by Dan Koboldt
The closet door hung ajar, and Jane’s mishmash of clothes—almost all of them black or blood-red—made a bruised tangle inside. I reached over them, back to the corner where I’d stashed my box.
Nothing. “Shit!” I whispered. Stupid of me to think she’d leave it, after the way things ended between us. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Hi.”
I flinched at the quiet, familiar voice. Jane stood in her doorway with her art-bag and easel draped over her shoulders. She’d dyed her hair again, a yellowish green. Such a waste of her natural color. She was alone. Probably just coming back from drawing class. Damn Summer for making me think otherwise.
“Hi,” I said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to get my hard drive, the one with the backup code.” Please let it be here. How long would it take me to rewrite that simulation engine? A couple of months, at least.
“What for?” Jane asked.
“I need something on it.”
Her lips trembled. “I think that’s the last of your stuff.”
“Yeah.” I fought to keep my face still. Sadness, bitterness, and longing all fought to show themselves on it. I have to be strong.
She looked down and away from me. “Bottom right corner.”
I crouched and fumbled beneath her clothes. My fingers closed on the familiar smooth cardboard. I dragged the box out. Still feels heavy. I fumbled the lid open, not daring to breathe. The hard drive nestled inside in a pile of packing peanuts. Relief flooded me. I sagged against the closet door. “Thank the lord.”
“Is that all you came for?” Her voice carried a dangerous undertone.
Uh-oh. “Well, yeah, I—”
She scoffed. Turned away from me. “It’s fine. Just go.”
We stood there in awkward silence. A part of me wanted to stay. The foolish, impulsive part. The wiser part knew that I should leave. And I might as well do that before I lost my nerve. “Well, see you.” I walked to the door, trying not to look at the pillows or the bed, or her face.
As I slid past her, she shook her head and muttered, “Asshole.”
I halted in my tracks. A spike of anger flared up in me. “What, for taking what’s mine?”
She sniffed and covered her eyes. Couldn’t even look at me. “Whatever. You should go.”
She didn’t mean either thing. I knew that, and I wavered. It would be so easy to go back three steps and put my arms around her. She’d let me do it, too. Maybe the relief of holding her again would help me get past the pain.
That’s the thing about Jane: she was the worst thing and the best thing that had ever happened to me. The allure of that emotional roller coaster ride beckoned. But I couldn’t let myself slide into that dangerous comfort zone again.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said.
Summer poked her head out of the kitchen. “What’s taking you so long, jackass?”
Such a delightful roommate. I glared at her and stalked out. I didn’t even close the door. That old Jane-induced darkness threatened to bubble up inside me. I clenched my jaw and shook it off. It’s over now. It’s done.
And I had work to do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Domestication
My behavioral module code was in better shape than I remembered. Maybe I’d suppressed all memories from my last few weeks with Jane. I don’t know. But I was grateful now, because it took me less than a week to get the functionality integrated into my biological simulator.
Meanwhile, the rest of Evelyn’s design team started working on Design 49. First, they tried modulating the protocadherin genes that governed reward response. The idea was that customers could reward-train tame behavior, a practice that often worked with birds. It might have succeeded for us, were it not for the fact that newly born dragonets are ravenous. Customers wouldn’t withhold food when they needed to. Not only that, but the herpetologists raised the valid point that hatchlings had to eat, or they wouldn’t thrive.
Next, the designers tried jacking up the dopamine, figuring that a happy dragon would be less likely to maul its owner. They were wrong; we didn’t need a focus group to predict the lawsuits that would follow.
I thought my module might be able to help. It scored aggression with some rather complex modeling of stimulus-response and synaptic pathways. Basically, it estimated the balance of neurotransmitters in the animal’s brain and matched those against the known chemicals underlying aggression.
“What’s the output?” Evelyn asked me when I told her it was done.
“There are a few readouts, but the one you’ll want is probably the aggression score. It goes from zero to one hundred.”
“Higher being more aggressive?”
“Exactly. Tame animals should be below fifty. Ferocious, bloodthirsty predators should score in the high nineties.”
“What would score one hundred?”
“I’m not sure any living creature would.” I paused. “Maybe the T-rex from Jurassic Park.” Too bad I don’t have access to that genome.
She smiled. “I love that book.”
“Me, too.” The scientist in me knew that DNA molecules are too fragile to endure for millions of years, even encased in amber. But damn, what a great story. Crichton died too young.
“Run any domestic animals yet?” she asked.
“I ran Canis familiaris.” Better known as the domestic dog. “It scored a twenty-nine.”
We both sighed and shared a moment of sadness.
“Did you have a dog?” she asked.
“Yep. Bailey. He was a golden. What about you?”
“Fan-fan. She was a—”
“Shih Tzu?” I guessed.
She smiled. “Am I that predictable?”
I shrugged. She was proud of her Chinese heritage, and it made sense that she’d own the classic Chinese breed.
“What about Design 48?” she asked.
“I didn’t run it yet. I was waiting for you.”
She tapped a few commands to bring the design up in DragonDraft3D. I showed her how to activate the behavioral module. Then she ran the simulator, and the now-familiar image of our most recent failure shimmered into existence over her desk. The scores came up, too. Aggression was at 87.
“Well, I think I see the problem,” I said.
She chewed her bottom lip. “I’ll spend some time testing it. Thanks, Noah.”
“Hope it helps,” I said.
A few days later, Evelyn called a meeting with the whole design team. We crammed into her office. There weren’t enough chairs, so I ended up on the floor between Brian O’Connell and the Frogman. Korrapati took the extra seat. That’s when a Chinese guy rolled in on a foot-scooter, one of those motorized jobs that you balance on to zoom around. But he was riding it indoors.
“Am I late?” he asked.
“Wong!” said everyone at once. In my head, it sounded like Norm!
“Welcome back.” Evelyn gestured at me. “Andrew Wong, this is Noah Parker. Our newest hire.”
The newcomer’s forehead crinkled as he flicked off his scooter. “We are hiring now?”
“He’s a trainee,” Evelyn said.
Wong kicked up his foot-scooter and shook my hand. “You must be very good, very good, Noah Parker. Glad to have you here.” He talked a mile a minute. His smile was the picture of open friendliness, so I think he really meant it, too.
I felt everyone’s eyes on me, and it made my face hot. “I don’t know about that.”
“Noah’s behavioral module is working, and not a moment too soon,” Evelyn said. “Design 48 failed in hatching.”
By mauling the handler, I couldn’t help but think.
Everyone groaned. I took this to mean they’d experienced this before.
“Too bad,” Wong said.
“I’ve convinced the higher-ups to let us design another prototype, but it may be our last.”
“Whose turn is it to have design privileges?” Korrapati asked.
&nbs
p; “Pretty sure it’s mine,” said the Frogman.
Evelyn put both of her hands flat on her desk, as if holding herself up. “I’m thinking we will have a competition among all designers. Noah included. The best domestication prototype gets to be printed.”
“How will you decide which design is best?” O’Connell asked. “We should have some criteria.”
“We’ll use the aggression score in Noah’s behavioral module as a baseline metric.”
This brought a wave of protests.
“Aw, come on!”
“That’s insane!”
“Using the score gives Noah an unfair advantage. He wrote the simulator,” O’Connell said.
I fought the evil grin that wanted to spread across my face, because he was absolutely right. It wasn’t as significant an advantage as it appeared—the simulator scored the genetic code, after all—but it would give me an edge.
“Perhaps, but he has the least experience at dragon design,” Evelyn said. “That makes it a fair contest, in my opinion.”
The protests quieted to a grumble. Even though I couldn’t ignore the tension in the room, my mind already raced ahead to the design challenge. This was my chance to prove myself to the rest of the team. But it went beyond showing that I belonged here. Whoever cracked domestication would establish the baseline prototype for all future designs. And maybe get free rein with the God Machine besides. My heart rate quickened at the thought.
I snuck a look around the room. O’Connell was openly pissed, probably about my simulator playing such a critical role. Korrapati looked thoughtful. The Frogman’s face held no emotion; he was impossible to read.
Wong grinned. “I like a competition.”
Hell, that’s the scariest reaction of them all. Not that I was too surprised. Anyone who survived two years at Shenzhen would have to be taken seriously.
“What’s the deadline?” Korrapati asked. She sat with perfect posture, taking notes in a little Moleskine notebook. Because of course she was. She’d probably be a hell of a competitor, too.
“One week from today,” Evelyn said.
“Not much time,” said the Frogman.
“You can score your designs as much as you want in the interim. That okay with everyone?”
A few mutters answered her, but at least no one spoke up.
“Good luck,” Evelyn said.
O’Connell stomped out without a word. The Frogman followed on his heels.
“Noah, hang back a minute,” Evelyn said.
Uh oh. Maybe this was the part where she told me that the simulator was an unfair advantage. That I couldn’t compete. I still didn’t have a good rebuttal for that argument. I’d overcome my lack of experience with DragonDraft3D pretty fast, and she probably knew it.
Evelyn smiled. “So, Noah Parker. What do you think?”
“The competition’s an interesting idea. I just don’t want to step on any toes.” If I win, they’ll say it was because of the simulator code.
Evelyn shrugged. “You should consider it an opportunity to show you can be part of the team.”
“Fair enough.” It occurred to me, then, that a gesture of transparency might be the right opening move. “I’d like to make one more modification to the simulator code.”
“Is it critical?”
“No, but it might help the spirit of the contest.”
“I don’t know.”
“Aw, come on. Let me at least show you what I want to do.”
She sighed. “All right.”
“Would you mind pulling up the latest code?” I skirted around her desk so I could see the holoscreens straight on. She brought it up in a new window, which brought the current total to eight. Biotech news feeds, e-mail, and some kind of security monitor. My eyes wanted to wander, to see what the DDD got to see, but I forced them front-and-center on my code. At Evelyn’s gesture, I took over the keyboard and scrolled down to the spot I wanted. “Know what this is?”
She glanced over it, wrinkling her brow in concentration. Then her eyes widened in realization. “A phone home?”
“Bingo.” I was impressed, not just that she recognized it but that she knew the old-school term. It was a special subroutine deep within the simulator that sent me a message every time the code was executed.
“You like keeping an eye on things,” Evelyn said.
“When I write them, absolutely. But here’s what I had in mind.” I changed the recipient of the “phone home” from my address to the alias for Evelyn’s design team. Now it would send every single simulation run to the entire group.
Evelyn laughed. “Real-time scoring? This will be a good competition.”
“I think it will,” I agreed.
And I’m going to win it.
The design team didn’t waste any time. By the time I reached my desk, my updated simulator code had already sent out two results.
O’Connell: 82.69.
Korrapati: 76.18.
Not bad for an opening salvo. And even though my shoulders tensed at how quickly the rest of the team was moving, it told me two useful things. First, O’Connell and Korrapati already had models they were working from. At least two existing prototypes had entered the competition field. Second, it confirmed what I suspected: everyone wanted to win this contest just as badly as I did.
I pulled up Design 48 on my computer. Given that it had failed—and failed spectacularly—I figured no one would mind if I claimed it as my starting model. Otherwise, I’d have to create one from scratch, and I still had to get comfortable with DragonDraft3D. That being said, all the customizations didn’t really belong to me. So I made a copy of Design 48 and removed all the team’s modifications. That left me with a barebones dragon that would score embarrassingly high on the aggression scale.
Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
“Eh, what the hell.” I ran the design through my simulator. The 3D holographic model sprang into existence in front of me, beside the projection monitor. It looked much as I remembered, but slightly more predatory, with a lean body, rippled musculature, and a streamlined head.
Parker: 93.78
Out in the design lab, someone snorted. Sounded like the Frogman, but I couldn’t be sure. Good. I’d just as soon surprise them.
These grand plans survived about two minutes. Without Evelyn there to guide me, I had no idea what I was doing in DragonDraft3D. Scientifically, I knew what avenues to explore first—temperament pathways, neurotransmitter controls, that sort of thing—but finding these and adjusting them while keeping within that damn “points” system proved tedious work. Design 48 represented weeks of work by multiple engineers. God knows how many little tweaks they’d made. The disadvantages kept piling up.
Evelyn snuck up on me. “How’s it going, Noah?”
“Rough,” I said. “Not because of DragonDraft3D,” I added quickly. “I just need to get used to it.”
“I could give you some more instruction,” she said.
I waved her off. “I don’t think that would be fair to the others.”
“But you’ve never designed a full prototype before.”
I grinned. “All the more reason for you to be impressed when I do.”
“I admire your confidence, Noah Parker. Good luck.”
She click-clacked out and went in to confer quietly with Wong. Then she dropped in on Korrapati. Rallying the troops, as it were. I tried not to begrudge her a few words of encouragement. The rest of the team probably needed it more than I did, given how many designs they’d seen fail.
Wong: 79.23
“Damn,” I muttered. That put me squarely in fourth place, and I was fairly certain the Frogman wasn’t playing. So it was effectively last place, and a long hill to climb in front of me. There was so much to do, I hardly knew where to start.
Back to basics, Noah.
In their unmanipulated form, our dragons were wild animals. That had been clear as day when Evelyn showed me that one during my interview. Clearer still when De
sign 48 had attacked the handler. It didn’t surprise me, given the diverse collection of predators that gave rise to the dragon genome. Thousands of years of evolution had written those survival instincts. It wasn’t something I could undo in five minutes. I had to chip away a little bit at a time, like an ice sculptor.
First things first, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make the dragon slightly less dangerous. Besides, physical traits were the easiest to change. I reduced the claw length and tooth size. Cut back the size a little bit, too, because all things being equal, a smaller dragon would pose less of a threat to the staff. These changes freed up some feature points, which I figured I’d need soon enough.
While I was at it, I reduced the running speed and slowed the reflexes a hair. The less dangerous, the better.
Now I was swimming in feature points, and it was time to cash in. I flipped over to neurological enhancements and began the more delicate dance of mood alteration. I tempered the stimulus-response pathways to more moderate sensitivities but cranked down serotonin re-uptake to keep the neurons firing. Then a splash of baseline dopamine expression, to make the dragon a bit happier all the time. On paper, it seemed like my prototype would make an ideal domesticated dragon. Time to see what my simulation code had to say.
Parker: 85.42
Damn. I’d made some headway, but I hadn’t even caught up with O’Connell. It was 5:30 by then, quitting time, and the end-of-day test rounds started to roll in.
Korrapati: 76.18.
Wong: 77.89
O’Connell: 79.30.
I should probably stay late and try to close the gap, but I couldn’t gather my scattered thoughts. My shoulders and neck ached from hunching over my workstation. I decided to clock out.
One day down, seven to go. And I’d already fallen behind.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Leaderboard
I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading papers about animal behavior and domestication. A poor decision, but I was desperate. Then I had a horrible dream about wolves attacking the humans that tried to domesticate them. I woke up in a tangle of sheets to the persistent bleat and blinding glow of my multialarm. The volume and brightness told me I’d overslept. Shit.