“The murder was accidental, a heated argument between two old friends that got out of hand.
“That’s not an accident, that’s manslaughter. ”
“Well, I’ll let you work out the technicalities. Everything else, which York was unaware of, was an attempt by certain parties to keep the authorities away from York. ”
“Why, what’s so special about York that he needs to be protected? Not to mentioned ‘snatched. ’”
“He is in the position to make a credible claim to be the inventor of a process, known as Veritas, which could revolutionize and dominate a number of industries, such as education, medicine and entertainment, including pornography and the drug trade. ”
“What do you mean, ‘claim?’ Is he the inventor or not?”
“I don’t really know. But he was certainly there at the creation and may be, at the least, the co-inventor. ”
“This Skinner being the other co, I take it. ”
“That’s right. ”
“And this Veritas is potentially worth… ?”
“Over the life of the patent? A trillion or three. ”
“Whew! I’d whistle if I could. ”
Roee whistled.
“Thanks,” the Captain said.
“Don’t mention it. ”
“Well, the old cynicism wins again: Money is the root of all evil. ”
“Yes,” I said. “But it produces such a nice big tree with plenty of shade. ”
“So who are the certain parties?”
I explained about Batsarov and asked the Captain to check with Immigration and find out if he had entered the U. S. legally under his own name, and if so, when and how. Then I detailed my suspicions about Andy Rand.
“Well, from what you tell me, we could put on the heat to get York. We could arrest him for manslaughter, at least. Batsarov, if he’s here legally, we could get him on obstruction of justice, kidnapping, if that’s what it really was, and the Oregon authorities would want to talk to him about the arson of the houseboat. Assuming we could prove any of this. If he’s not here legally, we can deport the sport. As far as Rand is concerned, you haven’t got anything but a supposition that he’s involved. He’s in a perfect position to plead ignorance over the not-so-nice things that has been going on. He’s just an investor, after all. Not shaping up to be very exciting. ”
“Give it time, Captain. Plans have been frustrated. And frustrated men do stupid and dangerous things. ”
*
The Captain dropped us off at home to pick up the 911, then, we all drove out to Pasadena. It was a depressing drive through socked-in pollution. All color was dulled and barely deserved the appellation. Distance could not really be perceived when we were speeding along on the 134, leaving little visual evidence that urbanized life was to our right and a mountain range was to our left. Is it any wonder most people in L. A. have tunnel vision?
We pulled off the freeway at Orange Grove and slipped onto Colorado Boulevard, passed the Norton Simon Museum, traveled down to Fair Oaks, turned right, then left on Green Street to park in the city parking structure.
We got out of our cars and I headed towards the stairway exit to the south.
“Hey!” the Captain shouted pointing north, “The elevator over here is closer to Colorado. ”
“But then you miss seeing the Castle Green. ” I continued quickly, leaving the Captain and Roee no choice but to follow me. We descended the stairs and pushed out of the narrow door at the bottom to find ourselves facing the old Castle Green.
“What a weird building,” the Captain said.
“Yes,” I said, “weird and somewhat wonderful. ”
I don’t know if one could actually categorize the architectural style of the six story Castle Green, but there was a hint of the Moroccan in its towers and decorations, and Spanish in its facing, both mixed with a touch of Colonial Revival. California Hodgepodge might best describe it. Built in 1898, the Castle Green’s most interesting feature, among several, is an elevated covered bridge that runs from its entrance— which was set back quite a ways from the street—to the sidewalk, where it abruptly ends, as if sliced off. Originally the bridge continued on across the street and connected with the main building of the now long gone Hotel Green, of which it was once an annex. Slightly decrepit looking, although under refurbishment, Castle Green now leads a very active life as condos; an old world romantic place for weddings; a unique spot for corporate functions, and, of course, a dress-able location for the shooting of film and TV. It’s a bit like a sprightly old lady in clothes old enough to be antique. There is wit there and an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude, mixed with a small sense of sadness.
“Gentlemen,” I said to the Captain and Roee with a formality influence by the sight. “When you find an architectural and historical oddity in Los Angeles and environs, you must pay homage to it. For they are few and—this being Los Angeles and environs—very far between. ”
“Fixxer?”
“Yes, Captain. ”
“Write the guidebook later. Lets get back to the very serious matter at hand. ”
I turned to the Captain and thought it odd that I had never before noticed just how thick his eyebrows were. “You’re suited to your badge, Captain. ” He took it as a compliment.
The Captain probably wouldn’t have appreciated my thoughts about Old Town Pasadena, how I considered it the most refreshingly un-Los Angeles-like spot on the local map. It was just plain downtown Pasadena in the 1920’s, built like most of the average size American cities of that time, with dominating 5-to-10 story brick office buildings with retail shops on the ground floor—a nice, solid Babbitt look, possibly dull when conceived, but now charming and nostalgic, and, most importantly, substantial. Unlike most of L. A. , which is just a swath of flat and smooth interlocked suburbs blistered now and then with commercial districts made up of one and two-story box buildings of no particular architectural interest. This stretch of three blocks down Colorado Boulevard had become a slum for a while, a sad disrepair of these grand old buildings; empty, boarded up shops; the Le Sex Shoppe adult bookstore being the only highlight. But gentrification came in, money wanting a pleasant place to attract more money, and the place was recovered. Now it has the required restaurants, pricey handcraft stores, upscale movie multiplexes, and fancy bookstores to entice people pretty happy to be among the relatively attractive with disposable income. Le Sex Shoppe is still here. But it’s been given a classy facelift to mix well with its neighbors, including a window you can window-shop through.
We entered Sorriso, a Cucina Italiana, as they liked to say. It’s a pleasant space designed like many of today’s trendy restaurants, with the ceiling two stories high and the ventilating system hanging out for all to see. That’s okay, there is nothing particularly rude about a ventilating system, and it allows for the high ceilings and high ceilings, as the builders of cathedrals long ago learned, give one a pleasant elevated sense of insignificance.
The restaurant was virtually empty. In the back, at a small table with no other chairs surrounding it, sat a young man in a stark white long-sleeved shirt, barely faded jeans, and Timberlake hiking shoes. His face featured a high forehead that his thin brown hair fell forward on; bright blue ice cube eyes; a roundish nose; a mouth most natural when either sneering or snarling, and pretentious dark fuzz that he probably called a beard. I had no doubt this was Jim Skinner.
“May we speak with you?” was my introduction.
Skinner looked up from American Physics Review, and addressed me. “Are you the police?”
The Captain pushed forward and showed him his ID. “I’m the police. ”
“Then who are these two?”
“Two who wish to speak with you,” Roee stated.
He looked at us. Carefully. As if his science was not physics but physiognomy. Are you good guys? He was wondering. Are you bad? Should I care? Finally he said, “Speak. ”
“Let’s move to a larger table,” I said.
/> Dismissing the thought he said, “I never sit anywhere else,” and returned to his journal.
“Oh,” I said, not surprised, and not impressed. Then I grabbed his table—while smiling, I’m sure—and jerked it violently aside. It and his food crashed to the floor.
“Hey!” He started to rise.
“Sit!’ I yelled. “You never sit anywhere else, so sit!” Then I grabbed a large, empty table and dragged it to Skinner as Roee thrust several hundred dollars into the hands of the management and asked them to please replace Mr. Skinner’s meal and please bring the rest of us coffee. We put chairs around the table and sat. I stared at Skinner and said, “If a man is a genius, you have to assume he is smart enough to know it. I assume you know that you are a genius and I assume that that knowledge combined with your fortunate youth has lead to your supercilious arrogance. That is fine, I have no tolerance for humility. The truly talented have no right to it and everybody else, who has so much to be humble about, certainly shouldn’t be flaunting it. But for these coming moments, you and I will live in a vacuum, a pure state of question and answer. I will ask the questions and you will answer in a generous spirit of information sharing. Now, I see a little sliver of fear has crossed your right eye. Put it aside. I will not ask you to reveal exactly how your device works, how you get inside a person’s head and collaborate with the information already there to create new realities. But I will ask you about your motivations, I will ask you about certain personal history, I will ask you about the present and the future, and you will answer, and answer well, or that little sliver of fear will grow into a huge, massive, sharp stake that I will drive through your eye and into your head and it will lodge there impeding all other possible activity. ”
An incredibly apprehensive waitress brought Skinner’s meal and our coffees. I sipped mine. “Excellent. Jamaican Blue?”
“Uh, yes sir,” the waitress said.
“I’ll take three pounds. Whole bean. ”
“Uh, yes sir. ”
She left. Skinner smiled. Twirled some pasta primavera onto his fork. “Coffee is not good for you. ”
“In a world where mothers give birth, as Beckett said, astride a grave, coffee is the least of my worries. ”
Skinner took his bite of pasta primavera and chewed slowly. He was savoring it. That was good.
“You know that David Finch is dead?”
He nodded while swallowing then said. “His father called me. Jigsaw puzzled to death, as I understand it. ”
“Black humor over your friend’s death?” Roee questioned.
He shrugged. “I guess it’s my way of handling grief. ”
“Did you consider him your best friend?”
“David was not best at anything. But he was amusing with his intense, almost religious need to be right about movies. He was fun to argue with, because the outcome of the arguing was meaningless. ”
“Unlike a conflict in science?”
“Very unlike. ”
“He was killed by Craig York. ”
That stopped a forkful of pasta from rising. “Craig? Craig couldn’t kill. He’s the weakest of the weak. And as good as he is at gutting fish, he certainly couldn’t dismember a body. It’s a thought that would never occur to him. ”
“You’re right. The murder was accidental. The dismemberment was accomplished by others. ”
“Who? Butchers in training?”
I took the Veritas glasses out of my pocket and placed them on the table. “People who want to exploit these. ”
Skinner looked at the glasses. Then back up at me. “Is Craig dead too?”
“Might as well be. He has sold his soul to devils. ”
Skinner picked up the glasses. “The prototype. I spent $35,000 developing a better pair. I thought I had safely stored these away. Obviously Craig stole them. ”
I put the gold CD-Rs down on the table.
“Copies of my programming and software, I take it. ”
“Yes. ”
“And he would have been able to build a transmitter. Basic child’s play. ”
“Do you call it Veritas?” Roee asked.
“Yes, that’s what I call it. Did he steal that too? Craig is highly intelligent. But he has the originality of a fruit fly. ”
“So what are we talking about here?” The Captain asked. “Virtual Reality?”
“Virtual Reality? Virtual Reality sucks!” Skinner declared. “What I have created far outstrips something as clunky and inelegant as VR, which is nothing more than bad computer animation slammed through to your optic nerve combined with rudimentary sound design screamed into your ears to impress your auditory nerves. But if they can yank you out of equilibrium, no matter how crudely, they think they’re giving you something close to reality. It’s a con game. What is reality? Not the three dimensions of your surroundings. But the four dimensions of your surroundings as processed by your brain. Reality is what we perceive it to be in the moment, combined with what we have perceived it to be in the past, combined with what we are assuming it is going to be in the future. Reality is what our brain makes of all of our senses, not just sight and sound, but all of our senses providing information that run the gauntlet from abstract data to silly pleasure to excruciating pain. The key to a manufactured reality that is Veritas—Truth—lies in directly manipulating the brain, rather than manipulating the senses through “virtual” renditions of reality. If we have a direct link with the brain, and if we know what to communicate, if we can “mock” all the senses, instead of just piggybacking on two of them, then the brain will cooperate with us in perceiving a reality worthy of the name, Veritas. VR is like chiseling pictograms on stone. Veritas is the elegance of fine literature written on the breath of life. ”
“So these, uh… ” The Captain picked up the glasses. “These glasses aren’t like little video screens, then?”
Skinner laughed. “Absolutely not. In fact they are in the shape of glasses as a little personal joke. ” Skinner reached over and took the glasses from the Captain. “The right ‘lens’ is a receiver collecting information sent along an infrared wave. The left ‘lens’ is a transmitter sending back information to the home unit. ”
“And the metal contact points in the bows is your direct link to the brain,” I guessed.
“Yes. ”
“On some kind of an electrical level. ”
“You might say that. But, assuming a singularity, the question is: what level?”
“And the information, depending on exactly what it is, visual, aural, neural, cognitive, is somehow routed to the proper area of the brain for processing. And the brain, thinking this is actual, sensually delivered information, processes it into—reality. ”
“Very good. You’ve had a science background. ”
I smiled, and then asked, “How were you inspired to create Veritas?”
“Oh, let’s just say, I dreamed it up. ”
“Of course. You mean that literally, don’t you? You woke up from a dream one morning and said to yourself, as we all do on occasion, ‘That was so real. ’ Then it hit you. If you could get inside the brain, you could create and control dreams. ”
“You have a multiplex of levels to your thinking. Congratulations, Mr… ?”
“Those I allow, call me Fixxer. ”
“A nickname? Are you perhaps related to the character actor Paul Fix, who co-starred as the sheriff in “The Rifleman,” starring Chuck Conners and Johnny Crawford?”
“It is more designation than name. I am known for fixing things. ”
“Really? I have nothing that is broke. ”
“Veritas has been in the hands of some very dangerous people. ”
“But it obviously no longer is. ”
“That will not stop them. ”
Skinner shrugged. “Well—a rapist can’t do much without a prick. ”
“Rape is not a crime of sex, but a crime of violence,” the Captain said.
“Don’t you believe it,” Skinn
er snorted. “Rape is the gene survival strategy of losers. ”
I took a good look at Skinner. He was a young man in his early twenties, with a face hardly worn at all. And yet his ice blue eyes darted about to be both everywhere at once and to dodge incoming slings and arrows. “You perceive yourself to be surrounded by rapists, don’t you?” I asked without accusing.
Skinner thought for a moment, playing with this metaphor. He smiled. “If you equate intelligence with manhood—what other perception could I have?”
“I have experienced Veritas. ”
“Really?” He became immediately, genuinely interested. “And did you enjoy it?”
“Oh, yes, I love the smell of feces and urine. ”
“Ah, the Castle Program. ”
“Not sure I enjoy the panic of drowning. ”
“Based on one of my favorite Science Fiction novels. And the enjoyment comes when you are saved. ”
“The bear rug, though… ”
“I take no credit for that. Craig insisted on it. But then—he needed it. ”
“I found things missing. And my own personal memories did not always successfully fill the gap. ”
“You experienced an early version. I’m much closer to perfection now. ”
“And when it’s perfect, what are you going to do with it?”
“You know the power of what I’ve created. Do you know how often science has created power only to see it abused? I kept trying to explain that to Craig. I had to sketch out a whole scenario of abuse that could happen. Sketch it out like a movie to get him to understand it. What am I going to do with Veritas? I’m going to do with it, as I will. I’m not going to let the rapists have it. ”
“You’re very confident,” I said.
“And you would like to mock me because you know that that confidence comes from the independence of wealth. Wonderful country isn’t it?” He smiled. “You can draw a set of anthropomorphic prunes and make a fortune. ” He dropped the smile. “You underestimate me, the prunes did not do it alone. I’ve taken that money and rolled it over a thousand times. Yes, isn’t he amazing, another talent. I play—no, I work the stock market. I’m up every morning at three-thirty. I’m at my computer at four. I make or lose between 200 and 350,000 dollars by 8 A. M. I’ve been fortunate to make it more often than lose it. I need no one. Not the government. Not private investment. I am the most enviable man the world has ever seen. ”
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