by Robin Craig
Consequently Bram had no friends. But somewhere along the fractures of his mind remained the human need for them, and something in Aden’s gift for people reached him. They became fast friends. Before, Bram cared only for his work. When he did well, he felt a perfunctory pleasure in the praise of his professor or others, but it did not truly touch him, merely eased an itch he didn’t know he had. But he delighted in showing his work to Aden, even on the occasions where Aden did not really understand what he had achieved. Aden even acquired girls for his intense friend; girls who liked the challenge, or were “mind groupies” as Aden privately called them. This was another need that had lurked unexpressed in Bram’s brain, and its satisfaction filled him with amazed delight: even more than is usual, since he had never thought to seek it himself.
Aden found Bram a fascinating person; found his brain one of the wonders of the world. He delighted in not only knowing him but giving him joy. And Bram loved Aden.
Then Aden saw in Bram’s work the route to the wealth he had always sought. Bram cared for nothing but his work. It was a symbiosis that would exceed that of Watson, Crick and Franklin; of the legendary Jobs and Woz. It would change the world.
Aden had the keen knowledge, born of poverty, that money had to come from somewhere and that the somewhere had to be persuaded to send it his way. He took to his new role like a missionary to the natives. He knew the science well enough to explain it accurately and even more importantly, enthusiastically; and had a knack for seeing what people wanted and explaining the advantages in terms that hooked their interest. Few people could have pulled it off. The potential of Bram’s research was speculative: if it had been too close to practicality, the University would have dropped its leaden foot on it faster than lead feet had a right to move. But it was in the happy valley of being both speculative and conducive to informed speculation. To the University, Aden stressed its obscurity and uncertainty, and the favor he would be doing them if he could persuade anybody to buy out their interest; to the investors he stressed its uniqueness and potential, and hinted at the fortunate myopia of the University in being unable to see what they had. In the end he acquired both investors and the unencumbered rights to Bram’s research at a price the investors were happy to pay and the University was happy to receive.
The world of early-stage investment is littered with the corpses of unfulfilled promises and failed enterprises. Yet the early-stage investors continue, in the hope – and actuarial reality – of those few investments that will return themselves tens or hundreds of times over. Aden and Bram did not disappoint. Aden had seen hints in Bram’s work of fundamental breakthroughs, spun them into castles of dollars in the minds of the investors: and Bram delivered. His results opened the road to nerve-computer interfaces that would work at unprecedented resolutions, down to single nerves: and better, work in both directions. It took no exaggeration to explain the medical and industrial possibilities to the investors, and no special brilliance on their part to grasp what that meant.
Another synergy occurred, this time between Aden’s talents and his investors’ excitement, experience and contacts. Their company was bought out by a much larger company, Allied Medical Devices. The investors made a lot of money. So did Aden, who on the strength of the impression he’d made on the buyers also acquired a new position in the company, doing much the same thing for a rather better salary. Bram came along too, as an integral part of the deal. He was happy, because he could continue his work with an even larger budget. He was now wealthy too, literally beyond his dreams, which had never involved wealth. He didn’t care. But Aden ensured that he had all the comforts he had earned. Left to his own devices, Bram would have lived as easily in a loft as in the luxurious apartment he now inhabited. But Aden believed, and in fact he was right, that even if he gave few external signs, Bram was the happier for the more gracious architecture, beautiful art, better food, softer bed and warmer women that Aden ensured he had.
AMD’s board and major shareholders could only have been pleased by the expansion in income their new acquisition produced. Then through more good luck than anybody deserved, the next few years saw a string of poor selling decisions by the main shareholders with complementary good ones by Sheldrake. Along with some generous share options he exercised, the eventual result was his emergence as an unexpectedly large minority shareholder. From that position of relative strength and by dint of negotiating ability to rival his luck, it wasn’t long before he had gained control of the company.
That was the official history anyway, and all that Miriam had access to. But had the original owners been fully aware of the potential of some of the more arcane neural interfaces that had been under development, they might have been more cautious and less surprised by the outcome. In any case everybody was happy. It was just that fuller information would have reduced the happiness of some parties considerably, possibly to the level of lawsuits.
Nobody could question Sheldrake’s ambition. He had himself voted in as CEO and AMD began a startling growth phase. It acquired company after company, technology after technology. It was not an undirected growth: all the companies and technologies were in fields related to man-machine interfaces. Sheldrake seemed fired with zeal to own the field. Prosthetics, brain scanners, virtual reality, games, information input and control, military hardware, artificial intelligence: the list kept growing. But Sheldrake didn’t let it become an unwieldy monster: except for functions that could be sensibly amalgamated he let the parts of his growing body act relatively independently of each other. But through the nerve center of himself, Bram’s scientific brilliance and his specialized AIs, the cross-fertilization of technologies benefited all. AMD became Allied Cybernetics and its wealth grew with each acquisition.
Miriam considered this with a frown. She was no financial wizard, but she thought it odd that a company could grow in wealth at such a rate purely through acquisitions. She wondered how he could pay a fair price for a company yet end up so much richer, even with synergy and higher efficiency. She thought about that some more, formulated a query, and sent it off to forensic accounting. By then her head hurt. She had learned that in police work it was wise to rest when you had the chance, so she laid back in the seat, closed her eyes and dozed off to sleep.
Chapter 14 – The Dearly Departed
She was drifting down a river, her boat gently rocking on the waves, just leaning back against the comfortable leather of the seat and watching the beautiful forest pass by. But there was something wrong. She felt a sense of foreboding, as if something lurked within the forest just out of sight and hearing.
She looked at Alex, sitting opposite her, and smiled at him. But he just stared through her with obsidian eyes, and she realized that was all he had done for so long and she couldn’t remember why. She wondered why he was in the boat with her, but she did not want him to go. She wanted to ask him why he hated her. Except she knew. She just couldn’t remember. She turned away, and when she turned back he was gone. Then the boat bumped against something. And bumped. And bumped. Then a voice spoke.
“Detective Hunter, we have arrived.”
She opened her eyes with a start. Sometimes my dreams are so obvious, she thought. But I’m not going to call him. There’s no point.
She came fully awake and said, “Understood.” The door opened and she got out, looking up at the sign announcing “St Crispin’s Shelter for the Lost”. Perhaps I’m at the right place. Then she went in.
A woman was inside at the counter. She was middle aged, slightly plump, with light brown hair drawn efficiently back and a friendly expression. She practically oozed motherhood and the mere sight of her evoked the scent of freshly baked cookies out of the empty air. Beyond her was a rounded archway opening onto a large space containing rows of benches, but nobody was seated at them at this time of day. The woman looked at her with a friendly gaze touched with caution. “Can I help you, miss?” she asked.
“Hello,” she smiled back. “I’m with the pol
ice. Would you be Tammy Henderson?”
The woman nodded. “That’s me, officer. What’s this about?”
“I understand you reported a disappearance a few weeks ago. One of your clients, or residents?”
The woman gave her a slightly surprised look. “Why, yes, that’s me. But I’ve already been interviewed. Have you found something?”
“No, sorry, but I’d like to talk to you if I may. Do you mind?”
The woman sighed. “No, not really, not that it will do any good. Should I be pleasantly amazed that the police are showing an interest in the disappearance of one of the forgotten people here? Anyway, come in, I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
Miriam sat at one of the benches as the woman brought over a large metal teapot redolent of strong tea, a couple of rough cups, a small jug of milk and a glass container of somewhat dirty sugar. “Nothing but the best for the fine officers of the law,” she said with a smile, pouring the tea.
“What’s that?” Miriam asked, indicating a sign above the entrance, which read:
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.
“Oh, that’s kind of our motto. It’s from Shakespeare, the St Crispin’s Day speech in Henry the Fifth.”
“I see. Well, Ms Henderson, can you tell me why you thought your resident’s disappearance was suspicious? I imagine with the kinds of people here that it must be a pretty transient population. People must come and go all the time? So why report this one?”
Tammy gave a faint smile. “Oh, Big Max was different.” She stopped, looking into the distance as at a favorite memory.
“Listen, Detective… Hunter. The people we get here are a ragtag lot. People who’ve given up, basically. Lost in drugs, lost in drink, or just lost. As long as they still need to eat and still need a place to sleep and dream, we give it to them. We give them kindness. Sometimes it’s enough. I suppose the world thinks they’re all losers, and maybe the world is right a lot of the time. But you never know what journey another person has had to walk, do you? We don’t judge them. We help them out, show them a kind face and a listening ear.”
“Do many of them… recover?”
She shrugged. “Some. I probably couldn’t bear it, the things I’ve seen, if it were otherwise. But as you say, these homeless people are transients. They usually don’t hang around long, even with the food and shelter. Whatever they’re looking for, they usually keep looking. You’re right though. Most of them never find it.”
“But Max…?”
“Max was in his sixties, but had a sharp mind and a healthy body. I think he had been rich once, and had some of the early life extension treatments. I don’t know what happened to him, what brought him down: he’d never speak of it. He had a wedding band too, gold; I’m afraid most of the people who come through here would pawn something like that in a flash. But not him, it was precious to him. Whether there was some tragedy with her, or his family… I just don’t know.”
She paused, collecting her thoughts. “But whatever it was, it wasn’t drugs or drink; wasn’t gambling or bankruptcy either. He’d just lost interest. Lost interest in living, he said; not that he wanted to die, he just didn’t want to try any more. You know what he told me once? ‘People live for the future. But sometimes by the time you get there you find it’s already gone. Now I just live in the present, however long it lasts.’” She shrugged. “He’d spent a few years wandering around, you know, being a tramp, bedding down in homeless shelters like this one, never putting down roots. But when he got here, something about the place must have spoken to him. He never left. And do you know what he did?”
Miriam shook her head.
“He didn’t care about money, but apparently he still had some. Not huge, but tidy. He said he just didn’t care enough to do anything with or about it. Had nobody to give it to and no need for it himself. But after he’d stayed here a couple of weeks he gave it all to St Crispin’s. He said he didn’t mind travelling around and living off charity, as he figured that’s what the charities wanted. But he just couldn’t impose, as he put it, on one place like some kind of sponge on a rock. So he gave us the money, to St Crispin’s the organization I mean, not just this place. Enough rent for the rest of his days, he said. So he could live here without guilt. And if he left, he’d always have a place he could come back to if he needed it.”
“I see. What did he do with his time?”
“As I said, he was fit. He’d walk around the city, see the sights, visit museums. Or just sit in the park talking to the birds. He loved books; he’d go to the libraries, borrow tons of books. Watch old movies.”
“What about the other people here?”
“Depends. A lot of them are really lost and don’t do much of anything until whatever demon is riding them drives them on their way. But we don’t give them money. If they want money they have to earn it. Sometimes we’ll pay them for jobs around here like painting or repairs. Sometimes they get money for blood or being scientific research subjects.”
Miriam’s ears pricked up. “Scientific research? Is there much of that? I wouldn’t think many of your clients would pass the health criteria, from what you say.”
“Yeah… but there were the occasional things. Psychiatric therapies; drug dependency treatments. Even rejuvenation therapies. Sometimes my people here are just what the doctor ordered. And yes… there was a good one fairly recently. Wanted a lot of subjects and paid well – or what passes for well in this crowd. Hang on, they left some contact flyers in case anyone’s interested. They’re still recruiting, you know.”
She got up and went to her office, and in a short while returned brandishing a glossy brochure. “Real paper and all,” she smiled. “Yes, this is them. Allied Cybernetics. They didn’t mind about the quality of our residents in the slightest, they said. In fact they welcomed it. Their story is they are as interested in the extremes of human nervous systems as in the average. To make their technology more universal and robust. And some of their applications are psychiatric as well.”
“And Big Max?” Miriam asked. “I don’t suppose he did any work for them too?”
“Why yes, he did. He actually got quite interested for a while. He’d never tell me what it was about but he’d come home some days with quite the shiny look in his eyes. I could tell he loved whatever it was he was into.”
The woman paused but Miriam just looked at her with an inquiring expression. Tammy had seemed reluctant to talk at first, but once she’d started she seemed unable to stop. Perhaps she knew this was the only eulogy Big Max would ever have and Miriam the only person who would ever care enough to listen.
Finally she took a breath. “I shouldn’t tell you this. I might get in trouble, so please keep it to yourself. Can you?”
“As long as it’s legal – or even illegal within reason. I don’t want to make any trouble for you or him. I’m just trying to find out what happened to him.”
“Well, we’re not supposed to get too personal with the clients. Bad for morale, and I understand that. But one day Big Max came back here and he looked strange. Intense. I was off duty that night, and he knocked on my door later. We let them do that, you know: we like to always be there if they need help or just to talk.” She stopped and gave Miriam a nervous glance. “Go on,” urged Miriam.
“When I opened the door he just stood there. He looked… well, it’s hard to describe. More than intense. I’ve thought about it since, what it was about him. Like he was an avatar of Desire, if that makes any sense. Or like the essence of masculinity. And he gave me this look… Jesus!” She shook her head as if to clear it, as if the memory still had the power to rattle her hormones. “Well, look, he was an attractive man, even if he was older. And when he gave me that look… hell, I fell into his eyes. Practically pulled him into my room.”
“You don’t need to tell me this.”
“But I do! You have to understand! He’d been to Allied Cybernetics that day. I think he d
id something there that changed him that day, some kind of virtual sex that must have been… real, even more than real. He said something to me, afterwards. He grabbed me like his life depended on it, gave me another one of those stares – but ebbing, like it was leaving him – and he said, real urgent like, ‘Tammy! Is it real? Tell me this is real!’ And I held him, and said, ‘It’s real, Max, as real as it gets.’ Then he kind of smiled, and held me, and went to sleep.”
Miriam just stared, uncertain what to say.
“The next morning we were both a bit embarrassed, you know? He left my room and we never spoke of that night afterwards.”
“Pardon me for asking this, but did you ever do it again?”
She shook her head. “No… no. I think we would have, if we’d had longer. It was always there between us, that night. But it was only two weeks before he disappeared.” She sighed. “Two weeks.”
“Might that be why he left? You said you were both embarrassed about it after. Could it have driven him away somehow?”
She shook her head and said firmly, “No. It wasn’t like that. It was our secret, but it wasn’t a shameful one. It was… precious. Like a little bit of magic we shared. It drove us closer not further apart.”
Miriam thought about what had happened to him. “Did he ever tell you about any other side effects of what he did at Allied Cybernetics? Headaches? Hallucinations, anything like that?”
“No. None of the people here ever did.” She looked at Miriam sternly. “I see where you’re going. But Allied Cybernetics is good for these people. Good to them, too. Don’t you go thinking they hurt them.”
“Did Max ever go back there after your night together?”
“Yes. He didn’t usually tell me where he went; none of them did. But I know he went back there at least a few times. He loved it. But it was never like that night again, he never came back changed.”