High school had been an awkward and lonely time for Kya. Surrounded by far wealthier classmates, social conventions made making friends a challenge. She rode a bicycle home to their apartment, while the other kids took private transports to their parents’ wealthy homes. She brought in a small packed lunch while the other kids purchased large meals. She used antiquated holoTablets while the other kids studied from the BUIs. She was always the odd girl out, the last picked, the most awkward teen.
Where making friends had been tough for Kya, education had always come easy. Becoming valedictorian was trivial compared to the few dances Kya had attended. Scoring perfectly on her half-dozen university placement exams had been on par with her efforts of ensuring proper lunchtime social etiquette. But mastering Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the piano? Now that had been as challenging as any conversation she had ever had with a boy. Nothing before or since had satiated Kya’s perspicacious mind the way Bach had. Advanced physics had been a cinch—Bach, not so much. Learning machines? Easy-peasy. Bach? Nope.
Kya spent the evenings of her senior year of high school hunched over a piano that looked so decrepit the keys reminded her of uncleaned dentures—but it was the most expensive piano her mother could afford: free. And while it stayed woefully out of tune despite her best efforts, she grew to love every flat and sharp as if they were her own custom musical notes. As her mastery of Bach’s work grew—her fingers fluidly moving across the chipped, faux-ivory keys—so too did her young soul grow, for she had discovered passion.
Kya’s mother could not have been more thrilled, and though a music degree would not ensure riches (likely the opposite), her mom had been steadfast that Kya follow her passion.
Fourteen schools of varying disciplines, ranging from science to artificial intelligence to classical music had received articulate holoVids from Kya, humbly requesting attendance to their esteemed programs. Only one plea had been authentic, however, and it happened to include a perfect rendition of Bach’s seminal harpsichord piece. At the end of the holoVid, as the final note still echoed, Kya apologized for the flats and sharps that only the perfect ears of those reviewing her piece would hear. She noted that while she could have tuned the piano prior to her performance, ensuring that the keys stayed in tune at least through one performance, she felt that a perfectly tuned rendition would not accurately represented her true spirit.
She ended her video by stating: “Because, like this piano, I too have parts of me that are out of tune. And I love those parts just the way they are.”
Somewhere, a pretentious teardrop from a stodgy old professor who had long ago lost passion for music fell upon the Accept button of Kya’s application.
So when the time came to at last choose a university to attend, Kya hadn’t hesitated to choose her most challenging, her most inspiring, and her most passionate path: the Juilliard School for Music. She responded personally to their acceptance holoVid with a Mozart-inspired composition she penned on the spot, titled “Accipio”; Latin for “I accept.”
Two days later, Kya’s mother fell into a coma from a rare disease, robbing her mind of oxygen.
Kya hesitated for the first time.
When Kya had two years invested in her PhD in cognitive neuroscience, her mother passed away. It had happened silently, one inhale too many. One simple breath inward, never to be let out. All of those memories—her mother’s very soul—lost forever. Deleted.
Had Dr. Okafor only finished her PhD a little sooner, worked a little harder, been a little more perfect, perhaps she could have saved her mom . . .
When the job of chief scientific officer of NRS had been offered to her, she had hesitated. The job offered her more clout and pay than any other, so her only trepidation had concerned control. She didn’t work well with barriers. It wasn’t so much that she preferred to draw outside the lines; rather, she preferred to draw the lines themselves. Until NRS, Kya’s previous experience had been exclusively at start-up environments, ten to twenty employees at most. Smaller groups of people could get away with far more, simply because they had less to risk.
So when the lawyers at NanoRegenSoft had presented her with a nondisclosure agreement the size of the Bible, she had hesitated more than a remedial med student would during their first attempt at cauterizing a wound. She had even turned the job down. It wasn’t until Reverend Coglin had paid her an informal visit—promising her the freedom to operate beyond the litigious eyes of public corps—that she had acquiesced and taken the job.
“You will have more freedom than you’ve ever imagined,” Coglin had whispered to her in his most seductive tone. “I will build you a lab the envy of the world over—darkTech or corpTech—anything you desire. You will operate outside of the bounds of the United States; you won’t be required to submit documentation for patent purposes, yet everything you do will receive accreditation upon completion of our project. You will be known the world over for allowing humanity to live on, to live forever.”
The choice was easy.
Now, in her lab, with her rats running around behind her and her holoVids and metrics encompassing her periphery, Kya paused. She was about to load Coglin’s memories, up to the minute, into a deathTrip to be transferred to an innocent man—Dylan Dansby.
She patiently watched a holoVid displaying various metrics pertaining to Dylan’s brain function, it was clear his mind now struggled with reality. Her eyes welled with tears, which she abruptly refused to let fall. She gritted her teeth. She was destroying an innocent man to save humanity. Was this man’s soul worth the cost of everlasting life for the entire human race? Of course. It was a bargain, if you really thought about it.
“Hurry up, everyone—Dylan’s mind is ripe for transference.”
Hours later, during one of the more challenging days of Kya’s career, she fielded a contentious holoVid from her boss.
“Mr. Coglin, the average person has seventy thousand thoughts every day. Those thoughts are the product of eighty-six billion neurons, all of which are in constant communication within our brains. Each single neuron connects via synapses to somewhere between five thousand and two hundred thousand other neurons. Each little neuron listens to tens of thousands of messages—yet they send only one message. Fascinating, right? They send that one message fast, though—one hundred and fifty meters per second.”
Kya stood rigid, her hands clamped to a desk, elbows locked.. She stared at a holoVid of Reverend Coglin’s leathery face. Behind her, the body of Dylan Dansby lay motionless. Monitors beeped and buzzed, keeping watch on the careful cartography of a man’s mind. As Dr. Kya Okafor spoke, she took pleasure in watching the corners of Coglin’s lips turn down and his brow furrow. She continued with her enjoyment.
“I’m off topic—back to your initial question. Let’s just round up and say we have about one thought every second. That’s totally inaccurate and not exactly measurable, considering our subconscious, but we’ll go ahead and run with it. So, one thought per second. Given this, our brain requires seven quadrillion synapses to fire in order to produce a single thought. Give or take a few quadrillion.” Kya paused, then turned slowly on her stool to make direct holoVid eye contact with her boss, an angry old man who she had come to call Reverend Grumpy when he wasn’t around. “And you ask me, after not even five minutes, whether I’ve mapped and analyzed the entirety of this man’s constantly evolving brain?”
Kya figured Reverend Cogling was not accustomed to recalcitrant employees, and she watched with pleasure as he gritted his teeth in frustration.
(Thousands of miles away, back in Seattle, the good Reverend yet again regretted hiring Dr. Kya Okafor. She had been the best in her field—no doubt about it—but he had known from her initial psychiatric evaluation that he might have trouble controlling her. He cursed his hubris; it had always been his weak link.)
Responding calmly, he asked, “May I have an ETA as to when you will have mapped our patient, Miss Okafor? How many synapses need to fire in your brain until you
can tell me that simple fact?”
She sighed. “I don’t know, I need more time. It shouldn’t take more than a day.”
“Can we begin his reprogramming before you’ve mapped—”
“No! How many more times do I need to explain this to you—”
“Shut up!” Coglin’s body flinched slightly, as if he were going to raise a hand to Kya’s holoVid. Though his shoulders slumped back down, his face flushed further with anger. He drew a ragged breath and snarled as he said, “Show some fucking respect, Doctor. You work for me, don’t fucking forget it. I’m paying you to do whatever I goddam want at whatever goddam time I want it. You will fucking obey me!”
Kya blanched. Sensing as much, Reverend Coglin leaned in and his image grew in front of Kya, his holoVid image mere inches from her own face. Had they been in the same room, she would have smelled the breath from his rotting lungs. Then he added in a soft and raspy voice, “My life is nearly over, Doctor, and if you don’t do exactly what I ask, I will have no compunction about ensuring the same fate for yours.” Enunciating so much that Kya saw tiny holographic spittle floating toward her, Coglin added rhetorically, “Now, how many times do I need to explain this to you before I make myself fucking clear, you filthy cunt?”
Dr. Okafor’s head was shaking visibly. Her breath had run and hidden far away from the image of the evil man in front of her. “Yes, sir,” was the only tepid response she could muster before hanging up.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“That one, Sindhu! No—Sindhu! No! Pick the other one!”
Mitlee hollered and pointed at the holoVid as if she could control the actions of the unsuspecting object of their observations. It was a voyeuristic game of cat-and-mouse.
“Mit, calm down. She’ll get there at some point soon enough. If not now, later,” Nimbus replied patiently, patting the girl’s dark hair. Mitlee slumped forward in frustration.
The pair were sitting not-so-patiently in a circular yurt; a brownish tentlike structure that was paradise compared to the miles of slumland that surrounded them. This particular slum was located on a hillside in the middle of the southern Nevada desert. Across the river stood the decrepit town once known as Laughlin, Nevada. Laughlin had long ago succumbed to ghosts. Virt gambling and Indian casinos had electronically demolished all Nevada towns aside from Vegas. No one complained, however, as these once vibrant, now deserted towns made great public land for the lower class to visit indefinitely.
Inside the yurt a bevy of activity was taking place. Mitlee and Nimbus were on Sindhu observation watch. Jay-san, Grepman, and Chicklet were huddled together waving hands over a holo-display that mapped out various portions of the inner workings of the Titus facility. Various rooms and hallways were color coded, while the majority of areas remained unmarked. A few paces away from the trio, Simeon sat on a couch, talking incessantly to someone only he could see within his ocular implants.
“Yep, I realize that it’s the third time in the past year, but what would you have us do? It’s not like we could have stayed there. We were obviously compromised.” Simeon’s salesmanlike voice bumped up a notch, “C’mon, Fish. Money isn’t an issue—” The person on the other end of the line cut Simeon off.
Catching his wife’s gaze, Simeon rolled his eyes and she smiled back at him playfully. Mitlee clutched at her arm and pointed at the hologram floating in front of them. Simeon followed the girl’s finger and noticed the top of a forehead bobbing at the bottom of the vid feed. Simeon bolted upright.
“Sorry, Fish, I gotta run. Something just—” He was cut off again, but interjected: “Yep, nope, I got it. I will. Yes. I promise, I will update you morning, noon, and night. Okay, gotta go. I love you, too.” Simeon mock-smooched the image in his ocImps and blinked them off. His eyes flared red briefly before returning to their normal flame color.
Simeon hurried over to Nimbus, who quickly asked, “Well, should we try it?”
“Yes!” he replied. “Do it.”
“Okay. Mit, you heard him. Send it.”
Mitlee smiled wide, clicked on her BUI, then began emphatically poking the air in front of her. The forehead on the vid hologram froze, then swung around 180 degrees, forcing a wad of hair into the camera. The hair began to bob cautiously in several directions. Everyone in the room held their breath.
“Do you think it worked?” Mitlee asked impishly.
“Shh!” Nimbus scolded.
At last, the hair gave way to the forehead, which rose up, displaying two wide, chocolate-colored eyes. The eyes smiled brightly as the forehead began to reverse. Suddenly Sindhu’s upper torso came into the picture, revealing more details of the room she was in; a well-stocked supply closet. Sindhu’s lips matched the smile of her eyes and she waved crazily toward the holoVidCam. She began to speak, and as she did, their holoVid converted her lips into captions on the bottom of the projection.
Thank God. I was worried you guys forgot about me!
“Never,” Simeon stated. “How’ve you been?” His voice would be translated into text and displayed within Sindhu’s ocImps.
Hanging in there, she said, smirking. Actually, I’ve been bored out of my mind. When do I get to do something worthwhile? All I’ve been doing is cleaning robots and avoiding augmented education classes. I’m getting dumber every day. Had the lip-reading software been able to interpret sarcasm, it might have placed double quotation marks around classes.
“Sorry it took us so long, Sindhu—relocation took longer than we anticipated. But we’re all set now out in the Nevada desert. Cracking the various Titus firewalls was no easy task, either. Even now we only have access to the least restricted areas. We’ve been waiting for you to walk into a closet for days now.” Simeon took a deep breath.
Okay, so what can you access?
Mitlee chimed in, but her excited, high-pitched voice was merely translated to bland text, her name appearing on Sindhu’s ocImps. “We can access basic stuff, like supply closets, bathrooms, and kitchens, but that’s about it. And even some of those areas are still restricted access! They’re using a fairly advanced rotating organic cypher, which we’ve cracked, so we’re pretty sure we’re good to go for a while. We have to be careful, though; that’s why we’re sticking with text instead of vid for now. The less data we send, the easier it is to obfuscate, and the harder it is for them to detect.”
No worries, Mit. It’s good to hear from you.
Simeon cut off a would-be reply from Mit. “And on that note . . . let’s practice brevity in these chats. Sindhu, you mentioned classes. What is that about?”
There are optional class sessions every day. They call it augmented education. They didn’t introduce me to them until I was situated and into a routine—I just attended for the first time a few days ago, and quickly verified my initial assertion: These aren’t classes at all. They are virtTripping these students using some new tech. I’m assuming it’s SolipstiCorp’s stuff, but I don’t know. It’s some kind of headgear. When I saw what was going on, I left.
“Were they suspicious?” Sindhu looked confused, so Simeon added, “Of you leaving, I mean.”
Oh, no. The classes are optional. In fact, they really don’t push them on folks at all. Maybe they’re harmless, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out. I’ve talked to a couple people about them, and they sound harmless. They are learning remedial classes; algebra, history, things like that. It seems to be effective, too. So, I don’t know?
Simeon looked thoughtful. Nimbus glanced at him, and he felt her gaze and returned it. She whispered, “Maybe just testing the system?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Subtlety can be a very effective manipulation technique.”
“Or they’re just testing stuff out,” Nimbus added.
What are you guys saying? I’m only picking up half the words. Sindhu looked nervous.
“Sorry, Sin—Nimbus had a thought that maybe they are testing the system.”
Possible. Still, even if that’s the case, what
are they testing? What’s the endgame? Maybe they are just building a smarter workforce? Or reeducating people for the sake of helping the poor.
“Heh, right.” Simeon’s face twisted bitterly toward skepticism. “And I only love my wife for her sarcastic sense of humor.”
“I love you too, dear,” Nimbus deadpanned.
Sindhu jolted to her left as another woman of Indian descent entered the room. The video display began dictating the conversation.
Woman on the right: Hey, Tamalika, were you talking to yourself in here?
The awkward laugh that Sindhu responded with was not picked up by the vid translator.
Sindhu: No, just singing, softly. I do that. I sing. Songs. I sing songs to myself. Softly.
She smiled awkwardly as the other girl grabbed a plainly labeled bottle.
Woman on the right: Good for you, I like to do that, too. I’ll leave you alone to your tunes.
The woman smiled and left. Sindhu’s eyes flared toward the camera.
Shit. I need to be more careful.
Simeon replied, “Nicely played. We’re reading your lips and translating to text, you don’t need to vocalize. Just mouth the words.” Sindhu nodded, and Simeon continued: “Sindhu, two things we need from you. First, we think we know a way to unlock your encryptChip for one hour a day. As Mitlee noted, they use a unique rotation on their encryption, but we are better. We should be able to give you full access to the entire facility between the hours of two and three a.m. During this time you will appear to be asleep in bed, but you should be able to go anywhere in the complex.”
Sindhu rolled her eyes. Words flowed onto the Vid display quickly.
God, Simeon, please stop with your passive voice. You think you’ve given me access? It should work? Tell me definitively. Will it work?
Simeon smiled. “Sure. Yes. Probably. At least, we think so. We’re pretty sure about this one.” He began to chuckle.
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