He pointed with the gun barrel to the edge of the barn to coax Paul to try moving that body forward.
Paul staggered to the door like Frankenstein. “Stop hamming it up for the pretty lady doctor in hopes she’ll put her…”
Celine had already rushed to his side and was helping him to walk by tucking herself into his armpit.
“How come she just doesn’t like it when I try to manipulate her?” Adrian asked, hanging back a few steps.
Klepsky decided to hang back with him. “She’s in love with you, she’s just in lust with this guy. Give it time. Time I suspect he doesn’t have,” Klepsky spoke the last part in a hushed tone.
Paul’s little walk outside into the invigorating fresh air just seemed to take the life out of him. He collapsed on a tree stump that had earlier been used for chopping wood.
“How are you feeling?” Celine asked.
“Like death warmed over.” Paul managed a chuckle.
Celine unzipped another of her bags that Klepsky had been kind enough to pick up for her and drop by her side now that Adrian was watching their backs with the Tommy gun.
Paul seemed to tolerate the scanners so long as Celine was touching him with her free hand or leaning her cleavage into his face, or dangling her hair against his neck as she bent down with the wands. As soon as she tried to take any scans too far away from him, he shouted, “No!” She resumed her “grabbiness” on cue.
Give it to him, for a half-dead guy, he isn’t all that slow, Adrian mused.
“So, what did you say to the guy to keep him from chopping you up?” Adrian asked.
“I told him I volunteered at the soup kitchen. I ran marathons for breast cancer victims. I coached little league.”
Klepsky tapped his ear-mike. He was obviously listening to Gorman at the other end. “Ed says the guy’s a regular boy scout. All his life. Probably would have died a saint if he’d been allowed to keep going down the road he was on.”
Adrian snorted. “So that’s what our killer meant by upping the ante. He’s not going after bad guys anymore. He’s going after people who don’t deserve punishing.”
“Figuring it’s a much better way to fuck with you,” Klepsky said.
Celine returned the last of her wands to the bag and came around behind Paul, massaged his shoulders. She held up one of her hands for Klepsky and Adrian to see, with three fingers standing up.
So, three hours, Adrian thought, before this one turns into another puddle of blood and guts on the floor. That’s quite a bit of improvement, alright.
Celine started to strip until there was nothing left but her naked body, and then teased “Paul’s” back with her nipples, painting them across him, until he couldn’t tolerate her rubbing up against him anymore. He yanked her by the arm and brought her around to his front, taking just a moment to part the folds on his underwear to give her something to sit on.
Klepsky and Adrian sauntered off a ways to give them some space. “She’s going to do that for the full three hours?” Klepsky whispered. “She go that long with you?”
“Not all at once. We take breathers throughout the night. Thought I was pacing myself on account of her.”
“Yeah, good women are like that, always playing to the egos of men.”
Adrian cracked a sardonic smile. He figured he deserved the ribbing after all he and Celine put him through about Ed earlier that morning.
“Go get me those scanners she was using,” Adrian said. “This is close enough for me.”
“Yeah, would be for me too if I was in your situation.” Klepsky hustled off to get the scanners and one of the bags, brought them back to Adrian. He handed them over one at a time, waiting for him to finish with flipping through the screens on one multiplex scanner that ran a spectrum of studies before shifting to another scanner.”
“I’m a futurist, God damn it, and no one told me we were in the middle of a Star Trek episode,” Klepsky griped.
Adrian chuckled half-heartedly; it came out more like a grunt. “You don’t watch any of those Peter Diamandis videos? It’s all part of the telemedicine movement. A more basic model to this, far more basic, of course, is expected on the market any day now. Some hospitals like the NIH in Bethesda already have them.”
“So, what’s the verdict?”
“Well, of course, I’m not the doctor cum multiple life-sciences PhDs researcher Celine is, but…”
“Cut the crap, Adrian. You can probably afford to forget more science than she’ll ever know.”
Adrian took a deep breath as he took his eyes off the scanner and stared straight into the sun. The idea was to go blind or force an idea into his head in the resulting vacuum of zero thought inside his head. The technique usually worked, but he hadn’t tried it staring into the sun before.
Finally, he let the breath out and looked away from the sun, let himself drown in the pools of blue spots he was seeing everywhere for a while.
“You ruled out all the other leads I gave you to go on, right?” Adrian said finally.
“Yeah. You know me. I can’t move forward until I’ve checked off everyone in my little black book. Unlike yours, mine just has suspects.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was a DNA computer behind this, a sentient one. Too many experiments have to be run in parallel and too many incoming streams of data-feedback have to be assessed to inform those concurrent experiments, both the thought experiments and the physical ones involving folks like ‘Paul’ over there. That’s assuming he maintains contact with his experimental subjects at all times.”
“So, we’re back to the AI hypothesis again?”
“Not just any AI, a DNA-supercomputer, which is unlike any other. Modeled more like the human brain. Only with perfect recall, and a million, a billion, or a trillion times the processing speed. They’re not as good as other computers at most things, but at this kind of problem solving, where so many experiments have to be carried out in parallel… well, they excel at it.”
“Except, according to Ed, who’s doing backflips in the office he’s so excited, judging by the tone of his voice in my ear, they don’t exist yet. Certainly, nothing on this level. He says he’s getting right on it though.”
Adrian handed the scanner back to Klepsky who could only think to use it as a weapon. Its screens were just a lot of pretty lights to him and he wasn’t in the mood for color therapy. But not being able to read the displays dislodged an idea. “You say this AI is in constant communication with its test subjects? How? How does every cell in their bodies speak to the AI exactly?”
Adrian’s sigh became a whistle. “Good question. Celine said something back at the church about how cells communicate using quantum signaling. Maybe this AI can read those transmissions somehow. Maybe the reanimation solution flowing through their bloodstreams is close enough to what’s running through the AI to permit it to sense at a distance, to take advantage of quantum non-locality. That’s crazy-talk by the way, in case you don’t know it when you hear it. But if this is a super-sentient AI we’re talking about, who’s to say what’s possible?”
“Nah, makes perfect sense to me, but then I probably watch more vampire movies than you. The original vampire always knows what the creatures he’s sired are up to.”
Adrian lit up a cigarette and took a few steps away from Klepsky, stared off into the woods, taking in the sounds of nature, which had returned, strangely, considering the giant spiders were now out of their cages. He needed room to think, so Klepsky gave it to him.
It took Klepsky a moment to realize the reason the sounds of nature had returned was that the giant spiders were finally fleeing the barn, headed into the woods, no doubt in search of food. He pitied the poor deer and other wild animals doing the screeching. But if Adrian was right, the spiders would die off eventually too, just not as quickly as Paul back there. And this far from civilization, likely before they ran into any humans. But just in case, he’d put the junior futurists to rounding them up, or puttin
g them down, as the case may be.
Celine’s moaning was doing things to Klepsky’s crotch that only a shower handle had done before. He couldn’t imagine what it was doing to Adrian. That might have been another reason he’d taken a few more steps in the direction of the woods.
Finally, Klepsky couldn’t take the moaning anymore of a woman being fucked by a man who knew it was going to be the fucking of his life, one way or the other, and he closed the gap between him and Adrian.
“Any more bright ideas?” Klepsky whispered.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’d hate to scream just to be heard over the moaning. Didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.”
“No, of course not. Or get in the way of my torture any.”
“There’s no getting in the way of that.” Klepsky swapped his cigar, which he’d just finished lighting, for Adrian’s cigarette. “Here, suck on this a while, give you a feel for what that big dick in Celine’s mouth feels like.”
He gave Klepsky a look like he might take his head off before chuckling and letting the emotion go, like watching a soap bubble burst.
“Well?” Klepsky said impatiently.
“I figure we have maybe another week, tops, before our killer perfects his unkillable man at this rate. That’s how long we have to apprehend him. I sure as hell don’t want to go after that cat after it’s out of the bag.”
“How do you plan to make the most of your time?”
“I think I’ll visit the other two girlfriends. A spy can get at information even we can’t, and lend political insights on why certain pathways to the future are being blazed ahead of others. That might cue us on what innovators are behind this better than simply following the science, which so far has led nowhere.”
“And after you’ve paid Monique a visit? What’s the assassin got to offer you? I could see you needing Veronica’s skills if you actually have to go hunting after this guy, after he’s unkillable, not before.”
Adrian grunted. “Don’t know my body could survive two visits with her, but if this guy does get away from us, no doubt I’ll be spending two nights with Veronica, not one. But the first night is to get her to push me past my limits. I need to feel like I’m dying and be left to fend for myself.”
“Why?”
“Because it might be the only way to get inside my killer’s head?”
“You think he might be dying as well?”
“Would explain why he’s putting such a premium in his back-from-the-dead experiments.”
“Ed says he’ll try and narrow the suspect pool for you there as well. I’ll run through the list once he’s got it together for dying geniuses and DNA computer designers.”
“Sounds good.” Adrian took the cigar out of his mouth to stare at it in admiration. “Love the smell of these things. Definitely colors my thinking though. Like seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses, but for someone who prefers to take in the world through their nose instead of their eyes… So like aroma therapy then?”
Klepsky yanked the cigar out of his hands. “One more thing about me that I could have stood you not knowing.”
Adrian saw the sour face, so when the eye-roll came a few beats later he knew it wasn’t connected. “What’s Ed whispering in your ear now?”
“He says not to worry, he has a pressure nozzle attached to the shower head he uses as a bidet to flush his ass out and make it smell like roses, or whatever I care to smell.”
“Thoughtful fucker. Not like my Celine.” Adrian glared her direction as her moaning hit another decibel rate. “What’s that guy on now, his third erection?”
“Ah to be young again.”
“Come on, let’s continue our conversation in the car,” Adrian said. “At least it comes with noise cancellation.”
“Genius.”
***
Being back in the car, locked in with all his cigar smoke, Klepsky was able to think better. Adrian didn’t complain about the cigar smoke affecting his thinking, but then again, he’d probably shot his intellectual wad for the morning. Klepsky was still looking to get into first gear with his mind.
“I’ll have Ed do an internet and illicit company intranet searches as well to see if he can find anything matching Celine’s scans he took of Paul.”
Adrian nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.”
Klepsky took a couple more puffs on his cigar before coming up with, “I’ll also have him run down who else has gotten golems on the mind. Artists, historians. May not be a scientist behind this, as unlikely as that sounds. Even if there is, maybe he parlayed with one of these guys once upon a time.”
“It’s only fair to tell you that if I’m right about there being a sentient DNA computer behind this, it would have been able to anticipate logical paths your investigation would go down, allowing it to throw up red herrings for you along the way. Just that many more parallel-thought processes to throw up. It could have done so without slowing its scientific research into its main area of focus significantly. It only has to stymie your human mind, after all, not another super-sentient AGI. Each time you arrest one of those red herrings and think ‘case solved’ and ease up on searching for your bad guy, the more time you give the AGI to complete its calculations.”
Klepsky started coughing on his cigar smoke, and rolled down all the windows at once with a press of the button to ventilate the car. “The air in here suddenly turned toxic,” he said.
Adrian smiled sardonically. “It’s the odds of finding our killer in time that’s eating at you, but you go ahead and blame it on the cigar smoke if you want.”
When he finally stopped hacking, Klepsky said, “So, what are you not getting that our killer is so determined for you to get, Adrian?”
This time Adrian felt something sticking in his throat. The truth. “He wants to turn me into a serial killer like him. Sees me as a genie that won’t let itself out of the bottle. He’s convinced we’re so alike that it can only mean one thing, that I’ve missed my calling.”
Klepsky got off one more hack. “Yeah, I can see why you’d prefer to take what help you can get from your lady loves before going down that road.”
He rolled the idea over in his mind a while longer. “How does turning you into a killer get him closer to solving… Solving what exactly?”
“It doesn’t, if he’s trying to get us to follow in the trail of his experiments to find out what he missed in his reanimation efforts, and his attempts to forestall his premature death.”
“Damn it! That was my theory, before Ed pulled me off it with a misdirect of his own. He was certain that was just too unlikely.”
“You should learn to trust your gut like me, Klepsky.”
Klepsky crushed a walnut in his trench coat pocket. “I’m going to have to give him the beating of his life for that.”
Adrian craned his head towards him and gave him a strange look. Then he seemed to relax. “Your punishments are his rewards, I get it. Strange set of checks and balances you two have worked out.”
“Ah,” Klepsky said, his tone dismissive, “I told him to get a Kevlar-body suit to ride out the breaking waves of affection.”
“Meanwhile you’re teaching him how to box so he can turn the tables on you. You sure it’s not yourself you want to punish? If he’s a stand-in for all those schoolyard kids you bullied, then each time he knocks you out you get to atone for one of their beat downs.”
Klepsky ignored him. His mind was already running along another track.
He was shaking his head. “Something doesn’t fit. Those recordings the killer has been leaving you. They seem more consistent with the idea of his trying to turn you into a serial killer like him by getting you to snap.”
The air got thick in the car again as Adrian considered this. “Maybe we’re dealing with two separate killers. Or maybe one of the well-crafted psych profiles is meant to divert us, while our real killer continues to buy more time for himself. Hell, maybe both psych profiles are bogus.�
�
Celine was approaching the car.
Which meant that Paul was dead.
She climbed in the back seat without saying a word.
Which is how they drove off.
All lost in the quiet spaces of their heads. Of course, what framed those empty rooms inside their minds was likely different for each of them.
NINETEEN
“What’s with the silver paint?” Adrian asked, opting for politeness over a show of annoyance with his tone of voice, just to show off the kind of self-discipline he had. He and Monique Dubois were both covered in silver body paint. They were dressed as normal over the silver.
“You pick now to ask?” She was rifling through a file cabinet looking for something she shouldn’t be looking for.
“My skin is itching now. Earlier, it was just a novelty.” He glanced up at the video camera in the corner of the room, its ready-light on. “You’re one lousy spy, you know that?” Adrian waved to the camera.
She glanced his way, opting for annoyance over politeness, showing off how self-preoccupied she was. “The camera? Don’t worry about that. There are three security guards who man the camera banks. I killed them all.”
Adrian took the cigarette out of his mouth and hit her with the “Who are you?” face. “What happened to less is more?”
“Who is that? Buckminster Fuller?”
“Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, I think. Close, though; they were both architects.”
“Huh. Well, never subscribed to that philosophy. Maybe if the guards could be bothered to remember they were only making ten dollars an hour and so to keep their guns holstered.” She snatched the paper she was looking for out of the drawer. “Got it!” she said in an exclamatory fashion usually reserved for shouting, “Bingo!” She kissed him and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“You’re hopeful. In case you haven’t noticed we’re inside the largest safe in the world. It’s a hundred plus stories tall, the windows are bulletproof, and the halls are rat-proof, meaning not even a rat could work this maze. Best of all, every office and every floor look exactly the same. It’s like one of those three-thousand-bit puzzles with nothing but white pieces.”
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