Brian gives it a couple more minutes before standing up himself and bringing his tray over to where I'm sitting. He gives me a thumbs-up on the way over, and as he sits down, I demand, “You got it? You got his name?”
“Yeah, no problem. He wasn't trying to hide it, you know? I said I'm Dr. King can I sit here, he said he was Dr. Acharya and sure, very nice to meet you, lunch lunch lunch, the end. You could've done it yourself if you'd brought one of the masks you were making last time.”
“Dude, where were you with that idea when I was signing up for this thing?”
“I figured you had a plan!”
“I did! I had a dumb plan. You should know this about me.”
Brian laughs and shakes his head. “Yeah, you're right. This is on me.”
I notice after a moment that he's eating left-handed. “Everything all right?” I ask, gesturing to his right hand.
“Oh yeah, totally. But – okay, stick with me on this one, 'cause it's a pretty big reach. But I was thinking that, you know how you can have bomb-sniffing dogs that pick up residue of explosives? Since when you work with stuff, tiny particles tend to get everywhere? I don't have the slightest idea how these nanos work, but on the off-chance that he's got some kind of nano particles riding around, I figured I'd see if I could get some by contact and bring them back to Doc Simmons.”
“Man, that's the kind of reach that an NBA player couldn't make.”
“Oh yeah? So you know how the nanos work now, then?”
“I didn't say I had a better idea! I'm just staking my 'I told you so' claim right here, so that when Doc Simmons makes fun of you, I get to chime in.”
- Chapter Two -
“The man who made the nanobots is here in the hospital?” Doc Simmons asks. Her eyes have a gleam in them that doesn't seem entirely safe.
“Yeah, well. He is, but he's not like presenting a paper on them or anything. I think he's just scoping out the competition,” I say.
“Competition? No one is doing anything anywhere near this! He's decades ahead of everyone else. He's breaking ground in so many ways that it's impossible to even say which is most impressive. He may be the greatest mind of our generation.”
“Sure, but he's also experimenting on me and killing people, if you'll recall. So maybe dial back the fan club just a bit?”
“I am not in his fan club,” says Doc Simmons haughtily. “His methods are reprehensible. But I would kill to see his notes. Figuratively speaking.”
The gleam is still in her eyes, and I'm not completely positive that that really was just a figure of speech. I can't think of any polite way to ask, “Even if you're sure you wouldn't get caught?”, though, so I just let it slide.
Meanwhile, Brian still has his hand held awkwardly at his side, and has been waiting patiently for the conversation to turn back to our original purpose for coming here. “So what's the word, Doc?” he asks. “Think we can get any nanos off of this?”
Doc Simmons has been donning gloves while we've been talking, and now swabs Brian's hands. “I can't imagine that he'd be working with them out of containment, as they'd be far too susceptible to contamination. So there's essentially no chance that he'd have them on him as a byproduct of the manufacturing process.” She carefully stores and labels each of the swabs in small plastic tubes, then takes out a needle. “Let me get a sample of your blood for comparison purposes.”
“Hold up, I'm confused,” I say. “If we can't get nanos from the skin-to-skin contact, then what are you poking at Brian for?”
“Two reasons,” says the doc. “One: just because I can't imagine something doesn't mean that I don't test for it. I've seen plenty of things I can't imagine over the years. For example, superpower-providing nanomachinery.”
I grin at that. “Okay, fair point.”
“And two,” continues Simmons, “there's good reason to believe that Dr. Acharya has applied the nanos to himself. Didn't you tell me that he transferred them to both you and Regina through simple touch?”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. I guess he would have to be acting as a carrier there.”
“So,” says the doc, “I'll check to see if Brian was able to pick any up, and if so, I'll see if I can spot any differences between those and the ones you and Regina have. It's entirely possible that he has a different strain than he's been giving his subjects.”
“Hey, can you check his DNA, too?” I ask.
“For what?” asks Doc Simmons.
“To – I don't know, see who he is?”
“Dude,” says Brian. “We know who he is. I just shook hands with him like half an hour ago.”
“Yeah, but I don't know. This feels like the sort of thing where we should be sequencing his DNA. Figure something out about him, you know?”
Doc Simmons sighs. “Dan, you're conflating DNA profiling and sequencing. Also, there's not really a lot of use for either one in this situation. Unless you particularly need to know if he's at risk for certain types of cancer? Or diabetes? You could slowly get him onto a high-sugar diet and take care of this problem in just a few dozen years.”
“Hey, just start inviting him over to your place,” says Brian. “Basically all you have to drink there is soda.”
“There's this bendy metal spout in the kitchen called a 'faucet,'“ I tell him, air-quoting the word. “You turn the knobs next to it and it just dispenses water freely. I keep a whole collection of cylinders called 'glasses' nearby to catch the water when it comes out.”
Doc Simmons makes a shooing motion with her hands. “No bickering in the laboratory. I have work to do. Out, out.”
- - -
Back at home, I feel like there's something I should be doing, but I can't think of what. We've identified Ichabot. We've learned his name. I still need to figure out the intermediate step that leads to “and then we turn him over to the police,” but right now I've got nothing. Officer Peterson? This man once touched me in public. No, not creepily, just like a handshake. Yes, that may not sound bad, but he gave me superpowers. I'd like you to arrest him, please.
Linking him to Regina would be a better bet, although again, I'd have to prove that he gave her the power to control the weather, something which she can't demonstrate anymore since he retracted the power. If I could connect him to Aaron Lovell and Jonathan Caraway, then I might be on to something, since they both turned into ape-men and then died of internal injuries.
I'm not positive that turning someone into a sasquatch is a crime. It seems like it must be, but I can't imagine what statute it violates. Killing them definitely is, though, and the ape-mutation was basically just a complicated method of doing that. I mean, that's probably not why he did it, but it was the end result.
Regardless, I have absolutely nothing linking him to those two, so it's all a pipe dream. Having his name is good so that I know who I'm working to defeat, but is otherwise completely unhelpful to me right now.
Since my brain's coming up empty on ideas, I do what I always do when I need to jar something loose: switch off and veg out in front of the TV for a few hours. Having some mindless monster movie on allows my subconscious to take over, or something. I don't know. All I know is that taking a break is much more likely to yield results than sitting at a table for hours going, “Come on, brain! Think! It's what you're for!”
However, one teen scream flick later, I've got no new bright ideas. Either the movie wasn't sufficiently mindless, or I'm overly so. Whichever is the case, I'm coming up blank.
With nothing else to do, I idly punch Dr. Acharya's name into Google. It pulls up a bunch of doctors, lawyers and professors, along with a few colleges with the name, but even after I refine the results I don't find any doctor by that name in my city. Frowning, I go back to the first page of results and notice one I'd skimmed over at the top, since it wasn't a person at all. It's the definition of the word “acharya,” and says that it's a title given to learned people, or can also mean the founder of a sect.
I text Brian:
/> I think we've been played
Acharya's not Ichabot's real name
My phone recognizes the word “Ichabot,” which makes me happy. It's the small things sometimes.
Some time later, my phone buzzes with response texts.
what a jerk
let's look him up through his credit card
I write back, “How?” and receive a sarcastic reply:
credit cards have to have a name on them
helps make sure people pay at the end of the month
didn't know you were new to the whole capitalism thing
I roll my eyes at my phone.
yes, thank you
FYI I'm buying a new car soon & am well versed in credit
how, as in how will you get his credit card info
Visions of '80s computer hacking montages fill my mind. I had no idea Brian had these sorts of skills, but he's surprised me before. He got into Tanger's phone with barely even a pause. Admittedly, that was less hacking and more just following the pattern smudged on the screen in finger grease, but still. It's all part of the same skill set.
My daydreams are dashed moments later by his response:
I know a doctor with:
- standing at the hospital
- desire to meet this guy
- track record of getting what she wants
Oh. “Look him up” like see how he paid for the symposium we were just at, not “look him up” with screens full of code and super-fast typing. I mean, however we get the info is good, I guess. But hacking is cooler.
And yes, it's a crime and a very bad problem and many hackers are bad people who do bad things and much money and information and time is lost to hackers. I get it, I'm not actually advocating it. But it's still cool.
Either way, be it hacking or Doc Simmons bending lesser mortals to her will, the information-gathering is currently out of my hands. So I get a light workout in, cook up some pasta and sauce for dinner, and settle back in on the couch to waste my evening.
The only brilliant idea I have during this movie is to watch another movie, but that's a good enough one for me. I check to make sure my alarm is set for work tomorrow, then settle in to fall asleep on the couch.
- Chapter Three -
The world is very quiet before sunrise, especially in the colder months. I will never be a morning person, but with a cup of coffee to focus my senses I can admit to finding serenity in the time before everyone else is awake. It's an oddly Zen counterpoint to my daily job in construction, which is loud noises and physical action all day long.
I wonder sometimes if the other guys on the site enjoy the morning stillness the same way I do. Then I never ask, because that is how you get made fun of at work. Even if it were true, no one there would admit it to each other, me included. Besides which, when you're hauling metal beams and buckets of rivets up temporary elevators, it's hard to ask questions like, “Do you ever stop to contemplate the beauty of life?”
That said, there's a lot of beauty in construction, and a whole lot of satisfaction. Every job I had before this was behind some manner of counter, and while they paid the bills, there was nothing I looked forward to about them. Customer service is about bending yourself to do what others want. Construction is about bending the world to do what you want. At the end of the project, you don't just have a building. You have a soaring structure torn from the ground and stretched toward the sky. You have a triumph over gravity itself.
These are also thoughts I don't express at work.
The point is that although I come home filthy and sore, it feels good every day. Plus I'm in the best shape of my life, which is another thing that store work doesn't get you. And showers have never felt so sinfully refreshing.
Which is why it's all the more annoying when my phone rings during my post-work shower today. I groan and consider letting it go to voicemail, but it's almost certainly my parents, since no one else calls me. They have a knack for calling during my shower, too. But they don't call all that often, and if I don't answer it, I'll have a guilt-trippy voicemail to listen to when I get out about how they was just wondering what I've been up to and they'd love to hear from me if I can find the time.
Construction, Mom. I've been up to construction. It doesn't change. I like it, but that doesn't mean that it makes for a gripping serial drama.
Reluctantly, I clamber out of the shower and dry off one hand to fish my phone out of my pants pocket. Surprisingly, it is not my parents; the phone screen declares it to be Dr. Simmons. I swipe to answer the call.
“What's up, Doc?” The classics never get old. The doc's excited, though, and brushes right past my reference.
“Dan! Good. I had a look for your Dr. Acharya, and he paid with a business card.”
“Oh. So no real name for him, then?”
“No, but this is just as good! We have the name of his business. Rossum Medical Supply.” She gives a short laugh.
I turn the name over in my mind for a couple seconds, but don't see anything funny about it. “Okay, Rossum. I don’t get it. What's the joke?”
“It's the same thing as Acharya, basically. Not the same meaning, of course, but the same idea. He's making a reference that he thinks is too clever for other people to get.”
“Boy, I sure hate people who drop references into casual conversation,” I say blithely, but Simmons still shows no sign of noticing my opening line. “Full disclosure: this is too clever for me to get. What's it mean?”
“It's from a Czech play from the '20s –”
“Right, a topic popular with today's youth,” I interrupt.
The doc barrels over me. “–which was the first time the word 'robots' was used. So, Rossum Medical Supply? He's basically advertising that he's got nanobots.”
“Nice! Have an address? How do I get there?”
“Just take a left turn at Albuquerque,” Simmons says.
“Wait, you DID get my joke!” I accuse.
“Dan, you think I caught a reference to Rossum's Universal Robots, but I missed one about Looney Tunes? 'Nice boy, but he's about as sharp as a sack of wet mice,” she says, dropping her voice to do a creditable Foghorn Leghorn impression.
“You have hidden depths, Doc.”
- - -
Half an hour later, I'm at the bus stop for the third time that day, reflecting on the fact that I really need to hurry up and get a car. It's not strictly necessary to get around in the city, but this trip that would take me only ten minutes by car is instead going to take almost forty minutes by bus, counting waiting at the stop and the walk at the end.
On the one hand, I wasn't doing anything with the rest of my day anyway. On the other hand, waiting at a bus stop is not really better than not doing anything.
Fortunately, we live in modern times, so I pass the time by browsing local car dealerships on my phone. By the time the bus arrives, I've found a couple that seem worth visiting to go test drive a few used cars, and have scheduled vague mental plans to go to one or more of these tomorrow. In fact, they're pretty near each other. Maybe I can take the test drive from one dealership to the other, try out one of their cars, then drive back. Shoot, I could drive the one there, leave it, and test-drive the other back. They can swap them back later, or just wait for someone else to do the same test-drive in reverse. I bet they'd appreciate the innovation in forced partnership.
By the time I get off of the bus, my mental schedule for the rest of the week looks like this: today, corner Dr. A at Rossum Medical Supply and force him to admit his dastardly schemes. Tomorrow, new-to-me car and creation of a brilliant car-swap program. Day after: ticker-tape parade in new-to-me car.
This might seem a bit unlikely, but I'll point out that even in these fantasy scenarios, it's still a used car that I'm driving. I'm trying to keep things realistic.
On the walk to Rossum, I picture how things will go there. Inside, Dr. A hunches over a microscope behind the counter. Racks of packaged nanobots line the walls, all labeled wi
th different superpowers. Dr. A looks up as the door dings, and stands up in shock to see me in the doorway.
“I've found your secret lair!” I proclaim, striding boldly into the shop.
Dr. A cringes back and points one broomstick arm at me, and a cloud of nanobots swarms forth to attack. I laugh and raise both hands, generating a weak but effective magnetic force that scrambles the tiny machines' instructions. Dr. A looks on in horror as his nanos are magnetically drawn into a baseball-sized lump, which I catch out of the air and throw at him, knocking him out.
“Good has triumphed!” I declare, holding his unconscious form up by the collar outside of the shop.
If you aren't picturing this in sepia tone with the dialogue on intertitles, with photoplayer accompaniment, go back and try it again. It's better that way.
My dreams are dashed before I can even stride boldly into the shop, though. The outside windows are dusty and dingy, showcasing wheelchairs, crutches and adult diapers. Inside, the walls are not lined with futuristic tech in vacuum-sealed packages, but instead have canes, walkers, ointments and countless rows of various boxed supplies.
Topping it all off, the counter is not staffed by the skeletal form of Dr. A, but rather by a nondescript guy in his early twenties. “Welcome to Rossum,” he says unenthusiastically. “Let me know if I can help you with anything.”
Swallowing my disappointment, I walk up to him. “I need to see your boss,” I say.
“I'm the manager on duty at the moment,” he says, straightening up. Sure enough, beneath the NATHAN on his name tag, it says MANAGER. “What do you need?”
“No, not the manager, your boss. Who hired you?”
“What, Jules? Jules Dupont?”
“Describe him! Wait, is that a guy or a girl?”
“Yeah, he's a guy,” says Nathan. “I don't know. Like, mid-fifties, brown hair? Glasses?”
“Is he abnormally tall and thin?” I press.
Everything Falls Apart Page 2