Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-07

by Penny Publications

  Phoon looked exasperated, then thoughtful.

  "Fair enough. But it will cost you more," Phoon warned, "and I will hardly make a profit on this deal, but I like you. His name is Mostafa. Check him out."

  Mayer spoke into his phone again, read the reviews, looked at Phoon. Mayer seemed uncertain.

  "The reviews say he's an asshole. His former partners hate him."

  Phoon shrugged.

  "And what difference does that make? Check again. Look up the survival rate of his patients. See the numbers? That's what you care about. So what if his partners hate him? Ask yourself why they hate him. I'll tell you. His partners hate him because he takes away their sickest patients, the ones who are willing to pay the most, because he can cure them and they cannot. Perhaps he isn't the nicest person in Jakarta. Who cares? If he does the job right, you live. What else do you want for your money? A hug and a kiss at the end of your surgery?"

  Mayer considered. Jakarta was the end of the line for him. It was time to go under the knife or go home to die. He touched his neck, felt DeAnne's life necklace.

  "Screw it."

  He pushed his thumb onto the card and spoke a code word, a crude word that expressed his view of the world and his life and what everything had done to him. The card flashed and turned light green. He ripped it in half. He kept one half and handed the other to Phoon.

  "If I live, you get the other half of the card and I activate it and you get your money. If I die, you get nothing and my will gives it all to charity," Mayer warned. Phoon nodded. The half-card vanished into Phoon's pocket.

  "Where's the stent?" Phoon asked.

  "In the hospital morgue. Here's the permission to remove it." Mayer clicked the approvals to Phoon. Phoon checked his phone, looked back at Mayer.

  "I thought... I assumed it was a new stent."

  "She's my sister. We, the whole family, have the same genetic problem. Spontaneous mutation from our parents."

  Phoon winced. Spontaneous mutations were usually the worst kind.

  Mayer studied Phoon. Mayer felt too tired to play any more little power games.

  "Twenty-five years ago our doctors started to find aneurysms in our brothers and sisters. One by one, they went under the knife and had stents inserted, to strengthen and close off the aneurysms."

  "They were cured?" Phoon asked.

  "They still died. The stents were too primitive, just a simple piece of piping to strengthen weak blood vessels. The disease grew around the stents, blew out our arteries in a different area.

  "We needed an intelligent stent, something that analyzed the progress of our disease from the inside and took action. Something smarter and more flexible. We knew the disease was coming for us, so DeAnne went into biomedical engineering and I went into medical artificial intelligence design," Mayer explained. "Our first five new stents failed. She has number six inside her. She claimed it was working."

  "Where is number seven?"

  Mayer shook his head. As far as he was concerned, the one in the fab shop was so far away from being done that it didn't count.

  "There is no number seven."

  "Number six didn't work for her. What makes you think it will work for you?" Phoon asked.

  "Nothing. No reason at all it should work. But it's my money and I'm willing to try," Mayer said. "Maybe it did work and she just ran out of time. I'm willing to throw the dice."

  "Hope is expensive. This will cost more," Phoon warned.

  "I'll throw in a bonus. After the surgery," Mayer said.

  "The permission from the ministry for the surgery is legitimate?" Phoon asked. Mayer shrugged. He stood. His legs shook for a moment, then relaxed.

  "Part of your job is to make sure everyone keeps their mouth shut and doesn't ask questions. If they check, that's your problem and I expect you to take care of it. What I want to know is, when do I get into the operating room?"

  Phoon hesitated, then smiled.

  "You look like crap." Phoon sounded decisive. "Let's get this done now, before you die on me. Bad for my reputation. We'll come get you the day after tomorrow."

  "What's in it for me?"

  Phoon stood in the morgue next to the assistant medical examiner. The examiner wore a wide, thick, autopsy bib, just like the halal butcher down the street. Which made sense since the examiner actually was the halal butcher down the street, as well as Phoon's brother-in-law, in his regular day job. Phoon decided to not ask questions about the mix of stains on the bib.

  "The usual." Phoon stated a moderately ridiculous number. The examiner nodded, satisfied, and turned to the body on the pull-out metal slab. He glanced at the display next to DeAnne's vault. He looked at Phoon over the top of his glasses.

  "Says she's going to be cremated, then shipped back to the Netherlands."

  "New paperwork." Phoon touched the display with his phone and the words changed. The examiner grunted approval. He turned to his instruments.

  Phoon stepped back and picked a disposable autopsy mask out of a box near the door and tied it over his face.

  "There's a stent in her brain." Phoon pinched the mask down hard over his nose to kill the room smell, antiseptic overlaid on sweat and dead meat. "That's what I want. You know where it is?"

  "I saw it on the autopsy X-rays."

  "Is it all right?"

  "It looked fine to me," the examiner said absently, "but it's not from any of the usual manufacturers. Are you sure this is what you want?"

  "The customer pointed me to her," Phoon answered, indifferent. "He pays the money, he gets what he wants."

  The examiner adjusted DeAnne's head and picked up a small, one-handed, circular saw. He brushed her hair away and flipped the saw to full power. Phoon moved closer and watched over his shoulder as he removed the stent and placed it on a metal cleaning tray.

  The stent was the usual shape and color, a mix of shiny metal and metallized meshwork and fabric. The only difference that this one seemed... fuzzy.

  Phoon reached out to touch it and the examiner slapped his finger aside.

  "Do you know if she had something in her blood, like hepatitis? Or in her brain, like one of those prion diseases? I don't. That's why I wear gloves. So don't touch anything. I don't want to have to explain your dying to your sister."

  "It looks wrong," Phoon complained. "It looks like there are threads hanging off it."

  "Microfibers," the examiner agreed. Phoon looked at him doubtfully. Sometimes he sounded like an expert about things he did not know at all. "A few of the new stents, in the labs, have them for remote biosensing. I've read about them in the journals."

  "Half price if there are any problems," Phoon warned. He stepped back, removed his mask and threw it in the trash.

  "Bastard," the examiner said, without any venom. He tilted his head to the side as he studied the stent. "Three-quarters price, even if I damage it. Or I cremate it now along with the rest of her."

  "You'll be careful?"

  "Teach your grandmother how to cook a chicken."

  Phoon considered again. Money was money, and Mayer would be a lifetime away before anyone knew any better.

  "Done."

  Mostafa still wore OR booties, thin wisps of blue cloth that covered his shoes, when he met Phoon in the hospital cafeteria. Phoon waved from a corner table, slightly set apart from everyone else. Mostafa, his tray loaded with food and a drink, maneuvered through the crowd to the table. He was always hungry after his morning surgery.

  Phoon waited until Mostafa was settled and into his lunch. Phoon knew him too well to try to talk to him until Mostafa was ready.

  Two plates and a refill of coffee later, Mostafa leaned back and turned to Phoon. Phoon slid an envelope across the table. Mostafa picked it up, checked the deposit slip, and put the envelope in his pocket.

  "You got the stent?"

  Phoon nodded. "It's ready for you in operating room 76."

  "Team?"

  "Team is paid to help. Administrators are paid to look
the other way. Patient is prepped and in preop."

  Mostafa looked longingly at the coffee dispenser, then down at his fingers. They were long and strong and steady. He wanted the caffeine but he knew what a third cup of coffee might do.

  He stood and handed Phoon the bill for his lunch.

  "Let's get this over with. I've got to take the wife out to dinner tonight."

  He turned and headed for the exit.

  Phoon sighed, stood, and followed him. He looked down at the bill, thought of the money he had just given the surgeon, and shook his head.

  Surgeons were such cheap-asses.

  Sheet lightning rippled over the edge of String's memory and he tasted blood. He woke, bleary and uncomfortable. Execution of his if-then was clumsy, access to his carry-around memory slow.

  But he was alive, and blood poured through him, the pulse strong and regular. He activated his subsystems and reached for his microthreads.

  Gone. Ripped away. Sheared off.

  He was paralyzed. He was blind. He was deaf.

  Slowly, carefully, String came back to life.

  He sampled blood, just a sip, and analyzed the results. The numbers were all wrong, nothing like DeAnne's before the aneurysm burst. He sipped again and built his first microthread. He touched a brain cell, made himself familiar with it, opened DeAnne's specs from his memory.

  The brain cells did not match. He searched his carry-around memory for instructions. He began with high-probability contingencies. None of them matched.

  He worked his way down the option tree, down to lower and lower probability situations. Nothing matched. Nothing and more nothing until he was out of instructions.

  One choice left.

  Reboot or execute emergency if-then. Reboot was the safest. With reboot he deleted his AI and became a very expensive piece of dumb hardware, loaded with sensors. He waited for something to contact him, to tell him what to do. R-boot did no harm.

  But it did no good either.

  With emergency if-then he grew more fibers and extended throughout the brain. He actively looked for instructions. The danger was that, while he searched, he might do something which made things worse.

  String considered his options, created millions of simulated futures, ran through all the choices.

  None of the futures worked. In each of them he either executed endlessly or he deleted himself. In each case Mom was still dead, her memories, her consciousness, her self locked away inside the stent that used to be String.

  The thought drifted up to him, an old memory from Mom: Sometimes you just have to take a chance.

  He executed the emergency if-then.

  New subsystems activated. They led him to a set of vague contingency executables, the if-then's more conjecture than sharp and clean instructions. But one of the if-then's provided an answer that fit the data: Mom was dead. But String was alive. This was inconsistent. Mom's memories were still inside String, neatly tucked in storage, but they were not outside, in the brain. The subsystem referred him to a long-buried random choice decision maker. It came back to him with an answer and a set of instructions. He began to rewrite himself, and then to execute....

  String loved his work, once he knew his task. He slowly, carefully, sampled the new blood, the blood that flowed through him.

  He extended the first micro-thread, moved it on to touch a second cell. He started another micro-thread, stretched it toward a different lobe of this strange brain, and settled comfortably down to work.

  The first sound Mayer heard was a voice, calm but urgent, the words clear, a slight echo, followed by the sound of footsteps and the swish of clothing, the sharp tap of metal against metal, a faint beep in the background.

  "He did fine. BP is 110 over 60. No bleeding. Take him up to postop for the usual time."

  Mayer knew the sounds. Hospitals were the same all around the world. And he knew hospitals very well.

  He tried to open his eyelids. Nothing. He tried to move a finger. Nothing. So he was still paralyzed. He knew that anesthesiologists always used a paralytic to make sure he did not move during a procedure. He must be just out of surgery.

  The noises changed. He heard more voices, distant and unintelligible, the whines of equipment, but they seemed to come from farther away, not around him. He tried to listen but he was so tired....

  A few hours later he heard a pair of voices, one female, one male, speaking over him.

  "This one is done with postop. Time to wheel him up to the ICU. Oh, and he's a special. Make sure you mark the chart."

  "Let me guess. Dr. Mostafa?"

  "Of course."

  "And I don't see any orders. Is this guy on the schedule?"

  Hesitation.

  "He's off the books."

  "I thought so. So, did you get yours?"

  Hesitation.

  "Yes. And I'll make sure Mostafa takes care of you. Just take this guy upstairs and put him in the corner, out of sight. Then talk to JP. She'll know what to do."

  Mayer went back to sleep. His last thought was a hope that they gave him just a touch more of the amnesiac before they pulled out the ventilator. What he did not remember did not really happen....

  String hesitated.

  String's threads now spiderwebbed the brain lobe that surrounded the stent. Everywhere he found areas where the brain cells were damaged or dead from strokes and aneurysms and seizures. These areas were all cut off from the rest of the brain.

  String checked his instructions again. He found executables that told him to clean out any dead material that prevented the stent from properly functioning. He gave his equivalent of a shrug and carefully sliced away the dead and damaged cells and flushed them into the bloodstream. When this was complete he delicately dipped into the body's blood for raw materials. He budded new cells and placed them into the lobe, in the dead areas.

  He quickly discovered there was not enough space in the cut-off areas for all the new brain cells. He considered the problem and looked for more if-then.

  Nothing.

  He executed the random generators and rewrote himself again. The solution was simple but unexpected.

  He tore down everything he had created. He built new cells, more compact, more efficient, and packed them tightly into the dead areas. He connected the new cells more directly to each other so he had more room. But he was careful to connect the new cells only to each other, not to the rest of the brain. He left strictly alone every original brain cell that still worked.

  He opened DeAnne's memories from the stent's storage memory. He carefully separated out DeAnne's memories for this lobe and adjusted the new brain cells so they matched DeAnne. He connected the new cells to each other. He activated the cells, watched them twitch and quiver and send impulses to each other. He waited for Mom to wake up and tell him what to do.

  And nothing happened.

  She never woke up.

  String waited, then shrugged.

  Now his problem was the rest of the brain. It would not do much good to fix one aneurysm, in one lobe, but still let this body die from another aneurysm in another lobe.

  String if-then'ed the problem for ten thousand simulations, to find the right answer. Finally the variables were satisfied, the choices clear.

  He dipped into the new body's blood. Micro-threads grew from the stent, finer and thinner and, slowly, carefully, slipped up and down the arteries and veins and collaterals into another lobe.

  If he could not solve one problem, perhaps he could fix another.

  "We discharge you today."

  "Thank you, Dr. Mostafa."

  "You're sure the headaches are gone?"

  The main headache, the one that pounded behind his eyes, was gone. Smaller ones still surged and circled and then reluctantly slid away. But Mayer knew if he mentioned any of this he would be sent back to the labs for more MRI's and CAT's and all the other tests. All of which could diagnose him, but none of which could cure him.

  Besides, the headaches did
seem to be getting better. Maybe the rest in the hospital had done him good.

  Mayer didn't care any more. The last dice were thrown. He wanted out of the hospital. He wanted to go home.

  Mayer lied smoothly, his words and attitude practiced and experienced.

  "Everything is just fine," Mayer assured him. "I very much appreciate everything you did." Mayer touched his temples on both sides, then looked up and smiled. He pulled his hands away from his head, his fingers spread out as if he was throwing his pain away.

  "Good." Mostafa turned to the floor nurse. He touched his pad to hers. She looked up and nodded.

  "Discharge approved. We'll get him out of here today."

  String was finished.

  But he wasn't done.

  Another lobe cleaned and repaired, another set of improved brain cells in place, another download of Mom's memories. More waiting.

  And still more nothing.

  So, down another artery and into another lobe...

  "What the hell did you do?"

  Mayer slid off the examination table. He was an old pro when it came to medical exams. He wore a white T-shirt, cut high on the shoulders, and a pair of grey workout shorts. He ignored the blue, useless, hospital gown on the hook on the back of the door. He sat on an office chair and concentrated on pulling up his hightop socks.

  "You said I had a problem," Mayer said as he worked his toes into the end of the sock. He glanced at Hershfield. "You said I was inoperable. I said 'screw you' and took care of the problem."

  "There's a stent in your brain!" Hershfield pointed to the CAT results on the display.

  "I know. I paid for them to put it there."

  "Mayer, you weren't there to have surgery. You were there to take care of your sister's funeral."

  "I took care of two problems at the same time."

  "You can't do that. I didn't know anything about it. What if something went wrong?"

  "Nothing went wrong. Besides, what were you going to do? You were here, I was in Jakarta. And, remember, you said I was inoperable. You would have tried to get me to stop. And I wasn't going to stop."