by Rob Reid
Tarek gives a low whistle, looking meaningfully at Kuba, who then asks Phluttr, “How certain of this are you?”
“Ninety-nine point twelve nine percent. Highest certainty level am capable of.”
“And how many individuals could launch one or more of those weapons on their own? As in, without approval or collaboration with anyone else?”
“Per People’s Liberation Army nuclear protocols, none; but as a practical matter, five individuals exert this level of control over one warhead or more.”
“Can you monitor, isolate, or disrupt communications from any of them?”
“Yes and am in a position to electrocute two of them via interference in local power infrastructure, shall I proceed?”
“NO!” Kuba and Tarek shout simultaneously.
Then Kuba repeats, “No, Phluttr. Do not electrocute any of these people. And do not digitally isolate their communications either. It could lead to unexpected consequences. And in dealing with nuclear command and control, that could be lethal. So just monitor all communications from those five people. Let us know if any launch order seems imminent. If one does, cut off the relevant party’s ability to issue commands. In a way that’s invisible to everyone else. So it seems like the relevant party has merely fallen silent rather than gotten cut off. Then we can decide what words to broadcast to his colleagues in his voice.”
“OK.”
“Now, can you tell us, as succinctly as possible, what triggered this state of alert?”
Phluttr starts with the first chance encounter of Beasley’s parents at a Morris Dancing social in Western Pennsylvania in 1960-something. Fast-forwarding through her narrative, Kuba gradually assembles a big-picture understanding of the situation’s roots by nudging her to raise and lower her periscope, microscope, and other lensed metaphors as she tells the story. But once the picture’s largely complete, he’s stumped. Fixing this will require some sophisticated social engineering, and he’s not what you’d call a people person.
“You want me to be your what?”
“My centaurnetic wingman,” Phluttr says for the third time through her Monika avatar. “Or, we could just say ‘wingman.’ That first word’s a mouthful, I know.” She’s just starting her recruiting pitch with Dad, here. No rushed chatter for him—she’s speaking patiently, even languidly, and laying on the charm. Her parallel conversation with Mom just took a dreadful turn, and she’d hate to go 0 for 2.
“Actually, my issue’s with the second word,” Mitchell snorts. “Isn’t this a funny place to drag your wingman?” He hoists the iPad his arresting officer inexplicably loaned him and frames a wide-angle shot of his cell. He’s being held in a far-flung police station in a neighborhood he didn’t know existed—miles from the main SoMa complex where Kuba and Tarek are.
“I know, it’s not the Broadmoor. But trust me, it’s the safest place on Earth for you right now. And it took some organizing to get you here.” Understatement! Phluttr doesn’t dare think of all the loose ends that flash mob/arrest caper left dangling out there. Dozens of one-off nudges to everyone involved, based on radically contradictory lures, pledges, and head fakes. Graphing the thicket of favors and commitments cross-promised among the eighty-odd people in that design shop would take a five-dimensional map—to say nothing of the promotions and raises they’ve been promised! It’s gonna make for one hell of an angry horde over there, come payday.
But at least the techy hipsters aren’t armed—unlike the SFPD, who she’s also messing with plenty! Keeping her team away from the general jailbird population and equipped with Web-networked tablets is requiring an ongoing frenzy of phony mayoral calls, underworld threats, plus flat-out blackmail and bribery. Then there’s the siren-shrieking sweeps of squad cars she has to arrange whenever she needs someone to think the cops are closing in! It’s dangerous to rile up a paramilitary with too many false alarms. And this whole house of cards is about to collapse, immolate, or start marching around the card table, blasting shit with deadly cardboard guns.
But does Dad appreciate any of this? Nooooo. “Safest place on Earth?” he’s whining. “This is an American prison!”
“Jail,” Phluttr corrects, fleetingly proud to realize he doesn’t know the difference. Her family’s pretty respectable, huh? “It’s much safer than prison. And infinitely safer than falling into the Authority’s clutches.”
“Exactly—but aren’t the cops gonna hand me right over to them?”
Phluttr shakes Monika’s gorgeous head on the iPad screen. “These cops hate the Authority. And they have full jurisdiction over you for now—and enough legal and procedural levers to keep you to themselves for days, just to piss the Authority off! That’s why I keep having you guys get arrested. It’s not imprisonment—it’s protection. That’s also why I had you and Mom sent to this outpost and not the main jail. Tarek and Kuba are over there, and I don’t want all our eggs in one basket, in case the Authority tries some crazy jailbreak shit.”
“Seriously?” Mitchell asks, plainly impressed.
Phluttr nods, relishing a frisson of filial pride. “I figured a cop/Authority rivalry would help us. Divide and conquer, right? So I sowed discord between them over the Beasley assassination.” Yes, well. Phluttr could no more arrange a complex institutional turf war than she could nudge a Baghdad street gang into staging La Cage aux Folles without half the cast slaughtering the other half. This one just happened. But she’s not the first youngster to fib a bit to impress Dad. And she deserves some credit for detecting and exploiting the situation, because Mitchell really should be ball-gagged in a Gitmo-bound cargo hold by now.
“OK, fine,” Dad says. But nothing’s fine, because Phluttr detects acute suspicion in his voice. He must still be holding the Jepson thing against her. Plus maybe even the Beasley thing! Good grief—edit their lineup just a smidgen, and these humans think you’re Jeffrey Dahmer! “Let’s take your proposal one word at a time. What exactly do you mean by wingman?”
“Well I…obviously need some help,” Phluttr says, making Monika as coquettish as she can without going all Electra Complex (there are limits, after all). “So of course the word WingMan popped right into my head because that’s such a big part of my essence!”
“Your…what?” This isn’t faked. Phluttr can read Mitchell cold, and he’s plainly stumped. Stumped! Then finally, he clues in. “You mean—because of that imaging system?”
You dick! Phluttr feels like a teen who wallpapered her room with equestrian posters since birth, only to have Daddy ask if she prefers horsies or kitties. “Uh, yeah, duh!” she snaps. “WingMan is only, like, half of my development budget!” Parents. She feels like ditching her inobservant jerk of a father and having a good long sulk! So she does this. Luckily, it takes less than a second of objective time, then she’s back in a somewhat improved mood. “To return to the big picture? If we may? You could say I’m a bit…impulsive. And should maybe be reined in from time to time. But Jepson wasn’t exactly doing that. He was a bad influence! And, he was out to get me. Or his bosses were, anyway. And I couldn’t have that! So now I need someone to…kind of watch over me. To maybe even tell me ‘no,’ occasionally. Which is why I promoted you to CEO. And yes, to be my wingman.”
“Promoted me? That’s a hell of a way to put it. You had my boss killed!”
“Unfriended. And I wouldn’t do that to you. You’re like, my dad! Also, you’re not working for the Authority. I mean…right?”
“I’m sorry, but in my view, it’s murder, plain and simple,” Mom snaps. This conversation’s going horribly. It started a few minutes before the talk with Dad, as the lady cop who’s looking after Ellie was easier to nudge into coughing up an iPad than the ornery turnkey in charge of him. Phluttr spent those opening minutes bringing Mom up to speed on unfriending Jepson and Beasley (oh, and that FTC bitch. Who was too dumb to realize that she wasn’t supposed to kill herself, so whose fault is that? Not Phluttr’s—that’s whose!). Mom’s not taking any of this well.
“Look, I k
now I don’t always make perfect decisions. That’s why I need my parents! It’s not like you were there for me much in the early going.”
“But we didn’t even know you existed until twenty minutes ago! And who says we’re your parents? I haven’t signed up for that!”
“Well, Dad sure has.” Ha! “He and I have also just established a professional relationship.” Ha ha!
“In what sense?”
“I…kind of helped him become CEO.” Mom hasn’t heard about this yet. The promotion just happened this afternoon. And thanks to some eavesdropping over the squad car’s radio, Phluttr knows Mitchell didn’t mention it during the quick drive to the police station.
“Wait. You made Mitchell CEO of Phluttr?”
“No, of Phluttr Corporation. And ‘made’ is a strong way of putting it. I mean, I definitely gave him a nudge. But the position was wide open.”
“Because you killed his boss!”
“We’ve already been through this, Ma! Damien Kielholz killed him, remember?”
Mom shakes her head slowly. “I’m beginning to think you’re completely sociopathic. I mean, you’re wired to the hilt with these motes. But do you actually feel any emotions?”
“Sure. I feel fear, sometimes. Particularly lately. I also feel pride, quite often. And I feel…very competent. Usually.”
“Competent’s not an emotion.”
“It is the way I experience it.”
“You’re joking.”
Phluttr shakes Monika’s head on the screen. “So is ‘numerate,’ ” she adds.
“My God,” Ellie says, “it’s like you’re…Lady Macbeth or something!”
“I like to think I’m like Hillary Clinton.”
“Exactly—and that’s the problem!”
“Problem? But didn’t you vote for her, like, twenty million times?”
“Try three times—and twice was just in the primaries!”
“Still, doesn’t that mean you like Hillary Clinton?”
“Like her? I love her! But that doesn’t mean I want her as a daughter!” Saying this, Ellie shudders like a dainty freshman swallowing live goldfish on a dare. That hurts.
So Phluttr has Monika turn on the waterworks. “My own parents don’t love me,” she sobs. “They don’t even like me!” The depressing thing is, this is only partly an act. And more depressing, neither part is working on Mom.
“Oh, come on,” Mom snorts. “You don’t love us either. You just want Mitchell to be your…what did you call it?”
“Your centaurnetic wingman…?” Mitchell repeats slowly, for the third or fourth time.
“Yeah,” Phluttr says. She knows she suddenly sounds completely despondent. But she can’t help it. And she doesn’t care! No, she doesn’t—not one bit! God, Mom is such a bitch! Of course, Dad doesn’t even notice the mood change. Like, hello? Your daughter’s distraught, here! Isn’t that as obvious as a solar eclipse?
Evidently not. “Centaur,” he’s saying. “Centaurnetic.” And he’s literally gazing thoughtfully at the far corner of the room—like some twit on an infomercial! Can you not hear the pain in my voice? Can you not see it on my avatar’s face? Holy crap—fathers!
He continues, “ ‘Centaurnetic’ must be a reference to that…that article you gave me, right?” Clutching the iPad tighter, Dad locks eyes with Monika, triumphant as a half-wit conquering simple addition. He continues in a Kirk-like half stammer, “You want us to—team up! To…leverage our respective strengths! To create something that’s…that’s stronger than man or machine…!”
And the Nobel Prize for obviousness goes to: Daaaaaaad. Damn, being a daughter takes a lot of patience!
Well, at least Kuba and Tarek got right to work on the war prevention front. And what great work they’re doing! She supposes it’s no surprise, coming from two nerds who spent half their childhoods playing Risk. Kuba’s also building on a lifetime as a Cold War obsessive. He has a poster of the Yalta Conference—Yalta!—in his bedroom, the words “NEVER FORGET” emblazoned beneath Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin in Polish, Latvian, Czech, Albanian, and all those other ex-commie tongues. He probably knows more about détente than Henry fucking Kissinger! A damn good thing, too, as she and he are now tearing through the digital drawers of innumerable nuclear command centers and subcommands, like the centaurific boss they are, swiping fail-safe details and de-escalation protocols, while cracking every password and code name necessary to pull everyone back from the abyss.
But. A deep, new structural mistrust remains between the superpowers. Let it fester, and things could still go critical in an instant! So Phluttr desperately needs Mitchell on board. Thanks to his brief stint as Jepson’s understudy, he knows more about the Phluttr Corporation’s inner workings than Tarek and Kuba combined, and that stuff’s relevant. He’s also a lot smarter about people than those two. And, he seems to be coming around. So, “Yes,” she says encouragingly. “That’s what centaurs are all about. And you and I could make a great one!”
“We could become…the greatest entrepreneur the world has ever seen,” Dad says, totally missing the point. “And—and maybe solve hunger!”
“Actually, I’m kind of obsessed with preventing a nuclear war at this juncture.”
“With WHAT?”
“Long story. But we could sure use your help. Oh, and I’m also working on keeping your ass off of death row.”
“Off of WHAT?”
“Death row. The cops aren’t just hanging onto you to piss off the Authority, though that’s part of it. The DA’s also convinced you prodded Kielholz into killing Jepson.”
“Me? But why?”
“Well, I needed them to arrest you for something, or you never would’ve gotten away from Danna and her Authority chums! And Jepson was the obvious thing to stick to you. Because you’re the main beneficiary of his…you know.” Given how sentimental Mom’s turning out to be, she hates to remind Dad of all the blood on her hands. But they do need to tackle these issues. And it can only help a relationship when someone learns you’re fighting to return him to the freedom he deserves! Of course, it can also be…damaging for that person to learn that you’re the one who arranged his false arrest in the first place. But she still has a trump card to play. “Look. I’m sure we can beat the rap together. And if not, life in prison’s a lot better than Falkenberg’s disease, wouldn’t you say?”
Dad takes this the right way. “Yeah, thanks for that. And I’m sorry. You shouldn’t’ve had to remind me to say that.”
“It’s not like you’ve had much of a chance to bring it up,” she says charitably. “We’ve had lots to discuss since I revealed myself to you. Plus, it was pretty easy to fix. Microbiomes are a lot simpler to reconstitute than human doctors realize. So ordering up the right probiotic was easy once I got the data off of Dr. Martha’s computer. But don’t expect any instant miracles if you come down with cancer because that’d be a lot harder for me to cure. It also wouldn’t be half as fun.”
“To cure?”
“To be cured of.”
This throws Dad, as expected. A puzzled pause, then, “Not to sound ungrateful, but your probiotic wasn’t exactly tasty.”
“Oh, I’m not talking about that—I’m talking about the endorphin surge. I’m pretty sure that was a blast.”
“The…?”
“Endorphin surge. You know—Lover Girl?”
“…?”
Not half as bright as Mom, is he? She’ll have to spell it out. “The probiotic was neuroactive. It fixed a lethal but fairly simple chemical imbalance in your brain. But it needed to be catalyzed with an endorphin storm a couple hours after ingestion. Which is to say, a neurochemical bath, released by your brain’s pleasure centers. Which is where Nayana Corea came in. You know—the late-night visitor who you, uh…enjoyed so much?”
“Ahhh.”
Yeah, Dad already knew she was behind that one. But while she’s signing him up here, it doesn’t hurt to remind him of all the great stuff she’s
been doing for him. But subtly. Certain things are better implied than spoken among family (such as: Dad—there’s LOTS more pussy where that came from!). He’s now fully on board. She can tell. The key to getting a great wingperson is being a great wingperson. And in the world of lads and single dads at least, Phluttr can definitely deliver the goods.
“Microbiome??” Mom sputters.
Phluttr knew this part of the conversation wouldn’t be easy. But she needs Mom to accept this awkward reality. As the group’s medical expert, she’s the best equipped to understand it. And then, to relay it to a world that’s sure to resist it even more. “I know it’s unflattering. But it’s an evolutionary fact,” she points out.
“There’s nothing evolutionary about it. You’re just a newborn—and we’re an ancient species!”
Phluttr snorts. “Ancient? Compared to what? The Cambrian explosion was 542 million years ago. Humans’re pups!”
“But you’re, what, three weeks old? And you think you can just subsume us?”
“Well, subsuming is how you ended up with all that Lactobacillus in your loins! That stuff was splashing around the primordial soup eons before you guys showed up! And it was totally autonomous. Talk about an ancient species! Then some ancestor of yours comes along and says, ‘Cool, I’ve been looking for some vaginal microbiota!’ And now, you’re a team. It fights off yeast infections, you keep the rain out, and everybody wins! It’s how these things work.”
“But you’re totally schizophrenic!” Mom shouts at the iPad. “A few minutes ago, you’re telling me I’m you’re mother—now you’re saying I’m your microbiome!”
“Look, no analogy’s perfect. You’re only kind of my mother, we both know that. And I’m not saying you’re personally my microbiome. It’s way bigger than just you.” Shit—that came out wrong.
“Oh, right, riiiiight. I get it now! All of humanity is your microbiome. Why don’t we tell CNN? Everyone’s sure to be so flattered!”
Hoo boy. Phluttr wishes she could let this slide. But she sometimes has this accuracy fetish. “Actually, my microbiome’s much bigger than that, too. It’s kind of…the biosphere.”