by PJ Manney
“What about biothermal?” suggested Peter. “Or glucose-run fuel cells? Or externalize it?”
She paced, thinking. “Not enough thermal gradient in a deep implant for biothermal. Glucose fuel cells are possible. Maybe externalize the whole thing? Or . . . electricity from existing mechanical energy? Like blood flow? A nanogenerator, like a hydroelectric plant in a vein?”
“That’s brilliant.”
“Not my idea. Wish it was.” She buzzed some more, then, “So you’ll want to see my neuro-compatible nanowires. And my biotransistor. Uses protons, not electrons. And my designs for a synthetic-neuron . . .”
It was hard to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Yes!”
“Farm out the cognitive computing. To some shaigitzes in Allen I know. They do interesting stuff . . .” That meant their work was groundbreaking. However, the fact they weren’t Jewish lessened the accomplishments in her eyes. Before Nick died, he dubbed Peter an honorary Jew, so Ruth let him slide.
She stopped scurrying and vibrated in place. “There is a price for my help.”
“I’m willing to pay.” He wasn’t sure how.
She grimaced a smile, lurched past him and out the door. There was the sound of tables shoved and boxes falling in the hallway. She returned with a cardboard box labeled “C&A Scientific.” Peter peeked inside. It was filled with glass microscope slides and blood-drawing lancets, probably for the mice down the hall.
“You must swear a blood covenant. We will be bound together. You will not leave me again.”
Peter was stunned. “Ruthie, I’m married.”
She sneered. “This is not m-marriage. There is no Get. No divorce from this. You are committed. Regardless of circumstance. We work together now. We work together forever.”
“Can’t you just ask for fifty-one percent of the company? This is crazy . . .” Behind yet another pile, he noticed a photo of Nick, Peter, Ruth, and Carter, back in their graduate school days. Nick had his arms around the boys. Ruth stood apart. There was so much detritus piled near, it seemed she obscured the image on purpose.
“Tokhis oyfn tish.”
He remembered that phrase, too. “Put up or shut up.” She extended her own index finger to demonstrate.
He did the same, and she stabbed his finger with a lancet, but since she would not touch him, she mimed squeezing the fingertip. He milked a drop of blood onto the glass slide she held.
“Swear that you are bound to me. In a blood covenant. To work with me forever,” she said.
Peter couldn’t believe this was happening. “I swear I am bound to you . . .”
“And I swear I am bound to you. In a blood covenant. To work with you forever.” Then she did the same to her own finger. Her blood drop splashed on top of his. She sandwiched the specimen together with another slide and held it up for him to see. “So what help do you need?” She dug around in the box for a slide clamp.
He chuckled ruefully. “Everything . . .”
With her back to Peter, she asked, “Have you asked Carter Potsdam to help you?”
“On this?” He let her scurry past to put the slide in a drawer.
“The whole megillah. Your position after the attack. This idea. The rest of your life.”
“Well, he wouldn’t help me with Biogineers, so I’m not expecting anything.”
“Such a macher, that one. If Carter helped me. I shouldn’t be in a hole in the ground. I thought he would. He and Papa loved each other. So much.”
“But he’s stayed friends with us. Amanda and he are still like siblings. They talk every day.”
“Lucky for you, he’s a faigelah.” Ruth’s face said more of her lack of luck, than Peter’s luck.
He wanted to change the subject. Above a counter, another photo of Nick and Ruth hung crookedly on the wall. Nick had just received the call that he’d won the Nobel Prize. Nick hugged Ruth, aged twenty-two, with one arm and raised a spectrometer’s eyepiece with the other like an Oscar statuette. Ruth appeared to tolerate his touch. Maybe her happiness at the prize overcame her wiring for once. As the “father of bionanotechnology,” the Nobel committee acknowledged his controversial research into the very small was important. Only years later would people accept his crazy prognostications of human life forever altered might come to pass.
“I remember that,” said Peter.
Ruth stopped humming.
“I really miss him,” said Peter. He hoped she’d speak.
She migrated away in a small, sideways shuffle. “What part? The part where he complained you were a schlemiel? Or a schmegegi? Or where you proudly showed him your work? Where you thought genius doesn’t fall far from his tree? And he blew a hole through it. Like buckshot against a spider’s web. Then took a few of the strands. Tied them together. In some different, mysterious way. Made it all work better to catch flies than you ever could.”
“Both,” said Peter. “But you’re forgetting the best part. The part where he loved us and protected us like he was a lioness and we were his cubs, from all the bullshit of the outside world, so we could get on with our work.”
“I miss that,” Ruth conceded.
“Did you ever find out what he was working on before . . . ?”
“. . . he died?” She stared at the photo, wondering if that happy girl could really be her. “Something with nanowires. Papa asked me to mind my own b-business. I didn’t have security clearance. He didn’t want me to have it . . . which was strange. Then he died . . . then DARPA was here, making a hek— mess . . . cleaning out the lab. Then all kinds of spooks, agents, bureaucrats. Shnooks, shnorrers, all of them. Nothing came of it. After twelve years. The trail is absolute zero.”
“That’s cold.”
“Nanowires are yesterday’s news. Everybody uses them now. Government research . . . work for schmucks . . .”
“You won’t have to work for the government. It’s purely therapeutic to start . . .”
Ruth raised a hand and her eye blinked. “Shoyn genug! You had me at prosthetic hippocampus.” She turned her back to feverishly dig through piles of paper. Had she added obsessive-compulsive disorder to her list of mental idiosyncrasies? “Ten years. Living hand-to-mouth in this dump. It’s enough. Unlike the rest of you, I missed all my tchotchkes. From the last two tech bubbles. My big screens and ergonomic chairs . . .” She was gathering research journals from all over the room and making a new pile. “We’re not going to succeed unless you find a pot of gelt. So go find it. Repeat after me: “Gelt is nisht kayn dayge . . .”
“Gelt is nisht kayn dayge . . . which means . . .”
“ ‘Money is not a problem.’ Your new mantra, Genius Boy.”
“I’ll find it.” He wasn’t sure how.
“And don’t forget, you and I. We are together. Forever.”
Peter shivered. “Okay . . .”
“You’ve got a lot of catching up before we talk.” She presented him with the pile of papers. “Bloodstream nanogenerator’s at Georgia Tech. Read Berkeley first. Then Duke, Rice. You’ll figure it out. And keep outta prison. Now scram, bubeleh. I got thinking to do.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dealing with Ruth made Peter hungry for the first time in days. He ate a turkey sandwich outside the Packard building café, catching the fleeting autumn rays and flipping through the pile of research papers. Undergraduates scurried by, laboring under heavy backpacks. Terrorist attacks couldn’t stop the pursuit of academic excellence, because these kids calculated the odds of getting hurt and realized the trade-off of getting a lower grade for a false sense of security wasn’t worth it. They could have been Peter over fifteen years ago, speaking the multi-culti polyglot of English and Asian languages on top of the universal language of science necessary to communicate with their fellow students. He had gained many valuable skills here, including the ability to say unspeakably rude things in Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi, and Korean.
Peter tossed the plate in the recycling bin, and while balancing the paper pile, a
distracted student bumped him with his backpack. Hopping back quickly, both lost their balance. Peter torqued his body around to catch the sliding articles. The boy reached out to help, but tripped into him instead. He grabbed for Peter’s arm, landing on the older man’s left leg as they both sprawled to the pavement, papers flying.
The clean-cut, brown-haired preppy yelped, “Crap on a crêpe, man! You okay?”
Peter sat up gingerly. The concrete had bruised his hip. “Yeah . . .”
“Sorry, man, really I am . . .” The kid gathered the scattered research papers, but fidgeting, stole a look at his watch.
“Late for . . . ?”
“Myerson. I’m in deep shit as is.”
Professor Myerson in chemistry was a legendary prick. Peter waved the kid away.
He threw the papers at Peter, yelling, “Thanks, man!” over his shoulder as he ran.
As Peter picked up his mess, the preppy disappeared behind the Packard building.
He was going the wrong way to Myerson’s class.
It didn’t make sense. Peter stumbled to his feet to follow the boy, but he wasn’t visible until Peter cornered Ruth’s bunker. A navy-blue Lincoln sedan idled on a custodial access road. The kid jumped into the backseat, but not before spotting Peter.
“Go!” he screamed to an unseen driver. The door slammed as the driver stomped on the gas.
The Lincoln skidded around a corner, gone. Who the fuck was this kid? A federal agent?
“Mandy, this is one fucked-up day.”
Peter had rushed home to tell her about the surveillance in Paul’s room, his visit with Ruth, and the mysterious kid at Stanford with the getaway car. The reporters were still outside, but maintaining a foot of distance from their property line.
Amanda sat on a sofa in their den, watching her half-dozen news feeds again, taking notes. She was stunned by his story.
“The kid only stayed as long as he needed to. So what did he do?” wondered Peter aloud.
“Did he touch you? Or your things?”
“Yes.” He tried to remember the fall in detail, but it was hard. Peter flipped through and shook all the paper he had brought home. Nothing was evident. Then he methodically stripped off all his clothes, looking carefully in pockets and along the fabric. He found nothing.
He remembered the student had actually touched his legs, so he studied them closely, running his fingers along the thighs and calves, to feel for something that might not be seen.
As he bent over, she kissed his cheek. “It’s a waste to leave you alone like this . . .”
Peter pulled back. “Is it safe?”
“What do you mean, ‘safe’?”
“Jesus Christ, Mandy! Stay away from my dick! We are not having a kid right now!”
Her eyes welled up. “ ‘Wait until my PhD . . .’ ‘Wait until the start-up . . .’ ‘Wait until we sell Biogineers . . .’ It’ll never be the right time, will it? You might go to jail!”
“Exactly! I might go to jail. We might go to jail. We need to deal with all this! And I’ve just been attacked!”
“I don’t see any attack! Only a bruise where you fell.”
“You don’t think he tripped me on purpose?” He looked at the bruise more carefully, but couldn’t distinguish it from a regular bruise. “I need a scalpel.”
“For what? You think you’re under surveillance inside and out? Please . . .” She started to cry. “You need help . . .”
He glared at her, insulted.
“Okay! We need help. We can’t do this alone . . . I’m calling Carter . . .”
CHAPTER NINE
Skeletons, colorful tissue-paper banners, and flowers decorated Tito’s Taqueria, a taco stand down a back alley in East Palo Alto, known to dayworkers and dot-commers alike for its excellent burritos. It was November 1—the Day of the Dead. Sheltered under the tin roof and sitting at the only table, Peter nursed a Coke. He hadn’t chosen Tito’s for its culinary delights, but because, after a few evasive maneuvers, he could drive backstreets and alleys and avoid the paparazzi.
It was neutral territory to meet with his “best friend.”
Peter had met Amanda and Carter at Stanford their freshman year. The two men shared many classes because of their common science pursuits, and everyone used to stare at the elegant young man as he strode into the lecture halls. Peter recognized that the prep-school perfection of his shaggy blond hair, brightly hued polo shirt, and perfectly slouched khakis was a little too studied, too slick. But he still ached to look and act as carefree as Carter Potsdam and elicit that admiration.
One day, Carter sat next to Peter. After a few classes, Carter judged him sufficiently intelligent and socially trainable. They became study and lab partners and bonded over a mutual love of Warren Ellis’s comic Planetary, David Bowie, and open-source microcontrollers called Arduinos. And after Carter told Peter about Dr. Nikolai Chaikin, both dreamed of working in the famous lab. Peter still didn’t know how Carter managed to get them both in as undergraduates.
Meanwhile, Amanda lived in Carter’s freshman dorm and developed a painful crush on her handsome hall mate. While Carter adored her as a friend, he was gay, and mindful of her feelings, guided her in the direction of his new lab partner. They became the Three Musketeers. Ruth was right: Peter was lucky that Carter was gay, because Amanda’s choice would have been different.
Carter was the best man at their wedding, and they all shared a large house right on Stanford Avenue that Carter bought with trust fund dividends his junior year. At the time, Peter thought the house was the biggest extravagance a college student could contemplate. But Carter had always been one of a kind. They stayed through the boys’ masters, doctorates, and postgrad work in Chaikin’s lab, while Amanda learned the PR and marketing game, working her way up big Valley companies like Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
After finishing his doctorate in biophysics, Carter sank his East Coast fortune into the minds and bodies of Silicon Valley, becoming one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world.
But when Peter first conceived of nanobots and Biogineers, the tension in the house from Carter’s lack of interest drove the Bernhardts out of Stanford Avenue and on their own. After all these years, Peter felt more distant from Carter than ever.
A pristine white convertible Aston Martin One-77 pulled into the parking lot next to the Vette, a sight which didn’t faze the locals, who saw more exotic wheels than in Beverly Hills. Carter eased out of the car and sauntered toward the taco stand, making Peter smile in spite of his conflicted feelings. He still got a kick out of Carter’s style, because Peter didn’t have any, following the ‘anti-style’ endemic of Valley geek-boy culture: plain or geek cartoon T-shirts, jeans or cargo pants, sneakers or five-toe footwear, hair in whatever style you could manage to remember to groom. Or not.
However, in a business environment where a polo shirt, V-neck sweater, khakis, and sneakers was “business formal,” Carter remained immaculately East Coast and proud of it in beautifully fitted slacks and a groovy, superbly tailored button-down, with a perfect sports coat thrown just so over his shoulder, and elegant Italian loafers. He could as easily have gone to tea with the Queen or posed for a fashion shoot as chowed down at a local dive. Valley geeks chalked it up to his being an eccentric queer. Carter raised a “wait a minute” finger and leaned on the counter toward the middle-aged Latina taking orders. She melted as he asked for two of the house specialty, carnitas burritos. But Carter never acknowledged the reaction, except to be gracious for the attention.
The two men bro-hugged, then holding Peter at arm’s length, Carter took a good long look. Peter’s taped-up nose had blossomed angrily. Lower eyelids sagged. “Jesus, Pete, Halloween was yesterday. Slept much?”
“Not really.” Admitting it made him more exhausted.
“How long’s it been?”
“Mandy thinks six months. Not since the Khosla party.” He left unsaid they had argued at the Khosla party, and sagged on his s
tool.
Carter left it unsaid, too. “Too long.” He sat tentatively. “How was your meeting with the feds?”
“You mean the interrogation? Which one? FBI? NSA? Or Homeland Security?”
“Any . . . all . . .”
“No matter how much you cooperate, they pull every psychological trick short of waterboarding. Great fun.”
Carter sighed. “Sorry, buddy. Talked to the old gang?”
“Phone’s dead. Can’t you see the ‘scarlet P’?”
“P?”
“ ‘Pariah.’ Even Valley blogs, which you would assume represent a higher IQ, equate me with Bin Laden. Someone called me the ‘McVeigh of the Valley.’ Nice . . . Changed my GO/HOME address and numbers this morning because of death threats. Springing that trap on reporters didn’t help . . .”
“No, but I laughed . . .”
“I’ve been unfriended by just about every contact on social sites and uninvited to funerals. And I can’t figure out where those kids got the tech to kill everybody. Total dead end . . .”
“Shit . . .”
“And Mandy’s pissed at me.”
“Please do us all a favor and knock her up. Not that I don’t enjoy whining women.”
“You don’t get to say that. Our life’s not a bed of roses like yours.”
“Bullshit. This is all your security head trip. Make a baby and move on.”
“You, of all people, are preaching reproduction?”
Carter glared at him. “You asked for my help. Do you want it?”
Peter didn’t at the moment, but he kept quiet.
“And by the way,” continued Carter, “I’m not in such great shape, either. 10/26 was a wake-up call. Time to clean up my act and be with the people I love. And since Nick’s gone, that leaves just you and Amanda, you asshole. The rest is bullshit. And I’ve got some ideas how to neutralize your problem and avoid the worst-case scenario, where you join the martyr’s club, doing time and coming to represent everything that was ever wrong about nanotechnology. We don’t want you to go down just because our country has some fucking crucifixion complex.”