Connect

by Julian Gough

  ‘Yes,’ she says, relieved this is an area she’s thought about. ‘My research indicates that if suitable imaginal discs were made available in combat zones, and, of course, packs of cell material, you could save limbs right there on the battlefield. The drawback is that you’d need to tailor the discs in advance for every soldier, using their own DNA, to prevent rejection. But it scales up pretty quickly. If you were to do it for all combat personnel, it would become very inexpensive . . .’

  A woman who’s had her hand up since before Naomi stopped speaking can’t wait any more. ‘What about head trauma? Brain injury? Has it any role in that?’

  ‘Mmmm,’ says Naomi, who is starting to feel weirdly spaced now. She just wants to lie down, shut down. My God, this must be how Colt feels all the time . . . Concentrate! Head trauma, brain injury . . . No, she definitely doesn’t want to answer that question. ‘I haven’t really thought that far ahead.’

  A young man with a thin moustache and old-fashioned, gold-rimmed spectacles grabs the mike; Naomi, who no longer pays attention to the fashions on the coasts, wonders idly if he is intensely fashionable, or just completely disconnected from fashion.

  ‘Thank you for a verrrry interesting paper.’ His accent is almost comically French. OK, that answers that. ‘But how does this improve on the work already being done, using stem cells alone, to promote limb regrowth?’

  ‘Well, as I’ve said, stem cells come up against the size problem. They’re great for growing a limb on a foetus, which is, you know, incredibly small compared to an adult; and in the womb, which is, obviously, a nutrition-rich environment, optimized for cell growth. Basically, they work great internally. But adult limb regrowth, outside the womb, faces scale problems, nutrition problems, infection problems, that we feel this approach can solve . . .’

  More questions; the questioners are excited, energized. Some want to know specifics. Some explore the implications.

  Eventually, Yaakov wraps it up. ‘I’d like to thank Naomi Chiang for participating in StemCellCon at such short notice, and for delivering such a fascinating paper. Next up is Fabian Procter, who needs no introduction . . .’ Yaakov indicates, with a turn of his head, that Naomi can walk offstage now. She does. She really needs a lousy coffee.

  She feels like she’s walking on a trampoline. No, she knows how she feels. She feels better than she has ever felt, in daylight, in her life.

  28

  The backstage kettle hasn’t even boiled when the latecomer who asked the first question strides into the green room.

  ‘Man, you’ve let the cat out of the bag,’ he says. He is smiling, but it’s not a good smile.

  ‘Well, it’s my cat,’ she says, and automatically smiles back. Not a good smile, either. It reminds her of the way she used to smile at Ryan. No. She shuts it off abruptly. No more fake smiles.

  ‘Well, no,’ he says. He doesn’t stop smiling. ‘No, it’s not your cat. We just didn’t hear about it in time to stop you. You can’t announce stuff like this at an open conference. Your research is funded by government money—’

  ‘—It’s part-funded by the University of—’

  ‘—and it clearly states—’

  ‘—University of Nevada—’

  ‘—and it clearly states in your contract that if you come up with work of potential military significance, there are appropriate channels . . .’

  ‘I didn’t think about military significance, it has general medical applications—’

  ‘Bullshit,’ and he stops smiling. ‘Your initial research proposal specifies frontline trauma management. You just admitted this has military significance, onstage. You realize that ANYBODY could just take this information and use it? I mean, bad guys? Really bad guys? Guys that don’t have our . . . whatever, moral scruples, about experimenting on human subjects. This conference is a totally public forum, they were streaming it live till we managed to block it, and you have potentially just given away the biggest breakthrough in battlefield medicine since . . .’

  ‘There is no such thing as “battlefield medicine”, medicine is just medicine . . .’

  He raises his voice and talks over her. ‘There are implications for this way beyond trauma management, and you know it. You are COMPLETELY in breach of your employment contract. We could crucify you for what you just did.’

  The door swings open, and by the time Yaakov has stepped into the green room, the smiling man is smiling again. ‘I’ll be in touch. Oh, don’t leave the hotel. Seriously. Great paper, Dr Chiang.’ He nods, ‘. . . Dr Stern.’ And he’s gone.

  ‘You really stirred them up,’ says Yaakov. ‘An entirely novel approach.’

  Naomi takes two steps to the wall, and leans on it. She doesn’t feel like she’s walking on a trampoline any more. ‘I think I need to lie down, Yaakov,’ she says. ‘And I need to talk to Colt.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ says Yaakov. ‘I’ve got to introduce two more speakers, then I chair a panel in the Broadway Ballroom. We’ll talk later. I’m free at seven. Dinner? I’ll introduce you to some good people.’

  ‘Yes. Love to.’

  Yaakov pats her shoulder, and leaves.

  She tries to reach Colt, to tell him she did it; to tell him she’s OK; to wish him a happy birthday without mentioning the words, because he hates his birthday; but her screen is behaving strangely. It freezes, unfreezes, freezes again. Then it folds up. Turns off.

  She’s so used to it working effortlessly, all the time – there when she needs it, gone when she doesn’t – that she’s not even sure what’s happened for a moment.

  Odd. She’ll try again in her room.

  29

  Yaakov catches up with her, halfway to the elevator, breathing heavily.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he says.

  His face, it’s bad. Oh please, not Colt . . .

  ‘It’s . . . unprecedented,’ he says.

  ‘What?’ she says. ‘What?’ Oh God, I should never have left him . . .

  ‘They’ve done a pullback on your paper,’ says Yaakov.

  ‘What . . . what’s a pullback?’ Her knees give a little and she stifles a moan, as relief floods her like a little orgasm.

  Yaakov is looking at her strangely. ‘Don’t you keep up, God forbid, with the news?’

  She shakes her head. Pullback . . . pullback . . . She has a vague memory of overhearing the term in cafeteria conversations at the lab, a while back. But she never joined in.

  ‘You don’t understand how serious this is?’

  If Colt is OK, then it’s not serious. ‘Just tell me what a pullback is.’

  ‘My goodness,’ says Yaakov. ‘Well . . . the NSA or NDSA, or whatever they are calling themselves now, would call it a cyber defence tool, though I’d have another word for it . . .’

  Naomi snorts a little laugh. Now, the ongoing rebranding of the National Domestic Security Agency (formerly part of the NSA, a chunk of the Defense Department, and a bunch of smaller agencies), is a subject she does know intimately, from back when Ryan rang her all the time. When she wanted to stop him hassling her about Colt, she’d ask him how the new logo redesign was going. He’d explode. You saw that? It makes us look like a financial services company! He’d rant for twenty minutes, Colt’s schooling entirely forgotten . . .

  ‘. . . developed to stop leaks of government information . . .’ Yaakov’s still talking, but Naomi has Ryan in her head now, triggering a cascade of memories that she usually represses at home. His cock. His tongue. His voice. His fist. Good memories. Bad memories.

  ‘. . . can be blocked across all networks . . . Are you listening?’ says Yaakov.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You did ask.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. I’m a little tired.’ She wants to touch herself but of course she can’t. ‘I might need to take a nap before dinner.’ It’s being away from home, she supposes. It’s relief, that the paper went well. It’s not being seen as a mother, for a few hours.

  ‘Hmmm. Anyway, no I
SP can host or transmit them. And there’s a backdoor in most devices, to allow the government to erase copies from private devices. Tremendous controversy when that came out. Bigger than the old NSA encryption scandals.’

  ‘Mmmm . . .’ Oh, of course, she didn’t take her pill this morning. And, for a couple of days before that, she’d been having it with coffee. Coffee interferes with absorption . . . She almost laughs. This isn’t something unusual happening. This is her libido, no longer suppressed, roaring back. And her anxiety. No wonder she feels so odd. She’s herself again.

  Naomi tries to focus, concentrate. ‘You mean, they’re blocking the delegates from passing my paper on to other people?’

  ‘No, no, they’re wiping out every copy of your paper. We released it to all delegates at the start of your talk. The government, I assume the NDSA, is erasing all those copies from all delegates’ devices, and blocking transmission.’

  ‘But you can’t eradicate a piece of information once it’s out . . .’

  ‘Oh, certainly, it’s almost impossible to kill all copies of anything. But once people are afraid to pass it on, or receive it, then it’s effectively dead. A file that can’t copy itself, locked off on a single machine, is essentially dormant.’

  He’s locked his hands together now behind his back, slipped into a favourite rant. She sneaks a quick glance at her screen. Her eyes widen.

  It’s blank.

  Oh. This is serious.

  ‘Look at the old Soviet Union,’ says Yaakov, looking off into the distance, into his childhood, not noticing her dismay, ‘where the state owned every printing press and photocopier, and registered every typewriter. You didn’t need to stop people writing subversive books. You just needed to prevent transmission. Rather like hygiene, and bacteria. Ideas have to spread to do damage. If you can wipe out 99 per cent of the population, and stop the remainder from spreading, you have functional success . . .’

  Wait, she’s got her screen back on. She tries to call up her own copy of her own paper on her own screen.

  It’s gone.

  She’s been obliterated, wiped out. Her work, her moment of triumph on that stage. Taken back. Erased. It has to be Ryan.

  Yaakov finally sees her face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Yaakov. ‘I’m so sorry. There’s nothing we can do.’

  30

  Back in her room, the woman on the TV is talking about electrical storms in the south-west. Cartoon lightning bolts stab at Las Vegas.

  Naomi rings Colt.

  He answers on audio.

  ‘Put it on video.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mama.’

  ‘I just want to see your face.’

  ‘Jeeeez, Mama, you know what I look like.’

  ‘You’re wearing your helmet, aren’t you.’

  She hears him mumble something, and then he is tapping, tapping, off mike, rapidly and symmetrically for a few seconds in a quick, familiar pattern, before he says, ‘How was the p . . . p . . . paper? It was supposed to go out live, but it cut off before you came on.’

  ‘Really? It went well, I think. It went well . . . But . . .’ She wants to unburden herself. Mention the smiling man. The threats. The pullback. ‘Afterwards . . .’ No.

  Not to Colt.

  Don’t make him anxious.

  She feels empty. Her body aches after the stress of the paper, the confrontation in the green room, the erasure of her work. There should be someone to talk to. Oh, she should have stayed in touch with her friends . . .

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Honey . . . Are you eating?’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Oh, Mama.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Colt takes off the helmet, flicks on video, and goes to the fridge. Opens it.

  ‘Why doesn’t the light come on?’

  ‘I had to take . . .’ No. He starts again. ‘I needed . . .’

  He pauses. She’s not going to like this, whatever way he phrases it.

  *

  Naomi’s trying to peer inside the fridge. ‘You took out the bulb?’

  Hah! Cool. ‘Uhhm . . . for an experiment. I’ll put it back later . . .’ It’s not really lying. He means the extension cord. It’s not his fault she thinks he means the bulb.

  He puts his face, the camera, close to the bottom shelf so she can see. Only four smoothies left. He ate a teaspoonful of every smoothie, an hour after Naomi left, so he could tell her truthfully he’d eaten some. ‘Some’ was a good word. Useful. But since then he’s been dumping them, one per mealtime, untasted, ingame. The game maps all outgame food onto sour goat’s milk – the look, the smell – to discourage you from tasting, because of the unavoidable taste/texture mismatches with the container and the food.

  He tries not to gag on the warm, rotting air. ‘See? I ate the carrot. I ate the . . . the . . .’ It won’t come.

  ‘Pea?’

  ‘Yeah, the pea.’ He pulls his head back out of the fridge and slams the door. Breathes out.

  ‘And you’ll eat the spinach?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK. OK. Thanks.’ She almost lets it go. No.

  ‘Promise me you’ll eat.’

  ‘Mama!’

  ‘Promise me you’ll eat.’

  ‘OK, I promise.’

  ‘Full sentence.’

  ‘I promise you I will eat.’

  ‘Soon. Today.’

  ‘Today.’

  ‘A full meal.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, all in one go.’

  ‘Mama, I promise you I will eat a full meal today.’

  ‘OK.’ She can’t see any wriggle room there. ‘Sorry. I worry.’

  ‘You look tired,’ Colt says. ‘You better rest.’ It’s ended conversations before. It might work.

  ‘Yes. I will.’

  She doesn’t want to let him go.

  ‘And you’re sleeping OK?’

  ‘Great. Perfect. Really.’

  Eventually he gets her to finish the call. He pulls the helmet back on. Pulls on the gloves. Relaxes. Stretches.

  Alone in the cave.

  He walks back to the fridge.

  It’s now a rocky ledge, with a rough wooden door.

  He frowns. It’s too cartoony. Something wrong with the shadows. Someone’s been playing around with the parameters for light reflection again. That English guy, Scurvy Wallbanger, probably. He’s in some kind of fight with the Snow Queen.

  Colt opens and closes the wooden door a few times, watching the shadows move, trying to work out what’s changed. There’s been an ongoing aesthetic argument for months over how realistic the light should be. Which is part of the bigger, broader fight over how realistic the avatars should be. Which is part of the permanent world war over how female-friendly, or not, the gameworld should be. A conflict which makes Colt intensely uncomfortable. He’s been trying to keep out of it.

  As he admires the swing of the wooden door, he thinks again about changing his brain, his life. Standing there, he closes his eyes. Methodically moves mentally through the procedure, reexamines all his decisions, looking for anything obvious he might have missed. Thinks through all the implications. This is his last chance to change his mind about changing his mind . . .

  He might die.

  He might live, without half of his brain. A vegetable. Human broccoli.

  But . . . it might work. He might understand people.

  He might understand women.

  He feels sick and he doesn’t know why.

  No, he does know why. Because he’s not going to do it. He’s too scared to do it. His mother will come back, and he will not have changed.

  Don’t think about it. This life is fine. This life is good. There’s nothing wrong with it. You don’t need other people. You’ve got the game. Your mother will come home and everything will be fine.

  He opens his eyes.

  There’s no cold air coming from the unplugged fridge now, good. The sudden cold
on his face, in his lungs, had never mapped properly ingame. Broke the illusion.

  Still, the gloves are doing a good job with the fridge door, translating the smooth metal and plastic of the handle into a rough, almost splintered wood texture.

  He takes the spinach and peanut-butter smoothie out of the unplugged fridge. The game maps it nicely.

  He has to admit, this slightly tweaked light does look dramatic. He admires the light and shade on the clay jug, passes it from gloved hand to gloved hand, enjoying the rough texture against his fingertips. He pulls out the cork stopper. Sniffs. Recoils. ‘Oh mano.’

  He walks to the waterfall, pulls back the vines, and turns on the shower. It’s not a perfect map. The vines map perfectly onto the shower curtain, but switching on the shower is a botch; he moves a rock ingame to unblock the waterfall, but his fingers go out of sync, between the two realities. His heart jolts.

  He starts blinking rapidly, which helps, and he murmurs prime numbers. He concentrates on the sound of the waterfall. The precision and accuracy of the sound reassures him, calms him, and he tips the goat’s milk into the stream, and the waterfall carries it all away. He scours out the earthenware jug till the water it contains is clean. Washes the cork stopper.

  Once the shower is actually on, the map between the shower and the waterfall is perfect. Soothing.

  The sounds, the smell of the damp air filling the dry cave, the splashes on his bare legs, felt directly through the porous micromesh. Perfect.

  He tips out the water, and leaves the jug. But there’s no clean way to go from waterfall to no waterfall without the same sync problem in reverse, so he leaves the shower on.

  He goes to the front door – a walk through a long, narrow cave – and puts the chain on the door. Yeah, the mapping is good. OK, the cave entrance is blocked.

  Safe.

  It’s going to be a good day.

  31

  ‘There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.’

  — Montaigne, translated by Donald Frame

  There’s a knock on her door.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Naomi calls out. ‘The room’s fine. Thanks.’

  But there’s another knock. Another. She answers it.