by Allison Goh
Brian starting tuning out. Lyxa’s comment on the safety of the Infinity Chip had struck a nerve and Brian was once again thrown in the swirling vortex of figuring out his current situation. How should he resolve the issues he had with the Infinity Chip? Could he do it without throwing his parents under the bus? Should he seek help from Etak Inc.? Who could he tell about all his concerns? Who would believe him?
Brian’s muddled train of thought was broken by Lyxa’s voice. “Anyway, I’m sure I’m good hands. You said your parents were the lead developers of the Chip didn’t you?”
At the thought of his parents, Brian’s mood turned sombre, “Yes, yes they are…” Brian was struggling to control the upset he felt with his parents. It was one thing to ignore him as a son, but why would they ignore his genuine cries for help as a scientist with regards to the very technology they had babied for years?
Over the past year, Brian had voiced some very serious and legitimate issues he was having with the long-term viability of the Infinity Chip. He had also undertaken several pioneer experiments to prove his point but each time he tried to demonstrate his results to his parents, he was unceremoniously cut down. Furthermore, each dismissal was met with more coldness than the one before, and Brian gradually realized how little his parents cared about the effect of the Infinity Chip on the masses.
This had been exacerbated once the Infinity Chip had been launched commercially and to amazing success as his parents had even less incentive to probe into the technology with their time and energies now focused entirely on sales. In fact, in the past few weeks since the launch of the Infinity Chip, Brian had been trying with great difficulty but failing, to push out a nagging and chilling suspicion out of his head. The notion that his parents in some way knew about the problems with the Infinity Chip but chose not to do anything about it.
An awkward silence ensued as Brian didn’t know what else to say. He felt sick to the stomach thinking that his parents could have become so enwrapped with money and power that they had lost their purpose as doctors. Sensing the mood, Lyxa probed tentatively, “High expectations? Over-bearing and protective? Well, that’s my dad anyway… In fact, this was his idea. He wants me to better. Not good enough nowadays I suppose…”
Brian looked at Lyxa. Frankly, he wasn’t the least surprised that this was her father’s idea. It must have been hard growing up as the Mayor’s daughter… He could empathize with the pressure that came with high expectations from parents. His parents, being brilliant themselves, barely acknowledged his achievements in school or in the laboratory, having had exceptional academic success themselves all their lives.
He said, “You know, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. And, you’re good enough. I’m sure your father only suggested this because he cares…”
Lyxa turned to Brian, “Yes, I know. I know he cares. That’s why I’m doing this really. He is convinced that the Infinity Chip is the way of the future and honestly, I think he just wants to take the Alpha5 down a notch. But in my perspective, whatever the people may say about the Alpha5, the children are innocent aren’t they? They didn’t choose to be genetically selected…”
Lyxa grew pensive as she thought about her friend Pamela and how she must be coping. Catching herself, she said quickly, “Oh no, I’m saying too much. I should really watch myself … There is doctor-patient confidentiality isn’t there?” Lyxa said with a wink.
Brian chuckled and nodded. Who else would he tell anyway? It wasn’t as if he had any friends. Brian thought about what Lyxa had said. He did find the way people attacked the Alpha5 children overly harsh.
He said, “People sometimes can be really cruel. I reckon it’s just the anonymity of the internet and safety in numbers. Bashing the Alpha5 children is practically an ice-breaker nowadays. No one wants to talk about their real problems…”
“You’re right,” Lyxa said. “I do think the Alpha5 shouldn’t get away with this though. But I pity the children. I’m actually friends with one of them, sweetest girl I know!”
“Oh no, there I go again, telling you way too much. What are you putting in those serums exactly!” Lyxa said smiling. Lyxa wondered at her unexpected openness. For some reason, she felt safe talking to Brian. He was a really good listener and seemed trustworthy. Maybe she should make a new friend. Brian seemed lonely. He could use someone to talk to, and so could she.
Brian stopped in his tracks. He was surprised at this information. Lyxa knew one of them! The genetically selected children! She was the Mayor’s daughter after all. She mixed in elite circles. Unlike him, hardly ever seeing the sun since he spent so many hours in his laboratory…
“That’s nice,” Brian said. “I guess you would have a different perspective seeing as you actually know them. I agree with you though, children shouldn’t be blamed for the sins of their parents…”
Lyxa looked at Brian with concern. She noticed his mood changed whenever the topic of his parents came up. She said softly, “You aren’t close to your parents?”
Brian laughed, “That would be an understatement. To be fair, they are really busy. They have been really invested into this Infinity Chip for the last couple of years…”
Lyxa nodded sympathetically, “I understand, my dad is so busy as well. Actually, the Infinity Chip seems to have helped him, he doesn’t even need to rely on his PDA anymore. He can remember everything! And, he has a lot more time now that he doesn’t need sleep, so thank you, thank your parents!”
Brian smiled, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. His anxiety shot up again as he thought about the Mayor using the Infinity Chip. Hopefully, his fears didn’t materialize. Thankfully, it looked like the Infinity Chip was causing no harm for now.
Without realizing it, Brian had gotten all the bloodwork he needed and completed all the necessary scans required. He felt an unexplained sense of loss as he realized his interaction with Lyxa was over.
Reluctantly he said, “We’re all done. After the results of your tests come back, we will be ready to put in the chip next week…”
Glancing at her watch, Lyxa was surprised at how quickly the time had passed. Standing up, she straightened her dress and thought idly about how much she had really enjoyed the time with Brian. Deciding that there was nothing to lose, Lyxa decided to be brave and ask Brian for his personal contact details. The immediate flush on Brian’s face almost caused Lyxa to giggle out loud. He really doesn’t get out much, she thought, smiling to herself as she scanned her wrist watch to his, finalizing the exchange of their contact details. Pleased that she had made a new friend, Lyxa walked out of the Infinity Clinic confidently, almost forgetting her fears over getting the Infinity Chip in the first place.
Later that night, Brian couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lyxa. Her cute laugh and beautiful green eyes but mostly, her warm and caring personality had touched him. Maybe it was because he hadn’t interacted with anyone his age in awhile, but she really got to him. Underneath his excitement however, Brian was genuinely worried. Now that he had made such a personal connection to Lyxa, his doubts about the Infinity Chip resurfaced with pressing need.
After tossing in his bed for an hour, Brian got up. I shouldn’t be lying here wasting time like this! I have work to do!’
Brian only had until next week before Lyxa’s appointment was due and he knew he had to get down to the bottom of things. Having been rejected all the times he had surfaced his concerns to his parents, Brian knew he was alone in this mission.
Now that he was digging deeper into the long term viability of the Infinity Chip, Brian knew he was treading in dangerous waters. With his parents being the lead developers of the Infinity Chip and holding executive positions in the company, Brian knew he would never get any help from anybody inside Etak Inc. Moreover, he was merely a junior employee at Etak Inc. He had just qualified as an Infinity specialist and was only assigned Lyxa as a patient so soon because of his parents.
With the potential ramific
ations of what he was seeking to find out, it was probably best he embarked on this project in secret. After splashing his face with ice-cold water, Brian strode to his laboratory purposefully, determined to reach a breakthrough with his research within the week.
Chapter 5: The White Room
Alex leaned back comfortably in his chair in the head office of Etak Inc. As he watched the stock prices of Alpha5 fall continually on a graph on his computer screen, he smiled. Everything was going according to plan. From the news leak to his ingeniously timed announcement of the Infinity Chip, Alpha5 was quickly losing their dominance while Etak Inc. advanced. Furthermore, he had been quietly buying up shares of OrionWan-Nutrienas, using a mixture of shell companies and fund entities, disguising Etak Inc.’s increasing ownership of OrionWan-Nutrienas.
His tireless efforts these past 3 years had been worth it, Alex thought. With the public hysteria over Alpha5’s genetically-selected children, the Infinity Chip could hardly have been launched at a better time. Everyone was scrambling over themselves to get one. To ‘improve’ themselves lest they fall behind those ‘superior’ humans. Nothing could be worse to most Egalians than the thought that the game had been rigged from the beginning, that they had no chance of ever rising to the top in the corporation. Etak Inc. barely needed to do put in any promotional efforts, the public was eating the Infinity Chip up and the profits were pouring in. Almost all of Etak Inc.’s real estate investments in the city had been converted into Infinity Clinics, a long-term strategy coming to fruition since he started Etak Inc. 3 years ago.
As Alex thought of his successes, he felt immensely pleased and smiled widely while trying hard to stifle a yawn. It’s so tiring having to upkeep the appearance of not needing sleep. Perhaps he should take a nap.
After making sure his entire office was secure and nobody would catch him taking a nap, he leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes.
It was white walls and a long, winding expanse of marbled floor. Alex walked down the halls and into a white room. A woman came forward, and stared at him. Stared at him for so long he felt hypnotized … until she got up, so quickly her chair fell, breaking the trance. ‘Son, is that really you?’ She touched his face with her hands and sobbed.
Alex woke up with a start as he recognized the familiar dream that has plagued him for years. The dream contained the last memory of his mother, her haunting eyes stuck in his mind.
Don’t worry mom, Alex thought, I’m coming to get you, soon…
Chapter 6: A Chip off the Old Block
Brian had been working tirelessly in his laboratory for four days, gathering all his old data and experiment results and re-examining everything with renewed vigour. His suspicions about the Infinity Chip not being effective in the long-term seemed increasingly real.
Brian knew how the Infinity Chip worked at its fundamentals but he didn’t know the details. His parents, neuroscientists, had successfully synthesized a special chemical that when channelled into the brain, relieved pain to a large degree by ‘freezing’ select parts of the brain. One of the unintended side effects was that patients reported a remarkable increase in vigour afterwards. After receiving funding from Etak Inc., his parents had combined this chemical, which they named Clyxint, with a microchip that Etak Inc. had already been working on that increased brain power. This gave birth to the Infinity Chip and the resultant benefits of increased brain prowess and the ability of foregoing sleep.
While he also participated in the Chip’s refinement after passing Etak Inc.’s specialist tests, those experiments had focused on implementation, the process that it took to insert the chip into a person’s brain. The technology for that wasn’t new and having worked on it himself, he believed it was safe. What he worried about was the Infinity Chip’s long term compatibility and its effects on human beings, especially with its touted claims of being able to improve memory, concentration, and efficiency as well as the ability to forego sleep. He was wary about those claims and wondered if it wouldn’t create a strain on the human body in the long run.
A breakthrough came in the form of some encrypted documents Brian found after digging through his parents’ computer in their private laboratory at home. Because he had access to much of his parents’ personal information and because his parents never expected an outsider to have access to their personal computer at home, the documents were surprisingly easy to decrypt and what he found shocked him.
The documents recorded the very first few human experiments his parents did with Clyxint. It seemed that there were other undisclosed side effects from using Clyxint besides renewed vigour. The patients tested on were burn victims who needed large amounts of pain relief. The pain relief worked and the patients actually experienced high levels of energy after being administered Clyxint but they became strangely monotonous in their daily lives. Family members noted that they were increasingly brusque in their behaviour and was strangely obsessive with details, spending more and more time at work, caring little about anything else. It was as if their human emotions had been turned off and they became much more functional than relational as human beings.
Brian’s suspicion was that Clyxint, while able to dull parts of the brains that controlled pain, also numbed others, resulting in a ‘de-humanization’ of sorts. From the records, the most common observable symptom was lack of empathy. The patient generally became increasingly selfish and unconcerned about others, even loved ones. Brian didn’t want his hypothesis to be true, why would his parents allow this to be fused with the chip if that were the case? Didn’t they care that this would harm people? These worrying thoughts piled up as Brian meticulously looked through the data again, trying his best to look for more evidence to cross-reference his findings.
Also, combined with the microchip that stimulated the brain, Brian wondered if the human brain was able to cope with so much going on. It made sense though, he thought, Clyxint helping to take off some of the stimulation the microchip caused. But what about the side effects? Brian was deeply concerned but he wouldn’t be able to get any definite answers with the little information he had now. He needed access to more data, especially data about the first generation microchip that was combined with Clyxint. This was too big of a deal to just let slide. He needed answers and fast. With only a few days left before his deadline (the appointment with Lyxa to integrate the Infinity Chip), Brian planned to infiltrate his parents’ work computers at Etak Inc. hoping those would turn up more data. He knew it was risky, but it was a risk he had to take…
Chapter 7: The Mole and his Motive
At 23, Ren Wan felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. Ren and Paris had been for the most part, hiding in their holiday home since the news leaked about their genetic origin. Ren felt powerless, imprisoned in his own home, as he watched their company’s share price dropping to an unprecedented low especially after the release of the Infinity Chip. As Ren thought about the Infinity Chip, his anger towards Alex Etak grew. First off, he was suspicious of the product and the remarkable timing at which it was released. He was surprised the government wasn’t intervening to ensure this product was being marketed properly to the masses. Clearly, they were just happy for the masses to partake in it as long as it kept them happy and reporting to work on time.
It is just like the government to lay low and let businessmen line their pockets, Ren thought. As long as it distracts the public from putting the blame on the government for letting the Alpha5 cheat the Genetic Lottery. Though Ren was irritated, his anger toward the government didn’t run deep. After all, his own family had been using their own wealth and power for years to get their way too. He sighed. The only way to beat Alex Etak was to beat him commercially. But right now, that was proving to be more difficult than expected. The Infinity Chip was the number one, most coveted item on everyone’s wishlist, young and old. What’s more, Alex Etak had even made use of his new found popularity as an anti-alpha5 figure to provoke the masses into a public boycott of their goods and it was
working. Ren sighed again, his shoulders hunched. Besides the company’s financial woes, he had other problems to deal with as well.
Ever since his father alerted him to the very real possibility of an internal leak, Ren had been investigating who could possibly have known about their genetically selected beginnings. Only the Alpha5 parents and their children knew and it made no sense for anyone of them to leak their secret. Who would do such a thing? Perhaps a calculated incident of espionage? Alpha5 did have many business enemies and there was thousands of companies who would love to reclaim their market share, Ren thought, thinking over the matter repeatedly, shuffling through potential suspects in his mind.
At this moment of turmoil, Ren missed his best friend Max more than ever, he would know what to do, Ren thought. Max always had a good head on his shoulders and was always trustworthy and honest. Ever since his death, both Ren and Paris had been distraught as he was their dearest friend. Ren then turned his thoughts to Max’s father, Billion Molten. Ren felt great pity for the Molten family. He let out a deep sigh as he thought about the Molten family. The Molten family had no one left. Billion’s wife, Kate, who was CEO of Molten Industries, had passed away when Max was a child, leaving Billion to run the company and take care of their young son. And just a few years ago, Billion had to face immense loss once again as his only son met with a tragic accident.
As someone who has experienced great emotional hardship throughout his life, Billion Molten knew a thing or two about coping. He had become Orion’s pillar of support after the news leak, helping him get things together at the company and looking for various containment strategies. Billion had been really helpful in ensuring the companies remained running. Ren felt grateful towards Billion, glad that his parents had some support right now. In fact, Billion and Ren’s father, Orion Wan, were having a private meeting right now. Ren hoped that they had figured out how to turn the situation around. For now, Ren decided to look into the Alpha5’s business rivals’ activities in the past few years more closely, hoping to find some kind of link to the news leak.