Collective Mind

by Klyukin, Vasily

  “That depends how you look at it. I’d prefer to describe the situation as fighting an epidemic.”

  “You’ve probably got the wrong man. I’m not a specialist in that area.”

  “Well, I think there is one epidemic where it’s impossible to find another specialist of your level.”

  “Ah, I think I’m beginning to understand what you’re driving at young man.”

  “Professor, think about it. There are plenty of clues to your presence left at the villa. Fingerprints, hair and all sorts of things. You’re a very visible individual. And so is your Japanese girlfriend. How far away will you sail? Where to, Japan?”

  “That’s enough, we can meet. My driver will pick you up at the hotel tomorrow morning and bring you to me.”

  “Straight to Capri?”

  “Straight to me.”

  After the conversation Isaac did not feel exactly overjoyed. Finding Link should have been a cause for celebration, but the conversation did not go well.

  Bikie nervously ran through every idea that might enter the professor’s head.

  “What if he decides to get rid of us? Poison us? Or hand us over to the police?”

  He hastily threw together a program that would send a pile of information to all his friends at a certain moment. Or not send it, if it received the command to cancel. He thought that would keep Link under control.

  In the morning Isaac purchased an absorbent gel used in cases of food poisoning in a chemist’s shop. He ate half a tube of the jellyfish-like goo himself and stuffed Bikie with it too.

  “It ought to neutralize a dose of poison or a sleeping draught,” he explained. “I’m more concerned about soporifics.”

  Bikie laughed and said that in any case he wouldn’t accept any cups of tea or coffee from the professor’s hands and Isaac shouldn’t either. In addition, after inspecting the contents of his bag, he took a knife out of it and stuck in it in his belt. Now armed, he immediately calmed down.

  “He won’t try to kill us. What’s the point? He realizes we can put out information about him. He doesn’t know how many of us there are. I didn’t need to swallow that gel of yours. If we found him, if means we’re not idiots, so we would take precautions. And you pressed him hard on the phone. I liked that.”

  “You know, to be quite honest, I really feel like a drink.”

  “With that gel in your stomach?”

  “Yeah, what a bummer. Seems like we do things right, but something always gets overlooked.”

  “Drop it. The important thing is, we found him.”

  Isaac nodded and started dashing off a text for Michelle on his mobile phone. Sensing danger ahead, he wanted to write to someone really close to him. The morning was already almost over, the clock showed past eleven, and Link’s driver still wasn’t there. They decided go to the lobby and have a cup of coffee – they needed to kill time somehow.

  Chapter six

  The car arrived at the hotel at midday. It was an ordinary taxi. Bikie and Isaac were just finishing their coffee. The taxi driver spoke neither English nor French. He said they were going to Porto Cervo, smiled at all their questions and answered in Italian. The language is very similar to French, so they were able to understand that he had been called in a usual way, asked to pick up two men at the hotel and take them to the sea port. It was mostly grand yachts that moored at Porto Cervo, the driver explained. But in every luxury port, you could also find ordinary fishing boats and smaller yachts too.

  Isaac and Bikie were met by a morose character who introduced himself as the professor’s assistant. His dour look sat strangely with the jolly red color of his beard and a gleaming bald patch. And his sudden appearance confused them even more: how would Link deal with them? What should they expect?

  Meanwhile, the assistant handed each of them a package containing shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops. There were also two baseball caps with the inscription “Sardinia”.

  They went to the nearby beach to get changed and were given a key to a locker where they could leave their things. They looked funny. In fact, the clothes fit Bikie, but hung baggily on Isaac. Bikie tried to conceal the knife in his shorts but he couldn’t so he left it in the locker.

  Redbeard waited for them to get changed and led them along the quayside. Isaac examined with curiosity the little boats and the large yachts and ships standing a bit further off shore. They came to a rather large sixty-foot sailing yacht, old but well-kept.

  The sail was furled, the engine running. Spots of sunlight from the splashing water gently caressed the yacht’s side. Isaac recognized the familiar and entirely distinctive smell of salt from sea water, heated on the metal sides of the yacht. “That’s it,” he thought, “the genuine smell of the sea.”

  “Board the yacht, please,” Redbeard said.

  They walked across a springy gangway to where an Italian captain was waiting for them. As soon as they were all on board, he cast off the mooring rope and the yacht put out to sea.

  There was a slight swell and Isaac started feeling sick. The captain noticed and handed him a pill.

  “For seasickness,” he explained.

  Isaac thanked him, pretended that he was feeling much worse, leaned over the side and flung the pill away.

  He heard Bikie say:

  “Boss, I could do with a pill too!”

  Bikie took it, said thank you and tucked the pill in his pocket inconspicuously.

  “What for?” Isaac asked in surprise.

  “Maybe we can check to see if it’s a poison,” Bikie whispered with his lips barely moving. “Maybe even test it on our professor. Or on Redbeard there.”

  Bikie was nervous at being left without his knife, and he felt calmer knowing that at least he had a pill of “poison.”

  The yacht kept sailing away from the shore. The guys sat at the bow and gazed at the sea’s blue, rippling undulations. They weren’t sailing to Capri like this. Perhaps the professor was coming to meet them on another yacht?

  Suddenly a sharp voice behind them said:

  “Well then, congratulations! You managed to do what no one else could. You found me.”

  Isaac swung around. A short man of about sixty was emerging from a small cabin that Isaac had thought was empty. He straightened up to his full height and the guys immediately recognized that cunning glint in his narrowed eyes: the professor had gazed out at them so many times from various photographs.

  His thick, back-combed hair with very marked receding temples glinted in the sun, dividing the upper part of his head in two, which gave him a somewhat diabolical air. Fine lines radiated out from his eyes, making his expression cunning and good-natured by turns, and several deep furrows in his forehead testified to exceptional intellectual capacity. He was attractive and scary at the same time, which was exactly what Isaac had imagined the professor to be.

  Bikie reproached himself for yet another blunder. What had stopped him from looking into the cabin as soon as they boarded the yacht?

  Isaac eventually replied to the professor in the same tone.

  “I think we really wanted to.”

  “I can see you did. Well done, well done.”

  “And I see you weren’t really in Capri?”

  “Of course, I wasn’t. I never left the villa. You’re still kids, you have a lot of weapons in your arsenal: passion and unflinching determination. But in mine, I also have experience and bluff.”

  “That all comes with time, but we have youth in our arsenal too.”

  “Now you’re offending me, that’s in poor taste.”

  “I’m sorry, it just slipped out. I don’t like to back down.”

  “That’s a good quality, but there is also Aikido. Why go head on, sometimes it’s better to make use of your opponent’s energy… Would you like some wine? Local, home-grown.”

  “Professor, why did you choose such a strange place for the meeting, on a yacht? Do you think you’re safer here?” Isaac parried.

  “No, not beca
use of that. I have nothing to be afraid of, and my experience tells me that wasting nerve cells on stress causes far more harm than the actual danger that so often fails to materialize. I enjoy fishing. Sitting there, catching fish, thinking.

  “I booked this yacht for today last week. And I decided not to cancel it, I thought we could talk perfectly well out here.”

  “And what if we’d been seasick?”

  “There are pills for that,” the professor said with a smile, holding out his hand, into which the captain placed exactly the same kind of pill he had given to Isaac and Bikie. The professor screwed up his eyes and tossed it into his mouth with an abrupt movement.

  Isaac and Bikie exchanged glances and the professor continued.

  “And then, even if you were seasick, we wouldn’t be far from shore, the engine would get us to port in five minutes, and we could easily talk in the evening, eating what we catch today for supper.”

  “Great! You live the good life alright!” said Isaac, beginning to feel less tense. He finally realized that he had achieved something incredible, even if it was only a step on the way to his grand goal. He has found the man he had been searching for so methodically for so long. Found him alive and well. Out of all the people who had searched for the professor, only he and Bikie did it!”

  “The grass is always greener… That rule always applies without exception. This life has its minuses too. I do not go to big cities, and I miss their bustle and energy. I miss students. Intelligent listeners. I’m actually glad to see you. I’m sick of hiding. I pass the time splendidly, but it flows along too smoothly.

  “And so, young people, I shall listen with pleasure to what you have brought for me,” the professor summed up. “And then you’ll tell me how you found me,” he added, puffing on a cigar.

  “The little magic key is right there in your mouth,” Isaac thought, then he spoke out loud:

  “We need your help.”

  “You wrote that already and I understand everything the first time around. I don’t like it when someone tries to explain something to me for five times as if I’m some slow-witted schoolboy.”

  “All right, I’ll try not to repeat myself. Professor, what you have created is both wonderful and appalling. But in the future, the appalling side could become a whole lot worse. You have created an epidemic, a ticking time bomb. The technology you have created means that the time remaining to totalitarianism amounts to no more than a couple of decades. We want to stop that.”

  “Appalling and wonderful. Interesting words,” said the professor, smiling wistfully. It was a long time since he had been involved in a serious debate.

  “And you will help us do it. Help us to stop your own creation,” Isaac continued. “Whether you want it to or not. And even if you couldn’t give a damn for your own life, something that is really important to you can be found. Only two of us have come, but we have allies. If necessary, they’ll find you again. So it’s not just a matter of us. By eliminating us or handing us over to the authorities, you’ll only gain a little time.”

  “There’s no need to threaten me, Isaac. I don’t intend to do you any harm, God forbid. I created the technology for honorable purposes and it has brought no less benefit to humankind than electricity.”

  “But it will inevitably lead to catastrophe.”

  “An interesting theory…continue. You’re intelligent young guys. I could have done with more students like that. And you actually bluff quite well. Concerning the ‘group of friends’…” – the professor smiled good-naturedly – “… you’re a bit short of practice. Tonight I will give you a book on poker, written by a friend of mine. It was published in a small edition and is very popular with the pros. It’s not as boring as textbooks on the theory of lying, much more popular in style and it better describes gestures people use when they lie or tell the truth.”

  “That’s theory, professor, but you are going to run up against the reality. Then we’ll see how true your conclusions are.”

  “Shush, calm down please, our conversation has got off on the wrong foot. So far there are no reasons for an argument. I can see that you’re rather hi-minded individuals, and so am I. Let’s relax and start over again. How about some rum and coke?” Link poured a dark, foaming liquid into a glass and added alcohol from a dark, heavy, thick-walled bottle.

  “Professor, I’m not really in the mood for drinking cocktails,” said Isaac, pushing aside the glass held out by Link.

  Link apparently guessed they were worried about poison and took a relaxed swallow from the glass he had just offered to Isaac.

  “For a start, I’ve realized that you’re Isaac, right? You work out a lot, I see?”

  Isaac nodded. The worldly professor was trying to lull their suspicions with his apparent kindheartedness, slipping compliments into the conversation.

  “And, judging from the hardline tattoos and the stubble, you are Bikie?”

  Even in the beach gear, who was Bikie and who, Isaac, was as obvious as the moon on a clear night.

  “And I, as you know, am Professor Jeremy Link. But please, young people, just call me Link. Using the first name is a little too hobnob for me, and Mr. Link is way too official. So, simply Link.”

  “All right, Link. So now what do you have to say? Seven years is a long time, you’re a clever man, and you watch TV and read the news. What’s your opinion?”

  “You want to destroy the system for gathering Orange Energy – you do understand that we’re talking precisely about the system? It’s impossible to destroy an operating system if it’s installed on too many computers. Either physically or with some cunning virus. It’s a program. It is sold in thousands of shops. And Orange Energy is a program too, a technology. I’d even call it a form of knowledge. Knowledge is impossible to destroy if it has spread right round the world. It’s like trying to convince people all over again that the sun is nailed to the sky.”

  “If you want to destroy it, you have to make everyone stop using it. Make it unpopular. And that is possible. People used to be crazy about getting a tan, remember? Tanning salons were everywhere. But not anymore, since people just stopped using them. In order to find the key failing, the decisive one, we have to understand how the technology works.”

  “And this is why you searched for me…”

  “Yes. In order to destroy it, we decided to find you. As Gogol says in Taras Bulba: ‘I gave you life, and I will kill you’. We want to know everything about the technology that you know. Its strong and weak aspects, the principles it works on, basically everything. The plan is to destroy it, to switch it off. We’ll figure out how as we go along. The world hasn’t been destroyed yet.”

  “The world cannot be destroyed. Sooner or later a tyrant dies. If a new tyrant takes his place, he will die some time too. Sooner or later there is a revolution. Even if the world goes completely to the dogs, humankind will survive in some places, invent everything all over again, and a new surge of evolution will begin. We don’t know what heights were scaled by the inhabitants of Atlantis if they existed. But the fact remains that mankind survived and was resurrected, and invented everything all over again. We fly into space, we talk to other continents on miniature wireless devices. We’ve surpassed Atlantis, that’s for sure. In the same way, the hypothetical crisis that I’ve created will pass off sooner or later. Even a nuclear war, capable of reducing cities and civilizations to dust, sooner or later will be forgotten. Life will start over again and completely restore itself. Where will the new cradle of civilization be? Maybe somewhere on the outskirts of New Zealand, maybe in Africa, or on Mauritius.”

  “That’s empty rhetoric, professor. We’re talking about here and now, not ten thousand years in the future. We want to win today, not through the whim of time’s endless flow. Our task is to halt evolution in the wrong direction.”

  “I’ve had enough time to assess the consequences of my invention. I disagree with your conclusions, although there is a grain of sense in them. In fa
ct, it is hard not to agree with some of them. If everything were in my hands right now, I would use the technology differently. I agree that there are no guarantees. No matter how a system is constructed, sooner or later a villainous scoundrel will control it, this is quite possible, so what then?”

  “Every good system is run by people, people get old and die, and new people take their place, it’s an endless process. And in infinite time, the probability of any event occurring is a hundred per cent. Sooner or later. If God exists, then probably he alone never changes and can offer guarantees, because he is eternal.”

  “I agree about eternity. I think so too. But God helps those who help themselves.”

  “Scientists are often faced with a choice: to give a technology to people or to destroy what they have created. Everything has an upside and a downside. Electricity is a good thing, but lots of people have been killed by it. Not to mention atomic power. There are power stations and there are atomic bombs. You can say the same about radio and antibiotics, GMOs and many other things.”

  “We are in the present. Seven years have gone by. And everything is still in your hands. And ours. You can correct or adjust the world that has been steered off course by your invention.”

  It was clear that Professor was about to seethe, getting ready to protect his invention. But, having studied Isaac and Bikie closer, he changed his mind. A little smile touched his lips and he continued with a soft voice, a bit sadly but amicably.

  “Well, yes. Everything that has happened is a catastrophe for me as the inventor. I created a universally accessible drug that is instantly addictive. The technology itself is unique and mega-useful, only there aren’t any instructions for use and my idea is not used as I wished.”

  “Professor, I understand that you’re disappointed, I understand about electricity, and about the drug, I just don’t understand how determined you are to put right the mess you have created.”

  “I didn’t create it, young man, I invented. God and humankind create. We always have what we deserve.”