by Dima Zales
Still confused, I assess the situation and realize I must be in a car that’s in motion—or sitting on a vibrating mattress, though this seems less likely.
An avalanche of excitement hits me from the EmoRat app, and I feel Mr. Spock cuddle up to my face, his whiskers tickling my cheek.
“What’s that, baby?” says a voice that sounds like Ada’s baby/rat talk. Since the voice is not coming from an app, I must assume Ada is the owner of the small hands working the kinks out of my back, and the source of the nice scent filling my nostrils. “He’s finally awake?”
“I’m awake,” I say out loud and open my eyes—only to be met by the pink gaze of my favorite pet.
“Where am I?” I turn over.
Ada’s amber eyes are puffy, like she was crying, and the sight makes me want to rip someone’s head off, though I’m too groggy to decide whose. As I look, I see fresh tears in her eyes, but I think they’re happy tears. Honestly, I didn’t let myself fully register how much I missed Ada until now. If, as the old adage goes, distance makes the heart grow fonder, then getting kidnapped and abused by the government makes the heart nearly burst with emotion.
I sit up and find it surprisingly easy to move. A quick check of the lab on the chip reveals why. I’m pumped to the brim with painkillers.
Unbidden, my arm goes around Ada’s waist, my palm landing on my favorite spot—the two dimples in the small of her back. She leans into me, and I pull her in for a kiss. Her lips quiver as they explore mine, and her breathing quickens as her tongue begins to—
Someone loudly clears his throat, and I pull away from Ada to look around the car—something I probably should’ve done first.
We’re inside a massive limousine, surrounded by a bunch of people who I assume work for Joe, because he’s also here. When Joe spots me looking at him, his somber expression twists, and he does something I didn’t think I’d ever—and I mean ever—see him do.
He winks at me.
Maybe he developed a nervous tick that I mistook for something playful?
“It’s official,” says a familiar voice from my right, and I realize this is the person who cleared his throat a second ago—Gogi. “You’d sleep through Armageddon.”
I turn and see that Gogi is sitting between a couple of extra-large dudes, and there’s a pair of crutches at his feet. He looks much better than I expected him to after four days of recovery.
“How are you feeling?” I ask and can’t help but grin at the Georgian’s good humor. Telepathically, I ask Ada, “So, what happened?”
In the time it takes Gogi to tell me he’s healing okay, Ada gives me the rundown of what happened while I was out in swift mental Zik messages. She starts with a quick update on some of the technological advancements these guys have come up with in a deceptively short time. The most interesting development is Mitya’s new algorithm that allows Einstein to pilot a drone—something that will severely cut costs for Mitya’s drone delivery system that services New York and New Jersey (since the current system uses human pilots). I then learn that both Tema and the Brainocytes got released as soon as I was knocked out, and the releases are exploding the brains of everyone in the cryptography and tech fields. Amazingly, in a few hours, at least fifty articles were published on the subject of how the Brainocytes could be used. Some of the ideas proposed are things we, the arrogant Brainocytes Club members, never imagined. Ada sends me her favorite ten ideas so I can review them later, and then she moves on to a less pleasant topic that she would clearly rather avoid.
Thanks to Mitya’s marketing people, my videos, especially the one where the tube is going up my nose, have gone viral. JC has been working hard at making sure my mom doesn’t see the videos, but I’ll have to tell her what happened at some point, or risk her hearing it from the news. Human rights organizations are on the warpath over the videos, which is good, but I’m forever cursed to be a celebrity of sorts, which is bad. A popular senator, who had experienced torture as a war prisoner, tweeted a condemnation of the things done against me, as did leaders of many countries around the world. The president hasn’t commented yet, but several US government officials, both elected and appointed, already held a record number of press conferences. Some claimed that at least part of the torture was medical assistance provided to a suspect detained after sustaining severe injuries—baloney, in other words. Some also said my capture was based on faulty intelligence, and later conferences suggested the actions committed against me were the result of an agent gone rogue. Both Ada and I know this is just a case of scapegoating.
“All the medical people at that facility lost their licenses, even the woman whose finger you damaged. Everyone else behind the task force will regret their actions,” Ada concludes, her real-world eyes getting that dangerous gleam I’ve learned to be wary of. “After the news cycles complete their witch hunt for whoever the media deems responsible, we’ll unleash Kadvosky and his lawyers on any survivors and make them wish they never heard your name.”
“I think you should take it easy,” I tell Gogi. At the same time, I mentally tell Ada, “Thanks, but you never explained how I ended up here, in this limo, with this entourage.”
“That’s simple,” Ada says out loud, and no one in the car so much as blinks at the sudden reply to an unasked question. “The government people dropped you off at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. As soon as I learned your location, I wanted you transported to the NYU Langone Medical Center. Your cousin demanded the security detail tag along—”
“And she insisted on joining,” Joe intrudes, and I can tell he and Ada must’ve argued about this issue. Somehow, he lost. “Nor did I want this invalid here.” Joe points his index finger at Gogi accusingly, but the Georgian doesn’t look chastised.
I look through the tinted window. The sight of greenery crisscrossed by electrical towers, as well as the warehouses and factories in the distance, suggests we’re still in New Jersey. Einstein confirms this via GPS.
Still looking at the road, I start the Teleconference app and invite Mitya and Ada into the session.
Mitya says, “I’m still in the air, but I should be in New York soon.” He must see my avatar show up in the room in front of him, because he smiles and adds, “Oh, if it isn’t Sleeping Ugly.”
“I’ll let that slide, given how much you’ve helped me in the last few hours,” I say. “Do you guys have an update on Muhomor?”
“You didn’t tell him?” Mitya asks Ada.
“I didn’t get the chance,” Ada counters. “Here, Mike, watch this video. It was taken from the hospital security camera.”
I see a hospital room that looks a lot like the luxury accommodations they have at the NYU Langone Medical Center—our destination. There’s a bed in the middle of the room, and Muhomor is set up with medical equipment that gives me an unpleasant flashback.
A bunch of people are there, including a blond woman with classic good looks whom I recognize as Lyuba—Muhomor’s ally, but not girlfriend. She’s visiting from Russia. Ada is among the crowd, telling me I’m looking at a recording rather than a live feed.
Seeing Muhomor like this is sad. It’s probably the longest I’ve seen him not say something snarky.
Suddenly, the monitoring equipment beeps, and medical people begin to murmur. Even without a medical degree, I can see what happened.
Muhomor’s eyes are open, and he’s trying to say something.
“How are you feeling?” a doctor asks him in the video.
“Viktor, can you hear us?” Lyuba asks in Russian, her hand on his wrist.
Muhomor keeps mouthing the same phrase over and over, and when I eventually hear it, I can’t help but chuckle. “This hospital’s cybersecurity is atrocious,” he’s saying. “I want all my personal data expunged from this sorry excuse of a database. I want—”
I stop the video. I suspect Muhomor’s rant might be long, and I just wanted to know how he’s doing.
“How is he now?” I ask Mitya
and Ada and notice they’re each waiting for the other person to answer the question—not a good sign.
“He’s paralyzed from the waist down.” In the real world, Ada puts her hand on mine reassuringly. “The doctors say this was the best-case scenario.”
I grasp her hand and sever my emotional link to Mr. Spock, lest he experience too much of my sadness.
“How are his spirits?” I ask, unsure what to say in the midst of such a horrific revelation. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Mitya says. “I just invited him to this conversation.”
“Misha.” Muhomor’s telepathic message is filled with way too much excitement. “I was just talking about you with Mitya.”
“Yeah,” Mitya echoes sarcastically. “Why don’t you tell him what you just told me?”
“Sure,” Muhomor states in Zik and manifests his usual anime-inspired avatar into the limo. “I was saying how glad I am that Mike was tortured.”
I’m distracted for a second by the depressing knowledge that while Muhomor’s avatar is standing on cartoon legs, real-world Muhomor will never be able to stand like that again. Then his words hit me. “What? You’re happy I was tortured?”
“I’m happy about the consequences of it,” Muhomor clarifies. “Not the actual pain you suffered per se, but that’s irrelevant to my point.”
“That’s nice,” Ada chimes in. Her sarcasm has a dangerous edge. “Very empathetic.”
“All I’m saying,” Muhomor continues, unfazed, “is that it was genius of you to release Tema and the Brainocytes on the tail of this torture business, even if I wish you’d asked my opinion on releasing the latter.”
“How so?” I ask. “I mean, I’m glad I got myself tortured for the greater good, but it would be nice to know what that greater good is or was.”
“When contemplating the release of Tema, one of my big concerns was that the government might want to regulate or suppress it.” Muhomor’s avatar sprouts a cartoony pipe and puffs out a cloud of cartoon smoke. “But now, with you as the figurehead behind these technologies, things might go differently. Think about it from a politician’s point of view. After all the wrongs the government has committed against you, no one wants to be known as the guy who picked on you again by attacking your intellectual achievements. In other words, whoever decides to suppress your technologies will look like they’re trying to pick on you—and no one should, since they’d get tainted by this torture business.”
“That makes a warped kind of sense,” Mitya says. “Especially if politicians thought like you, Muhomor. Thankfully, they do not. I think this is a moot point anyway. There’s little chance of suppressing either technology, given the way I distributed them—worldwide. The power these will bring will cause a paradigm shift. Suppressing it in the US would just mean the US would technologically fall behind more forward-thinking countries. Like China, for example.”
We sit quietly for a moment, each imagining what the world will be like once the Brainocytes are ubiquitous.
I know I’ll regret this, but I say, “Muhomor, at some point, you’ve got to tell us about your kompromat and cyberweapons. The task force feared you had dead man’s switches prepared in case you got into trouble. Is that true?”
“To quote Machiavelli, it's better to be feared than loved,” Muhomor replies cryptically. “I will only tell you about these things when I feel like I have enough kompromat on all of you, and I don’t feel that way—yet.”
“On that nice, friendly note, Mike and I are going to disconnect,” Ada says. “Glad to hear about your improving health, Viktor.”
“We’re going to disconnect?” I ask in the real world.
“Yes,” she replies telepathically. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something important for what feels like a year, and I don’t think it can wait.”
“All right, guys,” I send into the group conversation. “We’ll be back in a bit.”
“Someone’s in trouble,” I hear Muhomor tell Mitya as Ada and I disconnect.
“Am I in trouble?” I ask Ada, my pulse accelerating.
She looks at me with uncertainty for a real-world second—a long time telepathically.
A sick feeling curls in my stomach as I remember my suspicions about Ada’s strange behavior in recent weeks. My paranoia about being followed turned out to be warranted, so could my worry about Ada’s behavior be as well? Desperate, I blurt out, “Would you really break up with me so soon after I was tortured? Have you no heart?”
Ada looks taken aback. “What? No, you’re not in trouble,” she mentally replies. “At least not that kind of trouble.”
I exhale in relief. “Okay, then what is this big talk about?” Before Ada can answer, my brain-boosted mind runs through different possibilities, each scarier than the next, and my stomach plunges again. “You’re not sick, are you?”
“No. Not sick. Not exactly, anyway. It’s more of a big news sort of deal.” She chews on her lower lip. “A big surprise. Because of how unexpected it is, I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” If I wasn’t communicating telepathically, my voice would’ve probably betrayed my panic. An improbable suspicion flits through my mind, but I dismiss it, because what are the odds?
“I’m pregnant,” Ada blurts out in emotionless Zik. “Or is it more appropriate to say we are pregnant?”
“We’re pregnant?” I yell out loud, switching to Russian—something I’ve never done under stress before. My improbable suspicion was spot on—another score for my boosted intelligence. Not that having had that glimmer helps; I still feel utterly shell-shocked.
Ada looks around us, her cheeks reddening. “I meant for this to be a private, telepathic conversation,” she says, also out loud, and I realize Gogi and my cousin are staring at me. Gogi wears a shocked expression, but Joe looks like he’s in thoughtful contemplation.
Kiril, one of Joe’s Russian-speaking goons, gives me a thumbs-up and starts to say something, but Joe gives him a quelling look. I interpret it as, “Don’t fuck with my cousin right now. He just made me an uncle, and I always wanted to be someone’s uncle.”
Even Mr. Spock, who isn’t linked to me via the EmoRat app, picks up on the tumult of emotions in the air and peeks out of my pocket, glancing at Ada and then me, his nose twitching nervously.
I tear my eyes away from the rat and stare unblinkingly at Ada for a couple of breaths.
Ada doesn’t blink either, her gaze expectant. She’s probably waiting for some sort of reaction from me.
“I don’t know what to say,” I finally say, still out loud. “This is huge.” Then, telepathically, I add, “I’m not calling you huge. I can’t actually tell you’re pregnant—”
Figuring now is a good time to shut up, verbally and mentally, I reach out and give Ada a tight hug. With her warm body firmly pressed against mine, I process what she told me and feel like I’m riding a roller-coaster, though I’m not sure if I’m spiraling up or down.
Ada relaxes in my arms, and I realize I must’ve done the right thing.
It takes all my willpower not to say something idiotic like, “How could this happen?” Instead, I use my mind to quickly search the internet for answers. We always use condoms when we have sex, but I quickly learn that condoms can break, and the tear in the latex is invisible to the naked eye. Considering how much sex we have and with how much vigor, I can see how that could happen. As it turns out, when looking at it statistically, condoms are eighty-five-percent effective in actual use, so Ada and I are among the lucky fifteen percent. A few other things also make sense. Ada felt pretty nauseous a few days back. She didn’t drink any vodka or wine, even the Georgian wine that’s organic and vegan without egg whites or gelatin. Also, and this was the big clue, her period is usually at the beginning of the month, yet we never stopped having sex this month, meaning her period never happened. And—
“We never got a chance to talk about kids,” Ada mentally interr
upts my chain of thought. “I now wish we had.”
“That’s not entirely true. We had that one conversation,” I remind her. “When you said one day you wanted to use CRISPR and other genetic modification tools to make a super baby with biological super intelligence, extreme longevity, enhanced empathy, and I forget what else.”
“Right.” She pulls away from the hug, and I see that she’s smiling. “You mean that day when you said you’d prefer to make a virtual baby, ‘a merger of our minds, not our genetics,’ one we’d only experience via Virtual and Augmented Reality interfaces—so no diapers and other unpleasantness?”
“I guess we’re both going to experience something far more mundane.” I lay my right hand on her knee and run my left hand through her spiked hair. “I’m sure it’ll be very interesting. Just think about it. Building an artificial general intelligence is such a difficult problem, even with the Brainocytes, yet a baby basically starts off as a dumb bundle of cells that grows to gain general intelligence out of the box. Just provide some coloring books, some food, some love, and some toys and other entertainment. Maybe we can learn how to—”
“I want to give the baby Brainocytes,” Ada mentally interrupts and gives me a worried look in the real world. “As soon as it’s safe to do so.”
“That sounds like a cool idea,” I reply without hesitation. “Some people might see it as experimenting on the baby, but to me, it’s no different from those people who play Mozart to their baby or get them fancy tutors and toys. We’ll be able to communicate with our kid before he or she can speak. We can probably modify the EmoRat app to—”
I stop talking, confused by the sheer amount of adoration in Ada’s beautiful eyes.
“What? Is it something I said? I mean, thought?”
She shakes her head. “I’m just happy. You’re going to be a great—”
Ada doesn’t finish her thought because, in that moment, a gunshot rings out, and the tinted limousine back window shatters into small pieces.
Chapter Twenty-Eight