Kaleidocide

by Dave Swavely

  “I’m glad I could help,” I said, and had to admit that it did feel good. “But what does that have to do with your name?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she sniffled, wiping her face with her sleeve. “My name was Lee, working name Lady Lee, when I met Peter. He changed it to Angelee when we were married, because he said I was a new person, like an angel. I was ready to change it back tonight, but then you came. So my name is Angelee. Unless you want to change it…”

  “No, no. That’s okay, I like Angelee. Listen, can we talk about this more later? Right now I have to set up some things in my room, because remember I’m hiding from some powerful people who want to kill me.”

  “Won’t they be able to find you here at your house?” she asked.

  “No … this isn’t my house. It belongs to a woman I know, a woman I work with. Her name’s Tara.”

  “You have a key to her house?” she asked. I ran through the options quickly in my mind and decided there was no reason to keep her in the dark about this.

  “We were together a long time ago,” I explained. “She has a place in the city, where she works. But she bought this as a second home, so we could come here to get away. And she keeps telling me that she wants me to come back to her, to come back here.” I left out the part about needing a private rendezvous spot because I was married. “I knew she wouldn’t be coming here anytime soon, because she hardly ever does, so this was a perfect place for me to disappear.”

  “So you’re not … with her?”

  “No, not for years,” I said, again leaving out the part about marrying someone else. (Now she would be even more convinced that I was single.) “But I haven’t really made a full break, if you know what I mean. I actually plan to do that really soon.” Angelee clearly didn’t understand all this, but she brightened at the last statement. So I continued: “And to do that, I have to set up a net room. So why don’t you get some sleep with your son. Chris, right? And I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She nodded, wiping at her face again, and then tiptoed back into the master bedroom.

  I let out a long breath and proceeded to bring my things into the second bedroom, on the other side of the kitchen and living room. When I had everything inside, I locked the front door manually, stood next to it, and spoke into the air just loud enough that the Living House A.I. could hear me.

  “Vera, are you there?” I said. A code word had to be spoken at the beginning of every sentence, because otherwise the house would always think you were talking to it. And since it spoke in a woman’s voice, Tara and I had picked “Vera”—she liked it because of something in an old TV series, and I liked it because of something in a classic British rock album.

  “Yes, Michael,” the house responded, only through the walls in my proximity, so it wouldn’t disturb any other guests. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Vera, it’s me.”

  “It’s good to have you back, Michael.” Like Saul’s ghost, this A.I. had the irritating habit of using names too often. But I supposed that was necessary for this kind of communication to work well, because others who were present would know to whom it was speaking. There was no other way to know, because it couldn’t “look” at anyone.

  “Thank you, Vera. Please make sure that your external security settings for the property are as high as they go, and please disconnect any possible communication with the outside world. Please terminate any net connections … I’ll use my own. Oh wait, Vera, before you do that, I should ask: Are there any scheduled security or utility reports that would be missed by Tara or anyone else, if you shut them off?”

  “Tara and the security company are only notified if an alarm goes off, Michael.”

  “Good,” I said. “Vera, make sure any incoming calls will go directly to voicemail, so that no one here could pick one up by mistake.”

  “Consider it done, Michael,” she said. “Would you like me to tell Tara that you’re here?”

  “No, Vera, please don’t tell her. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “Very well, Michael. Would you like me to play a holo for you, that you and Tara filmed on one of your previous visits?”

  “No thank you, Vera,” I said quickly. “You can shut down for now, after you set the temperature at seventy degrees Fahrenheit. And don’t film anything on this visit, okay?”

  “Okay, Michael.”

  This all made me think of Lynn, not just because I wouldn’t want her to know those holos existed, but because the Living House showed how different she and Tara were. Our home was equipped with this same technology, but Lynn never turned it on, because she always said, “When I talk, I like to talk to people.” Tara, on the other hand, loved it and played with it like a toy. And unlike her, Lynn hated being filmed by anyone in any situation, let alone private ones.

  I stepped back into the second bedroom and pulled out the netkit that we had requisitioned from the castle. It was only the size of a large book but worth as much money as a large yacht, and contained everything I needed to communicate with Lynn, Terrey, and the protection team at any time, without any security risk. I pulled out the projector patches that would make the room into a net room and stuck them onto the wall at various places. Then I unrolled the three paper-thin monitor screens and pressed them to the wall above the desk, situated the keyboard scroll and airmouse patches on its top, and activated the system with my handprint, retinal scan, and voice identification.

  “Live forever, man,” I said when Terrey’s face appeared on one of the monitors.

  “Never die young, mate,” he responded. “Hey, before anything else, let me get my Trois to test your equipment, make sure it’s the bee’s knees.”

  According to the techs at BASS, this system was connected to the ultimate Fortress Cloud, which would filter any data so thoroughly that no one on the planet could scan it, hack it, or otherwise know that it even existed. Terrey was so concerned to keep me hidden that he was originally going to suggest I have no contact at all with anyone for the duration. But the triplets were very impressed with the capabilities of the BASS technology and convinced him that it would keep me safe, especially when combined with their own. Plus the ability I would have to “ride” with my double would make it so much easier for him to pass for me when he had to go into public places.

  Apparently the netkit and Fortress system was as good as advertised, because Terrey soon gave me the thumbs-up and a report about what had happened in the few hours since I had left the vacation house in Sausalito.

  “The triplets combed your property for every possible sabotage device or method, and installed sensors on the air system, electrical, water, you name it, so that if any foreign element is introduced, we should know about it.”

  “Should?” I said.

  “Well, mate, like everything in life, it’s not perfect. That’s why we’ll have backups, like the cupbearer.”

  “You found someone for that?”

  “Yes, but in an unusual place. The two friends you suggested were not good enough friends to agree to risking their life for you. They said no.”

  “Figures.”

  “But we got someone better, someone who has had no prior contact with you at all, which is always the best in this situation, because of the traitor factor. And at the same time, I kid you not, we got the other two security types we needed. I keep saying it, but the way this has all worked out is really bizarre. It’s like the hand of fate, or the stars are lined up, some weird shite like that. I still can’t believe we got a double this good, in less than an hour of interviews.”

  “Good except for the AIMS,” I said.

  “You still worried about that? Like I told you, the only way someone can get it is by sleeping with him, and that’s not going to happen. The incredibly minor risk of transmission by some other means is a wash, because the fact that he has the disease motivates him to follow through with what we need him for. He’s hoping to survive and get treated with the money he makes, or be healed by the Makeover. I didn’t ev
en have to give him a self-destruct imp to threaten him and keep him in line, like the other times I’ve done this. He’s committed, and he’s a fast learner. He’ll be awake by morning.”

  Terrey’s mention of an implant reminded me of a year before, and made me shudder.

  “Speaking of imps,” I said, “tell me again how you didn’t do anything to my head while I was out for that half hour.” The triplet who stayed at the house had anesthetized me briefly for a procedure before I left Sausalito to get Angelee.

  “You’re really uptight about that issue, aren’t you? But you’re the boss with the bikkies, so I’ll tell you again. We just had to lift some paths from your brain and transfer them to the double’s, so he can walk and talk like you.” The triplet had explained back at the house, in layman’s terms, that much of what makes people appear the way they do, and even talk the way they do, is determined by the neuropaths in the brain.

  “And when you say ‘lifted,’” I asked, “you mean copied, right? You didn’t actually take anything away from me.”

  “Do you still walk and talk like you did before?” Terrey asked rhetorically. “No worries, mate.”

  “Okay, just one more thing,” I said apologetically. “On my drive after you did that to me—it all happened so fast—I looked up implants on the net. It said that some of them can be inserted quickly, like through the nose?” Terrey snorted and shook his head, but I pressed on: “Min was outside getting the netkit and other stuff from the peacers who came from the castle, so it was only you and the cyborg girl for a while when I was out, until Min came back in. I started to think … I know, it’s paranoid—”

  “Bloody hell, Michael,” my friend said, frustrated with me. “I told you we have to do things fast, your life depends on it, and you’re gonna have to trust me. There’s no other way.” He calmed down, and asked rhetorically again, “Does your nose hurt? Does your head hurt?”

  “Actually my head does hurt a little. It reminds me of the feeling I had during the ‘silhouette’ incident.”

  “When you didn’t have an implant, but only thought you did.” He shook his head again. “Listen, you can have Min scan your brain if you’re gonna worry about this.”

  I thought about that for a moment, then said, “No. I’m fine. I’m guess I’m just shaken up by all this. I need some time to process it.”

  “That’s cool,” he said. “Take your time. But trust me, and try to get some sleep. We’ll meet the team in the morning when you and Lynn are both awake. And we’ll see how good my Trois and the Makeover are, and whether she’ll be fooled by the double.”

  I seriously doubted that would happen. I could never fool Lynn myself, so I didn’t think it could be done by someone who was almost me.

  19

  MAKEOVER

  I slept a few hours, just enough to meet my body’s needs (another ability I still had from my military days), and then stumbled out into the kitchen to check the fridge for some breakfast, even though I knew there was probably nothing in there. I was reminded immediately of Angelee, and how I needed her to shop for me, but the master bedroom was quiet and I wanted to let her and the boy rest as long as they could.

  I noticed it was almost 10:00 A.M., so I gave up my search of the cabinets and went back into my room. I washed up in the bathroom and called Terrey first, rather than Lynn, because I knew he wanted to have his fun with the double, and I had to admit I myself had a guilty curiosity to see what would happen. Lynn wouldn’t be happy with me for being a part of it, but she would recover.

  It took me a few minutes to reach my Aussie friend, because he had slept a few hours and was washing up when I called, his military habits exactly mirroring mine. And speaking of mirrors, it took me a minute to realize that I was looking at one when Terrey appeared on my wall screen. He had just finished dressing at the mirror in his room, and was now looking at himself so I could see his face, because he had answered my call in his contacts.

  “I know you’re not a contacts man,” he said, “but look how natural they are. Nothing to take on and off, and you can see my beautiful face with no obstruction. But for someone who looks like you, I can see why you’d want to cover up some.” He was referring to my preference for glasses over contacts, of course, and we were now having the same conversation that was repeated constantly among people who could afford tech like this.

  “Yeah,” I responded, both hearing him and talking to him through his earpiece. “But I have to watch you blink all the time.”

  This was the classic criticism of contacts used for such purposes, because the average human being blinks twenty-five times per minute and there was no way to eliminate the effect on the camera function. I had to admit that the blinking effect wasn’t really more noticeable than that of normal eyesight, but it was enough to prevent use by law enforcement agencies such as BASS, because of our dependence on complete and accurate video recording in much of our work. The audio recording by glasses was also so much better than even the best contact systems, and many of the latter didn’t have audio at all, or had to be augmented through an earpiece like Terrey’s. So I was, by necessity, a glasses man. Plus I liked the way I looked in them—it was nice to have a good excuse to wear cool shades at any time—and I liked how no one could see where I was looking when they were darkened.

  “And you have to look in the mirror for me to see you,” I added to Terrey. “While I can just take off my glasses and put them down in front of me.”

  “Touché,” Terrey said. “But I’m gonna leave mine on. You have a lot more interesting things than me to look at this morning.”

  With that he walked out of his room and into the hallways of the BASS base built into the mountain under my house on Stags Leap, which we called “the hill” to distinguish it from “the castle,” our base in the city. Saul Rabin had ordered the complex to be constructed in secret while they were building my house and another for Darien Anthony on the next crest over. He wanted to see if D and I would pass his tests and prove worthy to be his successors, when he passed away from the cancer that was eating him alive. Saul’s son Paul, angered by his father’s rejection and jealous of us for taking his place, had killed D (along with my daughter Lynette, who happened to be with him) and framed me for the murder. With Saul’s help, however, I had turned the tables on Paul and inherited all of BASS, including the house that was built for D, under which was the rest of the mountain base. That part of it was not in use right now, because I had given D’s house to Paul’s widow and children, and some security concerns involving his teen son kept me from fully confiding in them.

  The part of the base under my house was completely functioning, however. It contained state-of-the-art communications and surveillance equipment, research labs, a well-stocked armory, and other peacer supplies. It also had staff housing, an aero hangar bay camouflaged by a huge holo on one side of the hill, and a high-tech infirmary that Min had used to bring me back to life and patch me up after my confrontation with Paul. It was there that Terrey was headed, as I noticed through his lenses that the halls were deserted.

  “Pretty quiet in here,” Terrey said, reading my mind, “because I sent all the staff away. We’ll just run with my team and Min from now on. You never know who Sun’s people may have gotten to.”

  “You like the security there, huh?” I asked.

  “That’s an understatement,” he said breathlessly. “I’m positively orgasmic about it. Triple redundancy on the internal systems, external scanning backed up by the Eye, five coordinated smart missile cannons on the perimeters of the property, S-laser umbrella shields. If the Chinese knew about even half of this, I guarantee that assault team was waiting for you to show up somewhere else, ’cause they would never try to attack you here. What was Rabin planning for when he built this, the next world war?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he thought that some factions might stop at nothing to get the Sabon tech.”

  “Hmmm,” Terrey mused. “But the tech and it
s secrets are spread out in several places, right? Here, the castle, Silicon Valley. Seems to me he wanted to be able to protect a person. In fact, at the risk of sounding like a bloody broken record, it seems like it was all set up for a situation like the one we’re in.” He had reached the door of the medical suite. “Ah, here we are.”

  Inside, sitting on one of the examining tables and surrounded by the triplets, was the double. He was wearing my clothes, or at least a perfect facsimile of them, and he was looking down at the inside of his arm and injecting something into it.

  “We’re showing him how to take the Makeover I.S.,” one of the Trois said, and I knew from what Terrey had told me before that those letters stood for “immunosuppressants.” The Makeover was an elaborate chemical cocktail of modified genes and stem cells synthesized from the subject’s skin and muscle that could be programmed and molded like an intelligent form of clay. Introducing it to a human body caused the immune system to panic and go into murder mode on a molecular level. The good news was that ADA, a key protein in the human immune system, was actually prone to meld with the Makeover when it flooded the “infected” areas, but the bad news was that it left the subject with no ADA for his own immune system, and he would therefore not be able to survive even the most basic forms of bacteria. So for the first few weeks, until the body adapted, a synthetic form of ADA had to be added into the body on a regular basis to maintain its health and strength. This was the agent that was a possible cure for AIMS, but could only be afforded by the wealthiest of the wealthy.

  Terrey arrived next to the bedside, and I watched through his eyes as the double pressed one tip of a dime-sized triangle to the vein he had located with the help of the triplets. The triangle’s air-delivery system opened a microscopic hole from the epidermis to the bloodstream, sending the tiny sphere containing the ADA into it. Then the vacuum it created pulled all the skin and muscle back together so that there was no mark left, or damage done. White collar drug users loved this undetectable delivery system, and often paid more for the triangles than they did for the drugs themselves. Now the double would have to carry a stash of them with him at all times, in a fold on his belt, and shoot up two times a day until the Makeover stabilized and the transformation became permanent.