Turn or Burn

by Boo Walker

  Good, simple people, the ones that lived down the hill. Farmers and rodeo types. People like my mom and dad, here long before the winemakers discovered the vineyard potential.

  In fact, I lived in the house my parents had raised me in. I’d done some renovating, but my dad built a strong, timeless stone house back in the sixties. Tall ceilings. Fireplaces up and down. Giant windows that looked out over the vineyards and orchards in every direction.

  “That’s good wine,” Ted said, setting down his glass. “You got the life, don’t you?”

  “Life can be good out here. It’s supposed to be. That’s what they tell me.” I stabbed a piece of Comté cheese with my knife and stuck it in my mouth.

  “Still feeling sorry for yourself, I see.”

  I gave a half-assed smile.

  He rubbed his face. “When’d you start wearing a beard? Is that the farmer coming out?”

  I touched my patchy beard. “Something about being back on a tractor makes you feel like you need one.”

  “It looks good. In all honesty, man. You look good. Better than before, I mean. Much better. I thought I was losing you for a little while.”

  “You were.” I decided to change the subject. Green Berets don’t do emotional real well. “What is it that you want, Ted? Let’s get this over with, so I can say no.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You ever heard of the Singularity?”

  “I’ve heard of it. The end of the world. Artificial intelligence. Computers taking over, or something like that.”

  “You have been under a rock, haven’t you?”

  “You could say that. I’m out here to get away from all that.”

  “Welcome back to reality, hoss. In the past few months, it’s become one of the biggest controversies in the country. As far as how passionate people are on either side, it’s on the level of abortion or stem cell research. You can’t get through one newspaper without reading about it.”

  “I haven’t looked at a newspaper in two years, man. What’s the deal with it? I did overhear someone the other day talking about some Singularity Summit they are having in Seattle.”

  “Exactly. The idea of the Singularity is that technology, which is moving at an admittedly scary rate, will lead to the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence and the ultimate end of the human race as we know it. And by ‘smarter-than-human intelligence,’ they’re not talking about a computer who can beat a human at chess. They’re talking about a being—using the term loosely, evolved from our own technology—that will be able to beat us at everything in life. They could take our jobs, our girlfriends, even our lives. They could be super humans, robots, or nothing that familiar. It’s all very speculative at this point.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned toward me, getting closer to his point. Though the topic was rather interesting, I was getting no closer to signing up for whatever it was he was about to ask. “Theorists say this could happen soon, like twenty-or-thirty-years soon. They say that there will be a point in time—an event horizon—where everything changes. A point of no return. These people, some of the smartest in the world, say that no one could possibly predict how it will come about or what will be on the other side, but that it will happen. That event horizon is the Technological Singularity, or Singularity for short. The beginning of the unknown.”

  He ate a piece of Comté—a cheese that can always be found in my refrigerator—and enjoyed it before continuing. “One of the pioneers on the AI side, Ray Kurzweil, uses the analogy of the computer he used in college at MIT back in the seventies. It was the size of a room and only a few people in the world had access to such power. Now, more than a billion people have smart phones in their pockets that are many times more powerful than that computer at MIT.”

  He stuffed another piece of cheese in his mouth. “Man, that’s good.”

  “I know.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “Kurzweil says technology is not only getting faster, but it’s getting faster faster. It wasn’t that long ago that the Wright brothers flew the first airplane. Less than seventy years later—in the same lifetime for some—we put men on the moon. Where to next?”

  “Who knows?” I stood and stepped up onto the stone rail, where I began to relieve myself into the grass. A coyote howled off in the distance. “As long as I can pee outside on my farm, I’ll be happy.”

  “The little things in life, right? Those are what matter.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed, enjoying the view.

  “Like the one in your hand.”

  I shook my head. “You’re never going to grow up, are you? Don’t make me—”

  I was enjoying my sweet relief when Ted came up from behind and pushed me, midstream as it were, knocking me into the grass. Some things never change.

  A few minutes later, we were both back in our chairs and I pulled out some whiskey. We each took a shot and Ted picked up right where he’d left off.

  “Imagine this, Harper,” he said. “Seriously. In our lifetime, humans will have computers installed in their brains. Imagine a soldier who could access a computer just by thinking. He could see any map or speak any language without lifting a finger. Singularists say that these super humans will be the most creative artists and inventors and scientists, curing diseases that we never could, writing music that Mozart would drool over, solving environmental problems; that kind of thing. Even making ethical decisions.”

  I let him keep going. “But Artificial Intelligence is just part of it. You’ve got scientists in other fields doing similar work, like geneticists trying to reconstruct DNA to fix diseases and other human vulnerabilities, like mental or physical disabilities. Or nanotechnicians trying to repair the body with millions of nanobots that you can shoot into the bloodstream. Take that same soldier and add that he doesn’t need to sleep or eat as much as a ‘regular’ human, and if he gets shot, you can fix him up with an injection and put him back in the field within minutes.”

  “I had no idea you were such the intellectual.”

  He shrugged. “I just know what I’ve been picking up the past couple weeks. I’m no expert, but that’s what this is about. It affects everything. Think of the Olympics. We’ll have to separate competitors into categories. I don’t think it would be fair to make one of us compete against a super human, right? Someone tweaked to have quicker reaction time, stronger muscles, less sensitivity to pain or exhaustion. It’s the steroids argument on steroids.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “I’m still listening.”

  Just as he’d done for so many of our missions together, Ted had laid out the backstory, and now he would dive into the specifics. And then I would say no and try to get a couple hours of sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  “My client is a guy named Dr. Wilhelm Sebastian. He is one of these guys that Singularists love. I guess he is one himself. Complete nut job, but smart as hell. He and his partner, a Dr. Nina Kramer, have a lab at UW funded mostly by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They are supposedly on the cusp of doing exactly what I’m talking about. He says they’ve made it possible for a human to access the Internet via their brain using a neural implant.”

  I laughed. “How the hell do you do that?”

  “They drill into the skull and attach this microscopic implant—it looks like a mini-hairbrush—to the brain, wiring it to thousands of neurons, using electronic circuits of some kind. Obviously it’s way over my head.” He went back for more cheese. “They haven’t done it with a human yet, but they’ve done it with a chimp.”

  “That’s impressive,” I said, still knowing his words were useless. I didn’t care if he was protecting the man who invented time travel. I wasn’t going to be involved.

  “Yeah. Can you imagine?”

  “So you’re protecting geeks now?”

  “Well, think about it. We could spend all night listing the people and organizations that are already fighting these kinds of technological developments with every resource
they have. Hell, flip on the news. It won’t take you ten seconds to find some hater out there bashing it. If these two doctors really are able to put a computer in a person’s brain, this is the biggest step yet in uniting man and machine. This terrifies people. It means that we’re not that far from creating super-than-human intelligence. People think this is the end of the world. Machines taking over. People are terrified.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Dr. Sebastian told me that their next attempt is mind uploading. That’s uploading a human’s conscious mind into a computer, giving him the ability to live forever, or at least for a whole lot longer than we do now. It’s far out, nearly unimaginable stuff, but they think they can do it. Then, they could even create virtual worlds where this new mind, free of its human body, could explore.”

  He turned his glass around in his hands and continued. “His family’s been getting death threats. First one came six weeks ago. That’s when I put a team together. But I lost one of my guys last night. His wife found out she has breast cancer, so he’s out. And I need you.”

  “And there it is, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “The Singularity Summit starts in two days. It’s at the Convention Center downtown. All these nerds from around the world—people from NASA, Microsoft, Google, Apple, et cetera—come to listen to scientists and visionaries and philosophers talk about how we might reach the Singularity and what life could be like after it occurs. They’re expecting heavy protests. Guess who the headlining speaker is.” Ted filled the glass and put his feet up on the table. “Yep…Dr. Sebastian. He and his partner will be demonstrating their work in public for the first time. He’s got a wife and two little boys, Harper. I need your help. Need somebody like you on the team.”

  “Right. I feel like we’re back in the desert already. Tell me about the team.”

  “There will be four of us. Will Dervitz. I found him in Africa last year. He knows what he’s doing. And then my cousin, Francesca Daly. You’ve met her, right?”

  “No. Heard you talk about her, though. A woman…really?”

  “Get over it. She can outshoot and outthink you all day long.”

  “Right. I’ve heard that before.”

  “It’s good pay and I know you need the dough. What is it you told me one time? ‘How do you make a small fortune in the wine business? Start with a large one.’ You need me as much as I need you. A couple weeks at the most. I know you’re ready to get back out there. Live a little.”

  “You don’t know anything about me anymore. My head’s still not right.”

  “I think you’re better than you let on.”

  I stood, turned, and opened the door. “C’mon, Roman.”

  My savior got to his paws and slipped through the crack in the door.

  “What do you say, partner?”

  I looked at him. “Not a chance. I’m going to get some sleep. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like. You know where everything is. Make yourself at home.”

  “I’ll probably take you up on that.”

  “No problem. See you bright and early. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

  “I knew it would take some convincing.”

  “It would take more than that. Good night.”

  “Tofu,” he said, stopping me. “You’re not still taking the blame for what happened to Jay, are you?”

  There it was…that elephant. I chewed on my lip for a second, staring at the ground, contemplating a response. I didn’t have one. “Good night, Ted.”

  “You have to let it go,” he said.

  “Thanks, Ted. And now you’re going to tell me it wasn’t my fault. Fuck off.” With that, I closed the door.

  Upstairs, I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed so that I could get another terrible night’s rest. Nothing like tossing and turning, spinning in useless thoughts, waiting for the demons to come. I was almost getting used to them. I’d certainly forgotten what sweet slumber meant.

  ***

  Ted and I go way back. I was under his command my first few years in the Special Forces. We’d worked in Kosovo and Northern Africa together, and he’d done everything he could to help me advance. And when we returned from war zones, we’d spend time together in Seattle. His ex-wife used to take care of us. Let us sit on the porch and talk about the things no one understood. She’d let us be and show us love when we needed it. But he drove her off eventually. It was hard to avoid. The things we’ve seen can’t be shared. No one can understand, and it separates us from the innocent. A great big dividing line most often too thick to break through.

  We both left the Army at the same time and started doing private contract work. That’s when I met his younger brother, Jay, for the first time. Jay was ex-Navy, a year younger than me, and he’d been contracting for a couple years by the time Ted and I got on board. In fact, he’s the one who talked us into it. He’s the one who got us our first jobs. Despite what happened, I still have some grand memories of those days. Back then, the three of us ruled the world together. There was nothing we couldn’t do in a war zone. I pity the fool who tried to take us on.

  The deal with contracting was that it paid better and we didn’t have to follow rules. I love the Army and the Green Berets as much as I love our country, but I believed I had more to offer as a contractor than a tied-down military man. We could pick our battles and be more effective fighting them. The three of us were bouncing around Iraq long before Saddam and Blackwater were household names. Making six figures and a real difference.

  This was before the government got greedy and started paying any numbskull with a gun to get a job done. It used to be only those of us who had served could get the gig. Only those of us who had real knowledge of how to win battles, how to work with allied forces, how to produce results, how to protect. But contractors came to be in such high demand that there just weren’t enough of us, and they started taking anyone that knew how to pull a trigger. That’s why Jay was killed, because he’d been surrounded by idiots. But I was set on taking the blame and guilt to my coffin. If his death was any one person’s fault, it was mine.

  Aside from the obvious, the devastating fact about that day was I couldn’t really remember it. I could see bits and pieces but it wasn’t a memory like most. And that broke my heart. I couldn’t even give Jay the respect of remembrance. I wanted so badly to relive those hours, to analyze what we’d done wrong and how I could have changed things, but I couldn’t. Once it got ugly, I blacked out.

  So I hadn’t taken a job in two years; decided I wasn’t capable. I don’t think anyone would have argued with me. And I’d closed myself off from the world. Being responsible for a man’s death is too much for any man to handle, and the same men who had killed Jay had tortured me until I could taste death, and that didn’t help things, either. That week in Afghanistan, I was shown the dark side—something that I can’t shake. Even in my dreams. It took my soul and broke it down, like a fist crushing a cracker to crumbs.

  Yeah, I felt like those crumbs. No doctor in his right mind would ever clear me for battle again.

  I’d never be ready.

  CHAPTER 4

  “What are you doing up?” Ted asked me, coming into the kitchen with a bag in his hand. The sun hadn’t quite come up yet. Roman went over to him.

  “I got my catnap. That’s all I can do these days.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “Is that what they’re called?”

  “Got a call from my team,” Ted said, not letting me wallow in my sorrows. “King 5 is reporting protesters already pouring into town. Sounds like Battle in Seattle all over again. Remember that WTO disaster back in the nineties?”

  “Yep.”

  “Could really use you on this one.” He poured himself a cup of coffee out of the press. “I know you’re hurting inside. I know you think you’re a liability, and maybe you are in the real world. But not when you’ve got a gun in your hand. It’s like a pacifier in your mouth, and you know it. Nothing can fix you like
returning to the swell.”

  I had to admit it. Ted had a point.

  “I have a reputation to uphold,” he continued. “I’ve never lost anyone on my watch. You know why? Because I pick the best. Even if I have to stop in hippie wine-land to get ‘em. Now quit acting like a little girl and go pack your bags. It’s Seattle for God’s sake. A long way from any war. How bad could it get?”

  “One week?”

  “Two weeks, max.”

  I thought about it. I needed the money and the action. And Ted was right: it was a quick fix. And I could use it. Better than vodka or codeine or heroin.

  Better than the barrel of a gun in my mouth.

  “What the hell. Give me ten minutes. I’ll follow you.” So much for strength.

  I leapt up the stairs two at a time and threw my things together. Nine minutes later, I tossed a bag in the back and climbed into my diesel and turned the key. She crunched to life. Roman jumped in and buried his head in my lap. I lightly pinched his ears. “Not this time, buddy. I need you to look after the place. Will you do that?”

  I grabbed his muzzle and looked right into his eyes. He was everything to me. Everything. “Be back in a couple weeks.” I let go of his muzzle, and he buried his head back into my lap. I pulled him away and said, “Go on.” He looked mournfully at me one last time and jumped out of the truck. Chaco, my go-to guy for everything on the mountain, would take care of him on the farm while I was away.

  I rolled down the windows and followed Ted’s Toyota out of the driveway and onto Sunset Road, the main road that was home to all the Red Mountain vineyards and wineries. Roman was in my rearview mirror, running with everything he had, a trail of dust following him. I pushed down the gas. He ran harder.

  As I reached the Stop sign at the end of Sunset, Roman came up next to the truck, panting. I said, “Go home, boy. Chaco will take care of you.” He barked, put his head down, and turned back, slowly walking the mile back to the house.