by Curtis Hox
“Most of them. Some closely, some not so much.”
“Big plans with your press conference?” Dreya asked.
“You heard about that?”
From the back of the room Eliot said, “We’re planning to announce the findings of the article we just submitted.”
Corbin chuckled. “Moving quickly for academics. I thought the procedure was to send it out, let your colleagues comment, create conversation. Peer review and all that. A press conference? You must be confident.”
Hattie finally sat. “I am.”
Corbin smirked. “Be careful, Hattie. The Deep might come calling—”
“I’ll not be intimidated,” she said. “I’ll follow through with the press conference, and a demonstration.” The practiced sangfroid of her enemies disappeared. “After that, I’ll offer you a private truce to stay out of your hair, if you stay out of mine. I expect no interference.” She looked at Corbin. “Hexcom must police itself, especially you. Any break in the agreement will result in the deployment of a new order within my Society. I’ll not hesitate to respond. I know what you both desire: to manipulate the N.P.B. for political gain. I also know Corbin wants to use the N.P.B. for social change, and not the progressive kind.” The Lyells remained still. “I know you seek to unravel the secrets of nature to control it for your own ends. What is it now, Corbin? Last I heard, you said we’re the playthings of alien gods and you’d destroy the world to please them. Psychotic, no? Or, maybe a few years ago, when I read you believed the N.P.B. is proof Satan is breaking through the bonds provided by Yahweh to bind the powers of hell. Dreya, you must keep him on a short leash. I know what both of you think, personally, especially you Corbin. Your insanity must be opposed. Yet you further your own aims, even as you lie to the public.” Finally, she said, “I also know about your attempts to harness the N.P.B. at Hexcom and what it has led to. I know about your experiments.”
No one responded, although everyone understood except Eliot. It was better left unsaid what the experiments were. She would soon have to contend with the fact Hexcom’s methods existed. Her Society of Spinners would have enemies on all sides, rational and irrational. She would explain it to Eliot in time.
“You don’t know everything,” Corbin managed. “Nor do you own—”
“I don’t. But I’ve made more progress than you by holding onto a central tenet: the universe is rational. I won’t bow to mysticism or its abhorrent creations.”
Corbin chuckled with a manic glee that rattled in his throat. “What have you got, Hattie? What’s your, what’s the term, Full Generated Object? Your abstract didn’t say. Do tell. I bet you have no leverage to speak to me this way. What do you have? What stops me from making a call?”
Eliot blanched. He looked like he might tip over.
“You can dial nine for an outside line,” Eliot said, as if his suggestion would erase any actual threat.
Hattie ignored him. “Leverage? I have all the leverage in the world. I have knowledge.”
Corbin nodded, as if to say, you have nothing. He withdrew a cell phone and thumbed it teasingly.
“What good will that do, Hattie, if I make a call?”
She maintained her equanimity in the face of a direct threat on her life. She had to appear strong, or else her Society would never have a chance. All she needed was a few weeks; all she needed was time to create an order that could protect them. She needed to generate a few more vital instantiations for that to happen.
She saw the fear in Eliot’s eyes. She had never fully explained this danger with him, knowing how paranoid and fantastic it would sound. Corbin’s threat, though, was proof that Eliot couldn’t deny. She would have his support. She just needed to persuade the Lyells not to act. If they chose to call in their jackals, she and Eliot might not make it through the night.
She withdrew an old, battered notebook from a desk drawer. She spread her fingers across its tattered top.
“What I can do is summon. Can either of you, beyond a few minutes?” Visible doubt bucked through Dreya; Corbin glared. She continued. “I know what you fear, what you desire, and what you can’t do. To control nature means the control of society, of government, of individuals. You have no idea to what extent my knowledge leads to praxis. You worship the Deep. Fine. I worship the True.”
With unexpected histrionics, Hattie leaned forward and said, “If you interfere, I’ll swallow you up, whole. I don’t even need to make a call.”
“What can you do?” Corbin asked.
Hattie withdrew from her notebook a small hallmark card of Saint George and the Dragon. “I collect these sorts of images, especially any depiction of Good over Evil. In this one, a valiant heroine sits atop a mighty warhorse, lance pointed downward, at a serpent-like beast.”
“You’re bluffing,” Corbin said.
“You want to know what I can do?”
Hattie reached behind her and withdrew her large monograph entitled Bleedover. She turned to page seven, the preface, and read, “I suggest a fitting F.G.O. be historically and socially pertinent, a symbol that points backward to science’s struggle with its mastery, and forward into a future fully constructed by a positive mythology. I suggest a Red Delicious apple.”
She withdrew from her desk the first apple Towns had produced a few days ago. She placed it on the desk.
Corbin stood, refusing to admit defeat, but unable to stop looking at the fruit. “An apple. Clever. Very clever.”
Shaken, he walked for the door.
Dreya stood. “We look forward to the demonstration, Hattie. Then we’ll talk.”
“I imagine we will. See you there, Dreya.”
Dreya followed her husband out.
Eliot shut the door. “What was that?”
Hattie replaced her notebook and the apple in her desk drawer and locked it.
“A bluff.”
“Well played.” He waited.
She knew she should explain herself, although she feared his reaction.
“Eliot,” she said, “you’re still a part of this, correct?”
He moved to a chair in front of her desk and sat on its end. He leaned forward, his hands only inches from hers.
“I have no choice,” he said, causing her to frown. “Of course, of course. I was just kidding. Now tell me about these experiments.”
“The Lyells have been collecting artifacts of the N.P.B. for a long time. Years ago, I met one of their recruits who claimed buildings talked to him. I thought he was crazy, but he told me the history of the building with such detail. I didn’t realize it, but later I came to understand individuals could sense information in the N.P.B. This is a rudimentary form of spinning: emotive, not intellectual. It feels mystical, unexplainable.” And then, “I took another path: a rational path.”
“They’re full on crazy now?”
“Not at all, especially not Dreya. They’ve had success at Hexcom using these particular individuals for instrumental means. Some of them can do more than just listen to buildings.”
“Like what?”
Hattie leaned back in her chair, shutting her eyes, telling herself to slow down, to be careful how she phrased this. Otherwise, he might withdraw. He’ll bring up my strange-theology, as he calls it.
“They have odd beliefs … and practices.” She waited for his expected skepticism. He said nothing. “Corbin is insane, but sophisticated. He’s created a method called Lucid Media Projection at Hexcom. But he hasn’t had our success. I know, I know. He sounds no different from all the nut jobs out there. Except, he’s surrounded himself with an army of real individuals connected to the N.P.B.”
“Lucid Media Projection?”
Hattie knew this fact was a problem. She had claimed her approach was the best way to understand the N.P.B.; all else was speculation. If the Lyells had managed significant manipulation, even simple projecting, they had a method to challenge hers.
“Hexcom takes visual interpolations, then finds similar media and spends days
saturating someone who can project. It’s dangerous. People have died.”
“It works?”
“The results are inconclusive,” she said, backpedaling. “I believe they’re succeeding through hit and miss. They’ve seen no order in the pattern. They’ve not even formulated a pattern.”
“So, what’s to fear?”
“Corbin, just to spite me, pursues N.P.B. that relates to ‘the Deep.’ He used phrases like that to needle me when we were in college. Remember, his Lovecraftian mythos?”
“Oh my. Lovecraft. What was it, something about—”
“The Old Ones, Cthulhu and the other horrible beings from outer space. Think ugly, nasty, big monstrosities that evoke horror and terror. Remember? Yeah, pulp, right? Well, Corbin argues that fiction has turned fact, but only his type of fiction. During our reading group—”
“I remember. He was a nightmare.”
“I bought a bunch of those paperbacks and read them: Lovecraft, Derleth, Howard. One night, I went to Corbin’s apartment and buzzed until he let me up. I challenged him with this material, demanding he admit he was just goofing me. He began with that smile of his, that laugh, as if we both knew it was a joke but that he would continue. He offered coffee, and asked if I would listen. I listened as if I’d stumbled into a house of macabre Mormons warning about a coming Armageddon. He mumbled about how Lovecraft and Howard and the early pulp writers were onto something, that they were struggling, just as I was struggling, to understand the new phenomena I was calling the N.P.B. Then I saw the connection: he believed the stories were glimpses into a coming reality. His sincerity was plain, even as all the talk of eschatology frightened me. He told me he had proof.”
“The next day Corbin introduced me to a man who (I now believe) has the ability to sit on a park bench and predict who would come walking up the path; describe them, their clothes, their builds. This is a genuine example of psychic bleedover. Something was influencing the man to read like this. His text was pedestrian traffic in the park. What he read was their appearance. It was harmless and it told us nothing of value. While I have dismissed many of these as insignificant, if certainly interesting, the Lyells began a career documenting them and calling these people to them, feeding them, sheltering them, fostering them. They built their army of followers from all over the world, selecting people who have these unique abilities that so bothers our scientific community.”
Eliot moved even closer. “And frightens you.”
“Of course. They spread Corbin’s interpretation based on the pulp writings of the early twentieth century and feed it to vulnerable people already marginalized because of their strange abilities. They’re organized and well-funded and determined to be the arbiters of how to understand the N.P.B.”
“You’re afraid because they’ll come after us? Or because you think they’re a threat to how we understand the N.P.B.?”
“Both. In the last few years they’ve found a few individuals of considerable talent. They can’t stitch or even read as I do, but they can channel bleedover.”
“Channel? That sounds like—”
“In a way …”
She almost said, magic, a word sure to make him cringe. He sat back in his chair, another behavior she knew meant she’d have to explain herself, probably, after he posed a few grounding questions.
The first one came immediately: “Don’t you agree the magical is merely one aspect of religious thought that has been discredited by modern Western science?”
“Yes.”
“Then, you must mean an attempt at magic but merely a misapplication.”
“They can control nature in ways I can’t explain, Eliot.”
“So what? Bleedover affects reality and we don’t fully understand it. This is valid. We both accept that what’s happening with the N.P.B. is real and knowable. Magic—”
“Can also be rational.”
Eliot paused, puzzling over that statement. “Go on.”
“What we’re doing may be viewed by our critics as a type of rational magic. By controlling nature through ritualized behavior, through the medium of an individual, a shaman, a magi, etc., we’re mirroring primitive human behavior. What saves my sanity is that I’ve rationalized the process and it’s withstood our scientific validation and predictive process. So, it’s both magic and science, together.” He nodded along. She said, “But Corbin and Dreya have no such method. In fact, they encourage the opposite.”
“The appearance of magic doesn’t make it so—”
“To the world, their irrational method will be a form of unexplainable power. We have to challenge this with our own form of power.”
Eliot saw where this was going. “Tell me your Society isn’t going to be religious—”
“No, but it’ll be a society of similar … I won’t say magicians. I won’t use that term, of course. All of our language will be modern and secular …”
“Bleedover technicians, maybe.”
“Good.”
“Fine. So?” he asked.
“To bind them we must present some grounding philosophy.”
“Again, no problem. The search for truth is enough, isn’t it? This is the basis of modern science. It can be the basis for your Society.”
“I want to offer them a reason that affects their hearts as much as their minds,” Hattie said. “Our Society cannot be merely intellectual. That’s immoral. We’re humans—individuals who live together—we’re social. We must care for each other as we care for ourselves. Our mission to seek truth will act like cement. I fear it has to have this religious quality. But it won’t be a religion. It’ll be a philosophy whose members are grounded in praxis. I’ll not destroy challenging complexity with simplistic stories. In this way, I’ll resist the move toward religious institutional thinking …”
He finally relaxed. “Good. Then you and I are on the same page.”
“It’s no different from the application of moral science,” Hattie said.
“Right.”
“The very thing you find fascinating in the biology of morality.”
Eliot grinned at her. “What about that talk of swallowing them up, your notebook, and that card?”
She smirked. “A bluff.” Then, “Well, maybe not totally.” She winked, signaling that was all for now. “Later, Eliot, and I’ll explain everything. Just give me some time. I have it under control: the Lyells, the demonstration, the university. You’ll see.”
He stared at her for a moment longer than expected. “Everything?”
“Well, I have no idea what Stephan plans.”
CHAPTER SIX
Dr. Eliot Brandeis cornered Dr. Stephan Ross in a hallway outside the glass windows that provided an impressive view of Dr. Ross’s Cognitive Computing Neuroscience lobby.
The facility’s name was displayed in giant letters that hung from a wall above an ultra-modern, poured-plastic desk. A bored graduate student sat behind the desk, nearly asleep, obviously less than happy about working on the weekend. The guardian of Dr. Ross’s facility had little to fear; the double doors on either side were secure with biometric measures. They required both a swipe of a card and a direct look into a retina scanner.
Stephan Ross was, of all things, watering two fine ferns someone had placed in the hallway outside the entrance.
He straightened, the jug swishing in his hand, when he saw Eliot.
Both men had dressed down for the weekend, Stephan wearing jeans and tennis shoes, proof to all those snide haters that he knew how to relax. Eliot looked like he’d just gotten out of bed (or, as Stephan guessed, slept in his clothes on his office sofa).
“Stephan.”
“Eliot.”
They both offered customary nods as well.
“Will you be attending Monday morning?” Eliot asked.
Stephan tried not to knit his brow or pucker up like he’d bitten into a lemon.
“Of course. I still think she paid Masumi, though. I think the overly red apple is the result o
f steroids, or some other concoction. Maybe you helped her?” Stephan moved in closer, a half-head taller and never ashamed to look down at someone. “Eliot, I’ve spent years arguing she’s a quack who peddles pseudo scholarship and wastes the university’s money. If she wants to implode in front of her peers and, worse, the media, I won’t stop her. I’ll just sit back and enjoy the show.”
“So no hijinks on your part?”
“Eliot, you still think we’re kids at Columbia fighting for Hattie’s attention?”
“I think you’ll do anything to hurt her.”
“She’s really got you convinced?”
“Yes.”
Stephan paused long enough for a snapshot of Eliot’s calm face: he looked like he should be back in his lab fumbling with a microscope or playing with dyes. Eliot was about as imposing as a mouse. However, he had a way about him, a softness, that hid something more resilient when it came to matters of fact.
Eliot Brandeis, of all people, was a conundrum: a man of science who accepts Harriet Sterling’s thesis.
As much as Stephan had tried, he’d found no impropriety in the man’s work. He’d even encouraged a student to spend a semester reviewing a case study of his. Nothing. Eliot Brandeis had never been censured, although some people, of course, challenged him on small matters. His work created applications in the real world that generated real money for real people. Who could fault that?
And here he was claiming the same thing that Masumi and Hattie Sterling claimed.
“You didn’t actually see its—what’s the word—instantiation, did you?” Stephan asked.
“No.”
“I’m surprised. You trust her that much? You should ask to see a demonstration.”
“I will, next Monday.”
“I hope your trust is warranted. What’s your theory?”
“Up to this point, I refuse to formulate any testable hypothesis. She needs to isolate a stable variable before I can even begin to think how to comment about it.”
“‘Culture science’ too messy for you?”
“Yes, and fascinating.”
Stephan knew that Eliot’s field, comparative genomics, was so narrow that it said little about human culture, even though Eliot spent time writing about morality and biology for the popular sphere. The two of them collided at the border between the very small (gene expression in the brain) and the highly abstract (cognitive modules in the brain) over issues of evolutionary explanation.