by Neil Clarke
There were small victories. On his second shift, Gunther found fourteen bales of cotton in vacuum storage and set an assembler to sewing futons for the Center. That meant an end to sleeping on bare floors and made him a local hero for the rest of that day. There were not enough toilets in the Center; Diaz-Rodrigues ordered the flare storm shelters in the factories stripped of theirs. Huriel Garza discovered a talent for cooking with limited resources.
But they were losing ground. The afflicted were unpredictable, and they were everywhere. A demented systems analyst, obeying the voices in his head, dumped several barrels of lubricating oil in the lake. The water filters clogged, and the streams had to be shut down for repairs. A doctor somehow managed to strangle herself with her own diagnostic harness. The city’s ecologies were badly stressed by random vandalism.
Finally somebody thought to rig up a voice loop for continuous transmission. “I am calm,” it said. “I am tranquil. I do not want to do anything. I am happy where I am.”
Gunther was working with Liza Nagenda trying to get the streams going again when the loop came on. He looked up and saw an uncanny quiet spread over Bootstrap. Up and down the terraces, the flicks stood in postures of complete and utter impassivity. The only movement came from the small number of suits scurrying like beetles among the newly catatonic.
Liza put her hands on her hips. “Terrific. Now we’ve got to feed them.”
“Hey, cut me some slack, okay? This is the first good news I’ve heard since I don’t know when.”
“It’s not good anything, sweetbuns. It’s just more of the same.”
She was right. Relieved as he was, Gunther knew it. One hopeless task has been traded for another.
He was wearily suiting up for his third day when Hamilton stopped him and said, “Weil! You know any electrical engineering?”
“Not really, no. I mean, I can do the wiring for a truck, or maybe rig up a microwave relay, stuff like that, but . . .”
“It’ll have to do. Drop what you’re on, and help Krishna set up a system for controlling the flicks. Some way we can handle them individually.”
They set up shop in Krishna’s old lab. The remnants of old security standards still lingered, and nobody had been allowed to sleep there. Consequently, the room was wonderfully neat and clean, all crafted-in-orbit laboratory equipment with smooth, anonymous surfaces. It was a throwback to a time before clutter and madness had taken over. If it weren’t for the new-tunnel smell, the raw tang of cut rock the air carried, it would be possible to pretend nothing had happened.
Gunther stood in a telepresence rig, directing a remote through Bootstrap’s apartments. They were like so many unconnected cells of chaos. He entered one and found the words BUDDHA = COSMIC INERTIA scrawled on its wall with what looked to be human feces. A woman sat on the futon tearing handfuls of batting from it and flinging them in the air. Cotton covered the room like a fresh snowfall. The next apartment was empty and clean, and a microfactory sat gleaming on a ledge. “I hereby nationalize you in the name of the People’s Provisional Republic of Bootstrap, and of the oppressed masses everywhere,” he said dryly. The remote gingerly picked it up. “You done with that chip diagram yet?”
“It will not be long now,” Krishna said.
They were building a prototype controller. The idea was to code each peecee, so the CMP could identify and speak to its owner individually. By stepping down the voltage, they could limit the peecee’s transmission range to a meter and a half so that each afflicted person could be given individualized orders. The existing chips, however, were high-strung Swiss Orbital thoroughbreds, and couldn’t handle oddball power yields. They had to be replaced.
“I don’t see how you can expect to get any usefUl work out of these guys, though. I mean, what we need are supervisors. You can’t hope to get coherent thought out of them.”
Bent low over his peecee, Krishna did not answer at first. Then he said, “Do you know how a yogi stops his heart? We looked into that when I was in grad school. We asked Yogi Premanand if he would stop his heart while wired up to our instruments, and he graciously consented. We had all the latest brain scanners, but it turned out the most interesting results were recorded by the EKG.
“We found that the yogi’s heart did not as we had expected slow down, but rather went faster and faster, until it reached its physical limits and began to fibrillate. He had not slowed his heart; he had sped it up. It did not stop, but went into spasm.
“After our tests, I asked him if he had known these facts. He said no, that they were most interesting. He was polite about it, but clearly did not think our findings very significant.”
“So you’re saying . . . ?”
“The problem with schizophrenics is that they have too much going on in their heads. Too many voices. Too many ideas. They can’t focus their attention on a single chain of thought. But it would be a mistake to think them incapable of complex reasoning. In fact, they’re thinking brilliantly. Their brains are simply operating at such peak efficiencies that they can’t organize their thoughts coherently.
“What the trance chip does is to provide one more voice, but a louder, more insistent one. That’s why they obey it. It breaks through that noise, provides a focus, serves as a matrix along which thought can crystallize.”
The remote unlocked the door into a conference room deep in the administrative tunnels. Eight microfactories waited in a neat row atop the conference table. It added the ninth, turned, and left, locking the door behind it. “You know,” Gunther said, “all these elaborate precautions may be unnecessary. Whatever was used on Bootstrap may not be in the air anymore. It may never have been in the air. It could’ve been in the water or something.”
“Oh, it’s there all right, in the millions. We’re dealing with an airborne schizomimetic engine. It’s designed to hang around in the air indefinitely.”
“A schizomimetic engine? What the hell is that?”
In a distracted monotone, Krishna said, “A schizomimetic engine is a strategic nonlethal weapon with high psychological impact. It not only incapacitates its target vectors, but places a disproportionately heavy burden on the enemy’s manpower and material support caring for the victims. Due to the particular quality of the effect, it has a profoundly demoralizing influence on those exposed to the victims, especially those involved in their care. Thus, it is particularly desirable as a strategic weapon.” He might have been quoting from an operations manual.
Gunther pondered that. “Calling the meeting over the chips wasn’t a mistake, was it? You knew it would work. You knew they would obey a voice speaking inside their heads.”
“Yes.”
“This shit was brewed up at the Center, wasn’t it? This is the stuff that you couldn’t talk about.”
“Some of it.”
Gunther powered down his rig and flipped up the lens. “God damn you, Krishna! God damn you straight to Hell, you stupid fucker!”
Krishna looked up from his work, bewildered. “Have I said something wrong?”
“No! No, you haven’t said a damned thing wrong—you’ve just driven four thousand people out of their fucking minds, is all! Wake up and take a good look at what you maniacs have done with your weapons research!”
“It wasn’t weapons research,” Krishna said mildly. He drew a long, involuted line on the schematic. “But when pure research is funded by the military, the military will seek out military applications for the research. That’s just the way it is.”
“What’s the difference? It happened. You’re responsible.”
Now Krishna actually set his peecee aside. He spoke with uncharacteristic fire. “Gunther, we need this information. Do you realize that we are trying to run a technological civilization with a brain that was evolved in the neolithic? I am perfectly serious. We’re all trapped in the old hunter-gatherer programs, and they are of no use to us anymore. Take a look at what’s happening on Earth. They’re hip-deep in a war that nobody meant to start and n
obody wants to fight and it’s even money that nobody can stop. The type of thinking that put us in this corner is not to our benefit. It has to change. And that’s what we are working toward—taming the human brain. Harnessing it. Reining it in.
“Granted, our research has been turned against us. But what’s one more weapon among so many? If neuroprogrammers hadn’t been available, something else would have been used. Mustard gas maybe, or plutonium dust. For that matter, they could’ve just blown a hole in the canopy and let us all strangle.”
“That’s self-justifying bullshit, Krishna! Nothing can excuse what you’ve done.”
Quietly, but with conviction, Krishna said, “You will never convince me that our research is not the most important work we could possibly be doing today. We must seize control of this monster within our skulls. We must change our ways of thinking.” His voice dropped. “The sad thing is that we cannot change unless we survive. But in order to survive, we must first change.”
They worked in silence after that.
Gunther awoke from restless dreams to find that the sleep shift was only half over. Liza was snoring. Careful not to wake her, he pulled his clothes on and padded barefoot out of his niche and down the hall. The light was on in the common room and he heard voices.
Ekatarina looked up when he entered. Her face was pale and drawn. Faint circles had formed under her eyes. She was alone.
“Oh, hi. I was just talking with the CMP.” She thought off her peecee. “Have a seat.”
He pulled up a chair and hunched down over the table. Confronted by her, he found it took a slight but noticeable effort to draw his breath. “So. How are things going?”
“They’ll be trying out your controllers soon. The first batch of chips ought to be coming out of the factories in an hour or so. I thought I’d stay up to see how they work out.”
“It’s that bad, then?” Ekatarina shook her head, would not look at him. “Hey, come on, here you are waiting up on the results, and I can see how tired you are. There must be a lot riding on this thing.”
“More than you know,” she said bleakly. “I’ve just been going over the numbers. Things are worse than you can imagine.”
He reached out and took her cold, bloodless hand. She squeezed him so tightly it hurt. Their eyes met and he saw in hers all the fear and wonder he felt.
Wordlessly, they stood.
“I’m niching alone,” Ekatarina said. She had not let go of his hand, held it so tightly, in fact, that it seemed she would never let it go.
Gunther let her lead him away.
They made love, and talked quietly about inconsequential things, and made love again. Gunther had thought she would nod off immediately after the first time, but she was too full of nervous energy for that.
“Tell me when you’re about to come,” she murmured. “Tell me when you’re coming.”
He stopped moving. “Why do you always say that?”
Ekatarina looked up at him dazedly, and he repeated the question. Then she laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “Because I’m frigid.”
“Hah?”
She took his hand, and brushed her cheek against it. Then she ducked her head, continuing the motion across her neck and up the side of her scalp. He felt the short, prickly hair against his palm and then, behind her ear, two bumps under the skin where biochips had been implanted. One of those would be her trance chip and the other . . . “It’s a prosthetic,” she explained.
Her eyes were grey and solemn. “It hooks into the pleasure centers. When I need to, I can turn on my orgasm at a thought. That way we can always come at the same time.” She moved her hips slowly beneath him as she spoke.
“But that means you don’t really need to have any kind of sexual stimulation at all, do you? You can trigger an orgasm at will. While you’re riding on a bus. Or behind a desk. You could just turn that thing on and come for hours at a time.” She looked amused. “I’ll tell you a secret. When it was new, I used to do stunts like that. Everybody does. One outgrows that sort of thing quickly.” With more than a touch of stung pride, Gunther said, “Then what am I doing here? If you’ve got that thing, what the hell do you need me for?” He started to draw away from her.
She pulled him down atop her again. “You’re kind of comforting,” she said. “In an argumentative way. Come here.”
He got back to his futon and began gathering up the pieces of his suit. Liza sat up sleepily and gawked at him. “So,” she said. “It’s like that, is it?”
“Yeah, well. I kind of left something unfinished. An old relationship.” Warily, he extended a hand. “No hard feelings, huh?”
Ignoring his hand, she stood, naked and angry. “You got the nerve to stand there without even wiping my smile off your dick first and say no hard feelings? Asshole!”
“Aw, come on now, Liza, it’s not like that.”
“Like hell it’s not! You got a shot at that white-assed Russian ice queen, and I’m history. Don’t think I don’t know all about her.”
“I was hoping we could still be, you know, friends.”
“Nice trick, shithead.” She balled her fist and hit him hard in the center of his chest. Tears began to form in her eyes. “You just slink away. I’m tired of looking at you.”
He left.
But did not sleep. Ekatarina was awake and ebullient over the first reports coming in on the new controller system. “They’re working!” she cried. “They’re working!” She’d pulled on a silk camisole, and strode back and forth excitedly, naked to the waist. Her pubic hair was a white flame, with almost invisible trails of smaller hairs reaching for her navel and caressing the sweet insides of her thighs. Tired as he was, Gunther felt new desire for her. In a weary, washed-out way, he was happy.
“Whooh!” She kissed him hard, not sexually, and called up the CMP. “Rerun all our earlier projections. We’re putting our afflicted components back to work. Adjust all work schedules.”
“As you direct.”
“How does this change our long-range prospects?”
The program was silent for several seconds, processing. Then it said, “You are about to enter a necessary but very dangerous stage of recovery. You are going from a low-prospects high-stability situation to a high-prospects high-instability one. With leisure your unafflicted components will quickly grow dissatisfied with your government.”
“What happens if I just step down?”
“Prospects worsen drastically.”
Ekatarina ducked her head. “All right, what’s likely to be our most pressing new problem?”
“The unafflicted components will demand to know more about the war on Earth. They’ll want the media feeds restored immediately.”
“I could rig up a receiver easily enough,” Gunther volunteered. “Nothing fancy, but . . .
“Don’t you dare!”
“Hah? Why not?”
“Gunther, let me put it to you this way: What two nationalities are most heavily represented here?”
“Well, I guess that would be Russia and—oh.”
“Oh is right. For the time being, I think it’s best if nobody knows for sure who’s supposed to be enemies with whom.” She asked the CMP, “How should I respond?”
“Until the situation stabilizes, you have no choice but distraction. Keep their minds occupied. Hunt down the saboteurs and then organize war crime trials.”
“That’s out. No witch hunts, no scapegoats, no trials. We’re all in this together.”
Emotionlessly, the CMP said, “Violence is the left hand of government. You are rash to dismiss its potentials without serious thought.”
“I won’t discuss it.”
“Very well. If you wish to postpone the use of force for the present, you could hold a hunt for the weapon used on Bootstrap. Locating and identifying it would involve everyone’s energies without necessarily implicating anybody. It would also be widely interpreted as meaning an eventual cure was possible, thus boosting the general morale without your a
ctually lying.”
Tiredly, as if this were something she had gone over many times already, she said, “Is there really no hope of curing them?”
“Anything is possible. In light of present resources, though, it cannot be considered likely.”
Ekatarina thought the peecee off, dismissing the CMP. She sighed. “Maybe that’s what we ought to do. Donkey up a hunt for the weapon. We ought to be able to do something with that notion.”
Puzzled, Gunther said, “But it was one of Chang’s weapons, wasn’t it? A schizomimetic engine, right?”
“Where did you hear that?” she demanded sharply.
“Well, Krishna said . . . he didn’t act like . . . I thought it was public knowledge.”
Ekatarina’s face hardened. “Program!” she thought.
The CMP came back to life. “Ready.”
“Locate Krishna Narasimhan, unafflicted, Cadre Five. I want to speak with him immediately.” Ekatarina snatched up her panties and shorts, and furiously began dressing. “Where are my damned sandals? Program! Tell him to meet me in the common room. Right away.”
“Received.”
To Gunther’s surprise, it took over an hour for Ekatarina to browbeat Krishna into submission. Finally, though, the young research component went to a lockbox, identified himself to it, and unsealed the storage areas. “It’s not all that secure,” he said apologetically. “If our sponsors knew how often we just left everything open so we could get in and out, they’d—well, never mind.” He lifted a flat, palm-sized metal rectangle from a cabinet. “This is the most likely means of delivery. It’s an aerosol bomb. The biological agents are loaded here, and it’s triggered by snapping this back here. It’s got enough pressure in it to spew the agents fifty feet straight up. Air currents do the rest.” He tossed it to Gunther who stared down at the thing in horror. “Don’t worry, it’s not armed.”