The Last Rational Man

by Karlin

many may die before that happens. I cannot wait that long. The fab is pressing for results as well. The whole business is making their workers nervous, which is bad for productivity."

  A plainclothesman hurried into the room, and consulted with Bo-Sung in rapid-fire Korean. When he was done, Bo-Sung turned to me.

  "Well, it looks like we have a break. The woman who found the body saw somebody leaving that area as rolled her cart towards the victim's tool. She will be brought here for questioning in a moment."

  I remained silent. Even if she had seen the murderer, there was little hope that she could identify him. It did narrow the time that the murder took place to about one minute, which was precise, but useless in this case.

  I watched the interview, and though I didn't understand a word, the gist of it was obvious. The witness wasn't going to be much help. Afterwards, Bo-Sung confirmed my impression.

  The witness had approached the victim's area with a cart-load of wafers. As she walked up the aisle, she saw a man in a blue bunny-suit walking away from her in the same aisle. She thought nothing of it, since she hadn't yet seen the body. The body was hidden by a rack full of equipment, so she didn't see it until she was practically on top of it.

  Yes, she was sure that it was a blue suit. She thought that it must be a man just from his size. Besides that, he was just a bunny-suit.

  She was a good witness, trying to be helpful, but the circumstances were such that her information wouldn't help crack the case.

  There was not much else for me to do there. Bo-Sung arranged for a taxi to take me to my hotel, where I tried to get some badly needed sleep.

  I always have a hard time falling asleep when a fresh case lands in my lap. This was the worse type of case there was, the so-called 'perfect crime'. I was convinced that the crime wasn't perfect, that I could help Bo-Sung solve it, but for now all I had was a hunch, a hunch that would take some effort and no little cost to follow through on. It had been many years since I my last chemistry course at the university, but I still thought that there was something to it.

  I was exhausted, though, and did fall asleep. I breakfasted at the hotel, and took a taxi to Bo-Sung's office. He had left me a note in Korean to show the cab driver, to make sure that I would find the way. In quieter times I am sure that he would have picked me up at the hotel myself, or at least sent his driver, but the pressure of the case wouldn't allow him that kind of luxury.

  After the usual greeting, I asked my host the first question on my mind.

  "How many?"

  "How many potential suspects? About two hundred, including all of the employees that are tall enough. And, in answer to your second question, there is no real news from the interviews with the friends and neighbors. Forensics, as expected, are of no help here. They did verify that an object shaped like that flange could have caused the wound, but nothing more."

  "So no nice surprises. We have two hundred suspects, and no motive, and no clues."

  "Yes. I'm afraid so. Still I cannot wait for the next murder, and hope that our 'friend' will be sloppy for a change."

  "No. Will you try my half-baked idea?"

  "If you will share it with me, I may."

  "The gloves. The flange."

  "What about them?"

  "There are no hairs, no blood, no fibers, no photos, and no witnesses. We have a body, a weapon, and two hundred pairs of gloves. I propose that we match the gloves to the weapon, to that flange."

  "I don't follow."

  "The flange is a piece of steel. It has no DNA. But it may have traces of something else on it. Some chemical from the process, maybe some vacuum grease on the rubber seal. It may have a 'fingerprint' of its own.

  "Have one of your forensics guys put on gloves, exactly the same gloves as used in the fab. Then have him lift the flange, and lower it. Take the gloves to a chemical lab, and have it analyzed for anything likely you can think of. Find out what the flange may have been in contact with in the fab, and see if there are traces of it on the gloves. Make sure to send a clean pair of gloves for comparison."

  Bo-Sung thought for a moment.

  "The cost of the initial test is minimal. If it works, I can justify testing all of the gloves."

  "I will help you speak to the process engineers, if you like. To figure out what might be on the flange."

  "I would be pleased. In fact, I would be pleased to act as your translator."

  As it turned out, his help as a translator was not really needed. The engineers spoke passable English, at least when it came to technical issues. They used a special perfluoroether grease on the rubber seal that I had seen, and reported that the process tended to scatter Aluminum atoms.

  The Aluminum was useless. It is commonly found almost everywhere, even in a clean room. The grease though, gave us a break.

  It took three days, but finally Bo-Sung had something to report.

  "We have gone through all of the gloves, and found three with the tell-tale grease."

  "Three? Two suspects, or three?"

  "Two. One of them probably has a legitimate reason to have that contamination on his gloves. After all, it is used in the fab. My bet, in any case, is that the worker with two 'dirty' gloves is our man. That is a heavy flange. Two hands were needed for this murder."

  Bo-Sung was right. The fellow who had two dirty gloves did not normally work with that grease. So we had our fellow. Actually, we had identified him, but we didn't have enough information to convince a court.

  "So what's next?"

  "Well, not too many years ago, this would have been the end of the case, and our friend would find himself behind bars, or perhaps he would have disappeared. We no longer have a military dictatorship here, so we will have to be bit more imaginative."

  "What you really need is to have the witness identify him in a line-up. Doesn't seem likely to work, though."

  "No, it doesn't."

  Bo-Sung looked thoughtful, and I knew that he was onto something. I also knew that it was a bad idea to interrupt somebody who was thinking like that, so I didn't ask him what his thoughts were.

  I spent the next two days with Bo-Sung and his colleagues going over the security arrangements for the Asian Games that were to take place in September. It was late Thursday before the 'unusual case' was mentioned again. Bo-Sung interrupted our discussions to throw out his idea.

  "Michael, you mentioned a line-up."

  "Sure. If the witness can pick the suspect out of a group of bunny-suited men, you would have the evidence that you need. The only problem is that she won't be able to."

  "We are going to try in any case. The suspect is in custody now, but I won't be able to keep him if don't get more evidence. So we'll try the line-up. Maybe we'll be lucky."

  I could tell that my colleague had a hunch, maybe only half a hunch, but I knew him well enough to respect his gut feelings. Sometimes that is all you have to go on.

  The line-up took place a few hours later. Five men of nearly identical height, wearing identical bunny-suits, including masks, stood in a row in the front of the room. Our witness sat in a blue plastic chair, and stared at the exhibit. Finally she shook her head, and mumbled a few apologetic words to Bo-Sung, who looked disappointed, like a gambler standing in front of a traitorous slot-machine.

  I leaned over to my partner in crime, and whispered to him.

  "I wouldn't have expected much from this in any case. After all, she just saw his back as he was walking away. How could she identify him after that?"

  I watched as a smile slowly spread over Bo-Sung's face.

  A few quiet words with his assistant, and the line-up was moved to the back of the room. We moved our chairs closer to the back of the room as well. Bo-Sung insisted that we keep our backs to the suspects, and had them walk one by one past us to the front of the room.

  The witness was confused at the proceedings, which were different from the ones she was used to seeing on television police shows, but she went along with the game. I was only s
tarting to comprehend Bo-Sung's brainstorm myself. I wasn't at all convinced that it would work.

  The suspects walked past us one at a time. I watched the witness, who shook her head as they went past. One, two, three – nothing. As the fourth suspect walked past, she stiffened, paused a second, and quietly spoke a few words to Bo-Sung. He nodded to a uniformed policewoman, who led the witness out of the room. When she had left, and the suspects had been cleared out, he turned to me.

  "I must thank you. Your comment that she had only seen the murderer from behind filled in the missing link. I recreated the situation as best as I could, and it paid off. She picked the same fellow who had the grease on his gloves."

  "How? From behind they look even more alike."

  "So it seems to you and me. But those who work in these fabs look at things differently. They constantly have to identify coworkers in those suits. Is it your boss or your boyfriend who is approaching? It would be useful to know before you make some critical error. So they identify people in an unusual way. Unusual, but I think likely enough to convince the court."

  "What did she see? They were all identical. Completely so from behind."

  "Not so, my friend. Not when they are walking. It turns out that each of us has another identifying feature, besides our faces, DNA and fingerprints."

  I could see that he was right. He must be, since the witness had picked out the right suspect. But how?

  Bo-Sung saved me the effort of phrasing the question.

  "Another identifying feature, Michael. The way we walk. Our gaits."

  Emotions

  " 'Hi. I want to be sad.'

  'No problem. Let's see your ID card.'

  The client handed over his ID card, and you ran it through the scanner.

  'David Bateman?'

  'Yes, that's me.'

  'You can't be sad again until next year. You've used up your quota.'

  'But my father died. I want to mourn him.'

  'I'm sorry, but there are rules. Do you have private insurance?'

  'No. I can't afford it. Isn't there any way…'

  'Well, there's the committee. But I see that you have already applied to them three times this year. Twice for happiness, once for anger.'

  "That's how your day went, right Jimmy?

  "Of course I got it right. How else could it be? It must be pretty much the same every day. Great job you have, selling emotions packed inside of a syringe.

  "How close was I? Practically word for word, huh? You could probably do it in your sleep. Maybe you do.

  "Jimmy, it wasn't always like this. Everybody walkin' around like a bunch of zombies. No emotions. No feelings, no, well, no being just plain human. Used to be that people were alive, really alive. They didn't need injections to be alive either.

  "There was real music then, real art, and real people to appreciate the stuff. Now folks go to a museum, and know that they are looking at great paintings. They go to a play, and they'll tell you that the acting was good, or the plot was lousy, whatever. They'll analyze it to death – but it never means anything to them. Doesn't talk to them. Doesn't move them. Nothing.

  "Just look at us today. All perfectly calm. Nobody unhappy, nobody angry, nobody anything. Sure, you can get a hormone fix. Want to be happy? Sign up here. Got insurance? You can be sad this week. Want to fall in love? Here's your dose. Everything is controlled.

  "Sure, things are lot calmer now. We used to have crimes of passion. Murder, rape – you name it. War. Far too much of that. Today we only have logical wars, if there is such a thing. No passion today. They say it's for the better.

  "Jimmy, excuse my French, but if you want to fuck properly these days, you've got to apply for the emotions, buy the feelings in a bottle, have the nurse inject them. And they tell us things are better.

  "Bunch of zombies. That's what we are. Robots. Used to be a joke about a fellow whose doctor tells him he should improve his life style, live healthier:

  'You should quit smoking – you'll live longer'

  'What for?'

  'I told you. So you'll live longer. You should stop drinking so much too.'

  'What for?'

  'I told you. So you'll live longer. You should cut back on your womanizing too.'

  'What for?'

  'I told you. So you'll live longer.'

  'That's what I'm asking. Live longer? What for?'

  "So what are we living for today? For happiness? Only a couple times a year, three or four if you have the extra cash. People say that we live more satisfactory lives today. That we are more satisfied. Satisfied? I don't feel satisfied. I don't feel anything. Just an empty lump where part of me used to be. Hell, I don't even love my own son. I wish I could, but I can't, just like a guy without legs can't walk.

  "Everybody knows that things were different back then. Even you, even though you were an infant when it happened, know that people were different. You taste it every time you get a dose of anger, love or happiness. We used to feel those things all of the time. Without having to pull out our ID cards to get them.

  "So how'd we lose it? Government will tell you that it was a conscious decision. That things were bad. That emotions were driving people crazy. That there were riots in the cities, murders in the bars, endless wars everywhere. So they decided to get rid of emotions, and fix the human race. They'll even tell you that they had some kind of election. A referendum or something, and everybody agreed to it.

  "That's not what happened. Sure, the government funded some research. It started out as a way of getting rid of the prisons. They had so much crime back then that they would lock people up to keep them out of trouble. It was expensive, and when they let out the folks who had committed those crimes, they would run off and do them again. Prisons didn't fix anything. So they looked for other ideas.

  "The first one they came up with was neat solution for rapists. Castrate them – that's right, just chop off their balls. It was a primitive idea, but it worked. No testosterone, no built-up anger, no violence. The first subjects were all volunteers. They'd rather be cut than spend the rest of their lives in prison. Then other criminals starting clamoring for the surgery. Not the thieves, but the assault-and-battery types, and the murderers. If no testosterone meant no violence, why should just the rapists get the deal?

  "So the biologists started working on something better, something that would suppress anger without the surgery. See, castration screws up a lot of things, besides just suppressing anger, and it doesn't suppress anger completely. They wanted something more specific, something more effective..

  "That should have cued them into the problem. You can't play with one thing in this machine called the human body without affecting something else. But they tried anyhow. They came up with concoctions that would suppress this emotion or that, but they always had side-effects.

  "Government thought there would be military uses for the technology too. What if you could suppress anger and violence in enemy soldiers? Just infect them with some virus that would kill their anger, and the war would be over.

  "The research dragged on, and had pretty much come to a dead end. They had an emotion-killing trick, but it killed all emotions. They had a virus that could spread it, but they had no way of protecting our own soldiers. They called it the 'fix-it virus'. The virus that would 'fix' everything. They didn't dare use it.

  "The biologists kept up their work. Where there is funding, there is science. The fix-it virus was a dead end. They kept a few vials of the stuff in a freezer in Los Alamos, and that was it.

  "How do I know all this? I was there. Back then I was a molecular biologist. We were all sworn to secrecy after it happened. I shouldn't be telling you this. But somebody ought to know the truth. And the truth is ugly.

  "We were finished with the fix-it virus. Nobody could figure out a good use for it. But we had learned a lot about how emotions work, and there was a project afoot to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. There was still a lot of work to d
o. We had to avoid running into the dead end we did with the first virus.

  "The team worked closely, and for long hours. The work was fascinating, the people were tremendous, and, well, I at least have memories of how these things felt. You will never even have that.

  "The crazy working hours and the close-knit team had an obvious side effect. Nearly everybody who was young and unattached was in love, one way or the other. How could it be otherwise? I fell in love and married your mother inside of a few months. Getting married was the best thing that I did. It got me out of the emotional swamp that the labs had turned into. Ecstatic love, broken love, jealousy, despair – you name it.

  "I at least had a real reason to leave work at a more or less reasonable hour. After you were born I had another reason to spend time at home. I was crazy about you. Yeah – that's how we talked. Intense love was described as a type of insanity. And so it was. A beautiful insanity.

  "There was one fellow who was what we called 'intense' back then. He had some complicated foreign name, but went by Henry. A guy who felt everything very strongly. There were always some guys around who were like that – they were prized as guinea pigs in our research. He was a neurologist, but he spent more time have his own brain scanned than he did studying others'.

  "Well, it figured that a guy like that would fall madly in love with one of the technicians. And it figured that after a while she would be exhausted by their relationship. Someone that intense is hard to be with for very long. We all saw it happening, their getting closer, their few months of unbelievable happiness, her pulling away, looking for space for herself. Then bickering, anger, and a proper break-up. You have never seen these things, but they were common enough back then.

  "Our hero took the break-up very badly. Back then there was something called suicide. You may have read about it, or studied it in history class. When somebody was really angry, they might kill somebody else. If they were depressed, then they might decide to kill themselves. That's what suicide was.

  "It was pretty common back then. Sometimes there were suicide pacts where a few people would kill themselves at the same time. Like a death party. Sometimes there were murder-suicides. A classic one was where the girl decides to break up with the guy. So goes off, says: 'If I can't have her, then nobody will', and shoots her, then himself – out of depression or remorse, or both – I don't know. It's been so long that I barely remember what those things feel like.

  "Well, Henry was intense, but not really violent. He wasn't capable of pulling a trigger, whether the muzzle was aimed at him or at somebody else. Turned out that he was capable of something much worse.

  "We were all eating one day when he joined us in the lunch room. People looked up when he walked in. We liked Henry, and felt pretty bad for his heartbreak. Thing was, it looked like he was finally getting over it. He sat down next to me, grabbed my glass and spoon, and started dinging on the glass to get everybody's attention. Sure enough, the room quieted down.

  "He gets up, and says, believe or not: