by Bart Kosko
“No.”
“Just a moment please.”
The guard turned back to his control booth but left the glass door open. John felt the cool air tumble out the booth and into hot desert air just as it flowed out of his Jeep. He had to strain to see the floating brown image of his brain on the guard’s monitor.
Signal processors had taken his brain’s field measurements and mapped them into an electroencephalogram. The EEG was the first step in the system’s parallel match of stored EEG brainprints. The EEG waves rolled across his brain in shades of blue and green and red. A massive neural network matched the 3-D brain pattern to millions of like patterns stored in the tangled webs of its trillions of software synapses.
The guard looked puzzled.
“You’re not Maria Ramirez are you?” he said.
“No. John Grant.”
“Hmm. John Grant. You know it’s been a while since we got any new netware out here. Budget cuts. That don’t stop them from packing this thing with new scans. Been misclassifying for nearly two months now.”
The old man stroked his whiskers with his left hand while his right hand typed in John’s name on an old-style keyboard.
John had a bad thought and he wished he could see how it looked on the brain scan. He thought that this old guard might be what would have come of his old miner if the miner had been born 100 years later.
The console screen showed a new brown brain image that turned slowly in orange three-space. The guard spoke the words “John Grant” twice to the screen to confirm the brain image. The teacher signals also helped tune the neural net.
A neural net forgot things much as real brains did. The neural net would learn the new pattern of John’s brain but would forget small parts of the other brain patterns spread over its tangled virtual synapses. There was no way to tell what it would forget.
A neural net could match patterns well if it did not store too many patterns. But it could not explain where it stored the patterns or how it matched the new pattern to the stored patterns. The neural circuits left no audit trail. They spun around in massive feedback cycles and then converged on a fixed pattern or nearest match. The full neural system answered questions just as humans did. And like humans it could not explain how it answered them.
John watched the guard’s console screen scroll through his tax returns and his medical and banking data.
The state had kept this data on him since his college days when he had used the school’s medical plan and then had taken out a small loan. He regretted that now and had since paid off the loan. He could not wipe the ongoing files unless he bought out with the million dollars that so few could afford. Even then he could not be sure SoCal would wipe its files.
The lower third of the guard’s monitor flashed in red. John knew it was a warning. It told the guard that John Grant had a high-risk profile in the eyes of Southern California. John tried to read the message. He turned his eyes so hard to the left that they hurt and his contact lenses bunched up. He could read only something about how state employees should remain courteous but cautious when they dealt with him.
“Hey,” the guard said. “I see that you patented your own molecule.”
“Jesus. How did you know that?”
“Son. You don’t want to know. Sure would like to know how you patent a molecule. Never heard of that before. Figured the Orientals had all the patents now.”
“You have to work out a novel molecular structure. It can’t occur on its own in nature or the state won’t even look at the patent.”
“Amazing. Mr. Grant is it? I’m sorry. Looks like you have some unpaid speeding fines and some consumption taxes from your last visit here. No sir. You can’t beat those new asphalt sensors. Please drive right over there to secondary inspection. Just step on the gas a little bit.”
Jism flashed on the windshield and nodded to John to calm him. Jism blinked off the windshield before the guard saw him.
John tapped the accelerator.
Caltrans took over and drove the car to a metal hut behind the welcome sign. Two border patrolmen in green and brown came out with .357 Magnums strapped to their sides. They held wire wands in their hands. They were younger than John and that just added to the humiliation. It also made him feel a little old and far away from the buyout. And it made him feel both lonely and sad at the loss of Alon Gorenberg.
“Sir,” the shorter patrolman said. “Please step outside the vehicle.”
John stood in his shorts and T-shirt as the man moved the wand over his bare knees and back and chest. The other patrolman passed a longer wand over the roof of the Jeep. The longer wand made a loud bell sound. He passed it over the Jeep twice more to locate the target.
“Go ahead,” John said. “It’s in the glove box.”
“We’ll need your driver’s license.”
John gave the license hologram to the shorter patrolman. He ran it through a small wireless monitor and gave it back to John.
The taller one came out of the car with a pack of Zensin marijuana cigarettes.
“What’s this?” he said.
“You know damn well what it is. And look at the seal. It’s not broken. That means it’s legal even here in Southern California. So put it back.”
The patrolman gave the pot back to John instead.
“Mr. Grant. You got quite a few speeding violations from I-15 last month. What was the hurry?”
He held the display pad so John could see the green dots on the desert highway and the date and time and the amount of the fines.
“You know these fines compound at 10% per month. That puts your fine total at $856 and your consumption tax total at $203. So as of today you owe $1,059. State law says you have to pay any fine over $500 on the spot. If you can’t do that then we have to impound your vehicle for future auction.”
“I have a credit card,” John said.
John pulled the Visa card from his wallet and handed it over. The short patrolman ran it through the wireless monitor.
“Sorry. You’re overdrawn. You know the state has the right to fine you for that?”
“I know.”
“So we impound the car?”
“No. Let’s get my girlfriend on-line. She has the American Express card. It has no balance limit.”
“Let’s hope she is home.”
Chapter 11
North of Tabriz
Iran
The young guard Jahangir sat with his wood flute and Japanese submachine gun. He sat outside a cave high in the brown rocky Qareh Dahg Mountains of northern Iran.
Jahangir was 19 and had tended sheep and had cut pine trees as a boy in the valleys far below. He and his older brother had fled Azerbaijan as children when an Armenian shell fell on their house while he was at school. The explosion killed his parents and his baby brother. He had joined the Sufis a few weeks after the Armenians captured and shot his brother in the war in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave that lay to the north across the border in Azerbaijan.
The young shayk Hamid Tabriz had pitied the boy and let him live with the brotherhood. Tabriz had taught Jahangir many things. Tabriz taught him to pray and fast and meditate. This helped Jahangir ease his grief and then leave it in his past. Most of all Tabriz had taught the young man to love life and to love Allah.
Now Jahangir sat close enough to the cave entrance so that he could hear the singing and the synthesized music within. The music made him feel warm and excited. Many times he flipped the machine gun’s safety off and on and then off again. Tabriz had promised him that someday soon he could join the brotherhood. He thought about that now as he listened to the music and watched the rocks and the dark sky.
Someday Jahangir could even become a dervish like the young initiate Barat Berdiev from Baku. The initiation would come at the supreme cost. But it would secure him a life in heaven. It would be his wedding with eternity.
Heaven was worth any cost.
Tabriz sat at the back of the ancient cave. He kept his bac
k to the granite and kept the cave entrance in clear view. Twenty Sufis in old white wool sat on the dirt floor in a large circle with Tabriz at one end. All had fought for the Muslims in Nagorno-Karabakh or Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan.
The tanned boy Barat spun and shouted at the center of the circle.
Barat had found the rapture early in life at puberty. Tabriz loved the boy but would not have sex with him because he had not yet become a man. Some of the Sufis swayed with him and shouted to the many rhythms of the wild music. The shouts came in Farsi and Turkish and Azeri. A few came in garbled Russian. Four Sufis sucked on red cords from a large brass water pipe filled with a brown brick of smoldering hashish.
Tabriz did not shout or move or smoke. He sat still and watched both the boy Barat and the rock mural across from him. He had made the mural when he was 15 and had founded this brotherhood. The other Sufis had carved the rocks and woven the red and black rugs with polygon designs and sketched in charcoal the portrait of the ancient Sufi master and poet Jalāl-ad-Dīn ar-Rūmī. The Sufis had also placed computer consoles beneath the mural and stacked superconducting battery packs between the consoles.
Two older Sufis laughed and blew hashish smoke at the Israeli AMAN agent Joel Davis. The Sufis had beaten him below the neck and tied his hands to his boots.
Davis had lost the Game. He puckered his cracked and dry lips and sucked in as much hashish smoke as he could. That helped ease the pain and helped him to rest amid the Sufi frenzy.
The whirling dervish Barat spun to a stop.
The Sufis went silent. The mood music softened and reduced to just three lines of fast counterpoint. The young guard Jahangir looked in the cave to watch the final celebration. Barat looked at the ceiling and sang the lines of ar-Rūmī in Farsi:
It is the day of great great joy.
Let us all now become friends.
To mystery’s side. To the side of mystery!
We go dancing as God’s guests.
My death is my wedding with eternity!
Hamid Tabriz stood as the dervish sang the last line.
Tabriz had the tall thin body of an ascetic. He held an ancient scimitar across his white robe.
“Let us become friends,” Tabriz said in Farsi.
Barat looked at Tabriz and then looked back up at the cave roof. He screamed in ecstasy for over a minute. The other Sufi members in the brotherhood shouted and screamed in support. The music grew louder and added more lines of counterpoint.
Tabriz spun with the curved sword and cut off the boy’s head as it still screamed.
Two Sufis rose and caught the wild-eyed head as it fell. The other Sufis jumped to their feet and rushed in and danced with the jumping headless body. They smeared their white wool robes and faces with its pulsing blood. The music screamed with a distinct line of counterpoint for each Sufi.
Joel Davis watched the blood dance and fought to keep his head clear and to keep his courage from turning to panic. He knew that Israeli intelligence would conclude that he had died. They would only worry whether he had talked first and whether they could still use his latest reports. Davis had resolved to tell the Sufis only lies and then only when he could no longer stand the pain.
At least he had had the hashish.
Joel Davis had always known that someday his death would come. He would never again sleep well or make love or read the London Times on the porch of his flat in Tel Aviv. The Sufis would not even let him drink water. Now his life would end like this and no one would care.
Tabriz lowered the bloody scimitar and turned to look at the beaten but stoic Israeli.
Davis just hoped it all had some purpose.
Chapter 12
San Gabriel Mountains
California
John Grant cleared the Cajon summit on I-15 at sunset and began the long descent down the mountains to the L.A. basin.
John had taken the wheel at Barstow when I-40 fed into I-15. He could brake and steer and control the throttle. He could not replace the collision avoidance system. The road sensors now measured his speed and how much his Jeep veered from the midpoint of his lane. The state would fine him for a high speed or a wide dispersion from the lane midpoint.
The heavy traffic on the freeway was a mix of old gas cars and new electric cars and buses. They all drove on smart lanes that billed and fined the driver by the second. Satellites and road sensors helped each car navigate to within a millimeter of its goal path. The system worked much as the air traffic control system worked for airplanes and helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles.
John watched the road and only glanced at the new tract homes. The homes covered much of what had been the Angeles National Forest before the Great Quake. Southern California and the federal government had both sold much of the forests and foothills to land developers. Now only the steepest peaks remained wild.
John tried not to think about how the land had changed or how the people had changed. He could not blame them for wanting more. They made do as best they could in the face of the huge state and federal debts from the past that still grew each year.
The world had long since learned not to index its debt in dollars.
First Japan and Germany had called in their U.S. debt and dumped their U.S. treasury and municipal bonds. Then the Chinese and Mexicans and Brazilians had switched to Swiss francs and to the new private commodity currencies. The United States had had to sell land and highways and offer ever higher bond yield rates to attract buyers. That pushed up the cost of capital and increased the kill rate of start-ups like Water Dragon. There were now more people than ever and they had to pay more taxes for fewer state services than ever.
John relaxed and tried to let his mind float and yet not fall asleep. He thought of Denise and the child and the old gold miner and of the slight thrill he felt as he watched the river of gas cars and smart cars.
The black phone symbol appeared in red on the windshield. Jism appeared and reached over and answered it.
John? It’s Richard.
“Put him through,” John said.
Richard’s face broke through the green heads-up display of the freeway traffic. John tried to watch Richard and the real traffic at the same time.
“Good news,” Richard said. “I just finished the first draft of the movie. You’ll love it.”
“Good. Don’t forget I have to present it.”
“I didn’t forget. I packed it with 36 ports for you to blend in. Of course you do have to practice your lines.”
“Sounds like more work,” John said. “But I’d rather do that than just sit in this damn car. I have to stop in a few minutes and see Denise. Can you last awhile?”
“Sure. When you get here I’ll show you something else you’ll like. We just got the new bill for this month’s CPU tax.”
“How much?”
“Almost a grand.”
“Jesus. There’s nothing like paying a tax for a loss of liberty. Do you have the money for it?”
“No.”
“I don’t either. They just hit me for over a grand at the border. My card bounced and I had to call Denise. Sure hate to ask your sister for more credit. It would be a lot simpler if you just changed your Y chromosome to X!”
“Fuck you.”
“Not till you change. Oh shit!”
The word violation flashed in red on the windshield.
John’s Jeep had just passed the state speed limit of 70 miles per hour for the second time in five minutes. The new $400 fine would add to the 37 small fines he had accrued since Barstow when his Jeep’s lane variance passed the state’s lane dispersion limit in fixed five-minute intervals.
The state could suspend his license with the next ticket. It could impound his car with the next ticket after that.
“Jism?”
Yes?
“Move us into the smart-car lane. I quit. You’re back in control.”
Thank you.
Chapter 13
Wrightwood
California
The sun had set when John’s Jeep pulled up to Denise’s cabin in the pine suburbs of Wrightwood. The cabin was over 7,000 feet up in the San Gabriel Mountains and looked out over part of the L.A. basin far below. The L.A. lights now glowed orange and yellow through the basin smog and the local pine trees. Most of the glow came from millions of barrels of oil a year. Only part of it came from the lone nuclear power plant down the Pacific coast at San Onofre.
John jumped out to stretch and felt the good crisp chill from the cool thin air. He always liked the tall western yellow pines and ponderosa pines. Only mesquite and paloverde shrubs grew near his desert trailer. John did not look forward to driving to Richard’s lab down in the heart of that orange and yellow glow.
“Jism. How much time can I spend here?”
Enjoy yourself. Take at least two hours.
“Don’t try to act like my father. I never had one and never will.”
Please forgive the suggestion.
Denise stood at the cabin door and held her new green silk robe closed with both hands. Her long black hair swirled around her neck to the left side. She was barefoot and John could see she wore nothing under the silk robe.
He ran up and kissed her.
“Good trip?” she said.
“Are you kidding? The whole world is coming apart and I’ve been stuck in that goddamn car. Defenseless. Nothing to do but watch it happen.”
“Mr. Rockefeller wants action? Maybe I can give him some.”
She wrapped her legs around his and made him carry her into the brown pinewood cabin. John waddled with her past the open door and into the cabin where he smelled the Vietnamese fish oil of her cooking. He carried her past the blue fake Ming vases in the hall and into the pine-log living room.
Large red and purple flowers slowly blossomed on the smart walls. Denise had picked them to celebrate his coming. Their son had his pink left foot at the edge of the egg of red and yellow sap on the new egg shelf. Denise had just bought the shelf for the final gestation.
John carried her next to the egg.