“Really.” Tad told himself there was no way this was good news. He decided to sit before he swayed too obviously on his feet and pulled his office chair out before he gestured to the two other chairs in front of his desk. “Sit. Right upfront, you tell me what you want in return.”
“Uh…” The two men looked at each other.
“It’s a piece of ICU equipment,” the one with the tie said.
“It helps patients in comas,” the other one added.
They wouldn’t be straightforward either, would they? He resisted the urge to tell them to go away.
“Okay, first, who are you? You in the sweater, what’s your name?”
“Jacob Zachary, sir.”
“And you?” Tad nodded to the one in the tie.
“Nick Ryan, sir.”
“Well.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “Mr. Zachary. Mr. Ryan. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m not a fan of long presentations. I’m also not a fan of quid pro quo deals. So if that’s what you have for me today, you should do us both a favor and walk out that door, are we clear?”
Jacob looked like he wanted to do exactly that, but Nick leaned forward.
“Senator Williams, please hear us out. We’ve made a device that does all the normal functions of ICU equipment. It’s called a pod.” He pushed a piece of paper across the table at him. “It can monitor blood pressure and heart rate, provide a specific amount of oxygen, all of the normal stuff. It merely has something normal ICU equipment doesn’t have—a way to engage a patient in a coma. A way to stimulate brain waves and jumpstart the brain’s process of healing. We think it could work for your son.”
Tad looked at the two of them. There wasn’t anything practiced in these words, and he liked to think that what he saw on their faces was sincerity.
“Sir, my grandmother just died in the ICU,” said Jacob. “She’d had a stroke, she wasn’t waking up, and—”
“What does it cost?” he asked them.
He was talking favors and votes, but when they answered, it was clear they hadn’t even thought of that. Nick swallowed twice before answering.
“It’s about…well, five hundred dollars a day.” He held up his hands. “But hear us out—”
“Five…hundred?” He did some quick math in his head, then pulled a calculator out of his desk drawer to check the numbers. He couldn’t possibly have been right, could he?
But he had been. This machine would give Justin three more years to recover.
The two young men looked at him like they were afraid they’d blown it, but all he could do was smile.
“Tell me more,” he said quietly.
“I don’t want to promise anything,” Nick said quietly.
Jacob looked angry. “My grandmother might have lived if she’d had something like this,” he told his friend. He looked at Tad. “A doctor named DuBois conducted research several years ago about a device that would basically do the same thing ours does. He hadn’t built one—he was trying to find out if it would be a good idea. His research showed it would but it was blocked.”
“Blocked how?”
“Healthcare lobbyists.” Jacob’s hands clenched. “Sir, this research is solid. It could help people. But healthcare companies don’t want people to get better. That’s not how they get paid. They blocked DuBois’s research and we need someone to help get ours through.”
Tad hardly heard him. Three years. More than enough time. Justin would surely have woken up and they’d still have money for his physical therapy.
“Sir, I don’t want to raise your hopes,” Jacob said again. He shook his head at Nick. “You said you wanted straight talk, didn’t you? It is experimental. No one’s done this with a game before. That’s what we would do. We’d give him a game that’s like real life. For you or me, it would be like dreaming or using a VR set. We don’t know what it would do to someone in a coma. If he dies in the game…we don’t know how his brain would interpret that.”
Tad, for whom the word “game” conjured mental images of Candy Land, realized they probably meant something like Justin had played. Call of Warfare. World of Legends. One of those.
“I have to talk to my wife about this,” he said.
“Of course,” Nick said.
“Sir,” Jacob began, “if you’re worried about the device—”
“Your friend’s right, Mr. Zachary.” He smiled. “I do like straight talk. You’re not lying to me, and I like that. Let me talk to my wife and I’ll get back to you. Does my aide have your information?”
“Yes.” Jacob nodded. He and Nick exchanged a look, completely transparent in its hope.
“Good.” He stood. “I’ll be in touch. Yes, Annie, what is it?”
His aide had come around the door and she gave him a cautious smile. “A Mr. Metcalfe is here to see you,” she said.
Tad had a vivid memory of himself saying, “Do stop by.” He had thought it was a rote pleasantry when he said it but apparently, Metcalfe had taken him at his word. He sighed.
“Send him in, Annie. Gentlemen, I’ll talk to you later.”
Chapter Six
Amber hunched over the compartment of the pod and tried to think of something other than the swirl of negative thoughts in her head. She didn’t take any particular joy in being a pessimist. She’d much rather be an optimist, and if the whole world were like her lab, she would be one.
The whole world wasn’t like her lab, though. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even close. Instead of carefully-drawn schematics, there was absolute chaos. Instead of careful trial and error, in which every problem you encountered was simply your fault—and thus fixable—the world was full of situations that were not only chaotic but sometimes tailored toward failure.
She stole a glance at the corner of the room, where Dr. DuBois was sitting—or lying, in actual fact. Apparently, he had decided to take a nap.
He didn’t look at all like she’d pictured him, which threw her off. She’d expected someone short and businesslike, either with his head entirely in the clouds like Nick or bleakly depressed in the wake of his defeat at the hands of lobbyists. Instead, he didn’t seem to have any particular thoughts on whether the pod would work or not. He’d asked to see the game, played it for a couple of hours, and disappeared around the time Nick and Jacob left to see the senator.
When he’d returned, there had been popcorn in his beard and now, he was asleep on the couch.
And he still hadn’t given any feedback on the pods.
Amber straightened and looked wearily at him. He was a perfect example of why she was worried right now. DuBois had done good research, she had to admit that. He’d tied together disparate groups in his field, resolved hanging questions, and written a rigorous study to which there was not yet any rebuttal.
It wasn’t the quality of his work or ideas that had sunk him. Rather, it was someone who didn’t want their profits to suffer and who could pay to make sure that wouldn’t happen. If DuBois, with a full slate of researchers and the backing of American University, hadn’t managed to get past them, what hope did PIVOT have?
The door banged open and she heard Jacob and Nick talking excitedly to one another as they came down the hall. A quick glance showed that DuBois had not even stirred, and Amber shrugged before she headed to the kitchenette to see what was going on.
“So?” She was surprised to see the happy looks on their faces.
“He wants to do it,” Jacob reported.
“He’s talking to his wife,” Nick tempered.
Jacob rolled his eyes. “This guy? He’s not all salesman, turns out. He tried un-selling the thing once we’d already made the sale.”
Amber’s eyebrows raised and her mouth twitched when Nick gave a soft moan and put his head in his hands. She’d seen many arguments between these two over the years, during which they went round and round with increasingly implausible suggestions of each other’s parentage and what the other one could consider doing with a cactus, and the theater of it
never got old. Now, she pulled a chair out and leaned back to watch.
“You didn’t meet this guy,” Nick told Amber. “He eats lobbyists for breakfast. He doesn’t want to be oversold, and we’ve never had a coma patient in one of these. I gave him the facts, which”—he held a threatening finger up to stave off Jacob’s protest—“ended up getting us the contract. He liked that we weren’t selling him some pie in the sky dream.”
Jacob rolled his eyes. “It will work,” he said to no one in particular. “I don’t know why everyone is so worried. It will work, and the sooner we get it on the market, the better.” He shook his head and wandered into the lab, muttering something about upgrades.
His companions exchanged a glance.
“I didn’t expect to be the voice of reason,” Nick admitted. He lowered his voice slightly. “Buuuut let’s say Jacob oversold a little.”
Amber tilted her head to look and make sure their friend was out of earshot. “Are you surprised?” she asked Nick.
“Well…yeah.” He waved his hands. “The dude’s not a salesman.”
“No,” she said patiently, “but he is someone who just lost his grandmother and has an awful lot invested in this working.” She rolled her eyes at the slow-dawning comprehension on Nick’s face. “Yeah. This isn’t coming out of nowhere, and we’ll need to be real careful when we hit snags.”
“If,” he said warningly. “Don’t tempt fate.”
“Nick, you’ve been an engineer how long? When. There’s a reason it’s taken us four years to get here on this project. Jacob likes to talk about brains being computers, but they’re so far beyond the computers we have that it’s a miracle the two can even talk.”
“I don’t see why,” a new voice said.
Amber and Nick both jumped and turned to where Dr. DuBois wandered sleepily into the kitchenette. He rummaged around in the cupboards, opened each one in turn to see what was inside, and turned to look at the two of them. “A laptop could understand a calculator,” he said, as if that solved the whole problem, then wandered into the laboratory and left several boxes of tea and coffee on the counter and the cupboards open.
“What does he mean?” Nick mouthed at Amber.
She shrugged as she began to put the tea away, frowned, and went to lean in the doorway. “You’re saying the problem isn’t the human brain understanding computers, it’s computers understanding what the brain says in response. Right?”
DuBois didn’t bother to give a yes or a no. “The brain will fill in as much as it needs to. The computer says ‘sky,’ the brain builds a picture. But what happens when the brain says something that’s beyond the computer’s knowledge?”
“Nothing,” Jacob said. “If you tell a computer to do something it can’t interpret, it does nothing.”
“If you’re lucky,” Nick argued. He came to stand in the doorway beside Amber. “If you’re unlucky, you used language it knows and it tries to do something it can’t.” He swallowed. “And it crashes.”
Jacob’s face darkened and he marched to one of the pods to begin working on it. He kept his back to the two of them.
Dr. DuBois looked puzzled. “Why is he angry?” he asked Amber and Nick as he pointed at the man.
“They’re talking about ways this could go wrong,” Jacob said without looking around.
“I thought we were talking about computers,” DuBois said vaguely. He shrugged after a moment. “So it goes wrong. What then?”
Jacob finally straightened. “Then we have a medical emergency,” he said slowly. “And a dead person.”
“That doesn’t necessarily follow.” The scientist raised an eyebrow. “You’re falling prey to a classic logical fallacy, young man.”
Amber thought their friend might have an aneurysm.
“What’s the fallacy?” he asked far too nicely.
“You put too much moral weight on doing something different,” DuBois told him. “You think if you put someone in this machine and they die, it will be your fault.”
“It will be our fault,” Amber said.
“People in comas die all the time,” the man countered. “Do they do that because they’re on a ventilator? Because they have surgery to stop internal bleeding? No. They die because they’re in bad condition. You say you have a good piece of equipment.” He waved his hand at the pods. “I agree. So if you have a good piece of equipment that can save people and you don’t use it… Well, that’s a choice, too, isn’t it?” He gave them all a somewhat challenging look. “I’m going to go get more popcorn,” he added before he disappeared.
A moment of absolute silence followed.
“I cannot figure that dude out,” Amber said finally.
“He has a good point,” Jacob replied. He looked at them. “There might be problems but there are problems with the way things are done now, too. We have to remember to not make it our fault if something goes wrong outside of our control.”
She was a little more worried about what the legal system would think of things.
Chapter Seven
In person, Dru Metcalfe was tall with brown skin and close-cropped, curly black hair. He shook Tad’s hand but his eyes were worried.
“Senator Williams, I hope you don’t think I was eavesdropping, but I caught the tail end of that discussion.” He folded his lanky form into one of the chairs and pressed his fingertips together. “I’m sorry they offered you something like that.”
The senator leaned back in his chair and resisted the urge to narrow his eyes. “Why so?” he asked as neutrally as he could. He’d poured them both cups of coffee when the man entered the room and sipped his slowly. It was almost strong enough to raise someone from the dead, which was what he needed right now.
“The technology is untested,” Metcalfe told him. “Who knows what problems might lurk down the road? This country has stringent testing protocols for a reason, Senator.”
He took another sip of his coffee. “I thought you recently told me the protocols were too stringent,” he said and he couldn’t keep the amusement from creeping into his voice.
“Senator Williams.” His visitor did not smile. “Politics aside, testing is important. Putting your son’s life in the hands of those…” He paused as he tried to choose the correct word.
“Engineers,” Tad supplied.
“Yes. They’re not doctors, you know.”
“They’re working with one. Mr. Metcalfe—”
“You can’t possibly be considering their offer.” The man seemed horrified. “Senator, you do not need to take desperate measures right now. Mr. White is happy to fund as much care as your son needs.”
“In return for my cooperation on the senate floor,” he said flatly.
Metcalfe smiled gently. “Senator, believe it or not, I do understand your worries.” He paused and deliberately let the moment hang. “We understand your fears that this might conflict with your morals. Trust me when I say this is as far from those concerns as it could be.”
Tad couldn’t help himself and raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you walk me through that one,” he suggested. “Because my guess is that favor won’t get called in until you need support for something I won’t give it to. So why don’t you tell me how there’s no conflict?”
“Senator, which treatments go to the FDA for testing and which are blocked is not a matter of lives being saved,” the man explained as if he were not at all fazed by this question. “It is a matter of politics. IterNext has strong competitors, each of them with their own lobbyists. Suppose all of them pursue the same avenue on…oh, heart disease.” He gestured to show that this was only an example. “This is not a matter of whether or not people are cured. It is a matter of who gets the rights to cure them.”
He leaned forward. “And that is not a game I want to play,” he said simply.
Metcalfe stared at him, a little nonplussed.
“If there’s truly no difference,” he continued, “then why should I care if the other guy wins? Why shouldn�
�t I simply let all of you duke it out and spend my time on other matters?”
“Because none of the rest of them have called to help you and your son.” The lobbyist was not offended. In fact, he was all too calm. “Senator, I assure you, I understand. You don’t want to be bought. This isn’t being bought—it’s finding complementary interests.”
Tad said nothing. He tried to think of what Mary would say and could not.
“There is a reason quid pro quo has always existed,” Metcalfe said easily. “Before it got a dirty name in the media, it was merely two people helping each other out. That’s what we do, isn’t it? It’s why you got into politics—to help people out. Mr. White appreciates that, as do I. We even appreciate your candor about your worries.” His smile did not falter at the disbelieving look he earned. “But quid pro quo is older than Washington, Senator—it’s even older than the empire that named it. It isn’t going anywhere, and if you refuse to take part, the only one you harm is yourself.” He did not add “and your son” but the words were almost audible.
Tad looked out the window. When he had campaigned for this job, it had been so clear to him how the chain of corruption began—a small ask, a favor, a gift in return. Nothing you could object to. Nothing that even seemed wrong.
But it opened the door and every time, it got easier to say yes.
His path forward was clear. Justin’s prognosis was uncertain, even in the ICU, and whether he stayed there or they transferred him to PIVOT’s labs, he and Mary had decided that they would do this without Dru Metcalfe and his bribes.
“I’m not interested,” he said simply.
Metcalfe nodded slightly. He opened his briefcase and withdrew two full-page, glossy photos and a written statement. When he pushed them across the desk, Tad’s jaw dropped. The photos were of him standing with a woman in a sundress and heels, far too close for them simply to be having a friendly conversation. Behind them was the entrance to a hotel. The statement was from the woman and contained details of an affair and his offer of a payoff if she would remain silent.
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