Last Tango in Cyberspace

by Steven Kotler

  But this is a thing companies have been doing lately. Intentional obfuscation. An old subcultural affect deployed in the face of overzealous scrutiny, like Bob Dylan in that Scorsese doc, spouting nonsense: “We all like motorcycles, to some degree.” Decades later, with the omnipresence of social media and surveillance technology, obfuscation became a brand strategy for edgier brands. Arctic, via the medium of Jenka, is telling Lion something about Arctic.

  “And back at you,” says Jenka, his accent lending a hard edge to soft consonants. “What is it that you do for us?”

  Lion leans forward, setting his elbows on the table, gray sleeves displacing white glow. Doesn’t know what to make of Jenka just yet, but he’s pretty sure that in Arctic’s book em-trackers are found in the file marked SPECIAL CREATIVES. Seems like Jenka should know about him, especially with Arctic’s penchant for research. More intentional obfuscation, or something else going on?

  He counters with simple truth.

  “I say yes or no.”

  Jenka nods, slowly, like something’s been settled.

  “I do that as well.”

  Then he reaches a hand beneath the table, slides open a hidden drawer, and extracts an envelope similar to the one Lion’s been carrying. Same thick rag weave. Same double wrap to undo the string.

  Jenka lifts the flap and sets his finger on the e-reader. “Like our nano-scanner?”

  “Is it new?”

  “There have been versions in Malaysia for three years. Sir Richard did a favor for a minister, got an early line on the Western market.”

  Lion catches the zip of light, hears the soft click. Then the door opens and in walks the missing Penelope. Red hair braided into higher-dimensional knots, full sleeves of ink bleeding through starched white button-down, and a tray with refreshments.

  “Would you like coffee, sir?”

  A slight tinge of an accent. English? Scottish? And dangerously attractive.

  “Just black, please.”

  White saucer and white cup gets set on white table in front of him. Then she pours a second cup for Jenka, sets it down, and turns to depart. Lion spots a bar code tattoo on the back of her neck. It’s the same one that Bo has, including the question mark. Just a soft twinkle, like dying sparklers on a jet-black night.

  Do two tattoos a pattern make? Does Arctic have some sort of Rilkean connection?

  But, before he can ask, Penelope’s out the door, leaving as quickly as she came.

  Jenka takes his with two sugars and two packets of powdered milk. The end result is more white. White coffee, white walls, white suit. Lion sips his coffee and savors its blackness.

  Sliding a stack of photos out of the envelope, Jenka starts laying them out in a big square on the table. The same images Lion saw this morning, same Arctic icon pulsing in the bottom right corner.

  “Mesh electronics in the paper,” says Lion.

  “Romanian.” Not bothering to look up.

  After finishing his arrangement, Jenka rises from his chair, rounds the Ping-Pong table, and comes to stand uncomfortably close to Lion. He points at the photos.

  “So yes or no?”

  Tamping down the slide-away impulse, Lion looks at the images again. Something definitely not right, though he still doesn’t know what. But Jenka’s too close for comfort, and Lion’s never really had much interest in crime puzzles. And with Walker decapitated, definitely a crime puzzle.

  “No.”

  Jenka gives him a serious look from inches away, then reaches two fingers inside his jacket and pulls a silver laser pointer from his breast pocket. Twists the tip and aims the beam at Walker’s mounted head.

  “You noticed?”

  Lion pushes back his chair, trying to get a little distance from Jenka, knocking into one of the photos along the way. A shot from South Africa flutters toward his feet. Reaching down to grab it, he notices the word PONG engraved in diamonds on one of the table’s legs. Talk about bling—must be a hundred gemstones in total.

  “I noticed,” he says, setting the photo back on the table.

  “Any thoughts?”

  “Gruesome,” looking at the image of Walker’s head once again. “And someone let Arctic into an active crime scene, or someone knows someone at the crime lab.”

  “True,” says Jenka. “But not what I was asking.”

  Lion grabs his Moleskine out of his sling-pack, opens it, and reads the note he left himself. It hasn’t changed since this morning.

  “Someone’s hunting the hunters,” he says.

  Jenka nods again, supercolliders retracting and a flash of Iron Curtain dental work. “And this doesn’t interest you?”

  “Doesn’t really matter.”

  “Why?”

  “I do cultural projection,” he says, sliding his notebook back into his sling-pack. “Judging from the nano-scanner and the mesh electronics, Arctic does product development. Do these photos point toward a future product with appeal to an emerging culture is what matters.”

  “They don’t?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Lion’s never been a fan of this particular conversation, but the check Arctic’s cutting is not small. “Shifting culture requires a confluence of inciting incidents. Something directional that leads to a tribal fracturing and reknitting. Often shows up in language first. In music. Fashion. It can feel a little like hope.” He points at the images. “This doesn’t feel like hope.”

  “So it’s no.”

  Lion nods.

  “You did some work for the Tyrell Corporation,” says Jenka, “em-tracking early-stage cyborg evolution.”

  “I thought you didn’t know who I was?”

  “Also for Weyland-Yutani, that led to a new kind of body armor. And then in Sicily, a Mafia spin-off group, that crazy ICO, the hover-scooter, the arrests.”

  “I can’t talk about it. Nondisclosures.”

  Jenka sighs, clicks the laser pointer off and returns it to his inside breast pocket. Stepping in front of Lion, he slides the sling-pack to a far corner of the table and begins restacking photos. A precision operation by the looks of it. Only after the nano-scanner whirs closed does he seem to remember that Lion is even in the room.

  “Sir Richard will be here any moment.”

  He isn’t following.

  “It would be better if you told him yourself.”

  Lion can think of absolutely no reason it would be better, but it doesn’t matter. Sir Richard isn’t there in a moment. Or another. So good-bye to the white room and back down the long hall. Jenka stops him at the front door, a hand grabbing his elbow.

  “You’ll be available later? If Sir Richard desires to call?”

  Lion almost yanks his arm away, but then he notices Penelope, standing at the edge of the waiting room, watching him. She has a look in her eyes he’s seen before. He flashes on the look in Robert Walker’s eyes. Regret? Remorse? And what about him would make her feel that way?

  He doesn’t know.

  But before he can do anything about this puzzle, Penelope turns on her heel and disappears back down the hall, taking his question and her question mark tattoo along for the ride.

  But Jenka is still there, still waiting for his answer.

  THOSE GODDAMN MONKEYS BITE

  Back to Bo and the shiny mobile and now working their way through Times Square traffic. Living-screen billboards the size of buildings make him think Blade Runner. Discover new life in the off-world colonies. What did Lorenzo say—without the voice-over it’s just a movie about a psychopath with a cool gun.

  This reminds him of the message he never checked.

  Lion opens his sling-pack to retrieve his phone. Double-clicks the text, sees a familiar refrain: There are mines over there, and mines over there, and watch out, those goddamn monkeys bite.

  Lorenzo’s way of asking for contact.

  Also kind of an SOS. When really tired, Lorenzo limits all his communications to Apocalypse Now quo
tes. More intentional obfuscation, though he maintains it was once a very practical form of communication.

  The text is accompanied by a photo of the band playing a gig in what looks like Japan. Kanji neon over saloon-style bar, rhinestone cowboy hats on the patrons, sawdust on the floors.

  So contact via Skype perhaps, an idea that makes him smile.

  Lorenzo is a friend. And, at sixty-six, nearly thirty years older than Lion, though it’s often hard to tell. Stuck on semi-permanent adolescent, also a cinephile and a conga player in a cow-punk blues band. The band does Robert Johnson through Social Distortion. Lorenzo does the older groupies.

  Lion starts to plot out his afternoon. Food, nap, some Ghost Trainwreck and Skype with Lorenzo.

  Inside, he can feel his stress levels level off.

  The human brain does information acquisition, pattern recognition, and goal direction. Give the goal direction system a goal and you give the pattern recognition system a purpose and the information acquisition system a target. Cortisol levels drop. It’s why, Lion believes, everyone needs a mission.

  And this reminds him.

  Types I wanted a mission and, for my sins, they gave me one into the text box. It’s his Apocalypse Now response, code for “Give me a few hours before contact.”

  Message sent, Lion decides to leave himself a post-nap reminder to call Lorenzo. He reaches into his sling-pack for his notebook but can’t seem to find it. Swats around for a while, then dumps the bag onto the seat beside him. Strands of loose tobacco slide into every available crevice; his copy of Dune, a couple of pens.

  No notebook.

  When did he see it last? The meeting? He remembers Jenka easing up next to him. He examines each pocket carefully. No Moleskine. He remembers Jenka stepping in front of him and sliding his sling-pack to the corner of the table. How long does it take to steal a notebook? Lion shakes the bag a few more times to be sure, triple-checks the pockets. Finds the Arctic envelope wedged into the designated laptop sleeve. Nothing more.

  Why would Jenka steal his notebook?

  None of it makes sense; all of it makes him twitchy. He tries telling himself that it was a new notebook, with only one note, and he can take the loss. When that fails, tells himself to take a breath. Doesn’t help.

  Walker’s head mounted on the wall, the white-on-white room, the full creepiness of the day begins to register.

  Pulse throb in his neck, levels spiking.

  He hunts out the window for something to take his mind off the subject. Gray skies and gray buildings, pedestrians in auto-walk mode. And too depressing to be distracting.

  He counters with the Dune mantra: “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

  But it’s no use. Adrenaline’s pumping through his system, like fire ants crawling through his veins.

  Out the window, an argument in front of an auto body shop, two men in stained coveralls, one threatening the other with a tire iron—or exactly how Lion feels about Jenka right now.

  “We’re going to need to make a stop,” he tells Bo, through gritted teeth.

  Sunglasses in the rearview. “Where would you like to go?”

  “A place that sells Moleskines.”

  “The notebooks?”

  Nods, brushing tobacco strands into his palm, squeezing for all he’s worth.

  “Union Square Barnes and Noble?”

  “That’ll work.”

  Bo takes a left at the light. Lion feels dread mixed with jet lag mixed with what the fuck.

  THREE-INDIAN TUESDAY

  A walk might calm him down.

  Lion asks Bo to pull over, just a random block somewhere along East Seventeenth. The SUV glides to the curb with a floating sensation, almost like a boat docking. The door opens automatically the moment the rocking ceases, with reflexes too responsive to be a sign of life.

  Rather a sign of not-life.

  An auto-stair uncurls, a rail of nonslip synth-rubber in high-gloss black, and a low clunk as it locks into place.

  “Half hour?” asks Bo.

  “In front of the bookstore,” says Lion, pointing into the distance.

  His boots hit the stair, next the ground. The sure grip of asphalt below, gray skies threatening rain above.

  Chasing the calm, he tells himself.

  One step out of the vehicle and Lion starts to straighten up. Two steps and a sideways toss of his hand sends tobacco strands into a storm drain. Three steps and he’s fully ambulatory, catching sight of a sky crane on a distant roof, like a giant robot resting its head on storm clouds.

  Chasing the calm was the way he explained it, thinking of the Q&A session after that University of Chicago talk. Standing onstage with white-hot lights blinding him. All he could see was the edges of the room, and pin spots shining down on photographs of oversized floating heads. Twelve-foot-high images of Nobel-laureate alumni, their sentinel faces in black-and-white, hanging on all the walls. Michelson, with his brushfire mustache, for measuring the speed of light; Abrikosov, like a family doctor from the 1950s, for superconducting superfluids.

  Lion doesn’t remember the question, only his answer. Anxiety is the enemy of empathy. Fear makes us egocentric; egocentric makes us blind. An amygdala/prefrontal-cortex two-step that narrows the search parameters of the pattern recognition system. Pretty soon, as anxiety climbs too high, we lose our ability to find one another.

  Chasing the calm wasn’t his logos. The phrase first showed up at the early meet-ups, meant to describe an em-tracker’s tool kit, a way to handle the heightened emotions. Lion is working his way through the kit. He tried the deep breathing, and the Dune mantra; now he chases the calm with long strides.

  Halfway down the block, a pair of Uber autonomous taxis idle by the curb, the U in “Uber” pulsing pink from their side doors. Similar in color to the Red Ice icon, and meant as both a warning sign and a sign of life. Not your father’s sign, either. A new species of habit machine: awake and aware, but not quite conscious. So the hot-pink U is a new kind of signifier, and one of the conditions placed on the New York test fleet rollout.

  He read this somewhere, and recently.

  Another glance reveals their Lidar eyes have evolved again. Less insectoid, more gunship, but still seeing all. Nearly four hundred million data points a second, and definitely capturing the data points of his set jaw and tight grimace.

  The car sees emotions. Signals have been pre-programmed, down to the basement level, below Ekman’s micro-expressions, getting to the core biophysical: heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels.

  And all from pointing a laser at a tiny vein in the human forehead.

  The car sees emotions, yet feels nothing. So morality too has to be pre-scripted into the code. Aim for garbage cans and not pedestrians; aim for solitary pedestrians rather than large groups. Empathy programmer, he’s heard it called, someone’s job now.

  Lion walks on, a few blocks at a faster pace. Past a line of aluminum garbage cans and a series of well-kept brownstones, thinking about those Bolivian chemists and the last time he was in this area. They turned a top-flight walk-up into one of the better labs on the East Coast, slept in bunk beds, rarely slept. Lion counted stars in the sky one night, perched beside the toilet in their bathroom, high on something he couldn’t pronounce.

  Woke up there too. The stars turned out to be glow-in-the-dark paint splattered on ancient asbestos. The hangover turned out to be different than expected. Grapheme-colored synesthesia, heavy impact on vowels. The letter A a somber red. E a translucent lilac, clearly a happy letter. The catalyst a not fully described dopamine-acetylcholine interaction, or so the Bolivians had said.

  He takes a left at the light, now able to make out the outline of Union Square in the distance, and quickens his pace. A thwack of high-density plastic as a skater sails the curb in front of him; defens
ive maneuvering arcs him into a tour bus unloading Bulgarians in matching purple tracksuits.

  He crosses the street to avoid them, cutting into the square, passing a vendor selling vintage medical equipment on a folding table. An array of ivory-handled bone saws, cutting teeth made of silver, carefully laid out on a red velvet tablecloth.

  Reminds him of another of those early em-tracker meet-ups. Red velvet chairs in a Victorian tearoom, and when was that? Definitely after the Rod of Correction story in Jamaica, smoking early attempts at Ghost Trainwreck on the front steps of Tuff Gong, and just a few days before his talent emerged. Past those initial rounds of neuro-probing, the brain scans at UCLA, his chance to meet other em-trackers for the first time. All of them trying to figure out what the hell was happening, one of them coming up with the idea for the get-togethers.

  So more than a decade ago.

  A quick left around a leafy hedge, and he sees the bronze statue of Gandhi with walking stick, a garland of orchids draped around his neck.

  Someone says, “Get the Indian with the Indian.”

  Get the what?

  Neck cranes left, then right. Then he notices: a tall Sioux in beaded elk-skin posing in front of Gandhi, talking to a Bengali woman in a red silk sari shooting video with her phone.

  Data bit finds data bit. For the first time today, Lion cracks a smile.

  The woman notices his expression. “It’s three-Indian Tuesday,” she says.

  Another smile, seems to be clearing his head. Arctic with their research, Jenka with his notebook, that white-on-white room. Intentional intimidation meets intentional obfuscation, and one thing for sure: If he gets the chance, he’s going to punch Jenka in the mouth.

  Then he notices Gandhi again. Nonviolent salt maker in slowly oxidizing copper. So maybe he won’t punch Jenka.

  Nope.

  Right in his Communist Bloc kisser.

  Which is when he spots the Moleskines. Last thing he remembers is the Indians. Now he finds himself standing in front of a Moleskine notebook display. Clothbound volumes arranged in order of size. He looks around slowly. Hardbacks on bookshelves in every direction. People carrying lattes. Did he robo-walk into Barnes and Noble? No other explanation pops into his head, and another thing for sure: His habit machinery works just fine.