The Primus Labyrinth

by Scott Overton

  “What does that mean?”

  “If it’s true . . . .” Bridges’ face turned serious. “It means that you can’t rely on the detached safety of virtual reality. As far as your brain is concerned, that existence is as real to you as this one—and the brain is all that really counts. For good or for bad, Mr. Hunter, you’ll have to accept that from the moment you give yourself over to the world of nano time, that world is your reality.”

  8

  The darkness was like a creature; he could hear it breathing, feel it circling him like a predator around its prey. Glowing eyes . . . . No, glowing readout lights. Except the lights were dying as the power failed

  A noise. At first a whisper, then a rustle, and finally the obscene chittering of thousands of crabs clambering over steel. Castanet clicks washed in waves over him . . . louder, penetrating, myriad cries of metal under pressure. Unbelievable pressure.

  Downslope lay another two thousand feet into the abyss, dark as a nightmare.

  Then something was different. Huge balls, their surfaces undulating like soap bubbles, appearing out of the twilight like specters and charging the sub with soggy impacts that shook his world. He could feel it shift, slide, twist and tip.

  And then began the long fall . . . .

  His head snapped up and a lance of fire shot through his brain.

  Excruciating. The base of his skull throbbed. He gave up any thought of moving and lay still, hoping the waves of pain would subside. Sure, he’d had a lot to drink the night before with some of the young bucks from the support staff—trying to unwind, he’d told himself—but he’d never had pain like this from a hangover: a stabbing pain from his spine. Was it some kind of whiplash from the beating his body had taken the day before? Except his body hadn’t really moved much at all. So they said.

  His head hurt far too much for thinking. He needed coffee and an aspirin the size of a golf ball. After nearly an hour of suffering, he pushed to his feet and went to find some relief.

  Bridges gave him a couple of extra-strength painkillers. He almost seemed to have had them ready. Then the two of them went together to the cafeteria where Gage and Tamiko were midway through their meal. Gage was finishing off ham and hash browns; Tamiko had opted for fruit and yogurt. The white-haired man looked tired. Up late working on the “kill” switch for the VR equipment, the pilot guessed. Good.

  Hunter needed protein and carbs. More proof that the pain in his head wasn’t from a hangover because his stomach was fine. He went for eggs, ham, and hash browns, toast with honey, and the largest mug of coffee he could find.

  Between mouthfuls, Hunter asked, “So what is there to keep a person busy until Primus is ready to go again?”

  “Now we analyze the data from the first run and decide where to send her next.” Tamiko looked concerned.

  Hunter stared at her. “Where to send her next? You mean you don’t know?”

  “We had several options in mind,” she replied defensively. “But I think those will be reevaluated, in light of the way things went yesterday.”

  She was proven right when Kierkegaard gathered them together a half-hour later. He looked as uncertain as Hunter had yet seen him.

  “We’ve got a tough decision to make,” Kierkegaard began. “A new course for the Primus. I don’t believe we should follow the original plan.” He looked at Hunter then raised his head to scan the group. “It was overly optimistic, it would seem.”

  “What was the course?” Hunter asked.

  Mallory started to reply, but Kierkegaard held up a hand to forestall her.

  “The key question, Mr. Hunter, is where are we most likely to find the bombs? Where would our adversaries place them?”

  “In the main organs . . . the brain . . . places where they’d cause the most damage.”

  “Exactly the conclusion we came to originally. Now I’m not so sure, and it’s not certain that we could do anything about it anyway.” His words left the occupants of the room in shock. He walked to the front of the briefing room, hands clasped behind his back. Then he turned to face them in a professorial stance, fingertips resting lightly on the polished table in front of him.

  “From all of the information I have been given, it is not the death of the patient, but the threat of her death that is important to the enemy. They are trying to pressure the government, so if she dies, their leverage is lost. A good thing for us because, judging from yesterday’s mission, it is evident that we can’t protect the patient’s vital organs at all.”

  Gage thrust forward against the table. “Are you saying the mission is a failure before we even start?”

  “No, Kenneth. But a close study of the mission data confirms what all of you saw—we cannot control Primus in the main bloodstream.” He shook his head slightly and continued. “We can’t navigate her with any reliability in a current as powerful as a main vein, let alone an artery, and that’s the only way for the Primus to travel to any of the major organs or to the brain itself. At least, the only practical way. To try to follow the lesser channels of anastomoses or even capillaries would be like crossing the United States on dirt roads. We simply don’t have the time.”

  “Anasto. . . ?”

  “Anastomoses, Mr. Hunter. They’re the very smallest of blood vessels. Blood has to be able to reach every cell in the body.”

  “OK, so there are a lot of them, but there has to be a way.”

  “I agree.” Gage slapped the tabletop with his hand. “It’s too early to talk about failure.”

  “I wasn’t saying that we’ve failed,” Kierkegaard protested. “I’m saying we’ve got a terribly difficult problem to overcome. Let’s leave that for the moment and look at the first part of the equation. If instead of the patient’s death, the enemy wants to exert pressure on the government, where would they locate the bombs?”

  “Damage to the critical organs or the brain is too likely to cause death,” Tamiko said. “They wouldn’t risk losing their trump card too soon.”

  Mallory sat forward with her hands clenched tightly together. “They’d choose places they could use for demonstration purposes first. Like the pinky finger. Then places where a blood clot would cause health problems but not immediate death. Maybe the kidneys?”

  Gage shook his head. “If they create a blood clot anywhere and it breaks loose and travels to the heart, lungs or brain, it’s game over anyway.”

  “All the more reason to place them in minor veins or arteries near the skin,” Tamiko countered. “They’re less likely to get loose and do serious damage ahead of schedule. Then you gradually trigger them in more and more dangerous locations to build up the pressure until the government gives in.”

  Kierkegaard nodded. “I agree. Which means that we may have a little more time before we must venture into the major blood vessels and deeper into the body. Some practice time, at least.”

  “Wait a minute, Devon.” Gage raised his voice. “Don’t we want to get to the most serious ones first? To take the patient out of danger as quickly as we possibly can?”

  “I agree with you in many ways, Kenneth, but for now we have no choice. We simply aren’t capable of going after those prime targets. The test run yesterday proved that. It may be that all we’ll be able to do is buy the government some time to solve the problem in another way.”

  Gage was struck dumb. Clearly it had never occurred to him that their creation could fail to perform as required, or that their leader could ever question it.

  Hunter looked around the room, then cleared his throat. “I may have an idea about that,” he said. “About Primus’ performance, I mean. I think you’re selling her short.”

  Kierkegaard was taken aback. “You of all people. What you went through yesterday . . . .”

  “Was a bitch, yes. What do you expect from a test run of brand new technology? In a place no one’s ever been before? Maybe you folks are used to working with computer models and scale tests in laboratory condit
ions; but in my world, you never expect a hundred percent out of the starting gate. If you run a shakedown cruise and don’t destroy the craft, screw the mission, or hurt anyone, you figure you’re ahead of the game. I think we did fine.”

  Gage gave him a look of gratitude and grudging respect, but the other faces showed only skepticism.

  “Are you sure that was only a painkiller you took, Hunter?” Tamiko asked.

  “I must admit that I’m confused, too,” Kierkegaard said.

  The pilot took a deep breath. It was pure arrogance for a sub jockey to give advice to a group with credentials like these.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t think it’s out of the question for Primus to navigate within the major arteries. It will require some modifications, that’s all. The ship is tough, and it has power. I still have to learn how far I can count on those things, and then I have to learn how to use them to full advantage. That might take some time.

  “I admit that the whole bloodstream environment threw me off my game. Way off. But . . . I think I can adapt to it. I’ve got to.” They didn’t interrupt. That was a good sign.

  “The way I see it, there are two main problems we have to solve: the speed of the current, and the same difficulty all explorers have had to face throughout history. Figuring out where they are on the map.”

  Tamiko looked annoyed. “I can name any blood vessel you want on an anatomical chart,” she said. “Our scans have even produced a three-dimensional model of the patient’s bloodstream. The trouble is, we have no way to track Primus in real time. It’s not powered by a radioactive particle like the movie submarine. That Michaels guy could tell exactly where the sub was at any moment. Tell the pilot every single turn to take. Untie my hands—give me a way to track the ship.”

  “I don’t have any ideas on that—I wish I did—but I’d bet a computer could make estimates that would be a big help. I’m talking about collating a number of factors. The color of the surrounding blood cells could tell us whether we’re in an artery or a vein. The size of the blood vessel would narrow the list more. An estimate of travel speed combined with the time spent in transit, could tell the distance traveled from the starting point. The number of possible locations that fit all of that data at any given moment would be limited. Maybe a large number, but not infinite.” He hesitated. “I don’t know about the capillaries and the . . . what were those others called?”

  “Anastomoses. They’re like a web between larger blood vessels.”

  Hunter nodded. “Well I don’t know if we could ever map those, but with most larger vessels we’d only be asking the computer to choose from among a limited number of options, weigh the percentages, and give us the most likely location. What’s the line the polling companies use? Accurate nineteen times out of twenty?”

  His audience didn't seem convinced, but they weren’t dismissing the idea out of hand.

  “What about the excessive speed?” Kierkegaard asked. “For most of the mission yesterday you were completely helpless.”

  “That was because I couldn’t see anything—the computer couldn’t keep up; it didn't seem to be able to stitch the images together quickly enough. If that’s true, we either have to speed up the processing . . . ” He waved to acknowledge Gage’s shaking head. “Or cut back on the resolution of the picture.”

  “What do you mean by cut back?” Gage asked.

  “We’ll have to decide what elements to sacrifice . . . color, contrast, sharpness . . . likely a combination of all of them. With less to process for each image, maybe the computer will be able to do the job. Your team tried to give us the sharpest picture possible. But the priorities have changed.”

  “I thought you considered the visuals shitty enough already,” Gage muttered.

  Hunter looked at the ceiling.

  “You’ve performed a miracle to give us any picture at all,” Hunter offered. “But if the data overwhelms the best computer we can get our hands on . . . then something’s got to go. I think we can live with a drop in resolution. It’s all I can suggest.” He crossed his arms and sat back.

  Kierkegaard looked thoughtful. “A worthwhile suggestion, Mr. Hunter, and a good example of why we need firsthand experience. But what about the rough ride? You were very convincing about that.”

  The pilot hesitated, forced to face a memory he’d rather forget. “The worst punishment was definitely the transit through the heart, like being stuck at the bottom of Niagara Falls—even astronauts don’t train for that kind of battering anymore. But with a VR kill switch I’ll be able to cut myself out and wait for calmer waters. In the rest of the blood stream, the ship was pointed backward with the engines at full thrust fighting the current. Naturally, that kicked up a huge amount of turbulence. If we bring the VR processing up to speed, and I don’t need to use the engines for braking . . . then I think I can handle the ride.”

  “Glad to hear it.” The Project director smiled with genuine relief. “And the so-called haptic feedback loop?”

  Hunter caught Gage’s scowl out of the corner of his eye. “Whatever that was,” he said simply, “it only happened in the worst of the turbulence. That’s what the kill switch is for.”

  Kierkegaard didn’t speak right away. Instead he took a hard look into the faces around him. What he saw there must have been satisfactory.

  “Very well. Dr. Gage, you and Mr. Hunter get together and decide which parameters of the VR visual feed can be reduced.

  "Dr. Tamiko, assemble your team and see if you can produce some software that will estimate the location of Primus in the blood stream. I realize that’s asking a lot in the time we have; but, if it helps, you can concentrate your data input on the blood vessels of the hand and the face first. Those will be our next destinations.

  “We’ve seen how important it is to know exactly what we’re dealing with, so we’ll have Primus pay a visit to the blood clot in the patient’s little finger, to see if there are any remnants left of the bomb that caused it. Then we will search the skin of the face. It’s my feeling that the enemy will strike there next, creating a demonstration that will be harder to ignore.

  “That is all. Good luck everyone.” He walked quickly from the room, as if someone important were expecting an immediate report. That was likely the truth.

  Before following Gage to his lab, Hunter fell back a few feet and signaled Truman Bridges to stop in an empty doorway.

  “When we were talking yesterday, you said you thought my mind made a closer link to the sub than expected. If you’re right, is that something I should encourage or discourage?”

  The doctor was surprised by the question. “I think that is up to you. Is it a help or a hindrance to you? I expect it will be both. You’ll have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. In that reality—the Primus reality—you’re pretty much on your own.”

  “The Primus reality. You’re right—it is like a whole other world. Like a labyrinth, and I’m the only one there.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “So if I wanted to encourage this link, what would I do?”

  “I suppose, as with most methods for improving concentration, relax as much as possible and avoid distractions. Try to make yourself receptive. That’s the essence of self-hypnosis, too. Have you ever tried that?”

  “No.” Hunter made a derisive noise.

  “Don’t sneer at something you don’t understand. I should think you’d be learning to have an open mind by now.”

  “And if I want to fight it, I . . . what? Tense up, and try to think of Tamiko in a bikini?”

  This time Bridges snorted. “Now you’re just plain dreaming. No, I . . . I’m not sure there is any way to deliberately fight it. Or deny it. How do you deny reality?"

  9

  Hunter had been nervous before his first mission into the bloodstream. This time he was afraid. A part of his soul quailed at the thought of putting his fragile body through the kind of punishment he
knew was waiting for him. That voice said what they were doing was an aberration, a violation of universal laws, and there would be a reckoning. He told that voice to go to hell.

  It didn’t listen to him.

  Gage and his team had needed another twenty-four hours to modify the virtual reality program. They’d decided to reduce the display’s color range all the way down to 256 colors and cut the number of pixels per centimeter by fifty percent. To compensate, they boosted the contrast.

  Gage was convinced the changes would degrade the image too much, so he rigged a simple control dial that gave Hunter three options: the original high resolution feed, the new very low resolution settings, and a middle ground in between. In theory, the three modes would cover everything from high-speed travel, to low-speed surveillance, to slow detail work. Hunter was gratified to see the kill switch he had requested on the right-hand controller, out of the way, but easily reachable by a twist of the thumb.

  The modifications to the computer navigation system required new software and a massive amount of new data. The programming team would need a string of eighteen-hour days to pull that together. Tamiko wasn’t speaking to him.

  Lorelei Mallory helped him into the VR suit.

  “Primus is obviously too small to carry much of a payload,” she said. “But we think it can carry enough plasmin to make a difference. As I said at the first briefing, these bombs release adenosine diphosphate—ADP—into the bloodstream, which draws platelets to the site and also converts a blood protein called fibrinogen into fibrin threads. Those knit together to make a kind of net that traps passing blood cells and platelets, and forms them into a giant mass.

  “There might also be another chemical released that suppresses the body’s natural anticoagulants to allow the mass to keep growing until it blocks the artery. We’re not sure. The blockage is what we call a thrombus—a blood clot. The plasmin that is carried by Primus is an enzyme that breaks down the fibrin threads. That makes the clot come apart and the debris is able to disperse in the bloodstream.