“How do you-”
“I know someone who was stationed there,” he said, anticipating my question, “a cousin who still lives in India. Your people – the ones still in the Congo – are causing my home country quite the headache.”
“Your home country?” I said, “I don’t hear any accent.”
“It’s my spiritual home,” he said in Bengali, “I feel more at home there then I do here.”
“Is there something you want?” I replied in Bengali.
He smiled and shook his head, saying in English, “nope. Just wanted to meet you in person. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.”
I stood and watched as he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
Word of our presence in the city must be spreading.
Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen, but I had figured it would happen sooner or later. Especially after we brought the rescued children to the hospital.
I turned and continued on through the throngs of people, finally seeing my destination getting closer. It was a small shop that sold art supplies. Even in these strange times, I still needed my distractions.
“What’s that one?” Laura asked.
“It’s the Grand Canal,” I said, “in China. I worked on it during the Sui dynasty around the time it was finished. These boats are the flotilla procession of Emporer Yang Di.”
Both of us were in my bedroom, which also functioned as my art room. Scattered over the floor were the art supplies I bought the night before – canvases, pencils of various sizes and colors, brushes with an assortment of bristle types, different colored oil paints, scissors, glue, paper clips, tape, twist ties, hunks of wood, and just about anything else we could think of. I took to my old distraction with a fervor I forgot I possessed, once again recreating images in my mind from different past lives.
I’d stayed up all night painting. Laura, trudging past my door at around four in the morning and, seeing me still up, came in and watched me work. She stayed quiet, slowly fiddling with some pieces of paper as she sat on my bed, watching with her drowsy gaze. I barely noticed her presence as I furiously painted. When she spoke, it dawned on me that this was probably the closest she could come to getting sleep.
“Those boats are insane,” Laura said in her usual monotone, getting off the bed and walking over to take a closer look.
“You have no idea,” I grunted, “I didn’t even have an idea when I was there. So many people died making that damn canal. Starvation, injury, disease. And then Yang Di came with hundreds of boats and thousands of servants to have extravagant parties as he sailed down what we had just made,” I shook my head, “they dumped more food off those boats than the workers had seen in…in decades. They spent more money on their party than the workers were paid for the entire project.”
Laura turned to me, eyes wide, “what did the workers do?”
“There were riots,” I said, “but it wasn’t enough to make a difference until that fat bastard failed to conquer the Goguryeo and squandered even more money working on the Great Wall.” I paused, “I was lucky to be spared that project.”
Laura kept staring at me in astonishment. “I wish I could see all the things you’ve seen.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you actually had,” I said, feeling somewhat defensive, “that experience at the wall in Mexico was…”
“Was nothing compared to things you’ve been through before,” Laura said.
“There’s nothing good about having lived through something like that,” I signaled to the picture, “it’s nothing but cruelty and misery. All throughout time it’s always been the same goddamn thing because it’s human nature.”
Laura looked back to the picture without saying anything.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s just…”
“I’m over it,” she said in her deadpan voice, making it difficult to know what she really felt.
“What did you make?” I said, giving her a smile.
“Just…nothing.”
“No, really,” I said, “I’m interested how your mind works, too.”
Laura shrugged and walked out to her room and retrieved what she had been working on. It was spherical, about two feet in diameter. Composed of pieces of paper twisted into helices and then looped inside one another, the entire superstructure was worked into a larger helix and then looped inside two others that were identical, making a triple interconnected ring that folded in on itself into a ball. Everything was painstakingly put together.
“Wow,” I said, “you did all that in,” I looked at the clock on my ARs, “holy shit, it’s been seven hours? Still, that’s pretty impressive.”
“It’s nothing,” she shrugged again, tossing it onto the bed.
“It looks like it took a lot of work,” I said, picking it up.
“I’ve made this one before,” she said, “when I was locked in my room.”
“Is it supposed to be anything?”
“No. I just think it looks kind of cool.”
“I like it,” I smiled.
“Want to trade?” she asked, signaling to my picture.
“Sure,” I said, “I’d like that.”
Laura seemed pleased with the trade. She gently took the picture off the easel and carried it across the hall into her room.
I studied the intricate swirling rings of paper, turning it about in my hands and pulling on it to unfurl the strands, letting go and seeing it regain its shape. There was something eerily familiar about it, yet I couldn’t put my mind on what it was. I took it over to the chest of drawers and set it on top before heading out into the hallway to go downstairs. Through Laura’s open door, I could see her holding my painting out in front of her, transfixed.
Chapter 11
“This looks expensive,” I said as I followed Akira into the basement, helping her carry another heavy box down the stairs.
“It was,” she said, something bordering on a grin coming across her face as we set the package amongst a few others on the floor.
It was nice to see something other than perpetual gloominess in her expression since our escape from Mexico. The transdermal implants in her head remained visible black lines beneath her short re-growth of hair. Her scars were healing slower than I expected and she was losing weight again after gaining some back since Mexico. Despite frequently wearing oversized clothing, it was easy to tell she was maybe ten pounds away from anorexia.
In just the five weeks since crossing the border, the house Akira bought was already filling with laboratory instruments that she and Doctor Taylor ordered. Three large freezers and two refrigerators – each set to a different temperature – stuck out into the already narrow walkway between the benches on either side of the basement. Part of one bench had been fashioned into a crude hood, blowing chemical fumes from a refluxing reaction apparatus through a vent on the roof. What had once been a laundry room connected to a small finished den was now packed with a centrifuge the size of a washing machine, a long table overflowing with instrumentation – PCR thermocyclers, UV-Vis and an IR spectrophotometers, two HPLCs, two GC mass spectrometers, a deli refrigerator with several sizes of nickel and ion-exchange columns, an isothermal titration calorimeter, a fluorimeter, a flow cytometer, water baths, micro-centrifuges, two dry warming chambers set to different temperatures, a powerful light microscope, and a quantum computing hub hanging in the back corner encased in a humming metal box and super-cooling tubes. The construction of a new room off the side had an NMR machine that still required assembly, all its components scattered about in boxes. The humming, buzzing, knocking, whirring, tapping, sloshing, and rumbling came from everywhere and reverberated through everything.
We had more room in the shanty at the Mexican border than in this cramped basement.
“I’ve used up probably eighty five percent of what was left over in the account,” Akira said, “I wish I could have spent more on a bigger house. The lab is spilling over onto the m
ain floor. I’ve got a bunch of reagents stored where dishes and food should be and a countertop taken up with more instruments.”
“But you’ve been able to get everything you needed?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, looking around the packed basement, “Doctor Taylor knew where to get good stuff for cheap. And she was able to haggle some deals for me.”
“So, she seems to be working out pretty well?” I asked as we both started up the stairs.
“Yeah,” Akira said, exhaling slowly.
I glanced over my shoulder. Without anything immediate she could work on it was as if the veneer of contentedness was being stripped away before my eyes.
“How have you been holding up?” I asked once we’d arrived upstairs.
“I’m good,” she said, forcing a smile.
“I mean, the border crossing was pretty hard on all of us…”
Her forced smile faded and she said, “It was…”
I didn’t bother pushing the subject any further. The image of her lying on the dirt floor in that shanty, the blood leaking out between her legs as she cried, ran through my head. Her pitiful pleas rang through my ears. And now she was here, trying to force another smile on her face. A face that had not gained back the full healthful beauty she had once possessed.
But it wasn’t just the crossing. She had stopped caring. She had stopped applying makeup. The hair growing back was perpetually unwashed, as were her clothes. And I couldn’t help but think of the story she had told about her childhood, and the despair in her voice when she said she wished she had never gone through with the transition.
“How is the search going?” I asked, trying to change the subject back to business, “for Jiang Wei’s reincarnation?”
Akira shook her head, “his reincarnation would still be an infant right now. I’ve tried looking for children born with anomalous blood, but hacking even a single hospital is no small feat. Hacking every hospital in the world is impossible.”
“We can assume that Benecorp will be looking for Jiang Wei’s reincarnation,” I said, “it might simplify things to just watch what moves they make.”
“If you say so…”
“You disagree?”
“I’m still wondering what the plan is,” she said, “I’m definitely on board for rescuing those children. But that’s just personal. Where do we go from there?”
“Yes, the plan,” I said, “I’m still…working out the kinks.”
“I assume it has to do with Benecorp,” she said.
“The way things are going,” I said, “Benecorp is in a position to be a key player in the foreseeable future.”
“That’s vague.”
I gave her a weak grin, “for now, getting people to believe in us is what’s important on that front. Spreading the chromosome is a good way to setup a larger network. A decentralized network.”
“Rescuing those children will be good public relations.”
“I’m…not just doing that for cynical reasons,” I said, “I don’t want to take a hardline ‘big picture’ approach to everything like Sachi.”
“I know,” she nodded slowly, “I didn’t think you were. But it will help, won’t it?”
“I’m hoping,” I said, “have…have you found anything out about that hostage we interrogated from the Anonymous Knights?”
Akira took a deep breath before saying, “I’ve been checking out the tech you took from him,” she started toward the computer tower in the dining room.
“Do you think we can trust the lead?” I asked, following behind her, “the guy was just a pawn, and we had him under duress. People will often say anything under those conditions.”
“That tech you took off him seems pretty legitimate,” Akira said, picking up the drive I’d taken from the Anonymous Knights prisoner, “it was encrypted, but the quantum computer was able to solve it pretty quick.”
“What’d you find?”
“Amongst other things, a map of the CSA.”
“The CSA? Why?”
“Yes,” she said, flipping the driver over in her hand, squinting at it, “it had some color pattern. There wasn’t a key for any of it, but I’m assuming it’s a schematic of the Anonymous Knights network in the region. I’d say it’s a pretty big base of operations for them.”
“That may be so,” I said, “but how do we know the information isn’t outdated? Or that it isn’t all bullshit? It might be something the prisoner himself was working on.”
“You said he told you that he was able to trace the communication to somewhere in southern Georgia,” she shrugged, plugging the drive into the tower, “It’s more than we had before. Look.”
“You think it’s worth checking out?” I asked, opening the file on the display in my bionic eye.
The map of the CSA opened up, different areas color coded, some overlapping. Nothing was labeled and no key was available.
“I don’t know what the plan is,” Akira said, “so I don’t know how the AKs fit into all this.”
“They’re using Shirou’s virus,” I said, focusing my attention back on her, “or at least a modified version of it. They’re trying to kill off every mesh network in the world and force people to use the old internet. And they were advertising Shift in Mexico. Shift that Benecorp slaves were producing. They have to fit into Benecorp’s plans somehow.”
“Working for them? Or against them?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I can’t say they’ve done anything to make them seem like allies of ours. I think if we-”
“Goddamit!” Akira shouted, falling to her knees on the floor.
“Huh?”
She started ripping chords out of the computer tower. I stood up, unsure of what to do. She tore the drive AK drive up, holding it up between her fingers and squinting.
“What’s going on?” I stood up.
“Get rid of this,” she said, tossing the drive to me as she stood up.
“I, uh, get rid of it where?” I asked.
Akira walked quickly to the kitchen, opening one of the drawers. I focused on my ARs, seeing a popup frozen on the display. It said virus blocked.
“Smash that drive and microwave it,” she said, coming back into the dining room with several screwdrivers and a power drill, “we’ve been breached.”
I dropped the drive onto the floor and slammed the heel of my shoe down onto it, feeling it smash beneath my foot. Akira furiously opened up the computer and started ripping components out. She set the hard drive down on the table and took the power drill to it. I trotted into the kitchen and threw the crushed drive in the microwave.
“All the tech on you, too,” she said, walking into the kitchen, pulling off her own tech.
I peeled the throat piece off, removed the earpieces and the AR contacts, and put them in the microwave along with Akira’s. I turned the microwave on and we both stood, watching the tiny polymer and metal pieces spark as it spun around inside.
“I guess that means we’ll be spending more money on tech,” I said in Japanese.
Akira remained silent for a minute, finally saying, “it was stupid of me to plug that drive in without scanning first. I’ve been so…fucking sloppy.” She shook her head, “this shouldn’t have happened.” She closed her eyes, “so stupid!”
I put my hand on her shoulder, but she pulled herself away. A tear streamed down her cheek as she turned and walked back into the dining room to continue dismantling the computer.
The self-driving truck reversed, pulling out of the driveway onto the road. Akira turned around in her driver-side seat to to examine Yukiko, running a hand over the toddler’s head, but her eyes focused on me. I knew what she wanted. She had been pestering me for the past several days. There was no way of avoiding it anymore. They both deserved to know what I intended to do.
“Do either of you…remember…what our actual goal is with all of this?” I asked.
Akira furrowed her brows just before turning back around in her seat.
<
br /> “Is this rhetorical?” Masaru asked, keeping his eyes fixed out the windshield.
I looked to Yukiko sitting in her car seat next to me. A new toy doll kept her sufficiently distracted. Her small hands, just now getting back to a normal amount of baby pudge for a two-year-old. She looked happy, but I knew she was traumatized from our experiences at the border. Every night she awoke screaming from nightmares. For a while, Akira and Masaru took turns going to comfort her like she was a newborn infant. Now they just let Yukiko sleep in their bed with them, reducing her nightmares to two or three times a week.
“Making the world a better place,” I said, turning my head to look out the window, “for the future.”
They both remained quiet.
“Is that…I mean, do you think that’s even possible?” I asked.
“Are you suggesting we give up?” Akira asked, “is that your big plan?”
“No,” I said, “but my plan requires we think about…that we take an objective assessment of things.”
They exchanged glances before Masaru said, “I don’t think we follow.”
“Okay,” I said, turning to look up front between them, “let’s say we succeed. We come up with some grand plan that eradicates all the brutal authoritarian governments and greedy corporations in the world. We invent some political-economic philosophy that convinces three quarters of the world or more that it’s the way to do things. How long do you think that’ll last?”
Masaru nodded slowly, “it’ll probably end up being corrupted or lost in some way.”
“Yeah…” I said, “and…what do you suppose is the common denominator every time some society gets corrupted and devolves into tyranny?”
“Power?”
“People,” I said, “it’s human nature itself.”
“Distributing the chromosome treatment is some way of changing human behavior?” Akira asked.
“In…in a way,” I said.
“You’re still dancing around some issue,” Masaru said, sounding uncharacteristically impatient, “what are you getting at with all this?”
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