Neural Web

by Dima Zales

  I convince Dr. Jarvis to stay in the surgery room as our representative. If it’s unusual, the hospital staff are too dazed to object.

  I keep myself busy as I wait for Joe to come out of surgery. Every thread that I spawn grabs a robot and tries to help someone still in trouble. I soon learn that most Human++ employees are doing the same thing I am, and by the time we run out of robots, plenty of people have recovered enough to help physically.

  In another half hour, the media recuperates too, and the news begins blaring all over the world.

  “We don’t know much about what just happened,” says a blond newscaster from the ancient TV in the dingy waiting room. “Here at the studio, we’re calling the event the Joining. Here are some theories about—”

  I ignore the rest, though it’s amusing to hear some of the crazy ideas, the least fantastic of which has something to do with alien visitors.

  Using AROS, I check better news sources on the web and find that not every reporter is as clueless as the blonde on TV. Some are covering what’s most important: that worldwide recovery is underway and people should pitch in. Some are providing useful instructions, while others are reflecting that this restoration project is as unprecedented as the Joining that precipitated it.

  I agree. It’s heartwarming to see people, sometimes via robots, come together to help each other literally get back on their feet.

  “You can see your cousin now,” the surgeon says. His face is haggard, and I’m amazed the man could perform something as complex as a surgery so soon after the Joining. “The procedure was a success.”

  Dr. Jarvis gives me the thumbs-up over the man’s shoulder, and I listen to the surgeon’s instructions on how, when, and where I’ll next see my cousin. Ada, Alan, and I make our way to the recovery room and watch as they wheel Joe in and hook him up to the monitoring equipment.

  “He should be up shortly,” Dr. Jarvis says, walking toward the door. “I’ll go make sure he has a competent nurse to look after him when I leave.”

  We patiently wait until Joe opens his eyes, which takes what feels like two hours. Finally, his eyes blink blue, and when he sees us all standing there, I see something new in his gaze. It’s not exactly warmth, but it’s as close as Joe’s probably capable of.

  “It wasn’t me in that room,” he telepathically tells me in Zik, the message heavy with dark emotions. “I couldn’t get control back. I tried.”

  “Don’t even think about that,” I say. “Masha almost made me kill my family, and I couldn’t wrest control back either. It wasn’t a matter of strength of will. The technology affected your brain directly.”

  “There are more people here to visit him,” a pretty nurse says as she enters. “You’ll have to give them space.”

  Reluctantly, Ada, Alan, and I turn toward the door, but when I see who the visitors are, I’m stunned.

  “Mom! Uncle Abe! And what is she doing here?” I point at Tatum.

  “Why wouldn’t Joe’s girlfriend visit him at the hospital?” Mom asks, her forehead furrowing.

  “She’s not his—” I recall the lie we told Mom earlier and cringe, adding, “Never mind.”

  Mom, Uncle Abe, and most surprisingly Tatum look at my cousin with worry.

  “He’s fine,” I reassure them. “He probably just needs lots of rest.”

  At the mention of “rest,” the full weight of the post-adrenaline slump hits me like a freight train, and I yawn, loudly.

  “You need rest as well,” Mom says, her eyes narrowing. “But once you’ve rested, we’re going to have words.”

  “Great,” I mumble under my breath as I make my way to my chosen hospital bed. “Now I won’t hear the end of it for at least a year.”

  “I’m going to take a quick nap too.” Ada follows me and gets into the bed next to mine. “You and I are going to spend a week in the Bedroom once I wake up.”

  “I’ll hold down the fort while the old people relax,” Alan says, his eyes crinkling with mirth. “But I do suggest you learn those sleep tricks Mitya’s researching after the dust settles.”

  “You’re not quitting sleep until you’re eighteen,” Ada says as she pulls the hospital blanket to her chin. “Not unless you conduct statistically sound research to prove the safety of said tricks.”

  “Which he will do by the end of the month, I bet.” I pull my own blanket up. It’s fuzzy and smells like antiseptic. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m long overdue to pass out.”

  Ada and Alan chuckle, but it sounds far, far away because true to my word, I instantly drift off to dreamless slumber.

  Epilogue

  “Happy birthday, Alan,” Uncle Abe announces in Zik and raises his shot glass.

  “Five years old.” Mom clinks her vodka glass with her brother’s. “He’s becoming such a charming young man.”

  I raise my own glass and look over the enormous picnic table in the middle of Central Park. Everyone from Human++ is in attendance, as well as their families, all of Alan’s online friends, and many acquaintances. Even the mayor is here with his whole retinue, and a couple of other politicians I hoped to avoid.

  “I propose a toast.” Gogi ceremoniously holds up a shot glass, the scar I gave him barely noticeable on his hand. “Once upon a time, in a village high up in the Georgian mountains, there lived a strange rat—”

  “I think this toast panders to you,” I privately tell Mr. Spock as I add more walnuts to the tiny tea saucer that serves as his plate. “I believe it traditionally involves an eagle.”

  “Eagles are scary.” He moves his whiskers worriedly back and forth.

  “Don’t worry, bud. I made sure there are no birds of prey here in the park. If one tried to get you, our security people would scare it off.”

  Mr. Spock resumes his meal, and I half listen to Gogi as I survey everyone around the table. My eyes settle on Kostya, my half-brother, who’s sitting with the family some eight feet away.

  After last year’s events, we eventually let Kostya return to Russia—but not before Joe got the whole story from him using a custom version of the Join app. As Joe’s investigation revealed, Kostya developed the Control app to get his sister out of the asylum, not for revenge against me.

  However, his research and development team did discover the GPS backdoor in a project for the Russian government—SVR connections Kostya met through his father. This backdoor work was separate at first from that of the Control app, but just when the GPS backdoor information was in its final stages, Masha took over everything. The handoff of the GPS backdoor to the SVR never happened. In hindsight, I guess the only positive development from that whole nightmare was that the SVR didn’t get a monopoly on such a powerful weapon.

  As to how Masha took over, from what Kostya could puzzle out, she seduced one of the scientists, an expert on Brainocyte IDs, and took over his mind as part of some bondage game. She used that opportunity to make the man do her bidding, and things went downhill from there.

  Kostya sees me gaze his way and salutes me with his shot glass, his face unreadable. He looks pretty good, given all he’s been through, but I know he spent most of the past year in therapy. And it’s no wonder. I was in his shoes for mere minutes, and I still have horrific flashbacks. To my relief, he’s never once raised the question of his sister’s fate with me. He must mourn her, despite all she’d done, and if I’m honest, even I sometimes wish Joe hadn’t had to kill her. She wasn’t evil; she suffered from a psychosis that she channeled into misguided revenge.

  The thought of my cousin makes me look across the table. Joe isn’t drinking his vodka—he just brings it to his lips for a moment, then places the shot glass back and gives Gogi a dirty look. Joe takes his job as Head of Security seriously. He refuses to get intoxicated on duty and doesn’t like Gogi to drink either, even though Gogi officially retired a few months ago. Joe looks from Gogi to me, and the dirty look turns into a frown. I guess he’s still mad about the choice of venue. As he put it, Central Park is a “security clu
sterfuck.”

  To Joe’s left, Tatum downs her shot and cringes like all the non-Russian guests. This is her first official family event, and so far, I’m impressed with her poise. That she didn’t press charges against us a year ago wasn’t so surprising; the Joining had that sort of effect on a lot of people. What was surprising (and maybe even shocking) is that she didn’t run away screaming after visiting Joe at the hospital after his surgery. Instead, she was there for him during his recovery, and now there’s some sort of strange relationship between the two. Einstein and I think she shows signs of Stockholm syndrome, but I don’t bring this up with my cousin. Joe seems happy in his own creepy way, and that’s good enough for me.

  “Is it time for gifts now?” Alan asks after everyone’s shot glass is finally on the table. “You know I don’t like suspense.”

  Everyone laughs, and Ada stands up and says, “May the gift giving begin.”

  There’s a quick tussle as to who goes first, and as people often do these days, we let Einstein decide. The AI creates a list, and I can’t help but notice that some of the honorary guests, mostly politicians, get to go first—very Machiavellian on Einstein’s part.

  “I’m happy to announce that we named a street after you,” the mayor tells Alan. “It’s in the south part of Queens. We named it Cohen Street.”

  Alan accepts the gift graciously, but I suspect he couldn’t care less about this honor. I’m impressed, however. Given that the mayor is letting us use this park as a birthday venue, I didn’t think he’d bother with more gifts. I make a mental note to support his campaign at reelection—probably the reason he’s here in the first place and why the gift he gave Alan is as much an honor to Ada and me.

  Politicians have a nuanced relationship with us. After Joining Day, most countries blamed Muhomor’s virus on each other, especially the United States and Russia. The reason was simple: Muhomor had created cyberweapons for both nations, making his work difficult to attribute to any one player. But when Human++ took responsibility for the Join app without taking responsibility for the virus that spread the app, the governments put two and two together. Instead of prosecuting us, they made the wise decision to seek our favor instead.

  “Wow, a trip on a spaceship?” Alan’s voice brims with excitement as he puts down the ancient-looking gizmo that JC just handed him. “You’re the best grandpa ever.”

  Ada and I exchange glances. We both know that if the kid finally called JC his grandpa, he must be beyond himself with joy.

  “It’s from the both of us.” JC clasps Mom’s hand.

  He isn’t fooling anyone. Mom wouldn’t dream of getting her grandson such a dangerous gift, and I marvel at the effort it must’ve taken JC to convince her to allow this. I also wonder if he overspent. Then I decide that as a major shareholder in Human++, he can afford it.

  After our admission that the Joining app is ours, some thought Human++ would finally suffer financial ruin. In contrast, even after funding restoration costs and compensating the victims and their families, our company is enjoying the largest profits since its inception. As tales of the Joining spread to the distant corners of the globe, Brainocyte adoption rates have soared beyond our wildest dreams. Most people who didn’t have them now do, even members of Real Humans Only. Not having Brainocytes today is what not having internet access was a few years ago; some people choose to avoid it, but they’re an ever-shrinking minority.

  “Thanks, Grandma,” Alan says earnestly and runs up to hug Mom.

  As usual, when those skinny arms wrap around her, Mom melts into a puddle of oxytocin. I love to see such a joyful expression on her face. It’s a pleasant change after all the months she grumbled at me about the risks I undertook on Joining Day. Even though she was part of the Joining, it provided no advantage at all when it came to quelling her ire afterward. I’d say it took at least a week for her to begin to forgive me for almost getting myself killed again, then another two weeks until she let go of the fact that I hadn’t told her a single thing before going to Ada and Alan’s rescue.

  “A house in the Hamptons?” Alan’s expression is unreadable when Muhomor finally presents his gift. “Thanks.”

  Ada and I pretend surprise, though in reality, we precleared Muhomor’s gift this year. This house was the only acceptable thing our hacker friend could come up with. I’m not sure about Alan, but I like the idea of a house with an ocean view. It reminds me of the Miami condo we stayed in while we were rebuilding the penthouse, which is only now beginning to feel like home again.

  The gift giving takes an hour. Once it’s done, the party changes from a Russian-style sit-at-the-table affair to an American cocktail party, with guests mingling at an open bar spanning the whole park—which is as expensive as it sounds.

  I waltz up to a large group of Alan’s online friends and smile at the two I recognize from last year, John the professor and Margret the computer scientist. Unsurprisingly, the Joining is the topic of this group’s conversation. It’s really all anyone has talked about for the past year.

  “Gaia allowed me to glimpse something the philosophers of old would’ve sold their souls for,” John says, his voice all but shaking with conviction. “I can’t believe your negativity.”

  Looking much calmer, Margret sips her martini and says, “I just fear what would’ve happened if Gaia had existed for a few seconds longer. I’m not saying we’d all be like the Borg, but we ought to think twice before—”

  I carefully make my escape before someone pulls me into this discussion. The nature of Gaia has been a topic of unending debate and obsession. People have compiled a whole database of wisdom Gaia reportedly conveyed during the Joining, and volumes have been written trying to analyze and make sense of it all.

  We in the Brainocytes Club decided to play it safe going forward. All future versions of the Join app have had that hivemind component removed. It’s impossible to grasp the motives of such a being as Gaia, yet all too easy to envision losing control. We used the same logic here as when we considered building an AI smarter than us. Mitya summarized our attitude well when he said, “I’d rather we ourselves become vast intelligences over time. Building one just because we can or by accident, as with Gaia, is too risky.”

  “Mr. Cohen,” says a male voice as I’m walking back to Alan. “If I could have a word.”

  It’s the mayor, so I smile and say, “Sir, it’s an honor. What would you like to talk about?”

  “The honor is mine,” he says pompously. “And this has nothing to do with my official role. I’m just here as a Brainocyte user—”

  “You want to know when you can try the Join app again?” I make a mental note to use Battle Mode the next time I want to avoid politicians.

  He looks scared for a second, and I wonder if he’s one of those crazy conspiracy theorists who thinks Human++ would bother reading the thoughts of Brainocyte users. But curiosity seems to win out, and he nods. “That’s exactly what I was going to ask.”

  “This stays between us,” I whisper. I lean so close I can smell the vodka on the guy’s breath. “I’m only telling you as a thank-you for letting us have the birthday here.”

  The man’s eyes widen—I have his complete attention.

  “The next update of AROS, the one that’s slated for next month, will contain the Join app.” I pull back and wink conspiratorially. “Of course, this version of the app will only allow you to send the Join request to the people in your contact list. Those people will have to accept the request before any Joining can begin.”

  “A bit like the videoconferencing?”

  “Right.” I sip my champagne. “This means that Joining Day cannot repeat itself again anytime soon—not unless someone has the whole world in their contact list.”

  I debate if I should tell him that we’re capping that list at a million people and decide against it.

  “So Joining Day definitely can’t recur?” His disappointment is obvious.

  “Not anytime soon.” I give him a
bland smile. “Even if you hypothetically had billions of friends, you’d have to convince them all to Join on the same day and time with you.”

  He nods. As a politician, he can appreciate the daunting nature of such a feat.

  “It’s not that we don’t want Joining Day to repeat, per se. We just want to design a way to prevent such an event from becoming another worldwide disaster. That will take time.”

  “How long?”

  “I can’t say for sure.” It’s too much for him to know the truth: that another Joining Day must wait until every human on Earth has a mind that’s mostly nonbiological. That would allow the Joining to happen in tandem with normal activity, as it now does for us Brainocyte Club members when we Join our small circle together.

  “That’s a shame,” he says. “I worry that the citizens of Earth will begin to forget Joining Day and drift back to their old ways.”

  I know exactly what he means. After Joining Day, hundreds of conflicts ended in cease-fires, even in the most troubled zones in the world. Multiple peace treaties were born, as well as aggressive global nuclear disarmament initiatives. The US president suggested international accords to protect the environment, and the Russian president backed him up. To Ada’s delight, many countries passed laws against capital punishment and took other steps showing that human life became more valued.

  “I’ve made a hobby of collecting the things people credit to Joining Day,” I tell the mayor. “And as an expert, I don’t think all the positive effects are only due to that Joining experience, no matter how transcendental it felt. Some of the good things we saw might simply be thanks to Brainocytes making people so much smarter. In any case, not everything resulting from Joining Day was rosy. So many people died, and then there are all the new religions that sprouted in the aftermath. Nor is it clear to me if the overhaul of some of the older religions is a good thing.”

  “You might be right,” the mayor says, his gaze growing distant for a second. Then he refocuses on me and says, “My people tell me you have the all-clear for the fireworks now. When will you start?”