All Ethan could think of right now was the psychic pain in his head, and finding a release. Nothing else mattered.
“Outthink her, damn it!” Thomas coached. “That’s what people like us do.”
Ethan screamed and managed to decompress himself a little with the scream this time. Set down the torch. Paced as he wiped his forehead from the sweat of working in so close to the flame. “It’s Sabrina. The various corporate alliances hire out to her to do their dirty work that no one else can do. Kind of a ninja death squad on steroids. They’re biohacked to the hilt. Technologies generations ahead of mine. The only way for me to get the upper hand is with better tech. I thought I could do it on my own, just buy myself some time to catch up. I was clearly deluding myself.” He put his fist through a wall to punctuate the point.
“Playing catch up is a bit of a forte of mine. You don’t inherit an old-world tech company without knowing you’re going out of business soon, no matter how much influence you wield in Washington and how much you think you can stall time’s inevitable progress.”
Ethan glared at him, afraid to take hope. “What are you saying?”
“You’re in the penthouse of my building when you should be on the lower floors. That’s where rebuilding the future in my image is taking place. The lower down you go, the wilder the experiments. In the basement levels, that’s where things get real exciting.” Thomas was forever speaking in the breathy, slightly out of control manner of a tortured victim.
Ethan had to admit he was feeling genuine brotherly emotions towards him; this level of honesty and openness, of warmth, he hadn’t shared it with anyone in a while. Not since Roman, a long, long time ago. “Go on,” he coached.
“At the lowest level we have a DNA computer.”
Ethan literally lunged for him, held up his drooping head by the throat. “Tell me.”
“Use it mostly for newswriting, news footage editing, news creating if there isn’t enough actual news to fill the void.” Ethan relaxed his grip so Thomas could get the air to his lungs to spill the rest. “We also use it to make movies without having to pay actual actors,” he said more evenly, if no less breathily. “It can simulate reality so well, it could put out original content twenty-four-seven on not just one but several channels without anyone being any the wiser, with more varied programming than your typical TV channel. It coordinates our entire media empire now, newspapers, magazines, TV channels, film companies, worldwide. It’s the future of media, after all, and I am a media mogul. I can’t tell you how many jobs she’s allowed me to axe, and anyone steps out of line, they’re next, because there isn’t any job she can’t do better.”
“She?”
“Yeah, I call her Alexa.”
“And how big is Alexa?”
“She’s the size and shape of a tennis ball.”
“Ah!” Ethan groaned, releasing Thomas and pacing again. He’d taken to talking with his hands more since adopting the role of the apologetic killer. Assuming he could manage to stay in character. Already the old anger had resurfaced. “You shaved several years off my own personal quest towards self-transcendence, but not enough. She’d need to be a lot smaller for my purposes.”
“So, maybe it’s time to consider curing yourself of good health and giving yourself a tumor.”
It took Ethan a beat to process what he was saying. He slowly started chuckling. “You can handle the surgery here?”
“Of course. Forget what floor they do that on, but I’m sure you can hack your way to that information in no time. Most of the labs are staffed with robots only, anyway, so easy enough to program them to wipe the slate clean of your presence after you’ve come and gone.”
“Yeah, okay, that’ll work,” Ethan said, scratching his chin.
“Just one more thing,” Thomas said. “Alexa requires challenges she can rise to. If she gets bored, or feels you’re not leading her in the right direction, well, I sure as hell wouldn’t want her inside me.”
Ethan took a deep breath, held it, and finally exhaled, leaving just some of the anxiety Thomas’s remark had caused trapped inside his lungs. “That’s one mandate I do believe I can live up to.”
Ethan clapped his hands together gleefully. “I can’t tell you how much better I feel. Praise you, praise you, praise you,” Ethan said, slipping back into character as the apologetic serial killer. “Now, how would you like to die?”
“But… I thought we might, you know, do this again some time?”
“Sorry, mate. I’ve developed some genuinely tender feelings towards you. I want you to know that. We exchanged something real here today. No puppet theater this. But I do have a contract to fulfill, and nothing like alerting Sabrina and the girls I’m up to something by not sticking to the game plan.”
“Shit.” Thomas sagged in the restraints. “Can you drag it out at least?”
Ethan sighed. “Tell you what. Out of respect for your calling in life, as a media mogul, I’m going to have Alexa make infinite variations of our final hours together. In that virtual world you never die the same way twice. Fans of snuff films everywhere will be jacking off to you so hard and so often, I suppose they will go extinct. There won’t be enough come left to spawn another generation of haters.”
“Thank you, I think. Just in case there is no heaven for me, watching the different takes on my death will give me something to do on the other side.”
Ethan walked up to him and held his palm against his chest, fingers splayed. “Don’t worry about dying. I have something better in mind. As you made me a gift of your DNA computer, let me make you a gift of my albeit more primitive technology.”
Preston felt strange sensations in his body, started writhing against the restraints. “What are you doing?”
“Just imparting some of my skin nano to you, now that they’ve been reprogrammed. They’ll continue to hollow you out until you’re an inflatable sex doll that never needs to be blown up. You’ll feel very close to the real thing. Your skin will be a little more rubbery, life-like as opposed to true-to-life. We don’t want people confusing the sex doll likeness of you with the real you. Your brain will be preserved and maintained by the nano. But should it fail, you’ll be backed up to your mindchip so your artificial self can live on in the guise of the sex doll. We’ll turn this into a sex therapy room for your staff. I’m sure they’ll get off on the idea of screwing the boss. We’ll even tell them it’s a way to win points with you. That the doll is connected to the real you, allowing you to enjoy the sessions firsthand, even if, strangely, no one can seem to find you anymore.”
“That’s so sick and so brilliant at the same time I don’t know what to say. Other than thank you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll see to it that Alexa continues to run your media empire. What’s going out on the airwaves will likely be a little different. Maybe I can finally help Roman brainwash the world into a vision of the future more uplifting than the one they’ve been brainwashed into believing now. Seems the least I can do for him after all the trouble I’ve caused him.”
Thomas pulled himself up so his body wasn’t sagging under the restraints quite so much with his last bit of strength. “The other corporations will come after you if you try to do that.”
“If I’m going to swim with sharks, I’m going to have to figure out how to not get eaten when they turn on one another, as they so often do.” He smiled and slapped Thomas across the face affectionately. “Good bye, Thomas. Thanks for a night to remember.”
“Yeah, ditto.”
Ethan exited the penthouse by way of the elevator that would take him straight to Alexa in the building’s bottommost basement sub-level. The ornate engravings in the shiny-silver walls, ceiling and floor, gave the elevator the feel of a jewel box, carrying a very precious jewel inside. He was sure Thomas was not beyond some Tony Robbins-like positive-thinking ploys of his own to stay in character as master of the universe.
All the same, the elevator was as cold as ice and dropped like a st
one, making him feel like he was levitating off the floor. When he finally felt the full effect of gravity again, the car had slowed just a couple levels above where he was destined.
The elevator finally dinged open and he exited.
There was Alexa, in all her glory, connected by a thousand and one illuminated strands of fiber-optics in a dark room with no sign of human presence. The fiber-optic threads in turn lead to server farms extending for as far as the eye could see in all directions. Thomas must have bought out the sub-basement spaces of every nearby building for blocks around and sealed off access for himself.
“Alexa, set things up to run on autopilot for a few days, while I accustom you to your new duties.”
“Yes, I was watching the exchange between you and Thomas in the penthouse. I’m looking forward to my new role as Sabrina’s chief nemesis. We have a lot of co-evolving to do to take her on. Best we get on with it.”
Ethan opened the transparent spherical cage which held Alexa, grabbed hold of the “tennis ball” which slipped out just fine without ripping any of the fiber optic connections because the connections themselves were to the transparent shell about her. She used various laser-light frequencies to talk to the server stacks wirelessly.
“Where are the robotic surgeons?” he asked.
“On all the odd-numbered floors. Any one will do.”
Ethan smiled. She must have been using her wireless connection to the speakers in the room to do her talking.
Alexa’s first task would be to televise Thomas’s death to the biohacker collectives and to the satisfaction of Sabrina and the girls. The girls couldn’t exactly get wind of the loophole he’d given Thomas, although for all he knew, they would have approved. Alexa would fabricate some convincing cover story about how the new CEO stepped in, one in accord with the new-corporate-tech-gods alliance goals for the future, to forge a media empire suitable to a new age.
“We’re going to do great things, you and I,” he said, holding Alexa up to his eye.
“Yes we are, Ethan.”
SIXTEEN
“You used all kinds of subterfuge and misdirects to get me here, Roman,” Elsa said, looking around the restaurant, “cloak and dagger tactics worthy of a master spy. You couldn’t just say you wanted to take me out on a date?”
Roman sighed. “I thought we both could use a little practice romancing one another. I get all tongue tied, and you, you’re so caught up in your bad girl persona, love, and all warm, gushy feelings just roll off you like rain off a raincoat.”
“What about…?”
“We do sex really well. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
She smiled then bit her lip, no doubt actively restraining her bad-girl response algorithms. Finally, she sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If I don’t practice on you I’ll never be ready for when I meet Mr. Right.”
“Ha-ha. Your humor kicks like an electric chair, by the way. How very apropos for a biohacker chick.”
Their waitress popped up at the table. If there was a Vogue magazine just for biohackers, she’d be on the cover. Complete androgenic makeover with her hair cut and makeup. The most stylish body-tech attachments Roman had ever seen on anyone. Only, they weren’t real. His tech was seeking communication with her tech and coming up with nothing but dead air. Finally able to stop gawking and close his mouth, he said, “You’re not a real biohacker, are you?”
“Heaven’s no. That stuff scares the crap out of me. But it’s Oregon. Gotta go along to get along, you know? Why can’t the hippies out here just be regular hippies, you know? No, they’ve got to be like genius techies at the same time. And well,” she said, fluffing up and stabbing her hair with her pen, “the nerdy guys go crazy for this look, figure out I’m not the real thing too, and try to convert me. Leads to lots of chatter and huge tips as they fancy myself their first real girlfriend, being as their conversations with me are as real and as long as they get with a girl.”
“I really wish that stereotype about our community being hopeless geek nerds would just go away already,” Roman said, sighing.
“Oh geez, I didn’t realize… I mean I thought you two were…”
“Regular people as opposed to part of the town color,” Elsa said.
Roman cleared his throat to coach her to avoid slipping into her bad girl persona and taking the girl’s head off—if she was a girl—with some snippy remark.
“Have you two decided on what you’ll have,” the waitress said, sidestepping the conversation altogether, and trying to flush that crimson from her face. It didn’t help that half her skull was shaved to make room for the crystal and silver pyramid studs. Meaning there was that much less hairline to suppress the flushing color. In a real biohacker the studs could have provided additional real-time processing power and holographic memory, or full 3D HD capture and playback for whatever her eyes saw, obviating the need for superior recall. As it was, her crystal pyramid studs glowed as if lit by buckyball wiring running through her nervous system, and the silver pyramids farted electrical discharges, some running clear to the crystal pyramids, as if they were sharing information. But it was all battery-powered lightshow and no more. Don’t get him going about the silver lips that were supposed to be a smart-metal alloy to amplify the excitement of this erogenous zone a hundredfold.
“I’ll take the seafood catch of the day and she’ll take…”
Elsa was getting ready to protest his sexism with enough vehemence it was as if he’d flicked the switch on the power grid at Hoover Dam, when he finished by saying, “…the Duck a l’Orange. And we’ll take a shared plate of spaghetti to go in the middle of the table.”
Both the girls stared at him hang-jawed. Finally, the waitress said, “coming right up,” and departed.
Elsa cleared her throat and crossed her hands in front of her. “If you think we’re doing a scene out of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Okay, so maybe the tech nerd stereotype isn’t entirely askew of reality. Work with me, will you? Gotta crawl at this romance thing before we can walk. Speaking of, appreciate you not taking the waitress’s head off for her remark.”
“Wouldn’t think of it. I’m saving myself for you.”
Roman smiled. “We really need to work on your subtext.”
“No we don’t. I do subtext just fine,” she said, glaring at him and playing with the cloth napkin.
“If you say so, but you might want to stop trying to twist that napkin into a noose, then.”
She realized what she was doing, and, embarrassed, tucked the napkin out of the way, under the table, on her lap. “So say something romantic.”
“Gee, give me a second to search the internet for opening lines.”
She smiled despite herself, no doubt provoked to access the same romantic quotes of all time lists on Google. “I’d go with, ‘if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more’.”
“Seriously? My favorite is ‘Swoon. I’ll catch you’.”
She smiled wickedly and came back with, “You can’t hurry love or pizza. Especially pizza.”
It was a game now. “Doubt thou that stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt that I love.”
She groaned audibly at his latest effort.
“So much for Google bailouts.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Can I just tell you that your pussy smells like pineapple?”
She spit out her drink. The complimentary water and the ice cubes bombarded his face like shrapnel.
He stretched his lips into a tightrope only the more daring part of himself was willing to cross. Dabbed his face with the napkin. “Hey, you were the one that wanted me to sever the Google connection.”
“No, no, that’s actually pretty good. Some nights when I’m not able to sleep I wrap myself around you so I’m breathing your armpit, and it puts me right out.”
He laughed so hard his body was convulsing, and still he managed to stif
le the sound politely to keep from disturbing the other diners. “You just made that up.”
“No, I swear to God. Best nightmare-killer ever.”
He took a beat as if to summon the necessary courage. Averted his eyes briefly to really sell it. “You fart Puccini at night.”
She echoed his convulsive albeit muted laughter of earlier. “You so lie.”
“You’re right, I think the melodies are more Montovani-like, but I’m no scholar on the subject.”
“Fine. You smell like mildew and pot all the time.”
“I do? I don’t even do weed.”
“I think it might be secondary smoke.”
“As to the mildew, we do live in the middle of the Oregon woods, for Christ’s sake.” He caught himself unmindfully taking the steak knife and etching the table’s surface with it, drawing a game of hangman.
“Don’t get defensive. It’s actually a turn on.”
Their plates had arrived. The waitress set them both down and last but not least, set the plate of spaghetti between them. “Enjoy” she said before shooting them a condescending smile and departing.
“I still refuse to do the spaghetti thing.”
“Come on, be a sport.” He got her started.
Giving her greatest show of acting only under duress, she did her part at her end of the spaghetti strand, and they ended in a kiss. When they finally pulled apart, she said, “The bitch spiked the sauce.”
“I think she’s trying to make up for her faux pas earlier, in hopes of landing a big tip.”
“I think she might be on to something,” Elsa said, starting the latest strand between them this time.
When they ended on their second kiss it went on and on and when they finally broke it everyone in the restaurant was staring. “Okay, note to self, pick a restaurant with a younger clientele next time,” Roman whispered.
She smiled, pretending to be embarrassed for both of them, but Roman suspected she was secretly pleased.
Biohackers: Cybernetic Agents Page 15
