Collective Intelligence

by Harry Marku

so sure?” Ryan challenged. “CI has never done anything with grains.”

  “The amino acids we saw earlier were extracted from mitochondria... from the same grain cells.”

  “Oh.” Ryan's was confused. “That makes no sense. How did it get there?”

  “Simple metabolic uptake.”

  “How did it get into the plant?” Ryan said with an edge.

  “We believe it had been dispersed—“

  “Deliberately?”

  “Would that matter?” Robb deflected. Natalia took the cue and advanced a slide.

  “It could help determine the extent.” Ryan's voice was drowned by the overheating projector fan surging into overdrive. Before he could repeat himself he glanced up—and stared in disbelief. “It has the same chemical structure,” he breathed. “Mass Spec?”

  “Not tagged.”

  “It self-replicated...” The weight of the added evidence left Ryan reeling. “I can't believe this stuff was airborne,” he muttered. “If word gets out...”

  “It's not anymore.” Natalia surprised him.

  “It's not what?”

  “It's not airborne anymore.”

  “I'm not following you.” Ryan was confused.

  “We only recently characterized these signatures. These samples were collected fifteen years ago.” Dr. Dioumaiev reminded him. “They're not in today's aerosol soup.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “We know. We continuously conduct air sampling projects now.”

  “You do?” Ryan didn't mean to scoff.

  “Yes.” Natalia humored his skepticism. “We monitor for early warnings—countries that are developing nuclear, chemical or biological technologies.”

  “That will do.” Robb interjected.

  “Yes, Robb.” Natalia ceased to elucidate.

  “How did you find CI's?” Ryan was suspicious.

  “We re-analyzed samples from our database.”

  “How would you even know where to look?”

  Natalia hesitated and looked at Robb.

  He shook his head back and forth.

  “The assurance of your lack of involvement is on the line.” Ryan said testily.

  “We had a tip.” Robb said vaguely.

  Ryan leaned back in his chair and donned his best poker face. He would wait as long as it took to win this stare down. But he was mistaken. Natalia broke the silence almost immediately.

  “It has infected our domestic grains: wheat, barley, oats and corn.”

  “Excuse me,” Ryan asked. “What's in our food supply?”

  “The same genetic markers that were found in the aerosols. The ones that were similar to what Dr. Jankowiak called 'The Methuselah Project.'”

  “No!” Ryan denied the connection but his protest was weak. “How could that be?”

  “It's like I told you earlier,” Robb broke in. “Jankowiak was hacked by GenCorp. GenCorp was courting a manufacturing base in China.”

  “And you did nothing to stop it?”

  “It's profits, Ryan.”

  “Why did it stop?”

  “Good question.” Natalia broke in. “We don't know.”

  “How can that be a good question?” Ryan asked sharply but she misinterpreted his question.

  “The original chemical signature simply stopped appearing. We checked the archives from the next several years but it never appeared again. What we find now is a modified version. No isotopic tags, slightly different in structure, but it's in every commercial grain crop.”

  “Success or mistake?” Ryan looked at Robb. He found it hard to accept the happenstance.

  “At this point, I can't be sure.” Robb answered. “I'm leaning toward an 'act of ignorance,' though.”

  “Not orchestrated?” Ryan raised his eyebrows.

  “No,” Robb assured. “Just chemistry and maybe some evolution.”

  Ryan face lit up. “The signature disappeared—“

  “—About the same time CI extricated itself from GenCorp legal entanglements,” Robb affirmed. “Pawluk filled in the details.”

  Ryan nodded. That shed light on one mystery—whether Pawluk had had a hand in it. That long-sought answer suddenly seemed meaningless in the face of the more urgent question.

  “How long has our food supply been affected?” That was the next real question, one that CI might be able to sidestep, but not without carnage. He shook his head from side to side, slowly, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “For the past fifteen years.”

  Cryo-Stasis

  The first time Tammy fell asleep in the snow she was five years old—some ten years earlier—but she had always kept it a secret. Even at that tender age she sensed it was too strange to ever mention.

  It had been a cold December afternoon, after kindergarten, when she visited a friend for an hour or two until her Mom finished work and picked her up. It was the usual routine. The day at school had been tough. She'd been called out for accidentally kicking a boy and been forced to apologize. She never really understood why.

  After school, she just wanted to escape. She played with her friend in the backyard. A weekend blizzard had fashioned a fence-high snowbank just begging for their attention. They burrowed through its sculpted face and hollowed a chamber from its depths. Then, within the pristine while walls, protected from the wind and insulated from the biting cold, they played with their dolls: two Ice Queens with miniature dressed up Princesses, gossiping of romance, danger and magic until the diffuse winter daylight faded.

  Tammy had laid on her back on the fort's floor while she played, impervious to its chill, growing ever so warm and drowsy as the make-believe flowed and digressed. She had resisted the steady gathering of fatigue, but when her friend excused herself to go to the house—to “powder her nose” as she put it—Tammy found it difficult to keep her eyes open any longer. As she recalled, she succumbed almost instantly to a drugged sleep that she'd never before experienced.

  When her friend returned a few minutes later, dutifully bearing the news that it was time go indoors, Tammy barely heard the call. She struggled to reopen her eyes.

  Too slow in response, her friend had poked her head into the fort and found her still lying on the floor. Her friend had admonished. “You can't fall asleep in the snow. You'll die!” Words that made no sense... the fort was far too comfortable... all Tammy desired was to continuing napping.

  But her friend was persistent, shaking her repeatedly until Tammy roused and reluctantly abandoned the cozy underworld retreat for the blast furnace warmth of the house. Once inside, she lingered at the door, scheming of a way to return to the comfort of the snow palace.

  Her friend was glad to be inside. She hung her coat on a clothes-tree and bolted hungrily toward the kitchen. Tammy didn't want a snack. She wanted peace and solitude and rest. She remembered mouthing, “My Mom's here!” but before she could wander out the door her Mom knocked on the door.

  It was so happenstance that nothing was ever said. And so Tammy kept it hidden.

  But the second time it was not so easily overlooked.

  She was now fifteen years old, anxious, self-conscious and trembling with excitement to go to a party because there would be music and people and boys... she couldn't have imagined running into trouble so quickly.

  He hadn't even been all that cute. He was all of seventeen, a face full of zits, a bit too scrawny, a bit too over-the-top demanding but even so, he had been someone to talk to. When she bored of his company she excused herself to “powder her nose” but when she exited an upstairs bathroom she found him standing at the door, jealously waiting for her to return.

  It had given her the creeps.

  He suggested that she join him outside on a veranda but she knew that was where the couples went to be romantic. She deferred and he suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her.

  She gasped in anger, raised her knee into his groin but missed as he twisted away. He seemed to have anticipated her response. Before
she could pull away he slugged her hard on the chin. She felt her jaw separate below her ears and there was a sudden and intense sensation of ringing that accompanied the pain. Dazed, she stumbled down the stairs to a loud and obnoxious throng of teenagers and overbearing hip-hop music. Suddenly she had nothing in common with anyone. She had to get away.

  Outdoors it was freezing. She looked for her coat. It was in a coat closet at the entrance foyer but before she got there the boy cut her off. Tammy panicked and ran headlong out a patio door. She heard a collective murmur as the winter's chill swept inside and bit into those closest to the door.

  “Hey!” Voices shouted angrily but Tammy paid them no heed. She darted out onto an icy patio, nearly slipping and falling headlong into a concrete fence post. The cold bit through her clothes and seized her back. Her chest constricted and it was difficult to breathe.

  “Close the door, bitch!” Someone yelled and that was all she needed to turn and run again. She ran out of the yard and onto the sidewalk beneath the dimly lit streetlights. She thought she heard voices behind her and she ran for a full ten minutes, tears falling from her eyes and freezing into miniature ice balls on her cheeks. She ran towards the edge of town. She ran until she'd left the lights behind and her feet were numb and her breathing came in wracking gasps and the searing in her face and cheeks and lungs finally forced her legs to quit.

  She stopped at the edge of an open field, the city lights a short distance behind, a dim glow that reflected awkwardly off the meadow of snow, and she shivered. Her tears no longer fell. Nobody had followed her. She relaxed.

  In front of her, a deep snow bank lined the edge of a ditch. She instantly perceived what she had so long