Change Agent

by Daniel Suarez

  He tried to disregard the feeling of drowning, but being unable to draw breath every time the shark’s muscles clenched didn’t help.

  But he was locked in place. He couldn’t move.

  He opened his eyes to see in the video feed that his artificial shark was sweeping forward through a tubelike concrete tunnel. Up ahead, he could see a steel gate opening slowly with a grinding sound. There were barnacles and smaller fish all around—some of which fled at the looming terror of this six-meter fish.

  With each sweep of its tail, the artificial muscles squeezed the air out of Durand, causing him to cough as he sucked for oxygen—and then get a mouthful of salt water through the distorted rubber seals. Then the shark’s musculature would relax, and Durand would gulp air before the cycle began again.

  The shark plunged downward now. Durand tried to take in the underwater scene, but constriction crushed him.

  It was an advanced design, he did not doubt—no moving parts, just electroactive polymers contracting like muscle tissue under the guidance of a computer brain—but it was clear this machine wasn’t designed for a living passenger.

  The shark leveled out and began swimming across the murky, sandy seabed. The depth gauge in the corner of his video feed indicated that he was at ten meters depth almost exactly. But the seabed was dropping out beneath him.

  And yet everything seemed under control. Durand tried to calm his rising sense of claustrophobia. He looked down and could see the trash-strewn seabed of the Strait of Johor. There was the rusted shell of a car. A sunken fishing boat. Various steel barrels and barnacle-encrusted billboards.

  Not as many fish as he’d expected, though. Lots of jellyfish—some of them huge. The artificial shark didn’t seem to notice any but the largest of these. They were vast translucent organisms, some of them tens of meters long. They caught the sunlight from above as they floated, their gossamer-like stingers trailing. Durand had to admit they were beautiful, but he knew why they were proliferating. He’d read about acidification of the oceans—how the rising acidity harmed fish and the formation of shells, fostering what was called “jellification” of the seas; jellyfish thrived in the new environment, whereas more advanced life-forms—like fish—did not.

  Ahead he could see an endless field of jellyfish, dotting the depths like eerie spaceships.

  And then Durand saw something else—a torpedo-like craft surging along in front of a whirring screw. Even deep within the belly of the artificial shark, he could hear the shrill piercing of its sensors scanning as it passed below them, from left to right, heading along the coast. A black torpedo with the logo of the Singapore Customs department on its flank.

  The shark leaned to the left, and then dove down in a move that put Durand’s stomach in his throat. He resisted the urge to vomit—which he knew would probably cause him to suffocate. He couldn’t even raise his hand to his face. His robotic monster swam deeper and Durand could feel the pressure in his ears. But they moved clear of the customs drone.

  As he looked downward now, Durand saw they were much closer to the seabed, moving between piles of garbage and rocks. Here, too, he could see lidar, radar, and heat sensors of all types—hear their ear-drilling sonar beeps and frequency scanning. The place was a solid wall of underwater sensors.

  The anti-terror security measures were for good reason. Not everyone in the world was pleased about Singapore’s success, and not everyone wished it well.

  The shark undulated forward, sweeping its tail tirelessly as it headed off a cliff and out across the much deeper channel. A murky abyss yawed below—not more than sixty meters deep, he knew, but due to the low visibility it might as well have been a thousand.

  Then the hiss of a ship’s propeller and the drone of a big engine rose above all the other sounds. Durand turned right and left to see where it was coming from. It seemed almost upon them, but then it kept getting louder. Something truly huge was headed his way.

  When it had become almost deafening, he finally saw ahead a black wall moving into his view from the left—with a range of numbers printed on it that, having been in the navy, he knew well. They were depth measurements, in meters. The numbers went to fifteen—and that’s when he realized it was a monstrous container ship, with a draft in excess of forty-five feet.

  It was sliding in front of them at a distance of a hundred meters, a rolling wall of steel—followed, he well knew, by three or more propellers five meters in diameter, moving fast enough to kill with cavitations alone anything that came close to them.

  Durand turned his eyes as far left as they could go to see the approaching propellers—horrified that the shark wasn’t yet diving deep. It needed to dive! He struggled with rising panic, but could still not move. The damn shark was heading right toward the wall of the ship, and if it only dove just beneath it, the propellers might roll in right on top of them—cutting them to ribbons.

  Durand felt panic and started hyperventilating—but then the shark dove, and he mentally urged it to continue diving as the water pressure closed in on him, making it still harder to catch his breath between viselike constrictions of the shark’s musculature.

  And then Durand saw the whirling cavitation patterns of the quad screws rolling in above them—and not nearly far enough away.

  The impact of their pressure wave crushed the top of the shark down into him, squeezing every ounce of breath from Durand’s body as the shark was swept aside like a bathtub toy. He heard straining metamaterials creaking all around him as the shark continued to struggle, and finally rolled over.

  The video feed went black.

  The entire machine simply stopped functioning. Limp, it began to sink, still buffeted by the deafening roar of the propeller wash above.

  No!

  Durand strained against the impenetrable skin of the robotic monster and cursed himself for not asking for a diving knife. He might have been able to cut himself free. Instead, he watched in horror as the video feed stayed black. The shark kept rolling, rolling. The water pressure increased. Then the shark thumped onto the seabed.

  His ears felt the crushing depth, and he knew he was finished. It was all quiet now, with the ship’s roar receding fast, but the shark was still in utter darkness.

  And then he heard beeping and felt constrictions in several of the shark’s muscle groups. It was a pattern that a computerphile instinctively knew.

  A reboot.

  A terminal cursor appeared in his vision, and then computer scripts rushed past.

  The shark had crashed. That must have been it. Maybe it didn’t like the readings it was getting. Maybe something got a voltage spike. Whatever it was, the great artificial shark started to come back to life, and with relief Durand felt its crushing wave of muscle contractions come over him again. Squeezing the air out of him once more.

  He was never so happy to feel partially suffocated.

  • • •

  Nearly an hour later—about three times longer than he’d expected—the synthetic shark ceased its slow, upward decompression spirals and finally entered the mouth of the Sungai Kim inlet across the border in Malaysia. He could see a couple of customs sensors on the ocean floor, but nothing compared with the great array monitoring Singapore.

  Before long the false shark was swinging its tail against a current and into a smuggler’s cove. Durand heard the whining screws of smaller boats, but after his experience with the monstrous container ship, he wasn’t nearly as concerned. Instead, he was struggling with real suffocation. His rebreather mouthpiece had become partly dislodged from the air hose during one of the shark’s muscle contractions—and now every time he had to draw air, he barely got enough. He felt himself near to hypoxia and knew that if he passed out he’d die—since he wouldn’t be able to time or maximize his breaths to the shark’s movements.

  Durand closely watched his progress into the cove on the video monitor as t
he shark moved into shallower and shallower water—finally reaching a depth of barely ten meters. He could see pier piles ahead, and the shark moved directly into their barnacle-encrusted forest-like depths.

  And then suddenly the shark surged upward, finally relaxing its muscles as Durand heard a hissing sound—actuators releasing compressed air.

  In a few moments, the video feed revealed that he’d surfaced in another air lock, one not dissimilar to the air lock he’d left in Singapore. He realized that identical portals would suit a robotic shark. Robots liked predictable apertures. The shark bobbed in the sloshing waves of the small opening.

  Durand felt the shark get winched out of the water, and finally watched as workers with hard hats motioned for others to lower the shark onto a concrete floor.

  Only then did the shark’s mouth open, and Durand immediately used the freedom of movement to pull the rebreather mask off his face. He sucked for air as fast as he could, coughing out seawater.

  After his breathing calmed, he looked up to see Desai, now wearing a fedora, suit, and tie, and clutching a gold-handled cane.

  Desai smiled. “Your tattoos communicate that you are upset with me. But in my defense, if I had been honest about how unpleasant that journey would be, you might not have done it. And now look: you are in Johor Bahru, my friend.”

  Durand resisted the urge to punch Desai’s smiling face.

  Malaysian workers activated the platform inside the shark, causing Durand to emerge from the shark’s mouth as though it were regurgitating a surfboard.

  As soon as he was free, Durand shakily got to his feet. Desai helped hold him upright. Durand took a deep breath as he looked around. No police or armed men about. Desai had apparently not betrayed him.

  Durand finally nodded. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have gotten in there if I knew what was coming.”

  Desai slapped him on the back. “That’s the spirit! Now come on. Let’s get you out of those wet clothes. We have someone to see.”

  • • •

  An hour later Durand and Desai exited an electric van driven by one of Desai’s confederates. Durand wore a wide-brimmed bush hat, baggy cargo shorts, a plain button-down shirt, and sandals. He gazed at the cityscape around him.

  Durand had been to Johor Bahru several times. As far as he was concerned, it was a cheap shopping destination for Singaporeans—ringed with shopping malls, restaurants, low-cost entertainments. The last time he’d been here was to buy furniture for Mia’s bedroom.

  But he’d never wandered into the industrial backstreets—which was where they were now. He could see the additive printing houses, biomanufacturing plants, and photonic part suppliers that no one had ever heard of. Hundreds of migrant workers moved around him interacting with invisible AR objects and speaking to invisible people back home. He heard a smattering of Bengali, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Burmese. It was a pale imitation of Singapore’s synbio industry—but the spillover was still substantial.

  Desai led him down a narrow lane of smaller shops and teeming apartment blocks. They passed a row of laser vision-correction vending machines. Real-world signage was on display all around him, but also rogue light field projectors, creating ghostly “adparitions” of Asian models hawking beer and energy drinks, with captions in various languages scrolling in midair.

  Desai pushed a pair of mirror glasses into Durand’s hand. “The ad mix gets aggressive here in Johor.”

  Durand slipped on the mirror glasses and half the advertising disappeared. But one sign close at hand did not. It cast a glow over them both in the fading light of the humid evening. It was an old-fashioned, real-life neon sign buzzing the word “Twisted” into life letter by letter, with a double helix of DNA serving as a swizzle stick in a martini glass.

  Durand cast a doubtful look at Desai.

  “Never heard of it?”

  “No. And if it mattered, I would have.”

  Desai laughed. “Embryo labs aren’t the only things of interest in this world, Mr. Durand.”

  Durand followed Desai down a dark flight of stone steps.

  They entered through an ancient wooden door into a dimly lit vestibule—and were immediately deafened by cacophonous guitar and synthesis sounds. Durand winced at the random musical gibberish.

  Desai motioned and pulled Durand farther inside. After a few moments they passed through a sonic wall and immediately found themselves in comparative silence. They moved through a velvet curtain into a darkened, ornate bar buzzing with conversation and soft ambient music.

  “Apologies for the sonic assault at the entrance. Protein music discourages casual tourists. That sounded like tomato DNA actually . . .”

  Durand removed his mirror glasses and surveyed the place—an eighteenth-century Asian watering hole, with curtained booths and a crowded British-colonial-period bar, beveled mirrors and carved teak wood. In an earlier century it might have been an opium den. Original gas lamps barely illuminated the room—and its unusual clientele. Strangely attired patrons with anti-facial-recognition paint in stylish Día de los Muertos patterns, electronic tattoos of Chinese characters or animated cartoon characters glittering across bald scalps, motorized piercings (earlobe-mounted gear mechanisms seemed popular), ornate cosmetic surgical stitches, and other enhancements from devil horns to fangs filled the room.

  “And they said bio-punk was dead.”

  “Don’t mock what you don’t understand.”

  Durand’s gaze moved from person to person. They spanned all ages and races; male, female, and transgender. “Biohackers.”

  “I’m told they prefer the term extra-humanists.”

  “These aren’t geneditors, Rad. They’re tweakers. Surgical and chemical modification isn’t going to help me. What are we doing here?”

  “Patience.” Desai led him farther into the establishment, squeezing past the crowd at the bar. Durand edged past a buxom Caucasian woman in a corset and a Victorian hat—her skin glowed softly in the semidarkness as if she were a ghost. Durand shielded his eyes to see if she was an AR projection, but she remained.

  Desai whispered, “Bioluminescent elixirs—popular with party people. Wears off after a few hours. Many’s the office worker whose midnight proclivities are revealed when they arrive, still glowing, to the office the next morning.”

  The woman’s gaze followed Durand with obvious interest. It shocked him how unabashed she was, and what was stranger was how magnetic he felt. Confident as he strode through the crowd, which was something he’d never felt in crowds before.

  They moved through another sonic compartment of the open room, where the ambient music was replaced by thumping dance music and lights.

  Desai leaned back to speak as he continued to move through the dancers. “They augment themselves, you see. Imbibe chemicals, endure radical surgeries. All to extend their natural senses, abilities, and appearance—some of it only temporary. But all in an effort to make their physical form match the person they see in their mind’s eye.”

  Durand watched as he passed a booth where black-eyed young men speaking in Russian watched one of their number inject a companion in the eyeball. The liquid turned the man’s eye completely black in seconds.

  “Ocular reagent—gives a limited ability to see invisible spectrums of light. Ultraviolet. Temporary, of course. The body metabolizes it.”

  “And just think, all you have to do is inject yourself in the eye.”

  “The world has all types. I think it’s marvelous.” Desai brought them onward.

  “How’s this place stay open? I thought Malaysia was a conservative country.”

  “Malaysia has its own method of dealing with human nature. Almost nothing is allowed. But that’s what fines are for. None of this would be tolerated in Singapore, of course, but many of these people work for the biggest synbio firms in Singapore. ‘Straities,’ they’re called. Ther
e is money in this room, my friend.”

  Durand pushed past a young man with artificial horns protruding from his skull. Durand nodded to him as he edged by.

  Another man sitting in a booth wore a thin film display on his chest, revealing an ultrasound image of his heart beating and trachea swallowing as he downed his drink.

  Desai pointed. “Chip implanters, body modders, quantified-self addicts. You’ll find all types here. Perhaps some of them have edited somatic cells—blood, sperm, and so on. But nothing as ambitious as what you’ve experienced.”

  The vibe was clearly more relaxed than in Singapore. Durand had been aware of this at some level but had never seen it firsthand—and he found it fascinating. More than a few women—and also a few men—cast looks his way. He strode through and others made way for him. He was intimidating, and with shame he felt elated by it.

  Desai led Durand toward a roped entrance to a back room, guarded by a burly Chinese bouncer in a pin-striped suit and black derby that Durand guessed was loaded with sensor gear. Maybe even nonlethal weaponry. The huge man stared at Desai for a moment—getting a face-rec match apparently. His expression suddenly softened, no doubt after the CRM system told him to smile courteously and unhinge a velvet rope. “Mr. Desai. Good evening, sir.”

  Desai motioned. “This young man is with me, Ferar.”

  “Very good, sir. Will you be—”

  “No, we’ll be joining Dr. Frey this evening.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Durand squeezed past the bouncer, avoiding the man’s stare lest management get a face-rec match on him as well.

  Desai led the way down an aisle of Persian carpet, bordered by closed velvet curtains and richly carved mahogany dragons. They caught glimpses of smiling faces, the sharp scent of atomized narcotics, and laughter through narrow openings. Then Desai stopped and knocked with his cane on a wooden dragon head—the number “13” clutched in its fanged mouth.

  A man’s voice called from within. “What sort of idiot knocks on a curtain?”