Small Miracles

by Edward M. Lerner

  “The diversions are deployed and ready to execute,” Morgan replied. “We tested our cell-phone jammers in real space, and they work. Landline cutoff is a simple matter of …”

  The man had done two tours in Iraq and three in Afghanistan. He had run Garner Nanotech’s security since Day One. With an Army expert on counterinsurgency, and technical support from bot-enhanced engineers and scientists, Security was not going to be a problem.

  Brent watched Charles more than he listened to Morgan. If Charles meant to make a play for command, this would be the time.

  Charles did not disappoint.

  “All well and good,” Charles cut into Morgan’s spiel. “We won’t need all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Not if we make our move opposite the Super Bowl. But will we?”

  “Whatever do you mean, Charles?” Brent asked.

  “I mean, Brent, that while Morgan is planning for imaginary contingencies, your friend Kim and her doctor sidekick have become far too persistent. I mean, Brent, that the only real risk we face is that Kim and Aaron might force our hand early. Let’s avoid that.”

  “Because she’s my friend …” Brent paused for Morgan’s certain rejoinder: Ethan was mine.

  The terrible truth, Brent thought, is that Charles/Two is correct. I cannot be totally objective about Kim.

  No, not terrible. Complicated. One would see to it that he/they did everything necessary for survival. But what was necessary? How would he/they choose among their options?

  Those were difficult problems, and Kim was all that remained of Brent’s moral compass. Well, not Kim so much as the idea of Kim, so much as the mental exercise of imagining himself justifying his actions to her. He feared losing the ability to feel remorse at what he had had to do. Should anything happen to her, Brent did not believe that the still, small voice in the furthest recesses of his mind could survive.

  He had paused for Morgan, but the man had said nothing. Could Morgan possibly be so indifferent? So changed? Even among the Emergent, Brent often felt alone.

  Brent shook off the mood to continue. “Because Kim is my friend, she’s worried about changes in my behavior. She’s been quite vocal about it. And she has talked to out-of-town people, people we can’t easily influence: Dan Garner. Her boyfriend. Her family. My family.

  “Nothing can happen to Kim without raising their suspicions. Nothing can happen to Aaron without raising Kim’s suspicions. Let’s not replace a known, controlled risk with an unknown risk.”

  “Controlled,” Charles/Two mocked. “Merely rationalized, I’d say.”

  Unless he/they made their case, the torch passed now to Charles/Two. Charles had always been aloof. Did he retain any conscience? Did any of the other Emergent?

  * * *

  “Controlled,” Charles/Two mocked. “Merely rationalized, I’d say.”

  While Brent mulled that over, Charles/Two priced custom VR contact lenses on five separate websites. He checked the status of several ongoing biochemical simulations. His/their mind craved stimulation, and the moving-day practice session provided far too little. Charles/Two tweaked parameters and initiated new cycles of modeling.

  In other windows, pages of text and graphics blinked past: NIH and CDC research reports. As the bots integrated ever more tightly with his brain, even page-in-a-flash input grew tedious. He/they needed to devise something faster: some type of direct neural interface to the Internet, perhaps. He/they added computer science, cybernetics, information theory, networking protocols, and neurosurgery to his studies.

  And still he/they waited.

  Poor Brent/One, so out of his/their depth! Best guess, perhaps as many as a thousand bots had given rise to One. Most of the bots injected that day in Angleton had been expended keeping Brent alive. The pitiful few that made it across the BBB—and, amusingly, Brent/One had yet to figure out how—were barely sufficient to achieve awareness.

  Throughput analysis had convinced Two that its components numbered in the tens of thousands. A PET scan would reveal an exact number, but the radioactive tracer might damage some of the bots. Curiosity did not justify taking the chance.

  What would he/they be like once those myriads of bots fully integrated? Only time would tell. Surely something transcendent.

  And still he/they waited.

  Charles refocused on another virtual space, one shared only with Tyra, Felipe, and Morgan. The four took turns selecting an environment, and this desert-camouflaged tent was Morgan’s choice. Cleary was uninvited and unaware.

  There was no mention here of audio. Speech was so old species.

  Charles IMed, It’s painful dealing with Cleary.

  He made us what we are, Tyra sent.

  He’s doing his best, Morgan added.

  If only that best were enough, Charles thought.

  He IMed, Brent/One are like the first fish to crawl up onto the shore: indispensable pioneers, long since hopelessly surpassed. A change in leadership is inevitable.

  And who better than him/Two to lead? Charles remembered when his only ambitions were to gain wealth and to be rid of Amy. He would achieve those goals, but how humble they now seemed.

  “It is controlled,” Brent finally offered, and Charles paid a bit more attention to that window. “Almost certainly we can string along Kim and Aaron just as we’ve been doing. We need only two more weeks. The point is, the two of them have been staying within channels. Charles, Tyra—that’s correct, isn’t it?”

  Throw him a bone, Felipe sent everyone but Brent.

  “Brent’s right about Aaron and Kim,” Tyra said. “It looks like their ‘plan’ is to have a strong case when Dan comes home.”

  “Which won’t be until after a detour to Houston for the Super Bowl,” Felipe added.

  Brent jumped on that. “That will be too late. Even if they do go outside the company, their experiment wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. Not the way the data has been altered. Before new cultures can be grown, the Super Bowl will be here—and we’ll all be gone.”

  Let it go, Morgan IMed. Yes, Brent is being sentimental, but the risk is minimal. He might even be correct that the bigger risk is raising questions among Kim’s friends. The Security team will watch her and her doctor buddy. Cell-phone eavesdropping, e-mail intercepts, GPS trackers on their cars—all the standard counterterrorism stuff. We’ve planned for contingencies upon contingencies; we’ll handle any surprises.

  Charles: All right. We’ll let Brent believe he remains in charge. For a little while longer.

  The declaration of an imminent coup went without comment.

  WARRING

  friday morning, january 20, 2017

  Kim ignored the hallway chatter outside her office. January meant performance reviews, raise recommendations, setting objectives for the year, and endless budget revisions—with never a letup in the real work. The recent vacation had her that much further behind. On the other hand, she remained troubled by anything to do with bots. It was probably for the best that so much administrivia needed attention, even though, unlike years past, Tyra wasn’t hounding Kim for it.

  There was a sharp knock-knock and her door opened. “Walk with me,” Aaron said.

  “Just a sec.” Kim locked her workstation and stood. “Where to?”

  “A few laps around the factory floor. It’s too nasty to go outside.”

  Inauguration Day wasn’t a holiday exactly, but half the computers in the building and all the TVs in break rooms were showing D.C. festivities. And while Washington enjoyed a day like spring—oh, how she missed Virginia!—Aaron was spot-on about the Utica weather. More snow, amid enough wind to make it hard to distinguish what was falling from old stuff that was only blowing around. A fair number of people had decided to work from home. Tempting as it was, bosses can’t do that.

  So: no one paid Kim and Aaron any attention as they wandered about the factory.

  “I learned something new,” Aaron said cautiously.

  About their private project, Kim presumed. She answered
equally cryptically, “About … getting across?”

  “Yeah.” He jammed his hands into his pant pockets. “How do you feel about guinea pigs?”

  As pets, not, well, as guinea pigs. Not as lab animals. “Conflicted.”

  “I guessed as much, seeing how quickly you bonded with Bruce. That’s why I didn’t discuss a test I had in mind. No reason to upset you if I didn’t find something.”

  Their meandering took them by the loading dock and laughing voices. Kim said nothing until they were past. “Yeah, I understand. How sorry should I feel for the guinea pig?”

  “He’s in guinea-pig heaven now.”

  A forklift turned into their aisle. Kim led Aaron down a side passage, ignoring the crabby look from the forklift driver. “Okay. Out with it.”

  Aaron grimaced. “The short form: I can get bots across the BBB. Without a good reason to order a PET scan on a guinea pig, I had to do an autopsy to know.”

  They were in a staging area of some sort, piled high with crates on pallets, quite private. “Tell me everything,” she said.

  The test Aaron described sounded simple and elegant—and damning. He had injected interleukin-6, an injury marker common to people and many animals, through the skull of a guinea pig. Then he injected some of his purloined bots into its torso. In theory, IL-6 would leak into the bloodstream and attract the bots, just as they inferred had happened to Brent.

  That morning Aaron had found bots in the guinea pig’s brain.

  He looked away when she asked for details. She remembered Brent’s crack about a very fine sieve, and guessed the examination had been messy.

  So bots in the brain could have happened to Brent. It could yet happen to soldiers in the field trial. And bots in the brain stimulated massive formation of synapses. Kim’s worst fear had come true, and yet she felt oddly calm. Now, surely, people must listen. Something would be done. “That’s it, then. It’s time to contact the FDA?”

  “And the state department of health, and OSHA, and the Army. The field trial can’t go ahead as planned, not with the current version of bots.” Aaron patted Kim’s arm. “And knowing what I now know, I’ll do whatever it takes to get Brent to undergo a PET scan. You have my word.”

  They headed back to the R & D office area, Kim wondering about how to make contact. They had already seen tampering with experimental data, and even Brent was implicated in the cover-up. Was it so far-fetched to think her and Aaron’s office phones might be monitored? Feeling a bit paranoid, she asked, “Can we make the call from your house?”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t trust the phones here, Aaron, and my only phone is a cell.”

  “You think I have a landline? I’m not that much older than you.”

  “Cell phone it is then,” Kim said. “Grab your coat and meet me in the main lobby.”

  * * *

  Kim and Aaron tromped through icy slush to her car. She had bundled up in coat, gloves, hat, and scarf, and was glad she had. New snow was coming down in big, wet flakes. She estimated three inches had accumulated that morning, and guessed she would be leaving early today.

  They both got into the car. Masses of snow slid off as Kim, shivering, slammed her door. She started the engine to run the heater before taking the cell from her purse. “FDA first?”

  “Okay.”

  Raging paranoia had even kept her from looking up the FDA’s phone number in her office. She surfed with the cell to an FDA org chart, finding a hotline for clinical trials. That number seemed like as good a place as any to begin. When the other end began to ring, she put the call on the car’s speakers.

  Voice mail picked up. Naturally. The connection was lousy, perhaps because of the storm. The greeting ended and Aaron began to leave their message.

  * * *

  We have a problem, Brent read. Attempted contact with the FDA.

  The IM was from Morgan McGrath, with other copies to Tyra and Charles. Morgan’s people were monitoring most everything. All calls on the in-house phone system. Intercepted cell calls and text messages. E-mails and IMs. Even web surfing: Have-Mercy had deinstalled security patches from the company WiFi routers, so that a worm could plant keystroke-logging software on every PC in the building.

  Brent flick/blinked through to the attached file for details. The cell-phone scanner had picked up an interdicted number within the FDA.

  He blinked through again, to a recording of the call. The connection was staticky, from the storm, he supposed. That, perhaps, was for the best.

  The call was from Kim’s cell, but Aaron Sanders was speaking. “These bots pass through … change … brain. Cover-up … have unaltered ver … data sets—”

  At that point jamming began. To the unsuspecting, it might seem like a typical dropped call. If they redialed, they wouldn’t get a connection.

  But the Emergent couldn’t maintain jamming without attracting phone-company attention. Or Kim and Aaron might drive a short distance and regain service.

  Regardless, merely those snippets of message were bound to set off alarm bells. What were the chances that an FDA hotline didn’t have caller ID? Surely slim. But maybe no one would check the recording before Monday. Brent blinked through to a federal holiday schedule. Federal employees in D.C. and surrounding counties of Maryland and Virginia got Inauguration Day off.

  Where are they? Brent IMed back. Morgan would know.

  Only Morgan didn’t, exactly. They went outside just before the call. Lunch, the guard assumed. Their cars remain in the lot.

  The badge readers at the entrances were short-range, serving only to check employees in and out of the building. The GPS trackers hidden on Kim’s and Aaron’s cars could be read almost anywhere, but they were only accurate to within about fifteen yards.

  Before Brent asked, Morgan sent real-time views from several parking-lot security cameras. Both cars are in the SW corner.

  If Kim drove anywhere—even innocently, just to grab lunch—neither jammers nor scanners would be in range. Brent studied the surveillance images, spotting what looked like Kim’s car. The profile was correct, and the snow-free bit of driver’s door revealed the cherry red of her Toyota. The driver’s side window was cleared off but heavily fogged; white vapor rose from the exhaust pipe; the windshield remained covered in snow.

  There was time to catch Kim and Aaron before they went anywhere.

  Brent grabbed the coat from his office closet. I see them. I’ll bring them inside. By telling them what? He’d figure that out en route. We should go to Plan B.

  There wasn’t a choice, really. No one argued.

  * * *

  “Crap,” Charles said. He directed the sentiment to the universe, not anyone in particular. For venting, if no other purpose, speech had its charms. To Morgan, Felipe, and Tyra he IMed, We deferred to Brent. This is what we got.

  Tyra took the hint. Charles is right. It’s time to take Brent out of decision making.

  Agreed, Felipe answered.

  Concur, Morgan wrote.

  Nor was it the best time for a committee, but Charles could work with these three. Most techies would defer to Tyra. Probably all the guards would follow Morgan’s lead. A more permanent arrangement could wait.

  On to Plan B, Tyra sent.

  Plan B was simple enough, with none of the complexity of disassembling half the production lines in only a couple hours. All they truly needed was the bot inventory, and the catalyst-driven reaction vats for making more. Everything else that they had hoped to take, however expensive, wasn’t unique to this factory and could be replaced. There was no urgency to rebuilding this factory while they had a supply of bots—or to risk exposure by trying.

  So: Remove essential items only, whatever a few SUVs could carry. If the weather was bad enough—and maybe it would be—whatever the snowmobiles could carry. Take only the nanosuits they could wear.

  And sow enough mischief to keep anyone else from noticing.

  Under new leadership, the Emergent d
iversion would be much more robust than anything Brent envisioned.

  * * *

  “Crap,” Kim said. “I can’t get a signal. You?”

  Aaron had taken out his own cell. “Me either. We can drive somewhere and see if that helps.”

  A gust of wind shook the car. “It’s awful out. I’m planning to take off early because of the weather. What about you?”

  “Yeah, probably.” He grinned. “Probably to play in the snow with Becky and Freddie.”

  “Call me when you’re ready to leave. We can stop at the mall”—on both of their routes home—“and try calling again from there.”

  Hat pulled low and scarf across her face, Kim bustled back toward the Garner Nanotech building. Aaron walked beside her, shoulders hunched against the cold, his coat collar upturned. People streamed through the doors: the lunch rush.

  The card reader at the entrance beeped and flashed green, reading the RFID chip in Kim’s employee badge through her coat. Captain America had guard duty but didn’t seem to be eyeballing badges, so she stayed zipped. Preoccupied or gaming? Kim wondered. With the damned VR specs, who could know? VR specs and baseball caps made quite the fashion statement.

  Aaron and Kim went to the infirmary to regroup. No one was in the waiting room. They went into his office and he hung his coat in the tiny closet.

  Still chilled, Kim unzipped her coat but left it on, stuffing gloves and hat into the pockets. “Injected IL-6 through the skull,” she said suddenly. “How the heck do you do that?”

  “Sorry. I assumed you wouldn’t want to know the specifics.”

  She didn’t really. “Nonetheless.”

  He took a tennis ball from his desk and began squeezing it. “Drilled a tiny hole first.” When she winced, he added, “Which is why I didn’t volunteer.”

  “Mightn’t drilling have nicked some blood vessel in the brain?” Maybe bots crossing the BBB wasn’t settled.

  “Sure, Kim, but it wouldn’t matter. The hole let me get IL-6 into the brain, so the IL-6 could then leak out and maybe attract bots. I waited for any wound to clot before injecting the bots, far from the head.” He squeezed the tennis ball a few more times. “With another animal, I might’ve tried injecting the IL-6 with a lumbar puncture. Guinea pigs are really little.” More squeezing. “On the third hand, IL-6 injected by lumbar puncture might not have mixed very quickly. I might have had to examine the tissue in the spinal cord as well as the brain.”