The Boost

by Stephen Baker

  “Precisely why I gave you instructions to keep them from there,” Vallinger says.

  “But we can and should assume that our operative on the ground, Mr. Espinoza, will eventually apprehend them and bring them back.”

  “I won’t hold my breath,” Vallinger says. He turns to Dahl and asks for a technical report on the value of the data on Ralf Alvare’s chip, and the prospects that it can be engineered, or hacked, to interfere with the upcoming national update, which is nine days away.

  Dahl happily proceeds to deliver a detailed report into the boosts of everyone sitting around the table. The report shows the diagram of the software, including the altered Gate 318, which is highlighted in blue. This change, his document asserts, will “modernize” the American base, bringing it into “harmony” with the world standards coming out of China. Speed will increase by a factor of three, and the increased “transparency” through 318 Blue will allow businesses to study and “optimize” the buying, working, and health patterns of the American population, leading to greater efficiency, energy savings, and economic growth. In addition, the update will provide a new service, already popular in China, called “Teamwork.” It will for the first time allow people not just to exchange messages with their friends, but also to share feelings and sensations. An army platoon leader, for example, will have an awareness of the location of his soldiers and an inkling of what they’re experiencing. “This is just a prototype,” Dahl says. “A fuller version should come in the next update. But this will be enough for early adapters to tinker around with it.” Once they get used to the software, according to the document, human teams should operate with the “synchronized efficiency of army ants.” These changes, the document states, have the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, and, naturally, the White House.

  “There’s one other feature on this chip,” he adds. “It’s something called R function, but I’m still looking for the details on it. I’ve sent messages to—”

  “You can leave that one alone,” Vallinger interrupts. “I’ve been briefed on it.”

  Smedley listens as Dahl details the threats to update. Global terrorist organizations are expected to launch network attacks in the coming week to disrupt the deployment and, perhaps, compromise the software. Domestic extremists, such as the Democracy Movement, are working to agitate against it, and they can expect strong support from Luddite sectors. To date, though, he says, the DM has struggled to get their message out. “Luckily,” Dahl says, engaging his voice for the first time, “they can’t get their message in the boost. And that’s the only place people go to for their news.”

  “The biggest danger,” he says, reverting to messaging, “is this.” Two photos pop up. He explains that Ralf Alvare and Suzy Claiborne, both employees of the Update Department, disappeared on Friday after an unauthorized transfer of the software update code. Claiborne vanished almost immediately, never even showing up for work following the transfer. Alvare was apprehended “by private security,” but later escaped from an Alexandria location “with the information apparently still on his chip, but…” He pauses, searching for the right words. “But not lodged internally.”

  “Lodged internally?” one of the military officers messages.

  “The chip wasn’t in his head.”

  “Your private security forces removed a man’s chip?” The officer looks alarmed.

  Vallinger, never comfortable with messaging, raises his voice. “We thought it the most prudent course—or at least Mr. Smedley did.”

  “Now that man, Alvare, has taken refuge in Juárez with his chip?” This information clearly wasn’t in the documents Vallinger’s team prepared for the Pentagon.

  “Right,” Vallinger says. “As of twelve minutes ago.”

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “She seems to be off the grid, probably in a safe house. But she has popped up a couple times in a New Jersey town, near New York,” Vallinger says. “I think we can locate her.”

  “She’s not the important one,” Dahl says. “From what we see, she was a DM plant. Her mission was to engage Alvare. He’s the one who can disrupt the whole program.”

  “Is he really so special?” Smedley asks.

  “A master hacker,” Dahl responds. “One time, at college, he hacked the chips so that the custodial staff at Carnegie Mellon spoke for two days in Urdu. Or maybe it was Pashto.” He stops briefly and consults his boost. “Actually, it was Tamil,” he says. “Funny the tricks the memory plays.… Another time,” he continues, “as a prank, he tweaked the spatial orientation of the University of Pittsburgh basketball team. In one game, they missed every shot, and were shut out, I think, 68-0.”

  “That’s impossible!” Vallinger says. He lived far into middle age with only his wild brain, and the idea that basketball players would rely on their boosts to such a degree disturbs him. “If they use their chips to calculate the arc on their shots, they deserve to lose, for chrissakes,” he says. He goes on to speculate that a reasonable coach would call a quick time-out and tell them to use their wet brains, “which run the body a whole lot better than the chip.”

  “True,” Dahl says. “And wet brains are also good for spatial orientation.” He gestures out the window toward the traffic below. “But turn off the boosts of these people and the controls on their cars, and see how many of them can find their way home.”

  While the discussion veers into a debate about the wet brain versus the dry, Smedley hunts in his boost for items on Ralf Alvare, pranks, Carnegie Mellon, even Tamil. He finds nothing. He scans the records of the Pitt Panther basketball team, and finds one loss to Villanova, 63-0, in the Sweet Sixteen round of the 2063 NCAA Tournament.

  “Not much about Alvare’s pranks on the network,” he says in a message, “except for that one basketball game.”

  “You won’t find any of that stuff in the boost,” Dahl responds. “They don’t want to give people ideas.”

  “Let’s get back to the matter at hand,” Vallinger says, once again with spoken words. “Could Alvare disrupt the update from Mexico, without a boost in his own head?”

  “If he has access to computing, he conceivably could. We have to assume they have advanced machinery in Juárez, but we don’t know what it is,” Dahl says.

  Vallinger nods grimly toward the military men at the table and sends them a private message. Minutes later, the military contingent departs, along with the legislative aide. This leaves Vallinger, Smedley, and Dahl around the large table.

  “There’s a bigger issue, and I think it concerns you,” Vallinger says, looking directly at Smedley. Then he nods grimly to Dahl, who begins another prepared presentation.

  “Word appears to be spreading quickly on certain networks about the nature of the coming update,” he says.

  “There’s always chatter about those things,” Smedley says. He leans back in his chair, yawning.

  “This isn’t exactly chatter,” Dahl says. “It includes information about the surveillance gate.”

  “There have been rumors about one coming forever,” Smedley says. “I’ve been hearing them for years.”

  “But these reports,” Dahl goes on, “mention an update worker who just had his boost removed.”

  Smedley twists in his chair. “My God,” he says. “Someone at that damn clinic must be talking. First they let him escape, with the boost, then they talk.” He pounds on the table, a bit too theatrically. “I’m finished with them.”

  “It’s not just that,” Dahl says, smiling as he comes in for the kill: “The reports mention that he’s in El Paso.”

  Vallinger leans across the table toward Smedley. “Who in the clinic would possibly know that?” he asks.

  Smedley looks at Vallinger’s hands, pressed hard against the table, and studies the liver spots. They remind him of maps of Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, each one dotted with thousands of lakes. He wishes he were swimming in one of them now, or maybe ice fishing. He wants
no part of this discussion. If only he were on the other side of the window, looking for a restaurant or walking back home. But he’s stuck in this office, and Vallinger is staring at him. The dark bags under his eyes seem to sag more than usual. He must be up for another face stretch soon.

  Smedley pushes himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. “Where are these rumors surfacing?” he finally asks. “I’m not seeing any of them in my circles.”

  “The network analysis shows that it broke Sunday evening on a sex site, Hard to Miss an Artemis. It’s been spreading, more or less virally, through the whole virtual sex world since then,” Dahl says.

  Silence. Smedley leans forward and places his elbows on the table, and then rests his chin in his hands, trying to affect an air of indignation mixed with concern. “Alvare’s talking,” he says.

  He doubts that Vallinger believes him. While Smedley’s ownership of virtual sex worlds, including Hard to Miss an Artemis, is obscured by a dense fabric of false names and meticulously encrypted software, his involvement in them is hardly a mystery. Only a few days ago he used the Alvare affair to drag in practically every Artemis in Washington—with the notable exception of Suzy Claiborne. All of them were offered employment in the very sex site in question.

  It was a day or two later that he found himself cavorting with a very pretty avatar in a virtual resort overlooking the Bosporus, and telling her that every act they were committing, along with all the other information coursing through their boosts, would soon be monitored through an open surveillance gate. That led him to tell her the story about the newly wild man in El Paso. He recounted it as a comedy, a computer science genius who from one day to the next finds himself reduced to the thinking apparatus of a caveman. It was so funny that he tried it out on two or three other women that very night. Smedley was aware even as he spoke that he shouldn’t be telling them so much. But they seemed so interested, and so warm, and they all vowed they wouldn’t tell. He wonders who those Artemis avatars might be in real life. They could be anyone, he realizes, man or woman. Practically the only people he can rule out are the wild—the Amish, the elderly holdouts, a smattering of rural Luddites, and Ralf Alvare himself.

  He lifts his head from his hands and sighs. “I guess it’s academic at this point, but Alvare himself must be the leak.”

  “On a virtual sex site, without a boost?” Vallinger dismisses the idea with a wave of a spotted hand.

  “Maybe Espinoza then,” Smedley says.

  Vallinger says nothing. He stares at Smedley, perhaps awaiting a confession, or at least a more plausible story. Smedley hears his labored breathing and finds himself wishing that the old man would simply keel over. He glances at Dahl, who is turned away from the uncomfortable scene and studying the portrait of the Renaissance prince.

  Vallinger breaks the silence by pounding the table with his right fist. For such a thin fist on a sturdy table it makes a resounding bang. “I think it was you,” he says, still breathing heavily. “I want to know what you’re going to do to make it right.”

  Smedley, feeling vanquished, answers meekly with a question: “What do you propose?”

  Seventeen

  3/7/72 7:36 p.m. Juárez Standard Time

  Could it get any worse than this? Ralf thinks about it. Pushed by his brother, he has crawled through a tunnel into what is reputedly the most dangerous city in America. He has no money, no Spanish, no map, and, most importantly, no boost. His girlfriend is at large somewhere in the same city. And his brother, who sits across the table from him in this grubby convenience store, is eagerly describing to him, in far more detail than Ralf would choose, the particulars of his sex life in virtual worlds. If Ralf had his boost, he would no doubt escape into a virtual world of his own. But today he’s stuck with his brother, in his wet brain and in Juárez.

  They sit on folding chairs at a metal table decorated with the ancient blue and white emblem for Carta Blanca beer. Simon is happily piling through a bag of Sabritas potato chips and taking regular sips from a jumbo bottle of lukewarm grapefruit soda.

  It was only about an hour ago, Ralf estimates, that they emerged from the sand trap tunnel onto the dirt roads of greater Juárez. Simon took one last look down the tunnel. If Espinoza was following them, he was far behind. The risk on the Mexican side came, he knew, came from drones. He grabbed Ralf by the hand and pulled him toward the road, saying only, “Hurry!” They trotted through a section that seemed almost rural. It was scattered with cinder block huts topped by corrugated plastic in orange or green. Women hunched over dry fields, planting. They called to their children, telling them not to run after the outsiders. Ralf and Simon moved east, Simon looking back every few steps. The sun set behind them.

  When they reached a crossroads, he grabbed Ralf by the elbow and tugged him to the right. They ducked into a small grocery store with a hand-painted sign over the door, Trastos. The woman behind the counter smiled and said, “¡Ay que sorpresa, Simon!”

  “They know you here?” Ralf asked, still panting.

  “A little bit.”

  “Y este debe ser tu hermanito,” the woman said, sizing up Ralf. “Son casi idénticos.”

  Simon nodded with a smile and translated for Ralf. “She can tell we’re brothers.”

  “Right,” Ralf said. “Listen, we should think about getting back. It’s late.”

  “I think we should probably spend the night here,” Simon said, looking uneasy.

  “Here?” Ralf said, pointing to the floor.

  “They know me. They have cots in the next room. Late as it is, I just don’t think it’s smart to crawl through that tunnel again. We really don’t know who might be waiting for us.”

  “Why can’t we just cross a bridge, like normal people?”

  “‘Normal people’ don’t cross bridges from Juárez into El Paso. It’s one of the most highly defended borders in the world.”

  “So are we going to cross through the tunnel tomorrow?”

  “We’ll talk about that.”

  “Let’s talk now.”

  The woman came to the table and plunked down two bottles of yellow soda pop and a big bag of potato chips.

  “Okay,” Simon said to his brother. “The people chasing you—or us—are over there, right?”

  Ralf nodded.

  “Now do you understand what this drama’s about?”

  “The open gate in the update,” Ralf said impatiently. He found Simon’s questions patronizing.

  “Do you have any thoughts about who arranged to have that gate left open?”

  “Industrialists, I guess,” Ralf said. “I don’t know.”

  “Powerful people, though. Right?”

  “Obviously.”

  “And who gets in the way of what they want? Who are their enemies?”

  Ralf fidgeted in his chair and looked toward the door. “I don’t know,” he said, anxious to end this cross-examination. “Who?”

  “That Asian guy who led you out of the clinic,” Simon said. “You heard some explosions, right? What were they from?”

  “Listen,” Ralf said. “Why don’t you just tell me what the hell you want to tell me. We don’t have to drag this on. You know stuff you’re not telling me.”

  “I don’t know who’s chasing you,” Simon said. “But I don’t think it makes sense to hurry back across the river until we have some sort of plan.”

  Ralf can tell that Simon was planning this excursion into Juárez, at least since the lunchtime meeting with the guy with the nose. When they reached Trastos, he saw that his brother just happened to have loads of Juárez currency in his pocket. The money looks like plastic poker chips, in green, red, and yellow, each one stamped with 1, 5, or 20 “dolares.” It’s odd, Ralf thinks, that while the U.S. capitulated twenty years ago, switching to Renminbi—while still calling them “dollars”—the Mexicans appear to be holding true to the greenback, albeit in plastic. Could it have something to do with drug revenues? Ralf noted that one of Simon’s doll
ars bought two grapefruit sodas and the large bag of chips. The woman gave Simon four pieces of candy for change. Simon distributed them to the barefooted children who stood by the table gawking at them. Either a Juárez dollar is worth a lot, Ralf thinks, or junk food is cheap in the land of the wild.

  Perhaps to distract Ralf from questions about returning to El Paso, Simon launches into a philosophical discussion about perception and reality, in traditional body life and virtual worlds. He tries to use his own sex life as an example, but Ralf refuses to engage. He stares at his brother in stony silence, not even breaking it to eat a potato chip.

  Simon evidently gets the message, because he is now retreating into the broader theme of the virtual. “You have to understand,” he says, “how primitive these virtual apps were when we were kids. They had this Swiss Alps app, and it just felt like you were climbing stairs and looking at a slide show. They had food apps, and I swear the only flavors they had were sweet, sour, and salty.”

  This breaks Ralf from his silence. “There were two problems,” he says. “First, they only had a basic read on the brain. So they couldn’t get very specific, distinguishing between different sweet sensations, like between vanilla and chocolate. The other problem was that people are different. You might experience a potato chip through a different combination of neural connections than I would. So each person had to have patience and train the app to deliver the experience like real life. Even now, the apps still rely on tricks. One of them might give you salty, but dresses it in the shape or texture of anchovies or olives, and you provide the customized detail with your own knowledge. A lot of it works through suggestion—teaching the brain what to expect.”

  “But what about sex when you haven’t had any?” Simon asks. “That was my problem.”