Her full amber hair was down and lush and she wore a slip dress that was almost demure. Her only jewelry was a glistening pair of earrings that she had previously shown to Lauren. Ethan Han had given them to Emma on their second date—his first gift to her—and called them “antique jewelry.” They were made from 100MHz Pentium processors.
Emma stopped in the middle of the room and shook hands with the two couples before proceeding over and joining the group by the door. After greeting everyone, she melded herself into the crook of Ethan’s outstretched arm as though it were a cradle she had been waiting for her entire life.
Ethan’s stiff reticence softened in her presence. She had the right word to welcome each of the new guests. Everyone in the room soon realized that, even if they didn’t want to be, they were watching her every move.
Alan recognized that he wasn’t watching her because she was famous. He was watching her because of what made her famous.
The caterers knew what they were doing. Dinner was fine, the service unobtrusive. Hootie and the Blowfish gave way to local rock and roll, mostly the Subdudes and Big Head Todd. Raoul seemed relieved. No flesh was served. The grain was quinoa.
Over the course of the meal, the two couples who completed the guest list at the dinner party revealed themselves as BiModal’s major investors. Kenneth’s wife, Georgia, was the head of an investment capital consortium. The other couple, Pete and Pat, he of the band collar, she of the denim, was already into BiModal for three million but were seriously considering “coming on board in a big way.”
J.P., the only person at the table not part of a couple, was quiet except when asked by Ethan to address some point or another. His posture remained painfully erect through the whole meal. At Ethan’s urging, as the entrées were being cleared, he explained BiModal’s current financial situation.
“We’re burning about 225K a month right now. That’s above revenues, which are exceeding projections, up sixty percent over last year. The dilemma is that our current products can’t support the development and start-up costs for the products that will be coming on-line in the next eighteen to thirty-six months. But R&D costs for the new products, especially the artificial retina, have skyrocketed, killing our cash reserves. Raoul,” he nodded piously at Raoul, who smiled back over the rim of a wineglass, “has agreed to come on board to try and bring some of our efforts into a sharper focus. His experience as a specialist in cutting the fat out of development costs and reducing lead times for production start-up is just what we need. You all know his track record.” Morgan gazed quickly toward Ethan and Emma.
Lauren said, “What, may I ask, is an artificial retina?”
Ethan touched a napkin to his lips before he answered. “It’s an application of basic myoelectric sensing technology to human optics. Soon…we’ll be implanting a tiny electronic device behind the eye of individuals suffering from retinal blindness. The chip, in effect, takes the place of the defective retina—that is, it converts light signals into electrical impulses and sends them down the optic nerve. The brain will experience the signals as visual images.”
“You can really do that?” asked Diane.
“We’re close.” Han smiled. “J.P., is that it?”
J.P. seemed to puff up before he continued. “Almost. We’ve decided to try to keep BiModal privately held. Ethan finally agreed—after some rather heated philosophical arguments with me—that it is in the company’s best interests to try to avoid a public offering to finance the next stage of our growth. We’re hoping to generate some new investment enthusiasm tonight. Enough to carry us through release of the artificial retina. Revenues should be sufficient at that point…” he smiled at Emma, “to finance the newer products.”
Alan turned to Raoul and said, “Are you and Diane thinking of investing?”
“No, they’re looking for big money, bigger than us.”
Alan teased, “I thought you guys were rich.”
“As my wife tells me many times, Alan, ‘we may be rich, but we aren’t rich.”’
Before dessert was served, Ethan explained that he had prepared a demonstration that might provide a vision of the potential of BiModal’s “next stage of growth”—the one that would succeed the artificial retina to the market—and suggested that everyone move into the front room and have a seat.
Diane, remembering the sling chairs in that big room, responded immediately, interjecting that she was tired of sitting, and she thought she might just stand for a while.
The autumn light was soft, the sky lit by a three-quarter moon. Everyone but J.P., Diane, and Ethan sunk down into a butterfly chair. J.P. leaned on one of the large window ledges on the far side of the room. The evening’s focus was moving from finance to technology and Alan thought that J.P. assumed his secondary role reluctantly. From his perch he could watch everyone’s faces in profile, but the guests would need to turn to see him.
Ethan left the room for a moment. He returned down the hall pushing a tall industrial cart that was neatly organized with a minicomputer and a large color monitor. He spent a few moments checking power supplies and cables.
“Diane,” he said, “since you’re standing, how about you? Will you volunteer?”
“For what?”
Han held up a device that looked like a radio collar for a big dog. He said, “This is Natalie.” From the collar, two narrow hoses snaked off into an adjacent equipment room.
“Is this some kind of bondage thing?” Her voice tried to convey the question as a joke.
“Hardly.”
“Will it hurt?”
“No, not at all.”
She looked at Raoul for guidance. He was smiling knowingly. “Why not? I think you will have fun.”
Her eyes said, Then you do it. Her mouth said, “Oh sure, why not?”
Ethan carefully fit the collar high on Diane’s neck and tightened it into place so that it pressed firmly into the hollow at the back of her skull.
“Why do you call it ‘Natalie’?” Diane didn’t care. She was distracting herself.
“In homage to Natalie Wood. Her last movie was a science fiction film that predicted this technology.”
“If I’m remembering correctly, she died filming it, right?”
“Unrelated events, I assure you.”
“I’m so relieved.”
Ethan wasn’t interested in bantering with Diane. He turned his attention to the investors. “Basically, with the exception of the application program—the neural-signal-isolating software—which I consider my finest work to date, and the collar, which takes advantage of some recent quantum leaps in sensory dynamics technology, the equipment you see is off the shelf. High-end, mind you, and not just any shelf, but the computer hardware necessary here is not particularly sophisticated. The grandest requirements are for memory and processing power. Currently, we’re using in excess of fifty gigabytes of memory for ten minutes of signal and over three hundred megs of RAM to run the program. With code refinements, the RAM requirements should be cut significantly. We hope. Raoul, write that down, that’s your first job.”
Raoul laughed but didn’t reach for his pen.
“Natalie—the collar Diane is wearing—has sensors that are capable of picking up virtually all the neural signals that exist at the level of her brain stem. For those of you who have forgotten basic neuroanatomy, and I’ll assume that’s all of you—a brief lesson. By recording the electrical impulses in some discrete structures above the brain stem, we can reliably record virtually all sensory activity that takes place in the body from the face down, and some of the cranial nerve activity from the face and head as well. Motor and sensory signals from the trunk and the extremities travel down local nerve tracks and then up the spinal column to these structures above the brain stem. The cranial nerves that control the musculature in the face follow similar pathways but avoid the spinal column. We’re still having trouble debugging the code that deciphers some signals, especially the visual and auditory ones. But for t
he purpose of the demonstration you are about to witness, those channels are not operative.
“Natalie is possible today because of advances by others in superconducting materials and supermagnetic technology. She senses the neural information—really just electrical impulses—at the brain-stem level and transmits the data, via telemetry, to the processor.
“The software we’ve developed has the capacity to identify and separate the signals from literally thousands of discrete pathways, digitize them, and store them.”
Han sensed he was losing some of his audience to technobabble. He opened his arms to his guests. “Let me simplify. Imagine a trunk line for a large telecommunications network, all right? With thousands of optical fibers—nerve tracks—and millions of discrete signals—conversations.” He paused and waited for head nods. “These sensors are capable of remotely separating out the signals from thousands of fibers and independently isolating out, monitoring, and recording the individual conversations or data transmissions, all from a position that is external to that trunk line. Okay?”
Diane made a face that made everyone but Ethan laugh.
“Ready?”
“Said the spider to the fly?” she replied, nodding.
He hit a key and a computer-animated figure of a woman appeared on the large monitor. Without moving, Diane whispered to Alan, “Is that Natalie or is that me? Ooooh, I think that I like the way my butt looks in cyberspace.”
Ethan explained, “The animated figure you see has been preprogrammed into the software. She is obviously nowhere nearly as attractive as Diane but she will represent her for our purposes this evening. Eventually, soon actually, we expect the software to be capable of defining a reasonable facsimile of the individual who is wearing the collar.”
Alan thought that Ethan had been hoping for a more serious subject than Diane was proving to be. He wondered why Ethan had chosen Diane, who was always quick with a joke, and usually made no attempt to hide her irreverent side. Was Ethan that poor a judge of people?
“Diane, please take two steps forward and stop.”
Diane stepped, goose-stepped, actually. The animated figure immediately mimicked Diane’s motion.
“Raise your right arm.”
She did. Her graphic representation did, too.
“Open your hand and spread your fingers.”
Her obstinate side continuing to dominate, she first made a fist before opening her hand and spreading her fingers. But Diane, too, was growing transfixed watching the figure on the monitor do the exact same things she did.
“Lift your right leg.”
She did. “Raoul, are you paying attention to what’s going on here? Does this break any of our marital vows?”
Everyone laughed.
“Walk backward, please.”
“Is this really just some high-tech sobriety test, Ethan?”
“I think maybe that’s enough for now, Diane. Have a seat, please.”
“Sorry, Ethan, even in the interest of science, I am not going to let you record the act of my getting my butt back out of that chair in this skirt.”
Georgia, the venture capital specialist, said, “I’m beyond being simply impressed by what you’re showing us here, Ethan. The entire signal that is generating that image is coming from the collar she’s wearing? None of this is choreographed in advance? There’s no video feed or infrared or anything to supplement the data?”
“No, none. Our sensors are responsible for the entire data input. Give her an instruction, Georgia. Any motor movement at all.”
“Put your hands on your hips, please, Diane.”
Diane had stopped enjoying herself and was beginning to feel like a marionette. She cocked one hip and followed the woman’s instruction in an intentionally provocative and sultry way. Her animated double did exactly the same.
From across the room the image looked like the beginning of the trailer for an X-rated comic.
“Amazing,” agreed Pete, the one with the “serious money.”
Alan had already come to the conclusion that the purpose of the entire evening had been to impress this man and his wife. Technology was the featured attraction. Raoul was the extra added bonus. Emma was the surprise diva.
“How about,” Diane said, “we share the fun and let someone else have a try, Ethan. Raoul, honey, could you please help me get this thing off.”
Ethan jumped forward and turned to the man with the band collar. “Pete, would you like to have a go?”
The dinner party broke up abruptly a few minutes before ten, moments after the venture capitalist’s baby-sitter phoned Ethan’s flat with breathless news of projectile vomiting and other grave toddler distresses. Within a few minutes all of the guests were gathering their belongings and heading out the door.
The two money couples had arrived together in one car and they departed together. As the waiters were retrieving coats for the rest of the guests, Emma asked Lauren if she would mind walking her to her car. Although Boulder’s downtown was usually safe, Emma’s reluctance to walk alone to her car didn’t surprise Lauren. Even at work, Emma usually sought company for the brief stroll to the parking lot.
Lauren said, “Of course. I would have offered, but I assumed you’d be staying here tonight. I take it you’re not planning on—”
“No.” Emma smiled, shaking her head. “Ethan needs to meet with J.P. about something. My car’s in the parking structure on Spruce. Are you certain you don’t mind? I can ask Ethan to walk me but I know he won’t leave his computers alone until the caterers are packed up and gone.”
“No, I don’t mind at all. After that dessert, I’d enjoy a walk.”
Alan overheard the conversation. “Lauren, why don’t I go get our car? I’ll drive around and pick you up on the Eleventh Street side of the garage when you’re done walking with Emma?”
Lauren said that sounded fine to her. Ethan helped Emma into her coat, a simple gabardine trench. He flipped her hair out from under the collar and fingered it in a manner Lauren found affecting. The couple then held hands, left to right, right to left. Emma leaned in and they brushed lips quite gingerly, as though they were frightened of bruising each other. Emma’s lips parted slightly, Ethan’s didn’t. When the brief kiss ended, Emma smiled. Ethan didn’t.
“Talk to you soon,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Thanks for dinner. Your friends are nice.”
Boulder’s outdoor mall was almost deserted. Diane and Raoul walked east to their car, which they had left on Fifteenth. Alan kissed Emma’s cheek, said, “Good night,” and proceeded down to Thirteenth Street to find his car.
Lauren and Emma had the Mall to themselves for the next two blocks. The raised flower beds were bright with coleus and a light breeze rustled through the trees. The drying leaves crackling in the wind reminded Lauren of falling rain.
Finally, Emma said, “I can’t believe it but I think I’m smitten.”
Lauren said, “You really look smitten. I have to admit to some surprise. I’ve wondered whether you were even interested in men these last few weeks.”
“After the fiasco in Hollywood, with Pico, I told myself I wouldn’t get involved for a year. Oh well. You know, tonight, earlier, your question? Ethan didn’t invite me to stay over. It feels odd. I’m not sure I would have, yet, I mean sleep there. But it feels odd that he doesn’t want me to. Or at least that he hasn’t asked me to.”
“Do you know that he doesn’t want you to? Has he stayed at your place?”
They stopped at the light on Broadway. No cars were coming in either direction. They jaywalked.
“It hasn’t come up. I haven’t asked. So far, all we do is, well, we kiss—and that’s it. Which is fine, I’m not complaining.”
Lauren felt perplexed at the lack of joy in her friend’s voice.
“It’s only been a couple of weeks, Emma. Give him some time. It sounds kind of innocent, refreshing.” What she was thinking, and didn’t say, was that entering into a relations
hip with Emma Spire had to feel complicated to any man. A man eager to rush into romance with Emma would, in Lauren’s mind, be immediately suspect. Ethan’s reticence was at a much safer end of the spectrum.
“I know you’re right; I keep telling myself the same thing. But I don’t trust my own judgment, I’m so wary of people. Since my father died, it seems I’m constantly on the lookout for people who want a bite of me. I’m not prepared for Ethan’s caution. It’s like you and Alan. I’m not accustomed to people who treat me like I’m normal. Maybe Hollywood made me too paranoid.”
“Let’s be realistic, Emma, if anyone has reason to be cautious of people’s motives, it’s you.” Lauren found herself wondering if maybe what Ethan Han wanted from Emma Spire wasn’t the same thing she was expecting him to want from her. Lauren decided to try to feel her out about it.
“What did you think of the party?”
“It was fine. The people were nice. Weird food.”
“Did it feel kind of like a sales meeting to you? I didn’t get the impression that Ethan really cared much for anyone there but you.”
“It’s possible; he always seems to be thinking about his business. Other than all of you, I didn’t know anyone but J.P. and the tension between them is pretty apparent. But Ethan does like to show off his toys, so I’m not surprised at the demonstration.” She reached out and touched Lauren on the shoulder. “I really appreciate you coming to the party on such short notice. I’m not comfortable being places where I don’t know anyone anymore. I feel like such a spectacle. With you guys there, at least I could have a conversation with someone, pretend I’m normal.”
“You are normal, Emma. You’re—”
“No, I’m not normal, Lauren, not anymore. People examine me in ways they don’t examine you. People take liberties with me they wouldn’t consider taking with you. Lately, I feel like everyone is waiting for me to screw up. I don’t think people really want me to succeed anymore. Now it feels like they’re just waiting for me to fail.” She remembered something.
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