by V. J. Deanes
“Not going to happen. You need to come back and answer some tough questions,” Vaktol insisted.
XXXX
Kalan Mars waited anxiously, hoping he had made the best of two dubious choices. The car rolled slowly until it stopped. “I don’t know how much of a head start I have,” he said.
“I don’t know how much of a head start I have either,” Nisha replied.
“From what?”
“From killers. The same people that you are running from,” Nisha said candidly. “Get in.”
“What safe place are you going to strand me in this time?” Kalan asked warily.
“You presume that we will make it somewhere safe before being captured,” Nisha replied. “My pursuers are not far behind yours.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Kalan remarked. “I saw the destruction in the safe house.”
“The plan was to move you to one of the other colonies for protection,” Nisha explained. “One of our men showed up to move you. Three strangers soon followed. They were sent to capture you, then to kill me.”
“Kill you?” Kalan questioned.
“I believe it was personal. Someone doesn’t like me,” Nisha remarked. “Lucky for me you shot that guy at the edge of the cliff that overlooked the river. I’m sure that he would have killed me, if he had captured you first.”
“Who was the bald man that spoke to me in the safe house?”
“His name is Duncan,” Nisha replied. “He’s the chief scientist on the human enhancement project.”
“What are you doing?” Kalan asked, while Nisha typed frantically on her mobile phone. Nisha made the car swerve hard into a robot car drop off parking lot. “Change of plans. Need another car. Get out,” she said.
They left the silver car in a space surrounded by other cars. Kalan followed Nisha as she ran into the terminal. “Where are we going?”
“Level three, spot twenty four,” she replied.
Their red car was parked in the outer row of the parking garage. “Look down there,” Nisha said. A small pack of drones descended into the parking lot. They slowly scanned the cars looking for Kalan and Nisha.
“Who were you running from?” Nisha asked.
“You think they fell for it?” Kalan asked, looking back as the drones hovered and darted in the parking lot.
“We’ll be fine, for now.”
“Just for now?”
“Who were you running from?” Nisha asked again.
“I don’t know,” Kalan replied, secretly fuming that Devon had likely called Stone.
“This way,” Nisha said once the car stopped in an underground parking lot on the outskirts of the city. They scurried into a waiting elevator. Nisha placed her hand on a small glass panel beside the door in the middle of the tower. “You live here?” Kalan asked.
“Mostly,” she replied.
Kalan wandered around the space. “Nice view.”
“Settle in,” Nisha said. “Get yourself cleaned up. Have something to eat.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back this evening Nisha remarked. “With answers.”
XXXX
“Doctor Lin,” Vaktol called out.
Nisha had almost reached her laboratory when the Head of Security caught up to her.
“Doctor Lin. You need to answer some questions,” he said firmly as reached out to grip her arm. “Come with me.”
“Don’t touch me,” Nisha warned him. “By this time tomorrow you won’t even be able to find work cleaning toilets in the worst prison in a Red Zone.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said defiantly.
“What’s the protocol on meeting Class One patients in the field?” she demanded.
Vaktol was silent.
“Are you supposed to provoke them with drone surveillance?”
Vaktol looked down at the floor. “You didn’t say anything about...”
“The patient was already distressed when I found him. He was being chased.”
“Does Duncan know?” Vaktol asked.
“Where is Doctor Wood?”
Vaktol said nothing.
“I can make this go away for you if Doctor Wood goes into isolation chamber number three. Now.”
Vaktol thought carefully about his options as Nisha walked away.
XXXX
Nisha read the preliminary findings. “Dendrotoxins?”
“Venom,” the medic replied. “Your assistant experienced a breakdown of blood maemoglobin accompanied by cell destruction.”
“What type of venom?”
“We don’t have an exact match,” the Medic replied.
What about lesions?”
“She had small bite marks on her ankles. We also found two narrow, shallow punctures on her left wrist.”
“It must have been a powerful poison,” Nisha remarked.
“She died within twenty minutes of coming into contact with whatever delivered the venom,” the Medic confirmed.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. Duncan took care of it,” the medic answered. “He handled the authorities. My orders are to keep this quiet.”
“So, it’s all hushed up?”
“I am sure that Duncan will brief the staff once he has all of the facts.”
“You are probably right,” Nisha said quietly, hiding her suspicion.
“I know this must be hard for you,” said the medic. “Let me know if there is anything that I can do to help.”
“That is a very kind offer.” Nisha stood up to leave. “There is one small favor that you could do for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Send me the chemical analysis of the poison.”
XXXX
“Good afternoon Shannon,” Nisha said into the microphone.
Shannon looked around the small room. She stared at the small lens mounted high in one corner of the ceiling. “Nisha?”
“This examination will not take very long,” Nisha said from the safety of the control room. She set the atmosphere in the chamber to simulate high altitude conditions. “You can leave your lab coat on the hook behind the door. Have a seat in the chair.”
“I don’t understand why this is necessary,” Shannon remarked belligerently, not realizing that she had already passed through a low radiation body scanner.
Nisha knew that time was working against her. “Lie back. Rest your feet on the foot pads. Then place your left hand on the screen.” Shannon reluctantly followed instructions, unsure of what would happen if she did not. A small roller slowly moved a dry cotton swab down one arm to take the skin sample. A small chamber attached to the roller began to grow the culture. Nisha separated the data streams. One contained the results from the swab for infectious bacteria. The other streams contained data that were more revealing.
The metal surfaces on the patient’s chair in isolation chamber number three enabled electro-interstitial scanning. The soft surfaces of the chair conducted diagnostic thermography. Tiny cameras embedded in the chair and throughout the room captured the images to perform three dimensional optical metrology. This isolation chamber was designed to reveal precisely what a patient was made of. “Are you feeling drowsy?” Nisha asked.
“How much longer?” Shannon asked in an alert, perturbed tone, unaffected by the lower oxygen concentration. “You don’t seem to be in any rush.
“I didn’t know that you had permission to go inside the hatchery,” Nisha said casually.
“I don’t have to discuss what permissions that I have and don’t have with you,” Shannon replied angrily.
“Looks like Doctor Carson can open doors for you.” Nisha remarked. “When he is appropriately motivated to do so.” She pressed a button that applied restraints to Shannon. “No need to squirm.”
“How much longer?” Shannon insisted as she reflexively gripped hard into the soft foam armrests.
“Another minute,” Nisha replied, to buy enough time for scans of Shannon’s phy
siology to finish.
Duncan found Nisha in her laboratory shortly after Shannon had complained to him about the examination. “I’ve been looking for you,” he remarked.
“What really happened to Paula Slate?” Nisha asked.
“I don’t know,” Duncan replied.
“Will there be an investigation?”
“No decision yet. It’s up to the local coroner’s office.”
“Is that the best we can do for her?” Nisha asked, knowing that the probability of outside authorities scouring the premises was low.
“They understand what is required. Leave it to the professionals.”
“What about her family?”
“Next of kin will be notified by the coroner’s office. I am as shocked and saddened as you are,” Duncan remarked. “I tried to speak with you sooner, but you weren’t here.”
“I got a tip about where to find Kalan Mars.”
“Where is he now?” Duncan asked.
“This isn’t the time,” Nisha replied.
Duncan was bothered by her unwillingness to share important information, but hid his frustration well. “Shannon called me. Something about an examination,” he remarked.
“She was seen in close proximity to Paula just before Paula died. Checking for infectious bacteria seemed appropriate.”
“Even without a lock down?” Duncan asked.
“Even without a lock down.”
“What did you find?”
“Early results show that she’s clear,” Nisha replied. “The rest of the cultures won’t be ready until later. The early test results are posted. You can review them if you wish.”
“I need to speak with you about ...”
“It has been a long day,” Nisha interrupted, in a voice that gave a hint of the distress she felt.
Duncan watched apprehensively as she walked away, wondering how much Nisha really knew about the demise of Paula Slate.
Chapter 14
Nisha returned to her apartment that evening to find Kalan sound asleep. She worked quietly at the computer in her small office. Chemical analysis from a small piece of the chair that Shannon clung to during the examination had just become available. Nisha ran a program that compared those findings to the chemistry of the compound that killed Paula. She stared at the screen pondering how they could possibly be identical. Cinematic renderings from the scans of Shannon’s physiology provided the answer.
Nisha was not accustomed to fear, but what she saw made her afraid. Shannon Wood was not human. Her alluringly feminine exterior was a masterful deception. It concealed a robotic interior comprised of miniature machines and computers intertwined in a mechatronic musculature. Yet, she had a human’s body temperature. The appearance of breathing. Sweat.
The neural network that controlled Shannon’s behavior operated on microprocessors each with tens of thousand of cores, tiled in an architecture with more signal pathways than a human brain. Arrays of radio frequency transmitters and receivers were optimally placed throughout her body to detect human emotions. Plastic explosive, capped with microscopic detonators, filled the inner channels of her biomaterial skeleton. Tiny vials filled with the fast acting poison were fitted beneath the artificial skin of her index fingers. Each vial was attached to a small motor that moved tiny fangs through small retractable flaps in her index fingers. Shannon was the ultimate assassin. An autonomous threat, powered by artificial intelligence.
Nisha wondered out loud why Duncan had introduced this killing machine into the inner circle. There was a knock at her office door.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Kalan said, as he stood in the doorway.
“You must feel better for finding a razor and the shower,” Nisha replied.
Kalan looked disturbed as he pointed to the video screen. Nisha had always monitored the Central Care Unit from her office. She never thought to turn the screen off, because she rarely had visitors. “What did you see while I was away?” she asked.
“Probably more than you wanted me to see. People who appear disfigured and act deranged.”
Nisha turned the screen off.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“We’ll get that in a few moments,” Nisha said. She pulled a small tube out from a drawer in her desk. She tore the packaging off then pushed the small end into a box that was attached to her computer. Once the implant loaded she pressed the small end against her arm. She winced as the implant was injected in her. “Now it’s your turn,” she said to Kalan.
“No way,” replied. “What is that?”
“Currency,” she said coldly. “These tiny implants read vital signs. If those vital signs go dormant a microchip will transmit data to a set of IP addresses that I have programmed.”
“What vital signs?”
“Our vital signs,” she answered.
“What is going on?” Kalan asked.
“One of the scientists I work with is a killer,” Nisha replied. “I am a likely target. Since you are with me, you are a likely target. The data files contain evidence that identifies the killer. The files also contain facts about how my assistant was murdered today. The IP addresses are for law enforcement.” She turned and instructed her computer to send a sample of the data to Duncan, Sahil and Shannon. “People who may have something to gain by harming either of us now know that law enforcement will be contacted if anything happens to us. Roll up your sleeve.”
“Forget it,” Kalan shot back. “I’ll take my chances. Is some guy called Stone on the list of people you just sent data to?”
“Who?” Nisha asked.
“He’s the one I was running from when you picked me up today. He says that clones begin to lose their mind when they get to be my age. Something about the science not being right. Those are the people that I saw on your screen, aren’t they,” Kalan shouted.
“Calm down.” Nisha loaded an implant into the injector and set it on her desk. “In case you change your mind,” she added. “The people you saw live in a place that provides palliative care to those in a perpetual state of trauma. The patients are clones who developed complications. They are orphans, stranded in deformity, with no connection to the outside world. Conceived in a lab. Born by a machine. Yet they give a tremendous amount to humanity. They have allowed us to correct our mistakes and make scientific progress. Their suffering has been necessary, to develop medicines and treatments for those who came later. They make it possible for subsequent generations of clones to live as normal humans.”
Kalan looked mortified. “This can’t be true. Doesn’t it frighten you to see human beings so disfigured? You see them only as experiments. How can you watch them and not feel their pain? ”
“I shouldn’t have talked about this with you,” Nisha said.
“The ones who look normal, yet have lost their minds. Will I become like them?”
“I don’t know,” Nisha replied.
“What kind of heartless monsters are you?” Kalan said in frustration.
“Inject the implant,” Nisha remarked. “It has the power to save your life.”
“I have to get out of here,”
“You have nowhere else to go.”
XXXX
Sahil did not convene private meetings in his office very often. “Don Mars. The situation in Brawer. Paula Slate. Who will be next?” Sahil asked dourly of Trent and Nisha the next morning.
“Anyone of us,” Nisha replied. “Perhaps all of us.”
“Why do you say that?” Sahil challenged.
“Because of Doctor Wood.”
Trent’s interest peaked.
Nisha showed them what she had learned about Doctor Wood the night before. “That robot bitch killed Paula.”
Trent stood up and walked a few paces away. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. He looked confused and in denial.
“She’s Duncan’s spy,” Nisha said dryly. “That explains why she flits between the different campuses. Why she only meets with those of us that w
ork on enhanced humans.”
“That’s absurd,” Trent said defensively.
“Really?” Nisha said. “How does that horny machine like it best? You know what I’m talking about.”
Trent glared at her.
“If that robot let you screw it in exchange for the entry codes to the hatchery, what else might you have given away? Nisha asked provocatively.
“I notified Duncan that I want out,” Sahil remarked, taking some of the heat off Trent.
“That must have shocked him,” Nisha said looking surprised.
“I told him after the incident in Brawer,” Sahil replied. “He was persuasive. I listened to him. He convinced me to stay. I changed my mind after yesterday, after someone within the inner circle was killed.”
“The project won’t survive without you,” Nisha remarked with concern.
“Maybe that will be for the better,” Sahil replied, with a saddened tone.
“You can’t mean that?” Nisha questioned.
“Our enhanced human project was born from the idea that humans and humanoids would live together in a plural society within a time of horizon of four decades,” Sahil said. “The humans in that society would need biological intelligence combined with artificial intelligence. The humans would need to be connected to the same information available to the humanoids; if the humans were to survive and not be defenseless in a world dominated by artificial intelligence. That premise was dismissed by the experts of the day. Impossible. Too many ethical and moral barriers they said. Today we have created the most advanced minds that can be achieved in human biology. Any day now a clone mother will deliver a baby. An affinity child will enter into this world within this year. Our goal was to enhance humans to the point where they could reproduce on their own, with the capability to connect to the same information that is available to machines. We are almost there. I don’t want to leave now. But, I don’t want to see more people die because of our work.”
“What will it take to stop the violence?” Nisha asked.
“I’ll tell you when Trent leaves,” Sahil answered. Trent protested, but Sahil insisted. “Give Duncan a full account of what you know about Doctor Wood before the end of the day,” Sahil instructed. “Let him decide if you have given her too much information.”
