Unkillable

by Dean C. Moore

  But now, here was Ed, pushing those buttons again, leaving him wondering if he truly had the coping mechanism he needed, or if he needed more. And what the hell was truly at the root of these undigested emotions between him and the geek-set.

  As for Ed… he might be craving these beat downs because he grew up getting more than a few of them from the Klepskys of the world, enough to become addicted to them. Here they were pushing one another’s buttons all over again.

  Was acting out these dark fantasies going to bring them into the light enough to promote healing, or just the opposite? Make them more stuck than ever in dysfunctional psychology? Had they settled for co-dependence administering to one another’s emotional neediness over love because the former offered a little more security than the other, at least in their sick and twisted minds?”

  ***

  Klepsky got caught up in traffic yet again en route to Biyu. It didn’t take him long to realize traffic wasn’t the problem. A mob scene was in progress. It looked like a black on white thing.

  “What’s this about?” he said, rolling down the window and showing his badge to the cop. One of many trying to get a handle on things.

  “Some racist mother fucker opened his mouth a little too loud in a little too public of a place. Not sure if he was black or white. Doesn’t seem to take much anymore.”

  Klepsky nodded. “Idiots. Ninety-nine percent of people are one paycheck away from homelessness. They got worse problems than worrying about if their neighbor is a racist or not. Personally, I’d be happy to have the racist mother fucker over for dinner if I could live in a world where everyone shared equally in the spoils. But no, they’d rather do away with racists so they can continue living with no financial security.”

  The cop snorted, balancing his end of the conversation with pushing people back and away from the car. “You’re preaching to the choir, pal. Me, I pray for a mob scene, any mob scene, for any reason, just so I can get the overtime to pay for my kid’s braces.”

  The cop, a Caucasian, who had to be in his late twenties, pushed the latest bodies that had been pushed up against him away, then glanced back at Klepsky. “Hey, what’s it like working for the FBI-FD, anyway?”

  Klepsky shook his head slowly, glancing out his windshield at the riot in progress. “Maybe I’m a futurist because it’s the present I can’t stand. You ever feel the same way, look us up.”

  The cop grunted. “Nah, not for me. Better the devil you know, eh?”

  Klepsky nodded, rolled the window up with a push of the button and took a sharp right, fleeing the mob scene before they had the car surrounded and all exits blocked.

  FIFTEEN

  Klepsky was given a temporary badge and a trail to follow with a yellow line on the floor, just like with his naval days aboard an aircraft carrier. There too he had to think and act quickly if he didn’t want a popping line meant to slow a fighter jet to cut him in half. The scientists in Biyu’s building, forever lost in their own world, and moving themselves from one research station to another in the building, walked at breakneck speeds on autopilot not looking where they were going, like rats trained to operate a maze blind. He was nearly the cause of multiple experiment failures as the ones carrying their test samples in their hands were more focused on them than playing bumper cars with him.

  Finally, about the time he was badged out, sliding his visitor’s permit through so many “credit card” checks attached to each door, waiting for a green light and a beep, Klepsky made it to Biyu’s operational theater. It was in the bottommost level of the building’s sub-basement floors. He was so far underground, he wasn’t sure he was in New York City anymore. Just like territorial waters only extended so far beyond shore, he wondered if “NYC” had legal jurisdiction this far down.

  Biyu had her own room, about 15’ x 30’, packed with scientific equipment that if she tried to explain he was sure the info would go in one ear and out the next anyway. It was a balmy forty degrees below in the room and not a degree higher. He thought he might just have to transmit his questions in Morse code from his chattering teeth. The woman was wearing short sleeves, and with virtually no body fat on her, he had to imagine her metabolism was up there somewhere with Superman’s.

  “Biyu?” he said.

  She glanced up from her microscope, made a perplexed face as her eyes ran up and down him. “Fedora. Trench coat. Ah! You American dinosaur. Three floor up. Look for empty case. Go inside. Pose like this.” She did the pose for him. “They spray you down in the Formica. So you can hold pose forever. Then they tag you. Just wait for paying tourists. Nice life.” She went back to her microscope.

  A smile crept across his face like a rising sun looking to slip in through the back door of night, exposing his teeth like the mountain ridge the sun was trying to climb over. “A Chinese chick with a sense of humor, who knew?”

  When she ignored him and kept her eyes planted on her microscope he decided to make himself at home, opening cabinets, refrigerator doors. He figured that would get her to pay attention to him. No one liked an interloper where they didn’t belong. As it turned out, his sense of having his space violated was stronger than hers. He screamed, “Shit!” and jumped back. “What the hell?”

  The refrigerator he’d opened had a dead body in it. Also Chinese, would be his guess, though with that much frost on him, it was hard to tell.

  Biyu walked over calmly and closed the door. “Scheduled for incineration in another week or so.”

  “You get that I’m FBI, right?” He flashed his badge. “And murder is illegal in this country.”

  “Really? It sport in China.”

  She returned to her microscope and to her note taking, writing blind as she kept her eyes on the microscope.

  He took a seat opposite her on her worktable. Glanced back at the fridge with the dead body, let the shiver run up his spine without attempting to cap the volcanic release of emotion, until he was shivering all over. He decided he needed to warm up anyway, and the passive workout would do him good. Then he groaned and ran his hand over his head and neck. Then he sighed.

  “Look, my wife, when she was living with me, before she served me divorce papers, was Chinese. She used to give me the broken, me-speakie-English routine too when she thought I was being racist. But she at least gave me a chance first. Well, until she ran out of second chances to hand out. Not on the racism issue. On every other issue, as it turns out.”

  She glanced up from her microscope at him. “You not here to marvel at Chinese woman with high IQ who do work of ten men and is reason why you take early retirement?”

  He smiled again, biting his lips this time. “I’m trying not to be that guy.”

  She sighed and relaxed out of character, her shoulders dropped, her face softened, her complexion brightened, as if her very blood vessels were widening to get more blood to her head. “Alright, FBI Guy, shoot.”

  “So, you mind telling me what you do here, in English? Feel free to talk down to me, everyone does.”

  She cracked a smile that five seconds ago he would have sworn she was reserving for her mortician. And she showed teeth. He didn’t think a head on collision with a Mack Truck could get her to show teeth.

  “IA,” she said.

  “You mean AI, right? Or do you have dyslexia? No disrespect, mind you. Cause I have dyslexia. I keep seeing pinup posters where Chinese chicks should be.”

  She smiled in a more constrained manner this time.

  “AI refer to Artificial Intelligence. IA stand for Intelligence Augmentation. That…”

  Okay, so her English was still a little broken, which made him feel sorry about the crack he’d made earlier. But her English was a lot less broken than his Science, so he figured she still had the upper hand on him. “I was referred to you because I was told you did AI. Sorry, didn’t mean to cut you off at the pass, but if I have to hear one less explanation about how technology is going to uproot my life today, it’s all the better.”

  This
time she smiled ruefully, as if she could actually feel his pain. He found that ironic as she and people like her were the cause of it. About the only thing he shared in common with Adrian was a clear predilection for forestalling the future—any future—for as long as possible.

  “My background is in the AI, yes. But everyone, every corporation, every country, is knee-deep in the AI, convinced it the only way to stay ahead of the up and comers. Just as it is for the NSA. For all these constituencies, it about big data, amassing as much intel on everyone as possible, looking for patterns, trends, how to market to them, how to push their buttons better, how to find connections no one else find, which of course means bigger computers with bigger brains each year.”

  “Until you end up with Skynet, the Terminator scenario. That’s…”

  It was her turn to cut him off. “I recognize American movie reference. There some of us who feel the only way to prevent such a scenario from happening is to switch to IA. In IA…”

  Here it comes, Klepsky thought. And his first cup of coffee was wearing off. God help him. The cold in the room freezing up the gears in his brain wasn’t benefitting him either.

  “…the hope is to dial up the human intelligence as easily and as rapidly as we issue new software version for Windows on your computer from the year to year. That way human can stay in the game. It that or live on UBI…”

  “UBI?”

  “Universal Basic Income… what you call social security, currently for people over 70, but this would be issue to everybody. Because most everyone would be unemployed, no longer market competitive with robots, or software assistants, the kinds that answer the phone now when you call most companies desperate to field your questions before far more expensive human laborer actually has to.”

  Klepsky gulped. He was a futurist, by God. He ought to be immune to talk like this. He sure as hell shouldn’t have needed the unabridged explanation. And still his mind couldn’t get around the truth. How the hell were normal people supposed to grasp what she was talking about?

  “If we can’t get IA to work this well, most everyone will be on the UBI in next five to ten year,” Biyu explained. “They’d be on it now if it weren’t for amount of political corruption in your country and stranglehold ruling elite has on it. Just like in China and Russia. No wonder the three countries more in bed with one another than ever. The one percent has no desire for the ninety-nine percent to face reality, because that would mean money going to bottom ninety-nine percent, not being vacuumed up to top one percent.

  “So you won’t hear much about need for IA in news or about new reality of growing joblessness. Instead you see unemployment rate down to the four percent because real numbers is hidden from you, the numbers of people who have just given up looking for jobs. And you won’t see bad guys painted as Wall Street Wizards and financiers and corporations and corrupt politicians on their take, who just want more money for themselves and don’t give a damn about public good. Instead the media give you scapegoats to vent your rage, talk to you about child molesters, or turn you against one another, blacks against whites, Muslims against Christians, and they manufacture enemies here and the abroad to keep you thinking that extremists are the problem. Anything to prevent IA and UBI both from becoming realities. Because whole wretched game only work by dumbing people down, not smartening them up.”

  Klepsky restrained a smile. “You’re not a Chinese dissident then, so much as you’re a dissident against the powers-that-be that are more or less the same whatever country you go to.”

  They treated one another to some silence after her rant to give them both a second to get some distance on themselves.

  “And how is it you make my future brighter, exactly,” Klepsky asked finally, “as opposed to scarier still?”

  She just gave him a hard look and a chance to catch up on his own.

  “The dead guy in the fridge?”

  “A failed prototype. We been using an extract from frogs, a form of glycogen, that allow frogs to freeze over in winter and then thaw in spring and hop back to life. The idea is that…”

  “Computers run hot, hotter than humans, anyway.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And cooling chip once inside body has prove difficult. So far, finding a happy temperature both silicon and biological life can thrive at has proved elusive.”

  “Wouldn’t it just be easier to use CRISPR to genetically alter a human, give them a 1000 IQ? In fact I read that research to that end is going on now. To say nothing of China’s genius baby project. I’m guessing you’re familiar with that one.”

  She looked at him as if she’d just figured something out about him. Her body posture and manner morphed again, more like she was debating with a professional colleague now, instead of a curious child. “It would be hell of lot easier,” she said. “But it would still take you a minimum of twelve to fourteen year to get anywhere with that model, being as that how long it take to raise a child prodigy, on average. Another twelve to fourteen year before even he or she reached maturity and maximum potential. Perhaps another twelve to fourteen again before that maximum potential could absorb what it is captains of industry, CEOs and masters of universe have to absorb. By which time their bodies are failing, and so now the focus shift to anti-aging techniques to recoup your investment. Meanwhile the world…”

  “…waits for no one.” Klepsky sighed. “If people can’t cope today, they sure as hell can’t afford to wait forty-two years in the hopes they might cope better then, or that their genetically altered kids will come to the rescue.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. Tried to think. The cold was actually starting to do him some good, keeping his mind from overheating, considering how out of his league he was trying to keep pace with this woman. “We could just vaccinate people like me, get some RNA virus to make us way smarter today, assuming we had the RNA virus to inject people with, of course.”

  She smiled again. “You Carl Klepsky, head of Futurist division of FBI. Well, technically, you work for Adrian Maslow, your consultant, only because he work for no one and everyone. I was wondering when one of you guy would come knocking on my door.”

  “If you’re wondering, I have other people working for me, people just like you, whose job it is to make me look smart. That’s why I can throw out ideas like RNA-retroviruses coming to our rescue.”

  “Yes, I figured as much. And once again, what you proposing is most practical, short-term solution, yes. Coupled of course with anti-aging protocols, medications, supplements, genetic alterations that forestall aging, for a more complete solution.”

  “Short-term, as in…?”

  “Probably still at least five or more year out. There are hundred, if not thousand of gene involved with intelligence, and we don’t know what most of them are. So even before you can use CRISPR to edit those segment of human DNA, you first have to find them. Even then, you likely want to marry that with some kind of mindchip that allow you broadband wireless internet access, and a form of electronically induced telepathy, by connecting us to one another mind as well. And the chip itself will have to have AI that is quite advanced to evolve the algorithms on the fly it need to carry out whatever data searches you need from the internet to feed that big brain you now have. Since without that kind of information retrieval ability, you just have a big engine idling, with no way to get into gear and get car up and running.”

  “But I read somewhere that a husband and wife team of British researchers stuck a couple mind chips in their arms as early as ten years ago, used it to speak to one another ‘telepathically’—essentially using radio signals.”

  “Yes, technology is further along than Intels and IBMs and Microsofts of world have you believe. At least until they can prepare your mind sufficiently to accept the notion without stirring panic and social unrest. There still more people who see that as mark of beast than as progress.”

  He looked into her eyes for the clues her words weren’t revealing. “But you, being you, have got y
our own angle on things. Something not yet tried. So maybe you beat everyone to market, maybe your way up the mountain is even slower. A high-risk gamble, in any case.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s your angle, exactly?” He startled as one of the machines in the room sounded off, cycling through whatever it was cycling through.

  She smiled wearily, glancing at all the knuckle-cracking he was doing. “For a futurist, the mere mention of the future sure scare the hell out of you.”

  “Which is why I know when you say most people wouldn’t take at all to any of this, you’re not speaking out your ass.”

  She let the silence envelop them for a while. At first he thought she was teasing him, or perhaps covering up something. But it turned out she was just trying to give him a second to suit up for the coming shock, tighten his muscles to absorb the blow.

  “The man in freezer is hybrid,” she said finally. “A product of synthetic biology. A silicon-carbon lifeform.”

  Klepsky swallowed hard. “My right hand man, Ed Gorman, is going to take the beating of his life for not properly preparing me for you. I don’t take kindly to getting my mind blown by anyone but Adrian. Him and Golem Guy. The latter I’m trying to put six foot under in a grave just big enough to house his world-turned-upside-down invention buried right beside him.”

  She brought the edges of her mouth down in a show of empathy. “Synthetic biology…”

  “I know I said I was okay with you talking down to me, but here’s where I draw the line. Surely, this path is at least ten or more years away from converging with the other paths we talked about to make me smarter, whether I like it or not.”