(R)evolution (Phoenix Horizon Book 1)

by PJ Manney

  There were no days off for Amanda. Peter found her where he had left her, in her office fielding query after query. As Biogineers’s vice president of public relations, she supervised media information 24/7 for months before the Lobo acquisition. The formal announcement of the closed deal had been disseminated to all major news outlets to break two days before, but their news was eclipsed by a much more important story. Instead of handling the usual post-merger requests for press releases, photo ops, and expert quotes in business and trade journals, she waded through voice mails from national press asking for interviews with Peter to discuss the terrorist attack.

  Two days ago, she had been as devastated as anyone about 10/26 and cried in his arms for hours. But the next morning, she was hard at work saving the company from death by public opinion.

  Only it wasn’t their company anymore.

  “So I’ll need the public statement from our counsel to you when? Arnold? God damn it . . . Arnold! Shit.” She slammed down the receiver as Peter reached her door. “And where’s the Internet?” She tapped her keyboard. “What’s going on?” She heard Peter, but didn’t look up. “Of all days, my e-mail’s frozen, phone’s on the fritz . . .”

  “We have to go. Now.”

  She saw his blood-smeared face and T-shirt. Then the guitar. “What happened?”

  He kissed her cheek, careful not to get blood on her.

  “I can’t leave,” she said. “Arnold was setting up a media step-list with handpicked outlets . . .”

  “There is no company left to save, Mandy. At least not for us. Please, you have to come with me.” He tugged at her hand and she rose, uncomprehending, to follow him.

  “But you’re bleeding!”

  “I forgot this wasn’t the schoolyard.”

  “You need X-rays,” she said.

  “I know.” He led her into the elevator. “Lobo says I’m under suspicion for 10/26 and we’re out. Executive summary: Forced resignations. No severance. No stock. A criminal investigation from Lobo and the shareholders and the feds. Probably millions in debt for legal fees.”

  Amanda was speechless for the first time in her life. And shaking.

  As they exited the elevator in the main lobby, their longtime security guard, Francis Bullock, moved from behind his desk to stand directly in their path but started at Peter’s condition. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bernhardt, but you . . .”

  He wasn’t alone. Two more black-suited Lobo security men stood at the exit doors, looking as menacing as the first pair.

  Known to all as Saint Francis of Sand Hill Road, the guard was about seventy and white haired, but still spry and twinkle-eyed.

  “What’s the problem?” mumbled Peter. His face was swelling.

  “I gotta check you out, Mr. Bernhardt. Pat you down. Make sure you take nothin’ outta the building. And you can’t take that either.” He pointed at the Gibson slung around Peter’s back.

  “Francis. It’s just a guitar.”

  “I know that, Mr. Bernhardt, but I gotta do it. Even though we both know this is dumber than a picnic in a hurricane, you know me losin’ my job over somethin’ stupid be wrong, too.”

  One of the gorillas by the doors stepped forward. “We’ll handle this.”

  Saint Francis spun on them. “No you ain’t. I know my job.” He turned back, eyes fierce. “Better me than them,” he whispered.

  Amanda turned away, trying not to get emotional. She chewed her thumbnail as Peter pulled the Gibson’s strap over his head and handed the guitar to Francis.

  “Please put it back in my office. And be careful with it. It’s a special one.”

  “Yes, sir. You know I will.”

  Saint Francis laid the guitar against his desk so softly that it made no sound. He then proceeded to pat Peter down. Peter had only a billfold in his pocket and handed it to Francis, who made a show of looking through it carefully. Then he checked the contents of Amanda’s purse.

  When he was done, a guard said, “Pat her down, too.”

  “I know it!” snapped Saint Francis. “I’m old, and I’m gettin’ there!”

  Amanda stood with her arms in a T as he patted her as lightly as a butterfly. His downcast eyes were damp, and he began to recite quietly, “ ‘I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre . . .’ ”

  She stared at the ceiling, trying to ignore the guards’ leers. Peter wanted to kill them.

  Francis continued, “ ‘Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me, men who trust in their wealth, and boast of the abundance of their riches?’ ”

  One of the guards smirked, “You missed her back pockets. Inside.”

  Francis avoided Amanda’s infuriated eyes. He carefully pulled back the tight fabric of her jeans’ pockets and pretended to look inside. “ ‘Truly no man can ransom himself, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of his life is costly and can never suffice, that he should continue to live on forever, and never see the Pit.’ ”

  Finished, he whispered with deep embarrassment, “You’re clean.”

  “We know,” Peter whispered back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Biogineers was housed in the last building of the last anonymous industrial park before Highway 280. Peter pulled his LeMans Blue 1968 Corvette Stingray out of Biogineers’s parking lot in a daze and onto empty Sand Hill Road. Rush hour usually inched, but the malls and buildings were mostly empty and the roads clear of traffic, like a zombie movie. The public feared the new plague.

  On mental autopilot, he followed El Camino Real north. No longer the Royal Road of the Spanish Empire, it was now the high-tech highway through the world’s greatest technological empire of Silicon Valley. Peter had fancied himself a Spanish grandee in that brave new empire. Until today.

  Today, the Inquisition had begun.

  Amanda tapped her GO, checking e-mail and news. She avoided answering the phone, not knowing what to say.

  The CNN feed was grim: a hitherto unknown group called ATEAMO—American Terrorists End American Military Occupation—was taking responsibility. They wanted an end to foreign occupation and opportunistic wars and were willing to spill their own blood and that of their fellow Americans to do it. Three young people were named as perpetrators, and their identities were confirmed by security footage and DNA analyzed from saliva left on their disposable coffee cups thrown in trash cans.

  “My God . . . children inspired by bad TV reruns!” gasped Amanda.

  “No,” sighed Peter. “ ‘A-Team’ is a Special Forces nickname for their fighting units. Shit.”

  The FBI said their deaths were a radical form of suicide bombing, designed for maximum shock, awe, and elimination of evidence. An investigation to find the creators of both attack and suicide technologies was ongoing, but there was evidence to suggest a Californian company had the capabilities to make this new plague. The government’s failure to prevent the tragedy was blamed on insufficient security and intelligence funding, and law enforcement agencies were asking Congress for authorization to protect our nation with private security contractors, unfettered by federal law enforcement regulations. Congress would agree to provide this and more in the months to come. They acquiesced without debate, because fear was a budget line item.

  CBS televised the martyrs’ final videos, and Amanda watched, mesmerized, on her GO.

  “I don’t understand,” said Peter. “How did three undergrads get this tech? It’s so specialized. And who knows how to attack with bots?”

  Amanda exited the video tab to read headlines aloud. “Senator Mankowicz Urges Special Panel to Investigate Nanotechnology Industry.”

  “What industry? Everyone does nanotechnology.”

  Like many scientists who worked on the nanoscale, Peter didn’t think of himself as doing “nanotechnology.” That simply meant he made things on an atomic scale. He could manipulate atoms and molecules like LEGO bricks, making structures so small, a milli
on nanotubes twisted together would be the width of a human hair. He was a bioengineer curing diseases by building tiny machines, only molecules big, as drug delivery or therapeutic structural systems. Others doing “nanotechnology” were chemists building labs-on-a-chip to diagnose diseases or identify pollutants; physicists making renewable fuel cells; biochemists making water filtration systems; or electrical engineers designing quantum semiconductors. Nanotechnology only applied to the scale of the efforts, a new arrow in their technological quiver and not an objective in itself. Yet “nanotechnology” captured the public’s attention as a discrete borderline of technology, thanks to the media. It was a good sound bite and headline: “The Atom as the Final Frontier.” But there were numerous final frontiers over the years. Space, thanks to JFK and Star Trek. The sea, thanks to Jacques Cousteau. Some said the brain was the final frontier. Now the atom. In his opinion, there was no final frontier. If there was, humanity was screwed.

  Amanda continued, “President Stevens condemns terrorists. Swears to root out and bring ATEAMO to justice.” Her messages chimed.

  “All I want to know is where the hell did those kids get the tech? And why does everyone assume it’s me?” His first calls would be to his Asian counterparts to see if they had any clues about the Korean or Singaporean companies.

  “Carter called. Maybe he could help?”

  “He’s your best friend. You call him.”

  “He’s your best friend, too,” said Amanda quietly.

  “We both know that’s been in name only, for a while.”

  Amanda expelled an exasperated breath. “Would you stop being such an ass about this? So he didn’t invest in Biogineers. That was ten years ago! He didn’t abandon you. He made a business decision. When are you going to let it go?”

  “I don’t want to see the ‘I told you so’ in his eyes. How is he always right about everything?”

  “Enough,” said Amanda. She flipped the AM button. Newsreaders hammered home the repercussions and collateral damage of 10/26: the tent city of quarantined convention center victims; the collapse of financial markets and shoring up by the government; possible confiscation and banning of all nanotechnology. It was only two weeks before the elections, so the pundit parade sucked down the controversy with the enthusiasm of mosquitoes draining a pregnant woman. Politicians made hay over biotech’s cowboy ethics, calling for tougher domestic security measures and nanotech regulation. The incumbent president had run in a dead heat with his challenger. But polls shifted in the president’s favor overnight.

  “Fucking assholes!” Peter stabbed the radio’s off switch. “It’s their fucking fault!”

  “Why?”

  “We warned them! Remember? There are two ways to cure Alzheimer’s with nanotech: hardwiring with nanowires or ingesting nanobots. I wanted hardwires, because bots could be mass-weaponized. But everyone else, including you, wanted bots. And when I wanted strict international protocols for the bots, everyone—investors, competitors, the FDA—had a fit.”

  Amanda shook her head. “Hey, it wasn’t me or the investors. The focus groups want a pill to cure their mental illness. Not brain surgery.”

  “Bullshit!” he spit. “You can’t get brain surgery in some corner store whenever you want it from a guy who took a weekend seminar on brain-machine interfaces, like Lasik or cosmetic surgery. At least not yet. Only patients who were supposed to get the therapies would get them. Not millions of people looking for a quick mental pick-me-up.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but when people think ‘hardwiring,’ they think ‘Frankenstein.’ Or ‘cyborgs.’ ”

  “We are cyborgs! We’ve got pacemakers, cochlear and retinal implants, deep brain stimulators and insulin pumps. We’ve built artificial hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, tongues—even an artificial anus! And what about prosthetic limbs? We’re not afraid of those guys. They’re either veteran poster boys or Olympic heroes.” He snatched her GO and waved it. “And what about this? It’s our brain on a chip! We don’t have to know or remember anything anymore. Just look it up on the GO/HOME. It’s the World Wide Mind, and we’re all hooked up to it!”

  “Why are you yelling at me?”

  “Because if you don’t agree, you still don’t get it!”

  She grabbed the GO back. “Other people have different points of view,” she said in a softer tone, “but let’s face it—a pill’s more likely to be taken. They wanted to make it easy.”

  “The bastards promised me there wouldn’t be any risk. So I took their money and gave them their Goddamned nanobots and now look—I’m a mass murderer!”

  “That’s not what’s really upsetting you.”

  “What the hell’s upsetting me then?”

  “You’re upset you let yourself believe them!” she said.

  That shut Peter up. His self-deception was disturbing, but worse were the implications.

  Exhausted, Amanda dropped her GO in her purse and stared blindly at the buildings on El Camino Real’s transition from workaday Palo Alto to upscale, leafy Atherton.

  After a minute, Peter placed a hand on her thigh. “Mandy? I don’t understand why this is happening, but I swear, if we get through this in one piece, I won’t let anyone hurt us again.”

  She squeezed his hand in response. But her expression said she was not convinced he could keep his promise.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  If hell exists, it will have television news crews stationed in front of the fiery gates to broadcast your arrival.

  Perdition Brothers, Brimstone and Hades Circus rolled into town to welcome Peter home, and Patricia Drive in Atherton was the center ring. White trucks and vans—splayed with satellite dishes and rigging, and cheerfully painted with station call letters and network affiliations—ferried a hellish host of hair-sprayed, camera-ready talking heads and their indefatigable cameramen to his front yard. Still photographers and print reporters double-parked along the street. Neighbors crept out of houses to see the serial killer who had made their quiet little enclave famous.

  The Bernhardt house was a solidly built neo-Georgian, red brick and white trim with neoclassical columns framing the front door. It sat between a mini Norman château on one side and a Tudor manor on the other. When he saw this house a year and a half ago, it was everything his deprived fifteen-year-old self had ever wanted. So he bought it.

  Everyone recognized the Corvette the moment Peter turned onto the street. They ran toward it. Had the authorities put out an APB?

  “Don’t talk to anyone!” screeched Amanda. “Just keep them off our property!”

  “Why?”

  “If we allow them on it, they can claim implied consent to trespass. They can stay indefinitely.”

  It was one of the rare times the First Amendment didn’t sound like a great idea.

  Peter’s finger stabbed the garage remote and he turned into the driveway. Video and still cameras and reporters’ microphones rushed the car, jostling for position closest to his window. More bodies crowded the hood. If he rolled forward, he might hurt someone. Through the gray noise of screamed questions, Peter could pick out words: “nanobots . . . murder . . . terrorist . . . responsible . . .”

  He laid on the car horn, but it wasn’t enough, so he popped the hood to up the decibels. Amanda covered her ears. The TV folk all went for their headpiece volume controls, and the earsplitting sound instinctively drove the few diehards on the bumper out of the way.

  Peter thought he’d feel better being home, but he didn’t, even as the V8 engine growled loudly in the garage, a sound he usually relished. They were under siege. He turned off the ignition.

  “What about your X-rays? We have to go back out there,” said Amanda.

  “Tomorrow. I know what to do for now.”

  He unlocked the kitchen door and shuffled right by the HOME console on the countertop, but Amanda paused in front of it and hesitated.

  “Mandy? You’re kidding. Don’t.”

  “But we don’t know . . .”
/>   “And I don’t care. We’ve got a lynch mob with unlimited rope out there!”

  “I don’t believe it . . .” As soon as she pressed the speaker button, the six degrees of separation game began. Their accountant’s secretary returned their call. “Uh . . . hi Mr. and Mrs. Bernhardt. Mr. Nelson’s brother attended IAM and hasn’t . . . um . . . turned up yet, so our office won’t be returning any more calls until the situation . . . resolves itself.”

  Peter rested his head on the refrigerator, but didn’t bother to open it. He had no appetite. “Is ‘resolves itself’ a euphemism for ‘shows who to sue for wrongful death reparations’?”

  “Stop it,” said Amanda. That message ended, and the next began.

  “Hey, Pete, it’s Kevin. Remember Clarissa Brouchard? On our freshman hall? I’m guessing you know she was president of NarcisCity . . . and was at IAM. Her funeral service is next Thursday . . .” Suddenly, six degrees dissolved to one.

  Amanda turned on the HOME’s TV feed. Serious, pointed voices of news anchors drowned out the insistent yapping outside. She pulled up five news channels at once. CNN took up the main screen, and four open windows in the screen’s corners showed a selection of local, national, and international news. CNN was finishing a report about the attacks. FBI, CDC, and DHS’s forensic tests confirmed that nanobots had killed the victims of 10/26. The only bots made in the US were by Biogineers. Two other stations mentioned Bernhardt and Biogineers as the only US manufacturer capable of making bots of this complexity.

  One of the screens had a live feed, with a reporter doing his stand-up. There was their house. On TV. And if they opened a curtain, they’d be on it, too. Peter headed toward a window.

  “Pete! Don’t!” begged Amanda.

  He ignored her and peeked between the curtains to see two dozen reporters parked on the front lawn. All armed with headphones, GOtooths, and other assorted devices, it was hard to discern who might be surveilling them for media, as opposed to government, purposes. And was there a difference anymore?