by PJ Manney
“But my snakes were toast.”
Carter sighed. “My dear, we can’t fake everything.”
At 5:00 a.m., the limo arrived at the Hay-Adams, and Carter half carried Peter up to their suite. Amanda was worried sick when they hadn’t returned by one o’clock and dozed lightly on the sofa in the living room, waiting to hear the door open. Seeing Peter, she was furious, assuming the obvious: old-boy networking, with too much liquor and not enough sense.
Carter, halfway to drunk, was very convincing. “You should be proud of him! We were in a bar fight, and you should see the three policy wonks he flattened!”
Both men played their guilt-ridden roles to the hilt, and Peter didn’t have to pretend he would never do anything as foolish as this again. He swore to her over and over, and Carter apologized over and over. Peter had never lied to Amanda before, but he put that thought aside.
After collapsing on the bed, he almost told the truth. But something stopped him. He liked the secret. Being a giant bruise wasn’t fun, and he’d need to recuperate for a few days, but in retrospect, the entire evening had been a great adventure, and if Carter and Josiah were correct, it would save his life. The curtains were closed against the rising sun. Half listening to Amanda berate Carter one last time, he remembered a few more lines from Rundgren’s song before drifting off into a well-needed sleep . . . The world revealed . . . Peter Bernhardt finally understood why men join secret societies.
PART TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The moment he returned to Silicon Valley, Peter felt like a human cannonball propelled into space, flying high over the crowd. Within days, Carter structured their new company on paper, with a business plan, budget, and timeline the likes of which Peter couldn’t fathom. They filled a slick, nameless, glass cube on Sand Hill Road with equipment that existed nowhere else on earth. In addition to former Biogineers alums—Amanda as head of public relations, Chang as chief engineer, and Jesse Steinberg as chief programmer—they let Ruth go shopping for the greatest minds of each link in the intellectual and technical work chain at academic and corporate institutions (including the shaigitzes from Stanford’s cognitive computing department and the bloodstream nanogenerator team from Georgia Tech), offering salaries no one could match. With experimental results expected so quickly, Peter didn’t think the schedule could be met, because it never had before.
Employees needed a mental adjustment to work for Peter, the Valley pariah, destroyer of nanomanufacturing. So he made sure they saw the company’s whole, concentrating on Carter and Ruth, and the access each had to the wide variety of specialists necessary in such an interdisciplinary undertaking. There were neuroscientists, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, material scientists, molecular biologists, electrical engineers, biomedical engineers, and specifically, neural engineers. It was biotech heaven.
The next year was a whirlwind of round-the-clock activity, made possible by the largest (and best) biotech team in the world; no government, academic, or industrial oversight; and more money than God. The Phoenix Club gave never-ending support to Prometheus Industries in a Manhattan Project for brain-machine interfaces. And it eliminated all possible impediments by helping to scoot around sticky nano-ban issues with waivers from the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Health to work with nano-sized components, and using Carter’s own company’s nanowires, which hadn’t been banned. In fact, much of their technology was unaffected, since the ban was about nanoviruses or nanobots, not chips and wiring. However, they did have molecular assemblers in a subbasement that fell under the legislation. But no one was going to turn them in. Certainly not to the head of the NIH, who was a Phoenician. While Peter understood that his company was only possible through influence and corruption at the highest levels, he justified its actions as important to humanity. It was the brutal game of politics, finally mobilized for the public good.
Peter decided not to ask exactly how this was possible. He would ignore his squeamishness.
At least Carter let him name the company after his favorite Greek myth. He believed his work would be as beneficial as Prometheus’s fire, granting his patients independence. Identity. Life. And so from a dream’s ashes, Prometheus Industries was born.
Time was too precious to participate in any Phoenix Club activities. He missed his first Camp Week, embroiled in a technical problem involving proteins that wouldn’t bind to polymers like they were supposed to. But Carter told him it was better to wait until they had impressive results. Come to camp a star, not a plebe among thousands.
Prometheus Industries had two goals: a prosthetic hippocampus, “Hippo 2.0,” and a prosthetic neocortex, “Cortex 2.0,” to replace the parts of the brain destroyed by Alzheimer’s. Short-term memories recorded in the Hippo 2.0, instead of the damaged hippocampus, would be transferred, stored, and retrieved in the Cortex 2.0. Like a replacement hard drive for the brain, the Cortex 2.0 was a replacement long-term memory bank linked to the real cortex, so the patient could retrieve both mechanical and meat memories. Both prosthetics would be imbedded in the patient’s skull and linked by nanowires to specific neural pathways. Parts of the brain destroyed by disease could be made whole.
Even though work was 24/7/365, the cocoon of Prometheus made Peter feel more in control, more secure. And he finally kept his promise: When the couple realized pregnancy might not be as easy for them as they thought, he was there for Amanda’s IVF treatments, injecting nightly hormone shots and holding her hand during implantations. And it had all paid off. Amanda was pregnant. They kept the happy news to themselves, although it was hard making excuses when Amanda ran off to vomit.
Peter would have gotten excited about impending fatherhood if he’d had the time to think about it. Prometheus had succeeded at tissue studies, rat studies, and primate studies. There was no reason to believe that human trials would be any different. After a year of no sleep, all his mental energy was focused on implanting a prosthetic hippocampus chip into the first human subject. It was supposed to be his father.
But the FDA said that was not to be. They rejected all of his prospective patients, pending further investigation of his animal studies. The timetable was ruined. And they didn’t seem moved by either Carter’s protestations or club interference. Carter heard there was pushback from the pharmaceutical lobby in DC, and he flew back East to handle it. The word from Capitol Hill was Big Pharma would neutralize Prometheus and their revolutionary products, determined to bury the technology in regulatory hell until the pill manufacturers had a product to replace it.
Peter panicked. Screw the FDA. He had to save his father and his company, and he was damned if he was going to stop now.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As soon as Carter returned from DC, Peter tracked him down in the Prometheus rec room. CNN played in the background. A headline banner proclaimed the passage of new anti-privacy laws to root out internal threats from groups like ATEAMO. Peter wasn’t paying attention, but Carter watched the screen with a whisky in his hand. It was only noon. Not a good sign.
“Well?” asked Peter.
“I’m working on it. Big Pharma’s more powerful than I thought.”
“Work faster.”
“I’m working as fast as I fucking can. Give it a rest.” Carter sounded tense. And pissed.
Peter changed the subject. “I need you to answer honestly. Does anyone spy on us?”
Carter sighed. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“It’s eerie. I feel like . . . someone’s always behind me. Watching me. I know it’s stupid, but it’s how it feels.”
“Well, you were spied on for so long by the government, either you’ve fine-tuned your sixth sense or you’re knee-jerk assuming the worst.”
“Maybe . . . Don’t take this the wrong way, but does the . . . you know who . . . spy on me?”
His friend looked at him askance. “Why would they need to? We’ve got complete transparency with them. That’s why I don’t unders
tand this FDA bullshit. We shouldn’t be back-burnered. I’m here, protecting everyone’s interests, and I’m high enough up the food chain to be their representative both ways.” He leaned over and whispered, “Trust me, I tell the Decemviri everything. More than I should.”
Peter nodded. It sounded reasonable to him, but ever since the mysterious Angie Sternwood, coincidences played on Peter’s mind, and he wondered if he was rightly paranoid.
Carter put a finger to his lips and listened to the screen, so Peter listened, too. In a press conference, Senator Mankowicz called for further investigations and sanctions on technologies related to 10/26.
“Fuck you, you Pharma whore!” Carter yelled at the screen. “How many times do we have to do this dance?”
It was rare to see Carter lose his cool. “I thought you said he stopped because he lost bipartisan support since Pat Davidson dropped out.”
“I did! But this FDA thing is giving him steam. I am so fucking tired of the same Goddamned fight with this asshole. Just when I think I’ve got him cornered and cut off like a rat, he pops out another hole with a camera in his face. I’ve got to get to the Washington press corps. Cut him off, cold-fucking-turkey. See how Pharma likes that . . .”
He might have been naive, but Peter wondered how Carter could do this.
Rattling glass revealed Ruth rummaging in the fridge behind them for a bottle of the latest cubicle speed.
“Hey, Ruthie?” asked Carter, trying to calm down. “Is Peter being spied on, or is he just paranoid?”
“Papa used to say p-p-paranoia was an occupational hazard. Always someone is watching you. Remember the lab pools?”
“Yeah . . . Didn’t Nick always assume it was the Soviets or Russians or whatever they were at the time?”
“Or the Americans. He traded one m-master for another.”
“Which left the rest of us to bet on the Chinese, Israelis, Iranians . . .” Peter ticked off.
“Now,” said Carter, “we’d add the EU, Singapore, Japan, India, Pakistan, Korea—North and South—Islamic Jihadists, the big multinationals, who are as powerful as any country, if not more, and God knows who else. Any money ever change hands?”
Ruth shook her head, adding to other tics. “No way to prove who. Just that it existed. So it’s not whether you’re paranoid. It’s whether you’re paranoid enough.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “You are Woody Allen’s cousin.”
She twitched in annoyance. “Our p-people have proved throughout history. Better paranoid than dead.” She tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin for emphasis and left.
Peter gave Carter a good-bye punch in the shoulder and followed her out. Ruth always walked very fast. She said it evened out her tics, but Peter suspected she preferred to avoid others through speed. He had to hustle to catch her as she turned a corner.
“You my pace car now?” asked Ruth.
“I need your help. I want to test a healthy subject.”
Ruth walked faster. “You have a w-w-war with the FDA. And you want to do something as meshugeh as that?”
“I’m not crazy. The FDA is stonewalling us. Nothing Carter does works. I know him. He’s pissed because he thinks we’re beat, but he won’t say it. The FDA could keep us waiting for a decade. We’re dead men walking, unless we can show the world how good this is.”
“Prometheus cannot operate on anyone without FDA approval.”
“Fuck the FDA. We need to prove this works—now. Or Prometheus is dead.”
“And who is meshugeh enough to volunteer?” She walked right by the elevator.
“Me.”
“Your brain is not normal.” Ruth burst into the stairwell, climbing two at a time with ease. Nervous energy and a fear of enclosed spaces made her a stairwell champion.
Peter panted behind. “Normal enough for government work.”
“Ha, ha. So, what? You think you’re Alexander Shulgin? Or Albert Hofmann? Giving your neurons to science? Since already you gave your life? This is no acid trip on a bicycle! And what about Stanford Hospital’s institutional review board? You can’t have elective brain surgery. Meshugeh ahf toit!”
Peter assumed that meant more than just plain crazy. “You know how much self-experimentation goes on. What about Werner Forssmann?”
“Feh. That was 1929. Ancient history.”
“But the guy had balls! Could you lace a urinary catheter through your antecubital vein and into your heart all by yourself? Then run to the X-ray machine to show the world what you did?”
“You want to lose your job? And your reputation? Like Forssmann? Again?”
“The guy won a Nobel Prize . . . Eventually . . . You know we wouldn’t have half our discoveries if scientists didn’t put themselves on the firing line first, to prove they’re right, before endangering a patient. And who’s gonna volunteer for brain surgery if they don’t need it?” They emerged from the stairwell and headed for her lab, Peter puffing. He was out of shape from overwork.
“Ach! You said ‘endangering.’ I didn’t.”
“And I think I can convince the right people at the hospital this isn’t covered by the IRB.”
“Why not have Carter do it? He’s so good at convincing,” said Ruth, badly feigning innocence.
Peter muttered, “He wasn’t enthusiastic when I mentioned it hypothetically . . .”
Ruth couldn’t raise just one eyebrow. Her entire forehead twitched madly.
“Okay! He said he can’t have me dead or incapacitated or needlessly risking myself, and him, and the investors, yadda yadda yadda . . .”
“Even if we did,” Ruth interjected, “you have no objectivity. It’s your invention. How can you report on results? If you can assume outcomes?” She looked into a biometric eyepiece, and her door clicked open. Peter followed, and the door shut automatically behind them.
Her lab was relatively simple, filled with half a dozen computer workstations. Ruth and her team conceived the individual interface structures in this room. The nanofabricator labs next door worked on building them in reality. It was empty for brunch hour. They had worked all night.
“You’d rather have some poor schmuck go first?” asked Peter. “Who knows how many years from now? We have to break the FDA stranglehold! Our patients—and my father—don’t have much time left. Or this will all go away!” He gestured around the room.
Ruth’s left eye twitched as it followed his hand. “And what will your pregnant w-w-wife say?” Her expression couldn’t hide her disappointment that he followed the pleasure centers of his limbic system and not his intellectual cortex when choosing a partner.
“She can’t know about this.”
Her smirk twitched. “Implant just Hippo 2.0? Or Cortex 2.0 as well?”
“Both. The C-2.0 is programmable-ready. I can activate it later, when we’ve finished the computations.”
“Always Herr Umgeduldik . . .” chastised Ruth.
Peter stared blankly.
“Mr. Impatient, P-petulant. If we’re gonna do this, you need automatic language translation. In the chips. Ask the shaigitzes. They can figure it out. I can’t repeat myself all day!”
“ ‘If we’re gonna do this . . .’?”
“Yes. We have a blood covenant. We work with each other. Forever. I could not deny you this. But . . . I have conditions . . .”
He was afraid of that.
“You are my partner,” she continued. “This is my research.” Her index finger stabbed repeatedly at his forehead. “That is mine now.”
“I don’t understand.” For the first time, he wondered if she was mentally disturbed. And what would an unbalanced scientist do, tinkering inside his head? “I’m yours?”
“Feh. Amanda can keep your body. I get your cerebral cortex. I decide what gets done. And when.”
“I can’t give you that kind of power over me.”
She tried to shrug fatalistically, but her shoulders bounced up and down. “Then Pharma wins.”
“I
could fire you!”
It was the first time he could recall seeing real surprise in her eyes. “N-n-no. I am too valuable. And many are here because of me. And we have a blood covenant.”
She was right on all counts. He couldn’t. “So what would you let me do?”
“Both surgeries. As soon as possible.”
“Then why are we even arguing?” he yelled.
Ruth’s left leg vibrated. “I like you verklempt, boychik.” She reached out as if to tousle his hair, but her own wiring yanked back her shaking hand midair. A one-sided grin betrayed the eternal push-me-pull-you of her oddly firing brain. “Almost got me there. But your brain is still mine. And we will not tell Amanda. I don’t want a . . . p-pregnant . . .” she said as though imagining the disgusting intimacy and bodily fluids necessary, “. . . woman attacking me.”
“Definitely not. And we can’t tell Carter.”
“Agreed,” said Ruth. “Dozens of people have to know. But they cannot.” She sat at her terminal and turned away from him.
“Thank you, Ruth.” He would have squeezed her shoulder, but she might have screamed.
Ruth didn’t answer him. She was already absorbed in computer simulations of molecular-sized synthetic neural structures. He turned to leave. On the wall next to her, Peter saw the photo from Ruth’s old Stanford lab of Nick, Peter, Carter, and Ruth, no longer hidden away. It was clear that Nick was holding Carter more tightly to his person than he was Peter, as though he liked Carter more. Peter had never noticed that before.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Secrets can be hard to keep from the ones you love, but Peter persevered. This was the second secret he had kept from his wife during their marriage. When he realized he had degenerated into a husband who kept secrets, it disturbed him, but he rationalized it as necessary for the greater good.
But Peter had bigger issues than whether his wife and partner were opposed. On the news, all over the world, anti-nanotech rhetoric was flowing thick and fast. Some countries, like the United States, had confiscated all nanofabrication equipment and halted all research and development the year before but were still debating all-encompassing perpetual bans or embargoes on nanotechnology of all stripes. Others, like China, Israel, and the Koreas, sent their researchers underground to avoid international pressures. Senator Mankowicz continued to urge a broad nanotech ban in the United States. It looked increasingly as if Prometheus’s technology would never pass the FDA or public opinion. Furious at the shifting sands of governmental policy, Carter flew once again to DC to lobby the FDA, club, and congressional members (who were often the same people) and to muzzle the press corps through misdirection and promises of access, to protect whatever nanotech he could.
