The Braintrust: A Harmony of Enemies

by Marc Stiegler

  “Very disheartening. I see why you came to the BrainTrust. But why my lab? I am not doing stem cells.”

  A look of anger fleetingly crossed his face, then he laughed. “Because your research is even bigger and more important. Telomere chains! You can fix all kinds of things, including radiation damage.”

  Dash held up her hand in a “Stop” gesture. “Only radiation damage that has not compromised the cell’s ability to produce a healthy replacement. Do not confuse my research with a universal cure. Many people are apparently making that mistake already. I will not have such a person in my lab.” She paused. “Lengthening the telomere chains may even amplify the dangers of radiation, since cancer cell telomere chains don’t behave normally. Indeed, if something goes wrong, my therapy may cause whole new types of uncontrollable cancers and tumors.”

  Byron waved a hand impatiently. “Yes, yes, we are playing with fire.” He smiled sheepishly. “I guess that was a reason I wanted to be here, too.”

  “Excellent. Can you show me what you’ve been doing with the CRISPIER?”

  ***

  The world was dim and quiet save for the glow of the screens as Byron showed Dash the work he had already done. As they ran the simulation of the viral factory programming, Dash gasped: it ran so much faster than anything she had been able to do back in Bali. It took her a few minutes and several runs to realize that the new speed of her computations demanded a change in the way she worked.

  Back home she would very carefully plan a simulation run, taking all evening after she got home from the hospital and then letting the sim run all night. But now, with the sims coming back so fast she could hardly think between submitting the job and seeing the outcome, she realized that meticulously spending hours to craft the next design no longer made sense. She would become a tinkerer instead, making an improvement in the design, running it, seeing how it went wrong, correcting that, and running it again, all in a matter of minutes.

  The tools for programming the factories, however, were too clumsy to support the pace of modification she desired. Time and again the modified design, even when created by Byron—who was at this point highly proficient—broke the sim. "I think this can be improved upon," Dash said quietly as she watched such a failure for the fourth time in a row. Byron looked aside from the screens and eyed her quizzically. She sketched out an idea for making the basic factory template more modular, so that errors could not cause surprising side effects far from the location where the modification had been made. Byron nodded seriously and opened another screen; a whole new kind of software code appeared. "Let's fix it," he said with a light in his eyes. "We'll rebuild the tools so we can redesign the factories." With that, Byron dove deep into the structure of tools themselves, leaving Dash behind.

  Several minutes passed before he came up for air and smiled. "You realize that modifying the tools to modify the programs to modify the viruses is unlikely to work the first time." They entered Dash's newest improvement much more simply than they had before, and ran the sim. Despite Byron’s warning, the result was much as had been planned.

  "Victory! Well done, Byron."

  And so they continued, modifying the factories, then modifying the tools to make it easier to modify the factories, again and again. They made some horrible mistakes, but that was ok. Dash understood that human beings, herself included, learned best when making errors.

  Meanwhile, this was the first time Dash had ever worked with someone else on her telomere project. She had never known what it could be like. She hoped henceforth to work this way always.

  Finally Dash proposed a radical modularization redesign of the basic template, much more radical than the first one. Byron slumped in his chair. "That's a great idea, Dash, but we'll have to modify the CRISPIER's hardware to support it. We'll have to get a couple of Amanda's engineers in here to help us."

  Dash shook her head, blinking, as she came out of the near-trance of their intellectual labors. "Well, on the bright side, I am not quite late for lunch. I am scheduled to meet two friends of mine. Would you care to join us?"

  He gave her a goofy grin. “Sure.”

  As they strode down the passage toward the nearest elevator, Dash asked, “How do you like it here on the BrainTrust? I would guess most Americans would find it very cramped, with our cabins so small.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind the small rooms. I don’t spend much time in my room anyway, and my roommate spends even less. The rooms are all about the same size, so it’s pretty egalitarian.”

  Dash had a cabin all to herself, a perk of being a research lead and project owner, she guessed, but he was right. All the cabins were the same size, and to the best of her knowledge, no one had two unless they had children.

  Byron continued. “But from a social perspective, the BrainTrust is pretty backward.”

  Dash shook her head. “What does that even mean?”

  “There are almost no rules to protect people from exploitation. There’s no minimum wage, for example.”

  “I see.” They stepped off the elevator and Dash looked around at people moving swiftly on their appointed tasks. “What is the minimum wage in your home?”

  “Thirty dollars an hour in California, thirty-five in Portland,” he answered crisply.

  “Does anyone here on the BrainTrust make less than that?”

  “Well, no. All the low paying jobs are done by bots, and the bot wranglers make pretty good money.”

  Dash thought the facts spoke for themselves, but quickly learned that they didn’t.

  “The wranglers are still being exploited, though. I mean, with ten bots that never rest or tire in the typical swarm, the people are getting fifteen times as much work done as a dirtside worker, but they don’t make anywhere near that much money.”

  “I see, I guess, though many of the people who were my patients back home would be delighted to make as much money as a BrainTrust wrangler. Indeed, they would be happy to make as much money as one of your bots.” They entered the cafeteria and saw Ping and Jam. “My friends are over there.” After grabbing trays and running through the buffet tables, they joined Dash’s friends. Dash took a seat next to Ping and introduced Byron, who sat beside Jam. Dash looked at Ping, who was making a face. “Are you okay?” Dash asked.

  Ping answered, “They said this dulse was supposed to taste like bacon. It’s terrible.” She thrust a flaky leaf of purple something at Jam. “Jam, does this taste like bacon to you?”

  Jam delicately took a bite of the dulse. “It is not too bad,” she said cautiously, “though I have no idea if it tastes like bacon.”

  Ping put her hand down. “You’ve never had bacon?!”

  Dash kicked Ping under the table. “Ping,” she hissed, “Of course she has never had bacon.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” She picked up another piece of dulse and held it toward Dash.

  Dash looked at it dubiously. “As it happens, I have never had bacon, either. Still…” Like Jam, Dash took a small bite. She shook her head. “I suppose I could eat it,” she looked down at her plate, “but today I think I shall stick with Shrimp Alfredo.”

  “Hmmph. Well, they say it works best with lettuce and tomato.” After reintegrating the dulse into her BLT, Ping took a big bite. “Ok, not bad, though next time I’m having the kahala.”

  Jam asked, “What is kahala, anyway? I’ve been wondering about that since Mr. Wheeler mentioned it.”

  Dash answered, “A high-quality amberjack that prefers traveling in dense schools, making it an excellent breed for domestication and farming. It is used primarily for—”

  Ping interrupted ecstatically, “Sashimi!”

  “As Ping said.” After a pause, Dash told them briefly about her morning, ending with, “And on the way down here, Byron was telling me about the minimum wage in America.” She turned to Byron. “I have always been puzzled by the American argument over the minimum wage. If it is such a good idea, why is it not several hundred dollars an hour?”

  Byron
eyed her like she was crazy. “Obviously businesses couldn’t afford to pay that much.”

  Dash pursued the matter with the same focused energy she brought to all her interests. “So, is there a discrete indivisible step function at thirty dollars and one cent?”

  Byron’s face registered blank puzzlement. “A discrete what?”

  Ping pointed her fork at him. “A discrete indivisible step function! Don’t you know what that is?”

  Jam touched Byron gently on the arm. “Do not let her give you a hard time. She doesn’t know what a discrete indivisible step function is either.” Jam dipped a thick piece of lobster in butter as she continued, “I don’t know either, of course. Dash just says things like that from time to time.”

  Dash leaned forward. “Hey, not fair.” She turned to Byron. “So, in California, is there an indivisible break between thirty dollars and thirty dollars and one cent, such that at thirty dollars all businesses are able to pay the minimum wage, but at thirty dollars and one cent all businesses are not?”

  Byron shrugged curtly. “Well, no.”

  “So, business failures and job losses are a continuous function as the minimum wage goes higher? Would there be more businesses and more employment if the minimum wage were lower? Are there many unemployed people in California and Portland at this time?” At Byron’s look of disgust, she explained, “I am just trying to understand the mathematical underpinnings of your belief system.”

  Byron glared. “I see you’re one of those libertarian types.”

  Dash saw another tall shadow, undoubtedly another American, materialize behind her to the left. She heard Colin speak.

  “I doubt Dash even knows what a libertarian is.”

  Byron looked up at the newcomer, and somehow his pasty skin grew paler. “Mr. Wheeler?” He rose rapidly from his seat.

  Colin raised an eyebrow. “And you are?” he asked as he offered his hand.

  “Byron Schultz, sir. I’m Dr. Dash’s intern.”

  “Ah. Blue state?”

  “Yes, sir. California.”

  “Well, you won’t find any libertarians here.”

  Byron scowled as he sat back down. “The whole BrainTrust is a hotbed of libertarians.”

  Colin gestured at the three women at the table. “Not here. You won’t find three people less interested in politics anywhere, Byron. Mind if I join you?” He pulled over a chair from the nearest table without waiting for an answer. “Of course, you’re partly right. There are a lot of libertarians on the BrainTrust. Quite ironic, actually, considering that the BrainTrust’s basic political structure is that of a corporate dictatorship.”

  Ping laughed. Byron looked alarmed. Jam and Dash, who had lived under dictatorships, looked horrified. Colin looked at the range of expressions and joined Ping in laughter. “Corporate dictatorship. Here’s the bottom line: if there’s someone on board we don’t like, we send them back where they came from.”

  Byron leaned forward. “I’ve heard that on your ferries, if they find a stowaway, they just toss ‘em overboard into the ocean.”

  Jam quietly hunched over and looked down at her plate. “Not true,” she whispered.

  Colin watched her as he answered, “I’ve heard that too. Both Huffington and Drudge agree that we secretly slaughter hundreds of refugees. Surely they could not possibly both be wrong, could they?” Colin’s expression turned sour. “Nonsense, Byron. Our official policy is to return stowaways to the port they originated from once they get here. In practice, it’s sufficiently hard to sneak onto our ferries that the successful few almost always find jobs on board. Employers often line up at the dock to talk to stowaways about job opportunities. Because…” he paused and looked around the table to make sure everyone was paying attention as he revealed a secret truth, “a successful stowaway has a characteristic even more important than genius.” He sat back in his chair, waiting to be prompted.

  Jam quivered, all her muscles taut, but Dash broke first. “Tell us,” she demanded.

  “Grit,” he said simply. “The relentless pursuit of one’s goal even if one has to cross continents and oceans to achieve it. People with grit can achieve the impossible.” He looked at Jam. “Isn’t that right, Ms. Yousafzai?”

  ***

  Grit… Jam ran her finger across her scarred cheek. The memories came at her, and the world and her friends faded from her sight. She flashed back.

  Evening turning to night. Jamal, her husband, gone again. The sound of angry voices. Jamal crashing through the door. Rage in his eyes. A fist swinging at her.

  Dodge, dodge, block. His anger growing with each missed swing. Dodge. Don’t trip! The giant ring on his finger, on his fist, in her face. No!

  She was dazed, but she was angry too, so she fought. And when it was over and he was curled sideways on the floor screaming, she took the emergency savings stashed behind the flour crock and dragged herself numbly out of her village into the abysmal darkness.

  ***

  Ping waved a hand just in front of her nose. “Hey, girl, where’d you go?”

  Jam’s hand flashed as she knocked Ping’s away. She touched her scar again.

  Ping asked, “Where’d you get that, anyway?”

  “My husband,” Jam mumbled.

  “You hit him back, right?”

  Jam raised her hand, examining it closely as she closed it in a fist. “I was a Pakistani commando! What did he expect me to do?” She looked at Colin. Grit.

  ***

  She knew where she needed to go, but she did not have enough money to get there. She did not have a passport or a letter of recommendation. All she had was her training, but it would be enough.

  She remembered leaping off the dock next to the ferry that carried excited new employees to the BrainTrust, and as the ship left the port, she remembered climbing ever so quietly up her rope on the starboard side, and rolling over the gunwale, soaked and shivering, to fall onto the deck. She no longer had any money, but she still had a few dried dates and a soggy biscuit in her pack. Perhaps she could sneak into the bathrooms for water? It would be enough.

  She thought of the bosun finding her as she dozed under the tarp covering a deck winch spare. He ordered her out onto the deck, and she explained that she had been a Pakistani commando and she could do security work, and he eyed her skeptically. He gave her a meal and escorted her back onto the deck to demonstrate her hand-to-hand skills with the security chief while the captain watched. After she threw the chief five times and gave him a black eye (for which she apologized), the chief and the captain and the bosun called the BrainTrust. “Boss,” the captain said, “we have another sob story for you. Yeah, real grit, if it's true.”

  Grit. Yes, that was the word he had used.

  The chief muttered, “I don't get it. She's graceful and all. I mean, it's like fighting a ballet dancer, but she's not very fast, so you can see her move—flow, really—from block to attack and back again. She's so slow, she should be easy to take no matter how graceful. But somehow she always has an arm or a leg in position to mess you up, or she’s not there anymore. How does she do that?”

  The captain chortled. “You don't know? It's easy. Bruno, she starts throwing the block before you start throwing the punch. You have a tell.”

  “I do not have a tell!” Bruno objected. “Nobody's spotted a tell since high school! I do not have a tell!“

  “That's fine,” the captain said. He jerked his thumb in her direction. “Tell her that.” He turned back to the phone and listened briefly. “No, she surrendered peaceably when we found her. I suspect she could have taken us all, locked us in a hold, and commandeered the ship. Is that laughter? You sound like you're choking. Yeah, it's funny if you're a thousand miles away, I suppose. What? Put her in with Ping? Ping's already got a roommate. A bot wrangler. What are you complaining to me for? Ok, I'll shuffle ‘em. In with Ping she goes. Yeah, yeah, right next to that Dyah Amabara-something girl. The doctor. She seems pleasant. Very polite. As you wish.”
r />   ***

  Jam squeezed her eyes together, and once more shook herself back into the present. She caught Colin’s eyes with her own. She silently mouthed the words: It was you. It was you.

  Colin smiled mischievously. Jam rubbed her scar.

  Dash interrupted the unspoken conversation. “Jam, I have offered before, and I offer again. Would you please let me fix your cheek? It would be quite easy.”

  Jam pulled her hand away from her face. “It helps me remember.” She put her hand down and leaned toward Dash. “Why don’t you get your eyes fixed so you don’t have to wear those ridiculous glasses anymore?”

  Dash turned away. “I, uh…”

  Ping interjected smugly. “I know why. I bet she thinks they make her look older.”

  Jam looked at Ping, then back at Dash. “Is that true?”

  Dash bowed her head. “Without them, I look too young to be a doctor. Even in Bali, I still looked like a college student. And to American eyes, I look—“

  “Like jailbait,” Ping interjected brightly. “Same as I do.” Her smile turned wolfish. “Of course, in my line of work it’s helpful to look harmless. Then, Ka-Pow! But it’s probably different for Dash.”

  Dash squared her shoulders. “The glasses and the lab coat grant me the appearance of maturity I deserve.”

  Ping interpreted this for everyone. “She wears the glasses so her patients don’t argue with her so much.”

  Dash nodded her head sheepishly. “That too.”

  A moment’s silence filled the air, then Ping picked up the thread of conversation that had been dropped. The thread Jam had so neatly dodged. “Jam, we were discussing your husband. The one who hit you, you know.” She pointed at the scar. “What did you do to him when he did that to you, Ms. Pakistani Commando?”

  Jam looked down at her hands, now clasped hard together. She mumbled an answer only Ping could hear.

  Ping clapped. “Do you have a picture of him? In case he ever shows up here, I mean. I want to spot him right off.” Ping reached out very slowly and lightly touched Jam’s scar. “I think he deserves one of these, too. Dash, as a surgeon, could you teach me how to cut a cheek just that way?”