The Braintrust: A Harmony of Enemies

by Marc Stiegler

  Dash looked bemused. “What would I do with it?”

  Ping shouldered her way between the two of them. “Give it to me,” she chirped. “I mean, really, I’m the only one of the three of us who has a clue how to use a knife like this.”

  Dash went to the mediator’s table, took the knife, and handed it to Ping.

  Jamal was dragged from the room howling for his property.

  ***

  The next day Dash awoke slowly as pseudo-daylight filtered into her room from her virtual balcony, a very fancy cruise liner-esque name for the immense screen covering half a wall that replayed the real-time view of the ocean just beyond the Elysian Fields.

  Normally at this time of day that patch of ocean was empty. Later the area would fill with jet skis and windsurfers, but dawn was quiet. Today, however, a major laser tag game was being held, and it had started the moment the sun popped above the horizon.

  Dash found the laser tag players quite entertaining. Ping had told her that normally laser tag was played by individuals with pistols, ducking and dodging across an obstacle field. Ping had urged her to play a round, so that, as Ping explained, “I can nail your sorry ass.” Given that incentive, Dash had demurred.

  The virtual balcony was showing her the BrainTrust version of laser tag, played with copters buzzing each other across the water. When a laser tagger scored a hit on another copter, the downed flyer automatically lost his guns and had to return to the floating helicopter pad.

  The copters were all home-brewed designs. One looked like a flying saucer with six holes around the outer edge for the turbofans. Another had an octagon of spindly poles arcing out from a central chair just large enough for the pilot. Dash thought the best one looked like the Jetsons’ skycar, and it moved with a speed the others must have envied.

  Copter tech had evolved at revolutionary speed on the BrainTrust because of the low costs and simple certification processes. You could fly any wacky design-prototype copter in the laser tag competition as long as you didn’t fly over the isle ships and kept the altitude within thirty feet of the sea’s surface. A thousand hours of accident-free operation by five or more pilots, and the restrictions were lifted.

  A number of venture capitalists, Colin had explained, were avid watchers of the battles. Several copter designs had been licensed and were now manufactured dirtside, though none of them were made or flown in America or Europe. “Too dangerous,” the regulatory wise men of Western civilization universally agreed. “Too fat a litigation target,” the investors responded instinctively. That was why America still didn’t have flying cars. At least that was what Colin had said, though he might have been trying to get a rise out of Byron at the time.

  Music wafted in from the passage. Beautiful music.

  Music? Dash struggled to her feet and pulled a Balinese sarung around herself as she listened. It was a woman’s voice, singing a melody with no words. She thought she recognized the music, and smiled as she realized it was Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. She had looked it up after finding out she would be living on the Appalachian Spring deck.

  The voice was remarkable, even through the walls of her cabin. She was even more amazed that this lone voice could carry a tune designed for a symphony. She swung open her door.

  Jam stood in the middle of the passage, eyes closed, face raised to the sky in the deck’s artificial dawn.

  Movement on her right made her look to the side, and she saw Ping step hesitantly beyond her door. Ping began to sing, backing up Jam’s alto with a remarkable soprano.

  Another door on the passage quietly opened. And another.

  A bicyclist rolling down the hall slowed to a stop.

  People started to arrive and sit or stand in the passage. The neighbors must have called friends who were singers, because a remarkable percentage of the new arrivals joined in. Soon it was a symphony indeed.

  Dash noticed another odd thing—there were no cell phones in the air recording the event. Unplanned, this had become a private concert, an ephemeral moment that would exist only in the memories of the people here.

  She remembered a writeup she had seen about the origins of the music. Copland had written it for a woman who had, he explained, “Something prim and restrained, a strong quality about her, that one tends to think of as American.”

  In Copland’s era, Dash realized, Jam would have made an excellent American. Today, she was perfect as a member of the BrainTrust.

  Dash leaned against her cabin door, closed her eyes, and simply listened.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Experiments in Aging

  Just imagine how much happier you would be if a prematurely deceased loved one were alive, or a debilitated one were vigorous—and multiply that good by several billion, in perpetuity. Given this potential bonanza, the primary moral goal for today's bioethics can be summarized in a single sentence. Get out of the way.

  Steven Pinker, “Boston Globe, A Moral Imperative for Bioethics”

  She gave her patients their customized primary injections, and for three days and three nights everything went as planned. Which was to say, nothing happened as the telomere replicators distributed themselves throughout the bodies of the patients.

  On the morning of the fourth day Dash slumped exhausted over her desk, her head cradled in her arms. She heard heavy, fast footsteps come through the door. She did not look up. “What, Byron?”

  “News.” He hesitated. “Good and bad. The replicators are having an effect.” Another pause. “Many different effects, actually.”

  Dash opened her eyes slowly, rolling her head as she straightened her back and stretched. “Let us see.”

  The nearest patient was Randa. She was snoring lightly. When Dash entered the room, her husband looked up and nodded silently.

  Dash studied the charts on the digital displays around the room as she muttered, “Pipelines.”

  Randa looked up at the sound. She smiled. “Is that how you remember me? As the pipeline girl?”

  Dash smiled in return. “Not any more. You are no longer the pipeline girl. You are the girl who lived.” She studied the screens for another moment. “Ten years, I estimate, by many measures of age.” She looked sternly at the elderly woman. “However, you are not younger. This is not a Fountain of Youth. But…” she reluctantly continued, “based on the progress being made by reinvigorated cell divisions and replacements, you would not be entirely off in your assessment if you concluded you felt ten years younger a month from now.”

  Randa clapped, laughed, and touched her face. “What about all these wrinkles?”

  Dash shook her head. “I suspect that ten years ago you already had those laugh lines. You will have to live with them.”

  Her husband spoke for the first time. “Her laugh lines are what make her beautiful. She’ll definitely have to live with them.”

  Randa looked at him with wonder. “I suppose I shall.”

  ***

  Byron spoke as they walked the short distance to Ben Wilson’s room. “Mr. Wilson has had the oddest reaction of anyone.”

  “Yes?”

  “None at all.”

  “Interesting.” Dash entered Ben’s room, finding that his grandson had pulled sentry duty for the moment. The two of them were speaking quietly when she interrupted. “Mr. Wilson, good morning.”

  He frowned at her. “I told you to call me Ben.”

  “Very well, Ben.” Dash studied his charts for a brief moment. “Well, Ben, you are an interesting case.”

  Ben closed his eyes and shuddered. “Oh, no. I learned long ago that being an interesting case was bad news.”

  His grandson reached out and took his hand. “It’s ok, Papa.”

  Dash shook her head from side to side. “There is good news. The telomere replicators did not harm you.”

  “And?”

  “They also did not lengthen any of your telomere chains.” She leaned over and peered at one line on the nearest screen. “They seem to have entere
d the cells of your body, but they never engaged with your chromosomes, and now they have all been flushed out of your system. I have no idea what happened.” She pursed her lips.

  Ben laughed, a thin edge of hysteria in the sound. “Well, if you had wanted me to continue funding you, this outcome would probably work.”

  Dash frowned.

  He waved his hand. “Joking, just joking. I would have continued to fund you regardless.” He shook his head. “Unless I died, of course, in which case you would definitely need other funding.” He shook his finger at her, raising his eyebrow in a mocking expression. “I would still fund you even if I were a corpse, you understand, if it were allowed.”

  “I’m sorry it did not work.”

  “That’s why they call it an experimental procedure, Dr. Dash.” Their eyes met for a moment. “If you figure out what went wrong and need another test subject, you’ll think of me first, won’t you?” He was very serious.

  She touched his shoulder. “Count on it.”

  ***

  They found Carl bent over a pad of old-fashioned paper, scribbling furiously with a traditional pencil. He looked at his tablet from time to time, making modifications to a simulation program.

  Dash watched him for a couple of minutes, averse to interrupting him. Finally he looked up. “My head hurts.” He winced. “It really hurts.” He went back to scribbling.

  Dash looked around at the displays. A look of alarm spread over her face. “This is very bad.”

  Byron raised an eyebrow, and she pointed. He answered his own question. “The replicators are overstimulating the neurons throughout the cranium.” He looked at her again. “How can that be?”

  Dash shook her head.

  Carl moaned. As he paused for a moment the left hand, the one holding the pencil, started shaking. He grasped his left hand in his right, and slowly, painfully, went back to his work.

  Dash touched his wrist. “Carl.”

  He looked up. “I almost have it. I’m really close.” He ripped the page from the pad, and held it up to her. “Can you see?”

  Dash studied the page. “Almost.” She ran a finger under one passage in one equation. “What’s this?”

  “It’s…it’s…self-evident.” He looked into her eyes. “What’s happening to me?”

  Dash glanced at the monitors. It was too painful to her to maintain eye contact. “The replicators are no longer following their expected behavior.” She exhaled. “While all your neurons are firing at unexpected intervals, the ones that process the sensation of pain are the worst.” She thought of an analogy. “You know how you can set the timing circuit on a computer chip to fire faster, running the chip at a higher speed until it overheats and fails?”

  Carl nodded. “Overclocking.”

  “Think of it as overclocking in your mind.” A very painful form of overclocking. And it was accelerating.

  “That explains it. Aspects of my formula that I couldn’t understand before are now clear. I just have to get them down on paper.” He started writing again, but the scrawl was illegible.

  Dash tapped on a keyboard and a pale pink chemical slid into the IV line attached to his wrist. “This may help with the pain, at least a little bit. For a little while.” She shook her head. “But the source of the pain is actually inside your brain.”

  “And you cannot shut it off without shutting me off. I understand.” He continued to write, and in a few moments the numbers and symbols became legible again. “I-I don’t think I will make it.” He looked up at her and feverishly grabbed her arm. She stood passively. “You understand. Will you finish it for me?”

  She looked at the equations again. She had a sense that there were a couple of things that could be, should be improved upon, and it would make a difference. “You work on it more it first. I will take it from there.”

  He laid back in the bed, his muscles relaxing for the first time. His eyes closed. “I’ll go back to it in a minute.”

  Dash turned to Byron. “Stay with him.”

  Byron nodded. “I’ll make sure he gets some sleep.”

  Dash thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “Help him stay awake. He has little time. Enable him to make the most of it.”

  ***

  Ryan was kicking his covers and screaming when Dash walked in. A nurse turned to her and said, “I was about to call you. The pain meds aren’t working.”

  Dash nodded. “It is not normal pain. She tapped on the machines, and a dose of the same light pink medication as Carl’s moved down the tube to his wrist.

  Ryan stopped kicking. “I don’t suppose that’s a symptom of healing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have to fix it!” he shouted, then kicked again and grabbed at her. Dash stepped back, reaching for the call button.

  “No, don’t get the goons.” His whole body arched in some combination of pain and misery and collapsed nerveless onto the bed. “It’s over then, huh?”

  Dash considered for a moment. “Shall I call your relatives?”

  He chuckled. “That crew? I’ve repaired many votes in my time, but today if they had to vote, I’d probably already be dead.”

  “Do not underestimate them.”

  More chuckling greeted her. “Trust me, underestimating is not in my character.” A new surge of pain transfixed his face. “Is that the best painkiller you’ve got?”

  “I have nothing better.”

  “Where’s the button to finish it?”

  Dash pointed mutely at a toggle by his side, nestled under a snap cover.

  “I just open the cover, flip the toggle?”

  “And press this button.” Dash pointed at the last control on the instrument.

  “Fine.” He flipped the cover off. “Ok, you can call in the cannibals now.”

  Dash nodded to the nurse, who started briskly for the door. “Tell them to hurry,” Dash called after her.

  “Don’t you have other patients to attend to? Get out.”

  She bowed to him, then took her leave as he pressed the final button.

  ***

  Dash stood in the hallway gathering herself for a moment. Cries came from Ryan’s room, and an elderly woman came out. “Bet he gave you a very hard time in the end.”

  Dash almost smiled. “Yes.”

  “Good. He was happy then.” The woman patted her cheek. “I’ll tell everyone what happened. You go on.”

  A gurney was already being wheeled toward them. “Thank you,” Dash answered.

  She walked to Lucas’ room. She shuddered a moment, then straightened her back and entered.

  Lucas turned from his sister as he heard her. “Good morning,” he offered.

  Dash felt overwhelmed with relief. “Good morning,” she replied, with perhaps an excess of enthusiasm. Was she gushing? Unacceptable.

  Dash strolled around, studying the monitors.

  “How is it, Doc?”

  “Fifteen years, Mr. Kahn.” She looked at him sternly. “It is not rejuvenation, of course. But you may have fifteen more years now than you had before. We’ll see in the course of the next thirty days, but that is my best estimate at this time.”

  Lucas’ sister closed her eyes; tears welled from underneath the lids.

  Lucas smacked his hand on the rail of the bed, creating an unimpressive dull thud. “Hah! Now I’m younger than you, Trini!”

  She opened her eyes; they danced with laughter. “You’ve always been younger than me, Lucas. You’ve always been a spoiled three-year-old.”

  Dash shook her head. “Please do not get too frisky yet. As I said, this is a preliminary estimate.” She glanced at a clock on one of the monitors. “I must go,” she said, and departed.

  ***

  She walked briskly toward Tom’s room, elated with Lucas’ response to treatment. She had two successes! She had hoped for this, but she had forced herself to remain skeptical. The failures seemed less terrible.

  Her pace faltered as she came around a co
rner and saw Byron hustling into a room, accompanied by two nurses. Tom’s room.

  In the moments it took her to reach them, it was over. Byron looked up at her. “At least this one was sudden. As in, virtually instantaneous.” He waved his hands around at the monitors. “You can see for yourself, but as nearly as I can tell, the membranes on his neurons started to dissolve and the cells more or less exploded.” He shook his head. “It’ll take some time to figure out what happened.”

  Dash looked at the monitors briefly, then decided she would analyze the data another day. “Go back and check on Carl. I will take a break, then go see Anne.” Byron hustled off, and Dash moved more slowly toward the floor’s small café.

  ***

  The Voice of the Silent watched in delight as four gun barrels formed in the printer’s well, one layer of sintered titanium powder at a time.

  Drew, Jerry, and Chuck looked at Howie, who had rented the printer, in amazement. Drew asked the necessary questions, rattling like a machine gun himself. “How did you know to do this? Why aren’t the cops crawling around us yet? Where’d you get the plans? Will this work like a real gun?”

  Howie drew his eyes away from the miracle forming in the machine that was his new best friend. “First of all, it won’t just work like a real gun—it’ll work better, at least for the duration of our trip. These are top-of-the-line 3D printers here, guys. The BrainTrust uses them to manufacture parts for the next generation of isle ships.” The Voice of the Silent had been given a printer near the window when they asked for a couple of hours of rental time, and Howie pointed outside at the more-than-half-built isle ship taking shape next door. “We’re gonna have guns made out of frickin’ titanium! Fifty thousand a pop, if you bought one in Texas! These’re better than my Winchester back home.” He slapped Drew on the back. “As for why the cops haven’t shown up yet, we aren’t makin’ guns here. We’re just makin’ parts for a homebrew copter. You know, the laser tag.” He pointed at the gun barrels, now large enough you could see their shape. “Those aren’t gun barrels, Drew. Those’re just tubes for a part of the fuel lines to the vertical props.”