Synners

by Pat Cadigan

  "Sorry," Keely said.

  "You didn't let me finish anyway. I don't know dick about any of this stuff just being like you are, no holes in the head. But now I'm on-line. Connected." Wires appeared on his head, growing out from his skull in a frenzy. "Understand now? I know what there is to know. Only thing I don't know is how I'm supposed to get all this stuff back in my head with me. I mean, where can I put it?" He picked up the tangle of lines again.

  "Wait," said Keely. "You mean you're on-line that way?" For some reason it hadn't occurred to him that Mark would be using the interface.

  "Come on. Anyone can tell something's different with me. Haven't been this coherent since I was sixteen fuckin' years old." He held the wires up and grimaced at them. "Gonna haveta cook this one awhile. Getting back to you later. I'll leave a back door open for you. Access code 'Gina' and you're in.'

  "What if you're off-line?"

  Mark spread his hands. "If I'm off-line, call Medical. It'll mean I'm dead."

  The screen went dark, leaving Keely staring at his own distorted reflection in the glass.

  25

  Manny's head was pounding. Not thirty minutes back to work after his own procedure and he'd had to have that headline, of all things, jump out at him from the dataline, with a notation from Mirisch: Find out about this!

  He was half tempted to leave his own message for the Great Grey Executive: Find out about it yourself! But he didn't need that kind of trouble with everything else he had to think about. He had to write up a dismissal notice for the Beater; good thing they hadn't had to waste sockets on him, and good riddance. He had to check on the hacker in the penthouse, make sure he'd been kept dosed enough to be unambitious but not so toxed that any damage had been done. Maybe another interrogation, with something stronger this time. None of the names Manny had gotten out of him under the influence had surfaced, and if at least some of them didn't show soon, the cops were going to drop them.

  Maybe that was best; more than a couple of hackers together, and they'd start plotting to take over the world. Maybe it would be enough just to get the one he already had drilled and get him working on security. If he could turn the kid all the way around, Diversifications would be airtight, completely closed to any break-ins-and at the same time, no employee system would be completely locked to him, either.

  But first, Travis. The red-haired doctor must have been sitting by the phone; there was half a ring, and then Travis's face was looking out at him through the screen, haggard and pale, as if he'd been up for days. The scene around him was definitely not his office.

  "I tried to keep it quiet," Travis said before Manny could speak. "You'll be happy to know almost nothing of the real story got out. Anybody who saw anything's been paid off, including the cops, although we had to get one of them a new, higher-paying job before she was completely satisfied." Travis stepped aside; behind him was a table with a sheet covering what was obviously two bodies.

  "What happened?" Manny asked, his voice flat.

  Travis looked even grimmer. "They had a stroke. Which is to say, they each had the same one." He reached over and threw the sheet back.

  Joslin and Galen nude was a sight every bit as revolting as Manny had ever imagined, with the added feature that their faces seemed to have been dipped in blood. He looked away from the screen.

  "No, look at this," Travis demanded, and adjusted the lens on his end. It zoomed in on their heads. Manny's stomach did a slow forward roll.

  The wires connecting Joslin to Galen-Galen to Joslin?- were an incomprehensible snarl. There looked to be too many of them, more wires than there were sockets to accommodate them. Travis kept the lens on them for a long time and then retracted it, moving into the center and mercifully obscuring the sight.

  "That's all there was, just the wires," Travis said. "Connecting them directly to each other. Wires, and blood, and piss, and shit. Just the way the hotel maid found them."

  Manny massaged his forehead. "And did the maid understand what she'd seen?"

  "You bet she did. She's saving for mod school." Travis's mouth twitched. "We're giving her sockets next week-our treat, of course-and sending her off to a prestigious school in Hawaii, also our treat. A congenial practice on Oahu will be waiting to take her when she finishes."

  "Did you think of giving her sockets and clearing out some old useless memories taking up a lot of space that could be put to better use?"

  Travis's disgust came through clearly. "If it were that simple, you'd never have gotten this legalized in the States. I don't have time to explain the complexities of memory storage, so just take my word for it, Mr. Rivera, that it could not be done without removing a number of other memories, and we don't yet know enough to be able to plant screen memories to cover it. And even if we did, I would refuse to take that kind of responsibility."

  He wiped a palm back and forth across his lips in a harsh movement. "But we kept that part of it out of the media. What they were doing." Travis glanced over his shoulder at the still uncovered bodies. "Mindfucking, I guess you'd call it. Apparently they used to do it hooked into hardware to save the images. We found quite a library of chips in their room, which have since been removed and purged. I had a look at some of them. It's amazing, really, what can walk around upright, let alone manipulate technology."

  Travis was losing it, Manny thought. The idea was enough to make him feel a little panicky himself. "We've known for some time they weren't the healthiest people around," he said placatingly. "I'm sure if you look at the specs of her brain-"

  "It's not a matter of sick," Travis said. "It's a matter of… being alien. Another person's mind can be an alien thing, if you approach it just right. Or just wrong. But we were talking about how they died, weren't we?

  "Stroke. Did I say that? The fact is, I can't tell you what it was. Global malfunction. Intercranial meltdown. System failure. Their brains just… went. I can't tell from the scans who went first, or why, and personally I don't think it matters. As to why, I'd say that certain ideas can be hazardous to your health, real hazardous, Mr. Rivera. If you can get an ulcer, why not a cerebral vascular accident, or all-out nuked?" He gazed into the screen, chin lifted defiantly, as if daring Manny to argue with him. "Are you coming down to take care of this?"

  "You can take care of it," Manny said quietly. "Just get rid of the bodies. That's all you have to do. We'll handle the media."

  "I thought we might remove the brains-what's left of the brains-and study them," Travis said, his voice suddenly dry and pedantic. "Since this is the first case we know of where two brains have been directly linked, without the hardware."

  "Do what you feel you have to do-" Manny started.

  "I personally favor burning the brains, pouring the ashes into a deep hole, and salting the earth above them so that nothing can grow there."

  "That's enough!" Manny snapped. "You're supposed to be transferring the operation over to the Mexican government and training their doctors. Get a grip on yourself. I don't care if you found chips recreating Krafft-Ebing out of the Marquis de Sade. For all you know they died as soon as they stuck the wires in their heads, from the misuse of the hardware and not from any weird ideas any of them had."

  Travis laughed humorlessly. "You didn't see the chips."

  "And I don't need to. All I need to do is take care of my end while you take care of yours."

  "We really should study these connections," Travis said, turning pedantic again. "To see exactly how she altered them. I'd like to know, just for my own curiosity, what she did to set up two-way communication without hardware intervention. Without more hardware intervention, I should say. I don't want to know, but as a scientist, I should know. You can't let these things get by you."

  "We're putting warning labels on all the equipment," Manny said, managing to sound far more serene than he felt. "Misuse of hardware and unauthorized alterations could prove hazardous and blah-blah-blah. We were doing that anyway, but nobody needs to know what can happen if t
hey disregard the warnings. Are you up to the job right now?"

  Travis leaned forward. "Going to move me out, retire me, send me to some lab where I'll be too sheltered to leak?"

  "Perhaps you're feeling overly stressed from the responsibility and the work load and all the VIPs and the media traipsing through, that's all," Manny said evenly. "But I need your expertise right now, and if you can't supply it, give me someone who can."

  Travis's shoulders slumped as all the tension drained out of his face. Manny could see the man's professional reflexes kick in as they discussed who at the installation should be let in on the Joslin-Galen fiasco and what kind of new cover story should be released to the media. By the time Manny finished with him, he seemed refocused, back in control, though with an occasional glimmer of suppressed emotion.

  Manny himself felt half-drained, in need of another week of R amp;R. He started to make notes on a new media release explaining that Joslin had died of "natural causes" and Galen had killed himself out of grief for his lost beloved. It removed the hint of instability on Joslin's part, something they didn't need to have associated with the person who had invented brain sockets.

  Five minutes later his emailbox alarm beeped, showing a new message from Mirisch. Manny put it on-screen.

  Just wish we could have screened these videos before their release-M.

  Manny had the distinct sensation of his heart hitting the top of his stomach. He brought up the review and release queues and watched in horror as the listings shifted from review to release like a little parade of data-soldiers in lockstep. Cursing himself, he froze the process immediately, managed to call two items back from the bottom of the release queue, and then just sat at his desk trying not to hyperventilate.

  If the Upstairs Team got wind of this, he'd be preceding the Beater out the door. Not just out the door but probably into court-it wouldn't be the first time a company successfully sued an employee who faked a job by automating it. His panic lessened slightly when he saw there was still a handful of items in the review queue, a few short commercial spots, and a couple of videos, both Visual Mark's.

  A moment later his heart went into turbo-charged overdrive again. Even automated, it should not have happened. He had to call an item out of the review queue, review it-screen it -and then dispose of it, either letting the program release it automatically, or releasing it himself. And even then the process was not self-perpetuating-he had to order it to deliver another item from the review queue. It should not have been able to continue by itself. But then, it should not have been able to start-

  His heart was banging as if it were trying to bludgeon its way out of his chest. That little bastard in the penthouse. The son of a bitch had not only hacked him but infected him with some kind of virus. Had to be. If the little shit had been able to worm his way into Ludovic's area, then he could get in anywhere, and he'd just fucked around with the program until he'd kicked it into motion. And then planted his little virus. Obviously the dosage in his food was no longer strong enough-if the Upstairs Team found out-

  Anxiety attack, he thought, left mesial temporal lobe. Travis would probably enjoy studying this. Especially now.

  He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe normally through the pain in his chest. Bad day, he repeated over and over to himself like a mantra. Bad day, bad day, badday, badday, badday…

  Eventually the pain began to recede, giving ground by the slow half inch. He was almost back to normal when the pounding on the door started.

  "Rivera, you motherfucker, I know you're in there!"

  He groaned. Aiesi. The only person in the world who would ignore a Sealed for Privacy notice. He thumbed the speaker pad.

  "This had better be important. I'm too busy to be at the beck and call of every employee with a problem."

  She pounded on the door again, and he unsealed. Under normal circumstances he'd have just called security and let them deal with her. But then she might have just jumped off the terrace again.

  She strode in, planted her fists on his desk, and leaned into his face. "You're gonna be too busy to live if you don't do something about Mark. He's fucked."

  He gave her his standard antiprofanity wince to remind her of what an animal he thought she was. "Your friend is doing fine, according to all the reports. He's producing well above what we expected, and he's adapted beautifully, the doctors say-"

  "Yah, your fuckin' butchers on your payroll. They'd certify a chuck roast if you told them to. You pull in a cold one, or I will."

  "Pardon?" he said politely. "A 'cold one'?"

  She straightened up and put her big fists on her hips. "A neurosurgeon from the outside. Someone who ain't in on it, who ain't standing around waiting to profit on the big fucking breakthrough."

  Manny gave a short, refined laugh. "I'm afraid Diversifications' insurance plan doesn't cover consultations outside our own staff except in the case of grave emergencies needing a particular kind of specialist."

  "Bill me."

  "You don't have that kind of credit. Ms. Aiesi. I think you'd do better to spend some extra time on-line yourself, to get a better feel of how the system works. Your output, to be frank, hasn't been as high as we'd hoped." He actually had no idea of what her output was, but it was a good standard speech for heading off troublesome employees at the pass.

  "Don't output me, I've had enough of your horseshit. You won't get a cold one in here, I'll fucking do it."

  "No, you won't," he said cordially. "No doctor will examine another doctor's patient unless the patient him- or herself requests it. I don't think Mark is going to do that."

  She glared at him. "I'll find a way. I will fucking find a way, and then I'm gonna nail your ass up in court-you, and your head-drillers, and this whole fucking shithole."

  "I see." Manny sat forward and folded his hands on his desk. "Are you through now? Because if you are, I'd like to point some things out to you. Generally this is not how we address our superiors here. If you do it again, you'll be subject to discipline. Your whole outburst makes you subject to discipline, but I'm going to let it go because you're obviously overwrought for some reason-"

  "Wow. The quality of mercy just ain't fucking strained with you, is it?" She looked at him incredulously. "Thanks for the big fucking break, I'd just hate to see this on my permanent fucking record, that just makes my shit run loose." She turned and marched out.

  The door resealed behind her, and Manny waited tensely for the phone to buzz with a new crisis. It would be only too appropriate. After a few minutes of blessed quiet, he let himself relax. Apparently it was over for the day, over for the bad day. And all bad days always came to an end.

  He called up a list of the released material and prepared to skim through each item, in case the Upstairs Team decided to pop-quiz him on it. If they did, he'd just tell them he'd reviewed most of the stuff prior to getting his sockets and sent it to release sequentially so as not to overload the area. None of them had the expertise to prove otherwise. Then he could screen what was left in the review queue, either later today or early tomorrow. For now, though, he would leave it frozen.

  He skimmed the commercials first and found nothing that made him wince unduly. There were a few things he'd have sent back for a little fixing, but no disasters he'd have to live down or explain in full.

  For the videos he went to the high-res thirty-six-inch screen in the wall behind him. The first one he tossed up was one of Aiesi's, something with a group called Canadaytime. He shook his head at the silly name. Diversifications was going to sound like it was putting out word salad. After a few minutes he used the remote to cut it off and go on to the next one.

  Sometime later he became aware that he was staring at a blank screen. Dazed, he swiveled around to his desk to do something and realized he had no idea what he was going to do. He glanced at the desktop monitor. Play completed, said the plain white letters, and underneath, Actions Menu: replay, next, exit?

 
He turned and looked at the big screen again, frowning. His head felt foggy, as if he'd dozed off. It must have been one hell of a boring series of rock videos if it had put him to sleep.

  Manny tried to remember what he'd seen, but the only thing that came to mind were vague shapes moving rhythmically. More tired than he'd realized, he thought, too much the first day back.

  Abruptly he found himself standing up behind his desk, rubbing one eye to the point of soreness. Damn, but he needed a rest already, from obnoxious rock'n'roll animals and a certain hacker who was too smart for his own good.

  Which reminded him-what was he going to do about that little bastard? He could go up and confront him and see where that would lead, or he could let him stew for a couple of days, worrying about what would happen, maybe let him get confident enough so that he cracked in again, but this time to a hot reception, Manny catching him in the act. And then see where that would lead. Threatening to revoke the reparation contract and having him remanded to prison could make him compliant.

  The little shit. The little brass-balled cock-knocker. Screw him, why let him have even one more moment of feeling confident? He sat down and banged out a short, pointed message on the keyboard and zapped it up to the penthouse. Sweat, you son of a bitch, sweat and suffer all night, Manny thought, so that when I get around to you tomorrow, you'll be the shivering little turd you ought to be.

  Immanuel, when did you get so mean?

  It seemed to be his father's voice speaking in his head, a voice he had not heard for years, and it took him by surprise. His father had been proud of his ambition, but his father had also been dead for close to twenty-five years, since before he had graduated high school.