She smiled like a fox this time. “Depending on how you approach issue, that quite true. But what if you had figured out how to coax a stem cell to differentiate for you into any organ you desired, and at just the right time, the way a baby is grown from a fertilized egg? If you had those pathways isolated, AND you knew just where to insert your synthetic genes…”
“But…” Klepsky was hyperventilating so hard, she had to hand him a brown paper bag, her lunch bag, to be precise, to breathe into, after dumping out the contents.
“It okay. I get that a lot,” she said.
“How close are you?” he said between breathing into the brown bag.
She shrugged. “Five-ten year, maybe.”
“So no closer necessarily to the finish line than anyone else?” he gasped, continuing to bury his mouth back in the bag between speaking to her and gasping for air.
“It still anybody guess who going to cross finish line first. The good news is, it will likely take the convergence of all these research vectors coming together to formulate more robust, long-term solution. So I doubt anyone of us going to be left out in cold.”
“Not like your guy in the freezer, at any rate.” He stumbled back to his stool, still unwilling to let go of the bag, but needing it a little less now.
“I can’t believe you told me all this. Certainly whatever you’re doing is a hot enough topic to make it worth the company’s while to keep the likes of Ed Gorman off your trail. He still thinks you’re neck deep in AI research, which means that’s what the rest of the FBI thinks.”
She absently teased the rack of slides in her slide-box, awaiting placement under the microscope, back and forth with her manicured fingernails. “I thought being as we going to be seeing each other romantically from now on, candor would facilitate a more desirable degree of intimacy.”
Suddenly he was breathing into the brown bag again. After a few puffs, and trying to walk in circles to exorcise the latest bout of tension, he took the bag away from his mouth and said, “Come again?”
“It not like I have anyone to talk to. And bouncing ideas off you and your team might actually spur my research. Something tell me, if that the case, company will get over you knowing. Especially since it your job to make sure no one get by you with a solution to future unless it actually spur global economy and America bottom line.”
“I would love to be in a relationship with you, being as you’re so far out of my league and my closest erotic relationship for the longest time has been with a paperclip, which I rub incessantly, and a bag of walnuts, which I crush in frustration. I wish I could say the nut crushing was in response to sexual frustration, but that’s what I have the paperclip for. As it turns out, most everything about my life frustrates me.”
She smiled wearily and empathetically in one.
“Only I can’t because I promised myself to Ed, because his wave of emotional neediness reached the shore of my own clinginess ahead of yours.”
“I only have one night a week to offer you, so I make no claim to the rest of your life.”
“You don’t mind that I’m seeing a guy?”
She shrugged. “My closest relationship is with vibrator. So who I to judge? I’ve considered entering into a more intimate rapport with my dog. I came to accept bestiality as a viable approach to life when I realized how difficult human relationship were a long time ago.”
That took another puff on the bag. “It’s all settled then. What night a week are we talking? I’ll make sure Ed is away on business that night.”
“Sundays. Rampant sex how I do church.”
He smiled. “What a coincidence. Me too.”
He stood, getting ready to leave a lot more graciously than how he’d come in. “Why me? Why not Adrian? He’s the one whose pants every hot woman wants to get into.”
She smiled vaguely. “I like dinosaurs.”
“He’s quite retro himself. Ripped right out of film noir.”
She smiled no less vaguely than last time. “Read corporate debrief on two of you. I know this much, in end, he adapt as readily to any future that come along, even if he doesn’t like one much better than other. You will never adapt. You need me or someone like me as a protector.”
He grunted. “So, it’s one of those opposites attract things?”
“Little too early to tell what it is. Science has taught me that even known law are damned hard to explain, least of all law of attraction.”
“Touché.” He slipped her back her brown paper bag, donned his hat and walked by her, pausing only long enough to bow respectfully, in the custom of the Chinese.
She smiled warily, and returned to her microscope and her note-taking.
SIXTEEN
On his way back from visiting with Biyu, Klepsky got caught up in traffic once again. Must be my day for feeling stuck. Stuck on this case. Stuck in my life. If there’s anything to that spiritual idea about synchronicities being the way God talks to us, he’s throwing an absolute hissy fit trying to get my attention. He glanced over at the passenger seat with the slit up the middle. He’d meant to swap out the seat or get it reupholstered, but then the memory that went with the tear would be gone, or at least the trigger that allowed him to access it in back of his mind. The Ford Taurus he was driving was exactly like the last one he’d finally had to surrender after two hundred and fifty thousand miles. And even then, he couldn’t let go, so he went out and bought the exact same model, only with less mileage. Most people who had abandonment issues were referring to their parents or their siblings or their kids. Not to every single thing in their lives, down to the toothbrush and cloth napkins on the table. He once took the toothbrush into the repair shop to ask if it could be fixed. After some lengthy arguing the guy ended by saying, “Take everything. Take it all,” he opened the cash register for him, “just leave me with my sanity.” Maybe the spate of sudden new influences in your life, Klepsky: David Clancy, Biyu, and Ed, all presenting you with new relationship dynamics… A perfect storm of influences that even you can’t ride out without being forever changed?
He honked at the horn and held up his badge to the windshield.
As the cop peeled himself away from mob management to see what this latest asshole was all about, Klepsky rolled down his window. “What’s going on here?” he asked.
“It’s one of those Occupy Movement things. Occupy the bank building, because this bank was responsible for funding all the devastation in Indonesia. Apparently they mowed down an old-growth rain forest the size of Texas so they could plant palm trees for the palm tree oil to make ice cream with. Ice cream for us fat cats here in the West. Actually the more I listen to them, the more I think I’m on the wrong side of this.”
Another young cop, enthusiastic, excitable. Must be nice, Klepsky thought, to get that excited about anything.
“So many worthwhile causes,” Klepsky said. “Didn’t anyone bother to educate any of you social doctors, you don’t treat the symptoms, you treat the underlying malady?” The cop withdrew his attention from the mass protest underway and riveted his eyes back on Klepsky, which was fortunate, because Klepsky was nowhere near finishing his rant. “And the underlying malady is the one percent looking to get away with murder now that everyone is so busy just trying to survive. No one can be bothered to keep track of the plight of the rhino or the elephant or the giraffe or the panda bear, or of indigenous forests being leveled to produce palm oil for making ice cream, as it turns out.
“Focus all our hatred on the one percent, force them to redistribute the wealth, to create Universal Basic Income, Intelligence Augmentation, and all the problems of the world go away. No need for getting caught up in sex trafficking if you have your monthly UBI check. No worries about all the problems going unattended if billions of people have augmented minds to throw at the innumerable problems.”
The cop stared at him hang-jawed. He punched the next guy to get tossed in his face just to make room for himself to ponder Klepsky’s words. “Fuck, man
, that’s deep. Hey, you want to come and speak to some of these Occupy guys? They’d love you.”
Klepsky chuckled. “Give me a podium? Probably not the brightest idea. You just need to date an Asian dissident, like me, whose way smarter than you, and can bring you up to speed on how you’re being mentally massaged by big media interests that just live to play divide and conquer games. Stirring up unrest and getting us to kill one another instead of focusing our hate where it really belongs.” He glanced up at the crowd, at the divide between conservatives and liberals duking it out. “Yeah, thank God my girlfriend came into my life when she did. She’s helping me to put things in perspective just fine.”
The cop smiled. “How long you been dating?” The cop slugged another guy that had been shoved in his face by how rough the mob was getting. He had to shout his question at Klepsky to be heard over the rising ruckus.
“Going on our first date, Sunday. I tend to get ahead of myself. Probably why I’m a futurist.” He rolled up the window, waved at the guy. He waved back as Klepsky took advantage of the hole opening up to tear down a side street, away from all the action.
***
He was nearly all the way back to the FBI-FD at 1 WTC. Almost. He could see it. He could almost reach out and touch the building. He was close enough anyway to seriously entertain thoughts of abandoning his car to the latest mob. Let them have it.
“Just not your day, Klepsky. You think they could spread these things out. A riot on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, say, to give us a day to catch our breath in between. But no…” he said, annoyed at people flying into his windshield, pushed hard by the mob as it heaved and retreated, the tide of bodies, considered in aggregate, like waves against the shore.
He waited until one of the cops was pinned against his driver’s side window to roll it down.
“What’s going on here?” Klepsky said, flashing his badge. Each time he was forced to ask that question, the irony didn’t exactly escape him. He was a futurist. He was supposed to be the guy that answered that question, not posed it.
“Some jihadist just blew up a Gays-For-Christ church meeting,” the female cop said, getting her tits and her face pushed into Klepsky’s face in turn as the mob rolled by them. She must have felt like asphalt under a steamroller.
“Ah-ha. My life sucks, I can’t find a decent job, someone’s to blame. Must be all the people I’m bigoted against that’s the problem, not the handful of all-powerful people, the one percent. Not the fuckers vacuuming up all the income in the world so there’s nothing left for the rest of us, who simply find you, said jihadist, irrelevant. Better yet, that finds you the perfect tool for turning hateful eyes away from them.”
“Hey, want to suck my tits for me?” she said, growing self-conscious of her breasts getting shoved in his face every few seconds by the mob. “I could use the stress relief. Feel free to blab your own political agenda all you want in between.”
Klepsky grew self-conscious himself and smiled ruefully. “You need any help here?”
“Nah. SWAT’s on its way. Regular police are already on the scene with riot gear. You get out of that car now, you’ll just get trampled yourself.”
“I’ll leave you then. You got the present to hold together. I got the future.”
“Yeah, I saw that FBI-FD badge. Can’t imagine what you guys are made of. This is already more than I can handle. Makes you wonder what the future’s gonna look like.”
“Just like this, only with far more tech-savvy people able to do far more damage. Unless I can stop them, or I can educate people on the facts of life in time.”
She got tired being pressed into the car, having her face battered against the hood of the vehicle when she didn’t stand up straight enough or duck low enough. She started elbowing. Backing up. And undoing that baton. Look out. One pissed off broad who didn’t get her titties worked. Suddenly, Klepsky couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
He let the mob carry her with it. And he took the car through the opening before the next crashing wave of angry protesters hit.
SEVENTEEN
Klepsky and Ed tapped their gloves together inside the ring. He let Ed get off the first few punches, curious to see how well he kept his balance with his boner tent-poling his satin boxer shorts with the thick black elastic waistband. He got an A-grade for props and stage-setting, Klepsky had to give him that. He had the lights around the ring and the rest of the apartment dimmed down, and brightened overhead. The equipment itself was of the quality only found in professional boxing establishments. But the kid couldn’t box to save his life. One good punch from Klepsky and he was going to be out like a light. So love taps it is, then.
“You don’t have to be afraid to hit me, Ed. Give it everything you’ve got.”
“Um, I have been, sir.”
“Then you might want to take a page from Ali’s book, ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’.”
“Yes, sir.” Ed modified his boxing style accordingly, trying to stay out of Klepsky’s reach with his longer arms, and starting to look more impressive on the mat. Though he still couldn’t hit worth a damn.
“Go to the store and get yourself one of those Superman outfits, something with padding so you can take a punch better, Ed. Wouldn’t take much for me to lay you out.”
“Us wiry guys are stronger than you think, sir. Have to get more from less and all that.”
“I’m sure that’s true, Ed. But I wouldn’t rely on that entirely.”
Ed’s blows were starting to connect better. “Good,” Klepsky said. “You’re learning to use momentum, torque, speed, and angles to get the most out of that medium-weight body of yours. You’re smart, you’re good with math and physics and all the other science stuff, use that.”
Ed continued to improve with the coaching, but it was like punching granite. If it weren’t for the boxing gloves and the taping of his hands prior to putting on the gloves, Ed would have broken all his knuckles already, and most of his fingers, and probably his wrist too.
“You’ll need to go on protein shakes, see if you can bump yourself up from super-middleweight to light-heavyweight. Narrow the gap between us. That with your geeky science aptitudes, and you might be able to bridge the gap the rest of the way to my junior-heavyweight division. Make the fight more even.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who knows, you might be able to knock me out one day.”
Ed smiled. Klepsky forgot how big that kid’s mouth was until he smiled. He had just the mouth needed for going down on a horse dick like his. Who knows, maybe this match was made in heaven—in some upside down, parallel universe.
“Might I ask what earned me this beat down, sir?”
“You got the story all wrong on Biyu.”
Ed smiled.
The smile told Klepsky everything he needed to know. “So, you set me up. Figuring I’d get mad and take it out on you. I don’t like being manipulated, Ed.”
Ed smiled even more broadly. “I know.”
Klepsky smiled back, getting into character with the teasing, hitting back harder and more often, and making Ed a bit groggy before his senses returned. He was still fighting with just a tenth of his strength, but at the rate Ed was going, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting Klepsky the rest of the way into character. Maybe soon, the walnut trees of the world would be thanking Ed for sparing all their walnuts.
The relationship as it was unfolding between them still felt a bit pervy to Klepsky. He was in the dominant, older man’s role, which made it easy to prey on Ed’s weaknesses. But a world full of tech geeks, who alone understood the world enough to play in it any longer, was a world full of overgrown kids. So what was he to do but to take on some kind of mentoring role, and hope that both sides saw their way through their emotional neediness by working through it? If love was what both parties wanted, moreover, the control games would fade in time in favor of the love games, which would no longer need the manipulation to get them going. In theory, anyway. B
ut two broken people guiding one another back to health was a bit like the blind leading the blind, admittedly, which didn’t bode well. Still, what choice did either of them have, short of creating a ménage-a-trois with a shrink in the middle? Time would tell if that were the real solution.
“Bet you just loved it when she sprang that whole synthetic biology thing on you,” Ed goaded with a got-you smile on his face.
Klepsky clocked him across the jaw and he went down like a light.
Klepsky politely returned to his corner and his stool, waiting for Ed to regain consciousness, while sipping on his inverted bottle with its bent straw lid, positioned just above his head and to the right, like one of those water bottles in a hamster’s cage.
A few minutes later, Ed came to, smiling up a storm as he got back on his feet, fists up. Klepsky migrated to the center of the ring again, kept his arms down so Ed could massage his torso and his back for a while with his “love taps,” which were all-out punches in his case.
Finally, Klepsky raised his arms again. “Very nice Ali technique, Ed.”
He smiled. “Thank you, sir.” Then he must have thought up another taunting line to say because Klepsky could see the change in his expression and the tenor of the smile. “How did you react when she said she wanted to sleep with you?”
“You couldn’t possibly have predicted that!”
Ed took advantage of his shock to get off a few punches to the face before Klepsky raised his gloves again to block. “Doesn’t exactly take a genius to realize that a Chinese dissident running from the law her whole life wants to finally get cozy with the law so she never has to worry about those demons breathing down her shoulder ever again.” Ed threw in a condescending smile for good measure. “At the same time, a part of her mind wants the police breathing down her neck, because she’s addicted to the trauma of it all. You fulfill both roles quite nicely.”
Unkillable (The Futurist Book 1) Page 15
