Adrian flicked off the TV, and padded into the kitchen to make a bitter cup of coffee to go with his bitter existence.
As he was throwing out the old dregs to make way for the fresh roast, it occurred to him that he’d cut short his unverbalized haranguing in desperate need of an audience. He’d forgotten to mention the outcome of Klepsky keeping his futurists working on the three competing theories simultaneously: the idea that an AI might be behind the murders, a child prodigy, and someone with a broken psyche. Klepsky had promised to keep the junior futurists working on these theories long after Adrian and the rest of the high honchos had abandoned the ideas, for the simple reason that pursuing three separate theories about the case at once was bound to leave rocks that hadn’t been overturned.
And what had they found when they’d overturned those rocks?
Not one, but two child prodigies living homeless, both begging for change. Sadly, society as a whole couldn’t be arrested for those crimes, though they damn well should be. One was plying some interesting stock market trades with his pocket change. Because he never had much to start with and because he needed to keep raiding the profits to eat, his subsistence existence had been muted some, but still not enough to be anything less than traumatizing. The other one who was also eating out of garbage cans had taken to writing the formulas for how to keep food from degrading at room temperatures. Pieces of the formula were now lost, and its creator was in a mental asylum, temporarily, to see if what remained of his mind could be salvaged. In all likelihood the formulas, which he insisted had been perfected, were lost to the world now.
And there was the small matter of the AIs, he thought, swapping paper filters, that the junior futurists had dug into. Apparently several of them had designed microchips with a million times the efficiency of what any human or team of humans was capable of doing. The best part? No one could understand or unravel how the hell the chips actually worked. In short, the day was rapidly coming when these machines would be building things which only they could understand and repair and upgrade. If they started with their own minds, there would be no way to even begin to monitor just what they were up to, or how the evolutionary curve could be directed. And if those chips found their way into our heads, if humans would even know which of their strings were being pulled by their new puppet masters.
As for the broken-minds theory… Adrian poured the fresh grounds into the coffee pot. No one had been unearthed half as interesting as Cray Willis. But a couple Silence of the Lambs types had been taken off the streets. Those reports hadn’t hit the airwaves yet. The FBI was too busy getting their back story together that would make them look less the fools.
Speaking of Klepsky’s thoroughness and inability to let a subject drop—he was worse than a pit bull with a bone—investigations undertaken by the junior futurists continued until the FBI-FD traced down who actually killed David Clancy’s parents. Turned out it was the FBI, another branch, of course. They wanted better control of, access to, and influence over the kid. With the murder of the parents, they got all of that and more. Adrian doubted Klepsky would ever tell him. What was the point? Our government did sick things all the time in the name of national security. People didn’t matter: people they hated; it was humanity they loved. Actually, they likely hated the latter too but they needed some rationale to keep going and keep their own demons at bay. Klepsky just cut off access to David from the other branches of the FBI, keeping him solely within the more protective fold of the FBI-FD.
On the plus side, the pet spider that Ed and David were training was still alive and doing well thanks to Celine’s tweak to its genetics. It would live out its normal lifespan of some twenty-eight years, even after being brought back from the dead. The FBI-FD was arguably already contributing towards David’s welfare rather than deterring from it as the other branches had.
When the coffee finished brewing Adrian tasted the Texas Crude for himself.
The caffeine gave him the jolt he needed.
There was one more loose thread to tie up.
He picked up the phone. The dial tone, beating less like a metronome and more like a dispassionate heart, reminded him of the countdown to Altreman’s death as he was standing beside his doctor and researcher-in-chief Sarah Wellman that fateful day not too long ago.
Sarah picked up. “Hello?” Her voice conveyed the tenor of a person drifting at sea for too long, nearly dead, suddenly spying a ship in the distance, and calling out feebly.
“Maybe Altreman didn’t die that night,” Adrian said. “Maybe his consciousness lives in the machine, directing, spearheading the future. Maybe that machine answers to us now, not some board of directors whose motives will be more suspect. Do you trust me to take his project in a direction it was meant to go?”
Silence. She was back in that boat again on the far flung sea, certain the ship passing by was no more than a mirage, and so she was retreating into herself once again.
Finally, she said, “I trust you more than I trust the other alternatives.”
“It’s decided then. I’ll have our legal people draw up the necessary paperwork for the precedent of having an AI running its own conglomerate. And we’ll make sure no one can hack it; no one will ever know what we’re up to.” He took a beat to make sure he’d thought of everything. “Oh, yeah, and let’s change the AI’s name from Morbius to Phoenix. Why not? It’s arising out of the fires of our corporate damnation.”
He thought the name change was the cleverest part of the whole affair. But the ensuing silence gave him a chance to reconsider that notion.
“There’s just one thing you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t be your girlfriend, Adrian.”
He laughed. “That’s okay. I think the only thing that benefits from hitting critical mass is a nuclear explosion.”
Adrian ended the call, thinking, maybe with the AI to do all the heavy lifting, and the “kids,” namely Ed and David, just overseeing its coding part-time, building a better future wouldn’t have to be such a distraction as all that. Maybe that was the takeaway from Tum. That the future could bloody well build itself if you set the initial parameters right.
Mind you, he was succumbing to a lot of the initial errors in thinking he had bitched about with corporations, namely attending to the research in secret, behind closed doors. But his aims weren’t nefarious and they weren’t about profiting at the expense of the ninety-nine percent, as if you could keep bleeding a turnip forever; the ninety-nine percent had nothing more to give and it would take a greed-crazed man not to notice.
This was more an act of philanthropy, eating the cost of the groundbreaking work and giving away the spoils for free—as the government was supposed to do with basic research. Of course, that was before corporate got their clutches into everything and put an end to all that goodwill gifting of a better future to people, without them having to pay through the nose for a lot less.
Even after the call to Sarah, this case wasn’t wrapped up all that nice and neat yet.
Sooner or later he was going to have to sit in on that debrief with DARPA alongside Celine, explaining why the joint alliance between the FBI-FD and DARPA, meant to propel them towards a more sustainable and brighter future, had ended with the loss of the greatest advance in human bioengineering ever. It wasn’t a meeting he was particularly looking forward to. He wondered if, to help DARPA cool their jets, he’d tell them about the real fruits of The Unkillable Man project, about Phoenix.
Whether he did or not, to be fair, protecting the future was going to take more than DARPA, the FBI-FD, and Phoenix. It was going to take everyone.
FORTY-TWO
Klepsky lay in bed with his back up against the backboard, reading his newspaper and smoking his cigar. Life was good. His family had chosen to remain together despite the greatest temptation of all to rip them apart from one another.
As he turned the page, his one thought was, “It’s all downhill from here.”
>
***
Ed was showering in the master bath he shared with Klepsky. To be more precise, he was nozzling. The nozzle he’d shoved up his butt trailed directly to one of the top ten flower scents of all time, each one contained in a bottle against the wall. This one scent just happened to be rose. He was hoping for beginner’s luck with Klepsky who had so far ignored his advances. The scented waters in turn were connected to the shower head for the adequate pressure he needed to get good and inside his rectum, cleaning him out clear to his tonsils.
The job finished, he dialed off the pressure, got out of the tub, toweled down, and slipped on his satin boxer shorts. He entered the master bedroom and spread himself face down on the bed, with his head leaning just a bit over the side. That way he could keep an eye on his stopwatch and his hand in easy reach of the start button.
Klepsky was already lying in bed beside him, reading his paper, cigar in mouth, covered in his Wiley Coyote pajamas. It was a king-size bed, and Klepsky was clear on the other side of the “island.”
But, according to Ed’s wristwatch, which he could also see, with his arm draping over the side of the bed, operation Thunderclap was about to commence.
He only had smell, sounds, and movement to go on, as Klepsky was out of visual range. But that was good enough. From the fainter smell of cigar smoke drifting his way, Ed could tell Klepsky had already set the cigar down at the bedside. That, or he’d stopped puffing on it secondary to his jaw hanging open, in which case there would soon be a loud yelp coming from his side of the bed as the lit cigar fell on him and burned him alive.
From the sounds of crinkling newspaper, Ed could tell Klepsky had not only closed his newspaper but folded it into sections. Turning and folding of pages just had different sounds associated with them.
The sound of the paper landing by the bedside moments later, slapping the hardwood floor, confirmed the earlier analysis.
Could it be that Operation Thunderclap would prove to be nothing more than overkill? That the mere aroma of roses wafting up from Ed’s ass had done the trick?
Klepsky patted Ed’s ass. “Turn over, you’re going to love this.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ed said in his, “not only am I excited, but I’m looking for more excitement” voice.
Klepsky was chuckling, pointing to the big screen TV at the foot of the bed with his remote. “It’s The Dating Game.”
“From the 70’s?” Ed’s voice suddenly sounded as if he’d woken up at the bottom of a well and was feeling around the back of his head for the bump that accompanied the concussion.
Klepsky was still chuckling. He pointed at the screen again. “This is why I study history, for little gems like this. The contestant, Rodney Alcala, who the girls are trying to win… He turned out to be one of the greatest serial killers in history.”
“Oh my God!” Ed slid up straight against the backboard. “You’re taping this, right?”
“Nah.”
“Trust me, you’re going to want to tape it,” Ed said, checking his watch.
“Yeah, alright.” Klepsky hit record on the remote. “Though nothing is going to tear me away from this show.”
Ed did his best to stifle a smile. But soon his jaw was hanging open and he was getting so into the show that he was starting to feel sorry about plotting how the rest of the evening would unfold in advance. As a testament to his growing ambivalence on the matter, he bent over and slid the bucket of popcorn out from under the bed and stuck it between them. “Was saving this for later, but… screw that.”
They both had their eyes glued to the screen as they fingered the popcorn. It was really cool to giggle in two part harmony with Klepsky.
Cheryl: Bachelor #1 ... what is your best time?
Alcala: The best time is at night. Nighttime.
Cheryl: Why do you say that?
Alcala: Because that's the only time there is.
Cheryl: What's wrong with the morning? Afternoon?
Alcala: Well, those are OK, but nighttime's when it really gets good. (inaudible muttering)
Ed chuckled, listening to the interaction between the girl and Alcala, who was just one of the three male contestants. “Oh my God. Hope she’s a daytime person.”
David and Biyu had started going at it in the adjoining room, their loud moaning penetrating the wall as if it were nothing more than one of those expensive speakers disguised to look like a wall. Ed should have known to shoot David a text that Operation Thunderclap was a No-Go, but he’d gotten caught up in the show.
The only thing louder than their moaning was the smack of thunder of the bed board hitting the wall. Ed rolled his eyes. “Ignore them.” He grabbed the remote out of Klepsky’s hand and turned up the volume.
Somehow the moaning from the next room climbed over the sounds coming from the TV anyway.
Klepsky looked suddenly a lot less interested in The Dating Game. At least the one on the TV. He was growling and it sounded just like the rumblings of a volcano before it erupted. And Ed wasn’t referring to Mt. St. Helens. He was thinking about the one in Yosemite that, it was rumored, once erupted, would end the world as we know it.
Try as he might, Ed was starting to get aroused. Maybe this was going to work out perfectly, after all. They’d shared an emotional bond over The Dating Game, and now they were about to christen that emotional bond with a physical one.
He had started the stopwatch as soon as Biyu started moaning. What a screamer that one! Bless her heart.
Ed had calculated two minutes tops before Klepsky folded, based on earlier scientific studies undertaken when David was bopping Biyu at the office. Having to take this punishment night and day now, Ed figured Klepsky’s fuse would be even shorter than normal.
More strange sounds coming from Klepsky’s side of the bed. Ed dared not pan his head. Could that be a sigh of surrender? Followed by the tearing of a condom packet? Followed by the slipping on of the condom? The lubing of said condom? And…?
Klepsky rolled over on him, making a groaning sound like a bear provoked out of his hibernation. He slipped Ed’s satin boxer shorts down in a violent tug, flipped him over, and mounted him like he was drilling for oil.
Ed was so busy moaning at the top of his lungs he forgot to stop the stopwatch.
Klepsky had forgotten to stop The Dating Game.
Cheryl: I'm a drama teacher, and I'm going to audition each of you for my ... private class. Bachelor #1, you're a dirty old man. Take it!
Alcala: Uuuunnnhhhh Come on ... over here! Grrrrrrrr rrrraaaaarrrrrr.
Each time Biyu tried to climb over Ed’s outcries with her soprano’s pitch, Klepsky plunged into him harder to get Ed’s yelps up another notch in register.
The two couples went at it back and forth.
Klepsky was pacing himself. The older racehorse could only win the heat by being smarter. He laid on top of Ed, his dick firm inside him, refusing to go flaccid. And he let the younger colt in the next room exhaust himself with all the extra non-stop pounding. The on-and-off rhythm was one Ed found quite pleasurable despite feeling certain early on that he would prefer non-stop pounding himself.
Cheryl: I'm serving you for dinner. What are you called and what do you look like?
Alcala: I'm called the banana, and I look really good.
Cheryl: Could you be more descriptive?
Alcala: Peel me!
When Klepsky heard Biyu climax in the next room, he decided to take it all the way to home plate, slowly picking up momentum with his jack-hammering. Ed was singing tenor again with his presyllabic notes meant to penetrate the walls. Together they climaxed a good two minutes after Biyu and David.
Ed could tell Klepsky was very pleased with himself, because he slipped off him with a smug sigh, and headed into the bathroom.
Okay, considering how Ed had been treated, he may as well have been a hole Klepsky had drilled in the bed for masturbation purposes. But, hey, one small step for mankind, one big step for Ed.
He rolled o
ver and turned off the TV, tossed the remote.
Ed jumped up on the bed excited, running in place at first, then using the bed as a trampoline.
It took him a second to realize that he was actually just goading Biyu and David into a second round with the sound of the mattress springs going crazy. Soon they were at it again.
Ed jumped off the bed and paced nervously. He wasn’t sure how Klepsky was going to take this. He chewed on his knuckles.
***
Klepsky was staring into the bathroom mirror, wondering what he’d just done, who he was anymore. “Who are you kidding, Klepsky? They’re much better at bringing you down to their level than you are at bringing them up to yours.”
No sooner did the thought run though his head than he heard David and Biyu going at it again. “Already? You’ve got to be kidding? That’s damn impressive even for a twenty-one-year-old.”
He paced the bathroom, listening to David’s pounding, each thrust like a jab to the side of his head. “Wait, the chastity belt? How did he get it off?”
Klepsky paced some more, thinking, when a piece of bric-a-brac against the wall caught his attention. What was the soap dish and toothbrush holder doing glued to the wall? He got tired screwing his face up staring in perplexity. He grabbed the items off the wall, which had become stuck there as if with super glue and put them back where they belonged, only to see them fly back to the exact same spot on the wall. Klepsky nodded as the lights went on—in his head. “A super-magnet. He cracked the lock on the chastity belt with a super-magnet. Clever bastard.”
Unkillable (The Futurist Book 1) Page 36
