Distraction

by Bruce Sterling

  “It is made of jelly! It’s a neural watch!” she told him. “It’s the only one in the world! We made it in the lab.”

  “Amazing.”

  “You bet it is! Listen. Every mammal brain has a built-in circadian clock. In the mousebrain, it’s in the suprachiastic nucleus. So we cloned a chunk of suprachiastic tissue, and embedded it in support gel. Those numerals are enzyme-sensitive cells that express firefly genes! And, Oscar, we gave it three separate neural clumps inside, with a smart neural net that automatically averages out cumulative error. So even though that’s a totally organic watch, it supplies accurate time! As long as it stays right at blood temperature, that is.”

  “Tremendous.”

  “Oh, and you do have to feed it. That little packet there is bovine serum. You just boil up a couple of cc’s once a week, and inject it through that little duct.” She paused. “Rat brains do leak some waste product, but just a drop or two.”

  Oscar twisted his wrist and examined the translucent strap. They’d made the tooth and buckle out of some kind of mouse bone. “This is quite a technical feat, isn’t it?”

  “And you can’t let it get cold, or it dies. But listen: if you want to reset it, you just flip up that patch in the back and expose it to sunlight. We put retinal cells there. When retinal cells see sunlight, they release glutamate. Which binds to receptors. Which produce nitric oxide. Which activates enzymes. Which add phosphate to a nuclear protein. The protein sends a genetic message, and the genes reset the neurons in the clock!”

  “So, is there, uh, documentation with this product?”

  She hesitated. “Well, never mind all that. You’re just a layman. You don’t really have to understand how a watch works.”

  Oscar looked at the eerie device. It was clinging to his wrist like raw liver. “It’s a homemade birthday watch,” he said. “In the middle of all this trouble, you’ve gone and made me a watch. With your own hands.”

  “I’m so glad you’re pleased with it.”

  “‘Pleased’? This is the finest birthday gift I’ve ever had.”

  Her eyebrows twitched just a bit. “You don’t think it’s creepy, do you?”

  “Creepy? Heavens no! It’s just a step or two beyond the current cutting edge, that’s all. I could foresee big consumer demand for an item like this.”

  She laughed delightedly. “Ha! Exactly. That’s just what I told my lab krewe, when we were putting it together. We’ve finally come up with a mass consumer product that has real market demand!”

  Oscar was touched. “They’ve been harassing you for years about your ‘pure science,’ haven’t they. As if they had the right to control your imagination, just because they pay your bills. Well, I’ll tell you a secret, Greta. There’s no such thing as ‘pure science.’ ‘Pure science’ is an evil lie, it’s a killer fraud, like ‘pure justice’ or ‘pure liberty.’ Desire is never pure, and the desire for knowledge is just another kind of desire. There’s never been a branch of knowledge so pure and abstract that it can’t get down and dirty. If the human mind can comprehend it, then the human mind can desire it.”

  She sighed. “I never know what to make of you when you start talking like that…I wish I could tell you everything I’ve been thinking lately.”

  “Try me.”

  “It’s that…you want something, but you know it’s bad for you. So you deny it, and want it, and deny it, and want it—but it’s just too seductive. So you give in, and then it just happens. But when it happens, it’s not as bad as you thought. It’s not half bad. In fact, it’s good. It’s really good. It’s wonderful. It makes you better. You’re a better human being. You’re stronger. You understand yourself. You’re in touch with yourself. You’re not in denial. You’re not remote and pure. You’re alive and you’re part of the real world. You know what you want.”

  Oscar felt a soaring sense of absolute masculine triumph. It lasted three seconds, crested, and left him tingling with premonitory dread.

  “A love affair isn’t always peaches and cream,” he said.

  She stared at him in utter astonishment. “Oscar, sweetie, I’m not talking about the sex. That’s all very nice, and I’m happy about it, but you and I could have all the sex in the world, and it wouldn’t change a thing. I mean that you gave me a real and lasting gift, Oscar, because you put me in power. And now, I really know what power means. For the first time in my life, I can speak to people. When they’re all there in front of me, a big crowd of my own people, I can tell them the truth. I can persuade them. I can lead them. I’ve become their leader. I’ve found my own voice. I have real power. I think I always wanted power, but I always resisted it, because I thought it was bad for me—but it isn’t! Now I know what power is, and my God, it’s really good. It’s changing me completely. I just want more and more.”

  __________

  To end her second week as Director, Greta fired the entire Materials Processing department. This freed up a great deal of valuable lab space in the Materials Lab, which was situated on the eastern wall of the dome next to the Plant Engineering Complex. The long-impoverished botanists were overjoyed at their floor-space bonanza. Shutting down the gluttonous Materials Lab was also a financial boon for the lab itself.

  It was also a considerable boon for Oscar’s hotel. His hotel was now crowded with laboratory equipment scavengers, fly-by-night middlemen who’d flocked into Buna as soon as the news of a hardware sale hit their net.

  Most of the materials scientists sullenly recognized the fait accompli. But not Dr. David Chander. Chander had been an early and zealous striker, and he was also a quick study. To resist his own firing, he had taken his tactical cues from the Strike Committee. He had superglued his equipment to the lab benches and barricaded himself inside the research facility. There he sat, in occupation, categorically refusing to leave.

  Kevin was in favor of bringing in a hydraulic ram and blasting Chander out. The Collaboratory’s federal police were far too confused and sullen to do any such thing themselves. Kevin would have been delighted to play the role of strong-arm vigilante, but Oscar considered this a bad precedent for the lab’s new regime. He couldn’t countenance violent confrontations; they were unprofessional, not his style.

  Instead, he decided to talk the man down.

  Oscar and Kevin went up to Chander’s third-floor lab, and Oscar announced himself. He waited patiently as Chander unjammed his lab doors. Then Oscar slipped in, leaving a disgruntled Kevin lurking in the hall.

  Chander immediately began barricading the doors again. “Let me give you a hand with that,” Oscar volunteered. He helped Chander wedge a dismantled chair leg against a superglued door chock.

  Unlike the majority of Collaboratory locals, Chander, as an industrial researcher, wore a business suit and a tie, with a serious hat. His dusky face was ashen and his eyes were puffy with stress. “I was wondering if she’d have the nerve to meet with me herself,” he said, biting his plump lower lip. “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you show up.”

  Oscar opened his plastic carry-case. “I brought some supplies for your sit-in,” he said. “A little frozen gumbo, some tasty rice…”

  “You know that I’m on a hunger strike, don’t you?”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” Oscar lied.

  “Get ’em to turn on my lab phones again, and you’ll hear plenty about all of my problems.”

  “But that’s why I came here personally,” Oscar said cheerily. “To hear you out, man to man.”

  “I’m not going to put up with this,” Chander announced. “She’s destroying my life’s work, it’s completely unfair. I can wait just as long as the rest of you can. I can do anything that you can do. I’ve got my own friends and supporters, I’ve got industrial backers from out of state. I’m an honest man—but you don’t have a leg to stand on. Once word gets out about all the stunts you’ve pulled around here, you’ll all be indicted.”

  “But I’m from the Senate Science Committee,” Oscar said. “
Of course the Senate will take an interest in your plight. Let’s have a seat, and you can fill me in on the issues.”

  He sat cautiously in a partially wrecked lab chair and produced a paper notebook and a classic fountain pen.

  Chander dragged up a plastic lab crate and sat with a groan. “Look, Congress won’t help me. Congress is hopeless, they never understand the technical issues. The point is…I have a breakthrough here. I’m not just promising a breakthrough. This isn’t just some empty last-minute gambit to get me off the hook. I have a major technical innovation here! I’ve had it for two years!”

  Oscar examined his notes. “Dr. Chander…as you know, there’s been a general productivity audit here at the Collaboratory. Every department has gone through the same assessments: Genetic Fragmentation, Flux NMR…your department has been through five reorganizations in four years. Your production record is, frankly, abysmal.”

  “I’m not denying that,” Chander said. “But it was sabotage.”

  “That’s a remarkable claim.”

  “Look. It’s a long, dismal story but…look, basic science and corporate sponsorship have never worked out. My problems aren’t scientific at all, they’re all in management. Our agenda here is organic materials processing, we’re looking for new biologically based solutions to traditional engineering problems. There’s a lot of room to work there. Our problem was our corporate sponsorship in Detroit.”

  Chander sighed. “I don’t know why the automobile industry got involved in sponsoring our work. That wasn’t my decision. But ever since they first showed up, five years ago, they’ve wrecked everything we do. They keep demanding results from us, then shortening our schedules and changing our deliverables. They micromanage everything. They send in brain-damaged car executives on sabbaticals, who show up, and steal rare animals, and run goofy futurist scenarios, and talk nonsense to us. We’ve been through absolute hell here: reengineering, outplacement, management by objective, total customer service, you name it! Every kind of harassment imaginable.”

  “But industry supplied your funding. Those were your corporate sponsors. You couldn’t win complete federal funding for your proposals. If you can’t make your own sponsors happy, then why are you here?”

  “Why am I here?” Chander said. “It’s simple! It’s a very simple, straightforward thing! I’m here because of power.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Electromotive power! My krewe and I were researching new power sources for the American transportation industry. And we’ve created a new working model. It’s mitochondrial ATP power generation. With signal transduction, protein phosphorylation, membrane diffusion potentials…Look, do you even know what a ‘mitochondrion’ is?”

  “I’ve heard that term, I think.”

  “The mitochondrion is the power plant in the cell. It generates energy from adenosine triphosphate, it’s the basic reason we can live and breathe. Mitochondria are microscopic. But imagine they were”—Chander spread his hands violently—“a meter across.”

  “So you’ve cloned a piece of a living cell and made it a meter across?”

  “I was never any good at explaining science to the layman…No, of course it’s not a meter across. It’s not a mitochondrion at all. It’s a biomechanical device that uses the membranes and the structure of a mitochondrion. They’ve all been scaled up, industrially. It’s a giant waffle of membranes and gelatin matrix. It’s not a living thing, it’s biological hardware, engineered and turned into an electrochemical battery. You could drive a car with it. You could drive a truck! And it runs on sugar.”

  “So you’ve created an automobile engine that runs on sugar.”

  “Now you’re getting it! That’s it! Sugar, water, and a few trace elements. Totally organic and totally recyclable. No combustion, no emissions, and no toxins! And it runs at room temperature.”

  “So this is another new automobile power plant. Sure, fine. There are plenty of those on the market already—flywheels, steam, liquid nitrogen. How is the acceleration?”

  Chander punched the air. “It’s like that! It’s like punching my fist! Mitochondria did that! It’s the technology that powers muscle! It’s fast, it’s clean! It really works!”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “There isn’t one! It works fine! Well, it’ll work better when we get the prototype bugs worked out…there’s some problems with osmotic pressure, and even flow-through…oh, and if the battery gets infected, then it rots pretty quickly. But those are just shakedown problems. The real problem is that Detroit doesn’t want our product. They won’t put it into production.”

  “So you’ve achieved a great success,” Oscar said. “Then explain something to me. Your lab’s had more private funding than any other Materials facility, but you’ve never shipped a product. You’re the Principal Investigator here, but you’ve had more krewe turnover than any other lab…”

  “They were all spies!” Chander said. “They were spies and saboteurs! I didn’t have any choice but to fire them.”

  “I’ve noticed that the rest of your krewe hasn’t joined your personal industrial action here.”

  “Their morale’s been destroyed. They know we’ve been targeted for removal. They know all their hard work will come to nothing. They’re just hoping that someday the memories will fade.” Chander’s shoulders slumped.

  “This is a remarkable story. I’ll have to check this story out with your industrial liaison.”

  “Sure. Go ahead. His name is Ron Griego, he’s a project manager for corporate R&D up in Detroit.”

  Oscar blinked. “Would that be Ronald K. Griego?”

  “You actually know Ron Griego?”

  “I think I do,” Oscar said, frowning. “In fact, I suspect we can see this matter properly expedited in short order.”

  __________

  After leaving Dr. Chander, mollified at least to the point of eating, Oscar and Kevin sought shelter in the lush foliage north of the Genetic Fragmentation unit. Oscar then called Griego’s krewe secretary in Detroit.

  “Forgive me for cold-calling you, ma’am, but I think Mr. Griego will want to talk to me. Would you please tell Ron that it’s Oscar Valparaiso, class of ’37, and that it’s an urgent federal matter?”

  Griego was on the phone within five minutes. He and Oscar traded wary pleasantries.

  “Went into the family car business after all, eh, Ron?”

  “That’s why Dad sent me to Harvard,” Griego said. “What’s with this awful phone connection?”

  “Encryption and rerouting. Sorry. Look, it’s about the Buna National Collaboratory.”

  “I hear you’re shutting the place down,” Griego said cheerfully. “There’s a big workers’ strike going on there. Well, of course that’s a blow to our futuristic research effort, but I don’t want you to worry. We understand labor troubles, here in the auto business. If we can lobby Congress to let us keep this fiscal year’s R&D deductions, we think we can survive the loss of our Buna lab.”

  “Sorry, but it won’t be quite that easy, Ron.”

  “But I’m making it easy for you,” Griego said, wounded. “Shut the place down, fire ’em all. Zero it out, lock the doors, it’s over, they’re history. What could be easier than that?”

  “Oh, that’s easy enough for me—I meant to say that it wouldn’t be easy for you.”

  “I might have known,” Griego groaned. “Why can’t it ever be easy with you, Valparaiso? What have you got against the rest of us? What is your problem?”

  “Just fitting a few loose ends together. Believe me, Ron, I can sympathize. It must have been a nightmare for you—netwarring some krewe of lunatics who built a magic sugar battery.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “Look, Ron, relax. Remember that time I hid those two hookers from the campus police? I never outed you on anything, and I’m not planning to out you now. Just level with me. That’s all that I ever ask.”

  There was a long uneasy silence. Then Griego
burst out in a fury. “Don’t get all high-and-mighty with me, Mr. Third-in-His-Class. You think it’s easy running corporate R&D? It was just fine, as long as the guy didn’t have anything. Jesus, nobody ever thought a goddamn sugar engine would work. The goddamn thing is a giant germ in a box! We build cars up here, we don’t build giant germs! Then they pull this crazy stunt and…well, it just makes our life impossible! We’re a classic, metal-bending industry! We have interlocking directorates all throughout the structure, raw materials, fuel, spare parts, the dealerships…We can’t get into the face of our fuel suppliers, telling them that we’re replacing them with sugar water! We own our fuel suppliers! It’d be like sawing off our own foot!”

  “I understand about interlocking directorates and mutual stock ownership, Ron. I was sitting right next to you in business school, remember? Cut to the chase—what about the battery?”

  “Batteries have the highest profit margin of any automobile component. We were making money there. You can’t make real money anywhere else in our business. The Koreans are building auto bodies out of straw and paper! We can’t support an industry when cars are cheaper than grocery carts! What are we gonna tell our unions? This is a great American tradition at stake here! The car defines America: the assembly line, suburbs, drive-ins, hot rods, teenage sex, everything that makes America great! We can’t turn ourselves inside out because some big-brained creep has built an engine out of bug guts! There wouldn’t be anything left of us! The guy is a menace to society! He had to be stopped.”

  “Thank you for that, Ron. Now we’re getting somewhere. So tell me this—why didn’t you just pull his damn funding?”

  “If only it were that simple! We’re required by federal fiat to invest in basic R&D. It was part of our federal bailout deal. We’re supposed to have trade protection, and we’re supposed to catch our breath, and jump a generation ahead of our foreign competitors. But if we jump a generation ahead of the damn Koreans, our industry will vanish entirely. People will make cars the way they make pop-up toast. Proles will build cars out of bio-scrap, and compost them in the backyard. We’ll all be doomed.”