“My own kind? What would that be, sir?”
“Well. Other chimeras. Other swine.”
“Well, no. The feelings are there, sir. I just don’t pay attention to them. We’re not supposed to have feelings any more, are we? It’s not what the Augment is about.”
“But the Augment does provide a feeling.”
“Contentment. Gratitude. It’s a pleasant feeling of being a part of such a great world. And we all owe it to you, sir. Your work bringing it on.”
“Yes, but there is the wild side. Are you not drawn to it ever?”
“No, not really. Maybe because I struggle with it every day. You don’t know what that’s like, sir. The need to override the beastly impulses that wash over one pretty constantly, especially around food.”
“Well, we can understand those, believe me. Humankind and pigs are not very different. We all struggle with those.”
“Oh, but our urges are stronger. Sometimes I dream about a forest, sir. A forest of truffles and rooting for hours among the trees. It’s a very pleasant dream.”
“Yes. Well, maybe we should arrange for it. An excursion to the Argonne or someplace similar.”
“Sir, please. I'm good where I am. Don’t go changing things for my sake.”
“Are you scared, Absalom?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now you know how I feel when you talk about retirement and the end of the line.”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“Let the Augment do that. That’s not your job.”
“Yes, sir.”
The nurse who did the transfusion was a very pretty Cyrenian, about thirty-five, with the absent-minded air of a non-augment as she carried out her job. She paid no attention to Chagnon’s petty complaints and banal attempts at conversation. So impressive in the end. She looked as if she had had natural children, but when he asked if she was one of them, she just shrugged as if it was not important. He could always find out, of course, and she knew that. All it would take was the mental request and the hologram would appear with demographic content. Of course she was not augmented. Living totally in the moment and at the same time immersed in the sorry world of sordid images and third-rate ideas that swirled around her, the unrefined messiness of that sort of organic processing. She was living proof that the Augment could be a liberation, but at the same time Chagnon wondered if she would be any different with it. The longitudinal studies of identical twins showed clearly that the gains in composure and abstract processing were clearly linked to better health, but secretly Chagnon mistrusted their confirmation bias. He looked at the nurse and wondered what it would be like to have what she had, whatever it was, the old je ne sais quoi. He tried not to fall asleep as the pump whirred in time with his third artificial heart, the plasma swirling in the nanex tubes inserted in his arms. Her red hair reminded him of Heather Lewinsky in Carmel. He needed to call Heather and tell her he would be delayed in returning home. Due to the messy details of INN bylaws and the crisis they were in. She would understand, he hoped. It was so hard to be human. It seemed that every advance in the Augment only highlighted the remaining difficulties and their never-ending precariousness. Their need for each other was the greatest blessing and a spur at the same time for any labor saving device, to be done with it for good. What kind of a crazy intelligence would have thought up such a creature? In whose image could that possibly be made? A cup with a crack running through it, just begging to be mended. Who was the crazy old hoot that had claimed that was where the light got in? The bot lovers who would never fight back, perfect personal assistants -- they were all the rage a decade ago, before the advent of chimerae. But now there was an uptick in sexual attraction to the wild side. An uptick in diseases, a downtick in social cohesion. And flatlines in growth of native information. It could all be managed, but the stress levels -- that was what nobody understood about the INN.
Afterwards, he was always so hungry. But first he had the meeting with the Delta team -- Defpark Soong and his handler Jane Healey. He called up their images, but they were grainy and out of date, criminally so, given their status. They were the highest grade of Delta warriors, Team Zero. Their existence was supposed to be a top level secret, the matter of utmost care. Their profiles listed them as consultants with Jupiter Cargo, the algorithm management firm. His mental information came with a provenance that overrode the conventional sources, straight from the dossiers of the INN Committee on Southern Affairs, or so he believed. He girded himself for confrontation, stretched his arms overhead to get the new blood flowing and motioned to Absalom to have them come in.
Defpark Soong was compact and bright-eyed in his Chubasco suit, with the streamlined look of someone raised from birth for the purposes of extreme warfare. Jane Healey, the handler, as expected, was standard issue hetero-caliente in a flowing red robe. The Republic’s experimentation with elite bot troops had come to a standstill just a few years ago, as it became evident that, even with atomic level processing speeds, there was no substitute for human innovation and adaptability in the face of asymmetrical combat. Robotic failures were most evident in intelligence gathering and espionage that so often depended on innate human abilities to network and disengage with extreme fluidity. Delta Team Zero Fermion Warriors were raised in isolated settings that gave rise to shrunken amygdalae. These were then artificially enhanced through irradiation techniques, rendering high functioning, empathetic and intuitive soldiers that were, however, entirely dependent on handlers for most normal social cues. They were then paired into Team Zero same-sex and opposite-sex teams capable of insertion in various global cultural contexts. Chagnon knew the key was Healey, and he observed her carefully for instant impressions, ignoring her obvious physical charms. Her eyes were dimmed and uncertain, but behind the uncertainty was a wall of light. Her movements were precise and neutral. She held herself well and looked beyond him, checking the room for the presence of telltale sensors. The meeting was being monitored. She must have expected that.
“Hello there, sir,” said Soong, extending his hand and shaking Chagnon's with a collegiate enthusiasm.
“Absalom, move the chairs in closer for us, please,” said Chagnon. He rose from the chaise longue and smiled at Healey. She did not respond in kind, but a furrow in her brow posed a question. There were doubts in the air. Suddenly, the tone was awkward and ambivalent, as if novel outcomes were to be expected. Chagnon felt uncomfortably threatened and unprepared and glared at Absalom, who was flying around the room pushing the chairs swiftly into place in a curve facing each other. Then the chimera left the darkened room, closing the door silently behind him.
“So you’ve come,” said Chagnon, deciding that the obvious and banal was a good way to throw them off their pace.
“Please sir, sit,” said Healey. Her voice was a mix of earth and light, an elemental voice, well under control.
“No,” said Chagnon. “I don’t think so.” He moved beyond the range of the chairs and over to the wall length window, in the light of the southern exposure. He wanted to distance himself, exercise his prerogatives.
“Very well,” said Healy, looking at Soong. They both stood where they were and faced him. They made an excellent couple, minimizing the space between without revealing any obvious intimacy. Chagnon looked on in admiration.
“We realize this must seem highly unusual, sir,” said Healey.
“No. Not at all. You have information you wish to share of a confidential nature, and that’s why you requested the meeting. I assure you everything you say here will be kept a matter of the utmost privacy.”
“Well, we made sure of that, sir. The power circuits to this floor of the hotel have been cut off. You’ll notice there are no lights on any of your devices. The Augment’s processing has been masked by your recent transfusion and your immune system’s autonomous response. There is no way for this conversation to leak. What we have, sir are some uniquely strange details concerning the Mexico earth drain,” she said.
Now Chagnon understood the lack of decent photos of the two. His Augment was on pause, of course, for a period of several hours following the blood transfusion. He would have to rely on his basic wits alone to sort out the implications inherent in the situation. He wished that Absalom were still around. The chimerae were excellent at analysis of body language and hidden human motivations. Healey spoke without emotion, keeping her hands clasped together tightly in front of her. He ventured a guess, using his somewhat rusty intuitions and native language processing, that she was anticipating some tension, some resistance on his part. But there was also a hint of danger in the air, which was not helped by his momentary vulnerability.
“Can you give me some background on the situation? I know, of course that there is a knot of anti-Augment activity. Has been there for a long time. President Azueto is a personal friend of mine. But his population, what’s left of it after the die-off, is scattered and has been hard to cultivate for several decades.”
Healey looked at Soong. He took the glance as a cue to pick up where she had left off.
“Yes, and they have been cooperative on our common fight against the Perro and Diablo cartels on the Pacific coast. But this is an exceptionally threatening situation, sir. When we were called up by the INN sub-heads to go in and investigate, the first thing we did was run the known demographics of any actors in the area through the computer at the University of Shanghai. It has…”
“Yes I know about the capabilities of the computing system there. I helped design it,” interrupted Chagnon. Soong lowered his hands and stretched his fingers. He took a step back before proceeding. His was the more volatile personality of the two. Healey shifted her weight towards him almost imperceptibly, urging him to go on.
“So, sir. This is what we know," interjected Healey. She continued: "There is a man there in Zacatecas who has assembled an impressive array of personalities. The Mexican state does not want to move against his, well, community at this point, but is waiting to let the situation mature. It has the markings of a simple cult, but when we ran the computer scan what we found was impressive. The drain on the network is the equivalent of ten to the thirtieth kilograms, or about half the pull of the sun’s gravitational mass.”
“What?”
“Yes, it’s off the charts.”
“Did you have your parameters proofed?”
“Yes, triple-proofed. We even showed the formulation to Professor Dimitrievsky at the University of London, your colleague.”
That was Ludmilla’s father Carl. So there was something strange, potentially fascinating in the hills of western Mexico. Why were the hairs on his arm beginning to crawl? He looked at Healey. She was observing him closely. At that moment she turned, hearing the door at the same time he did. With a quick step, she intercepted Absalom as he entered the room. Endearingly, she wrapped her arm around his curvaceous belly and asked him, her voice a bell of sweetness, to accompany her to the bar. She needed a drink, she said.
“Why is it so dark in here, sir? Shall I turn on the lights?”
“No, that's okay, Ab,” said Chagnon. “Go with her to the bar and help with the drink.”
As soon as they went out, Chagnon sat on the chaise longue.
“What did Carl think it was?” he asked in a whisper.
“Well, he had various ideas,” said Soong.
“Because at that scale it could be attracting the Oort cloud.”
“No, we don't think so. Don’t forget. What we’re measuring is potentiality, not actual mass. Dr. Dimitrievsky said it did indicate to him some possible warping of the time-space continuum that lends a dark matter vortex to the actual entanglements. But it's these entanglements that hold the answer.”
“Yes, of course, as with most drains on the network. The entanglements are key,” said Chagnon.
“So Dr. Dimitrievsky theorised, initially, that it might indicate somebody who had defected from the leadership ranks and joined the Zacatecas cult, but there was nobody that fit that description. But when we ran the demographics of the INN leadership through the models, we did get some very interesting results.”
“What?”
“Well, one case produced motive and actionary waves which came in a basic eight-wave form.”
“An Elliott wave.”
“Exactly, generated by man’s social nature and the golden ratio.”
“Who was it?”
“You, sir.”
Chagnon was flabbergasted. His mind blanked out. The news of this entanglement precipitated a minor crisis. He reacted by shutting down, thus short-circuiting any panicked sense of unraveling that might overtake him.
Healey was handing him a glass of something. It was a straight grappa from one of the jumbo goblets of the bar area. He sipped at it, and the bitterness and the resinous aroma revived him somewhat, reminded him of the inviolability of his position. He could not possibly be at the mercy of these two and their juvenalia, their conspiracies of space and time. He was too old to be mixed up in it. He would play along with them, humor the whole enterprise. At this point it had not gotten out of hand yet. All sorts of things could account for the anomalous wave and the out-of-bounds nature of this whole day. Once they were gone and he was rid of his horrible headache he would speak with Ludmilla and arrange for dinner with her and her friends.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, in a hoarse, croaking voice.
“We need you to accompany us to Mexico,” said Soong.
“This drain poses an existential threat to the Augment and our way of life,” said Healey.
“You hold the answer, sir. Somewhere and somehow you are entangled with somebody out there, and now there are actors circling the largest event horizon we’ve witnessed in the history of civilization. You mentioned the Oort cloud. This could be even worse,” said Soong.
He felt a strange prickling of his senses, as if this was beginning to jibe with previously hidden patterns somewhere in his mind. Either that, or the Augment was beginning to kick back in. The thought of a Mexican adventure, an irruption into the quotidian, was perhaps not so repellant, an escape, something new, an aspect of personal story, an epiphany of creative destruction that would serve him well in some as yet hidden way. He tried to come to terms with the lack of control he had over the situation. The two, Healey and Soong, were ready to do anything to get their way. It was obvious.
“Why can’t you just replicate my neural footprint and download it into a bot?” asked Chagnon.
“Because the parameters are an unknown for such a large manifestation. It may take a face-to-face recognition; it may take an improvised personal reckoning to defeat this particular conundrum, sir,” said Soong. Healey gave a look of earnest concern.
He could see they were serious; they meant business.
“Where’s Absalom?” he asked.
“The chimera?” asked Soong. He looked at Healey.
“You haven’t hurt him, have you?” demanded Chagnon.
“Well, no. He’s asleep,” said Healey.
“I won’t go anywhere unless he comes also,” said Chagnon.
They all looked at each other. Not for the first or last time, Chagnon felt the ground beneath him almost give way. He couldn't believe this was happening to him. It was like a plunge into a cold pool of water in the dark, not certain of where the bottom would be. Healey nodded, unsmiling. They could accommodate the chimera. But he would have to contact those closest to him and give them a line about some time off. Secrecy was paramount. He would be taking a little vacation. Of course. He understood.
He gave his assent. He was done. He got through on the artifex to Ludmilla. They left him alone on the chaise longue, walking off together to find Absalom and take care of travel details. Ludmilla wasn't answering, so he left a message. Same with Heather. The thought again occurred to him that perhaps this was a positive development. And with Absalom along for company he wouldn’t be exposed alone to Healey and Soong, these two almost repellant creatures, f
or company. Despite their proficiency and finesse, he found them abhorrent. He couldn't put his finger on why. Perhaps it was their total lack of irony, the way they gave themselves over completely to the mission at hand. He knew it was wrong to feel the way he did. After all, they were just soldiers in the service of the Repho, and it took everyone pulling their weight, doing their bit for the prosperity of the whole. That was the motto of the Republican Homeland. Despite the secular nature of the state, it, and of course he by natural extension, being one of the founders, regarded moral principles as being of the utmost importance in the culture of the home and the education of the young. Healey and Soong were just two very good and complete products of the Repho system, the warrior elite that everyone depended on to do the dirty work that protected the fabric of the noosphere. Still, it had been many years since he’d been so utterly exposed to the people or, even worse, at their beck and call. He looked at it as a retraining in mental effort. He would have to try hard to bear up, and therefore he remembered the words of his former boss, Donald Trump: “Sometimes you have to sit back if their breath is particularly bad.” He still thought about that piece of advice. Just sit back and hold your breath. Trump’s time in power had been crucial to the rise of the Repho, despite his inevitable corruption trials. And after all, he had given Chagnon his first appointment as Secretary of Cyber in the old Department of Homeland Security.
Once Absalom had been brought into the plan, Chagnon’s cooperation was less problematic. His bags were packed with lightweight tropical suits and leisure wear, including some very comfortable trail running boots that he picked out from the Al Haniya on-line catalogue and had printed in the hotel lobby and picked up by Absalom. He tried them on and bounded around the room testing them. Healey smiled approvingly. Soong laughed and showed off a spinning capoeira kick which sent Absalom into a tizzy of delight. He always was such a sucker for athleticism. It was just proof that in the midst of potentially great danger it was only natural, even for the chimerae, to seek diversion and momentary escape. Opening his heart a little, he felt sad that he wouldn’t be seeing Ludmilla, he confessed to Healey. She put her arm around him and hugged him. It would only be a week, she said. In the meantime, he left detailed instructions written on the family file for Ludmilla so that she could represent his point of view to the Committee on Public Access. There should be no divulging of state findings regarding either the drain on upload speeds, the move to concentrate Creative inputs, or the pickup that had been detected by the Repho system’s deep space observatories in activity of Oort cloud asteroids. Life would go on as normal, as the scientific community and the management worked to surpass, synchronize and maximize in the spirit of the greatest good for the greatest number.
The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3) Page 9
