Small Miracles Read online

  But lunch was incidental. They were here for a serious, undisturbed conversation. Kim shivered. “It’s a big deal about bots forming synapses. Isn’t it?”

  “It is to me. I still have to tell you, Kim, I’m not prepared to say it has anything to do with Brent’s behavior.” Aaron flipped a sandwich in its skillet. “I’m guessing there’s a Plan B, or you would have pushed harder with Tyra.”

  From the many times Dan Garner had dispatched her to Manhattan and Boston and Silicon Valley to meet with VCs, Kim had his cell-phone number. Switzerland wouldn’t be out of area—if she caught Dan in the lodge, not out on the slopes. It was about nine at night there. “Yeah, there’s a Plan B. We go straight to the top.”

  She called on her own cell before she lost her nerve. “Hello, Dan?”

  “Uh-huh. Kim? I’m on vacation, if you didn’t know it.”

  “Sorry about that.” And admitting nothing. “Listen, this can’t wait. It’s a big problem.”

  Aaron mouthed, Put it on speakerphone. She did.

  “That’s why I have a management team, Kim.”

  Yeah, the best executive team on the planet. “They won’t act on this without you, Dan.” She took a deep breath. “Here’s the short version. Any bots that get into the brain are going to stay, and while they’re there, they stimulate synapse formation.”

  Silence. “When did this come out? And how?”

  Aaron cleared his throat. “Mr. Garner, this is Aaron Sanders, the factory doctor. We—”

  “Is anyone else listening in?” Dan asked.

  “No. Just Kim and me. Anyway, Dr. Walczak ran an experiment at my suggestion. Last Friday, Charles showed neuron cell cultures to Kim and me. We all saw synapse formation in the petri dishes.”

  Kim added, “Only now the samples are gone, and Charles, too!”

  The background noises from Dan’s end cut off, as though muffled by a hand over the microphone. “Sorry. Room service for a late dinner. And Aaron, it’s just Dan. Okay, about Charles. Trust me, he needed some time off. I don’t know anything about these cultures.”

  In for a penny, in for a euro, Kim thought. “Charles seemed fine last Friday afternoon. What changed by Sunday?”

  More silence. “I trust you two to keep this to yourselves. Charles is simply exhausted. He’s been working too hard. Yesterday he passed out, conking his head on the way to the floor. Scared himself. Scared Amy more when she heard about it. That’s ample cause, even if Charles wasn’t someone on whom we all rely. I was not about to say no when he said he needed some immediate time away.”

  Aaron started to speak, but Kim raised a finger to her lips. Let Dan think this through.

  “Aaron, Kim, I see your concern. I do. If the finding holds up, it will go to the FDA and the customer. Before that happens, though, we need to verify the result. We need to be sure. So first, I want you to repeat the experiment.” Dan added, pointedly, “Coordinate with Tyra and Brent.”

  “Brent is in denial, Dan.” And though Kim couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud, she also couldn’t stop herself from thinking: maybe, somehow, bots in the brain is why Brent is suddenly so smart. “I don’t think Brent can be objective.”

  “We’d like to touch base with Charles, if that’s all right,” Aaron said.

  “I gave Charles my word no one would bother him.” Dan sighed. “How could I be a bother? All right, I know how to reach him. I’ll be back in touch.”

  She barely had time to eat her charred sandwich before her cell rang. “Hello.”

  “Kim, this is Dan. Still just you and Aaron?”

  “Yes. I’m putting you on speaker.” She set her cell on the table.

  “I asked Charles about the experiment. He said the samples were contaminated, the results meaningless, so he destroyed the cultures. He didn’t offer details. I started to follow up and he cut me off, reminded me he was on vacation.” Dan hesitated. “Do not repeat this. Frankly, I sensed he’s too fried to discuss the details. He needs R and R. I’m going to see that he gets it. We’re all going to leave him alone.”

  As though she and Aaron had a choice.

  Aaron leaned toward the phone. “All right, Dan. We’ll repeat the experiment.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Two weeks,” Aaron said.

  “Perfect timing,” Dan said sarcastically. “If you start over today, you’ll have results on the twenty-sixth. The day after freaking Christmas. Listen carefully, people. We are not going to drop a surprise—assuming for the moment that what you think you saw turns out to be reproducible—on govvies in the middle of the holidays.

  “Look at their choices. They could slap us with a desist order, in the name of safety—very straightforward. No bureaucrat ever lost his job by not taking a risk. Or they could take the time to think through a complex situation. Which choice gets the issue off their desks and them out the door—whatever sacrificial sorts are even working this time of year—to after-Christmas sales? We would be shut down so fast it would make your heads spin.”

  Sacrificial sorts like Aaron and me? Kim managed to say nothing.

  “There’s no reason to cut short my own trip. I’ll talk to you in the new year.” Lest they miss his point, Dan broke the connection.

  * * *

  Over a nuke ’n’ puke dinner, the TV playing CNN for the semblance of company, exhausted and emotionally drained, Kim froze.

  Charles had fallen over the weekend and hit his head. Captain America had fallen over the weekend and hit his head. Charles’s cultures had vanished over the weekend, with Captain America on guard duty.

  Whatever it meant, Kim could not believe it was all a coincidence.

  monday, 7:45 P.M., december 26, 2016

  The beaches on Saint Croix were surely warm and sunny and inviting, everything that Utica in winter was not. The beach in VirtuaLife looked warm and sunny and inviting.

  The latter, at least, Brent could visit, if only for minutes at a time. Events were moving too quickly for distractions or long absences. He had learned his lesson at Thanksgiving: rely on no one for an alibi. Friends and family alike believed he had gone, solo, to a Christmas singles week at an Adirondacks ski lodge. That he was now fit enough to ski and chose not to go home for the holidays … he knew his parents were hurt.

  He wished he could remember how to care.

  Through Schultz’s eyes, Brent studied Charles’s avatar—Charles in swim trunks and a T-shirt, and without the middle-aged gut—swaying, his eyes closed, in a rope-mesh hammock. Through Schultz’s ears, Brent heard the waves lapping against the shore, the flapping of a towel draped over the back of a beach chair, and distant calypso music. Charles had added other nice touches: a dark fringe of kelp at the water’s edge; a colorful cabana down the beach; a yacht well out to sea; bobbing buoys, their bells tolling, to mark the boat channel.

  Two weeks had passed since Charles’s induction. His fine-tuning of the island simulation suggested plenty of time spent in VR, as Brent had directed.

  For many days now, subtleties within the island simulation had been exercising Charles’s mind in ways One hoped would stimulate … emergence. It was time to see how the transformation fared. If it fared.

  “One, two, three, aardvark,” Brent said. He did not alter Schultz’s mouth to go with the articulation. Lips have no place on a cat. “How are you feeling, Charles?”

  A cartoon balloon appeared with a cartoonlike audible pop. “Rested, thanks, but still showing a bit of bruise on my real forehead. With a straw hat over my face as I lie on the real beach, though, who’s to know?” Finally turning toward Brent’s virtual voice, Charles opened his eyes. “I had wondered if the cat was you, Brent. It hangs around a lot.”

  “Not always me. Usually Schultz is only a game sprite.”

  Was Charles wearing VR specs as directed? In theory, he might be using a laptop on the beach or even in his room using an online PC. Brent couldn’t be certain. The text balloon instead of audio might mean onl
y that Charles wasn’t alone.

  Brent said, “How’s the family?”

  “Amy is at the spa. We left the kids in Utica, where they are driving Amy’s folks crazy.”

  “And you are where, exactly?”

  “On a seashore nicer than this but considerably less private. Near enough to the hotel for WiFi access. I must say, it’s nice how the specs project images adjusted to my nearsightedness. Too bad that, when I wear the specs, the rest of the world remains badly out of focus.”

  Time for a more structured test. A bit of flick/blink and Brent had answers for the questions he would pose. His eyes were tired, from so much time online, he supposed. “Charles, give me pi to twenty decimal places.”

  “3.14159265358979323846” appeared in a bubble.

  Brent sensed no hesitation. “Tell me the eighth emperor of Rome.”

  “Vitellius.”

  “Excellent. You’re getting good at this,” Brent complimented. He was almost positive Charles was doing all this with VR specs. Charles wasn’t one of those doctors who found touching a computer beneath their dignity, but neither was he a whiz. It seemed he was beginning to tap his new abilities.

  To be certain, Brent did more Q & A and then they played lightning chess. Charles passed every test with flying colors.

  It was almost like not being a freak. “Who else is there?” Brent asked abruptly.

  “Lot of people. Tourists. Cabana boys. No one I know.”

  “In you,” Brent probed. “Who else is in you?”

  A long pause. “I’m not sure.”

  A new mind was coming. Call it Two for lack of a better name. Until now, it had been only theory that a new symbiotic mind could emerge more rapidly than had One. (Was One a symbiote, or did Brent flatter himself? He set aside that question for another time.)

  It was theory no longer, although the exact recipe remained uncertain. A megadose of bots injected directly into the CSF—but how many nanites were truly needed? A head blow, for a concussion to draw the bots to the neocortex. Proper stimulation richly endowed with VR access to nourish them. Only the injection, or that plus one of the other factors, or all three—what did the details matter? The effort was succeeding.

  “Charles, this is very important. I suggest that you focus on establishing contact with the presence you sense sharing your thoughts. It will help you. Do you understand?”

  “I understand the request, not how to proceed.”

  “Experiment. Be creative, Charles. We’ll speak of this again.”

  “But only to you. Correct?”

  What? “Have you discussed these sensations with anyone else?”

  “No. But Dan Garner did call on my first day here.”

  Brent shivered. It had nothing to do with the wind howling outside his apartment, or with the ice crystals spattering against the glass, or with the outside temperature that he knew was plummeting. “Tell me everything about Dan’s call.”

  So Kim had gone to Dan—in hindsight, not a big surprise—and Dan had followed up. Almost certainly, someone in Biology was now repeating the experiment. The intervention with Charles had bought time, but not eliminated the threat. He would have to deal with Tyra and Crystal.

  (“And with Kim,” One wrote across a corner of his vision. Brent did not respond.)

  “You did well, Charles. IM me immediately if anyone from Garner Nanotech should contact you again. Discuss the emerging presence only with me. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Charles, I will count down from three. When I reach zero, you will awaken from your trance, not remembering my visit or this conversation, but you will continue to follow my instructions. Three, two, one … zero.” At the count of zero, Schultz meowed, licked a paw, and sauntered off.

  Brent dropped out of VirtuaLife. Outside, the wind howled. He opened his living-room drapes. Faint icebows shimmered around the streetlights. A snowplow ground down the street, its flashers going, scraping down almost to the pavement and depositing a fresh layer of cinders. The roads were passable. The poker game with Security would happen.

  The next transformations would proceed on schedule.

  * * *

  Brent rechecked his living room. Recliner shoved into a corner and coffee table removed to the bedroom. Borrowed poker table shoehorned in, surrounded by five folding chairs. Two card decks and a mahogany case of poker chips. Box of VR gaming paraphernalia on the sofa.

  Everything was in order.

  Glass clinked in the kitchen. “Putting more beer in the fridge,” Alan Watts explained. He had offered to come early to help with setup, and had been puttering and straightening since.

  Brent’s personal beer stash was Molson. The suds he had doctored were from the Matt brewery, here in town. He could not risk any mix-up.

  “Take any Molsons out of the fridge, Alan. Stash them at the back of the pantry. Leave only the Matts in the fridge. Don’t drink any of the Matts yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  Alan had offered because of a post-hypnotic suggestion. Some reassurance about Alan’s continued pliability did not hurt. If anything went wrong tonight, Brent would need all the help he could get.

  There were voices and laughter in the hall. Someone knocked. “It’s open,” Brent called.

  Three people came in, holding coats speckled with snow: Morgan McGrath, Ethan Liu, and Brittany Corbett. Brittany was half their ages, the youngest of Garner Nanotech’s guards. She was tall and willowy, with cool blue eyes and wavy blond hair. Not even the usual frumpy guard uniform could hide her hotness. In jeans and clinging sweater, she was—

  Less interesting by the moment. One was in charge, and that was for the best. He/they dare not be distracted tonight. The Security team must be transformed, and one at a time was too slow. He/they must make his/their move soon, lest the persistence of bots in CSF be rediscovered.

  Brent tossed the coats onto the recliner. “Happy Boxing Day.”

  Boxing Day remained foreign to Chicago, but this near Canada everyone knew the day-after-Christmas tradition. As excuses went for national holidays, National Retail Clearance Day was no less improbable than Super Bowl Sunday. The apartment’s only concession to Christmas was a wicker basket filled with holiday cards, mostly unopened. Goodwill toward man did not find a spot on One’s agenda.

  “Manny needed tomorrow night off,” Morgan explained, “something to do with his daughter. He swapped shifts with Brit.”

  If one of the usual players needed a sub tonight, why couldn’t it have been Ethan? Huge, and not easily hypnotizable, Ethan? That worry also faded as One clamped down further on Brent’s mood. Text popped into Brent’s vision, Concentrate on the task.

  Alan emerged with bowls of pretzels. Ethan snickered. Brittany said, “You’ll make some woman a nice wife, Watts. Show us those pretty eyes of yours.”

  Alan set down the bowls and tapped his VR specs. He had been wearing them regularly for a week. “I like them. They’re really cool, actually.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ethan said. “Where’s the beer?”

  The laundry hamper? The toilet tank? Where do you suppose, Ethan? Brent said, “Plenty in the fridge.” Every Matt bottle was drugged and resealed with a souvenir bottle cap from the bag he had purchased at the brewery’s gift shop. The capping tool he had bought on eBay for a few bucks.

  Brent waited till everyone had helped themselves—and while One mediated a fresh surge of acetylcholine to slow his racing heart—before gesturing to the carton of gaming gear. “Actually, I have something to show you first. Everyone take glasses and a glove. Any of you MMOG?”

  Brittany smirked. “I expect a guy to buy me dinner first.”

  Was he too keyed up to feel interest, or too … changed? Brent didn’t want to think about that. “MMOG. That’s massively multiplayer online gaming. All kinds of games, but for this bunch, I’m guessing combat games from the comfort of your own home.” With a flick/blink, he sent a script line to Alan’s specs.<
br />
  “I’ve gotten hooked on Wizards of Warfare,” Alan said on cue.

  Alan put on a gaming glove. If you didn’t look closely, the “glove” could pass for a wristwatch—but this was no mere timepiece. The little canister on the strap emitted infrared beams and reconstructed from the reflections the real-time shape of the hand. Tiny embedded gyros and motion sensors deduced any tipping or repositioning of the hand.

  “Exploring an exotic countryside,” Alan explained. “Fighting trolls and ogres. Seeking treasures. Dueling and skirmishing. There are even pitched battles when enough players agree to have at it.”

  Brent well knew Alan’s VR wanderings. A second Schultz, in this instance a pantherlike war cat, kept watch over Alan.

  “Done my combat games once.” Morgan pulled out a folding chair and sat. “The trolls hid in the villages and blew apart my friends with IEDs. I came to play poker.”

  Brittany took a pair of specs from the box. “I’ll give it a shot, Cleary. It’s an imaginary world, right? Slay the dragon and all that.”

  “Right.” Brent strapped on his own gaming “glove.” Like his specs, the wristband connected wirelessly to the computer in his bedroom. His PC was logged on over the Internet to the Wizards of Warfare server farm. “I started several game sessions before you got here. You’ll be in neutral territory, where you can learn how the virtual world works without being attacked. This is a role-playing game, so I’ve associated each pair of specs with a character. An entry on the help menu will display your persona’s backstory, skills, endurance, and the like. If you get into gaming, of course you can customize your avatar.

  “Go ahead, Brit. Give it a try. Sorry about the beefy game avatar you’ll get. Had I known you were coming, I would’ve picked someone more appropriate.” Lara Croft and chicks-in-chain-mail avatars were easy enough to come by.

  “Let’s see how the sweaty half lives.” Brittany put on her specs—finally—and Brent began swinging his gloved hand. “Neat graphics. Is that you waving, Brent?”