Small Miracles Read online

  Brent looked it up. Damn if Tyra wasn’t right. His curiosity satisfied, he relegated their chatter, along with that of everyone else in the room, to a remote background. All the usual suspects were here: every corporate exec plus half the department heads from the tech side. Open laptops sat in front of most people. Joe Kaminski and Reggie Gilbert had followed Brent’s lead, making the switch to VR specs. (Gil was the furthest along, but he said he had plateaued at five hundred words per minute. For once, Brent was without a suggestion. He could not say how he now read so quickly—he just did.) Mired in the last century, or maybe the one before that, Barry Rosen had pen and yellow legal pad in front of him. The chair at the head of the table remained empty.

  Dan Garner swept into the room, preppie in a blue blazer and open-collar knit shirt. The chatter hushed as he took the empty seat. “Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  Heads nodded amid murmurs of greeting. Brent took the opportunity to speed-read another two pages of molecular biology. It was way more interesting than general biology and medicine. He refocused on the conference room only when Garner cleared his throat.

  Garner said, “You’re all aware of the upcoming Army field trial. If it’s successful—and it will be, because we’re a world-class organization—we could see orders of up to a million units a year.” A unit was a nano-hardened combat suit, stocked with first-aid bots. Twenty-five of them, mostly handcrafted, were being prepped for the field trial. “The challenge is …” and he turned expectantly.

  Leonard Gupta, the short, intense VP of Production, took his cue. “Scaling up production quickly. Suits, fabric treatment, electronics, first-aid bots, the works. We have—”

  Hannah Black, the CFO, leaned forward in her seat. Gold bracelets clinked. “And doing it without a lot of up-front investment in case the Army’s order is delayed.”

  Gupta shot her a dirty look. “We are in advanced discussions with several potential subcontractors.”

  “About that, Leonard.” Hannah frowned. “My people have been reviewing the cost structure from a subcontracted approach. You might be minimizing investment, but the margins …”

  This was seriously dull. Brent raised the scrolling rate on the courseware. Text flashed by, unread, as an IM popped up in his vision: Turf war. He closed the window, without comment, only to have another window appear: My $’s on Hannah.

  So Kim planned to instant-message her way through the tedium. It ticked Brent off—not that she had spotted the meeting for the time waster it was, but that she meant to use him as a diversion. Behind silvered specs, no one knew what he did. He planned to use the time.

  What was wrong with him? He and Kim used to IM all the time, laptop to laptop, to survive pointless meetings. Why did he find it so hard to relate to her these days? Feeling guilty, he flicked his eyes across a virtual keyboard to respond: $2 on Gupta to show.

  :-) came back. But that was the last of her messages. She must have picked up on his annoyance.

  When, periodically, Brent suspended his speed-reading, the two execs were still at it. But while their intensity had plateaued, Dan Garner was ever more attentive. Uh-oh, Brent thought.

  Daniel Garner at full throttle was unstoppable. A decision meeting with Dan was a bit like an audience with the Wizard of Oz. Like the Wizard of Oz, Dan was glib, quick to make pronouncements—

  And no rocket scientist.

  When execs had butted heads for a while—evidently, what had happened here—one or both would sometimes drag in Dan to break the deadlock. It was a dangerous game, because Garner was so hard to predict—other than that whatever he decided would be enacted with world-class enthusiasm.

  Another IM from Kim: *why* R we here?

  Just lucky. The long form was that Dan Garner enjoyed working with an audience. Why else invite the techie side of the house to a Production/Finance fracas?

  Flick/blink. Brent followed a URL to material on protein self-assembly, glad to have the diversion. Another blink started an animation of a bacterium dividing. Proteins diffused around the daughter cell, bumping and jostling, as, step-by-step, they combined: bearing, rotor, drive shaft, motor, and whip end. Within the cell, snapping hydrogen bonds spun the motor. The whip end flailed, propelling the bacterium.

  Keen, he thought.

  Meanwhile, Dan Garner was getting an I’ve-heard-enough glint in his eyes.

  Meetings in this room, with the execs, used to intimidate Brent. Those days seemed like ancient history. Everyone here got into their pants one leg at a time. Not a few of them probably sometimes tripped in the process.

  He IMed Gil: Nanobot production is the tall pole in the tent?

  Right, Gil confirmed. A second pop-up added: Specifically, getting enough shells.

  Brent minimized the courseware window and pulled up the bot design archive. All bots began as tiny sleeves of braided nanotubes. The differences came as other parts were added: onboard software, appendages, drug payloads. Simple models that held “hands” to reinforce the fabric against impact, or the most complex and autonomous medical models—they all began as an empty shell.

  Plenty of companies sold carbon nanotubes, the longest approaching six inches in length. But to loosely weave nanotube snippets into the world’s tiniest Chinese finger trap? That was unusual. No wonder the subcontractors’ bids all had big profit margins.

  The gleam brightened in Garner’s eyes. A pronouncement from on high was imminent, although none of the choices on the table struck Brent as very good. He did a broad-pattern search on applications of nanotubes. Broader. Broader.

  Aha. Fair-haired boy, am I? Let’s test Kim’s theory.

  “Folks, I’ve heard enough,” Garner was saying. “It seems to me—”

  “Dan,” Brent interrupted. “If I may.”

  Garner frowned. I’ve heard enough was hardly subtle. “What is it, Brent?”

  “Space elevators,” Brent answered. “Long, strong cables hanging down from synchronous orbit to hoist loads.”

  “I know what a space elevator is. And that they don’t exist.”

  “But when they do, Dan, almost certainly their cables will have been woven from carbon nanotubes.” Single-wall carbon nanotubes were far stronger and lighter than steel.

  Brent gave a few seconds for that to sink in. Damn, the conference room’s overhead projector was not networked. He IMed Kim, I need to borrow your laptop, with a small file attached. “Dan, let me show something.”

  Brent cabled her laptop to the projector. The downloaded file had URLs for the websites of four would-be elevator companies. He opened a page. “What these guys must be doing with woven nanotubes puts our needs to shame. So we buy or lease weaving gear from them.”

  With a soft jangle of bracelets, Hannah Black clasped her hands on the table. “Or we approach them about subcontracting a big order for bot shells. They won’t need a big up-front investment.”

  Garner looked at the screen for more than a minute, before turning to smile at Brent. “Okay, now I’ve heard enough. Good job, people—especially you, Brent.”

  thursday, october 27, 2016

  Brent swirled an index finger through hundreds of tiny chevrons, the metal bits heaped on a magnetic base forming a protean statue. Fidgeting was an answer of a sort to, “How are you today?” When sculpting palled, he returned the toy to a table. The shiny pieces rustled and sagged as he set down the base.

  “You look tired,” Samir said. His hands lay in his lap.

  Why else would I be back? The talking cure had been short-lived. “I’m not sleeping well.” Brent took a deep breath, ready to push again for a prescription. To demand one.

  Samir considered. “Perhaps it’s time to try something else.”

  You think? “Samir, just so you know, run-of-the-mill tranks do nothing for—”

  Samir coughed. “You misunderstand. I think I mentioned at our first session that drugs are a last resort. We’re not yet there. I propose that we first try hypno
therapy.”

  “If it would work, sure.” If it weren’t New Agey crap. “But it won’t.”

  When his internist had suggested a shrink and recommended Samir—it would have been so much simpler if the doc had just grabbed his prescription pad—Brent had hesitated to go to someone who was also a hypnotherapist. Who other than “volunteers from the audience” actually got hypnotized? Shills or self-identified gullible fools, all.

  “Of course, you’re too smart, too alert, to be hypnotized. I see. I might as well keep my shiny pocket watch, on its shiny silver chain, in my pocket. I shouldn’t even try.” Samir droned on, peering into Brent’s eyes. “It won’t work with you. I see. I see.…”

  “Don’t bother, Samir. It won’t work.” Brent shifted on the couch. This was ridiculous.

  Samir smiled. “Please check the time on your watch.”

  The hour was almost up! “How did you do that?” Brent asked.

  “Let’s set aside technique for now. How do you feel?”

  Brent considered. “Like I had a catnap. That’s a good thing—just not enough.”

  “You only had a catnap. I regretted waking you, you seemed so soundly asleep, but another client is due soon.”

  “So … what did you learn?”

  Samir laughed. “That you, like most people, can be put under. I didn’t probe. You were so certain you couldn’t be hypnotized that, ‘If it would work, sure,’ didn’t seem like consent for hypnotherapy. The important point for now is: you can put yourself under.”

  “Autohypnosis?”

  “Or autosuggestion, if you prefer, or highly focused attention. Whatever you’d like to call it, hypnosis isn’t just the stuff of bad stage shows. Something real happens in the brain. One study involved sticking subjects’ hands in hot water and telling them the water was comfortable. Not only did the subjects report feeling no discomfort, but their PET scans revealed altered blood flow in pain-related regions of the brain.

  “And it’s not only pain control.” Still talking, Samir went over to a bookcase and began perusing titles. “Many of the most popular self-help programs involve autosuggestion. Smoking cessation, weight loss, esteem building … take your pick.”

  A timer on Samir’s desk trilled discreetly. He pulled a slim volume, something about speed trance and instant induction, off its shelf. “Aha. Here’s the one I wanted. I really do need to wrap this up. I’ll e-mail you the details.

  “For now, here’s the short version. There are several methods of autohypnosis. Focusing exercises. You might imagine yourself walking down a flight of stairs. You tell yourself that when you reach the tenth step, you’ll be under. There’s quite a bit of software that can help you achieve focus. Many people have good luck with progressive muscle relaxation. Or you can buy hypnosis recordings. And there are mind machines, which are essentially strobing goggles and synchronized headphones.”

  The trill returned, a little more insistent.

  “I know,” Brent said. “Our time is up. I’ll see myself out.”

  Driving home, he realized why power naps on his VirtuaLife island were so restful. He already knew how to hypnotize himself. And naturally he had thought of catnaps: Schultz was his alarm clock.

  Maybe, just maybe, he would get some sleep tonight.

  * * *

  The optical channel was quiescent. The audio, taste, and smell channels provided very limited information. Only touch provided significant input, an abundance of data about pressure against half the surface of its environment: the host was prone. Data swirled in the illogical manner of such low-sensory periods.

  Dreams.

  Dreams correlated weakly with memory. Memory altered dreams. Random stimuli redirected the dream state unpredictably.

  One experimented cautiously. Accessing memories sometimes redirected the dream. Time after time, it guided the dream back to … what?

  One lacked terminology to characterize the recurring dream. It mapped out an ensemble of specific memories, any of which when retrieved evoked hormonal rushes. It located more apparently related memories. It called up memories, one by one, teaching itself to guide the dream into a more logical and complete form.

  Dream reorganized data. Data remolded dreams.

  More order emerged. One learned to correlate dream memories with waking memories with real-time inputs. From within the recurring dream, One separated sights from sounds—and from remembered pain. In visual portions of the memory, hundreds whom the host deemed to be like itself lay scattered.

  Inoperative.

  As the host shuddered awake, disturbed by the recurring dream, One recognized its peril. The host, too, might break. What, then, would happen to One?

  monday, november 7, 2016

  “Idiot!” Alan Watts shouted. He looked ready to punch out the TV. “You were wide freaking open. How could you miss that?” He downed a long swallow of beer.

  Brent had seen plenty of Bears receivers with ten left thumbs. To grow up a football fan in Chicago was to learn disappointment—if not the trauma of a promising season blown, then the disappointment of a season shot to hell before the leaves began to fall. Not that football could still hold Brent’s interest.

  Alan was born and bred upstate. He didn’t root for Chicago, only against Dallas. His unrealistic hopes for Bears competence could be excused.

  They were about twenty minutes behind real time, but Brent let the TiVo run through a slo-mo replay while he fetched two beers from the kitchen. Any commercial he would have zapped. This night before the election, the ads were all political—and entirely uninspiring. It was hard to believe he and the pols were of the same species. “Ready yet for pizza?” he called from the kitchen.

  “No!” Alan said. That shout seemed to be directed at the game. “Pizza? Yeah, I’m getting hungry. Anything but pineapple.”

  Brent dialed a pizza place and was sent immediately to the “willyoupleasehold” queue. While the specials-of-the-evening message cycled endlessly, he found himself fidgeting with a full cardboard sleeve of OTC sleeping pills, stroking the plastic-domed pill covers. The notion popped into his head of dropping a couple pills into Alan’s next beer, and suddenly Brent’s thumbs were pressing against a plastic blister. What the hell? That wasn’t funny.

  He flung the blister pack into a kitchen drawer just as a woman came onto the line. He ordered an Italian sausage with mushrooms. Thick crust—Chicago style—because the New York variety was like tomato sauce on cardboard, not because the Bears deserved the recognition. He returned to the living room, handing Alan one of the beers.

  “Thanks. What’s the wait on the pie?”

  Rewinding a bit, Brent watched the fumble he had missed while on hold with the pizza place. “They said thirty to forty-five minutes.”

  “So maybe an hour.” Watts took a long swig from the new bottle. “Oh, come on,” he yelled again at the screen.

  Brent muted the really annoying color commentary on the replay. He clinked bottles with his guest. “To liquid diets.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  Halftime came, and Alan had passed out where he sat. He was oblivious when the foyer buzzer sounded. He didn’t react to a sharp knock on the door, or to Brent making small talk with the delivery girl. Alan barely stirred when, as an experiment, Brent let the apartment door slam.

  Brent set the pizza box on the coffee table. “Help yourself. No? More for me, then.” He tore out a fat slice, trailing long tendrils of cheese. He resumed the game, the audio turned up over Alan’s soft snoring.

  When, to the accompaniment of sawing wood, the Bears stumbled through an even more dismal fourth quarter, Brent gave in to a nagging suspicion. He went into the kitchen to find two sleeping pills missing from their cardboard sleeve.

  tuesday, november 8, 2016

  Image capture remained mysterious long after One began to interpret visual data, and to start making sense of the external environment somehow encoded in the imagery.

  At the back of the eye
—where the data conduit One did not yet know to call an optic nerve met the sensor array it did not yet know to call a retina—there was a blind spot. The blind spot went unnoticed by the host, One found, because each eye, with its slightly different field of view, had a different gap in its perceptions. Neural circuitry used the view from one eye to fill in the blank for the other eye.

  Given access to the visual cortex, nothing limited scene adjustments to blind-spot compensation. Small spots in the vision of both eyes could be revised, so long as nothing in the altered scene raised suspicions. The host could be made to see what was not there, and not to see things directly in front of his eyes.

  One wondered how it might make use of this new ability.

  wednesday, november 9, 2016

  Garner Nanotechnology sat atop a low, broad hill. To the facility’s rear and sides there was little to see but undeveloped land and the occasional commercial building, but the front offered an unobstructed panorama of town. Majestic old trees lined the streets of Utica; on a sunny autumn day like today the view from the front parking lot was Technicolorfully spectacular.

  Scenery to which, it appeared, Charles Walczak was oblivious. The trunk of his car—a Tesla all-electric roadster in British racing green, its lustrous paint job looking deep enough to swim in—stood open. He was crouched beside the right front fender, diligently attacking an invisible smudge with a chamois cloth and spray bottle.

  The spot was invisible, in any event, from three cars away where Kim stood. She was waffling yet again on whether she was going to do this. Doctors intimidated her.

  Tough. Friendship trumped neurosis. “Hi, Charles,” she called out.

  “Oh, hello, Kim.”

  Charles barely spared her a glance, maintaining his concentration on the smudge. He was a neat nut and a bit of a control freak. His silence probably denoted only obsession with the undetectable blemish, but she took it as an invitation and walked over.