Fiction
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Source Code
(This one is near-future science fiction. In our increasingly wealthy society, desire of every kind has become something of a problem: it’s too easily satisfied and, once satisfied, destroyed. For every man who’s miserable because what he wants most is something he can never have, there’s one who’s miserable because there’s nothing he wants enough to give him a reason to live. Which suggests that a safe, reliable technique for implanting, removing, potentiating and depotentiating desires would be a source of limitless wealth, not to mention power undreamed of by all the tyrants of the ages.
“Source Code” is part of my novel The Sledgehammer Concerto.)
"Do you have to do this?" Elise Rosenthal's misgivings surged as she looked at the restraint chair.
Rachel MacLachlan nodded. "If you want to be my first subject, I'm afraid so."
"But...all right." Elise turned and sat gingerly. The formidable-looking experimental subject's seat, framed with thick steel bars and fastened to the floor by half inch lag bolts, was thickly padded and surprisingly comfortable. She knew she was supposed to settle herself against the back of the chair and lay her arms along the armrests, but she hesitated.
Rachel's pale green eyes peered at her. The researcher's exquisite face, its full-lipped sensuality contradicted by her bun of gray hair, was a portrait of concern.
"Elise, for this to work, you have to be free from fear. You have to believe I won't hurt you, all the way down at your center. If you have any reservations at all, the conditioning will be slipshod at best, and the results won't be meaningful."
Elise breathed deeply and studied her employer's face.
She wouldn't harm a fly. I couldn't dream of it. With all the other things I've dreamed about her, I could never imagine that.
She relaxed and pressed herself deep into the thickly padded chair. Her arms went along the armrests, and her head fit nicely into the semicircular support that rose from the back.
Rachel stepped behind her to adjust the supports. A few clicks of an adjustment knob caused the neckpiece of the head support to conform exactly to the column of Elise's neck. The headrest sank a millimeter or two and tilted back by a few degrees, and suddenly the chair was as form-fitting as her own skin and more comfortable than a mother's bosom.
Rachel came to stand before her again. "Are you ready?"
Elise started to nod, but the head and neck supports made it awkward. "Go ahead."
Rachel cuffed Elise's legs to the chair frame at the ankles and knees, and strapped her arms to the armrests at the wrists and elbows. She pulled a heavy woven harness, of the kind that secured pilots to the seats of fighter jets, up from between Elise's knees and buckled it behind her shoulders. Finally, she wrapped a soft, high leather collar around Elise's neck and the neckpiece behind it. The researcher pulled the collar carefully snug, then pressed its adhesive edges together.
"You remember the protocol," Rachel said softly. "First I inject the nanomachines at the base of your brain. It takes about twelve seconds for them to find the MacLachlan node, and another thirty or so to perfuse it. After that, I'm going to give you six cc's of sodium pentothal, just enough to induce sleep. When you've nodded off, I'll begin the conditioning sequence. You should be fully awake and able to verify the effectiveness of the suggestions about a half-hour later." She paused. "Just tell me to begin."
Elise swallowed. "Go ahead, Rachel."
The researcher moved behind her again. Elise heard a faint scraping of glass against metal, and then felt a tiny prick at the base of her skull. A prick to the flesh of her upper arm followed a minute later, and the laboratory grew indistinct.
Elise came awake slowly, with a swimming-through-molasses sensation that resisted her attempts to regain consciousness. When her eyes opened, she was still immobilized in the subject chair. The little laboratory was as ever: brightly lit, sterile in appearance, all the usual fixtures and appurtenances where she expected to see them. Rachel was not to be seen.
Did she leave me alone here? I wouldn't have expected that.
As the thought formed, there was a shuffling behind her. Rachel's tall, white-coated figure moved to stand before her again. Her employer had pulled a woolen ski mask over her head. Only her eyes were visible.
"How do you feel, Elise?" The words were muffled, barely discernible through the densely knit wool.
"Okay." Elise started to stretch, but her bonds prevented it. "Did it work?"
In answer, Rachel pulled the ski mask from her head.
At the first sight of Rachel's face, Elise was jolted by an unprecedented and overpowering lust. Her entire body surged against its restraints. Every muscle screamed in fury at being denied. Her whole being burned with a single desire: to reach Rachel MacLachlan and enfold her, and to cover her precious, beloved face with kisses.
Rachel did not move. Elise struggled against the straps and cuffs with all her strength, but she could not win free of them. She keened from frustrated longing. After about fifteen seconds the researcher, whose expression had grown troubled, pulled the ski mask down over her head once more.
As suddenly as it had come upon Elise, the mad passion subsided and was gone. She was as she had been: calm, a little sleepy, and securely fastened to the lab chair.
Without warning, Rachel pulled the mask from her head again. Just as before, Elise was overcome with lust at the sight of her face. Her body was not hers to command. It surged and strained against its bonds with the ferocity of primal desire, unmitigated by intelligent consideration or civilized inhibition.
Rachel moved toward her, and Elise shrieked in anticipation of fulfillment.
The researcher moved out of Elise's visual range, and once again the lust was gone, as if shut off by a switch. There was a prick to Elise's upper arm. Seconds later she was asleep again.
When Elise awoke the second time, her restraints had been undone. She rose and stretched, found no ill effects from her confinement, and looked about. Rachel was not in the room.
Probably went to her office.
The researcher was indeed in her office, slumped over her desk, one hand supporting her head while the index finger of the other traced random designs on the Id-A-Sketch Elise had given her for her fortieth birthday. Rachel had apparently set the pressure-sensitive doodling device to its lowest retentivity, for the patterns she drew disappeared as fast as they formed. She looked up at her assistant, grinned wanly and looked back at her doodling.
"Congratulations, Elise. It worked. We're going to be rich."
"You don't sound very happy about it."
Another pale grin. "Give me time to get used to the idea of running the world."
"Huh? What do --"
"Elise, I've found the seat of desire in the human brain and learned how to program it. With time and facilities, I can learn how to implant or extract every human desire, or tune them up or down in strength as I fancy."
Rachel rose to her feet and stood straight for a moment, then slumped against the wall beside her, as if the effort of standing had exhausted her.
"No one will ever have to suffer an unsatisfied desire again. No one will ever have to lose interest in life because he lacks desires. I'll be able to fix it all. I'll be able to make one man strive with every ounce of his strength to rise through the world of commerce, and make another perfectly content to live in a cardboard box. I'll be able to make a woman burn with lust at the sight of her beloved, and make her man completely uninterested in the bodies of other women. And that's just for starters."
The researcher's eyes closed. Tears leaked from beneath the lids. Her body quivered against the wall. "I'll be the undisputed ruler of the world."
Elise started to speak, caught herself. She had the feeling that she ought to want to do something, but she could neither recapture the desire nor remember what the action was.
It's just release of tension. It will pass. She's had a major achievement and it's unsettled her. She'll be all right in a little while.
Not all was as it usually was in Elise's own mind. Something was missing. It made its absence known the way the mouth reports the absence of a newly extracted tooth, by the sense memories of the surrounding tissue. The hollow place in her psyche pulled gently at her attention, distracting her from her employer's distress. Yet she could not say what was missing. In all other ways, she felt normal and at ease.
If it was important, it will come back to me.
"Rachel..." She fumbled for the right combination of words and sentiments. "People who want that kind of power don't go into neurophysiology. They go into politics. Whatever you decide to do with this, it won't be destructive. I'm certain of that, or I would never have allowed you to, uh, to..."
What did I let her do to me? Why can't I remember?
Rachel had pulled herself up straight and was watching her through wary red-rimmed eyes.
"Rachel? What was my conditioning sequence about? Why can't I remember any of it?"
The researcher grinned, though her mien of weariness remained. "You weren't supposed to remember it. It was a max-desire test, followed by its complete elimination, and I thought you might be embarrassed if you remembered it. Do you want me to tell you?"
Elise started to say of course, but stopped short. "Embarrassing?"
Rachel nodded.
"Well, never mind then. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just give me a few minutes to shore myself up." Rachel seated herself and allowed her head to loll back. "I didn't know I had this much invested in it."
Elise chuckled. "You turned your own home into a lab to work on it, but you didn't know it was important to you?"
"Maybe you should be the scientist and I should wash the glassware." Rachel pulled open a drawer and extracted her checkbook. She wrote a check and signed it with a flourish, detached it from the little booklet, and slid it across the desk to Elise.
"I want you to celebrate tonight."
Elise stared at the check in disbelief. It was for five thousand dollars.
"Rachel, I can't --"
"Yes, you can." Though still kind, Rachel's voice had acquired a hint of iron. "And I expect you to. Now go out and blow it. You're going to be an obscenely rich woman in a month's time, so you might as well learn to act the part."
A bare week later, Rachel had leased two floors of a Grand Avenue commercial tower. A week after that, the first MacLachlan Clinic for Desire Dysfunction was open for business.
The rush of patrons was immediate. Before a month had passed, there were two MacLachlan Clinics in Onteora, and a month after that there were four. The profits seeded clinics in Manhattan and Los Angeles, where the torrent of interest was just as quick, just as strong.
In six months' time, there were MacLachlan Clinics in every American city of population half a million or more, and several in smaller cities and less urban areas. Clinics leaped the oceans to offer the MacLachlan technique to the citizens of London, Paris, and Tokyo. Mexico City, Berlin, and Rio de Janeiro clamored for clinics of their own, but the governments of those places forbade them. The bans were fated to fall before the year was done.
When a year had passed, more than a million Americans, more than three million persons worldwide, had experienced the MacLachlan technique. Pundits discoursed on the social implications. Fanatic religious groups screamed of the imminent vengeance of God. Businesses great and small sought to turn desire control to their own ends. And in Washington, D.C., an ambitious man hatched an ambitious plan.
Miles Hamm pushed the doorbell button and desultorily straightened his tie. His tie wasn't crooked, nor was there anything wrong with the knot. It was a habit he'd never been able to break.
Just another boring-as-hell little suburban housing development. Onteora is one boring-as-hell little county. What's Rachel MacLachlan doing here?
The woman who answered the door was not Rachel MacLachlan. She was short, ordinary of face except for her high, prominent cheekbones, slender to the point of frailty, and possessed a thick mop of fiery red hair. She squinted at him against the sun at his back. "Can I help you?"
Hamm whipped out his badge folder and flicked it open. The woman's look of uncertainty intensified, and he smiled. "It's the new Uniform Federal Identification badge, ma'am. Down there in the corner you'll see my name, Civil Service grade, title and department."
She followed his pointing finger, glanced over his shoulder at the long gray limousine that waited at the curb, then looked into his face again. "Come in, Mr. Hamm. I suppose you want to see Dr. MacLachlan?"
He nodded. She turned and led him down a short hallway to the living room of a middle class suburban home, and bade him be seated.
The simplicity of the house and its furnishings took him by surprise. The yellow nylon couch on which he sat could have come from any secretary's home. The end tables were made of particle board, and had obviously been bought at a customer-assembled furniture store. Likewise for the many bookshelves, which groaned under the weight of hundreds of hardbound volumes that spanned a dozen scientific and technical subjects. There was no television, and no music system.
She must spend all her time reading. I suppose she doesn't need a mansion in Westchester for that.
It was only a moment before Rachel MacLachlan, her face already well known to him from dozens of news stories, came out to greet him. He shook her hand, presented his credentials once more, and followed her to a back bedroom that had been furnished as an office. In one of the two guest chairs that stood before the desk sat the woman who had admitted him to the house. MacLachlan waved him into the other and seated herself at her desk.
"How may I be of assistance, Mr. Hamm?"
He folded his hands and set them in his lap. "I've come here to notify you that you're to be indicted for selling medical products without proper licensure or approval from the Food and Drug Administration. We could have proceeded against you without telling you until the grand jury returned its findings, but my superiors and I thought it uncouth for you to discover you were under indictment by finding federal marshals at your door."
She pursed her lips. "I've had bad news delivered in worse ways, I suppose. Well, thank you for the notification. Is there anything else?"
Her unperturbed, completely businesslike manner set him back. "No, Dr. MacLachlan, there isn't, but aren't you interested in exploring ways of averting the indictment?"
A thin smile. "Not particularly. I expected it, and I'm prepared to defend myself. You don't have a case, and popular opinion of me will hardly permit you to conduct a legalized lynching. I rather look forward to seeing what you come up with before the eyes of the world."
She thinks she's tough.
"Dr. MacLachlan...may I call you Rachel?"
Another thin smile. "No, you may not. Continue."
His hand rose to worry the knot of his tie. "All right, then. Dr. MacLachlan, you can hardly guess at the resources we in federal service command. They don't cease at the courthouse doors, you know. Is the name Eamon O'Shaughnessey familiar to you?"
The researcher's face filled with blood. "You know quite well that it is. And I know quite well that he beat you."
Hamm drew himself up straight and fitted his fingertips together. "Granted that your brother managed to retain his liberty, what else did he retain? How much did his defense cost him? Who publishes his shabby little tracts now?"
Rachel MacLachlan's hands became trembling fists.
The little redhead spun her chair toward him, making a harsh thudding sound as she dragged the rubber tipped legs over the wood floor. She had followed the exchange in silence and with full attention. The heat in her gaze would have slagged a battleship, and it was aimed squarely at him.
The hostility in that stare made him too aware that he was outnumbered. He missed having his aide there, if only to even the odds. But Mort would have been too likely to talk about this trip with his coworkers. Until the deal was signed and sealed, Hamm couldn't have that at all.
He faced Rachel and flipped a hand casually at the redhead. "Your...companion, Doctor?"
"My research assistant, and my friend. You were saying -- ?"
"Ah, yes. We could see our way clear to withdrawing our charges against you, if you would indulge us in a couple of trifles."
The researcher said nothing. Her eyes rested on his with the focus of a sniper and the gravity of a Justice of the Supreme Court.
"They're very small matters, Doctor. Aren't you at all interested in saving yourself a lot of inconvenience and a fortune in legal fees?"
MacLachlan scowled. "Your badge makes you a deputy director of the FDA. It would take me some trouble to confirm that, but rest assured that I could if I chose. If the FDA is unhappy with my invention, and believes it to be a hazard to the public, why should it halt the action against me?"
Hamm smiled. "All such convictions are tentative, and rest on a base of scientific consensus which has proved mutable in the past. It might well prove so again, to your advantage. On the other hand, the FDA does have procedures and regulations which must be followed, even by the geniuses of the age. I must say, Doctor, we were more than a little miffed when you went straight to market without even dropping us a postcard. Even so, it's not too late to rectify the matter and disappoint a few dozen lawyers, to say nothing of a few thousand reporters."
The light faded from Rachel MacLachlan's eyes. She sighed and drooped in her seat.
"What do you want from me?"
Hamm stood. "The templates and annotated source code for your limbic nanomachines. FDA analysts will study them, make what changes they deem to be in the public interest, and return you a version approved for future applications. As of this moment, your clinics are to conduct no further implantations or conditionings with any non-FDA-approved version. The penalty for defiance will be the immediate confiscation of all your facilities. On this there will be no compromise."
The room was still. Hamm kept silent as the neurophysiologist fought down her desire to resist and maneuvered her way to acquiescence.
"Elise, take Mr. Hamm to the lab and give him what he's requested."
"But Rachel --"
"Just do it."
Elise stood, stared at Hamm with eyes incandescent from fury, and jerked a hand toward the door of the office.
"Why did you give in to him, Rachel?"
The researcher grinned weakly. "With his sort, it's better to give them what they've come for without a struggle." She pulled open a drawer of assorted glassware and shuffled through it aimlessly.
Elise was certain there'd been more to it than that. Miles Hamm had taken his prizes and departed more than three hours earlier. Rachel had been silent since then, as if he'd taken her voice as well.
"Are we in violation of some law?"
Rachel shrugged without turning. "Who isn't? No one even knows what the law is, these days. You're probably breaking one just by asking the question."
"What happened to your brother?"
That got Rachel MacLachlan's full attention. She turned and fixed Elise with an incredulous glare. "You really don't know?"
Elise shrank back from the anger in her friend's eyes. After she'd commercialized her discoveries, Rachel had become markedly more detached, less concerned with the world around her than she'd been before. Elise had become Rachel's keeper, someone to call the scientist to meals, remind her to bathe and change her clothes, and make sure she took time to rest. At that moment, their positions were reversed.
Maybe that wasn't it. Maybe the gulf between us I've been trying to wish away has grown wider and deeper than I knew.
"Devin wrote under a pseudonym." Rachel's voice caught momentarily. "Eamon O'Shaughnessey. He wrote marvelous stories, supernatural fantasies full of gods and demons, set among people whose only wish was to be free. The demons were forever trying to chain the humans, using whatever weaknesses they could exploit. Envy, avarice, hatred of pleasure, self-righteousness, provincialism, anything would do. Always they targeted the minds of men who had power over others. They'd seize on some dark current in the ruler's soul and get him to set his people against one another. Devin's heroes were men who rose above the weaknesses and superstitions of their contemporaries and challenged the prevailing power structure at its root." Rachel's hand dropped to the open drawer and slammed it shut. The glassware within tinkled. "They denied its legitimacy."
"They pilloried him for that?"
Rachel nodded. "You've obviously never read any of his books. He left little doubt what he was really writing about."
The researcher sidled toward the restraint chair in which Elise had sat eight months ago. She dropped into it, leaned forward and covered her eyes with her hands.
"They couldn't get a jury to put him away, of course, but the trial was a perfect vehicle for destroying him in other ways. Legal fees swallowed his assets. Reporters badgered him until he had nowhere to hide and no moment of peace. His publisher withdrew its commitments to him, and he couldn't find another. Requests for appearances and speaking engagements that had seemed endless dried up like dew under a desert sun. No, they couldn't put him in jail, but he doesn't write any more."
So they got what they wanted.
"What does he do now?"
Rachel removed her hands from her face and pulled them to her chest. "Not much. He's staying with our older brother Andrew for the moment." A wan smile. "Andrew lives in a cabin in the woods in upper Onteora that doesn't even get postal service. Only the three of us know it's there."
Elise's pulse accelerated. "Rachel, you aren't thinking of giving up, are you?"
A wild laugh ripped through the researcher's chest. "Give up? What makes you think I would be allowed to?"
"But --"
"Elise, we have a technique for controlling human desires. More than three million people have already confirmed that it works. Try to think like a real bastard for a moment. Like a politician." Rachel stood, a terrible fire burning in her eyes. "For seventy years you've been losing your pretensions to legitimacy. People no longer believe the system has any basis in right or justice, and they've taken to evading it in all ways great and small. Your guns and planes and tanks can't reestablish your control, because they'd only destroy what you want to dominate. But hey, there's this lady neurophysiologist in the New York outback, and she's developed this way to get inside the skull and command absolute loyalty. Absolute obedience! You can get her under your thumb with a few simple maneuvers. She can't resist you. She's got no power base and no connections. Would you let her give up?"
Elise's mouth fell open.
"I've trapped myself, Elise. I'm too good at this to be allowed to stop doing it. I thought that if I just released the technique onto the market, it would spread too fast and too widely to be corralled, and they'd realize that they could never get control of it. I was wrong. I've made a start, but not nearly enough to insulate me against their attack, because I was too cautious about who I taught the technique to. Now they're after me, and I don't have anything in the locker to throw at them. If I can outfox these hounds, it'll be a major miracle."
The researcher's strength drained from her. She sagged, stepped backward, and fell onto the restraint chair again.
Elise felt a prodding inside. It seemed to originate from the empty space in her thoughts that she'd puzzled over since their first experiments. Ghosts of memory and feeling drifted through her mind, whispering in voices too soft and sussurant for the words to be understood. They seemed to be urging her to act, but on what basis and to what end she could not say.
She stepped forward, hesitated, then dropped to a squat before Rachel and took the researcher's hands in her own.
"You did your best, Rachel. And you didn't do wrong, even if your tactics weren't the best. We still have time. I'll help." A squeeze. "But don't give up, okay? You're the brains of this outfit. I can't do it without you."
"Yeah, some brains." Rachel snorted.
"Well, you didn't go into politics."
Rachel MacLachlan raised her head and peered into Elise's eyes. "No, I didn't. Elise, did you tell him about the base sequence mods we made to keep the nanos from disintegrating in cerebrospinal fluid?"
Elise put a hand to her mouth. "No, we've been working with those bases for so long that I forgot! Should I call him and tell him now?"
A current passed across the researcher's features, gathering up the threads of tension and self-recrimination and washing them away.
"You won't have to, dear. He'll call us."
The phone trilled. The plasma panel displayed Miles Hamm's name and office number. Rachel pressed the ANSWER key and beckoned Elise toward her. "Rachel MacLachlan."
"Dr. MacLachlan, this is Miles Hamm at the FDA."
"Of course. How are you, Mr. Hamm?"
"Not well, Doctor. Our technicians can't seem to reproduce your nanomachines' base coding sequence. I can't find the specs for it in any of the materials your friend provided to me."
"If memory serves, you didn't ask for it."
"You should have told me it was nonstandard."
Rachel grinned at Elise. "Perhaps. So?"
"So what? Send it at once, preferably via secured link."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hamm, but I simply can't."
"What? Why not?"
"Because I'm afraid it's just impossible."
There was a silence of several seconds.
"Dr. MacLachlan, just because the grand jury is no longer sitting on your case doesn't mean the charges can't be reinstated."
"Mr. Hamm, this conversation is being recorded and witnessed. Would you care to have to rationalize the implications of your last statement before a grand jury of your own?"
Another silence. "I see. We do have other ways of getting what we want, you know."
"All too well, Mr. Hamm. But I will not release my final hold over this process to you. If you want your programming modifications, they will be made here, at my lab. Your replicators won't need the base sequences to reproduce my little toys, will they?" Rachel's voice grew light, mocking. "Or has the FDA not quite made it into the twenty-first century yet?"
Elise held her breath. Rachel winked at her.
"Very well, Doctor. But I will have monitors watching you every step of the way. If you think we can be bypassed by a little cleverness or some sleight of hand, you'll find yourself much the sorrier for the mistake. I'll have my team there on the twelfth, and you had better be ready."
"I look forward to it, Mr. Hamm." Rachel depressed the OFF button and sat back in her chair.
"He went for it." Elise could hardly contain herself.
The researcher nodded. "Hook, line, and sinker. But I expected that. I gave him a reason to believe what he wanted to believe, and he couldn't resist."
"What did he want to believe?"
"That my motives were the same as his."
Elise rose and ambled randomly about the little office. Rachel sat motionless at her desk.
"So what now?"
Rachel pulled a notepad toward her and peered at it. "You're sure we still have all the CDs for all the revisions of DEOS?"
"You know I can't bear to throw out a CD."
The researcher grinned. "Get version four point one and get it installed on the computer that controls the nanoassembly tank."
"What? But that's two full versions obsolete. And there was that bug in the command line interpreter that --"
Rachel raised a hand. "Just do it. Besides, that wasn't a bug." She rose and smoothed her skirt. "That was a feature. MicroMechanics's field rep told us so himself. Remember?"
At nine in the morning on September twelfth, Miles Hamm brought a thirty-person compliance team to Rachel MacLachlan's home. Elise let them in without a word. The FDA group was swarming over MacLachlan's setup before Hamm had set down his briefcase.
When the researcher appeared, Hamm thrust the disks with the new source code at her and said, "Five minutes only." It wasn't time enough to review the code, but he didn't intend to allow her to make changes anyway.
Hamm watched them closely. Rachel wasn't allowed even to go to the bathroom without an escort. Elise was kept from leaving her workstation by a ring of grim-faced monitors that could rip out her arms, and would if they were told to do so. The two women were obviously angered by the treatment, but neither resisted.
When the FDA's chief nanoengineer had verified that the altered files were in place, and that no trace of the original source code could be found on the nanoprogramming system, Hamm nodded to Rachel, and she typed in the initiation command as he watched. Before she struck the ENTER key, she paused and inclined her head toward him.
"Okay with you, Mr. Hamm?"
He reviewed the command line, his eyes darting back and forth between the computer monitor and his MicroMechanics reference card. He found no errors and no deviations from what he'd been told to expect. "Proceed."
Rachel pressed ENTER and sat back in her chair. All eyes went to the nanoassembly tank. It went from clear to cloudy gray as the reagents and base codon stock poured into the transport fluids and churned with the energy of reaction.
"You'll still be an immensely wealthy woman, you know," Hamm said.
Rachel did not acknowledge the statement.
"Most scientists would be proud to have assisted their government in a matter of such importance."
Her head swiveled slowly toward him. The green of her eyes glinted more brightly than he had previously seen. "Oh? And just what did I help you with, Mr. Hamm? You never did say what your changes were supposed to do."
He started to speak, stopped and clamped his lips together.
"I know that we outside the government aren't expected to have opinions on these things, but all your talk about public safety ceased as soon as I agreed to your demands. I've been wondering why. Perhaps the original MacLachlan technique wasn't unsafe in the first place? Or perhaps there was a second agenda, something a trifle sensitive, something you wouldn't care to discuss with a woman who doesn't answer directly to you?"
"There are no cameras here, Doctor," he said. "Your sarcasm is wasted on me. Kindly spare us both."
The tank continued to churn. Hamm, not himself a nanoengineer, had no idea what was happening in the swirling fluid. His engineers had assured him that the process was reliable, that their source code, once transformed into executable objects by the DEOS nanocompiler software, would infallibly produce the patterns they had designed. Yet he could not relax to it. There were too many steps he could not follow, for lack of the required specialized knowledge. There were too many places where specialists from different disciplines had to confer and agree. He, a bureaucrat whose expertise was administrative and political, had to take it on faith, and he hated it.
How did Rachel MacLachlan master it all by herself, with no outside expertise and no help except her friend?
He pushed the thought aside. She had done it. That was sufficient. He had fought off or bought off each of his competitors within the federal bureaucracy and had won jurisdiction over it. Henceforward, he would control it.
The tank cleared abruptly. At the bottom lay a thin sediment that glittered like a layer of tiny crystals: the new nanomachines. A pump whined, drawing off the top layer of fluid through a spider siphon. When the nanomachines were covered by the least possible volume of fluid, the spider siphon retracted. The valve at the bottom of the tank opened, and a second pump sucked the nanomachines out to a dryer which would remove the remaining reagents and any unprogrammed base strings.
Hamm turned to Rachel and smiled formally. "Would you care to observe the verification tests?"
Rachel returned the smile with a frosty edge. "I'd be delighted."
Elise ran to the door in response to the frantic hammering. She opened it to confront the odious little bureaucrat she'd come to loathe a month before.
"What is it, Mr. Hamm? Flat tire?"
He scowled. "Where is she?"
"Dr. MacLachlan isn't receiving visitors. State what business you might have and leave us in peace."
He tried to brush past her, but she extended her arms and held her ground. "You aren't welcome here, Mr. Hamm. This is still private property, and if you become troublesome I can have you removed by force."
She waved toward the side of the house. Hamm turned and discovered an Integral Security patrolman not ten feet away. The young man's eyes were hard, and his hand was on the butt of his revolver.
From behind her came Rachel's voice. "It's all right, Elise, I'll see him, if it matters that much to him."
Elise found Rachel standing behind her in a robe and slippers.
"I thought you were asleep."
A crooked grin. "I was."
Elise stood aside, and Hamm walked stiffly past her. The three of them took seats in Rachel's little office.
"What does the FDA want from me today, Mr. Hamm?"
Hamm's face was red and swollen. "How did you suborn the tests?"
Rachel's eyes widened in mock innocence. "Why, however could I have done such a thing? Didn't you have your goons and flunkies watching me every step of the way? Didn't you personally supervise the initiation of assembly? And weren't the results of the tests we conducted here to your satisfaction? I couldn't have coached your own experimental subjects on how to fake reactions I didn't even know they were supposed to have, now, could I?"
"Don't bullshit me, Doctor." Hamm was on the edge of apoplexy. "We've been unable to impose conditioning on anyone the nanomachines have been installed in. You put one over on us, and unless you want the wrath of the entire federal government to descend on you this afternoon, you'd better give over and tell me how!"
Rachel folded her hands before her. "Perhaps we could start by having you describe the intent of the FDA's modifications. You didn't give me much time to study them, you know."
The bureaucrat sputtered and fizzed. It was a while before he'd regained enough self-command to speak coherently.
"A second conditioning key was implanted in the nanomachines," he said. "Essentially, anyone with a Uniform Federal ID and the matching keyword could compel acquiescence in anyone of lower rank. No hypnosis or soporifics would be required."
"I see. So you, a deputy director, could command unquestioning obedience from anyone beneath you, with your badge and the keyword that goes along with your title?"
"That's correct." Hamm seemed to be calming. Elise relaxed slightly. "But it doesn't work. Nearly the whole federal labor force was injected with the nanos during the two weeks after you prepared the base stock for us, and it flat doesn't work."
Rachel appeared to ponder. "Tell me, Mr. Hamm, where would someone who isn't a federal employee fit into this rank system of yours?"
Elise sat forward. Hamm pressed his lips together briefly, then said, "At the bottom, of course."
"Of course. Well, your verifications worked here, on the subjects you brought. May I see your badge, please?"
Hamm's brow furrowed. He extracted his badge folder from his inside jacket pocket and handed it across Rachel's desk. She studied it briefly.
"Deputy Director is a very high rank, isn't it? Only departmental directors and cabinet officers would be above it."
"And the President, of course."
"Of course." Rachel closed the badge folder, handed it back to Hamm, and said, quite clearly, "Potrezebie."
Miles Hamm's hand fell into his lap. His badge folder slipped from his fingers. His facial muscles went completely slack. The lids of his eyes descended halfway, as if he were fighting back sleep and not doing well at it.
"Rachel --"
"Shhh. Don't disturb him. Mr. Hamm," Rachel said, "you came here unsatisfied, but you'll leave satisfied. I've shown you a flaw in the FDA's basic premise, one that goes all the way to the root of what you hoped to achieve. Image data can't be captured in nanostorage with enough fidelity to trigger a conditioning sequence. Until live tests were performed, the fundamental shortcomings of the approach couldn't be seen. You're quite clear on that now, and your mind is at rest. You want to believe that I've complied with your every wish, that failure was just a matter of an insufficiently advanced technology of nanoengineering. You want to believe it, you do believe it, and you have no more demands to make of me. Isn't that so, Mr. Hamm?"
The bureaucrat's head moved up and down in slow motion.
"Very good. You may return to full consciousness."
Hamm blinked once, and animation returned to his face. He looked first at Elise, then at Rachel, and produced a sheepish grin.
"I'm sorry, I was woolgathering for a moment." He picked up his badge folder and stuffed it into a pocket. "Where were we? Oh yes, that's right. Well, thank you for your time, Doctor. You will keep us informed of any developments that would make the technique work as we'd hoped, won't you?"
Rachel smiled. "Of course. You may rest assured of my complete cooperation."
Hamm stood. "I expect no less."
At the door, the bureaucrat turned to Elise with a question in his eyes.
"What is it, Mr. Hamm?"
"Do you have time for a few words with me? I've been curious about something ever since I met the two of you, and I hope you'll give me an explanation."
She waved him at the living room. They went to the yellow couch and sat.
"You live here, don't you?"
Elise nodded. "Top of the stairs, second bedroom on the left. For the past seven years."
"But you and Dr. MacLachlan aren't, ah, intimate, are you?"
She smiled sadly. "No, we're not. I used to hope we would be, someday."
Distaste rippled across the bureaucrat's features. "I thought as much. I've gotten very good at detecting such things." He grimaced and stared at his knees. "What holds the two of you together, then?"
"Love."
"But -- you just said --"
She nodded again. "Yes, I did. But love and desire are not the same thing, Mr. Hamm. Rachel would tell you the same."
Clouds of confusion shadowed Hamm's eyes. He did not understand. Probably he couldn't. It didn't matter.
"Is there anything more I can do for you?"
"No...no. Thank you, Elise." He rose, went to the front door and let himself out.
Elise sat a few minutes longer, sifting through her memories.
How stunning Rachel had been when they first met! Tall, slender, dramatically colored, a mobile geyser of energy and knowledge. The work had aged her badly. Her posture was no longer erect. Her emerald eyes had paled and watered, and no longer pierced as they once had. Her hair, once a flaming crown of glory, had gone brittle and gray. Yet the underlying beauty remained, to be found by anyone who cared to look for it. It would be there for as long as Rachel MacLachlan lived. It was not a thing of bones that could bend, muscles that could soften, or pigments that could fade. It was of her essence, just as her indomitability and kindness were.
Essences don't change. Neither do our responses to them. No matter what kind of conditioning you use.
"Elise?" Rachel stood at the mouth of the hallway. "Is everything okay?"
She doesn't know that I know.
"Fine. You know, you never told me how you tricked him."
"You haven't guessed?" Rachel laughed. "You called attention to it yourself, the day I told you to do it! DEOS four point one's command line interpreter was sensitive to embedded spaces. I just left a space between the options flag and the source code file name. He didn't see it -- he wouldn't think anything of it if he did, that version of the nanocompiler is more than four years old and was superseded within a month of its release -- but it made the command processor ignore his source code, bypass the compilation step and revert to the object code I'd stored in the system archives."
"What did that one do?"
The faded green eyes glinted with amusement. "Not far from what his would have done, with a few minor variations. The badge wasn't necessary, but my face was."
That's why their tests here worked. She was allowed to watch.
"How did you learn the keywords?"
Rachel shrugged. "I decoded them from the hexadecimal dump he gave me for the nanostorage."
"In five minutes? By eye?"
Another shrug. "I knew they had to be there, and I recognized the phoneme encodings. When you know what you're looking for and you're sure it's there, you usually find it."
Maybe. If you're a millennial genius with a will of iron.
"Rach," she said tentatively, "how come you never go out?"
Rachel squinted at the swerve in the conversation. "Don't we? Seems we eat out more than in."
"I mean on dates. You know, with, uh, men."
The researcher came to the couch and sat beside her. "No real interest, Elise. Besides, I'm a little old for that now, wouldn't you say?"
Not you.
"Rachel, there was a time when --"
Rachel put a finger to Elise's lips. "Do you remember that time at all well, dear?"
"Well, no, not really."
"Neither do I. And it would be best, I think, if we left it undisturbed." Rachel stood, leaned back against the entrance arch to the living room, and folded her arms across her breasts. "Desires are strange things. The lack of them can make a person suicidal more surely than one he can never satisfy. Yet there are some we're better off without, especially if we have to be in close contact with others who don't share them. Don't you think so?"
Elise's mouth had gone dry.
"I wouldn't have wanted anything to come between us, dear. And I'm terribly glad nothing ever has. To lose your help and companionship over a trivial sexual misunderstanding would have crushed me."
Rachel waited for Elise to respond, but Elise said nothing. After a moment the researcher turned and went back to her bedroom.
But it's still there, Rachel. You tried to take it out, but it's like picking dandelions. The roots underneath are still there, and the sun they responded to still shines on them whenever I look at you. You would have had to change my whole orientation to prevent my desire for you from coming back, and you didn't. You would never have violated me that deeply. I should have known.
Elise shook herself and went back to her chores.
| <<- Two Flash Fictions | The Hawk ->> |
