Revelations
I was driving home when it happened.
The black town car, there it was, a vibrating shadow in my rearview. Motherfucker. Pascal was on my tail again. The sun had rubbed its way through the clouds. No pussy footing this time, I thought. I'm gonna call him out, the prick. I gunned it forward, felt the tires do that loosey-goosey mambo as they shirked about for the right footing; they found it and burned ahead, flying into the fast lane and back again. The drunken weave. The sugar-fingered spindle. Pascal kept his distance. Oh, he was a pro, this one. I kept it floored. There was no secret here. He now knew I was onto him. Was he a killer? Who could say?
I ran a light. Swiftly, smoothly. The car was an extension of my limbs. We were a dragonfly, swooping and buzzing, a clever little beautiful little pest.
Suburban chains rose symmetrically from the strip, growing rapidly wider and more industrial. Carpet stores. Textiles. Furniture rental. Car dealerships with triangular flags. Foam rubber. Colors went from vibrant primaries to subdued earthones.
Swerved into a Mobil station. I knew exactly what to do. He'd take the bait, he'd come in and pretend to get gas, thinking he was being all smart, and then I'd just walk right up to him and say, "Hey, Pablo. Asshole. I'm onto you. Follow me one more block I'm calling the police." I killed the engine, stood by my car. Kept a sidelong glance fixed on the road through my mirrored sunglasses.
The Lincoln whizzed by. That's right, keep driving, fucko.
I waited a moment more, then lurched back onto Route 9, heading the opposite way. Ha! Moron. Did he know he was dealing with a mental ninja? Didn't anyone tell him? I slipped through a shortcut, the one I take when I'm late for a movie. (Geographically, it's a long-cut, but the absence of traffic makes for a faster ride.) Followed the entranceway to the go-cart track and the batting cages, which were all fenced-off for the winter, wound the crunchy service route to the thruway feeding into the mall access.
Looked back ― no one there. I'd lost him. The narrow path was a clean sheet of white silk, untouched in weeks. Just off, the land etched into sudden forestry, a neglected stretch of Indian forfeiture ― boulders and silver trees and broken streams, shallow ribbons of mist. The path emptied into a Wal-Mart backlot. Long, exhaust-singed trucks stood rigless on their hind legs, waiting. Others stationed the service bays, engines moaning as men in dumpy grey uniforms unloaded cuisinarts and shotguns.
I parked in front of Clearview Cinemas on the flip side, as good a place as any. On my way in I kept my messenger bag containing the CD and my laptop hugged to my person like it was nitroglycerin. Bought a ticket for the 7:10 screening of a shlocky horror film. The theater was maybe 3/4 full. Good. I didn't want to be the only one, nor did I want the place packed.
I booted up my laptop and slid in the CD. The lights dimmed around me. The quadraphonic surround sound hissed and crackled as the projectionist changed reels.
My computer built its desktop, purring as it processed the disc. I need a new machine; this one's held together with Scotch tape and string. Jesus, my palms are sweating just writing this. I sat there, my face aglow in the bluish light of the computer screen ― way to make myself inconspicuous. Double-clicked the CD icon and the folder revealed two documents, one entitled "intro_doc" and the other, "rovinj_schem.pdf." Schem... as in schematic? What did she do, detail the entire design? Look at me, my hands are trembling. I clicked the first document, a letter to me, which I'll just copy and paste below:
Catherine,
You and I both know you did not pick this up at the trade fair. I'm not sure I want to know where it came from but it is not safe in either of our hands; I believe the only sensible option is to hand it over to the military.
Why the military? Because any technology this complex is dangerous, in fact may very well have been designed to be so. There is no mark of a manufacturer, so I am left to presume it was constructed independently, by a private interest. One with powerful science and enormous backing.
Essentially, what we are dealing with is a kind of a nanorobotic virus. A fiendishly intricate network of molecule-scale machines that behave as aggressive enzymes. How they actually function lies beyond my realm of expertise. From what I gather, however, the nanostructures are set in motion, "armed" if you will, by boiling water. Powered by the heat and fortified by the H2O, the engines may be consumed with the tea into which they have been infused.
What happens at this stage is far more bizarre and if you'd told me two days ago that such a thing were possible, I would have laughed you out of the room. However, I have worked out the equations several times and can find no other explanation than the catastrophic scenario detailed below:
We may proceed under the following assumptions ― one, that the nanomotors are intended to be consumed orally, and two, that the host is expected to be unaware of what he is drinking ― otherwise, it would be administered in an undisguised form. In any case, once broken down and diffused into the bloodstream, they are promptly carried to the brain. The virus then envelopes clusters of neurons in the cortex, holds them in a kind of spidery clutch, and scrambles all incoming and outgoing synaptic transmissions.
The structure of the attack is much akin to the characteristic plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's disease, only with one key difference ― this phenomenon is engineered with a deliberate and highly dubious objective. The conclusion is as inescapable as it is unthinkable: with a complex foreign body regulating the flow of neurotransmitters from cell to cell, the host would potentially leave himself subject to the will of the engineer. His synaptic activity, the very stuff that engenders and sustains consciousness, would be open to the free manipulation of another party ― both the electrochemical substrate and the rate of its discharge, which together comprise the totality of mental life, would no longer arise from the organic constitution of the individual but from a congregation of silicon microprobes, much in the manner of a remote-controlled toy.
The host would, in a sense, become a living machine.
No doubt this reeks to you of science fiction, yet already we are witnessing the development of similar technologies: in medical neuroscience, with the slew of experiments in eyesight restoration, cerebral prosthesis and spinal repair; neural networks, with thought-controlled machines and your own computational modeling; synthetic biology, with hydrogen-producing microbes and virus-resistant cell circuits; and of course, in nanorobotics, with its recent forays into gene therapy and DNA branding. Someone has simply connected the dots, probably illegally.
I don't mean to imply that any of this constitutes "mind control" in the traditional sense. It's not as if thoughts or false memories would appear in the host's mind. More likely, the engineer could activate pleasure and reward centers, or engender simple base emotions like fear or anger, which may lead to bodily actions of the host.
A similar phenomenon occurs naturally in certain parasites like rabies, which induces venomous rage in animals in order to get them to attack others and transmit the virus. Or the hairworm, which latches onto grasshoppers while in its microscopic stage of life and slowly leaks an intoxicating protein into the brain of its host until the grasshopper is drawn, as if possessed, to a body of water, into which it plunges and drowns, allowing the now fully-grown worm to exit through its skin and swim away. There are, indeed, countless examples from biology demonstrating the ability of one organism to influence the behavior of another, to which our crude tools of manipulation ― hypnosis, mind games ― pale in comparison.
An appropriate question to ask at this point is why would someone have designed such a thing in the first place? For what purpose? From my standpoint, however, the answer is obvious. I have Asperger's Syndrome, as you may know, and while this affliction precludes me from understanding or interpreting many social cues, mores, manners or customs, it has allowed me a uniquely objective view of our species, unobscured by the romantic hopes and creative denials exhibited by most. It seems to me, then, that the control of other human beings on a cultural as well as individual scale has been a treasured preoccupation since the very earliest civilizations. Manipulation is unequivocally the most effective tool to gain an advantage. It persists in all areas of life, from seduction to advertising to propaganda to warfare to children's games ― not to mention the ubiquity of Doppelgangers and body-snatchers in mythology and popular culture. This diabolical infatuation/paranoia may in fact be woven into human nature at a fundamental level, for its benefits for survival are unambiguous. Considered from an evolutionary perspective, it's neither a surprising nor particularly unique adaptation.
Forgive me for extrapolating. I admit I find this all tremendously distressing. The material you left with me bespeaks an unprecedented capacity for grave misfortune, the likes of which the world has probably not seen since the discovery of enriched Uranium.
I should mention, however, that there may be a back door here. The nanomotors are not independent machines but rather occilatory automata that behave by communicating to each other via low-amplitude radio pulses. It is possible that by introducing a competing frequency from, say, a synchronized electromagnet, the nanorobotic signals may be disrupted by the interference and rendered inert. The risk, of course, is terminating the host as well ― a fair wager, given the fragility of that most complex of machines, the human brain.
In any case, since by whatever turn of fate this terrible device arrived in your hands and not my own, and I have no knowledge of its origins, I feel I must relinquish my own judgment and leave the responsibility up to you. Though I have included a truncated schematic of the nanomotors in this package, I urge you once again to hand it over anonymously to the authorities. Feel free to contact me at any time.
The very best,
Susan-Leigh Luka
I closed the application and stared straight ahead.
The movie flickered on the screen. Bright, multicolored. Even the shadows were polychrome and gleaming. Things were happening. Plots were forming. Choked blossoms of action. Characters saving people and getting shot or eaten. Whatever happens in horror movies.
But all I saw was a clotting of shapes, glassy triangle blots and oblongs.
It was because I was crying.
This startled me. I don't how long it had been since I'd cried. Years, it seemed. My tear ducts actually stung. Are they supposed to sting? Drops fell into my lap, warm speckles wearing through my jeans. My throat became gummy and my chest rose and fell in jerky silent heaves.
I killed this woman, you see. It really didn't hit me until just then. I mean, I'd known yesterday; I understood that I'd played a part in her death, but I hadn't felt responsible for it, not in such a visceral and immediate way. Reading her words. These thoughts that were formed through constellations of a billion neurons in a lucid, working mind, now a cold dry shell. I should have known there was danger there. That the tea was indeed a kind of weapon, I just had no idea that the information it contained was what made it so.
Transitively, it meant that I was in much greater danger than I'd thought.
Just then, a flashlight punched on from the aisle, blinding me.
"Ma'am?"
I gasped, slapped my laptop closed. They'd found me.
"What?!"
"Ma'am, would you come with me, please?"
Wait. This was no killer, this was the ticket-taker. He was wearing that demoralizing purple vest they make them wear.
"What do you want?"
"Just come with me."
The Acutane-scented 17-year old escorted me to the lobby to scold me for "bootlegging" the movie.
"Are you nuts?" I said. "Does this look like a camera to you?"
"A lot of computers have video things in them for capturing."
"This one doesn't. See, it's just a laptop."
"Whatever. It's not allowed."
"I wasn't even typing."
"Look, lady, you wanna see a movie, see a movie..."
I felt a billowing of red-hot rage, envisioned snapping his zitty nose with a pry bar, but the vision was so precise and so satisfying that it neutralized my wrath and I was content to leave.
In the car, I thought about all the people I knew who'd died.
There was my father, of course. Alzheimer's-ish brain disease. There was my Yoga instructor who'd died suddenly of AIDS. His sick-week became a sick-month and then he was dead and the class was cancelled. There was Otmar, a high school friend who'd overdosed on heroine.
All diseases, essentially. Failures of the body to harmonize with its environment. But I suppose that could be said about any cause of death. Luka's body didn't harmonize with an oncoming train.
Funny, like a child I still think I'm magically protected from death. That my body won't allow anything really bad to happen to it. You'd think that, having witnessed it up close, I'd have a less naïve relationship to mortality. Nope.
It felt good to drive. Just to drive.
What a joy to be not dead! The earth hummed with life. You are here, it said. I was. I'd read about the elation soldiers felt after a firefight. The way colors deepen and the sky swells and the air itself is trembling and animate. A feeling of odd safety despite the presence of death.
The night sky was like a catastrophic oil spill, a toxic accident of celestial proportion ― is that what it all is, in the end? The stars pulsed their secret codes, binaries in red-shift, and the moonlit road sparkled back.
The black sky is proof the universe is finite. Think about it. In an infinite, eternal universe, there would be an unlimited number of stars, and their light would have had an infinite amount of time to reach us, meaning the heavens would be perpetually agleam in luminous white. The fact that there is such a thing as night proves that our days are numbered.
Then came the revelation. A coruscation of insight, a camera flash illuminating a field of Leprechauns.
nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posteriioria nostria
I kept forward. I felt for a moment that I was sailing, the way the wind streamed thickly over the hood, the quicksilver sky drenching the landscape in darkness. My thoughts were sailing also, passing through me like a silent schooner...
toxicum
my father
he did not die of Alzheimer's
or any disease
The wind was a steady roar on the glass; I couldn't differentiate it from the blood rushing behind my ears. Dispersed molecules of the breath of the dead.
he was poisoned
Now I didn't feel so safe. A mounting blackness lugged and writhed.
my own work has contributed to this experiment
my calculations, my data
someone has been hacking into my files and
I checked the rearview. No town car. Checked again. I was the only one on the road, and I was the master. Checked for my bag, my laptop -- everything was in order there, obviously.
what have i done
Punched the lock on the passenger door. The lock? Meaning... it had been unlocked all that time? That was weird. I always locked my doors. It would have been extremely un-Catherine to keep it unlocked while I went to a movie... in fact I remembered locking it. Could someone have--?
"Keep driving," said a voice from the back seat.
I shrieked, feeling my heart compress into a tight, throbbing animal. The car jittered beneath me.
It was him. The metaphile.