The ER
The hospital is gloomy. A cabbage-scented basement level ER in downtown Sunderland with snotty yellow-green lights and cement walls. I'm typing this from a springy cot with an IV pricked in my arm. I've been partially awake for some time. Bits of the drive here had slithered into consciousness, the construction guy bellowing questions at me, his breath forming quick clouds on the windshield. Hard jolts and hard swerves. The radio blasting. He was listening to classic rock.
"Which isn't covered in the pension," I heard him say.
I'm now here in a blue-curtained cubicle, saline slugging its way through my bloodstream. I think I'm okay. I don't know what happened to Pascal. Is he dead? Is my father alive? Has my denial moored him back to the living world?
Am I safe? For the moment at least?
No. I have to get out of here. This much is obvious. If there's any truth to anything Pascal said, they'll find me sooner or later.
If I peer through the curtain I can see everything. The triage station, an overlit space full of crude treatment areas and black women in purple scrubs. Linen racks and glass cabinets containing folded stomach pumps. As soon as the coast is clear I'm making a break.
My jacket's gone. Fuck it. I have my bag, my computer, Luka's CD, and that's all I need.
If I am going find out who's behind this. This is what has to happen, is it not? Someone in the lab, someone close. A rat. Someone who's been pilfering my work and selling it to black marketeers.
It's up to me to find out who.
The Cab
I'm in the back seat of a taxi now. There's only one bar of battery of power on this laptop left so hopefully it won't die.
Dad. What does it mean that you have been alive all this time? Is such a thought even possible? Or have I, in a sense, known all along?
Have I been writing this blog for you? Are you my ghost reader?
Right now the sky is black and rich and eager for dawn. The deceptively finite stars burn their brightest in these last moments. A thin band of lustrous grey hugs the horizon.
In minutes I'll be back at the lab. This whole awful charade will soon be a thing of the past...
The Rat
Chronology has gotten the better of me. It's been so long since I've eaten or slept I worry if I'm capable of recounting these tumultuous events intelligibly. Tempted to spare you the tedium and simply dispatch the outcome. But in the interest of posterity (and potential judiciary inculpation), I persist in good faith:
Arrived at my office at maybe quarter to five. Copper dawn light glinting through the slats of the blinds. Felt like I was entering for the first time. I sat down at my desk and booted up the computer, the old girl with her sticky "S" key; she revved and whooped, blinking huskily to life. Connected to the server, dialed up the school mainframe. Open Sesame. There are thousands of files, applications and users aboard this library, innumerable protocols — dredging out the rat would not be easy. I ran a trace on Wilder Knotts using an internal search engine: nothing. Moonlight Security: nothing. Nor was there a match for Benchley, Rovinj, Pascal (except for several references to the philosopher) or Sleepwalker. Perhaps if I got all bad-ass and used a Class 5 decryption filter I could find something remotely relevant. Class 5 uses an "express" algorithm that scans for repeated patterns in code, guesses at possible keys and eliminates others like a Turing bombe, teasing out the ciphertext. The problem is the narrow threshold — many things can look like they are the result of deliberate encryption, and yet turn out to be nothing; others can look like nothing and turn out to be something.
I let 'er rip. The computer grumbled. Motors heating, fans spinning. In moments my screen filled with gibberish. So many words, half-words, symbols — it looked like a turgid mass of German compounds. I scanned for relevant keywords.
Tried arranging it this way and that — date, file size, alphabetic order. One thing struck me under "T": Tehnologija Sintetica.
Were these real words? They looked like real words from another language. Swedish? I pasted them into Google and searched. The only hits were from untranslated webpages, several with the word "Hrvåtski" in the URL. I looked up "Hrvåtski" on Wikipedia, learned that it's simply Croatian for "Croatian." So I found a Croatian/English dictionary online and translated Tehnologija Sintetica. Not surprisingly, it meant "synthetic technology."
This was it. It had to be.
I worked my way backwards from there, traced the user profile to a folder marked BackUp_Sec6.12, opened it up...
The answer like a padlock unlatched. I could feel the switch. Inside me, a silent click. The popup window on the screen opened like any other, only once it did, my life as I knew it ceased to be.
I was no longer a subordinate but a slave. Everything I had done for five years was for naught. No. Worse. It was iniquitous. This was the endpoint of my research; it led here — to this. I felt hollow.
Just then, the door opened. It was the man himself, the Professor, wearing his brown corduroy sports coat and sky-blue vest. An oblique band of copper light slid over his face as he stepped inside. He closed the door behind him.
"A bit early for you, isn't it, Catherine?"
I said nothing.
"Your dad always told me you were a late riser. He said he had to struggle to get you out of bed for your morning walks."
This august man suddenly obdurate. Like a ghoulish shape seen in a stone wall, his character was now perfidiously tinged.
"You're Knotts. Aren't you."
"Wilder Knotts is an amalgam of many people. But I do hold the honor of being the original, yes."
He was standing in front of the door. I glanced towards the emergency exit in the adjacent wall. Knotts merely blinked — a labored, knowing blink, as if to let me know I'd never make it that far.
"This is something you're proud of?"
"I won't burden you with false modesty. I think it's fair to say we've made a contribution."
"We?!"
"Of course, we. You took your father's work far beyond what he and I imagined. What was neuroscience in the 70's and 80's? A bunch of squares and arrows. You've been part of a new guard of researchers for whom there are no boxes, no arrows, no quibbling dichotomies between camps. It's been invaluable."
The feeling again. A resounding emptiness. Like I had been all working along for Josef Mengele.
"I can see why that would appeal to you," I spat. "No boundaries, no doctrines, no allegiances."
"Wholesalers can't afford to pick favorites."
"Convenient."
He smiled and nodded, stroking his delicate, white-furred hands. "I once thought like you. Ironically, it was your father who taught me otherwise. All the world's transactions, he said, all discourse, warfare, even reproduction, could be reduced to the flux of codemakers and codebreakers. Politics is window dressing. What we develop today is used against us tomorrow. Do you think it matters what doctrine we submit to? Should we bleed patriotic sentiment when selling arms to totalitarian regimes in East Timor, or buying them from Israel only to hand them over to radical Muslim insurgents? Nations are arbitrary enclosures, abstractions — illusory in every sense. There are only competing interests which themselves shift and erode like the rest of the natural world."
"Which is itself a doctrine. It's called relativistic nihilism. My father never used his ambivilance toward world affairs to justify violating his own humanistic principles, but you; you killed Luka, then you eulogized her. You're a common mercenary. "
I'd never spoken so well under pressure. I was so sure I'd be killed it almost didn't matter what I said.
"I prefer condottiere," he said, cocking his head slightly. The flesh on his neck was slack and spotted like some exotic lizard. "But we are all mercenaries in the end, aren't we? The difference between a soldier and a legionnaire is only a matter of degree — the net worth of his employer's real estate. Is one party's value system intrinsically superior to any other? Perhaps for a time it may appear so, but only insofar as it serves the larger goal of survival. Which, ultimately, is an empty gesture."
"DoubleSpeak. You're planning the mutiny that will destroy you."
A steadying distance in his grin.
"Not so," he said. "The battles of the past were fought with steel. The coming war will be fought with information. This technology would have been developed sooner or later. We're simply ahead of the curve."
It was the "we" that was getting to me. As though all along I'd been a party to the development of chemical weapons. That I'd signed on the dotted line. Could I have blinded myself all this time? Is there a chance I willfully ignored the implications of what I was working on? Is this what all scientists do? I felt a feverish clenching in my belly.
"What's stopping me from exposing you?" I blurted. "You know I have a record of everything that's happened. Why shouldn't I go public right now?"
"A facile threat. Don’t you know that I would have anticipated such a move? I've rigged your account. If you try to access it, you will trigger the release of a virus which will delete the entire mainframe."
"I don't believe you."
"You don't have to."
For a fleeting freak moment I had the uncanny impression he was not human. The sentinel unyeilding, the weirdly robotic hulk. A wax cast over industrial tackle. Was it that unthinkable, all things considered?
"Even if that were true, I have all the information backed up on my laptop, which Pascal failed to retrieve."
"I've accounted for that possibility also," he said, stepping forward. Languid dust particles shone in the slanting copper light. I felt myself pull backwards. The Professor — Knotts — dipped into his coat pocket and removed a small bullet-shaped vial. He held it up for me to see. Inside the clear glass capsule was a slow, greyish substance that swirled like curdling mini-clouds.
"Uranium hexafluoride," he said. "You know what that is?"
I knew, but remained silent. One of the most toxic compounds on Earth, UF6 is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A mere droplet on the flesh can be lethal.
"Eject the hard drive from your laptop." His forceful tone shook me. "Otherwise you'll become the victim of a regrettable laboratory accident. And I take the drive anyway."
Obey? Attempt to buy more time? Of the rapidly diminishing options, which would prolong my life?
"This is what you're reduced to. Years of scholarship and distinction falling away to petty violence."
"You were a gifted scientist, Catherine," he said, almost affectionately. It was the first time he'd ever used my first name.
I'm not sure how to describe what happened then. A sudden longing rose in me like something always there but seldom seen, a fish swimming alongside a riverboat. And in that instant it was clear to me: I wanted a family. It was a yearning so plain, so precise, it seemed to come from both inside and beyond me at once.
I was an unfinished project, a glut of urges and needs. The nexus of inner and outer gave way to something... else, a deeper, almost savage urge to share.
The Buddhists are wrong. Desire is not the problem. It is the oil in the engine, the rejuvinating ore that clocks movements and collapses wave functions, that tugs us by the hair into existence. Progression, sequence, motivity: all feed on want, the shaping impetus of time's tectonics.
A horrid panic welled in me. This cannot end here.
A glowering expression bent across Knotts' face as he lifted the capsule above his head in a loose fist.
And suddenly, as though from some ethereal mire, a synapse in psychic channels, the door burst open. A man; I knew him — brandy-colored skin, eyes like brown-bottled beach glass set in pearl: it was Benchley. His limpid flesh was tight over his frame as he lurched toward Knotts; Knotts swivled, shocked.
I screamed. In a beat — I must have turned away — there was a vaporous silver wreath shimmering about Benchley's head followed by a brittle shattering sound. He slumped backwards onto my desk with a shrill maul. His face was already gone, a smeared wreck of cartilage and steaming sinews. Again I screamed. A gurgling hiss issued from Benchley's throat in desperate waves. The airborne chemicals snapped and fizzed. I held my breath.
A second beat — a blink, a shutter — and I kicked the desk forward towards Knotts; it fell to the floor, the monitor shattering on the tiles, and blocked him from the exit. As I leapt towards to the door I could smell the musty chemical myrrh as it swallowed Benchley's flesh and sizzled in quick wisps. The Professor pivoted towards me, but I was already out. Bounding through the hallway, I felt my sense of direction slur, my equilibrium spit a queue of question marks. Where did I think I was going? Maintaining my horizontality seemed to require the full attention of my will.
A pop. A stingingly sharp balloon pop with a round metallic overtone. I am being shot at, was the thought that announced itself like a thought-balloon.
Just then: "Catherine!" A different voice, far younger. "In here!"
What could I do? I right-angled into the first open doorway which fed me into a brightly-lit corridor lined with glassed-in offices. I heard the irregular whap of footsteps echoing through the hallway behind me. My lungs burned.
"Who is that? Where are you?" I panted.
No partitions, no cubicles, only islands of blacktopped Formica desks and waist-high cabinetry holding sinks, burners, autoclaves. Raced to the far door, which had a circular plexiglass window like a ship.
"Get down and shut your eyes!" commanded the voice, which was now in my immediate proximity, though I saw no one.
I jiggled the door handle: locked. Looked over my shoulder to see Knotts limping towards me, zombie-like, only twenty paces away now and closing. Danger throttled in an angular upward fashion through several quadrants of my nervous system.
Darkness.
Someone had flipped off the lights. All was dark but a glowing, humming, magenta-colored cylinder caged by thin steel tubes and crowned by a silver pancake. Only later did it become clear to me that it was the Maser, though at the time there was too little denotative power in my brain to make the connection. Something behind it moved — a shadow kissed with faint purple light, a man... ? — and a pale opalescent swath issued forth from the bulb, accompanied by a raspy electrical sizzle. I shut my eyes and dropped to the floor.
The footsteps ceased; Knotts let out a kind of slewing squeal. I cracked my eyelids to see his silhouette keel, narcoleptically. It was exactly like watching the cows at the slaughterhouse, the way their bodies spasmed and buckled upon termination, instantaneously inanimate, subject to object. But was Knotts dead?
The lights plinked back on and the speaker emerged from behind the chrome-caged electromagnet...
"Theo?!"
"Are you okay?" said my student, my ignominy, my savior, whose presense was somehow too unlikely to even startle me. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face glistening with sweat.
I nodded feebly. Theo lumbered over to me and embraced me tightly. He seemed, in that moment, the embodiment of maleness, primatial and enveloping. I could feel my proprioception expanding to include both of us. If you asked my brain where I ended and Theo began, it would have drawn a blank.
"You're trembling," he said. "Try to breath slow."
Comforting me? Who was this guy?
"What the fuck is going on?" I murmured, near tears.
The room began to smell of ammonia with acrid dashes of butane and spoiled eggs.
"I'll explain everything. But right now we've got to get Knotts out of here."
"You know about Knotts?"
"I know about a lot of things."
Theo instructed me to grab a leg and pull. The Professor was extraordinarily heavy. I thought of a great painting — any great painting — the way its presense in a room exceeds the dimensions of the frame, as I lugged a body that seemed far weightier than its size should allow. We pulled his massive bulk back through the slippery corridor to my office. I watched a gooey, straw-colored liquid trickle out from his ear.
"Is he dead?" I asked, huffing.
"Not exactly, no. Just catatonic."
The pain in my arms and legs and back was sobering; probably the only thing keeping me awake. When we finally had a moment to catch our breath, Theo aprised me of all that remained a mystery.
Perturbed by my callousness towards him at Luka's funeral, he'd become curious about my relationship to her and searched the internal server for a joint project of some sort. Naturally, none came up, though he did discover a thread — an encrypted document that held both our names. This was Luka's letter to me, her explication of the Rovinj tea leaves, which had been lingering in the network's cache. Curious, Theo performed a frequency analysis of the document and was able to decode most of it. At first, he thought it was a joke, but that was before he was approached by Carter Benchley, who had been monitoring everything.
"Before SynTech was SynTech, Benchley worked with your father and Knotts," said Theo. "All of them were exposed to trace amounts of the virus, but only Knotts had developed a resistance. When Benchley became aware of how Knotts planned on using it, he defected."
We reached the door to my office, where we let go of the Professor's hefty legs; they slumped to the floor.
"How did you know to use the Maser?" I asked.
"Honestly, I wasn't sure if that would work, but it was the only available device capable of amplifying coherent electromagnetic waves. I knew from Luka's letter that it would fry the nanomotors, I just didn't know if Knotts had enough floating in his brain to--"
I drifted to one side, overcome by a languorous dizzy spell, then caught myself by grasping the doorjamb.
""Jesus, what's wrong?"
"I--I don't..."
"Fuck, I think you're going into shock. We've got to get you to a hospital."
"But, what about this mess? What do we... ?"
"I've thought this through. There's nothing that can incriminate us. Knotts was working late, found an intruder stealing expensive lab equipment. Benchley got frightened and attacked him. Knotts threw a deadly chemical in self-defense, killing Benchley, but then suffered a heart attack himself. You and I found them like this."
He flipped the Professor's legs into my office with a great heave. He removed his cell phone and punched in 9-1-1.
"Theo, wait."
He faced me.
"I need to know. Did Benchley tell you anything else about my father... whether he's still alive?"
"Yes, Catherine. And I know where he is."