Connections

by Kyle Kirkland

Half the crystals of my projector needed replacing and my eyes were gummed with sleep, but I managed to recognize the grainy 3-D image that had appeared in my room. There was a dead man staring at me.

The image spoke softly in that familiar gravelly voice. “I hope I didn’t wake you, El. I know you keep odd hours.”

“Arden,” I said, trying to work some saliva back into my mouth. Arden Kirst, my old mentor. Last Friday his car disconnected from the power rail and plunged two hundred feet into a utility substation.

Slowly my brain got into gear. Things like this used to happen often back when I was growing up—people forgetting to make preparations beforehand to switch off their artificial-intelligence systems. I remembered getting a birthday greeting every year from a great-aunt who’d died in 2015. But it didn’t happen so much with the newer models.

The AI stood in my room, where the projectors were aimed, looking very much like Arden—piercing gray eyes and jutting chin—and squinted at me. The AI’s sensors were probably having trouble seeing me—the image transmission of my home communicator wasn’t in any better shape than the projector—and the system represented this fact in the AI’s image.

“Did you attend my services?” asked the simulacrum.

I coughed. “Well, I…”

“Yes, yes, of course. I know how it is. Busy and all that.”

Actually, Nadia nixed the funeral service because she said those things were mostly pomp and pretence. But we’d gathered last night for a farewell dinner. Some of us had drowned our sorrow in too much alcohol. I had a distinct and unpleasant memory that one of us greatly exceeded the bounds of good taste and manners. That someone, I believe, was me.

But I wasn’t going to try to explain our grief to an AI with the emotional capacity of a child. I sat up on my bed and put my feet on the floor. One foot touched cold concrete and the other landed on a crumpled suit. Three walls and a high-resolution screen enclosed me. The sound muffler failed to prevent my hearing a neighbor practicing for a rock-and-roll gig.

“You’re always on a case,” said the AI. “Actually, that’s why I called. My apologies for failing to warn you. Bit awkward, I know.”

“What do you want?”

“My death was no accident,” said the AI. “Of that you can be sure.”

I wasn’t sure about anything. We’d talked about it over the weekend. Arden had seemed depressed before he died, so suicide was a possibility. But the cops said it was probably an accident.

The AI said, “I want you to find out what really happened.”

It’s not that I didn’t care. Just the opposite—I cared too much. A seasoned biodet avoided cases like that.

The AI misunderstood my hesitation. “I can pay. A lot of the estate slipped through Yoobie’s fingers—some of my patent royalties haven’t been frozen.”

“Forget the money.”

“But… you won’t take the case? I thought we were friends. I don’t understand.”

I wasn’t sure I understood either. “I’ll look into it,” I told him. “Pro bono.”

“You will? Splendid!”

Maybe it was because I didn’t trust the cops. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t such a seasoned biodet. But I was also suspicious.

The AI shook its finger. “It was Yoobie. Yoobie had a hand in it, I’m certain of that.”

I didn’t think so. If it had been a sabotage job, it was a clever one. Which would have required an unprecedented degree of competence from the Bureaus.

I told the AI that I might need to dig through Arden’s personal files later. It said it would “stick around” and provide access whenever I wanted. Then it logged off the comm.

Unusual. Most AIs wouldn’t have taken the initiative to call me. If they weren’t terminated, they’d keep performing their preassigned duties, putting in digital appearances when the owner was unavailable and making low-level decisions using algorithms that were supposed to mimic the owner’s personality and behavior. Or, if idle, an AI typically would have gone into standby mode.

After washing up and downing a tasteless vegmix, I headed out. My vision remained blurry but feeling and motivation had come roaring back. A lot of things had been going wrong lately, and not just within our organization, because it was happening to Yoobie officials too. A number of suspicious and unexplained deaths had occurred—Arden, Yvonne, and a few others came to mind. Many of them looked like suicides. We knew Yoobie was suppressing the news about the deaths, which was normal since they always suppressed bad news.

But when things start to go wrong, the government was a good place to start looking for the cause.

A young woman with honey-colored hair and an angular face was waiting at the usual booth in Brohm’s speakeasy on 33rd. To the microphone I said, “Bottle of Coke.” To my assistant I said, “I know I’m over thirty and my memory isn’t what it used to be, but don’t I have three assistants?”

Barbara gave me a cool look. I’ve seen Barbara smile once, but that was when Jake slipped getting onto a conveyor and got his backside wedged between the rails, after which the supposedly nonslip surface became nonslip again and did a marvelous job of gripping the seat of his trousers and pulling the pants, along with hot red boxer underwear, down to his ankles.

Barbara pulled out a comm from her purse. “Shall I call the others and tell them to get down here?”

“You realize Yoobie often monitors public networks?”

She smirked. “And responds to suspicious activity in an average of twenty minutes, in which case all the contraband will have vanished and everybody will be sipping Yoobie beer and discussing biodiversity.”

“Every once in a while they can sneak up on you.” Which reminded me of Arden, and the possibility that his suicide or accident was neither. “I’ll contact Sandra and Jake later. Right now I’ve got a mission for you.” I pulled out my comm and transferred the necessary data to her device via a direct link.

She looked at her screen and grimaced.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Same old crap. I go to the Bureau of Statistics and start filling out forms and initiate the month-long process to get the information we need, while you, I’m sure, will proceed to obtain it in a hour or two.”

“Right.”

Barbara slammed her comm into her purse.

“We need to keep up appearances,” I told her. “Patience is a virtue. And a necessity if you have to deal with the government.”

“But that’s just it! You don’t deal with Yoobie. That’s what I wanted to learn from you.”

Sometimes I suspected that we trained our new people too slowly. Particularly smart ones like Barbara. But you have to be careful.

“First you learn to walk,” I said. “Then run, and then fly—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t trust me. That’s the trouble.”

A bot brought my drink. I noticed the table was otherwise empty. “Buy you something?”

“I had a peppermint earlier.”

“Have another.”

“No, thanks. Too many refined carbs really aren’t good for you. Just because the United Bureaus forbid something doesn’t mean you should eat or drink it all the time.”

I took a swig of Coke. “You’ve got a lot to learn about freedom.” I belched and hoped Brohm’s carbon dioxide scrubbers were working. We worked hard to undermine Yoobie’s authority so that we could preserve as much freedom as possible. You’ve got to enjoy freedom to the fullest whenever you have the opportunity.

Barbara frowned and slipped out of the booth. “Excuse me, I’ve got a date with a bunch of bureaucrats.”

She took one step and accidentally bumped into Sandra, who had just reached the booth along with Jake.

Sandra rubbed her shoulder. “You want to watch where you’re going, Barb?”

“Why don’t you show up on time?” said Barbara, as she stormed away.

Jake and Sandra sat down at the booth. My two older assistants worked together well, complementing each other; Jake was tall, wide, and jovial, and Sandra was short, thin, and serious. Jake looked at me and said, “I’d ask what’s bugging her if the question hadn’t become so monotonous.”

“Give Barbara some time,” I said. “It takes more than two months to settle into a job.”

Sandra gave me a skeptical look.

Jake leaned toward the order mike and said, “I’ll have a root beer, Coke, cheeseburger, and an up-yours-Yoobie bar. Oh, and a side order of dark chocolate, please.” He shrugged. “I’m starting to engage in more sensible dietary choices.”

“What’s up today, boss?” asked Sandra.

I told them about my conversation with the AI.

“Wow,” said Sandra. “That’s big. Arden Kirst was one of the leading geneticists at the Crogan Biomedical Institute, wasn’t he? If his AI thinks something was up—”

“An AI that may or may not be his,” I corrected.

Jake rolled his eyes. “Always suspicious, aren’t you?”

“That’s why I’m not in rehab watching an I.V. shoot neuro-corrective drugs into my system, and promising to be a loyal Yoobie voter in the next election.”

A bot brought Jake’s order. Sandra commandeered the root beer.

Sandra said, “Most people don’t need drugs to convince them to elect pols who give them money.”

“Which means we’re dumb,” said Jake.

“Your job,” I told them, “is to visit the Crogan Institute and learn as much as you can about what Kirst was working on.” I transferred some background information on Kirst’s publications. “And check to make sure his AI matches the one who visited me. I’ve given you the specs.”

“What’s your job?” asked Jake, his cheeks smeared with cheese.

“To make sure my assistants do theirs.”

Sandra was about to say something when the alarm bell rang. An instant later a bot rolled up to our table and tilted it, collecting every scrap into the incinerator in its belly. Another bot wiped our faces and squirted masque in our mouths. We rinsed and spit into the bot’s cuspidor.

I got up. I told my assistants to hang around for a few minutes, then I headed for the exit. Bots were handing out bottles of Yoobie beer, and the stereo system was now tuned to United Bureaus Public Radio.

Just as I got outside and stepped onto the busy sidewalk, a U.B. Public Relations officer stopped me. Tall, blond, and gorgeous. She must have been high-ranking because she displayed an S.R.C.B. on her green uniform.

“Smile, citizen,” she told me.

I smiled as she aimed the spectrometer. A bored-looking assistant in khakis stood behind her.

My rinse job must have missed a tooth, because the instrument reading gave her pause. “We’ve been alerted of contraband in the area, citizen,” she said cheerfully. “Have you seen any illicit substances this morning?”

“No.”

She glanced skeptically at the spectrometer’s output. The instrument had probably detected a trace of refined sugar from the soda. She also looked at her ID machine. “Well, Mr. Ellam K. Troy, what have you been doing this morning?”

“I just walked through a crowd of rock-and-rollers.”

“Ah,” she said. “And their perfumes—”

“Intoxicatingly cloying,” I said, making a face.

“That explains it. Where are they?”

I pointed toward an art school nearby.

“Dirty little gangbangers,” muttered the officer. Her shoes clicked on the plasticrete as she headed toward the school.

Her assistant took two steps and then stopped beside me. Staring at me—making sure I was watching him—he tapped his comm twice, then hurried to catch up with the boss.

I waited until I rounded the corner to pull out my comm. Dozens of people were walking or belting past me, so I punched the “private” button and put the comm up to my ear.

“Good morning,” it said. “I observed a small speck of dust on your E.R.C.B. badge of merit.”

I slipped the comm back into my pocket while a chill ran up my spine. I hadn’t recognized the man, but the message was up-to-date in the codebook. We issued that kind of warning only when a member was in grave danger.

The community bus looked full, and I was in a mood for some privacy anyway, so I hoofed it two blocks down the street to a rental agency. Along the way I sent out warnings to all three of my assistants: stop what you’re doing and hide. Jake and Sandra affirmed receipt at once. Barbara didn’t. Great—yet another thing to worry about.

The rental agency’s business thrived this morning, as it usually did when the buses were crowded. A line snaked all the way to the door, which was underneath a guide rail. Cars hummed overhead. A heavy scent of ozone hung in the air.

A beefy guy with a proprietor’s badge came out. “Sorry, bud,” he told me, “we’ll rent everything we got before your turn comes up.” He pushed me out and started to close the door.

On the chance that he was one of us, I quickly said, “Uncle Barry loves me!”

He hesitated, and I knew I’d struck gold. He closed the door, but a minute later he returned. He’d recognized this week’s emergency code phrase. “You’re in luck,” he said, ushering me inside. “We got a crate I wouldn’t rent to nobody except a guy like you in dire need.”

I palmed payment, leaving a ring of sweat on the platter.

A moment later I was in the best “crate” I could have asked for—a highly illegal carbon-belcher with a turbojet to supplement guide-rail power. A cowcatcher mounted on the front tossed slower vehicles to the side and a grappler leap-frogged the other car’s rail attachment so that I could pass, leaving in my wake a trail of wildly oscillating cars. And probably seasick passengers.

Still no word from Barbara.

Just because someone wanted to put me in the recycle factory didn’t mean that they were also after my assistants. But that was the way these things tend to work. If the boss gets knocked off then so do the underlings, because nobody knows what they might have been told or what they could find out if they had access to the boss’s comm.

The first thing to do was find out who wanted little old ladies to be planting their geraniums in my ground-up and sanitized remains. That might be hard to figure out. Most detectives have a lengthy list of enemies, and those of us who specialize in biology tend to get involved in the messiest cases—family disputes, violent crime, and affairs of the heart and other organs. Mostly other organs. Add to that my membership in the Opposition. You could probably stand anywhere in the city and spit on the shoes of half a dozen people who’d consider me good potting material. I’d spent so much money escaping enemies that I was already in debt up to my chin.

Did Yoobie finally peg me as an Op? Maybe, but if I hadn’t made any mistakes then that must mean somewhere, somehow, a smart U.B. official existed.

Could it have been a false message? Doubtful. All of our guys are careful—or at least competent—otherwise even Yoobie can catch you. And you don’t want to think about what happens after that.

I had nothing to go on but a hunch. That hunch involved Arden Kirst.

At the Bureau of Statistics I detached the car from the guide rail and piloted it to a garage. Yoobie sensors detected the turbojet exhaust and undoubtedly alerted a patrol. I quickly exited the car and disabled Yoobie video monitors with a video-frequency scrambler. The car’s autopilot engaged the weak battery-powered engines and floated up to the ceiling with its fans, attaching itself using magnetic stabilizers. An automatic adjustment of the nano-paint did an excellent job of camouflage.

No success pinging Barbara’s comm. Maybe I’d gotten too soft lately. Discipline had become lax.

Ionic columns grandly adorned the entrance to Stats. A thin mid-morning crowd trickled in and out. Rows of potted flowers emitted a rich aroma. I walked by some roses, flowering courtesy of the dearly departed.

“Citizen,” I said, nodding to a local pol as I ascended the steps. He saw my E.R.C.B. and returned the greeting.

When I entered the building, a bot unplugged itself from the battery recharger and rolled its three-foot frame into the nearest booth. “Good morning, Ellam K. Troy,” it purred. “How may I serve you?”

“I believe,” I said, ensuring no one was close enough to listen, “it’s my turn to serve.”

After a pause, the bot said, “No, I think it’s definitely my turn.”

“No, it’s mine.” I pulled out my comm and examined the bot’s input receptacles until I found a promising target. “Don’t you remember? You double-faulted.”

More electrons coursed through its circuits. “Citizen, are you searching for tennis information?”

I found an adequate interface plug for my comm and inserted a cable. The protected data I wanted could only be downloaded from a hard link. “Nyet,” I said. That kept the machine preoccupied for another few seconds while it tried to figure out if I was Russian or if I had mispronounced “net.” I attached the plug.

“Citizen,” said the bot, “I have detected—”

“Have you located the swertzer?”

“Please repeat, citizen. I do not understand.”

I watched the blinking light on my comm as my search program churned through the databases. Meanwhile, I had to keep the Yoobie bot in chaos, but not so confused that it would call for a human supervisor, and not so threatened that it would call for a security guard. Fortunately, Yoobie had to wire their AIs to handle the lowest common denominator. If you made the bot think you’re an average citizen—slow on the uptake—then their algorithms churned through mountains of data trying to make sense of what you said, which consumed too many resources for them to do much else. It was the only time I ever gave thanks for an ineffective educational system.

“Swertzer, switzer, swalzer! Don’t you know what that is? What kind of bot don’t know that?”

I waited for it to decide which version of the word I really meant to say. The light still flickered and I started to sweat. My heart seemed to beat in synchrony with the light. Any minute a supervisor could stick his head in the booth.

The bot said, “Are you referring to Emerald Salker, the professional tennis player?”

It always amazed me that everything had some kind of connection, however tenuous, with almost everything else. I’d never heard of that guy.

The light stopped blinking. I detached the cable at once.

“Yes, thank you. His last win?”

“Emerald Salker is female. Her last major tournament victory occurred at the United Bureaus Open, two years ago.”

I pocketed my comm. “Thanks, little buddy. That’s it.”

“Are you satisfied with this visit to the Bureau of Statistics?”

“I think I got what I wanted.”

When I returned to the garage, a Yoobie patrol was just leaving. They’d gotten tired and had given up the search for my car, and were in all likelihood heading back to a speakeasy for a doughnut. I ordered the car to pick me up and attach to the nearest guide rail under legal power. The cowcatcher retracted into the nose cone. No sense alarming Yoobie when you don’t have to.

“Where to?” asked the pilot module.

“Just drive.”

Barbara’s comm still didn’t respond. Without knowing where she was, I couldn’t help. If something hadn’t happened to her she’d get the message I had left, and there was nothing more I could do.

My comm had finished digesting the downloaded data. I’d retrieved all the recent requests for information concerning Arden Kirst, along with oblique references and indexing activity. I configured the comm to project the screen onto a flat surface—the roof of the car was the best one available. I had to hunch uncomfortably in my seat, but the large area let me scan a lot of data at once.

Nothing important leaped out. But in the three days prior to Kirst’s death, there was a significant spike of activity at the Crogan Biomedical Institute concerning Professor Arden Kirst. Although I didn’t have time to sift through the data, the activity was likely the result of a multitude of queries. Shortly before Kirst died, he’d become a popular man.

Then I configured my data-mining algorithm to search in Kirst’s data file and my file for cross-references. It pulled out anything the two files had in common. If the threat on me was in some way related to Kirst, there must be some sort of link between us.

The algorithm found plenty of links. I’d been his student. Later I’d worked for him. He’d mentored me for my R.C.B. Helping Ops or future Ops obtain genuine Responsible Citizen of the Bureaus merit badges was a specialty of Kirst, and he’d been proud of it (“the only time I was glad to have students fall asleep in class,” he’d often said). He’d given me a leg up on my Extremely R.C.B. later. Kirst had also written recommendations in support for my license application to the biodet czar.

I got smart and limited the results to the most recent three months. And that’s when everything became both clearer and more mysterious at the same time.

A line scrolled on the screen displaying Kirst’s stepdaughter and her ID number. I knew nothing about her. Kirst had married his second wife, Nadia Yates, about three years ago, and she apparently had a daughter by the name of Jennifer Yates, though I had never heard of her until now.

At first I thought there had been a mistake. What did Jennifer Yates have to do with me? A crosscheck confirmed the link and provided the details. The ID number was the same as a young assistant I’d hired two months ago—Barbara J. Marion.

Parked on the fifth floor of a garage about three blocks from home, where I could keep an eye on the entrance to the building and the window of my eleventh-floor room, I watched for any unusual activity. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I’d almost decided to go in when I spotted a Yoobie officer walking out of the exit and looking around. Short, blond, and good-looking.

She might have been doing any one of a number of things, not necessarily looking for someone. And if she were looking for someone, it might not have been me—more than a thousand people lived in that building.

But I had a hunch that she was after somebody. And that somebody was Ellam K. Troy.

Maybe she was one of us and maybe she wasn’t. The secrecy we maintained and the rules about members knowing only other members within their cell started to seem catastrophically inadequate. It helped to prevent wholesale snitching and disastrous Yoobie round-ups, but it also meant that distinguishing your friends from your enemies was almost impossible.

She crossed the street and entered a veg-to-go diner.

At $200 an hour, I couldn’t afford to stay parked here for long. Besides, there was someone I needed to see. I decided it wasn’t safe to go home, so I ordered the car to slip out of the mooring and ease onto the ramp. A minute later the car hooked up with one of the main arteries, and, under legal power, I headed for Arden Kirst’s old house in the suburbs. The house now belonged to Nadia Yates.

On the way I kept looking behind me. Sure enough, someone seemed to be on my tail. But they kept their distance.

It probably wouldn’t have hurt to let them follow me—nobody would have been surprised that I should want to visit Arden’s widow, and I didn’t think I would be putting her into any danger by doing so. But I decided not to take the chance. I fired up the turbojet and lowered the cowcatcher. After that, the only thing behind me was seasickness.

My comm buzzed as I arrived at Yates’s house. Sandra’s voice came from the speaker. “El, you there?”

I powered down the turbo, detached the car from the rail, and parked it illegally on top of a nearby house.

“Go ahead,” I told her. “But be quick. And don’t linger at wherever you’re calling from.”

“Jake and I are at the Crogan Institute. It’s all right, we’ve been here a while and nothing’s happened.”

Another rebellion. “I thought I told you two to hide.”

“We did. In a way, I mean. This institute’s a real labyrinth. I’m not even sure we can find our way out.”

I sighed.

“El? You still there?”

“We’re going to have a little talk about this later. Now tell me what you learned.”

“Not much, actually. People weren’t very communicative. According to rumor, Professor Kirst was onto something big, but no one was sure exactly what it was. Plenty of speculation, though I think most of the researchers we talked to were just tooting their own horn.”

“You’re probably right. But did any common thread emerge?”

“A lot of people mentioned artificial intelligence.”

“AI? That doesn’t make any sense. Arden Kirst was a geneticist.”

“I know. But one of the projects he was working on when he died involved the genetics of intelligence. And he’d been seen studying computer science and AI engineering texts.”

Something began clicking in my mind. “How about the digital signature of the AI who called me? Is it Kirst’s?”

“It was.”

“Was? You mean—”

“One of Kirst’s colleagues told me it had gotten zapped late this morning.”

There went my “client.” Funny thing. I briefly felt as if I’d lost someone—almost as if Kirst had died twice. But it’d only been a relatively unsophisticated computer program. I recovered quickly.

Sandra went on. “But listen, El. That might not be his only AI system. Several people told me that they thought Professor Kirst had designed something a lot more advanced. And he’d gotten someone to build it.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is Jake there with you?”

A deep voice came over the line. “Yeah, boss.”

“Have either of you heard anything from Barbara?”

“Not a peep.”

I struggled with how to phrase the next question. Before I could get it out, Sandra asked one of her own.

“Is she in trouble, El?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know who she really is.”

“Come again?”

“Tell you later. For now let me ask both of you this. Have you spent much time with Barbara since she’s been working for me?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Jake. “You know how she is.”

Sandra said, “She isn’t very nice, and we’ve never seen each other outside of work, as far as I can recall. I think she’s an intense young woman. Smart and aloof. The only time I ever saw her smile was when Jake—”

“I remember. Okay, that’s what I thought you’d say.” I raised my voice. “Now hear this: Both of you go somewhere safe. I suggest Brohm’s. Yoobie raided it once today, so they probably won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. Stay there until you receive further instructions. If you don’t hear anything more from me by this evening, spend the night with some friends or relatives—someone you trust. Oh, and one more thing. If either of you ignore an order again, you’re fired.”

I closed the link.

Kirst and AI? It didn’t seem like a good fit. He’d never worked on it when I was close to him, although he could have gotten interested in it later. His research interests mostly involved the regulation of genes and gene expression—which genes got switched on and how much of the associated protein was produced, and when and where in the body this occurred.

The car floated down to street level, where I killed the fans and rolled up to Nadia’s place. It was the third floor of a tetraplex. The floors were staggered so that each resident enjoyed a sunny terrace. I knew she was home because I’d pinged her comm a few moments ago. I checked in at the security gate and got permission to enter. Nadia answered the door at once and ushered me in.

She still hadn’t cleaned up from the wake. I apologized for my behavior last night.

“I would have been offended if you hadn’t shown some emotion, Ellam. Some loss of control. The other guests… I’m not entirely sure they cared.”

Nadia took my hand and we navigated our way around the clutter and sat down on the terrace. “Hair of the dog that bit you?” she asked.

“Nothing for me.”

We stared at each other for a moment. Nadia looked about twenty-five years old though she clocked in at thirty-three—more than two decades younger than Arden. She wore her black hair long, though this morning she’d tied it up in the back. Her face, which hinted at a tropical ancestry, had paled today, looking unusually bright in the sunshine.

A brief smile showed on her face. “You’re here to discuss something sensitive?”

“Yeah. First let me ask about Arden. I heard he was into AI?”

A bot rolled out with a tray and two glasses of ice water. Nadia set them down on coasters. “I don’t know much about what Arden did at the institute. I know he was excited about something, but I haven’t the slightest idea what. We didn’t talk about our work. His or mine.”

Examples of Nadia’s work lay scattered on the terrace. Her terra-cotta sculptures had won some awards in the art world, of which I had little knowledge.

She kept staring at me. “You already know genetics and biology baffle me, and Arden never understood abstract art. What is it you really want to ask?”

I took a sip of water, clanked the ice a little. “Where is Jennifer Yates?”

“Ah,” she said. “So that’s it.”

I waited for her to volunteer more information but she kept silent. A painful expression clouded her face.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but it’s very important.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Her voice grew hard. “Yes, I do, Ellam. She’s returned to the earth.”

My mouth fell open.

“She died in the influenza epidemic five years ago,” she explained.

That would have been two years before she met Arden. It would account for why I never heard any mention of Jennifer Yates.

“Can I see a picture?” I asked.

Another brief smile flitted across her round face. “Always so suspicious,” she muttered. “Wait here.”

She got up and returned a moment later with an imager. It showed a series of three pictures of a teenager who looked a lot like Nadia, except her eyes were lighter and her cheekbones were more prominent.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Why did you want to know about Jennifer?”

“Have you ever heard of Barbara J. Marion?”

She shook her head.

“She stole your daughter’s old ID number.”

“But how?”

“I’m guessing that Yoobie neglected to void it. That happened occasionally during the epidemic, when a lot of deaths occurred at the same time.”

“But what would this person gain by using an old ID number?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.” I got up to leave. Then another thought struck me. I told her about the call I’d received from Arden’s now presumably switched-off AI.

“Remarkable,” she said.

I nodded. “Almost as remarkable as the connection between Barbara and Jennifer. Do you mind if I… I mean, is it all right if I…”

Nadia rescued me. “Arden spoke highly of you, Ellam. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded if you rummaged through his personal effects.”

“Won’t take but a minute.” And it didn’t. I hooked up my comm to his organizer, and a few seconds later the data had successfully transferred.

“Amazing,” said Nadia, shaking her head. “A man’s life, compressed into some number of bytes of data.”

“No. Not a man’s life. Just his data.”

I said good-bye and Nadia embraced me before I left. I had so little in common with her and her world that we’d probably become strangers after the removal of our only link—Arden Kirst.

No sign of anyone sniffing around, so I climbed into the rental and powered up the batteries. Next stop: Barbara’s listed address.

Sure, it was probably false, but worth a look. I had nothing better to do until I could sift through Arden’s data. And that would require some time, unless I had access to my computer system at home. But I remained afraid of returning home. Maybe I could find some other system of comparable sophistication. And deviousness.

After I punched the coordinates into the car, it fanned up to the guide rail and set off toward the city.

It really bothered me that I didn’t know who Barbara was. My HR software performed detailed background checks on everyone I interviewed for a job. In the eight years that I’d been an independently licensed biodet, I’d never before had cause to question its effectiveness. But Barbara, or whatever her name was, did an Uncle Barry on it. All the lies had sounded good.

That kind of mistake could potentially cost a detective his life.

Why had she applied to me for a job? She certainly didn’t need to learn much—she knew how to manipulate the databases as well as anyone I’d ever met. I only discovered her secret by a lucky accident, probably because she failed to adjust a few data points here and there. Which was no shame because you can never get them all, not with so much data and so many databases in the world. She was a pro. Unless, of course, someone else had done the work.

I didn’t bother pinging her comm again. When she’d found out I was snooping into Arden Kirst’s business, she probably figured I might latch onto her secret, so it was time for her to disappear. She wouldn’t be easy to find, unless she wanted to be found.

Maybe she’d turn up again. I felt certain that her connection to Arden Kirst involved more than just the illegal appropriation of Jennifer Yates’s ID. She’d used the number to legitimize her identity and routed all queries to a new file, a new person—Barbara J. Marion. That took an incredible amount of skill and hard work. And it took an intimate knowledge of Jennifer Yates’s ID and data portrait. I doubted that Barbara pulled Jennifer Yates’s number out of thin air.

Who was the young woman I knew as Barbara? She was flesh and blood, that much was for sure; I dismissed any thought of her being the sophisticated AI that Kirst had allegedly invented. That couldn’t be true for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that bot hardware could not yet come anywhere close to approximating the human body. She was a real person and she had a past. And a reason for hiding it.

I also discovered that she had a sense of humor, after all. Her listed address contained a recyclable pillow and mattress factory. It was called “Stuff It.”

My comm rang. I answered on audio.

A gravelly voice said, “Hello, Ellam. I’m Arden Kirst.”

I hesitated for a moment. “The AI?”

“No. I’m Arden Kirst.”

I shook my head to clear the last remaining cobwebs from last night. “You died,” I said reasonably.

“But I was reborn.”

At six o’clock that evening I parked in the garage at the Crogan Biomedical Institute and walked to the genetics building. The codes in my comm worked perfectly, and security granted me access. It was an optimal time—only a few people remained at work, but the hour wasn’t late enough for my presence to arouse suspicion. The conference room unlocked at my command. I entered, closed the door, and fired up the central console. Arden Kirst’s image appeared. It was sitting in one of the chairs at the table in the center of the room.

A simulacrum, like the last AI, but the institute’s projection system was much better than mine. “Good evening,” it said. “I trust the data I sent got you here without trouble?”

In no mood to chat with a machine, I said, “Who’s after me and why? Who is Barbara J. Marion, or whatever her name is? And why does she have Jennifer Yates’s ID number? What was Arden Kirst working on when he died? What kind of AI are you?”

The simulacrum smiled—the same mischievous grin that Arden had sometimes shown—and scratched the side of his nose with his thumb, the same way Arden had done when someone irritated him.

“Always so eager, El. Just like when you were my student, peppering me with questions—”

“Save the reminiscing for later. I want some answers.”

The smile faded, and those gray eyes perceptibly narrowed. Kirst was willing to humor someone just so far, and then… Although I knew I was talking to an AI’s digital representation rather than a real person, it was easy to imagine otherwise.

“Let me tell you a story,” persisted the AI. “Of an idealistic young man who had just earned his doctorate in genetics and thought the world was at his feet, waiting to be conquered. You see, he believed in everything that he was taught. He believed in science, and he believed in the government. Oh, yes, the government, too. United Bureaus. Both genetics and Yoobie seemed incomparably intellectual.”

“I already know that Kirst fell in with the Yoobie crowd when he was young. Earned his Supremely Responsible Citizen of the Bureaus merit badge by the age of twenty-four. Almost unheard of.”

“Yes, but did you know how I really felt about it? Deep down inside? I believed in it, Ellam. I believed that only a large, powerful central government could solve our social problems. It was the only way—evil, perhaps, but necessary.”

“And then you realized that it could solve only a few of our problems, and in the process created an even bigger one—a loss of freedom. I get it, Arden.” I paused. I had already started thinking of this machine as Arden Kirst. It seemed to have much more than Arden’s memories, which even simple AIs could store and access efficiently and to some degree intelligently. This AI was using data in a humanlike way. It almost seemed to be human—and apparently thought of itself that way.

“No,” it said, “I don’t think you really get it. But you’re, what, thirty-two now? Not enough time. Your thoughts are still too shallow, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

To steer the conversation to a more pertinent topic, I asked, “Who’s Barbara? I mean, really, who is she, deep down inside?”

Kirst smiled. “That’s the Ellam I know. Sarcastic. But you weren’t always so sarcastic. There was a time when you were more like I was, when I was young. You have, or had, great ideals.”

“Who’s Barbara?”

Kirst scratched his nose. “As I was saying, this idealistic young geneticist got a job at Crogan Biomedical Institute and married a responsible, idealistic young woman by the name of Cleo. You met her much later, Ellam, after the realities of life began to wring out most of the ideals of this young and initially happy couple.”

Cleo, Arden’s first wife, was a short-tempered and extremely self-centered person—at least by the time I met her.

“At first, the young couple decided the most responsible thing to do was not to add to the overpopulated, overburdened Earth. As time went on and their relationship deteriorated, Cleo decided to avoid even the possibility of ever having kids—at least with me. Instead, she turned to a cadre of young intellectual friends of hers, who gathered for weekend ‘retreats,’ as they called them, to read poetry or Plato and write theatrical plays that supposedly revealed the profound meaning of life. They scoffed at us mere mortals. And in the meantime, one of these poor mortals—namely, me—met a vibrant, witty, incredibly brilliant woman. A visiting professor at Crogan.”

Kirst paused and sighed.

“I think I see what’s coming,” I said. Now that I thought of it, there was a slight resemblance between Barbara and Arden Kirst. But I hadn’t noticed the connection because I hadn’t been looking for it.

Kirst went on. “Did you know that even in our age of advanced science and technology, there isn’t a foolproof contraceptive?”

I nodded.

“She didn’t want the baby. She insisted on an abortion. And Yoobie agreed with her.” Kirst’s eyes grew hard and cold. “It was at this point, I think, that my infatuation with our government finally withered and died. And the relationship I had with this woman quickly turned acrimonious.”

“But you fought it. The abortion, you held it up with lawsuits. Right?”

Kirst nodded. “Until I exhausted all avenues. Oh, there was no chance that I’d succeed. Yoobie would see to that. The fetus was doomed. Or would have been, had it not been for me.”

“You delayed it long enough for the fetus to live outside the mother.”

“Yes. It’s not that I’m against abortion—when both parents agree. But that child was just as much mine as it was hers.” It paused. “I’m not entirely sure why I wanted it so badly. It’s hard to explain. I guess I wanted someone to love and someone who would love me back. Real love, not the kind of love that adults have for each other. Not conditional love, but the unconditional kind of love that bonds parent and child.” It sighed. “Or so I thought.”

“How much did you bribe the doctor who was supposed to perform the abortion?”

“Nothing. I didn’t have to. Yoobie assigned the doctor and determined the course of action, as it does for all health issues, but fate smiled upon me. I knew the doctor. More importantly, I knew he had a habit of making some money on the side by writing bogus prescriptions. Some of my students had gotten into trouble because they had been caught abusing these drugs, and I discovered the source. It happens a lot. I suppose if Yoobie would pay doctors more, this sort of thing would happen less.”

“Okay, you didn’t pay him, you threatened him. Either way, you—I mean Arden Kirst—got your hands on a baby that couldn’t exist. At least not legally. The mother was anesthetized, probably after the doctor started talking about ‘complications,’ but the operation wasn’t what she’d expected. She never found out, did she?”

Kirst shook his head. “I couldn’t tell her, or the child would be… I don’t know what would have happened.”

“Don’t you think that was a little unethical?” I paused. What good would it do to lecture an AI?

“It was a lot unethical,” admitted Kirst. “I’m not proud of it. But the whole damn system is unethical. A monstrosity of lies, incompetence, tyranny—”

“I know, I know. I’m on your side. I’m an Op, remember?”

“She was beautiful. You should have seen her. Little toes, fingers, a nose so small I was scared she couldn’t breathe. When I held her in my arms, I knew I had made the right decision. And she was healthy; she overcame the prematurity. And she’s as smart as they come. Smarter than even her mother and father put together!”

“You had to find the means to get Barbara—what’s her real name, by the way?”

“I called her Eve.” Kirst shrugged. “I thought about calling her Andromeda, after the galaxy, but I got caught up in the whole mystery of her birth. And it was a struggle to support her when Yoobie keeps such thorough track of every citizen. I couldn’t have done it by myself.”

“This was when you joined the Opposition?”

“Exactly. They didn’t trust me at first. They saw my S.R.C.B. and the young age at which I’d earned it, and they probably dug up old essays I’d written for the school paper. Do you know that I once seriously advocated the public flogging of anybody who takes Uncle Barry’s name in vain?”

“Extremism will do that to you. Warp your mind, I mean.”

“Anyway, they told me to go stick my head up Uncle Barry’s arse. But then I showed them my child. I told them to find her ID, if they could. Find out who she was. They took DNA, RNA, protein samples, everything. Nothing was in the databases. She couldn’t exist—but she did. I told them the story often enough that they finally believed it. And they helped. We got a rotating set of numbers, kept building new files, new backgrounds. It was a real pain. I also had to hide the child, which wasn’t too difficult because Cleo divorced me the minute she found out about the lawsuits I’d filed and so forth. So I could live in peace with my daughter, even though I couldn’t admit having her. Schooled her myself. And then I met Nadia.”

“Nadia knows about Eve, I assume, even though she didn’t tell me.”

Kirst shook her head.

“No? You’re kidding. You never told her? That’s—never mind. You didn’t tell me either, and you probably avoided telling anyone else you didn’t have to. But you got hold of the old number of Nadia’s daughter, along with enough data to construct a file in the system that could answer almost all the queries consistently.”

“That’s right. I mean the Ops in my cell did. Our cell, I guess I should say, since you belong to it too. They’re much better with computer systems than I am. I love Nadia, by the way. In case you’re wondering.”

“I’m not. I mean, I have other priorities at the moment. Like staying alive and out of rehab. And finding out just what kind of machine you are—and what Arden was working on.”

Kirst’s eyes brightened. “Emotions. The secret to intelligence, Ellam. And—”

Someone banged on the door.

I froze. Helpless and unarmed—Yoobie threw you into rehab if you even hinted you had a desire for a gun—I was trapped. Had Kirst’s AI set me up?

A voice came from outside. “Hello? Is anybody there? We’d like to hold our meeting now.”

Kirst frowned. “Why don’t people follow the rules? They’re supposed to use the computer to reserve a specific time to use the conference room.”

The voice grew more insistent. “Hello?”

“They’re probably not going to give up,” said Kirst. “We’d better let them in. Just tell them you were downloading some data.”

I inserted my comm into the outlet. “That’s just what I’d like to do—download data. Send me Kirst’s lab notes.”

“May I ask what you intend—”

“Do it,” I said. “Now.”

My comm’s input light started blinking.

“While you’re still here, I need to tell you something,” said Kirst. “I don’t want to… it’s hard for a father to admit—”

“Hello? Who’s in there?”

“Just a minute!” I yelled.

“My daughter killed me,” said Kirst.

I gaped. “She what?”

The door rattled.

“She’s dangerous,” said Kirst, “so be careful. We’ll talk more later. Just watch out while you’re on campus. Good luck!” The image disappeared.

I recovered from the shock and opened the door. “Sorry, be done in a second,” I said calmly, as if nothing had happened. You learn how to do this as an Op or you’ll find yourself babbling incoherently in rehab. “Come on in.”

A dozen people walked inside, some of them giving me curious glances. But the screen in the center of the room displayed “authorized visitor’s download,” which seemed to allay their suspicion. When the comm light stopped blinking I unhooked it and left.

I spent the whole night in the rental car, parked at the institute’s garage. The car was too narrow for me to stretch out in the back seat; the driver seat reclined, though not all the way, so I ended up with a stiff back and a sore neck. And not enough sleep, for two nights in a row. I woke up around dawn feeling like hell. Déja vu.

But I’d spent part of the night productively studying the data I’d obtained from Arden’s house and the lab notes the AI had transferred. The most important bits involved genetics and intelligence. Not my specialty, but I’d learned something while working for Kirst.

Kirst had made a significant discovery, or at least he’d thought so. Considering the advanced capability of his second AI, which was surely based on the new findings, I’d say he’d been right.

People had been using computers to process data for a long time, but nobody had ever figured out how to configure them so that they could make decisions and inferences that are similar to human intelligence—in the fraction of human beings that had any these days. The problem was that scientists didn’t understand how humans did it, so how could anyone program a machine to mimic the process? Programmers tried using logic circuits, complicated rules of problem-solving, patterns, and brain-like devices in the attempt to make an advanced AI. Success up until now had been limited, though artificial neural networks continued to be promising.

Arden Kirst found an important component of human intelligence and, in the process, the means by which computer experts could implement that component in a digital system. According to Kirst, emotions are the primary means by which humans process data. Data without emotions are just valueless, disconnected numbers and facts. That was the theory, anyway.

Genes and gene expression play a strong role in emotions and mood. Genetics doesn’t explain all of human behavior, but it influences almost everything to a certain extent. Genes code for proteins such as enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of neurotransmitters to carry messages between brain cells, along with receptors that receive the messages and reuptake molecules that terminate the message. How much and what kind of proteins get made will strongly influence a person’s feelings and emotions as well as how the brain processes data.

In a complicated way I couldn’t fully understand from Kirst’s notes, emotions modulated the processing of data. The theory held that emotions are the links by which the brain connects data in meaningful and intelligent ways. In this view, emotions are not byproducts of human intelligence, they are the origins of human intelligence. Rather than being the results of thought or perception—I feel sad, for example, because I failed a test—emotions are essential links in the generation of intelligence. Emotions place a value judgment on passing or failing a test, for example, which would otherwise have no implication and would pass thoughtlessly from the mind. The more complex the emotions, the more complex the intelligence.

Maybe Kirst was right and maybe not. But his ideas had apparently inspired some computer experts to fashion remarkable AIs by mimicking the process in digital systems.

Kirst’s theory had also inspired another development, but the data weren’t clear about what it entailed. There were even signs that Yoobie had something to do with it, because I found several official documents related to “factors under discussion.” Kirst and Yoobie? That made no sense at all.

I’d finally fallen asleep even though my head had been spinning like a vortex. When I awoke, it was still spinning. If I didn’t get out of that car and stretch my legs I would go crazy.

I’d parked on the eighth floor. Avoiding the elevator, I took the stairs to the ground floor. Early morning sunlight streamed in; the sun had come up, the sky was bright blue. Blearily I walked outside. I kept walking, basking in the sunshine.

Ten minutes later I saw the Yoobie agent who had been at my residence the other day. And she saw me.

I turned around and started walking quickly back to the garage. I could hear her following.

How had she found me? Street sensors? Satellites? Yoobie seemed anxious to talk to me.

This time, I began to think, I’m in over my head.

Just as I reached the garage I heard a voice call out, “Citizen Ellam K. Troy!”

I raced into the garage, sprinting to the stairs. The elevator wasn’t an option because she could shut down power if she wanted to. With pumping legs and fists and lungs on fire I reached the door to the stairs. I made it in plenty of time.

But the door was locked.

Of course. I’d forgotten that they always keep the first floor doors locked from the outside. The stairway was an emergency exit, and they didn’t want people using it as an entrance. To go up you had to use the elevator.

I could hear footsteps behind me. Caught.

One little mistake. That was the first thing you learn as an Op. All it takes is one little mistake. They get you, they put you in a room with an I.V. and a bunch of people wearing white coats who shake their heads and wonder aloud at your obvious psychiatric needs because you can’t accept that Yoobie is the answer that solves all problems. So they fill you full of drugs so that your brain turns to mush and you drool and babble. Then they reeducate you, and the first words you learn to say are, “Uncle Barry is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

The footsteps were right behind me. I turned around, fists ready. She’d zap me, but I was going down fighting.

An explosion in the street sent both of us diving onto the plasticrete floor. When I looked through the wire fence that enclosed the ground floor of the garage I saw a burning car parked at the curb.

The Yoobie official and I exchanged a stunned look. Cars don’t blow up—there’s nothing inflammable in them, except for the illegal ones that have so many safety features that accidents never happen. And it’d been so long since I saw anything burning that my gaze was riveted on the dancing orange flames.

She hopped up and ran toward the carnage. I took two steps, then I stopped and slowly turned around. Standing behind me in the shadows was Barbara. Or Eve. But force of habit would keep me calling her Barbara.

“Let Yoobie deal with the car,” she said. “Nobody got hurt. All they’ll find is a bunch of broken, melted composite materials from the car of a professor I don’t particularly care for, and the residue of an explosive chemical mixture that I placed in it thirty seconds ago.”

“I know who you are,” I told her.

“Congratulations.” She waved a black object at the stairway door. It popped open, and she kept it from closing with her foot. “I warned you that you were in trouble. And what do you do? You wander around outside like a lost child.”

“You warned me?”

“Who else knew you might get into trouble?” She inclined her head toward the doorway. “You waiting for Yoobie to catch you again?”

I hesitated.

“Fine,” she said. “Do what you want.” She went inside.

The door swung on its hinges. Just before it clanged shut I got there and prevented it from closing, although not in the way I had intended. Two of my fingers got caught between the door and the wall. I said ouch in a creative sort of way.

Barbara opened the door and rescued my fingers. “I’m not sure you’re worth the trouble, but come in anyway. I’ve got some first aid in the lab.”

She led me through another doorway that somehow slid open in the wall. From there we entered a tunnel lit by organic LEDs stuck to the cinderblock walls. After a couple of turns to the left, Barbara opened a similar door in another wall by using the black wand, which I assumed emitted a code of pulsed electromagnetic radiation or exerted some specific sequence of electric or magnetic forces.

My hand throbbed in pain, although I could tell nothing was broken.

I found myself in a well-equipped biological laboratory. Barbara gave me some antiseptic ointment and bandages. I stood beside a DNA sequencer and wrapped up my fingers. “Why did you warn me?” I asked.

“Well, someone had to. I realized that you were going to get at the truth sooner or later. Since you wouldn’t have listened to me at the time, I had to get your attention in some way or another.”

“I’m not sure I’ve gotten to the truth yet.”

“I knew you’d say something like that.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“You talked to Daddy’s AI, and then when you didn’t leave campus I made the clever deduction.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

A buzzer went off.

“Time for me to change solutions,” said Barbara, stepping to a long lab bench that ran the length of the eighty-foot room.

I watched her weigh some chemicals on a microscale and mix some solutions in a couple of beakers. The way she handled the equipment I could tell that she was no novice in the lab.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I prompted.

“I monitor the institute’s security system from here. I spotted your car. Nice one, by the way. You have a carbon signature even a blind Yoobie scientist could detect. And this morning I saw the Yoobie agent. Yoobie agents always trigger the alarms.”

“You knew the AI called me?”

“I told it to.”

I watched as Barbara used a micropipette to pour drops of solution into a matrix of tiny wells in a large plate.

An idea suddenly struck me. “It was you, not Kirst. You’re the one who made the discovery,” I said. She’d probably spent her entire childhood in a laboratory. What else was there to do for a smart young person who couldn’t mingle in society because she didn’t officially exist? “You came up with the link between genes and emotions and intelligence, didn’t you? Arden took credit, but you’re responsible for it. Right?”

“You can hardly blame him for taking credit. He couldn’t tell them about me, could he?”

“Who killed Arden Kirst?”

Barbara frowned. “He did.” She peeled latex gloves from her hands. “I need to let these experiments cook for a while. In the meantime, how about we go somewhere and talk?”

“What happened to your father?”

“The drug has a few side effects,” said Barbara, with little emotion. “My father became addicted to a psychological state called dysphoria.”

I was astounded when she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

We were sitting in a small room with Spartan furnishings. Three chairs—two with cushions—a ratty sofa, and a folding table. She’d offered me the sofa but I sat down in one of the cushioned chairs, and she took the other.

She saw me staring at the cigarette. “I know it’s a vice. But tobacco relaxes me like nothing else.”

“Where did you get it? I thought Yoobie sprayed tobacco plants into extinction.”

“There’s probably a lot you don’t know about Yoobie. But everybody knows how incompetent they are. Idiots! Their response to any problem is to banish the symptom—they attack the result of the problem, not the cause. They ban tobacco, guns, junk food, red meat, drugs, nukes, carbon dioxide, and they’d ban alcohol too if they didn’t make a fortune in tax revenue on Yoobie beer. Not only have they failed to solve problems, they’ve managed to make almost everyone in the country a criminal.”

The air in the room began to smell acrid. I made a face.

Barbara waved the smoke away. “Don’t worry, the air scrubbers will kick in and save your virgin lungs.”

“Tell me what I don’t know about Yoobie.”

She took another puff. “I thought you wanted to hear about Daddy. And the drug.”

“Let’s start there, then. What exactly is dysphoria?”

“The opposite of euphoria. Dysphoria is unhappiness.”

“I know what the word means. But I thought you said Arden was addicted to it.”

“He was.”

I waited for her to continue, but she sat silently and smoked.

“How could someone get addicted to dysphoria?” I asked. “Euphoria addiction I can understand, but no one likes dysphoria.”

“Are you sure about that? Haven’t you heard people say that they felt better after a ‘good’ cry? Don’t a lot of people like sad movies? Aren’t there people who don’t seem to be happy unless they have something to complain about?”

“I guess, but that’s not the same as being addicted to it.”

“It’s the drug. It creates emotional links in order to enhance intelligence. Sometimes the connections lead to new insights—you get smarter, more creative. But at other times the connections establish or amplify something you don’t want. Like bad feelings. I suppose it’s natural to feel bad after you’ve made a mistake or a tragedy occurs. Maybe it’s the brain’s way of learning something from it. I don’t know. But anyway, if that sort of thing gets amplified, you’re in trouble. And nobody’s found a way of controlling the drug once it gets into your system. You can get a lot of smarter, but you can also get a lot sadder too. Or unnaturally elated, which is less of a problem although it makes you sound like a giddy fool.”

“Who made this drug? You?”

“I helped develop it. I’m not really into it that much, but yes, I helped. Through Daddy, I mean. He interacted with the developers.”

“Yoobie?”

Barbara nodded. “And also that silly organization you people call Opposition.”

I shook my head. “Make up your mind. It can’t be both.”

Barbara smirked. “I thought you were smart, but you’re starting to convince me otherwise.”

“Barbara, I’m an Op. So was your father. Or at least I thought he was. Ops don’t have anything to do with Yoobie.”

“Except when there’s a ton of money to be made. Oh, and you also get smarter, too. Who doesn’t want to become a genius? So they cooperated. Yoobie has a lot of resources, which they obtain by taxing everyone to death. Many of the best scientists are Ops. They needed each other. So they were like a couple of little boys slugging each other in the belly until they got distracted by an old shoe or toy or something stuck in the dirt, and they stopped fighting for a while in order to dig it up.” She shrugged. “It’s as simple as that. A joint venture, you might say.”

Maybe not so simple, I thought, but it would explain why the suicide rate for both Yoobie and Ops people had increased. I had wondered why it wasn’t one or the other, but both.

I looked up to see Barbara studying my face.

“Daddy didn’t tell you very much, did he?”

“Not about this.” I paused. “Arden’s AI said you killed him. There’s no way it could have known that for sure because it only shared Arden’s memories up until the last update, which of course occurred prior to death. I’d been thinking it might be right, though, because it might have had access to information I didn’t know about. But now I think it was wrong. I think it only wants to believe that you had something to do with his death. The AI has the same psychological profile as Arden, so it would also have his dysphoria addiction, as you call it. It prefers sad thoughts, and the thought of a daughter killing her father is one of the saddest things anyone can think of.”

“You’re restoring my faith in your intelligence, Ellam.”

So Arden really did commit suicide. But it wasn’t entirely his idea because of the drug’s influence. I watched Barbara calmly exhale acrid smoke. “Did you love your father?”

She crushed her cigarette in a little cup she used to hold the ashes. “What extraordinary questions you ask. I tell you about a potential wonder drug and you ask about my psychology.”

“He was about the only person you knew while you were growing up, wasn’t he? You couldn’t get outside much until you got Jennifer Yates’s old number, and that was only a few years ago.”

Barbara looked me in the eye. “What I love or don’t love, or hate or don’t hate, has nothing to do with anything. What’s important—what I originally wanted to learn from you, and why I saved you from Yoobie a little while ago—is your expertise. I could use your help. And you could use mine.”

“Another joint venture?”

“Yes, but this one has a nobler goal. We’re going to overthrow Yoobie.”

“Wow,” I said. “You and I are that powerful?”

“Don’t be so cynical. Yes, you and I. With a little help from our friends.”

“Who are?”

“I’ll explain later. Right now I need to do some work.” She rose and went to the door. “It’ll take me about an hour. I suggest you stay here. I won’t try to stop you from leaving, but if you do, you can’t get back in. And remember, you’re wanted now.”

“You’re not exactly on friendly terms with Yoobie either, are you? I bet they still don’t know anything about you. The truth, I mean. They still think Arden was the one who made the discovery.”

“So? Who cares what Yoobie scientists think? I don’t need them, nor want them. I don’t take the drug because I’m one of the few people who don’t need it. The drug doesn’t interest me. What I want is the same as what you want: to destroy Yoobie.”

“And replace the government with what?”

“With something less intrusive. We’ll talk about that later. The important thing for now is that you need me and I need you. And we can both sink each other if we choose. I could hand you over to Yoobie, and you could tell them about me and my lab. But since neither of us wants to go to rehab, I assume we’ll both keep our mouths shut.”

“Who are those friends you mentioned? The advanced AIs?”

“As I said, you’re a bright fellow.”

“Barbara, there’s no way that you and I and a few AIs can conquer millions and millions of people—”

Her eyes flashed in anger. “How can someone so smart be so blind and dumb? You and your silly Opposition don’t seem to understand that you’re the majority.”

I laughed. “I think you know better than that. If we’re the majority, how come Yoobie pols keep getting elected? The elections aren’t rigged. Loyalist pols get the most votes, but what can you expect when more than two-thirds of the citizens are on the dole? People vote for who gives them money. It’s the old bread-and-circus routine. Keeps the people happy so they don’t revolt—in the street or the ballot box.”

“The people in this country are slaves. And while most of them are stupid, even stupid slaves know they aren’t free, no matter what Yoobie’s mass media tell them. Slaves resent their masters. They obey their masters to get their bread and circuses, as you put it, but they’ll revolt the minute they get a better alternative.”

She saw my stunned expression and gave me a smug look. “Sometimes I think the Opposition is as dumb as Yoobie. You’re just playing games. You confine yourselves to your cells and little operations where one cell doesn’t know anything about the others, and you get giddy using your code words and your speakeasies and your vices and never realize that you are running this country about as much as Yoobie is.” She started to go. Before she closed the door she said, “I’ll be back in about an hour. You staying?”

I nodded. I needed the time to think.

By the time Barbara returned I’d made up my mind.

I’d reevaluated my position on a lot of things. The Opposition, for instance. Barbara had shocked me with some of the things she’d said, but what was more shocking was that I found myself unable to refute her argument. Amazing what hearing a fresh perspective will do for your outlook, especially when the perspective comes from someone who’s perceptive. And that someone tells you things that have perhaps been stealthily working their way into your mind for some time.

I belonged to an organization that essentially consisted of a bunch of adults playing children’s games. We laughed and thumbed our noses at Yoobie and got away with as much as we could and called it freedom. But we weren’t doing much good. We weren’t striving for meaningful change, we had instead settled down into childish bouts of tag or hide-and-go-seek. That surely wasn’t the primary reason the organization had been founded.

Did I want to topple the government or not? If so, then shouldn’t I pitch my tent with rebels who were talented and serious? People like Barbara.

Sounded good. Except when I dug a little more deeply.

I figured I had a good idea what Barbara was planning. Although we might be able to bring Yoobie to its knees, I worried about what would come next. Change isn’t necessarily always for the better. The alternative could be a whole lot worse.

What could be worse than an incompetent tyrant? A competent one.

Barbara was brilliant in some ways, terribly immature in others. I believed she’d go ahead with her plan with or without my help. That presented a dilemma. I had started contemplating the unthinkable. I might end up fighting for the status quo—and defending, of all things, Yoobie. The very thought crushed my spirit. I’d have no identity, no soul after that.

But I had a third option, and that’s the one I chose. It would be the riskiest move I’d ever made, and in addition, I’d also be putting Barbara at risk. But the risk wasn’t great if the argument she’d put forward, and evidently believed, was valid.

She came into the room and sat down in a chair. She lit a cigarette and eyed me warily. “You want to know the plan?”

I nodded.

“We place AIs at strategic points in the system, secretly replacing the existing AIs. Dispatch, routing, financial services, transportation, etcetera. The AIs can be easily trained. I don’t know how to write the code but I don’t have to—we already have a template, constructed by computer experts. All I have to do is add some code to simulate the genetic processes that make them truly intelligent. I can handle the AIs, but what I need is someone who understands and can manipulate Yoobie’s networks, otherwise we can’t install them where we want without Yoobie getting wise. That’s where you come in. Daddy said you’re one of the best.”

“I’m assuming you want to wait until all the AIs are in place before activating them?”

“They’ll be functional the moment they’re installed, but at first they’ll do Yoobie’s bidding, so government officials won’t notice anything’s wrong. The AIs will dispatch agents, gather and analyze data from sensors, keep traffic flowing normally, distribute and schedule the slaves’ bread and circuses, and so forth. But then, when we’ve got everything ready, we switch the AIs into a different mode a few weeks or months before the next election. We don’t want them to stop working or behave erratically because Yoobie could recover from that. We want them to maximize Yoobie’s distress. Send their transports crashing into one another. Feed them ‘actionable intelligence’ that some of their prominent pols are members of the Opposition. Send all the benefits to the wealthy instead of the poor.”

“And while Yoobie is in chaos, we foment revolt?”

“I think revolt will happen without our help because Yoobie will lose big at the polls, but if you want to lend a hand, that’s fine. After Yoobie falls, we can use the AIs to guide the reconstruction. I don’t much care what kind of political system replaces the Bureaus—I presume it will be something inefficient and unwieldy, but as long as it doesn’t try to live my life for me and tell me what I can and can’t do, it’s okay with me. I just want a big science budget. Remember that, if you become a pol. Money for science.”

“That’s your bread and circus?”

Barbara gave me a long look. “Very funny. Science is truth, not entertainment. There’s a lot left to be learned.” She inhaled a lungful of smoke. As she blew it out she said, “Want some advice? Distribute the wonder drug to people, even if they don’t want it. Do it secretly if you have to. Smart people can handle freedom whereas ignorant people can’t. Isn’t that what Thomas Jefferson once said?”

“That really makes sense to you? Think about it, Barbara.”

She shrugged. “Politics isn’t my thing. You decide. Well? Are you in or out?”

“I have another plan. How about we publish your discovery, and tell everyone—not just Yoobie and Ops scientists but the public—about the drug and the AIs. At least the knowledge will be out in the open and less subject to abuse. In the meantime, there is a thing or two you need to learn, and I’m not talking about science. I know two people who want to be your friend if you’ll let them.”

Barbara initially thought I was kidding. Then she saw I was serious. She set her cigarette down on the cup, and the muscles in her face and neck tightened. “I like my plan better.”

“There are a couple of problems with your plan. You’d be able to understand what I’m talking about if you were a little more mature.”

She sneered. “Who’s playing childish games all the time?”

“Me. But I’m starting to see the light. That’s the difference between you and me. You can’t see the light, you can’t see your own problems. And you never will, until you start getting along with people, or at least start appreciating that other people have feelings and needs just as much as you do.”

I’d recently found out a lot I didn’t know about Arden, and most of it wasn’t good. But everyone had flaws, and I owed the man a lot for helping me so many times. I wanted to return the favor by helping his daughter. I’m sure he would have wanted that. Circumstances deprived Barbara of a normal childhood; she turned out pretty well, considering, but her great intelligence had put her—and other people—in danger. Barbara needed to grow up, and I figured Jake and Sandra would be good role models. Well, at least Sandra would.

But Barbara wasn’t buying it. “I’ll turn you in,” she said fiercely.

“And Yoobie will catch you too.”

Barbara paused. “Yes, but what I didn’t tell you before is that they’ll save me. They won’t wipe my mind. I’m sure they won’t. They won’t do it once they know the truth. They won’t save you, but they’ll save me. I can fix the problems with the drug.”

I shook my head. “Now it’s my turn to clue you in about Yoobie. The one thing they fear above all else is violence.”

She started to say something, then she looked thoughtful.

I pressed my advantage. “They’ll find out you blew up the car. And despite your assurance that no one got hurt, two people who were nearby suffered second-degree burns.”

“How do you—”

“Your monitors. That’s how I found out. You have them hooked up to the institute’s cameras and security system, but with some maneuvering I tapped into the news circuit a short while ago. Yoobie will trace the chemical residue. They probably wouldn’t find out you did it without my help, but once I set them on the right track, they’ll know for sure you’re guilty. And my guess is that you’ve done this more than just once.” I paused. “They won’t save you, Barbara. They’ll be more afraid of you than anyone else.”

Her face became bright red. She screamed and slammed her fist into the wall with a surprising amount of force. I was betting her fingers ached more than mine did, but in her agitated state she probably didn’t even feel it. “I won’t submit to you!” she cried. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

“That’s your choice,” I told her.

She gave me the most evil look I’ve ever seen. Her voice shook with rage. “My only consolation is that what happens to me will happen to you.”

I was counting on it.

Barbara’s criticism of the Opposition was right. When you counted hearts instead of votes, we were in the majority.

There were some scary moments. The Yoobie agents who took Barbara and me into custody spared little feeling in their disdain. They wanted to begin rehabilitation right away.

A bureaucratic tussle ensued in my case. The Yoobie agent who had been trailing me carried a specific message, but Yoobie hadn’t caught onto my investigation of Kirst at the time—I had instead been selected for jury duty. My E.R.C.B. qualified me, and the Court Bureau and the Reform Bureau engaged in a spat with me in the middle, until the higher-ups sensibly ruled that rehabilitation overrode jury duty.

An indescribable anxiety swept over me as the technician sank the needle into my arm. The white uniforms, white walls, white floors, and white cot in the room crushed me, washed away all contrast and variety. Swathed in a white robe, I lost my identity, my separation from the environment.

The drugs would have finished me off, had they been given. But after ten of the longest minutes of my life, I discovered the I.V. contained nothing but saline, with an addition, perhaps, of a mild sedative. The sedative may or may not have been in the solution—my relief was so great that it may have just felt like it.

I had not been saved officially. Unofficially, someone along the line—the technician who administered the drug, the pharmacist who dispensed it, the nurse who supervised the procedure, the physician who prescribed the treatment, or even the orderly who turned down the bed sheet—someone had secretly intervened on my behalf.

It’d been a risky bet. But if the majority belonged to the Opposition, I figured somebody would come to my aid, especially after the importance of the charges against me leaked out. Ops were especially attuned to cases that Yoobie tried desperately to hide.

Barbara had also been given saline. I saw her a few times in the hallway, pretending to stumble about, as I was doing. But when we passed, we shared a glance that told each of us all we needed to know. She was okay. Still a bit peeved, but intact. And smart enough to play her role as convincingly as possible. She understood the consequences of failure.

We had to play the game a little while longer, then Yoobie would release us. By that time, I felt, Barbara would be more receptive to my ideas. I figured that this experience was just what she needed to broaden her understanding and give her a taste of what it was like to be the helpless subject of a brutal, insensitive authority. Maybe she wouldn’t be so quick in the future to do the same to other people.

I had no plans to keep my feelings hidden once Barbara was safely out of rehab. And if I could convince Barbara to join the Opposition, all the better. Not the old Opposition—the new Opposition. We wouldn’t be able to change all at once, but the time had arrived for us to take the first steps in getting our connections out in the open. A few well-placed advanced AIs could do wonders in publicizing our dissatisfaction with the current regime and promoting a public discussion of alternatives to the bloated, draconian system that had been weighing all of us down for far too long.

Content

Connections
by Kyle Kirkland