Behind the Veihl

“What did he say to you to get you to take this gig?” A tall man with dark skin ques­tioned in a hushed voice that still rum­bled with baritone.

“Who, Tony?” Godiya returned with­out look­ing up from her book.

“Yeah, what’s the pitch that sells a young nurse on a life­time of seclu­sion ded­i­cat­ed to a sin­gle client?” Remy leaned back against the door­frame, hands fold­ed atop his mop.

“I could find myself equal­ly curi­ous about what would sell MIT’s gold­en boy in the com­put­er sci­ence depart­ment, a twen­ty-five-year-old cer­ti­fied philo­math, on a life­time of seclu­sion that includ­ed giv­ing up fin­ish­ing his degree, and all the lucra­tive career options, and the yachts, man­sions, super-cars, and super-mod­els it would come with for a career push­ing a mop in a place that doesn’t exist.”  Godiya glanced up, wink­ing, lips pursed in a poor­ly mocked frown.

“They told me I’d get to see the real ones.”  Remy fixed on the ceil­ing, eyes unfo­cused, lost in the mem­o­ry of the intox­i­cant that led him there.

“The real ones?”

“The Gibsons.  When Dr. Metzinger read my pro­pos­al for my master’s the­sis, he took me aside.  He said I would need bet­ter com­put­ers than the school had access to.  He set me up a meet­ing with Barb.  Barb told me that if I would be will­ing to let them man­age the project, they’d guar­an­tee me an advi­so­ry posi­tion and the equip­ment to com­plete the project.

“The Gibsons; AI with hard­ware sets the com­mer­cial mar­ket will nev­er even see.  Topographical q‑bit matri­ces, mul­ti-dimen­sion­al prob­a­bil­i­ty arrays stored in quan­tum-lat­tice, crys­talline data tow­ers with the capac­i­ty to store not only the entire his­to­ry of humankind and the Earth on which they lived but every poten­tial his­to­ry in our future.  That was it for me.  I had been dream­ing of com­put­ers like that since I was a lit­tle boy, watch­ing sci-fi on a tablet in my gramma’s trail­er.  I would, and did, give up every­thing to lay hands on a lady like that.”

“And then there was that thing with the mop,” Godiya grinned up at him.

“What hap­pened?” She continued.

“As soon as they got my sig­na­ture on that NDA of theirs, they told me that my project would have to be shelved because they, “did not cur­rent­ly have sys­tem resources ade­quate to man­age that many data sets with that many inter­ac­tions over that peri­od of time.” Truth is, they just want­ed this research out of pub­lic devel­op­ment before it got start­ed. They said they had a posi­tion as a main­te­nance engi­neer that I could hold until the project was ready to come online, and that they would gra­cious­ly con­tin­ue my admin­is­tra­tive pay and ben­e­fits; hence, I inher­it­ed this mop and no alter­na­tive employ­ment options.”

“What was the project?”

“I devel­oped some algo­rithms to teach deep learn­ing mod­els to tell the dif­fer­ence between envi­ron­men­tal stim­u­lus behav­iors and hive-mind direc­tives in ant colonies. It required tag­ging and watch­ing every ant in a sin­gle nest for the life of the struc­ture.  Oh, and, ah, all of their prog­e­ny with­in a mile.”

“Ah. That does seem like a lot.”  Godiya stood from the reclin­er that faced Max’s bed and stretched.

“Can we take this out­side?  He can hear us.”  She squeezed past Remy and his mop into the hall, eas­ing him out behind her.

“Do you like to read, Mr. Ramirez?”

“That depends, Miss Lambro.  I don’t tend to spend much time on romance nov­els… yet.” Remy chuckled.

“You real­ly didn’t notice the books in my stack, did you?  Not what I meant any­way.  Follow me.”

Godiya led Remy through a maze of retro-future pas­sage­ways that leaned more toward Lucas than Scott in design.  Long halls of curved walls cov­ered in a beige tex­tile sur­face that damp­ened any echo not absorbed by the plush mer­lot run­ner cov­er­ing the cor­ri­dor floor.  Veins and arter­ies branched to the left and right. Nests of com­plex touch­screens embed­ded in alcoves of the curved cor­ri­dors left Roddenberry’s fin­ger­print on the architecture.

After exe­cut­ing a com­plex series of turns, Godiya stopped at an inter­sec­tion end­ing in a T. Corridors to the left and right con­tin­ued as far as Remy could see, unbro­ken but by the dou­ble doors they faced at the inter­sec­tion.  A tiny met­al plac­ard riv­et­ed into the sur­face of the curve beside the tall stain­less doors was stamped with the word “Transcription.” Godiya licked her palm and wiped a huge smudge across the sur­face of the win­dow­less doors.  It erased itself in a line behind her hand and was gone by the time she lift­ed her fin­ger­tips from the surface.

“Fingerprint-proof stain­less.  Pretty cool, huh?  Uses N^2‑KLN nano-clean­ers baked into the sur­face.  The lit­tle bots are attract­ed to any­thing that’s not stain­less steel.  They drop what­ev­er they catch at the bot­tom of the sur­face where the par­ti­cles are vapor­ized by a decom­pil­er.”  Godiya wrapped her fin­gers around the stain­less horse­shoe han­dle of the door.  There was a short hum­ming vibra­tion fol­lowed by a beep, and she swung the mono­lith­ic bar­ri­er open with­out effort.

“Do you think we real­ly need a mop guy? Come on.” With a sweep of her arm, she ush­ered Remy into a bil­liard hall with a haze of blue smoke.  It was being dri­ven down by a corkscrew of bam­boo ceil­ing fans onto green felt tables that looked to have been ancient when his grand­fa­ther had slipped a stick.  Mysteriously, the only scent was of autumn leaves and ker­nel corn with the faint under­tone of cold diesel, and grav­el with yesterday’s bub­blegum embedded.

“The smoke is called smartMizt. It’s one of Max’s cre­ations.  Purely for ambiance.  Designed for those nos­tal­gic for the haze-stran­gled noir of mem­o­ry with­out the actu­al stran­gu­la­tion of tobac­co smoke.  In fact, the vapor is made up of pro­gram­ma­ble nano-rotors car­ry­ing micro­scop­ic water droplets.  The pat­terns of the “smoke” are pro­gram­able.  The drift and swirl pat­terns you see now come from Harrison Ford’s apart­ment in Blade Runner.  Many of those droplets car­ry the scents that you’re detect­ing here.  It’s a pro­file of Max’s favorites blend­ed from his mem­o­ries.  I think he calls it October at The Farm. 

Godiya flopped back onto a strange lobed couch built into the stuc­co-sur­faced wall.  She was hold­ing a ream of trac­tor feed paper with dot-matrix type­face tat­tooed into both sides of the green and white spool.   Cones of illu­mi­na­tion from the indus­tri­al pen­dant lights played spot­lights, mak­ing the swirling mist into exot­ic dancers; all call­ing for atten­tion.  Remy found them hard to take his eyes off.

“Hey Remy.  Pull up a stool. You ever read the transcripts?”

“Transcripts?”

“Yes, tran­scripts. Every word Max says in SIM on paper, plus all the gen­er­at­ed respons­es, as well as gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the sce­nario.  Reads like a screen­play, mostly.

“You do read, don’t you? Things oth­er than mon­ster truck rags, or Bubble Yo-Ho’s fanzine trans­lat­ed from Japanese?”

“Yeah, I read.  I saw a copy of Idoru on the arm of your chair when you got up to ah… show me around?  I was just giv­ing you grief.”  Remy returned flatly.

“I thought so.  Only way some­one your age would know to call them Gibsons.” Godiya noted.

“But why would any­one want to read the text of some six­teen-year-old kid’s per­pet­u­al fever dream?” He grinned when he said it, eyes far away.

“I don’t know, Remy.  What would yours have looked like, had you had such a fever dream?  You haven’t asked about Max’s inventions.”

“That’s true. I’m tak­ing in a lot here.  Pardon the oversight.”

“The inven­tions are why peo­ple read Max’s tran­scripts.  Most of the tech­nolo­gies you are wit­ness­ing were just emerg­ing when Max went under.  Because Max’s imag­i­na­tion has not been con­fined by how the world actu­al­ly devel­oped, but by how he imag­ines it devel­op­ing, Max has a tal­ent for putting these ideas togeth­er in unex­pect­ed ways.  Like using nano-rotors to car­ry infi­nite­ly small water droplets to make pro­gram­able smoke dancers.  Also, a good way to make a mag­ni­fy­ing lens out of water in the sky to focus sun­light. Max didn’t think of that part.

“Another great thing about these tran­scripts, for the wise and intre­pid gov­ern­ment engi­neer, is that they are an excel­lent way to get to know the peo­ple you work for. Read last night’s.  I’ll make you some tea.”

“Tea?”

Godiya stuffed the ream into Remy’s hands and slipped behind the bar adja­cent to the dou­ble doors.  She grabbed two mugs from an over­head cab­i­net and set about draw­ing water.

“Uhm… Coffee?”  Remy requested.

“Read now.  Tea now.  Beer after.  Is that too many words at once?”

“Hush! I’m reading!”

“Good thing I’m a fan of sim­ple oper­at­ing sys­tems.” Godiya mocked.

The pot on the pol­ished glass counter began to squeal.  She poured a steam­ing foun­tain over the strain­er atop the serv­ing pot.  After a few min­utes, she decant­ed the tea, with unhur­ried respect, into del­i­cate Asian porce­lain, ancient or an excel­lent fac­sim­i­le. She hand­ed him the tea, return­ing to her seat on the sofa.  Sipping her tea, Godiya played her fin­gers through the trails of steam hov­er­ing above the cup.

“He designed a hive of nanopar­ti­cles car­ry­ing micro­scop­ic droplets of berg­amot oil.  They swarm to hot tea.  They dis­si­pate once the liq­uid is below one hun­dred degrees Fahrenheit.  Did you read the part where Gina tells Max some evil peo­ple have infil­trat­ed his net?  That they are caus­ing him hal­lu­ci­na­tions to manip­u­late him by remote control?”

Remy flipped through the spool, fold­ing it neat­ly at its per­fo­ra­tions onto the bil­liards table until he reached a state­ment indi­cat­ing Max dis­cov­er­ing Gina reclin­ing in his down­stairs apart­ment.  His brows fur­rowed and he gri­maced when he tast­ed the tea but swal­lowed it anyway.

“Oh, that’s heavy.  Then she put him out.  Just like that.”  Remy remarked.

“Used to make me cry.  Every time she did that to him. Now I just hate it, but I under­stand it for what it is.”  Godiya’s tone was somber, but she met his eyes.

“And what is it?”

“The thing I hate, the thing I real­ly hate most, I think, is that she’s not actu­al­ly lying to him.  There is some big nasty force infil­trat­ing his net and caus­ing him delu­sions for the pur­pose of manip­u­lat­ing him by remote control.

It’s her. And it piss­es me off.”  Her voice had an edge that years had worn off leav­ing it most­ly tired.

“I can see how it would. I’m sure there’s more.”  His voice was smooth, unaffected.

“She has to, because Max must agree to let her take him off-line.  In fact, it’s prefer­able if it’s ‘his idea.’ They’re going to do a hard­ware upgrade on Max’s pri­ma­ry sys­tems.  So Gina puts Max under increas­ing lev­els of per­ceived threat until he asks her to bring him in.  He knows com­ing back to “the hos­pi­tal” requires black-site lev­el seda­tion. Permission granted.” 

“And why does Gina need Max’s per­mis­sion to ‘pow­er him down’?”  Remy’s ques­tion is dry, tone flat, eyes unwavering.

“Because of what Sidney did.”  Godiya’s gaze slipped from Remy’s face to her shoes.  She set her cold cup of tea onto the pol­ished counter of the bar where the fin­ger smudges and evi­dence of use erased them­selves leav­ing the China gleam­ing.  Approaching the table Remy was using as a desk, Godiya beckoned.

“Bring that with you. Remember that what you’re hold­ing is a sin­gle day’s tran­script.  Roughly one hun­dred fifty pages, depend­ing on the day’s activities.”

Godiya point­ed at the tran­script Remy had laid out on the table.  She weaved through the off­set rows of pool tables and flagged Remy to fol­low her, stop­ping in front of a win­dow to the glow­ing court­yard out­side.  A thick plate of glass, long and rec­tan­gu­lar with beveled cor­ners set deep into the wall of the tran­scrip­tion room can­ti­na.  Outside, tall oaks and wil­lows sur­round­ed a half-acre gaz­ing pool as still as glass.  Tufts of cot­ton from dog­wood tress float­ed in irreg­u­lar fren­zies, always nar­row­ly miss­ing the water’s surface.

“Ever won­der how you build a court­yard this far under a moun­tain?”  Godiya quizzed.

“I’ve nev­er seen one since I onboard­ed.  But now that I have, the ques­tion does come to mind.”

“Occam’s Razor, Remy.  What’s the sim­plest answer?”

“Simplest answer, you don’t.  Remember, G, I came here for the tech.  It’s not a win­dow.  It’s a mon­i­tor.  Fairly mirac­u­lous in its clar­i­ty, col­or, and def­i­n­i­tion.  What is it, 16K?”

“You’re half-right. It’s a lumi­nes­cent bio-matrix; that’s why the “glass” media is so thick. You can’t define the res­o­lu­tion in pix­els. The num­ber of lum­i­neers is vari­able. They repli­cate and dis­as­sem­ble on demand, depend­ing on the require­ments for what they’re dis­play­ing. However…” Godiya placed three fin­gers on the glass and spread them.  An oval emerged on the sur­face, replac­ing the scenic pond with anoth­er view.

“It is also a win­dow.” Godiya finished.

Remy approached the glass.  Beyond the inch-thick sur­face was a flat expanse of con­crete as large as Chicago’s O’Hare air­field.  Freeway sodi­um lamps stood at what must have been one-block inter­vals for as far as Remy could see in any direc­tion. He sucked in his breath.

“Holy… Coulda been a court­yard.  Coulda been a for­est!” Remy whistled.

“It start­ed as a legal thing.  Max was eigh­teen before the orig­i­nal pro­ce­dure was fin­ished.  Mrs. Veihl’s con­sent was no longer valid.  We had to get Max’s con­sent to per­form upgrades with­out ever queu­ing Max for his sim­u­lat­ed exis­tence.  So, we set up a sce­nario involv­ing a sequence of main­te­nance surg­eries in SIM as Max’s doc­tors.  After the first few, he start­ed becom­ing resis­tant to ‘his doctor’s’ sug­ges­tions.  He said he felt fine and didn’t want any more trips to the hos­pi­tal.  His tran­scripts indi­cat­ed he was los­ing cohe­sion, psychologically.

“Gina had a dif­fer­ent idea.  She wrote some goons into the SIM to chase Max back to the hos­pi­tal.  When they brought him back, cohe­sion was great.  No gaps in time-stream.  No con­ti­nu­ity errors. All green. We learned that when it was Max’s idea to come in, every­thing worked.”

“Five by five.  Got it. Then what?”

“Then Sidney took over.  He decid­ed that since Max did not legal­ly exist any­more, he no longer bore the rights of an American cit­i­zen, and we didn’t need his per­mis­sion for any­thing.  So he took Gina’s idea and enhanced it.  He sent goons in to ter­ror­ize Max and then kill him.”

Godiya put her three fin­gers back on the glass.  With her cen­ter fin­ger, she made a corkscrew motion while spread­ing the oth­er two in an expand­ing spi­ral. A cir­cle appeared in the cen­ter of the sur­face, again spread­ing to reveal a new vista.

The con­crete expanse with its matrix of sodi­um lamps remained, but now under the glow of each lamp was a silo, each sev­er­al sto­ries tall, and each con­tain­ing stacks of six-foot diam­e­ter indus­tri­al rolls of the same paper Remy was hold­ing.  In the space sur­round­ing each silo were grids of old indus­tri­al com­put­er print­ers spew­ing tran­scripts while small ware­house robots loaded new rolls and oth­ers unloaded com­plet­ed rolls, mov­ing them into the silos.

“When Sidney killed Max in SIM, Max’s print­ers went crazy.  Started pro­duc­ing reams and reams a day.  Nobody could fig­ure out how.  His brain was pro­duc­ing no sig­nal at all, oth­er than the out­put to the print­ers.  That’s when they built the first silo.  Sidney start­ed bring­ing in more print­ers.  He col­lect­ed them from every­where, banks and air­lines, every­thing com­mer­cial was mov­ing to inkjets.  Sidney start­ed won­der­ing if he could change the fla­vor of the out­put tran­scripts, so he boot­ed Max back up and ran a new and more hor­ri­fy­ing sce­nario in SIM, then killed Max again.  More reams.  Different transcripts.”

“You can’t be seri­ous.”  Remy looked over the field of con­crete and silos again.  He couldn’t even find a way to esti­mate how many there were.

“Sidney loved it.  Most effi­cient way to pro­duce new out­puts.  So he wrote new sce­nar­ios.  Hundreds of them.  And he killed Max, over and over again, for years until he final­ly died.”

“That is the most hor­ri­fy­ing thing I’ve ever heard.  I’m so glad I came to work here.”  Remy just stared at Godiya, face slack.

“The thing is, Remy, the den­si­ty of the tran­scripts nev­er changed.  It stayed at about 150 pages rep­re­sent­ing a day of Max’s time in SIM.”

Godiya put her hand to the glass and stared out.

“How long was Max dead when we killed him?

“I nev­er answered your ques­tion.  What Tony said when he recruit­ed me. He said, ‘We nev­er give up on them.  We’ll nev­er let one of our kids die.’

“Then Sidney made me wish he’d been lying.”