Turn or Burn (3 page)

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Dr. Sebastian told me that their next attempt is
mind uploading
. That’s uploading a human’s conscious mind into a computer, giving him the ability to live forever, or at least for a whole lot longer than we do now. It’s far out, nearly unimaginable stuff, but they think they can do it. Then, they could even create virtual worlds where this new mind, free of its human body, could explore.”

He turned his glass around in his hands and continued. “His family’s been getting death threats. First one came six weeks ago. That’s when I put a team together. But I lost one of my guys last night. His wife found out she has breast cancer, so he’s out. And I need you.”

“And there it is, ladies and gentlemen.”

“The Singularity Summit starts in two days. It’s at the Convention Center downtown. All these nerds from around the world—people from NASA, Microsoft, Google, Apple, et cetera—come to listen to scientists and visionaries and philosophers talk about how we might reach the Singularity and what life could be like after it occurs. They’re expecting heavy protests. Guess who the headlining speaker is.” Ted filled the glass and put his feet up on the table. “Yep…Dr. Sebastian. He and his partner will be demonstrating their work in public for the first time. He’s got a wife and two little boys, Harper. I need your help. Need somebody like you on the team.”

“Right. I feel like we’re back in the desert already. Tell me about the team.”

“There will be four of us. Will Dervitz. I found him in Africa last year. He knows what he’s doing. And then my cousin, Francesca Daly. You’ve met her, right?”

“No. Heard you talk about her, though. A woman…really?”

“Get over it. She can outshoot and outthink you all day long.”

“Right. I’ve heard that before.”

“It’s good pay and I know you need the dough. What is it you told me one time? ‘How do you make a small fortune in the wine business? Start with a large one.’ You need me as much as I need you. A couple weeks at the most. I know you’re ready to get back out there. Live a little.”

“You don’t know anything about me anymore. My head’s still not right.”

“I think you’re better than you let on.”

I stood, turned, and opened the door.  “C’mon, Roman.”

My savior got to his paws and slipped through the crack in the door.

“What do you say, partner?”

I looked at him.  “Not a chance. I’m going to get some sleep. You’re welcome to stay if you’d like. You know where everything is. Make yourself at home.”

“I’ll probably take you up on that.”

“No problem. See you bright and early. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

“I knew it would take some convincing.”

“It would take more than that. Good night.”

“Tofu,” he said, stopping me. “You’re not still taking the blame for what happened to Jay, are you?”

There it was…that elephant. I chewed on my lip for a second, staring at the ground, contemplating a response. I didn’t have one. “Good night, Ted.”

“You have to let it go,” he said.

“Thanks, Ted. And now you’re going to tell me it wasn’t my fault. Fuck off.” With that, I closed the door.

Upstairs, I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed so that I could get another terrible night’s rest. Nothing like tossing and turning, spinning in useless thoughts, waiting for the demons to come. I was almost getting used to them. I’d certainly forgotten what sweet slumber meant.

We both left the Army at the same time and started doing private contract work. That’s when I met his younger brother, Jay, for the first time. Jay was ex-Navy, a year younger than me, and he’d been contracting for a couple years by the time Ted and I got on board. In fact, he’s the one who talked us into it. He’s the one who got us our first jobs. Despite what happened, I still have some grand memories of those days. Back then, the three of us ruled the world together. There was nothing we couldn’t do in a war zone. I pity the fool who tried to take us on.

The deal with contracting was that it paid better and we didn’t have to follow rules. I love the Army and the Green Berets as much as I love our country, but I believed I had more to offer as a contractor than a tied-down military man. We could pick our battles and be more effective fighting them. The three of us were bouncing around Iraq long before Saddam and Blackwater were household names. Making six figures and a real difference.

This was before the government got greedy and started paying any numbskull with a gun to get a job done. It used to be only those of us who had served could get the gig. Only those of us who had real knowledge of how to win battles, how to work with allied forces, how to produce results, how to protect. But contractors came to be in such high demand that there just weren’t enough of us, and they started taking anyone that knew how to pull a trigger. That’s why Jay was killed, because he’d been surrounded by idiots. But I was set on taking the blame and guilt to my coffin. If his death was any one person’s fault, it was
mine
.

Aside from the obvious, the devastating fact about that day was I couldn’t really remember it. I could see bits and pieces but it wasn’t a memory like most. And that broke my heart. I couldn’t even give Jay the respect of remembrance. I wanted so badly to relive those hours, to analyze what we’d done wrong and how I could have changed things, but I couldn’t. Once it got ugly, I blacked out.

So I hadn’t taken a job in two years; decided I wasn’t capable. I don’t think anyone would have argued with me. And I’d closed myself off from the world. Being responsible for a man’s death is too much for any man to handle, and the same men who had killed Jay had tortured me until I could taste death, and that didn’t help things, either. That week in Afghanistan, I was shown the dark side—something that I can’t shake. Even in my dreams. It took my soul and broke it down, like a fist crushing a cracker to crumbs.

Yeah, I felt like those crumbs. No doctor in his right mind would ever clear me for battle again.

I’d never be ready.

“I got my catnap. That’s all I can do these days.”

“Nightmares?”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“Got a call from my team,” Ted said, not letting me wallow in my sorrows. “King 5 is reporting protesters already pouring into town. Sounds like Battle in Seattle all over again. Remember that WTO disaster back in the nineties?”

“Yep.”

“Could really use you on this one.” He poured himself a cup of coffee out of the press. “I know you’re hurting inside. I know you think you’re a liability, and maybe you are in the real world. But not when you’ve got a gun in your hand. It’s like a pacifier in your mouth, and you know it. Nothing can fix you like returning to the swell.”

I had to admit it. Ted had a point.

“I have a reputation to uphold,” he continued. “I’ve never lost anyone on my watch. You know why? Because I pick the best. Even if I have to stop in hippie wine-land to get ‘em. Now quit acting like a little girl and go pack your bags. It’s Seattle for God’s sake. A long way from any war. How bad could it get?”

“One week?”

“Two weeks, max.”

I thought about it. I needed the money and the action. And Ted was right: it was a quick fix. And I could use it. Better than vodka or codeine or heroin.

Better than the barrel of a gun in my mouth.

“What the hell. Give me ten minutes. I’ll follow you.” So much for strength.

I leapt up the stairs two at a time and threw my things together. Nine minutes later, I tossed a bag in the back and climbed into my diesel and turned the key. She crunched to life. Roman jumped in and buried his head in my lap. I lightly pinched his ears.  “Not this time, buddy.  I need you to look after the place. Will you do that?” 

I grabbed his muzzle and looked right into his eyes. He was everything to me.  Everything.  “Be back in a couple weeks.”  I let go of his muzzle, and he buried his head back into my lap. I pulled him away and said, “Go on.”  He looked mournfully at me one last time and jumped out of the truck.  Chaco, my go-to guy for everything on the mountain, would take care of him on the farm while I was away.

I rolled down the windows and followed Ted’s Toyota out of the driveway and onto Sunset Road, the main road that was home to all the Red Mountain vineyards and wineries. Roman was in my rearview mirror, running with everything he had, a trail of dust following him.  I pushed down the gas.  He ran harder. 

As I reached the Stop sign at the end of Sunset, Roman came up next to the truck, panting.  I said, “Go home, boy. Chaco will take care of you.”  He barked, put his head down, and turned back, slowly walking the mile back to the house.

As I pulled onto the highway a couple miles from the house, I called Chaco and told him I’d be out of town for a while and asked if he would take care of things. He said he’d be happy to look after Roman and my place, and I bid him good-bye.

I’d gotten to know Chaco through some mutual acquaintances about two years ago. Now I relied on him without fail. Chaco could grow or fix anything.  His roots went back to Mexican cocaine cartel work back in Oaxaca.  After turning in his machine gun, he swam the Rio Grande with nothing but jeans and a shirt and worked his way up through California and then into Washington State.  Came up to work the cherry and grape harvests, and he proved himself.  When I’d returned to Red Mountain to plant a vineyard, I’d forgotten a lot. It had been more than a decade since I’d worked with grapes.  Chaco brought it all back for me, and he became a friend. 

I didn’t listen to anything on the drive. Just watched it all go by, trying to keep up with Ted. Truth was, I craved silence. I really had to be in the mood to listen to music, and I sure as hell didn’t want to listen to some dipshit run his mouth on the radio.

The journey three hours west to Seattle was a geographic marvel. Not even I could complain about it, especially on a clear day. The snowcapped Mt. Adams lay ahead and rose higher up from the horizon with each mile. Sixty miles of vineyards and hops, all the way to Yakima. If you’ve ever had a Coors or Budweiser, you’ve tasted Eastern Washington hops. They grow more there than anywhere else on the planet. 

We climbed the Manastash Pass toward Ellensburg. Came down the other side and started toward the Cascades. The temperature dropped. I started to see snow. The steep, broken cliffs and monstrous evergreens rose high overhead, and I put my hands at ten and two, negotiating the winding mountainous roads. It was a world away from my vineyard in the desert.

An hour later, the road flattened again and traffic picked up. We passed a billboard for the Singularity Summit. It was black with silver writing explaining the where and when, and on the upper right hand corner, there was a picture of this doctor who had hired us. The caption underneath said:
Headlining Speaker, Dr. Wilhelm Sebastian, lead scientist of the Fusion Project, will change the world.

I dialed Ted, starting to get a bit more curious. “Okay, you’ve got me. What the hell is this doctor up to?”

“I don’t know that I can explain it that well,” he said.

“Give me your best.”

“Okay. They’ve figured out a way their chimp, Rachael, can access the Internet using brain waves. The idea is that eventually none of us will need computers or cell phones…or at least we won’t need to drag them around. They will be embedded into our brains.

“Sebastian said it’s very crude and undesirable now. They had to drill a hole in Rachael’s brain in order to connect the implant, but the hope is that they can figure out a less invasive way soon. They’re still a year or more away from being able to try it with a human, but it works. He showed it to me. And it’s a game changer. How do you give a student a test like the SAT to test his knowledge and ability if he has access to all the answers just by thinking his way onto the Internet?”

“How could they possibly prove this with a chimp?” I asked.

“This implant communicates directly with an Intranet built specifically for the project. The first website they used was very basic. A green square is on the right. A red one on the left. If Rachael can move the flashing cursor to the green, she gets a nip of peanut butter. If she moves it to the red, she gets a pretzel. Once she figured out the pattern, she never once went back to the red square. She’s a peanut butter kind of girl.”

“How did she know how to move the cursor?” I asked.

“Just by thinking it, really. If she thinks the color green, almost wishing the cursor to move there, it does. This is all part of the nanotechnology embedded in this tiny chip in her skull. I think that’s where the genius of the technology comes in. That chip. It’s a computer mouse that you place inside your mind. It’s the same thing as your brain telling your hand to open or close. Same neural communication. I’m telling you, Harper…it’s mind-blowing.”

“I’m sure. So you still have to have a way to see what you’re doing? A way to see the screen? I would think you would be limited.”

“Sebastian said they were very close to finishing a contact lens that could display that same screen. Then the next step would be figuring out a way in which you could see a screen in your mind just by closing your eyes. Or closing one eye. Or maybe not even closing an eye. Who knows?”

“I’ll be damned.”