Gene Mapper (12 page)

“I had no idea.”

“It’s kind of a scam, really. You buy a farm with its DMZ. Then you sell the DMZ to a company that specializes in that kind of thing, so it’s not part of your farm anymore. Things have changed, of course. Now there are designed grasses you can plant in your DMZ. They keep out most insects and weeds, so you don’t need to go around blasting chemicals. Even if you do, pesticides these days are safer than they used to be, but a Full Organic zone completely surrounded by a chemical kill zone doesn’t make a lot of sense on its face.

“The point is, we didn’t do that here. Our DMZ is also Full Organic. It gets the same five certs as the rest of the site. It was tough getting those certifications, let me tell you.” Thep put her arms around her knees and stared off toward the tree line. “We planted ours with designed mustard greens.”

“Was that your job? To get the certifications?”

“The whole idea was mine.”

I looked at Thep with new respect.

“Sure, I had help. Takashi took the proposal to L&B and got them to approve it. He also got Enrico and Lintz to give me a research budget. I’m really grateful for all the support.”

The wind was blowing Thep’s hair into her eyes. She made no move to brush it aside—it was just my suit’s projection—as she gazed at the terraces falling away toward the valley floor, lush with the fluorescent green of SR06.

“The nocturnal glow is a downer, but at least we have a DMZ free of chemicals. The next time we build one of these sites, I may have to toss out the whole DMZ concept.”

Even with Emotion Control disabled, the suit’s projection of my “buddy” was very easy on the eyes. Still, just then I was feeling drawn to Thep in a way that had nothing to do with the suit.

“Well, are you rested up? We better get going. My gear is so shitty, I can only stay out here for a few hours.”

Thep stood and massaged the base of her spine. At least that was what the suit showed me. She was probably checking to make sure the replacement filter for her gas mask was still hanging off her belt.

*   *   *

Thep planted the tripod at the edge of the road next to the field and hoisted the camera array into place.

“This is today’s border between SR06 and the advancing intruder. SR06 to the left of the line, intruder to the right. By tomorrow we should have footage of actual mutation.”

“The grain heads are forming. Hey, what’s that?”

The line between SR06 and the mutated plants was blurry, as if something was swarming over the leaves.

“We harvest in thirty days if everything stays on track. If we can’t ship because of the mutation, we won’t even bother to harvest.” Thep noticed my gaze. “What’s wrong?”

Tiny green dots were moving all over the SR06 leaves. Was it the suit again?

“I’m seeing some kind of visual noise, like a moire pattern. It’s starting to make me nervous.”

“Disable AR and check it out.”

I touched the thumb and little finger of my left hand to my temples. “Deactivate.”

The millions of feathers vanished. My suit was back. The gel was warm and slippery.

My visor was clear now, but what I was seeing was unchanged. It looked just like the suit’s AR mode.

“There’s no change.”

“Pardon, what did you say?” Thep’s English was back.

“What I’m seeing has not changed.”

“Must be grasshoppers.”

I walked to the edge of the road for a closer look. Now I could see that the green dots were insects—thousands or millions of them. Every SR06 leaf had a little colony. I was getting dizzy trying to take in the whole scene. That, and the warmth of the goopy gel, gave me that feeling of something rising in my throat again.

I made the gesture, reactivated the suit, and pointed to the swarming grasshoppers.

“This makes no sense. I thought insects wouldn’t touch SR06.”

“That’s why I tried to warn L&B. Many times. Enrico’s not there, you said. I guess that’s why my messages didn’t get through.”

“Did you take samples?”

“Of course. I was going to sequence them and find out what they were. But our sequencer and the PC with Gene Analytics crashed the same day. Shit, I should’ve asked you guys to bring me replacements. That’s why we couldn’t do the second round of samples.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of that today.”

“The first grasshopper samples I took disappeared, you know. I shouldn’t have left them lying around. I forgot that the staff here are pretty superstitious.”

Teak Na again. Fair Trade local hiring had a downside. The sight of all these insects busily chewing away at L&B’s “insect-proof” rice plants must have looked like divine retribution.

I squatted to get a closer look. The suit zoomed in on one of the bugs. It had sturdy, tiger-stripe wings and was motionless, except for the constant movement of its mandibles chewing away at the leaf. Thep was right. It looked like you could just pick them up.

I heard a beep close to my ear. A suit alarm? A message appeared beside the enlarged image of the grasshopper.

IFF RESPONSE: NEGATIVE

FOUND OBJECT: GRASSHOPPER TYPE

THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN

“What the hell?”

“What’s wrong?”

“My suit is telling me the grasshopper isn’t responding to Identify Friend or Foe. Says it doesn’t know how much of a threat it is.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with your suit. Grasshoppers are grasshoppers.”

If a grasshopper was all it took to set off the suit’s IFF, how would it detect real threats? The suits we got from Kim were military surplus. Maybe they needed adjusting.

“Yeah, I think you’re right. Anyway, I’ll take a sample.”

I took a jar from my backpack. Leave it to the Americans to use love as a motivational tool for soldiers while challenging insects to declare whether they are with you or against you.

I sat in our private compartment waiting for the Dong Duong Express to get underway for Ho Chi Minh City. Kurokawa was lying on the seat across from me, wrapped in a blue blanket. The sun was just starting to lighten the horizon, but the curtains were closed so he could sleep.

“You’ve got chocolate on your face.”

Thep, sitting next to me, pointed to my mouth. I wiped the chocolate off, leaving a brown streak on my thumb. The candy smelled cheap.

“Sorry about that. I told Nimol it was Kurokawa-san who needed the chocolate, not you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Give everyone my thanks for their help.”

When I ended up collapsing like Kurokawa, Thep’s people figured they should be shoving chocolate in my mouth every fifteen minutes too. When we got back from the field and I deactivated the suit, I’d been hit with some major side effects.

It happened in the sterilization chamber. They told me afterward that I let out a long howl and clung to Thep for support. Suddenly shutting down the suit’s continuous feedback was too much for my nervous system, and I panicked. Thep’s staff were used to the drill by now and got me out of the suit, flushed away the gel, and tied me to a bed in the infirmary where they pumped me full of tranquilizers. I remembered that much, then woke up in the van taking me and Kurokawa to Phnom Penh. That had only been an hour ago.

At Kurokawa’s insistence, Thep and Nimol had loaded us into the van late the night before and headed for Phnom Penh, racing to get us on the first express for Ho Chi Minh. Their chopper pilot wasn’t certified for night flight.

“I suggested to Kurokawa-san that you stay an extra day to rest up, but …”

While I was sleeping off my reaction to the suit, Kurokawa had been “awake,” using his avatar to interview Thep’s employees and wrap up the other parts of the investigation. He insisted that we return to Ho Chi Minh City today and send some findings to L&B before the TerraVu satellite passed over the site. Yagodo had discovered the mutation from TerraVu’s last batch of images, but those were taken at night. This time, the satellite would be shooting Mother Mekong in daylight. The images would be higher resolution and more damaging.

“I still don’t understand how he can sleep and still control his avatar,” said Thep.

“Yes, I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

Feedback chips in each major joint control the user’s avatar in augmented reality. The chips monitor actual movement and nerve impulses. Finer movements are filled in with simulation software, though the results are not very precise. I had never heard of people controlling a moving avatar while their body was immobilized.

“You don’t move in Private Mode, but this isn’t the same. He was controlling his avatar even while he was lying on his side, vomiting.”

“Vomiting? That’s nothing. His heart was stopped. How does he do it?”

The warning buzzer sounded. It was time to go.

“I’d like to tag along as far as the border, but I have to get back to Mother. I’ll ping you if something comes up. Let me know as soon as you have positive IDs.”

Thep thrust out a hand that was scored and scratched from working in the fields. “Well, see you.”

I shook her hand and felt the warmth of her body. Her hand wasn’t as warm, or as soft and unmarked, as in the vision. But at least it was real.

“Hope to see you again.”

In reality, if possible.

*   *   *

The train started moving. I blinked twice to deactivate my stage. If I maxed out on roaming in Cambodia, it would run me fifty bucks. In two hours we’d be across the border and the cost would drop to twenty. I’d just have to put up with the real world until then. I didn’t need Yagodo’s translation engine anyway.

Across from me, Kurokawa moved under his blanket. He was so small that a seat for two was big enough for him to lie down, as long as he curled up. Still, the cushions couldn’t have been all that comfortable.

“Takashi, we’re on our way. We’ll be in Ho Chi Minh in five hours.”

Kurokawa’s jaw moved. I could hear him exhale.

“Try to get some rest now.”

His head inclined slightly and he blinked twice. Was he inviting me into AR? I blinked twice and reactivated my stage. On the second blink, he was sitting upright, dressed in his suit.

I was rarely this close to his avatar. The sense of realism was astonishing. Morning sunlight through the gap in the curtains picked out vividly real details in his hair and the fabric of his suit. If I hadn’t known he was curled up under a blanket, I would have sworn he was actually sitting there, using RealVu. Or maybe I had it backward—what I’d always thought was RealVu in our meetings was actually this avatar.

“Mamoru, I want to thank you for taking the samples. Ms. Thep told me that your suit knocked you out too. How are you feeling?”

“No worries, I’m all right. It didn’t hit me that hard. I panicked a bit when I deactivated, that’s all. I had a good long sleep. But what about you? Is it okay for you to be up like this?”

“Yes, as long as you keep feeding me chocolate every fifteen minutes. The calories will help me recover while I apply homeostasis behavior. I should be up and around by the time we get to Ho Chi Minh.”

“Homeostasis behavior? What’s that?”

A corner of his mouth twitched. He scratched the tip of his nose. It was as good as RealVu, and he was doing it while he slept.

“I guess it’s about time I told you. You’ve seen what I can do. I appreciate your help, Mamoru. I want you to know that it wasn’t my intention to hide this from you.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped.

“During the East Asian Famine, I ate Super Rice Zero. It put me in a coma. Were you aware of this?”

“Well, that’s what … Thep said when we were in her locker room.” I almost said “Enrico.” I was glad I hadn’t, because it would have taken the conversation in a nasty direction.

“Oh, yes. I remember. I was fourteen. Everyone was hungry all the time. My father got hold of some rice for brewing sake. Super Rice Zero. I ate it. It caused brain damage. Polyglutamic acid isomers in the rice triggered excessive levels of mutated ataxin-l in my brain. Ataxin-1 is a protein that causes neuron death.”

Kurokawa reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a model of a highly folded protein molecule. He held it in the palm of his hand. It looked like two tangled protein circles linked by a few strands.

“Take a look. This is a mutated ataxin-1 protein. The two circles are supposed to be side by side, but—” He pointed to a blue strand crossing the bottom of the gap. “As you can see, the polyglutamic acid isomers cause this strand to bend. The protein circles become entangled with each other. Some of you may find this hard to follow because it involves both isomers and mutation.”

Kurokawa seemed to be looking right through me, as if he was talking to a room full of people.

“Takashi?”

“I realize that some of you here— Sorry. I was replaying a lecture I gave last year at L&B. It’s in their archive.”

Replaying a lecture? From an archive?

“Simply put, after I ate Super Rice Zero, I lost most of my cerebellum and brain stem.” He turned his head and pointed behind his right ear. “I think you know what functions those parts of the brain handle.”

“That’s impossible. You wouldn’t be able to move at all without function in those areas.” The cerebellum maintains motor coordination; the brain stem regulates the central nervous system. Both are critical for survival in vertebrates. If the brain stem stops functioning, the result is brain death. Kurokawa was saying he had lost most of those areas, but that was impossible. He was alive.

“I don’t blame you for being surprised. I use my avatar and precisely configured homeostasis behavior to compensate for the lost brain function. The behavior mostly makes up for the brain stem—”

“Hold it, Takashi. Conscious behavior as a replacement for autonomic brain function? How is that possible?”

“You saw the bar code on my shoulder yesterday?”

“Yes. I glanced at it.”

He took a photo from his pocket and held it out. It showed a young man in a hospital bed. His right shoulder was visible. A bar code peeked from under the sheets. It looked like the one I had seen yesterday.

The photo had a caption.

TAKASHI KUROKAWA, L&B CORP. SINGAPORE CENTRAL LAB

L&B’s Singapore facility was known to everyone in the industry. The first distilled crop plant, SR01, was engineered there. Along with his other work, Barnhard had been the lab’s managing director for more than twenty years.

Kurokawa drew his right index finger horizontally over his lips in the NDA gesture. I blinked once to agree and register the conversation in my NDA database. If I ever discussed this conversation with someone else, my avatar would keep me from disclosing anything confidential.

“They used me as a guinea pig. The bar code is my patient number and experimental subject code. I got it at L&B’s Central Research Lab. They didn’t ask for permission, they just did it. When Barnhard found out what was going on, he fired the director and took over himself. He had to get my consent after I woke up.”

Kurokawa lowered his index finger.

“It wasn’t as if I had a choice. I was in a persistent vegetative state. My parents could’ve pulled the plug, but by the time I was shipped off to Singapore, they weren’t in a position to make rational decisions. Barnhard was offering me a new life. I would be able to control my body with homeostasis behavior and an avatar. If my parents had refused to subject me to the experiment, I probably would’ve spent the rest of my life in a bed in Singapore.

“It was strange when they connected my body and brain again. When they started streaming tactile sensations to my cortex with AR feedback, I regained my sense of time passing. For me, time stopped soon after I started feeling nauseous and crawled into bed after eating SR Zero. I have a sense that I was dreaming while I was in the coma, but I have no specific memories of those dreams. Without my hippocampus, I was unable to form them.”

The feeling of being controlled by the biochem suit came back to me. Everything I had experienced was as vivid as reality itself, yet it only took a fifth of a second to go from the pit of despair to the summit of bliss. My emotional state was controlled by a machine. Machine reality was my reality.

And that was Kurokawa’s world, right here, right now. His peripheral nervous system was communicating with his brain through AR feedback. His avatar was the gateway to controlling his physical body. An avatar, alive in the real world.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to L&B. They gave me a university education—online of course—and a start in the industry as a ‘ghost’ employee.” Kurokawa smiled. “Naturally I felt a certain amount of resentment. My face and body …” He touched his jaw.

“I asked them to do this. Make me identical to my father. I stopped growing at fourteen, and I didn’t want to look like a child for the rest of my life. So I asked them to give me the face, body, and voice of my father. That way L&B would never forget what it did to me. Even now, Barnhard sometimes finds it hard to look at me. So I got what I wanted, I suppose. If I had to do it over again, I’d have them make me handsome. Maybe make me look something like you. But with my height, it wouldn’t count for much.” He smiled again, that gentle smile.

“It’s not a bad way to live, all in all. Meeting people in augmented reality and in the real world is the same to me. Instead of my body controlling my avatar, my avatar controls my body. If I do a presentation, it goes into the archive and I can play back any part of it, down to the gestures and tone of voice. If I don’t want to experience a particular sensation, I can block it. How do you think I can stand eating chocolate all day?

“Unfortunately, the solution to my coma was what caused that reaction to the suit. I have more than two hundred feedback implants. You have, what, seven?”

I nodded vacantly. I could only wonder what sort of look I had on my face.

Seven chips: one in each wrist and ankle, one in each ear, and one in my throat. Some people have many more for professional reasons. Actors, say, or people in the military—anyone who needs extra AR support functions. People have implants in other joints, like the elbows and knees, but two hundred? I couldn’t begin to imagine where Kurokawa’s implants were.

“I can’t deactivate my internal AR stage, and the conflict with the suit’s AR made me go haywire. To let me use AR feedback to control my body, they had to sever the corpus callosum that links the two hemispheres of my brain. This came with an advantage, though. Whenever I need to, I can deploy two avatars at once, one from each hemisphere. Still, the information overload from the suit disabled both of them.

“I’m getting better now. I should be fully functional by the time we reach the border. Until then, please don’t forget the chocolate.” He put his hands on his knees and bowed. “I just need a little more time. If you need to talk to me, open your stage and let me know.

“Oh, one more thing. I just made a reservation with Kim to handle the sample analysis. When we get to Ho Chi Minh, could you take the samples over to him?”

“Okay, but … you just made a reservation?”

“Yes, while we were talking. I told you, I can use two avatars at once. That’s why I need so many calories. My brain burns a lot of glucose. Well, time to sleep.”

He bowed again and disappeared.

*   *   *

I unwrapped a chocolate bar, broke it in four pieces and put them on the tray under the window.

“Takashi, time for your chocolate.”

I lifted his blanket and looked closer at the bar code on his right shoulder, proof that he had been a guinea pig. I froze.

The bar code was surrounded by hundreds of tiny scars I hadn’t noticed at Mother Mekong. A lot of them looked like razor scars. There were also welts that looked like nail scratches, even a few burn marks. Some of the scars meandered, as if the cuts were inflicted in a frenzy.

The image of Kurokawa at the Central Research Lab didn’t show anything like this. He must have done it to himself after he regained control of his body.