Out of Touch (12 page)

“A correlation with what?”

             
“Between the sequence they want and a variant on the telepathy sequence.”
James replied telepathically.
“Do you know if they’ve found a variant? Is that why you came?”

             
“A variant? What do you mean?”

             
James steepled his fingers and they began to tap rapidly. Alak didn’t know anything and wasn’t giving any information.
“It may be nothing, a sequence I found in three foreign subjects. You’d probably learn more spying on the Americans, unless you can get me more samples. Now what did you come for?”

             
“Please, explain what you’ve found.”

             
“There’s nothing to explain yet. Now what else.”

             
“I heard you declined the offer from Minerva.”

             
“Yes.”

             
“We’re trying to share information with you on this. We need to keep channels open.”

             
How stupid. James would have told them his plans if he’d thought of it, but he wouldn’t have them telling him what to do. That was the point of his arrangement with Thailand.

             
“When they make a new offer, I’ll let you suggest replies.”

             
“Assuming they try again.”

             
James shrugged. He almost hoped they wouldn’t. Alak was reminding him of the American recruiters during his student days and his father before that. His arrangement in Thailand was supposed to be different. He’d built their biotech industry on the strength of his patents and research. They’d facilitated genetic sampling from their significant teep community and promised him scientific freedom and support. He’d hoped other researchers would follow him to Thailand, but that hadn’t come to pass. There was local talent, good minds in genetics and manufacturing. He hadn’t built biotech into Thailand’s fourth largest industry alone. But no other teeps, refugees or semi-native, had joined in his genetic research, and that work had been mostly stagnant, until today.

             
“Alak, I may have a lead here, but I can’t follow it without more subjects or more information.”

             
Alak sat back quietly, without his usual nod or other acknowledgement. He was quiet for a full minute, then pushed his chair back and stood. James followed him as he headed toward the door.

             
“I’ll see what I can do,” Alak said, reaching for the handle. Then with the briefest of nods, he was gone.

             
James stood uncertainly in his own lab. He walked back to the computer where he’d discovered the attenuated telepathy sequence. He stared at the results, but his earlier triumph felt hollow. He pushed his palms hard against the edge of the counter and tried to focus his thoughts on the meaning of ninety bases.

April 2 – 8, 2025 – Sacramento, USA

              Reggie opened his refrigerator and glared at the leftovers sitting from Sunday night. He’d made cannelloni for Sarah, because she liked it and Sunday was the one night he had plenty of time to cook for her. She worked Friday and Saturday nights, then slept the weekend days at the house she was inheriting. Sunday night each week she returned to Reggie’s, completely phase shifted but ready for whatever Reggie had prepared. The rest of the week she lived with him, but Sunday was sort of like a date.

             
Except last Sunday Sarah didn’t show up.

             
Reggie had waited until the candles burned low wondering which of Sarah’s peculiar acquaintances might have arrived on her doorstep needing help or which of her mother’s old friends might have called needing comfort. With Sarah, bizarre problems seemed to crash and recede like waves on the shore. She collected needy people as if they were stray kittens. But she usually managed not to let them take advantage; she passed through their troubles unscathed. And until now, she always arrived where she was supposed to be, eventually.

             
At nine on Sunday Reggie called her cell phone. He couldn’t get through and didn’t leave a message. He put away the cannelloni, blew out the candles, and ate salad and bread in the moonlight. He thought about calling the police or activating a scatter mob search party, but it was too soon and Reggie refused to panic. He listened to Ekova, creators of the inventive language remix movement, until he’d played every hCD they’d ever made.

              Now it was Wednesday morning. The cannelloni still sat in the fridge. Bright sunlight burst through the window that covered one huge wall of the loft. Reggie pulled toast and coffee from his preprogrammed appliances. It was good organic, fair-wage coffee from Chile, but he hardly tasted it. Instead, he drifted through the loft, touching each piece of fabric Sarah had brought back from India. Pinks, blues, yellows, and oranges, all bright and intricate, all with patterns to touch as well as to see. Sarah’s cloth covered the sofa, the table, the top of the bookshelf. She’d made some into a bedspread and pillow covers. All the beauty Sarah seemed to overlook, the colors and subtlety that she’d never wear, were in the fabric she’d found and brought back from their time in India.

             
Reggie looked at his photos on the wall. Only one showed Sarah. She didn’t like seeing herself in pictures. But they showed the school and roads they’d helped build with the Peace Corps. They showed the village girls who had flocked to Sarah day after day. They showed the cows no Hindu would eat and a well that no longer gave water. They showed the village cell phone and computer that ignited Reggie’s ambitions for Pronoia International.

             
None of their history seemed real since Sarah disappeared. It tangled with his imaginings of himself, the grieving boyfriend called on to identify her body at the morgue, or the jealous former lover catching a glimpse of her years later on someone else’s arm.

             
Reggie almost wanted to be jealous, to play the part of one spurned. But he couldn’t really believe Sarah would run off with someone else, not without a word. He remembered their last week in India.

              “So, have you and Phil decided where to start?” Sarah lay next to him in bed, red and amber quilted spread heaped at the bottom, mosquito net sagging inward. The air hung damp and still, steaming with spices and rot. Both of them lay naked on their backs, too sweaty to touch more than fingertips.

He imagined himself as a member of the intelligentsia, entering a part of his life where ideas would draw followers, sculpt a quiet revolution. “We have leads in key cities. Phil wants to introduce me to some people, get the unofficial news from around the U.S.”

“I could find temp work for a while, until you choose a place. Unless you want me to come along? I could look for office space or transcribe stuff for you.”

As a mature, forward-thinking innovator Reggie said, “Sarah, you can’t plan your life around me. Think about what you want, who you want to be.”

She rolled up to sitting, silently running one finger down his damp arm. “I could be who I want anywhere. If you want me, I’ll go with you.”

He looked up at her from his back, too hot to even move his arm. “We can keep in touch, get together sometimes, but life will be different back in the states. I’ll need to put everything I have into my work, and that wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Sarah climbed through the netting then, wet a cloth to rinse the sweat from her face and body. There was no point in drying off with the heat that day. Reggie didn’t know how she found the energy to move. He watched her pull on clothes and leave, all the time seeing himself as the big, practical man, making the only responsible decision.

It wasn’t until he was back in the states and realized there were no woman half as interesting as Sarah, that he replayed the scene, casting himself as the typical American guy, afraid of commitment and not appreciating what he had.

A month later, he convinced Phil to base Pronoia in Sacramento; it was the capital of a relatively progressive state, a fine location for their work.

He called Sarah for lunch, as if he’d chosen her city by chance. She leaned her elbows on a white restaurant tablecloth, and told him about her work at a group home and coaching gymnastics as if she were a surf and he a lord. She let him back into her life as if he’d never hurt her, as if she’d never expected to be treated any better. And somehow, he never switched the roles, never went down on his knees and begged his lady’s pardon.

             
Now Reggie didn’t know if he’d see her again. He pulled on a boat neck sweater, poured the last of the coffee into his cup, and headed down the street to work.

              “Reggie Malone, Pronoia International. Can I help you?” Reggie spoke toward the speaker phone trying not to rustle the project overrun analysis he was folding.

             
“Hi Reggie. This is Scott with PAD. We met last fall at the Ashland conference?”

             
“Sure. How are you doing?”

             
“Fine, fine. Look, I don’t want to say too much now, but what’s your policy on stock donations? Do you sell immediately?”

             
“Usually, yes. But we are flexible if the donor has special—”

             
“No, no. How fast are you? If I fax a transfer form to you without any notice or special instructions, what will happen?”

             
“During exchange hours, I can turn it over in minutes, half an hour at the most.”

             
“Great. Here’s my fax number. Send me whatever forms you need for a stock donation. I can’t promise you anything, of course.”

             
“Certainly, I appreciate you thinking of us.”

             
“Sure, Reggie. Keep up the good work.”

             
Scott hung up and Reggie stared for a moment at the fax number on his phone screen. There had been a definite subtext to that conversation. Was PAD in trouble? Serious enough trouble that their stock might crash and their CEO wanted to siphon some out to a charity with an immediate sell policy? But it couldn’t be a hostile takeover or he’d be holding on to the stock. Maybe a lawsuit with real teeth? Could someone finally bring down the company that coined the term Personal Access Device? A company that owned the only private global satellite network, bandwidth rights in almost every country, and a private island that was all but recognized as a sovereign country?

             
PAD’s business model allowed for perpetual lawsuits. They’d survived almost a decade as the only provider of truly anonymous global telecom with their hybrid satellite/cellular phones and their ability to reset their SIM card ID’s according to an algorithm only they could trace. When Reggie started college everyone in the counter culture had a PAD. It soon became illegal to sell them in the U.S. and other uptight countries, but enough of Europe and Asia valued communications immune to U.S., U.N., and Chinese spying that the company survived. What would fill the niche if PAD died?

             
Reggie also wondered for a moment how much stock Scott might send their way. He checked the stock price. It was down ten percent in the last week, but that certainly didn’t reflect the kind of concerns Reggie was entertaining. If Scott sent him stock and he sold fast enough . . .

             
Reggie shoved the paper he was holding into an envelope and set his phone to interrupt him high priority if Scott called, faxed, or emailed at any time.

              Noon on Wednesday meant pizza with Phil at Pizza Pop. Reggie had no idea why his fifty-year-old business partner with cropped gray hair, subdued Hawaiian shirts, and Birkenstocks had such an ingrained pizza routine. It was good California pizza, but he had to wonder if Phil didn’t also fancy the owner, “Pop.”

Reggie and Phil walked down the sunny sidewalk from Pronoia inspecting the youth culture near the capital. Reggie wondered for the umpteenth time how he could harness teenage angst to power a progressive microeconomy. Maybe some video game with advanced sim characters interacting on a global scale—

              “I bet you don’t even get the reference on that kid’s shirt,” Phil muttered.

             
The “kid” was probably eighteen, with well-defined muscles and a rather tight black t-shirt. Scrawled as if in chalk on a blackboard was, “This is my soccer mom,” with a picture of a spread-eagled stick figure, hair standing on end and eyes sprung out like slinkies. Beneath that was, “This is my soccer mom on drugs,” and a picture of the same stick figure dancing and shaking her hair back. On the bottom it said, “Decriminalize marijuana now.”

             
Reggie said, “Well, I understand the retro ad trend for issues that have been around a while, and I know the legalization of cannabis is still a political football at times.”