Gene Mapper (8 page)

“Do you like it? That’s great. This is my homebrew stage. It only needs to work in this room, so I focused on making it realistic. It wouldn’t be fair to compare it to an off-the-shelf stage.”

Yagodo seemed overly modest, but I had never heard of one person handling all aspects of stage development—camera positioning, image processing, and real-time feedback with results that were not just functional, but better than any commercial system. It didn’t seem possible. His system was configured for one environment, but so was Café Zucca’s. Even if it had started as a commercial platform, an AR producer would still have had to customize it.

“Please use it as much as you like. Takashi seems more comfortable, I see.”

Kurokawa nodded enthusiastically. His hands were on the table and his feet were on the floor. His center of gravity was stable on the sofa.

“Thank you. The chance to work on a stage with this kind of real-time rendering is priceless. Pardon me while I fine-tune my size.”

Yagodo motioned “be my guest” and turned toward the door.

“John! Paul! Let’s see what you have for us.”

The door opened silently, and two huge golden retrievers bounded into the room with matching red and blue bandannas around their necks. The dog with the red bandanna looked like the model for yesterday’s avatar. It had a Frisbee in its mouth. The other dog had a tennis ball.

The dogs circled Yagodo’s sofa from either side and deposited their “gifts” on the table before taking positions on either side of him.

“Good boys. John is, let’s see, from a farm in northern Japan, and Paul was on an agricultural testing station near the Sea of Japan—both were important sites for riziculture during the Internet era. Hey, I’ve got guests, you guys. Try to behave.” Both dogs now had their front legs in Yagodo’s lap and were happily licking his face.

“Mamoru …” Kurokawa pointed to the table.

The Frisbee and tennis ball were gone. Instead there were two folders. Yagodo nodded.

The dogs were avatars.

They were indistinguishable from real dogs, and to judge from Yagodo’s reaction, he could “feel” them licking him. But real dogs can’t carry augmented reality widgets around in their mouths.

“Isamu, you’re making fun of our guests.”

Nguyen was staring crossly at Yagodo with her hands on her hips. She was wearing glasses. For the first time, she spoke in Japanese.

“Nguyen, I thought you couldn’t speak Japanese?”

She smiled and drew her hair back over one ear with a fingertip. An earphone was connected by a lead to the frames of her glasses. The light reflected off the lenses as she moved her head, making her look a little surreal.

“Isamu’s stage has a very nice translation engine,” she said.

You can hardly find AR glasses in Japan these days. They don’t have the processing power to render something like Yagodo’s stage without a lot of implants, and I doubted that Nguyen had any. Yagodo must have customized her glasses. In augmented reality, the two of them would have no trouble communicating.

“John! Paul! Get back to work!” The dogs looked crestfallen but trotted over to the door. Paul touched the handle with his nose and they bounded outside.

Kurokawa and I stared at each other, blitzed with amazement. Yagodo was enjoying our surprise.

“The whole dog thing started as a joke, but the more I played with the concept, the more I was hooked. Sorry about the ruckus. Anyway, here’s the data I salvaged yesterday.”

Yagodo slid the files toward us. One was labeled
2014 japan agricultural cooperative, iwate branch office, internal pc.
The other was titled
2013 hokuriku agricultural research institute archive.

“Isamu, before I accept this data, I have to know where you found it,” said Kurokawa. I was thinking the same thing. “Was this actually on the Internet at some point?”

“Yes, just as the file names indicate.” Yagodo pointed to the first folder. “That was salvaged from a PC in a JA office. And I picked up that”—he pointed to the second folder—“from an internal server at a research institute. I couldn’t find enough data published on the Web, so I had to dive deeper.”

Kurokawa leaned forward. “So this information was never disclosed on any website. It was on someone’s personal computer. Please explain how you did this. Within the limits of professional secrecy, of course.”

“I salvaged this from an Internet cache server connected to Ho Chi Minh’s network.”

“But, Isamu—” I was getting impatient. “Cache data was up on the Web at some point. You can’t use the cloud as a gateway to pull down data sitting on a hard drive somewhere, even if the PC was connected to the Internet at some point.”

Kurokawa was shaking his head too.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to know,” said Yagodo. “You know how the Lockout actually happened? The data recovery software that protected the cloud during routine server maintenance somehow decided it needed to take control of every PC and mobile device connected to the network and do a clean reinstall of its internal search engine.” Yagodo took a sip of his coffee. “When it did that,
all
data on the drives it reached was uploaded to the cloud.”

“No!” I couldn’t help it. I was too shocked.

“Why so surprised? Backing up your data before you reinstall your OS is the most basic of basic rules.”

Yagodo continued his incredible story. The data sucked up from millions of PCs and other devices was routed to a fleet of seaborne data recovery centers. The center for East Asia was anchored off Singapore. That ship ended up getting hijacked, and after going missing for several years it appeared suddenly in Saigon Harbor.

“Since it docked, I’ve been able to use our local network to access data that was never up on the Internet. Of course, not anyone can do this. I had to find a way in first. You’ll want to confirm that the data is genuine, but the organizations I got it from are still around. Go ahead and contact them. They must have backups, probably on tape, or even hard copies.”

Kurokawa stroked his chin thoughtfully. He was probably thinking about what to do if we ended up with a match to something that was someone else’s intellectual property.

“Takashi, it’ll be okay. Let’s not waste more time. We should take a look at this. At least we have something to work with.”

My words shook Kurokawa out of his meditation. “Yes, I guess you’re right. Okay, we’ll take the data. Thanks for your help, Isamu.”

Kurokawa skillfully manipulated the file to create a copy and pushed it over to me.

“Better get to it, Mamoru. Start looking for our match.”

“Will do.” I opened the folders for a quick look at what I’d be dealing with. Each folder held around forty files. I never imagined I’d be able to access data off someone’s personal computer harvested through a network in Vietnam.

Still, something bothered me. “Isamu, haven’t you ever tried to find out where this treasure trove of data is, exactly?”

He laughed. “Waste of time. You saw the trunk lines on your way here from the hotel. Those cables are old and brittle. They break all the time. People reconnect and reroute them every day. There’s no way I could trace the physical location of the servers.”

“He’s right, Mamoru.” Nguyen shrugged. “Here in Ho Chi Minh City, if you have trouble with your connection, you just go outside and connect your cable to somebody else’s.”

“It’s not a crime,” said Yagodo. “They still pay the monthly fees. And frankly, I’m not sure I want to know where the servers are. I don’t want to scare them off. If they pick up and move, we’re both out of a job.”

The cables were all over the city, branching out like capillaries from fraying arteries patched with tape. If we’d been dealing with Yagodo remotely instead of in person, I would’ve laughed in disbelief, but I’d seen the cables myself. Who could say what kind of data was sloshing through them?

Yagodo slapped his knee and brought me back to reality. “Mamoru, why don’t you put your search off till tomorrow? You too, Takashi. The four of us should go out and see a bit of Ho Chi Minh, have a proper meal. The food here is unbelievable.”

I remembered how hungry I was, but I also remembered Yagodo’s taste in coffee.

“Um, sure.”

Wait—Kurokawa was drinking it the same way, without batting an eyelash. I wondered if I could trust their choice in restaurants. Then again, if the food turned out to be as sweet as the coffee, I could always get Nguyen to take me somewhere later.

Things were looking up after all.

A faint tone sounded from the other side of the heavy door as I touched the brass handle. The HMC lock recognized me immediately.

My first full day on the job.

The door opened smoothly, and the scent of okra flowers that Nguyen had decorated the office with wafted from inside.

“Morning, Mamoru.”

Yagodo’s cheery voice manifested from the vicinity of his desk. I blinked twice before I even saw him and entered his stage. The functionality was just like my workspace in Workers Heights. He had thought of everything.

There was a cloud in the middle of the room.

It was so thick I could barely see the desks on the other side. The cloud revolved slowly, shot through with vivid streaks of purple lightning. Each streak seemed to leave behind a small, bright point of red. Yagodo was working on something, obviously. But what?

“Sorry, things are a little messy. I’ll have this cleaned up in a minute.”

I could see him waving through gaps in the cloud. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

“Isamu, can’t you do this in your own workspace? How can the rest of us get anything done? We’re sorry, Mamoru.” I could hear Nguyen from somewhere behind the cloud.

“What is this?”

“A molecular model.” Yagodo walked right through it. The cloud didn’t react, which meant he wasn’t using physical tags.

“If we’ll be working with a two-hundred-gig gXML file, we’ve got to speed up the matching process. I’m just playing around looking for shortcuts. Want to take a look before I shut this down? I might be onto something. Hey, where’s Takashi?”

“L&B collared him while we were eating breakfast. Another emergency meeting.”

“It’s well after dinner in San Francisco. They’re keeping him busy.” Yagodo laughed as if he thought this was humorous.

I remembered Kurokawa’s look when he got the call. He’d come back to our table from the buffet counter with twice as much food as me. When the call came, he knitted his eyebrows and sighed, “I don’t believe it.” He’d gone back to his room to take the call.

They wouldn’t leave us alone. I wasn’t surprised. Four days had passed since Mother Mekong reported the mutation, and L&B still had no information to help them break the news to the world.

I dropped my shoulder bag. “It’s already evening in San Francisco. I doubt the call will last long. Takashi keeps his stage activated, so he’ll find his way here.”

Bolts of lightning kept flashing inside the cloud. Each flash left a purple streak about six inches long. Yagodo reached into the cloud, took a streak by both ends and held it up to the light.

“Brute-force solution to a sixteen-character hash in zero point two seconds. Not bad. I’d like to multiplex the cell connections and up the bandwidth to the limit of cell-liquid potential, but I’m still trying to find something in my communications interface library than can handle it.”

I looked closer at the streak Yagodo was holding to the light. I could actually see a tiny results log:
A>B:loren_ipsum.
“Isamu, what are you doing exactly?”

He lowered his gaze and looked at me intently. “I didn’t mention this, did I? I took a stab at designing a bio-nanomachine. I’ve been working on it since last night. The idea is to do a brute force hash calculation.”

“You’re kidding. You built this?”

“It was easy. Calculating machines are assemblies of simple input/output circuits. They don’t have to be electronic. Proteins can do the job. If you have a set of operating rules, the approach is more or less the same. This setup isn’t super efficient, but if I can make it work, we won’t have to grind all the way through each data set.”

Yagodo pointed to the cloud, a huge calculating circuit of virtual protein molecules composed of virtual amino acids. As I saw more and more of his technical chops, I was starting to feel embarrassed calling myself a gene mapper. All I could do was edit genome style sheets.

“This is impressive, Isamu, but the samples weren’t collected properly. Mother Mekong’s samples were contaminated with material from insects and SR06. I mean, two hundred gigabytes …”

Yagodo cut me off with a raised finger. “Mamoru, I told you two days ago: you have to assume the data represents a single organism. Now, let’s get to work— Sorry, let me shut down this model.”

He spread his arms wide and swept them together. The cloud shrank to the size of a basketball. He suspended it deftly over the coffee table. “Mother Mekong uses a serial DNA sequencer, right?”

I nodded. It went without saying. The holy trinity of genetic engineering was a serial DNA sequencer to read the data, an embryo printer to output the data in cell format, and Gene Analytics to analyze the data and model it with CAD tools.

“What an invention,” Yagodo said, marveling. “Just touch a bit of tissue to the sensor and nanomachines unravel the double helix of the chromosomes in the cell nucleus. The DNA readout comes from a single cell.” He winked. “No contaminated samples.”

“What?” Suddenly, I saw what he was getting at.

“Sure, maybe you could get a contaminated readout if you took cells from more than one organism and ground them until the nuclei were crushed and mixed, but you’d have to go to a lot of trouble.”

He was right. I had let the sheer size of the sample confuse me. If Mother was using a serial DNA sequencer—which only operates on single nuclei—then the data couldn’t be contaminated.

“Well, what do you think we’re dealing with? What kind of organism would produce such a large amount of data?”

“What do
you
think it is? Most of the sequences are probably junk. This molecular model is designed to save us time, but it will only handle a two-gig sample. With two hundred
gigabytes, we could be dealing with any sort of organism.”

“You think there’s something significant about the size?”

“I don’t think anything. I hope it’s mostly junk DNA, that’s all. Anyway, let’s see if we can find a match to the legacy DNA you abstracted from the sample. We need to know what it is and where it was cultivated. Without that we can’t move forward.”

There was a knock, and Yagodo turned toward the door. It went transparent. We could see Kurokawa reaching for the handle. There must have been a camera outside.

“Morning, everyone. Sorry I’m late.”

Kurokawa was carrying his briefcase. He was already normal size.

“How did it go? I bet they’re pushing us to work faster.”

Kurokawa dropped his bag on the sofa where he’d sat the day before. He had the same look on his face that I’d seen at breakfast.

“Not exactly. They gave me a video message from Barnhard. It’s for the two of you, actually.”

“What, me? I’ve never even met anyone from L&B.”

“I tried to talk them out of it. We don’t need this kind of pressure right now, but they insisted. In fact they made a big fuss about it. Sorry, but you need to watch this now.”

“Let’s use the translation engine and listen in Japanese,” said Yagodo. “English has a tendency to draw blood in situations like this.”

“Thank you. I should warn you—Barnhard made me promise to play this back at life size. Sorry if it makes you sweat a little.”

I sat next to Yagodo. Across from us, Kurokawa took a video file from his bag and laid it on the table. He paused, then tapped playback. Instantly, the huge man with the spherical gut was standing next to him. He was closer to six-eight than six-five. I almost had to look up at the ceiling to see his face.

“—No, this kind of message only works in RealVu. That’s why you’re useless when the going gets tough. You and your pathetic avatar.” Barnhard was speaking scornfully to someone off camera. They must’ve been in a hurry if they couldn’t take the time to edit.

Barnhard adjusted his collar. “Sorry. I am Lintz Barnhard. As you know, I am vice president of L&B. I am also leading the team that is investigating the mutation at Mother Mekong’s site in Cambodia.”

What about Enrico? He was the project manager and the liaison with Mother Mekong. I knew Barnhard was meddling, but now it looked like Enrico was completely out.

“Unfortunately, as I’m sure you’ve heard from Takashi Kurokawa, my hands are full dealing with clients and the regulatory agencies. I’m not involved in the scientific side of the investigation. Regrettably, I will have to leave that entirely to the three of you.”

I’d seen Barnhard many times, though not in the flesh, but he never looked anything other than bored or irritated. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him the way he looked now—apologetic, almost pleading. The mutation at Mother Mekong was eating him up.

“Mr. Hayashida and … Mr. Yagodo, was it? I’m depending on you.”

Barnhard’s projection took a step forward. Now he was embedded in the coffee table with both hands out in a supplicating gesture, staring at an empty wall with an expression of such intense sincerity that I almost burst out laughing.

Yagodo started to move the table, but Kurokawa stopped him with a quiet “That won’t be necessary.” He didn’t seem to be taking it too seriously either.

“Distilled crops are facing an existential crisis,” intoned Barnhard. “I am a vice president of this company, but to be blunt, I don’t care what happens to L&B. There are twelve billion mouths to feed on this planet, and we can’t rely on natural plants if there is any hope of meeting their needs. If distilled crop acreage reverts to these outmoded sources of calories, we’ll lose more than half the world’s supply of wheat, rice, and soy. The topsoil is already close to exhausted as it is.”

Barnhard wrung his hands mutely. For a few seconds, he seemed to have lost the capacity to speak.

“If that weren’t bad enough, a world dependent on natural food means unrestricted genetic modification. No one knows where that might lead.” He looked down, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry … Mamoru. Isamu.” He sighed and looked up. “As I told Takashi, I want you to go to Mother Mekong. Find out what’s happening. Takashi’s …” Barnhard hesitated. “He is … different, as you see. He needs your support.”

His head dropped again, pleading to a blank wall. The look on his face was close to agony. He didn’t seem to be faking it. By now he had advanced to the center of the table and seemed to be growing out of it. I suppressed another chuckle.

After an awkward few seconds, Barnhard seemed to pull himself together. He patted his lapels, straightened up, and gave a brisk nod toward the wall.

“I’m depending on you, Mamoru. And Isamu, I thank you for your help.”

Yagodo looked at us, openly puzzled. “Maybe the translation engine is too good. We could listen to the English.” He stroked his chin and gave Kurokawa a sidelong look. “Takashi, you’re not an L&B employee, are you?”

“No, I’m freelance. True, most of my work is for L&B.”

“When Barnhard was talking about you, he made it sound like you were a member of his family. Maybe it was the engine?”

Kurokawa nodded, but his expression was hard to read. He put the video file in his briefcase.

“That whole thing about going to Cambodia sounded odd, you know? Like he was asking Mamoru to ride shotgun for his son.” Yagodo’s voice had a slightly sarcastic edge. Kurokawa stared at him intently. From my angle, his glasses partially hid his expression, but his jaw was set.

“Maybe it did sound that way. As you say, it must be the translation engine. The original English didn’t come across that way.”

“Sure. That must be it. It’s not like you could be his son. I mean, look in the mirror. And he’s twice your size.”

“Isamu, stop it!” Nguyen was fuming. “Stop being so insulting. That man is not twice Mr. Kurokawa’s size!” She looked at Takashi. “Mr. Kurokawa, I’m so sorry. He just says whatever comes into his head.”

Kurokawa’s expression had assumed its familiar gentleness. He shook his head and smiled.

“Twice as wide, three times as deep, and four times as heavy. Isamu is right. Don’t worry. I’m not offended, really.”

I was concerned about Barnhard’s request. If we struck out for Cambodia just as our search was about to get on the rails, it was going to kill our efficiency. Mother Mekong was out in the sticks. It wasn’t like we could catch a cab from Phnom Penh.

“Listen, Takashi. Can’t Enrico cover this? I know L&B is shorthanded, but Enrico’s the project manager. He was on this from the beginning. He knows the site.”

“Enrico?” Yagodo was up and halfway to his desk when he heard me. “The SR06 PM, right? Didn’t he go walkabout a couple days ago?”

Kurokawa paused before answering. “Well, I guess you know just about everything. I only found out about it in the meeting this morning.”

“His wife wrote on her wall that her husband hadn’t come home from work. Anyway, you just got here, and now they’re shipping you off to rural Cambodia. I feel sorry for both of you.”

Yagodo was in his chair, swiveling back and forth. I got the feeling he thought of everything that was happening as a comedy of errors.

“I didn’t think we’d have to inspect the site.” Kurokawa looked crestfallen. “If all we had to do was interview the staff, it would be easy, but I left the meeting with a list of assignments to execute while we’re there.”

“Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“We’ll need some extra gear for fieldwork. A camera array to record what we do, a proper container to bring the samples back, and a lot of other things besides. Can you point us to a source that has everything? We’ll need the array for night shooting too. No one has documented the mutation process yet.”

“Why a sample container?” I was puzzled.

“Mother Mekong’s serial DNA sequencer is down. There will be no second round of DNA data out of Cambodia.”

“What? You’re kidding me. We’re not getting more data?”

“I just heard from Thep. We have to take samples ourselves and bring them back for analysis.”

“Then you’d better go to Kim’s shop,” said Yagodo. “Nguyen can take you. Kim is Ho Chi Minh’s go-to bio guy. He should have everything you need. He can do the analysis for you too. I could have everything delivered, but the problem is the suits.”

“Suits?” Kurokawa and I spoke at the same time.

“You can’t risk contaminating your samples. We need to do a proper analysis as soon as possible. I’m sure Kim has some biochem warfare suits in his inventory. Mamoru should be easy to equip, but I’m not sure if he has anything small enough for Takashi. We’d have to check.”