Little Deadly Things (22 page)

“Why was she monitoring your slate, Jim?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “She can’t care about dog training. It’s not like I’m part of the work that you’re doing. Maybe she thinks you’ll store something private on my slate. I don’t have a clue. But I’m going to drop my slate in the Charles River and then get a new one.”

“What about all your notes?”

“Backed up.”

“What about the copycat code. Won’t that back up, too?”

“No. It’s all on that damned game. You can bet I won’t have it on my next slate.”

“What do we do now?” asked Marta. “We’re doing some good science. In fact, I think that I want to focus on research, translate what I learned from Abuela into something the world can use. I’m not sure I want to pursue a clinical practice.”

Jim grunted. “Research, not patients? Can I still say I’m married to a physician?”

“Will you be serious?”

“I am,” Jim said. “I confess. I have fantasies of being married to a rich doctor and being a kept man.”

“Forget it,” Marta said, but her tone was lighter. “What should I do?”

“You have to see this project through, that’s a given. It’s part of your curriculum. Not to mention that you’ve got a crack at two good medicines. If Eva wants to run with them, make a business with them, that’s fine. And it’s not so much that she’s jacking me. Eva’s my best friend—after you, of course. It’s just her way. Look what she’s done for us. She kept me out of jail and helped us get married. And I feel like I understand her. Well, almost. But I love you, Marta. I love being a father and part of a family and working with the dogs. And that trumps everything else.”

“Querido, thank you for saying that,” Marta said. “Yes, she’s your friend and you care about her. That’s mostly fine with me. But I’m going to say something, and I want you to hear me, to take what I say to heart. And Jim? I’m only going to say it once.”

Marta faced him, leaned forward slightly and enunciated each word as if delivering a verdict and pronouncing a sentence. “I do not trust her when it comes to you. But I trust you and that’s what’s important.” Marta paused for emphasis. “Listen carefully. The moment I think she might do something thoughtless with Dana, or if I think she’s going to compromise him in any way, that will be the end of Eva’s relationship with him.”

She paused to let her husband absorb her ultimatum.

“Look,” she continued, softening, “it’s delicate. Eva becomes a different person around Dana. She’s caring, gentle, and considerate. Those are three words that I would have never used to describe her. He brings out the best in her and he’s already very attached to her. But he’s not on this earth for her benefit. The entire earth exists solely for him. If she crosses a line that involves Dana, we will not have Eva in our lives. Is that unequivocally clear?”

Jim swallowed. “Yes,” was all he said, all he needed to say.

Marta concluded, “I am Mother and I have spoken.”

After graduation, the three friends followed separate paths. Marta and Eva continued their education. Eva pursued twin doctorates in computer science and chemistry, completing both in three years. Marta went on to medical school and then focused on botanical research and the art of grant-writing to pay the bills. She travelled to the world’s rainforests, searching for remedies like those she found in El Yunque. Jim divided his time between childcare and his work at Haven Memorial. What started as part of his court-ordered community service had become a career. He was conscientious, effective in his job, arriving early and working late, caring for the shelter’s dogs. The work gave him a sense of purpose and helped him to manage his temper. While his work with dogs was fulfilling, he still mourned for Ringer.

He would never have another dog in his household.

Although Jim and Marta lived less than a mile from Eva, the two women did not communicate or visit. Jim maintained his friendship with Eva with Marta’s approval, although she was uneasy when Jim brought Dana to visit with Eva.

Neither Jim nor Marta realized at the time that they would enable Eva to attain her dream of creating a scientific empire. The day that Eva would pay an unexpected visit to Jim at Haven Memorial was still in the future; a day when the three would be drawn back together as colleagues was still very much in the future.

“NANOTECHNOLOGY...IS DEFINED AS
THE UNDERSTANDING AND CONTROL OF MATTER
AT DIMENSIONS BETWEEN APPROXIMATELY
I AND 100 NANOMETERS, WHERE UNQUIET
PHENOMENA ENABLE NOVEL APPLICATIONS.”

— U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
542 F 009, October 2008

___________________________________________

  RUDOLPH

VENICE, CALIFORNIA
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2042

E
mery Miller’s sixth fatal overdose killed him, an untimely death, and quite surprising.

He’d ordered SNAP, the most powerful—and expensive—of the recreational concoctions in the NMech pharmaceutical catalog. SNAP—Synaptic Neurotransmitting Acceleration Protocol—would amplify his mental pleasures. It would simulate the ecstasy of a Bach fugue, an algebraic proof, a perfect sonnet and extend the sensation into to a multi-hour reverie of almost unbearable bliss. So what if the drug was fatal? His NMech immunity subscription included an antidote to the concoction. When SNAP’s nanoagents detected death’s event horizon, it would pick apart the drug, reduce it to its organic constituents, simple wastes to be expelled. That is, as long as he paid his subscription fee. Without the pricey safeguard, Miller’s organs would be left with the vitality of pig iron.

Fifty-nine minutes before blood poured from his eyes and his heart stopped, Miller walked into an NMech pharmacy and greeted the pharmacist with a silent nod. Miller seldom spoke, save perhaps to his cat. The pharmacist said, “Welcome back, Mr. Miller. It’s a pleasure to see you.” His voice carried neither welcome nor pleasure. But Miller was wealthy enough to be accorded at least token courtesy, and as a Rudolph, he warranted special attention.

Behind the counter, sat a nanoassembler. This desk-sized factory built various compounds using prefabricated molecular pieces—carbon chains, neurotransmitters, ethanol, proteins, lipids, esters. Medicines, textiles, building materials, munitions, even food could be fabricated in an assembler. It had produced Miller’s SNAP in less than an hour and loaded the finished dose into an inhaler for the customer’s use.

The pharmacist handed Miller his purchase. “Will there be anything else?”

Miller ignored the man. He waved his datasleeve in payment, tucked the small package into a pocket, and walked out into the balmy Southern California sunset. Even in December, it was shirtsleeve weather.

Despite the day’s warmth, he shivered in anticipation of his SNAP experience. His respiration and heartbeat would slow to a nearly undetectable level. Blood at the surface of his body would plunge deep into its core to protect the vital organs. He would hover at the balance point between nirvana and death. In return for near-surrender to Thanatos, his reward would be hyper-cognition, an hours-long thunderclap of understanding.

Miller hurried eight blocks along Ocean Front Walk to his home, palmed the door open and ducked inside. An orange tabby cat curled around his legs mewling with impatient hunger. He hefted the cat and for a few seconds, the two nuzzled. Then the cat squirmed out of Miller’s arms and yowled. It was past dinnertime and appetite prevailed over affection. While the mouser ate, Miller took his own meal, if six ounces of amino acids, fatty acids, and glucose could be called a meal. It appealed to none of his senses save hunger.

He walked through his modest bungalow to a plain bedroom, furnished only with a smartbed. He programmed it to maintain his skin temperature and ensure a comfortable recovery. He neglected this step once, and upon awakening, every centimeter of his skin burned with the devil’s own pins and needles as warm blood returned to cold flesh.

Naked, trusting the smartbed to protect his skin, Miller lay down and activated the inhaler. He registered a brief tickle as billions of nanoparticles penetrated his nasal membranes. He could almost feel his brain flood with neurotransmitters. These chemical emissaries relayed messages to his body, barking orders to a fleet of corporeal agents. They slowed the nettlesome business of life support, system by biological system, putting vitality in nearly exclusive service to the mind. Miller was to be accorded a multi-hour experience of
satori
—Zen clarity without the fuss of
zazen
meditation.

At first he experienced the normal effects of SNAP. Seven seconds after inhaling, he felt his sinuses erupt and knew there would be a brilliant crimson trail where bloody mucus blanketed his face. The red stain was the source of the pejorative nickname: Rudolph. Then SNAP stilled his warming responses and he shivered. Even the hair on his body lay flat as the drug destroyed every source of thermal insulation.

But ah...the high! He was one with the cosmos—transcendent, omniscient. He danced among the stars, sang the music of the spheres and soared along simultaneous paths of quantum particles.

The coppery taste was Miller’s first warning that something was wrong. While he lay paralyzed in ecstatic thrall, blood began to puddle in his mouth. It rushed away from his core towards the skin’s superficial capillaries, a torrent at escape velocity from the body’s gravity well. It seeped from sightless eyes and deafened ears. It suppurated at a rate that would make hemorrhagic fever look like a bridal blush. Every centimeter of his skin oozed. It would be a race to see if he bled out or suffocated first. Five times before, NMech nanobots kept him alive. Today, he was swept across a biological Rubicon towards death’s cold embrace.

Still, the body is stubbornly attuned to one lodestone, the irresistible pull of survival. This most powerful of instincts punched its mighty way through the chemical interference, demanding life for an unresponsive body.

All for naught.

Emery Miller often imagined that his final thoughts would be a flashing montage of his short life’s events or that he would behold a mystical White Light proclaiming the Oneness of All. But Emery Miller’s last thought before blood saturated his thousand-thread-count silk sheets and flooded his smartbed’s sensors, before his heart stilled into silence, was to wonder,
Did I remember to feed the cat?

Three thousand miles away, in the sixth-floor management suite of a Boston office building, a chief executive sat at an ebony desk custom-scaled to fit her frame. A long bank of bare windows gave the space a clinical feel that matched the businesswoman’s demeanor. She’d scattered mementos on the opposite wall thinking this is what executives did, but the diplomas, photos, and a framed, jewel-studded gold pin were as out of place in the woman’s barren office as a litter of puppies in an operating room.