Authors: Walter Greatshell
Mad Skills (36 page)
It had been hard work, so insanely busy they rarely saw each other, but through all the years of late nights, endless experiments, and eternal staff meetings, there had always been that promise:
Someday, Chandra. Someday we’ll be finished with all this, and it’ll be our turn, just you and me.
Someday, Chandra. Someday we’ll be finished with all this, and it’ll be our turn, just you and me.
Only now there would be no more promises. No more dreams of cottages by the shore and kitchen gardens and golden years. After the fiasco with Maddy Grant, she would never again adopt a child. No June wedding, no wedding dress, no honeymoon. Face it, she would never be married. No Mrs. Alan Plummer—she was to be Dr. Chandra Stevens, maiden scientist, now and forever.
“DR. STEVENS, YOU HAVE A CALL ON LINE ONE.”
Damn.
The loudspeaker, so ridiculously loud it made her jump.
The loudspeaker, so ridiculously loud it made her jump.
She turned her phone back on. The saved-message icon flashed in rebuke—she wasn’t supposed to be out of touch like that. She would have loved to smash it.
There was another call coming in. “Yes?” she said. “This is Dr. Stevens.”
“Dr. Stevens, the Advisory Committee is on conference call in M2. I’ve been trying to reach you. All the department heads are already down there.”
“I’m sorry, my phone’s acting up—probably from that power surge.”
“Well, they’re waiting for you. Can I tell them you’re coming?”
“Yes, yes, certainly. Tell them I’m on my way.”
Boy, those lawyers weren’t wasting any time. The rubble had barely settled, and there they were to give it a spin. Not that she was surprised—in any corporation, the first and foremost part of damage control was managing perception. Lawyers, lobbyists, and PR firms were the filters through which the murky flow of potentially incriminating facts had to be strained. Purified. Perhaps discarded altogether, so that a clean-smelling and altogether-more-plausible fiction could be substituted. She had been through it before, during the Marina situation.
Taking the elevator to the lower levels, Chandra walked through the computer lab and along a dim catwalk skirting the rat city. She wasn’t crazy about rats and had never been fond of the construction. Alan had loved it—it had been his baby. She could still hear him giving the VIP tour in that rapt voice, which he called his “planetarium spiel.”
With its incredible complexity, this system may seem very fragile. It’s all well and good to be able to maintain efficiency under artificially imposed ideal conditions, but that’s not natural, is it? So what happens when we introduce disorder? Society is an organism, a living body, and its response to disorder must be similar to the body’s response to infection—it must create antibodies. Observe:
Here we see a rat that is being redirected to deliberately subvert the parameters of the system. Let’s call him Bob. Now of course we could simply introduce an outside rat, a wild rat, but its behavior would be so random and clumsily disruptive that it would not effectively show the system’s subtlety. For demonstration purposes, an intelligent attack is more useful. Bob must be crafty.
As you can see, our spy infiltrates the system by carefully avoiding notice. He stays out of the way, doesn’t block the supply lines, and only when the coast is clear does he seize his opportunity—there! What you’re seeing is him gnawing through the plastic tube that delivers water to the feeders. Very smart: In that way, he can drink undetected as well as destabilize the whole ecology. Oops—they’ve seen him. Once one gives chase, they all do. There they go! Doesn’t usually take long. As you can see, they’re cutting him off, methodically blocking every means of egress. Meanwhile, others are sealing the leak with putty. Remarkable, isn’t it? Uh-oh—that’s it—they’ve got him, got him cornered … aaaand, he’s nailed. Sorry, Bob—here’s where it gets a little ugly. It’s still a matter of speculation why they’ve started drinking the blood like that; it’s a recent behavior that’s obviously not part of the program. Our goal is actually to have them take prisoners alive, simply because it requires a higher degree of sophistication, but this abnormal savagery seems to be a long-term side effect of the motor control. Stress, maybe, or perhaps by inhibiting their will, we are inadvertently exposing a deeper level of rodent psychology. We’ll figure it out!
Seeking more challenging disruptions, we’ve introduced various crises for them to deal with, including predatory animals such as feral cats, barn owls, several species of large snakes, and even a very-bad-tempered monitor lizard, all of which they dispatched within minutes of the intrusion. The last test involved an adult male chimpanzee that had been specifically conditioned to kill rats with a hammer, having been rewarded for doing so. He lasted the longest, but in the end was overwhelmed, with the rats pursuing him right up to the top of the tallest building there, where he refused to move … until the rats finally dislodged him by launching a squadron of tiny biplanes and shooting him down. I’m kidding! No, they chewed away the building’s foundation until it collapsed. Then they ate him alive.
As Chandra walked beside the darkened pit, it suddenly struck her how
quiet
it was in there. That was odd—she couldn’t remember the last time the amphitheater wasn’t busy with the rustling and skittering of rodents. Furthermore, she couldn’t see any movement in the papier-mâché metropolis, not one rat. It made no sense, since she knew for a fact that the rats worked and slept in shifts, so that half of them were supposed to be awake at any given time, even during their artificial night phase. Unless they had had to be removed because of the signal interruption … perhaps just as a precaution. But even so, moving the rats was a big deal that required special authorization—usually from Alan.
quiet
it was in there. That was odd—she couldn’t remember the last time the amphitheater wasn’t busy with the rustling and skittering of rodents. Furthermore, she couldn’t see any movement in the papier-mâché metropolis, not one rat. It made no sense, since she knew for a fact that the rats worked and slept in shifts, so that half of them were supposed to be awake at any given time, even during their artificial night phase. Unless they had had to be removed because of the signal interruption … perhaps just as a precaution. But even so, moving the rats was a big deal that required special authorization—usually from Alan.
Ah, that was the problem. No Alan.
For that matter, where was everyone? Having been well shielded from the previous day’s electromagnetic attack, the basement computer vaults should have been the quickest to return to normal, but there was nobody at the workstations; all the lab techs seemed to be out taking a smoke break. Smoke break—that’s a good one: No doubt they were all staring out the upstairs windows at the huge smoke plume rising from the valley. Whispering about the end of Harmony.
That’s right, that’s right, it’s gone,
she thought irritably.
All that work down the drain. So let’s just curl up and die, why don’t we? That won’t be suspicious at all.
she thought irritably.
All that work down the drain. So let’s just curl up and die, why don’t we? That won’t be suspicious at all.
Entering the flickering blue light of the teleconference suite, Dr. Stevens suddenly realized something was terribly, terribly wrong. The long table had been tipped over, the plush leather chairs tossed around willy-nilly. The video screens were rolling windows of static, captioned SIGNAL FAILURE. And behind the table … oh God behind the table …
Inching forward as if in a bad dream, Chandra peered around the canted mahogany surface at a strange, heaving mass on the floor. It looked like an enormous white fungus, a sprawling, furry blob with many wriggling pink tendrils—she understood at once it was a living mound of rat butts. Protruding from underneath the thing were several pairs of half-gnawed human legs. She recognized Dr. Trager’s orthopedic shoes.
“Goddammit,” Chandra said softly.
The rats ignored her. They could barely move, they were so engorged. She stood frozen in place for what felt like a very long time, her scrambled brain just rolling and rolling.
Signal failure … unable to connect …
Finally, one of the rats waddled toward her, its belly dragging on the carpet. So ridiculous with its little cranial cap. In a burst of blind rage and despair, Chandra kicked the stupid thing across the room, where it struck the center of a plasma screen and splatted like a rotten tomato.
“God
damn
that bitch.” Opening her phone, she said, “Brenda, call Security. We need an exterminator down here.”
damn
that bitch.” Opening her phone, she said, “Brenda, call Security. We need an exterminator down here.”
Dr. Stevens turned and walked out. She made sure to close the door behind her.
FORTY
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
LYING awake beside Maddy, Ben Blevin had a moment to think about the bizarre events of the past week. Bizarre was an understatement: terrifying, unbelievable events—not the least of which was the discovery that he was not really Ben Blevin but some brainwashed stranger named Duane Devlin. As if that wasn’t insane enough, Maddy claimed she was really the ghost of Marina Sweet.
At first he refused to believe it.
I know who I am!
he had insisted, nearly storming out of their crappy motel room by the truck wash. The Marina thing he could understand to a degree, because he knew Maddy had been nuts about Marina Sweet, but this other stuff was pure nonsense. Who the hell was Duane Devlin? And what did that even mean, his parents weren’t his real parents? How could his father, Sam, be a Braintree doctor named Kaleel Zondervan? Obviously, between her brain implant and everything else that had happened to her, his goofy-ass former-stepsister-to-be had finally lost it.
he had insisted, nearly storming out of their crappy motel room by the truck wash. The Marina thing he could understand to a degree, because he knew Maddy had been nuts about Marina Sweet, but this other stuff was pure nonsense. Who the hell was Duane Devlin? And what did that even mean, his parents weren’t his real parents? How could his father, Sam, be a Braintree doctor named Kaleel Zondervan? Obviously, between her brain implant and everything else that had happened to her, his goofy-ass former-stepsister-to-be had finally lost it.
But she explained it all, pulling him back inside the room, sitting him down on the grungy yellow bedspread, and calmly, methodically telling him things about himself that no one could ever have known: things from his deepest subconscious that were so powerful and true they brought him to tears. The buried hurts he had suffered from earliest childhood at the hands of those he loved and trusted the most.
Neither white enough to please his mother’s small-town people, nor black enough to please his father’s, Ben had always felt like a shunned mongrel, caught between worlds, whose greatest comfort came from his parents’ unfailing bond. The race issue meant nothing to them, and their marriage was the best proof against the stupidities of others.
When Ben’s mother died, it was as though the Earth itself cracked in two—he closed down, refusing to deal. He thought things couldn’t get any worse … until his father started dating again. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, they actually moved in with his dad’s new girlfriend! It was a nightmare. But the strangest thing happened:
It was the woman’s daughter. An annoying, freckle-faced chick who was silly, awkward, and possibly the only person on the planet more uncomfortable than he was. Maybe because she was so uncomfortable, she drew Ben’s attention away from himself. Out from under the shadow of his towering grief. And every time he looked back, it was a little bit smaller.
As gently as possible, Maddy told him this was all bogus. His memories weren’t really his; everything before the carnival accident was secondhand. It was like an organ transplant, only instead of a kidney or a liver, he had gotten someone else’s
soul
. Ben Blevin’s soul.
soul
. Ben Blevin’s soul.
But I am Ben Blevin,
he said.
he said.
No,
she said. And she showed him the pictures.
she said. And she showed him the pictures.
Who the hell is that supposed to be?
That’s Ben Blevin.
The guy didn’t even look like him.
That’s ridiculous.
That’s ridiculous.
She proved it. She showed him evidence that the real Benjamin Blevin was dead, just as the original Madeline Grant was dead, their present identities nothing more than bootleg recordings from lost masters. And even those originals were fakes—the real Ben and Maddy had not been normal children but guinea pigs of Braintree.
We’re bootlegs of counterfeits,
she said.
Third-party unauthorized copies downloaded onto stolen computers. But check out the special features.
she said.
Third-party unauthorized copies downloaded onto stolen computers. But check out the special features.
She proceeded to repair her head in front of him. Ben could barely stand to watch, but Maddy had insisted he see what they had turned her into, making him sit beside her with a mirror and a spray bottle of topical anesthetic while she pulled out the hasty temporary stitches and reset the implant. It was nasty. He would have needed a microscope to see half of what she was doing in there with those tweezers—
damn
she was fast—but in a matter of minutes the wound was evenly and minutely threaded back together.
damn
she was fast—but in a matter of minutes the wound was evenly and minutely threaded back together.
All done,
she chirped.
Now it’s your turn …
she chirped.
Now it’s your turn …
Over the next few days, they recuperated in the room. From time to time, Ben stepped out on brief errands (the first thing he had done was get them both some hats—they looked like a couple of skinheads), running through their small supply of cash. They still had all the money from their original escape attempt, Ben’s pocket money, which was enough for about a week at the cheapest lodging they had been able to find: a noisy truck-stop motel on the outskirts of Newark. Ben had smuggled her in, but even at the single room rate, there was little left over for food or other amenities. At least gas was not an issue since they had abandoned the Braintree van in a parking garage. As far as they knew, no one was looking for it; there was nothing about them on the news. The only thing they heard about the destruction of Harmony was a brief story about reported explosions in the Bitterroot Valley region of Idaho. The official explanation was that these were “gas eruptions triggered by spontaneous coal combustion”—the gist being that since the valley was under federal jurisdiction, a restricted no-fly zone, it was of no concern to anyone.
Despite her crazy abilities, Ben could tell Maddy was having just as hard a time of it as he was. She could no more think of herself as Marina Sweet than he could think of himself as Duane Devlin. That more than anything was what persuaded him it was all true, the fact that she had to keep reminding herself that Roger and Beth Grant had not been her actual parents, that they were strangers to her, real-life mad scientists, and it was ridiculous to mourn their deaths. But she couldn’t help it; they were the only parents she knew. What’s more,
they
had thought they were her parents—Ben remembered the look on their poor sad faces as she was being wheeled out of the building. At Braintree, self-deception, self-obliteration, was the final reward. Everyone drank the Kool-Aid.
they
had thought they were her parents—Ben remembered the look on their poor sad faces as she was being wheeled out of the building. At Braintree, self-deception, self-obliteration, was the final reward. Everyone drank the Kool-Aid.
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