Turn or Burn (6 page)

Even though she wasn’t coming along, Luan Sebastian was well-dressed. I guess she was the type that didn’t like people to see her any other way than clean, done up, and appropriate.

Dr. Sebastian was administering shots to the boys, something Ted had told me about. The entire family took shots on a daily basis and the contents were some kind of special concoction of minerals, vitamins, nutrients, and so on to boost their health. This doctor was quite hard-core. Frankly, I didn’t see why anybody would want to add years to his life.

Ted was talking about who we should be looking for and the doctor interjected. “You know,” he started in his thick Dutch accent, “it is not just Bible thumpers that could be gunning for me.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, with pauses. “Certainly anyone exploring possibilities apropos life extension is possibly upsetting the religious set. And that’s who you’ll see most out there today. But there are others that disapprove as well.

“You can start with the arguments against stem cell research—a similarly disturbing topic for some. A moral dilemma exists that has nothing to do with religion. They think toying with nature is a bad idea. Bioluddites. Eco-fascists. Anarcho-primitivists. Think Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He was a Neo-Luddite.” He raised his voice. “Some of these birdbrains think we should stop using electricity!” He lifted his hands in the air. “Pull the plug! Now there’s a novel idea. They live in fantasyland! What these people don’t comprehend is that
technology is coming
. It’s a step in the evolutionary process. My friend William Gibson says, ‘In the future we’ll look back at the past and laugh at the so-called distinction between the real and virtual world.’ I think he’s right. And it’s simply a matter of who gets there first. I hope it is us, as opposed to, say…China.”

I liked what he had to say. Everything about this guy was smart, almost like he was more evolved in his own right. You couldn’t help but feel like an inferior being around him.

After we discussed the game plan, the doctor kissed the boys good-bye and then went to his wife. “I love you, darling.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

He removed his glasses and looked her in the eyes. “I wouldn’t dare let anything come between you and me watching our children grow. I’m in good hands. Nothing will go wrong. These measures are simply precautionary. I’ll see you this evening.”

He kissed her on the cheek, but she didn’t seem very receptive. Talk about a fireball. This woman was making my mother look like a pushover, and that, my friends, she was not.

“Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Ted and I escorted the doctor out of the building. It was the first time he’d left since we checked him in the afternoon before. We moved down the empty hall, two of us in front and one behind the doctor. We boarded the elevator. It stopped on the fifth floor. A woman with a briefcase stood waiting. She had on dark slacks and high heels and looked like she was on her way to her 10 a.m. Would probably grab a cup of burnt coffee on the way. I waved my hand and said, “Ma’am, you’re going to have to wait until the next one. Sorry.” She didn’t argue.

We reached the bottom floor and moved with purpose towards the exit. Ted and I scanned the lobby, analyzing each person, noticing eyes, hands, movements, and gestures. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The bellman opened the doors for us. Francesca had pulled the Suburban up to the front. She was standing with the back door open. She’d cleaned up since the gym. Looked sexy in her simple attire. No heels. Women can’t wear them in this business. You never know how far you might have to walk or run. I could see a little bulge in her suit jacket from her handgun.

The doctor stepped inside first, and I went in after him. Ted rode shotgun. Francesca drove us around the circle of the lot, weaving past a couple taxis, and then we were off. We’d analyzed the entire run the night before. Only a half mile to cover. Nothing, in the scheme of things. Everything sometimes.

There were all kinds of people, and they seemed to be everywhere. Some were chanting, others screaming through megaphones and waving signs and marching, all for their different reasons. As we suspected, and as I could tell by their signs and banners and shirts, most of them were motivated by religion. But I saw someone waddling through the crowd in a space suit. Another not far away wore a robot costume. It seemed others were there for the fun of it, almost like they were attending the newest Comic-Con.

On the corner of Seventh and Olive, outside of Blueacre Seafood, a group of people in neon orange T-shirts were standing together in a circle, holding hands. Their eyes were closed, and it looked like they were praying. These kinds of people covered the sidewalks and spilled into the coffee shops and fast food joints and out into the street, angrily shaking their fists and making noise.

I couldn’t stand protesters. I wanted to grab them all by their necks and scream, “Go get a job, you pricks!” Or, “Occupy
this
!”

From what the doctor had told us earlier, the Singularity Summit had grown greatly over the past few years, turning into one of the hottest tickets in the country. What began as a get-together of a couple hundred had turned into an international affair with a growing list of VIPs. And now, this…

We moved as quickly as we could south on Seventh Avenue. I read some of the signs and banners.
Make the Wrong Choice and He’ll Abandon You. Jesus Did Not Have a Computer. Don’t Choose the Highway to Hell.
And then there were some that didn’t have the religious message, like:
Hubris kills. Pull the plug.
That kind of thing.

The closer we got, the denser the mob became. The cops were in force, too, all wearing neon vests with
Seattle Police
on the back. Some were on horseback, weaving their way through the crowd. From what we’d seen yesterday, a block in every direction leading to the Convention Center was locked down.

Up ahead, I could see the barricade where they had blocked off the street. A thick line of SWAT stood with shields and sticks, ready for the crowd to try to penetrate. We just had to get inside. Looking left, I watched two men get thrown to the ground and cuffed by police. Others were circling around the scene, screaming and throwing things at the cops. Another traffic light stopped us. We were the third car back. Two blocks to go...

A loud boom.

We all whipped our heads back. A giant of a man was trying to see inside our vehicle. I touched my gun, ensuring it was there. He started beating on the windows with both fists. I didn’t think he could break the strong glass, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

Francesca was driving, and she didn’t need me to tell her to move. She held down the horn and started working her way to the wrong side of the road. Two cars had to stop and move onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting us. But she didn’t stop, like we’d all been trained to do. When you’re driving in that kind of situation, you must drive offensively. Don’t give other drivers the time to make decisions. Make the choice for them. Make them get out of the way or stop. She didn’t let up until we’d gone another block, and we passed through the last light before the barricade. Several other cars were in line to get in. We pulled up behind the last one and waited.

I shut down for a minute. That had really put me on edge. This voice in my head kept telling me I wasn’t ready, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t let Ted down.

I turned around and stared at the astounding sea of people and the great quantity of signs bobbing up and down over the mass. I cracked the window. A group was chanting, “Don’t play God! Don’t play God!”

The guards finally let us in after checking each of our IDs and running a dog around the car and a mirror under it. It was a good feeling to be out of that mess. If someone had been gunning for the doctor, it would have been easy to strike with some sort of bomb. We were okay, though. For now.

“There it is,” Francesca said. The Convention Center came into view. Massive silver block letters along the front read:
The Seattle Convention & Trade Center.
The walls were made mostly of glass. A sky bridge reached out from the fourth floor and rose over the street to an adjacent building. The Convention Center covered two full blocks. Plenty of exposure. If I was the one trying to cause problems during the Summit, I could have had my way quite easily. Simply put, I had a terrible feeling about what was to come.

We rode down into the parking garage and wound our way to a spot three levels down. Lots of people that could have been clones of the doctor were working their way to the entrance. The real geek squad. All of them had probably memorized the periodic table before they could walk. The ones that everybody picked on during grade school who were now married to all the good-looking, smart women.

We followed the crowd, flanking the doctor, not relaxing for a single second. Ted walked several feet behind us, and Francesca and I took either side. We rode to the first floor, and each of us worked our way through a security line, much like you’d find at an airport. As we got up to the front, we handed the officer our guns and papers. He let us pass without dealing with the detectors.

On the other side, we were handed an off-white pamphlet. There was a quote on the cover by Raymond Kurzweil, who would be speaking later that day. It read:

The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution.

Inside the pamphlet, there was a list of events and speakers, including biographies and descriptions relative to each talk. On the third page, there was a picture of Dr. Sebastian, and below him, a picture of his second in charge, Dr. Nina Kramer, who had straight blonde hair and fair skin—like she had some Viking blood running through her. She looked about ten years younger than Sebastian and was clearly in good shape. Ted had mentioned that she was a runner. She was standing next to their chimpanzee, Rachael. Kramer would be showing up later in the afternoon with the chimp. Their presentation, the one everyone was psyched about, would take place at four.

We proceeded to the escalators and rode up to the open third-floor atrium where everyone had gathered. The ceilings were multiple stories high. There would have been lots of light coming in through the giant walls of glass had the sun been shining, but of course it wasn’t, so artificial light lit the mood.

As we reached the top, swarms of people moved toward Dr. Sebastian, like paparazzi after a movie star. Sebastian turned to Ted. “I will need my freedom. I don’t want this to be a big deal. These are my colleagues and fans.”

Ted nodded and the three of us dissolved into the crowd. The doctor immediately jumped into a lively conversation with a group of pocket protector types. It would have to be one crafty assassin to fit in with these yahoos.

I walked over to Francesca. With my eyes working the crowd, I said, “Good workout?”

She mumbled something in Italian I didn’t understand.

In my best Italian restaurateur voice and with wonderfully exaggerated hand movements, I replied, “Okay,
bella
! Fettuccine! Lasagna! Parmigiana!”

She shook her head. The people near us who heard my rant looked at me like I was crazy. If only they knew. I guess I’d dug my own hole with Francesca. She’d started it and I couldn’t let it go. But now I was getting on my own nerves.
Can’t you keep your mouth shut?
My mother would have smacked me in the head if she heard that.

That didn’t stay on my mind long, though. I had a job to do, and any of these people could have been the person we were looking out for. I hadn’t worked in a while and my tools had dulled. I could usually pick an enemy out of the crowd with ease, but it wasn’t so anymore. I’d lost some of my precision and confidence.

There was no excuse. I couldn’t screw up.

Not that my opinion mattered, but I was sold on what could be happening in the coming years. A period of time really could be coming soon, where the technological achievements would surpass anything we could imagine. One of the most interesting talks I heard was from Ray Kurzweil himself. Ted had mentioned him back on the vineyard. Kurzweil began his work decades ago by creating a computer that could compose music on its own. His belief was that this period of time, this event horizon, could happen as early as 2045, and that specific year was based on his thoughts regarding exponential technological growth similar to what Ted had already described to me. It was actually so simple that even I could understand it.