Chapter 12
The drive from Randy’s lab was atypically uneventful, for which I was grateful. Traffic on the ground was light (most of it’s in the air these days, thanks to the preponderance of personal hovercrafts), and I made it to the ExShell headquarters with a few minutes to spare.
I pulled into the secure parking area and stared at the ExShell corporate edifice with a strange mixture of awe and bewilderment.
“Incredible,” I said to HARV. “Not every company would think of importing an entire castle from the Divided Kingdom for their headquarters.”
“Few companies could afford it,” HARV pointed out.
“If they’d just lose that giant, rotating ExShell hologram above the parapet, I’d swear that we’d just popped back in time a thousand years.”
“Oh yes,” HARV said, “except for the multitude of satellite receivers along the north wall, the hoverport over the main courtyard, and the two-thousand twenty-first century architectural details and improvements made to the front section alone, the illusion is very convincing.”
“You’re absolutely no fun, HARV.” I said. “It may be a bit ostentatious but it has more class than those boring boxes downtown.”
“That may be true,” HARV replied. “But your anachronistic tastes can hardly be considered mainstream.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“If you wish,” HARV sighed. “In any event, I suggest you hurry. Ms. Star’s computer informs me that its mistress hates to be kept waiting.”
I got out of the car and started down the finely manicured path towards the building. The scent on the breeze told me that the flowers peppering the grounds were the real thing (as opposed to holographic projections or the new improved plastic replicas which are so common today). It was clear that a lot of effort had gone into making this path seem natural, soft and nonthreatening. It was perfect in every respect, and that scared me.
The plants and the dirt were real enough, but they all fit too perfectly into some preordained idea of what nature should look like. There was no oddity or deviation to its patterns and structures. It was trying so hard to be perfectly natural that it was somehow totally unnatural, a Stepford garden.
Before I could dwell too deeply on the ambiguity of my thoughts, I entered the security checkpoint at the building’s entrance. It was a small room, sparsely decorated and pretty much what you would expect to find (outside the command center of a paramilitary complex). Ten burly security agents packing heavy ordinance were stationed in pairs on the perimeter. Three class AAA guardbots with multiple arm extensions (we’re talking serious firepower here) stood at the ready as well: two in the back of the room, one in front near the door. There was a bio-scanner near the entrance and a teleport pad at the room’s far wall.
This pretty much negated the warm fuzziness of the garden path outside. Cold and sterile, there were no illusions of softness here. Even the terminally dimwitted would quickly discern the message being sent: “No one gets in to see BB Star without our permission.”
And it just so happened that one unlucky man was learning this lesson at that exact nano. He was a trim, Latino man with a mini-handlebar mustache. He reminded me of that used hovercraft salesman from HV, smooth, suave and staggeringly good-looking, but there was something about him that you just couldn’t trust. He was verbally sparring with one of the security agents and a guard-bot, and it was clear that they weren’t buying whatever it was he was selling.
“Bloody DOS,” the Latino guy spat (surprising me with a somewhat cheesy British accent), “I demand to see her now!”
The agent was unruffled by the attitude and not at all surprised by the accent.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said calmly, “but Ms. Star has left rather specific orders that you are not to be allowed inside. If you attempt to get past me, I am instructed to shoot you and make it look like an accident.”
“Oh, sod off, you imbecile,” the Latino guy spat, then he shouted at the ceiling, “You can hear me, can’t you? I know you can hear me, you icy harlot. How the blazes do you expect me to live properly on a measly three-million-credit severance package?”
“Who’s the joker?” I whispered to HARV.
“That’s Manuel Mani,” HARV whispered through the wrist interface. “BB Star’s former personal astrologer and rumored ex-lover.”
“I think we can nix the ‘rumored’ part.”
“That is my opinion as well,” HARV said.
The agent shook his head and tried his best to deal with Mani.
“Ms. Star does not personally monitor this room, sir. Furthermore, the severance package is based on the standard scale that has been devised for Ms. Star’s former … um, companions. Now please move along.”
He put his hand on his on the blaster in his holster in a subtle, yet effective, threat. Mani may have been stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. He backed off, but he didn’t go quietly.
“You’ll be sorry. Believe me, you’ll all be bloody sorry,” he shouted, then he looked towards the ceiling. “Especially you, you trillionaire temptress!”
He turned toward the door in an attempt to make a dramatic exit, but unfortunately bumped right into me as he did so.
“Get out of my way, you cretin!”
“Believe me, buddy,” I said, “it’ll be my pleasure.”
Mani stared at me contemptuously.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Next in line for BB Star?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Well, you’re in for a world of trouble, mate.”
He bumped me again with his shoulder on his way out. The bump actually staggered me back and I hit the door jamb with a good bit of force. The guy was much stronger than he appeared.
I heard him mumble again as he walked down the garden path outside.
“A world of trouble.”
I straightened my coat and turned back to the agent and the guardbot as they turned their attention toward me.
“Well, there’s a good omen to start things off,” I said to myself.
“Good day, Mr. Johnson,” the lead agent said. “Ms. Star is expecting you. This bot will take your firearm and computer interface now.”
The guardbot held out a claw, waiting (impatiently) for me to comply. I smiled at it, but the screen that served as its face remained stoic. I slowly (yet still coolly) popped my gun from its wrist holder and into my hand. I gently placed the trigger loop on the bottom claw of the bot’s arm and let it dangle there like a 4500 caliber holiday ornament.
The bot extended its second claw so close to my face that I could have shaved (or cut my throat) with it if I’d wanted.
“Your computer interface, please!” the bot said. The word “please,” by the way, when spoken by a class AAA guardbot roughly translates into “Do it now or I’ll rip you limb from limb then gleefully roll over your remains while laughing.”
“How will I know what time it is without my interface?” I asked.
The bot’s blank screen remained exactly that.
The human agent interceded diplomatically. “Your time is not important to Ms. Star,” he said. “Now please cooperate. It will jeopardize our efficiency bonus if you are tardy.”
I thought about questioning his use of the word “tardy.” But I decided there would be nothing to gain from it. Also, it’s never a good idea to mess with a guy’s efficiency bonus and even worse to mess with ten guys’ efficiency bonuses, especially when those ten guys are heavily armed. I slid the wrist interface off my hand and tossed it to the bot. The HARV in my head was now the only one I had.
The bot caught the interface, but the display on its OLED screen formed an angry frown.
“Just checking your reflexes,” I quipped.
I’m fairly certain that it growled at me.
Once again, the lead agent interceded. He motioned this time towards the bioscanner. “Step into the scanner, please.”
A word about bioscanners. There was a time when security people could use metal detectors and x-rays to successfully scan for weapons. The advent of biologically engineered armaments, however, completely changed the rules of weapons detection. Making certain that a person doesn’t have a hand-blaster up his sleeve doesn’t mean a thing when that same person may be carrying one in his spleen (disgusting but often effective).
The bioscanner was a product of necessity from the (not so) good old days thirty years ago and has been modified over the decades. True, the world today is a fairly safe place, but for those who can afford the extra level of security, why take chances? After all, in a world of fifteen billion people, a few of them are bound to be, well, not running with a full set of RAM.
Bioscans are a great way of making sure people and things are exactly what they appear to be. Nobody has ever been able to trick one, until now, I hoped. That is, if Randy was right and my new interface with HARV was as undetectable as he claimed.
Electra, HARV and Randy have all repeatedly told me that bioscanners are completely safe and that the strange tingle I feel when I am scanned is purely a psychosomatic reaction. My response to that is usually, “I don’t care.” Unpleasant is unpleasant even if it is all in my head. But, despite my trepidation, I stepped into the scanner and felt that annoying tingle once again, as I passed through.
“Is that your original appendix?” the agent monitoring the scanner asked.
“Yes, it is,” I answered.
“It’s abnormally large.”
“I get a lot of compliments on it.”
The agent turned to the leader. “He’s clean,” he said. Then he turned back to me, “although you should add more fiber to your diet.”
Luckily, it seemed Randy was right again; there was no mention of the fact that I happened to have a supercomputer hooked into my brain.
I stepped clear of the scanner and, hopeful that I had successfully met the pre-meeting security requirements, turned toward the lead agent. But when I noticed the skinny agent with the weasel face in the far corner of the room, giving me the visual once-over, I knew there was more to come. The look this girl was giving me wasn’t your average, “I can take this guy if I have to” or “What the heck is he thinking, wearing a paisley tie with that shirt” once-over. This was a seriously thorough glare that made the hairs on my neck quiver. I knew then that the girl was a psi and that she was potential trouble. I took a breath, nicknamed her “Ratgirl,” and stepped forward to meet her.
Being blessed with a naturally thick head, I’m not a particularly easy guy to mind-probe and, if Randy was right (which he almost always was—when it came to most high tech matters), having HARV directly interfaced with my brain would make it especially hard for Ratgirl to get into my head. Still, if she were to pick up even one stray thought about HARV, my cover would be blown, so I wasn’t about to take any chances.
Years of experience with psis has taught me a few things about their talents. The ability to peer into someone’s mind is an awesome power but controlling that power is a very delicate art. It takes a fine touch to focus your senses onto one person’s thoughts. One slip-up or a lapse in concentration and you’re picking up the subconscious rantings of every id and superego within thinking distance and all that psychobabble is enough to drive a person insane, suicidal, homicidal, or any combination thereof.
So, given that the art of mind reading is a fragile one, to say the least, I’ve devised a few tricks over the years to sort of throw psis off balance. And, like many things in this world, the most effective is also the most simple.
Psis hate humming.
Yes, nothing throws off a psi’s concentration more than when the focus of her mind-probe starts humming an insipid yet catchy tune (I have found that theme songs of old holovision sitcoms work the best).
Apparently, the humming creates a type of mental white noise on the mind-probe frequency that drowns out any thoughts worth reading. Also, since most people associate such songs with strong visual images, such as personal recollections of their childhood, interpretations of the lyrics, or simple subliminal level devil-worshiping thoughts, the mind soon becomes even more cluttered and the psi is overwhelmed by the tsunami of near-impenetrable mental spam.
So, like a gunfighter of old, I locked eyes with Ratgirl and gave her an icy stare as she scoped me out intently. She realized then that I was on to her, so she cast aside all subtleties and pretenses and came at me with a full frontal mind-probe. In that nano the gauntlets were thrown and combat was engaged. No quarter would be asked, none would be given.
So I started humming.
“Here’s the story, of President Bradley, a good girl just looking for love …”
Ratgirl’s expression slowly turned sour. The veins in her forehead bulged and sweat began to bead on her brow. She doubled her efforts but I would not relent.
“With the Alien, his sister too, the Emperor and its lice …”
Her face grew pale and I noticed that her right hand began to quiver ever so slightly. That’s when I knew that I had her.
“Hello world, here’s a clone that I’m makin’. Somebody slap me!”
And that was all she could stand.
“He’s clean,” she told the others. “He’s clean!” Then she fell to the ground holding her head and sobbing like a baby.
She was lucky I couldn’t remember the theme to All My Clones. It probably would have killed her.
The lead agent cleared his throat uncomfortably and stepped over the sobbing Ratgirl. He gently ushered me away from his fallen comrade and gestured like a paramilitary game show host unveiling the grand prize, towards a teleport pad that was against the far wall.
“That, um, completes our security tests, Mr. Johnson,” he said. “If you’ll kindly step onto the pad, I’ll inform Ms. Star that she may port you up at her convenience.”
“And I’ll be sure to convey to Ms. Star the level of courtesy and professionalism that you all displayed,” I said.
The agent glanced again at the fallen Ratgirl who was now sobbing “Eep-op-ork-ah-ah,” over and over in her stupor.
“Whatever,” he said and turned away.
As I stepped onto the teleport pad, I couldn’t help thinking that one of the few things I hated more than being bio-scanned or mind-probed was being teleported. Porting is bad enough when you have to go from city to city (that at least serves a purpose). Porting from one room to another within the same building (even a building as large as this one) I consider to be either obscenely extravagant or (in this case) obsessively paranoid.
Part of me didn’t appreciate being ported to satisfy a trillionaire’s paranoia, but the other, more logical, part of me figured that the big credits she was paying gave her the right to a little eccentricity. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that I’d let a beautiful woman rip the molecules of my body apart, shoot them through a light beam and throw them back together somewhere else for credits. But that’s another story …
So I stood on the pad as a floating bot camera hovered beside me, probably transmitting my image directly back to BB Star. It was clear that she took no chances when it came to security and I couldn’t help but wonder, as my body was broken down and shot through space, what it was exactly that had this woman so worried.