When humans first settled into cities, they did so alongside or at the behest of creatures known as Ancients. Unlike Dragons, which were part of the world itself, or Wizards, which were born naturally from humans in a magical world, Ancients instead evolved out of the energy of Humanity as a whole. The Delphi Archives note that there is some debate whether the Ancients shaped humanity as an amalgamation of themselves, or whether humanity unwittingly created the Ancients to embody aspects of human psyche. Whatever their origin, the Ancients were long the driving force of Humanity's history.
They were powerful creatures, taking the names given to them by humans but never changing their forms, which were as varied as their personalities. No single description could possibly fit all Ancients. Save perhaps for these: the Ancients did not age. Nor were they immortal, as the Two Houses displayed. They could exert great influence upon the world and its inhabitants, although the form by which this took varied widely. Some were exceptionally physically powerful, others raised armies of their progeny, others could conjure magical devices, and still others could transform life into their own image.
The Ancients spawned many of the magical creatures in the world. Shadow men, vampires, orcs, gremlins, fairies, nymphs, and a dozen other species were either created to serve the Ancients, or as a result of their influence. These societies were as varied and as lively as their human counterparts, and lived alongside Humanity for thousands of years. They feuded with humans and each other, had kings and presidents and merchants and parents, and found their way in the world just as humans did.
Few of these societies and even fewer of their founding Ancients survive today. There used to be an Ancient of alchemy and plants, one who was very tied to the earth, but they killed her. There used to be a great inventor Ancient, who created machines for every use and user, but they killed him. There used to be one who was like the sun, a bringer of light, but they killed her too. Michael the storyteller survived, as stories often do. There is still an orc lord living in the mountains, a lord of war, who fought and lost against the Wizards before the Two Houses arose, and his being driven to the mountains at the top of the world saved him from the Two Houses.
Some wonder if the Ancients could return, now that The Anarchist Murmur has come and gone.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Becoming a more sophisticated drunk
I'm an unapologetic beer snob. I drink beer like most people drink pop because I lost my sweet tooth years ago. And while I have my favorite beer (Goose Island Honker's Ale) and my favorite type of beer (American Pale Ale), I'm quite partial to most styles of beer given certain circumstances. Wheat beers are better in summer, and stouts are exclusively for snowy days, for example.
Yet for the longest time, when I felt like drinking liquor I drank whiskey. Scotch at first, until someone turned me on to bourbon so I could branch out. Two ice cubes and a splash of water, pour whiskey on top, stir. Whiskey. Man's drink.
But now that I'm living with a lady, I've been informed that there are OTHER types of spirits. And despite what I learned in college, you can make a mixed drink that doesn't involve pop or kool-aid.
So I've been experimenting, starting with, what else, whiskey. Had to make a stop at the bottom shelf of the liquor store for some Seagram's 7, because mixing $40 Woodford Reserve made me a little ill. I decided I like the idea of an Old Fashioned better than I like the actual drink, and the Manhatten I made tasted like syrup, so it was time to try Science.
After a number of experiments I came up with something I call a Brambly Forest. It's named for its taste; try it and see:
2oz mixing whiskey.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
1 pinch dried mint leaves or 4 fresh mint leaves.
A dash of bitters.
A splash of water to taste.
Muddle the mint in the vanilla and water. Add two ice cubes, and top with whiskey and bitters. Stir.
Some more experimenting lead to what I'm told is a modified Whiskey Sour, but in REAL life is called a Puckered Canadian:
2oz mixing whiskey.
5 drops lemon juice.
Just enough real maple syrup to thinly coat the bottom of the glass.
A splash of water to taste.
Mix the lemon, syrup, and water until the syrup is dissolved, and then top with whiskey and ice. Stir.
Yet for the longest time, when I felt like drinking liquor I drank whiskey. Scotch at first, until someone turned me on to bourbon so I could branch out. Two ice cubes and a splash of water, pour whiskey on top, stir. Whiskey. Man's drink.
But now that I'm living with a lady, I've been informed that there are OTHER types of spirits. And despite what I learned in college, you can make a mixed drink that doesn't involve pop or kool-aid.
So I've been experimenting, starting with, what else, whiskey. Had to make a stop at the bottom shelf of the liquor store for some Seagram's 7, because mixing $40 Woodford Reserve made me a little ill. I decided I like the idea of an Old Fashioned better than I like the actual drink, and the Manhatten I made tasted like syrup, so it was time to try Science.
After a number of experiments I came up with something I call a Brambly Forest. It's named for its taste; try it and see:
2oz mixing whiskey.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
1 pinch dried mint leaves or 4 fresh mint leaves.
A dash of bitters.
A splash of water to taste.
Muddle the mint in the vanilla and water. Add two ice cubes, and top with whiskey and bitters. Stir.
Some more experimenting lead to what I'm told is a modified Whiskey Sour, but in REAL life is called a Puckered Canadian:
2oz mixing whiskey.
5 drops lemon juice.
Just enough real maple syrup to thinly coat the bottom of the glass.
A splash of water to taste.
Mix the lemon, syrup, and water until the syrup is dissolved, and then top with whiskey and ice. Stir.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
...and why I want to win
I played a game in college called Warcraft 3. Produced by Blizzard, it came out before World of Warcraft did, and is a real time strategy game rather than a role playing game. The appeal of Warcraft 3 to me was not the mechanics of it, or the unit control, or even the strategy. The appeal was the online ladder system .
I was good at Warcraft 3 because the ladder was an immediate, objective metric of my worth in the game. When I won I felt elated and egotistical; when I lost I felt hurt and insulted. I studied the matched I played; I studied the matches other people played; I spent time in class and before bed imagining new strategies and tactics. As a result of three years of heavy playing, I eventually was ranked in the top 100 players in the Americas and qualified for the World Cyber Games regional tournament.
All of which now means precisely shit. The game is dying, I haven't played since 2005, and none of the accomplishments I spent so much time earning mean anything outside the scope of that specific video game.
So was that time wasted? Would I be a better person, however you wish to define that, if instead I had spent that time writing fiction and working towards my dream of being an author? I contest it wasn't, and I wouldn't be, because of the things that game taught me.
The foremost of which is that I like winning. I was never athletic and was a theatre kid in high school, so WC3 was my first taste at competition that I had a chance at winning. And I frickin love it. The competition itself is secondary, I want to win, and if I don't win, I want to get better so I can. A vice to some, and in some situations, knowing that I love to win makes it easy to motivate myself in areas that aren't video games.
I want to win at writing a book. Not writing a book means I lose, so I wrote a book.
I want to win at getting published. Not getting published means I lose, so I'm busting my ass to get published.
I want to win at being in shape. Being in bad shape means I lose, so I work out four days a week and eat right.
There's no room for idleness if you want to win. There's no room for not feeling like it, or rationalization; those are just excuses if you want to win. Don't want to write? Fine, all that means is you're losing. If that stings, do something about it so you can win. Some people give themselves pep talks, I call myself a loser.
Playing WC3 also taught me that not everyone wants to win. Some people just want to play. These people get more enjoyment out of the game and competition than they do out of the result. They play 'for fun,' without thinking of improvements or optimal strategies. As a result, they drift. Their innate talent takes them to a certain level, and there they stay, whether that's at level 5 or 10 or 20, they always play the hand they were dealt. Beyond video games, these are the people who are perfectly content to plug away at a decent job for however long they're needed, and have nice safe hobbies in their free time, whether that's watching TV or going for walks or reading. They're content with where they are, because they're just here to have fun. Alternatively, they may feel empty or directionless, and seek to find meaning outside of the game, through religion or family.
Other people wanted to win, but only if they were playing 'fair,' which is defined by some arbitrary set of rules that exists only in their own mind. I never cheated, meaning I never used a hack or otherwise modified the game in any way to give myself an advantage. But I played dirty, and that agitated people who thought a noble loss was better than a backstabbing win. These players wanted to improve, but only if they could stay within their mental construct of fairness. Beyond video games, these people want to be objectively successful, but they want to do it inside an existing framework. They want to be managers, executives, owners. If they hit a ceiling, they exhaust themselves pushing against it before complaining about how the system is unfair, never thinking to remove themselves from the system. They may be bitter and angry if they cannot succeed, but if they do, they feel morally justified and righteous, because they succeeded the 'right' way.
Me, though, I just want to win. I want use all the tactics, use all the strategies. If I'm good, it's because I want to be. If I fail, it's because I picked the wrong strategy and didn't pull it off properly. Try something different next time. I plan on winning this game, and I'm going to have a blast when I do.
I was good at Warcraft 3 because the ladder was an immediate, objective metric of my worth in the game. When I won I felt elated and egotistical; when I lost I felt hurt and insulted. I studied the matched I played; I studied the matches other people played; I spent time in class and before bed imagining new strategies and tactics. As a result of three years of heavy playing, I eventually was ranked in the top 100 players in the Americas and qualified for the World Cyber Games regional tournament.
All of which now means precisely shit. The game is dying, I haven't played since 2005, and none of the accomplishments I spent so much time earning mean anything outside the scope of that specific video game.
So was that time wasted? Would I be a better person, however you wish to define that, if instead I had spent that time writing fiction and working towards my dream of being an author? I contest it wasn't, and I wouldn't be, because of the things that game taught me.
The foremost of which is that I like winning. I was never athletic and was a theatre kid in high school, so WC3 was my first taste at competition that I had a chance at winning. And I frickin love it. The competition itself is secondary, I want to win, and if I don't win, I want to get better so I can. A vice to some, and in some situations, knowing that I love to win makes it easy to motivate myself in areas that aren't video games.
I want to win at writing a book. Not writing a book means I lose, so I wrote a book.
I want to win at getting published. Not getting published means I lose, so I'm busting my ass to get published.
I want to win at being in shape. Being in bad shape means I lose, so I work out four days a week and eat right.
There's no room for idleness if you want to win. There's no room for not feeling like it, or rationalization; those are just excuses if you want to win. Don't want to write? Fine, all that means is you're losing. If that stings, do something about it so you can win. Some people give themselves pep talks, I call myself a loser.
Playing WC3 also taught me that not everyone wants to win. Some people just want to play. These people get more enjoyment out of the game and competition than they do out of the result. They play 'for fun,' without thinking of improvements or optimal strategies. As a result, they drift. Their innate talent takes them to a certain level, and there they stay, whether that's at level 5 or 10 or 20, they always play the hand they were dealt. Beyond video games, these are the people who are perfectly content to plug away at a decent job for however long they're needed, and have nice safe hobbies in their free time, whether that's watching TV or going for walks or reading. They're content with where they are, because they're just here to have fun. Alternatively, they may feel empty or directionless, and seek to find meaning outside of the game, through religion or family.
Other people wanted to win, but only if they were playing 'fair,' which is defined by some arbitrary set of rules that exists only in their own mind. I never cheated, meaning I never used a hack or otherwise modified the game in any way to give myself an advantage. But I played dirty, and that agitated people who thought a noble loss was better than a backstabbing win. These players wanted to improve, but only if they could stay within their mental construct of fairness. Beyond video games, these people want to be objectively successful, but they want to do it inside an existing framework. They want to be managers, executives, owners. If they hit a ceiling, they exhaust themselves pushing against it before complaining about how the system is unfair, never thinking to remove themselves from the system. They may be bitter and angry if they cannot succeed, but if they do, they feel morally justified and righteous, because they succeeded the 'right' way.
Me, though, I just want to win. I want use all the tactics, use all the strategies. If I'm good, it's because I want to be. If I fail, it's because I picked the wrong strategy and didn't pull it off properly. Try something different next time. I plan on winning this game, and I'm going to have a blast when I do.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Losing the only game that matters...
Today I woke up at 6:30 so I could shower and eat before I went to work a job I don't hate. About 11 hours later, I came home $200 richer. I need that money to pay rent, feed myself, keep the lights and internet on, and pay expenses on my car and student loans. These are the obligations I've chosen to take on, and my current arangement lets me afford these things and have a little left over to save and go out once a week or so. As far as real life money and possessions are concerned, it's a nice situation.
But if this were a game, I'd be losing.
The rules of the game are simple. The only resource worth mentioning is time, because it's something everyone has, but everyone has a finite amount. In the interest of fairness, we'll give everyone the same 24 hours, rather than worrying about years, which can vary from person to person. The object of the the game is to aquire as much time as possible, because time is necessary for all other activities. And because time cannot be created, it can only be consumed, the mechanic by which this works is to devide time into two categories: obligation time and free time. The more free time a player has, the greater control they have over their life.
I spend 11 hours a day preparing for work, commuting to and from work, and sitting at my desk at my job. I sleep seven hours a day, which is two hours fewer than I'd like. Making and eating food takes another 1.5 to 2 hours a day, and random chores like hygene take another hour. That leaves me with a little more than 3 hours a day for non-necessary persuits, as defined by the obligations I've chosen. That's 12.5% of my day that's free to use as I see fit. 20.5 hours spent on obligaitons to aquire 3.5 hours of free time.
Put another way, I tolerate seven hours of obligation to live one hour of life. I'm getting shafted on this trade, and I'm losing this game.
Which is how it should be, according to conventional thinking. People who win the game are always outside the mainstream, whether they win by being insanely rich, like an A list actor, by minimizing their obligations, like a wandering hippie, or by finding a way to meet their obligations in their free time, like an artist or entrepeneur. But most people don't win the game. A great many people have a fullfulling, enjoyable time losing the game, but they still lose.
I want to win. I want to flip that trade, and I want to do it sooner rather than later. You can have fun playing the game, or you can have fun winning the game, and I'm going to play to win.
But if this were a game, I'd be losing.
The rules of the game are simple. The only resource worth mentioning is time, because it's something everyone has, but everyone has a finite amount. In the interest of fairness, we'll give everyone the same 24 hours, rather than worrying about years, which can vary from person to person. The object of the the game is to aquire as much time as possible, because time is necessary for all other activities. And because time cannot be created, it can only be consumed, the mechanic by which this works is to devide time into two categories: obligation time and free time. The more free time a player has, the greater control they have over their life.
I spend 11 hours a day preparing for work, commuting to and from work, and sitting at my desk at my job. I sleep seven hours a day, which is two hours fewer than I'd like. Making and eating food takes another 1.5 to 2 hours a day, and random chores like hygene take another hour. That leaves me with a little more than 3 hours a day for non-necessary persuits, as defined by the obligations I've chosen. That's 12.5% of my day that's free to use as I see fit. 20.5 hours spent on obligaitons to aquire 3.5 hours of free time.
Put another way, I tolerate seven hours of obligation to live one hour of life. I'm getting shafted on this trade, and I'm losing this game.
Which is how it should be, according to conventional thinking. People who win the game are always outside the mainstream, whether they win by being insanely rich, like an A list actor, by minimizing their obligations, like a wandering hippie, or by finding a way to meet their obligations in their free time, like an artist or entrepeneur. But most people don't win the game. A great many people have a fullfulling, enjoyable time losing the game, but they still lose.
I want to win. I want to flip that trade, and I want to do it sooner rather than later. You can have fun playing the game, or you can have fun winning the game, and I'm going to play to win.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Battlesongs of Hope World Almanac: Part 1 - The World
Battlesongs of Hope takes place in a world that most readers will recognize as Earth, even though it isn’t. Most readers would also recognize the time period as mid-20th century, but those years mean nothing there.
Battlesongs takes place on a large continent that is demarcated primarily into those lands which have been recently under Wizard influence, and those that have not. The boundary between these lands is fuzzy, primarily because the Wizards' lands were so vast and their power so great that there were no other powers on the continent to whom a boundary would be useful, and also because the Wizards are now dead, and so their influence has been waning of late.
The Wizard continent is presumably surrounded by an ocean, although because its role in the book is solely to help regulate the weather, it warrants little more mention.
The Wizard lands span mountains and coastlines, swamps and forests, but the greatest area of land is occupied by vast rolling fields that experience a temperate four seasons. Few cities dot the plains, due to the Wizards’ tendency to consolidate people and resources. Expansive farms turn the fields into a checkerboard of crops from horizon to horizon. The characters of BSOH are not particularly educated regarding life outside of the city, and therefore unfortunately do not know the proper names for many of the landmarks and features in the hinterlands.
The largest Wizard city, which the characters usually refer to as “the sprawl” when discussing it in aggregate, forms a centerpiece in BSOH. This city is so massive that it is much more useful to refer to the districts within the city, which take the names given by the Wizard clan that presides (or rather, presided) over them. The size and population of each district is variable, as Wizards control territory in the city according to their clan’s relative strength and favorability in the eyes of the Two Houses.
Resources and technology in the Wizard lands generally tend to obey the laws of physics. If there is oil in the Wizard lands, it has not yet been found. Liquid fuel is instead produced from algae or plant material, and is generally far more valuable than gasoline. Oddly, electronic computing does not work at all in the BSOH world, despite all theories and calculations indicating that it is possible. The Wizards and most other scholars have concluded that this one discrepancy in natural law must be due to magic.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Candypepper spice
One of the keys to eating healthy is making sure you can feed yourself on days when you don't feel like cooking. Make this spice rub and you can prepare a couple of servings of chicken or pork chops in about one minute. Cut up a green pepper while the seasoned meat is grilling on a Foreman, and you have a decent lunch or a good start on dinner in about 5 minutes.
Prep time: 15 minutes
3 Tablespoon salt
4 T white sugar
4 T light brown sugar
4 T black pepper
5 T cayenne pepper
2 T chili powder
2 T thyme
1 T garlic powder
1 T paprika
1 T nutmeg
1 T cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
Mix together in a bowl, and store in a ziploc bag with a small piece of bread to keep the brown sugar from clumping.
Prep time: 15 minutes
3 Tablespoon salt
4 T white sugar
4 T light brown sugar
4 T black pepper
5 T cayenne pepper
2 T chili powder
2 T thyme
1 T garlic powder
1 T paprika
1 T nutmeg
1 T cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
Mix together in a bowl, and store in a ziploc bag with a small piece of bread to keep the brown sugar from clumping.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
An Experiment
On the edge of one of many cracked, long-dry riverbeds in the desert redlands of New Mexico, there was a single, wide, one story house. Next to the house was a boxy pickup truck, its paint long since stripped away by the desert dust and sun. The house’s corrugated roof sprouted a pair of satellite dishes between rows of black solar panels.
Inside, standing next to a brown electric stove, Travis Dreame grilled a cheese sandwich in a black frying pan. He was tall, with thick brown hair and an unkempt handlebar mustache. The pit stains in his faded concert t-shirt formed an unbroken ring across his chest and upper back. His jeans were worn to threads at the knees and had been sun-bleached to a pastel blue. The butter in the pan spluttered and bubbled when he slid the sandwich around with his finger to prevent it from scorching. After checking the underside of the sandwich, he flipped it onto a paper towel next to its twin. He was expecting company.
Travis took three steps from his kitchen to the dining room, holding his impromptu plate over his shoulder like a waiter’s tray. With his free hand, he rearranged the mess on a cheaply veneered oval table. He carelessly tossed various circuit boards, antennas, memory chips, power converters, and batteries into a black plastic box, which he pushed to the far end of the table. The LCD monitor, suspended over the table by way of a metal arm on the ceiling, was swung to the side where the glowing lines of code weren’t as intrusive. He set the sandwiches on the table.
Four steps took Travis to his front window. He folded his arms and watched a dust cloud approaching from across the dry riverbed. The harsh sun-glare of metal untarnished by the desert caught Travis in the eye, and he did not blink. An oversized silver SUV headed the dust cloud, following a wide path between rust colored boulders and sparse patches of spiky yellow grass. Travis knew the SUV, large enough to haul some family trees, carried only one occupant. The sunglass-wearing driver, one of Travis’ benefactors and unwitting experimental subject, parked next to the house and went to the door as dust settled around him.
Travis waited for the knock, and opened the door. “Please, come in,” he said, standing free of the doorway. The crew-cut blond man flashed a whitened smile and took Travis’ hand in an executive grip.
“Yeah, hey, Travis! Good to see you; how you doin’ yeah?” he said as he took off his designer sunglasses. He wore a white polo shirt over a beech tan, and looked to be ten years Travis’ junior.
“Fine,” Travis replied with none of Paul’s enthusiasm. “Did you find the place alright?”
“Yeah, you know, you kinda live on the ass end of nowhere,” Paul said. His lower jaw bounced when he laughed. “No, no, no, though. I got a GPS in the car. Yeah, it tells me all the country roads and trails and shit.”
“That’s good-“
“Your place wasn’t on there,” Paul continued. “No- yeah, listen. I put you in latitude and longitude; you don’t even have a fucking address buddy!” His lower jaw bounced again.
Travis smiled on one side of his mouth and shut the door. “You must be hungry; I made a couple of sandwiches,” he said.
“Not really, the heat kinda dries me out, you know?”
“Oh please, you’ve been driving for hours. I insist,” said Travis.
“Well, yeah, maybe just one,” Paul said. He sat himself at the table, straddling the back of a chair, and took a sandwich off the paper towel. “Got anything to drink? I feel like I just crossed the Mojave!” He laughed.
“Sure thing,” Travis said, opening the refrigerator. He heard a faint crunch behind him.
“Mmm! Ugh, did you forget the wrapper on the cheese?” Paul asked. He pried his sandwich partially apart.
Travis looked at Paul and faintly shook his head. “No, of course not. Might be the sand, it gets inside sometimes,” he said.
Paul took a small bite and chewed carefully. “Yeah, maybe. That one part tasted rancid,” he said.
Travis poured pop out of a two-liter bottle into two empty glass jars. He set one before Paul and leaned against the counter, sipping the other. Paul finished his sandwich with large bites and took a large gulp out of the jar. He dusted his hands together and then pulled a PDA out of his pocket.
“So what have you got for me Travis?” he asked. “Can’t tell the boss you’re making million dollar sandwiches!” he laughed.
Travis stroked his moustache and narrowed his eyes. “I jumped the memory past critical mass about ten weeks ago. I’ve got just under 27,000 petabytes downstairs,” he said.
Paul’s eyebrows shot up. “Twenty-seven thousand? Jesus! But you don’t have the funds; between Gaond’s and Palmer-Kineal I know you haven’t gotten more than ten or twelve mil this year,” he said. Travis had secured multi-year, multi-million dollar grants from the two companies. Misguided funds, in Paul’s opinion, given to a self-styled prophet chasing an electronic pipe-dream.
“I’ve had some extra help,” Travis said. He pulled at his scruffy chin and continued. “I had thought fifteen-thou would be plenty, enough for two people maybe. But then I started testing, on myself at first, about nine weeks ago, and the system couldn’t handle it. Fifteen kay was enough for a rudimentary copy, but it wasn’t a personality, not a consciousness. It was like the mind of someone in a coma,” he said.
Travis paused while Paul tapped at his phone. The medicinal division of Gaond Researchers, which Paul worked for, sent him all over the world with that PDA, looking for new chemicals and treatments. When Paul found something the company thought promising, like a man attempting to copy a person’s entire mental image into a computer, granting something like digital immortality; Paul tapped his phone and reported the details via satellite to the company.
Travis waited for Paul to look up, and then continued. “So I jumped the capacity and tried again. Three weeks ago I was testing a subject, and I hit a dilemma. In order to copy a mind at rest, I’d need to use a maser strong enough to fry the neurons I’m trying to map. But the only time the brain is active enough so I can use a subtler maser is when the mind is in a primal survival mode.”
“Like ‘fight-or-flight?’” asked Paul as a matter of course.
“Something like that, yes. But when the brain is that active, the Heisenberg effect jumps a few orders of magnitude and I end up with corrupted data,” said Travis. A metallic glare through the window shone briefly on his face.
“So what are you telling me? You’re saying it’s a bust, yeah?” asked Paul.
“Not exactly,” Travis said. From outside, the sound of tires on rock stopped abruptly. The whisper of a fuel-cell engine floated through the compact house. Travis walked to the door and opened it.
The passenger door of a black custom Cadillac, parked within touching distance of the front awning, opened with an electric whine. A hunched silhouette sat waiting on the seat while a man built like a refrigerator and wearing a suit stretched tight across his chest walked around the front of the car. Travis leaned against the doorframe while the barrel-chested driver helped his withered passenger out of the car. The desert wind disturbed the passenger’s sparse white comb-over and revealed a scalp covered with dark malignant splotches.
Travis chewed his overgrown moustache while the mismatched pair of men shuffled to his doorstep. The small man’s shrunken skull squeezed his squinted eyes halfway out of their sockets, giving him a fishlike appearance.
“Travis,” the small man said. “This—is C—Carl, my body—bodyguard.”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” The larger man put his face close to Travis’ when Travis didn’t move to let the pair inside.
Travis wrinkled his nose at Carl’s strongly minted breath. “He can’t come in,” he said.
“He just—just in case some—something—“ wheezed the old man.
Travis tilted his head around Carl’s blocky face. “I told you Charles. No. It’s not something for spectators.” He scratched under his chin and glared at Carl. “He might interfere.”
“You listen—“ started Carl, putting his face even closer to Travis’.
“Carl, wait—wait in the car,” Charles said, touching his driver’s elbow. The large man took a step back and bent to whisper in Charles’ ear. Travis saw him slip something heavy into the older man’s suit pocket. Travis smiled with one corner of his mouth as Carl fumed on the way back to the car.
Travis stepped out of the doorway. “Charles, I’d like you to meet Paul Dunn. Paul, this is the esteemed Charles Maxell.”
“Maxell the banker?” Paul stood and surveyed the stooped man in the doorway.
Charles stretched his neck, revealing dark hardened growths around his collarbones. “That’s—yes. Maxell In—Investments. That’s mine,” he boasted.
Paul shook Charles’ hand with stunned reverence. The old man looked suddenly out of place; one of the world’s wealthiest men, hunched and withering in a run-down nothing of a desert hut.
“I was just telling Paul here that I’m on the verge of a breakthrough,” Travis said, laying a hand on Charles’ bony shoulder.
The man’s fish-eyes went wild for a moment. “You—you told him—the—“ he stammered.
Travis smiled. “Oh no, no, no. I don’t think Paul has ever seen the basement. Let’s get you something to drink first. Would you like a sandwich perhaps?” he said.
“No. I’m not—not hungry,” Charles said, looking at Paul.
“I insist, Mr. Maxell,” Travis said. He handed Charles the second cheese sandwich on a fresh paper towel. “Have a sandwich.”
Paul glanced from Travis to Charles as the two stared at each other for a long moment. A look of understanding passed Charles’s face like a shadow, and the banker took the sandwich with both hands.
“Mr. Maxell has been working with me since I left my practice, almost nine years now,” Travis explained. “He’s helped keep me off the grid, so I can work independently, without the AMA always looking over my shoulder.”
Paul tapped his PDA and gave Travis a sidelong look. “You never mentioned that in your application for the Gaond grants,” he said. “You claimed Palmer-Kineal was your only other donor.” He tapped the PDA several more times, then let his hands drop to his sides. “And you’re in microcircuit science, not medical science.”
“Both, actually,” Travis said as Charles slowly gummed the sandwich. “Here, let’s go downstairs.”
Travis opened a door that stood in the house’s central divider. A black wrought-iron staircase spiraled downward inside the closet sized space. He flicked a light switch on the wall and looked over his shoulder. “Paul, you’ll help Mr. Maxell down, won’t you? The stairs are a bit steep.” Without waiting for an answer, he started down.
The air grew rapidly cooler as they descended. Paul walked sideways so as to support Charles by the arm. The rounded walls to which the staircase was fastened were made of uneven brick and crumbling mortar, making Paul think of an abandoned well.. The descent was lit by hooded fluorescent lamps over a myriad of framed papers. Doctorate of Computer Science: Travis Johnson. Doctorate of Theology: Travis Brown. Doctorate of Psychology: Travis Sowa. Doctorate of Internal Medicine: Travis Taylor. A letter of outstanding achievement in neurology to Travis Sweeny. Paul felt Charles’s hand become clammy.
“I met Charles when I first started this project; treated him for a minor aneurysm,” Travis said. His footfalls on the iron stairs clanged a strange rhythm into his speech. “I had the idea, he had the money. I sought your company’s grants, Mr. Dunn, to keep some suspicion off Charles. This much hardware, as you’ll see, goes beyond a personal expense account, even one such as his.”
The stairway ended in a wide low-ceilinged room. The walls were covered by floor-to-ceiling metal racks, bristling with circuit boards and humming with electricity. The corner closest to the stairway was draped with a thick cloth tarp, blotted with dark stains. On the ceiling above the tarp was a silver inverted bowl several feet across. In the opposite corner, an old, torn dentist’s chair sat under an octopus array of instruments that bristled from the sides of a similar silver bowl.
The fluorescent light drained the tan out of Paul’s skin. He took a few slack-jawed steps into the room, noting the scale and sophistication of the computers around him; mentally calculating how many hundreds of millions of dollars surrounded him. He tapped his phone, which returned a “No Signal” and promptly shut off.
Charles bobbed his head, forcing the last of the cheese sandwich down his dry throat. His jaw worked rapidly, almost independent of the words that tumbled out, “I—I—I don’t know, Travis. The—I’m sending for Carl. I’ve an app—appointment with the doctors—doctors in Seattle tomorrow,” he said. He turned back toward the stairs.
“For what?” Travis asked. His eyes were dark. “Chemo again? Going to let them laser away more of your mind? For what, Charles?”
Paul wandered to a monitor on one of the computer banks, in awe of the technology and all but ignoring Travis’s sudden growls. An animated star bounced around the edges of the screen. He clicked the Enter key on a keyboard below the monitor.
“I need treat—treatment. I don’t—don’t—don’t want to die,” Charles said.
“What are you getting this time Charles?” Travis advanced on the shrunken man, who stared back with wild fish eyes. “Mechanical liver? They’ve already done your kidneys and heart and God knows what else. You’ve more metal and cancer in you than normal cells.”
Hello Paul. The words appeared above the star like a comic thought-bubble. Paul peered closely at the screen in disbelief. He looked over his shoulder at Travis towering over Charles, then back at the monitor. He typed, Hello.
Charles tore at the paper towel in his hands. “But he’s—he’s just—just a boy. I—does it have to be now—now?”
Go with Charles you? appeared below the star. Paul pressed the escape key. Charles uses you? Paul noticed a blinking red light on a bulbous lens attached to a circuit board to his right. He waved his hand in front of it. Hello Paul.
“You’ve been rotting for a decade and you want to wait some more?” Travis barked. He grabbed Charles by the chin. “Your mind is rotting. Go! Fine! You’ve got fifteen years, if that, up those stairs. You have centuries down here.”
Who is this? typed Paul. The star paused in the middle of the screen and spun around. Travis, said the thought-bubble. Paul backed away from the monitor.
“Yeah, um, Travis, buddy? Your computer is talking to me,” Paul said. He forced a laugh.
Travis turned smoothly away from Charles with a charismatic smile that turned his moustache into an inverted ‘W.’ He left the muttering old man at the base of the stairs and moved close to Paul. “It’ll do that,” he chuckled. “Some of those corrupted scans are still floating around in there, awfully hard to root out sometimes. At least for me,” he said, looking back at Charles.
“Say, Paul, I said this project wasn’t a bust, right?” he said. Paul nodded and Travis continued. “When the mind is in the survival mode I was telling you about earlier, it will do anything, anything, to survive. Right before death, the consciousness replicates itself almost instantaneously, for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Your life flashes before your eyes, literally, in an attempt to preserve itself.”
Quartering closer toward Paul, Travis said, “About two weeks ago, I managed to come up with a few neat devices: one which amplifies and transmits that last burst of consciousness, and one which can receive and re-emit that burst. Then a third device which can combine two such bursts, so the first amplifies the second consciousness to a level that can be received and recorded by this equipment.”
Paul felt himself backing up as Travis advanced toward him. He tripped over a tarp on the floor, and put out a hand to steady himself. He touched a sticky and rancid smelling stain on the tarp hanging over the wall. “Yeah, yeah, great,” he said while wiping his hand on his pant leg. He saw Charles shuffling across the room with his hand in his suit pocket. Paul rubbed his hands together, bringing the darkly red substance off in flakes.
“I put the devices on nano-wafers, heat activated colonies,” Travis said, grinning with pride. “Once the wafer gets inside the body, the nano-machines reconstitute in the cerebrum, and in a matter of minutes are fully functional.”
“Great, yeah, fuckin’ good work; I guess,” Paul said. “But, uh, what good is it? No offense, but if it only fuckin’ works when people--“ He stopped abruptly. He cocked his head at the smiling Travis and slowly turned toward Charles.
In a bony and jittery hand, Charles pointed a compact black pistol at Paul. His eyes stood out, huge and round; and his mouth contorted rapidly between smiles and grimaces.
Paul froze, his eyes darting to Travis. “Sandwiches,” he whispered.
“I insist,” said Travis.
The pistol roared. Paul felt a burning tear at his neck.
“Goddamnit, Charles! Not the head!” shouted Travis.
The pistol roared again and Paul felt a punch to his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
Travis rushed to a monitor as Paul fell to his knees. He scanned the rapidly incoming data with expert precision. “Good, alright. We’re getting a good signal Charles!” he said.
Charles Maxell froze in fascination under the silver bowl on the ceiling; watching red stains spread through Paul’s punctured shirt. The body in front of him crumpled slowly, like a time-lapse of a dying plant.
“Looking good, looking good,” Travis drummed his fingers on the keyboard. The banks of computers around him hummed furiously. “Finish it Charles!”
Charles turned slowly to face Travis. “Jesus—God!” he said, voice cracking. He lifted the pistol, pointing it at Travis’s sweat-stained chest.
The younger man noticed the movement, took one stride toward Charles and backhanded the diminutive banker across the face. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ll throw this away?” he yelled.
“I—I’m sorry. I’ll—okay. Here,” the banker mumbled around the blood filling his mouth. He raised the pistol to his own temple.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Travis grabbed the old man’s arm and twisted it so the gun pointed at Charles’s breast pocket. “Do the heart; it’s not even yours,” he said. He turned his back on his old benefactor and went to a monitor.
“God—Oh, God! Forgive me,” Charles said.
“Only if this works,” Travis said to himself.
The gunshot echoed off the underground walls.
Screens all around the room lit up with reams of code, scrolling to fast for all but the most trained eyes to follow. Paul’s dying brainwaves, transmitted via millions of microscopic nano-machines to Travis’s receiver, merged with and amplified Charles’ last burst of consciousness. Charles’ personality and thought processes rode Paul’s brainwaves into the computer’s memory banks, filling thousands of petabytes of digital space.
The computer screens went black. A single green cursor blinked in the corner of one monitor. Travis stepped over a pool of spreading blood and waited at the screen. A coin sized portrait of Andrew Carnegie replaced the cursor. Travis held his breath.
Travis did it work said the portrait. Then, rapidly: I can move and it doesn’t hurt and I’m so free and I can stretch and I can fly. I remember again, Mom and Dad and school and the firm. And Travis? Travis, are you there?
Fingers trembling, Travis typed: This is Travis. Who are you?
Charles Bernard Maxell. I’m alone here. It’s so big. I’m so big. I remember a boy; he looked like a plant on the ground. What happened to Paul?
“I did it!” Travis yelled. “I beat it! I fucking did it!” he jumped in the air. He laughed long and loud at the floating portrait on the screen.
Inside, standing next to a brown electric stove, Travis Dreame grilled a cheese sandwich in a black frying pan. He was tall, with thick brown hair and an unkempt handlebar mustache. The pit stains in his faded concert t-shirt formed an unbroken ring across his chest and upper back. His jeans were worn to threads at the knees and had been sun-bleached to a pastel blue. The butter in the pan spluttered and bubbled when he slid the sandwich around with his finger to prevent it from scorching. After checking the underside of the sandwich, he flipped it onto a paper towel next to its twin. He was expecting company.
Travis took three steps from his kitchen to the dining room, holding his impromptu plate over his shoulder like a waiter’s tray. With his free hand, he rearranged the mess on a cheaply veneered oval table. He carelessly tossed various circuit boards, antennas, memory chips, power converters, and batteries into a black plastic box, which he pushed to the far end of the table. The LCD monitor, suspended over the table by way of a metal arm on the ceiling, was swung to the side where the glowing lines of code weren’t as intrusive. He set the sandwiches on the table.
Four steps took Travis to his front window. He folded his arms and watched a dust cloud approaching from across the dry riverbed. The harsh sun-glare of metal untarnished by the desert caught Travis in the eye, and he did not blink. An oversized silver SUV headed the dust cloud, following a wide path between rust colored boulders and sparse patches of spiky yellow grass. Travis knew the SUV, large enough to haul some family trees, carried only one occupant. The sunglass-wearing driver, one of Travis’ benefactors and unwitting experimental subject, parked next to the house and went to the door as dust settled around him.
Travis waited for the knock, and opened the door. “Please, come in,” he said, standing free of the doorway. The crew-cut blond man flashed a whitened smile and took Travis’ hand in an executive grip.
“Yeah, hey, Travis! Good to see you; how you doin’ yeah?” he said as he took off his designer sunglasses. He wore a white polo shirt over a beech tan, and looked to be ten years Travis’ junior.
“Fine,” Travis replied with none of Paul’s enthusiasm. “Did you find the place alright?”
“Yeah, you know, you kinda live on the ass end of nowhere,” Paul said. His lower jaw bounced when he laughed. “No, no, no, though. I got a GPS in the car. Yeah, it tells me all the country roads and trails and shit.”
“That’s good-“
“Your place wasn’t on there,” Paul continued. “No- yeah, listen. I put you in latitude and longitude; you don’t even have a fucking address buddy!” His lower jaw bounced again.
Travis smiled on one side of his mouth and shut the door. “You must be hungry; I made a couple of sandwiches,” he said.
“Not really, the heat kinda dries me out, you know?”
“Oh please, you’ve been driving for hours. I insist,” said Travis.
“Well, yeah, maybe just one,” Paul said. He sat himself at the table, straddling the back of a chair, and took a sandwich off the paper towel. “Got anything to drink? I feel like I just crossed the Mojave!” He laughed.
“Sure thing,” Travis said, opening the refrigerator. He heard a faint crunch behind him.
“Mmm! Ugh, did you forget the wrapper on the cheese?” Paul asked. He pried his sandwich partially apart.
Travis looked at Paul and faintly shook his head. “No, of course not. Might be the sand, it gets inside sometimes,” he said.
Paul took a small bite and chewed carefully. “Yeah, maybe. That one part tasted rancid,” he said.
Travis poured pop out of a two-liter bottle into two empty glass jars. He set one before Paul and leaned against the counter, sipping the other. Paul finished his sandwich with large bites and took a large gulp out of the jar. He dusted his hands together and then pulled a PDA out of his pocket.
“So what have you got for me Travis?” he asked. “Can’t tell the boss you’re making million dollar sandwiches!” he laughed.
Travis stroked his moustache and narrowed his eyes. “I jumped the memory past critical mass about ten weeks ago. I’ve got just under 27,000 petabytes downstairs,” he said.
Paul’s eyebrows shot up. “Twenty-seven thousand? Jesus! But you don’t have the funds; between Gaond’s and Palmer-Kineal I know you haven’t gotten more than ten or twelve mil this year,” he said. Travis had secured multi-year, multi-million dollar grants from the two companies. Misguided funds, in Paul’s opinion, given to a self-styled prophet chasing an electronic pipe-dream.
“I’ve had some extra help,” Travis said. He pulled at his scruffy chin and continued. “I had thought fifteen-thou would be plenty, enough for two people maybe. But then I started testing, on myself at first, about nine weeks ago, and the system couldn’t handle it. Fifteen kay was enough for a rudimentary copy, but it wasn’t a personality, not a consciousness. It was like the mind of someone in a coma,” he said.
Travis paused while Paul tapped at his phone. The medicinal division of Gaond Researchers, which Paul worked for, sent him all over the world with that PDA, looking for new chemicals and treatments. When Paul found something the company thought promising, like a man attempting to copy a person’s entire mental image into a computer, granting something like digital immortality; Paul tapped his phone and reported the details via satellite to the company.
Travis waited for Paul to look up, and then continued. “So I jumped the capacity and tried again. Three weeks ago I was testing a subject, and I hit a dilemma. In order to copy a mind at rest, I’d need to use a maser strong enough to fry the neurons I’m trying to map. But the only time the brain is active enough so I can use a subtler maser is when the mind is in a primal survival mode.”
“Like ‘fight-or-flight?’” asked Paul as a matter of course.
“Something like that, yes. But when the brain is that active, the Heisenberg effect jumps a few orders of magnitude and I end up with corrupted data,” said Travis. A metallic glare through the window shone briefly on his face.
“So what are you telling me? You’re saying it’s a bust, yeah?” asked Paul.
“Not exactly,” Travis said. From outside, the sound of tires on rock stopped abruptly. The whisper of a fuel-cell engine floated through the compact house. Travis walked to the door and opened it.
The passenger door of a black custom Cadillac, parked within touching distance of the front awning, opened with an electric whine. A hunched silhouette sat waiting on the seat while a man built like a refrigerator and wearing a suit stretched tight across his chest walked around the front of the car. Travis leaned against the doorframe while the barrel-chested driver helped his withered passenger out of the car. The desert wind disturbed the passenger’s sparse white comb-over and revealed a scalp covered with dark malignant splotches.
Travis chewed his overgrown moustache while the mismatched pair of men shuffled to his doorstep. The small man’s shrunken skull squeezed his squinted eyes halfway out of their sockets, giving him a fishlike appearance.
“Travis,” the small man said. “This—is C—Carl, my body—bodyguard.”
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” The larger man put his face close to Travis’ when Travis didn’t move to let the pair inside.
Travis wrinkled his nose at Carl’s strongly minted breath. “He can’t come in,” he said.
“He just—just in case some—something—“ wheezed the old man.
Travis tilted his head around Carl’s blocky face. “I told you Charles. No. It’s not something for spectators.” He scratched under his chin and glared at Carl. “He might interfere.”
“You listen—“ started Carl, putting his face even closer to Travis’.
“Carl, wait—wait in the car,” Charles said, touching his driver’s elbow. The large man took a step back and bent to whisper in Charles’ ear. Travis saw him slip something heavy into the older man’s suit pocket. Travis smiled with one corner of his mouth as Carl fumed on the way back to the car.
Travis stepped out of the doorway. “Charles, I’d like you to meet Paul Dunn. Paul, this is the esteemed Charles Maxell.”
“Maxell the banker?” Paul stood and surveyed the stooped man in the doorway.
Charles stretched his neck, revealing dark hardened growths around his collarbones. “That’s—yes. Maxell In—Investments. That’s mine,” he boasted.
Paul shook Charles’ hand with stunned reverence. The old man looked suddenly out of place; one of the world’s wealthiest men, hunched and withering in a run-down nothing of a desert hut.
“I was just telling Paul here that I’m on the verge of a breakthrough,” Travis said, laying a hand on Charles’ bony shoulder.
The man’s fish-eyes went wild for a moment. “You—you told him—the—“ he stammered.
Travis smiled. “Oh no, no, no. I don’t think Paul has ever seen the basement. Let’s get you something to drink first. Would you like a sandwich perhaps?” he said.
“No. I’m not—not hungry,” Charles said, looking at Paul.
“I insist, Mr. Maxell,” Travis said. He handed Charles the second cheese sandwich on a fresh paper towel. “Have a sandwich.”
Paul glanced from Travis to Charles as the two stared at each other for a long moment. A look of understanding passed Charles’s face like a shadow, and the banker took the sandwich with both hands.
“Mr. Maxell has been working with me since I left my practice, almost nine years now,” Travis explained. “He’s helped keep me off the grid, so I can work independently, without the AMA always looking over my shoulder.”
Paul tapped his PDA and gave Travis a sidelong look. “You never mentioned that in your application for the Gaond grants,” he said. “You claimed Palmer-Kineal was your only other donor.” He tapped the PDA several more times, then let his hands drop to his sides. “And you’re in microcircuit science, not medical science.”
“Both, actually,” Travis said as Charles slowly gummed the sandwich. “Here, let’s go downstairs.”
Travis opened a door that stood in the house’s central divider. A black wrought-iron staircase spiraled downward inside the closet sized space. He flicked a light switch on the wall and looked over his shoulder. “Paul, you’ll help Mr. Maxell down, won’t you? The stairs are a bit steep.” Without waiting for an answer, he started down.
The air grew rapidly cooler as they descended. Paul walked sideways so as to support Charles by the arm. The rounded walls to which the staircase was fastened were made of uneven brick and crumbling mortar, making Paul think of an abandoned well.. The descent was lit by hooded fluorescent lamps over a myriad of framed papers. Doctorate of Computer Science: Travis Johnson. Doctorate of Theology: Travis Brown. Doctorate of Psychology: Travis Sowa. Doctorate of Internal Medicine: Travis Taylor. A letter of outstanding achievement in neurology to Travis Sweeny. Paul felt Charles’s hand become clammy.
“I met Charles when I first started this project; treated him for a minor aneurysm,” Travis said. His footfalls on the iron stairs clanged a strange rhythm into his speech. “I had the idea, he had the money. I sought your company’s grants, Mr. Dunn, to keep some suspicion off Charles. This much hardware, as you’ll see, goes beyond a personal expense account, even one such as his.”
The stairway ended in a wide low-ceilinged room. The walls were covered by floor-to-ceiling metal racks, bristling with circuit boards and humming with electricity. The corner closest to the stairway was draped with a thick cloth tarp, blotted with dark stains. On the ceiling above the tarp was a silver inverted bowl several feet across. In the opposite corner, an old, torn dentist’s chair sat under an octopus array of instruments that bristled from the sides of a similar silver bowl.
The fluorescent light drained the tan out of Paul’s skin. He took a few slack-jawed steps into the room, noting the scale and sophistication of the computers around him; mentally calculating how many hundreds of millions of dollars surrounded him. He tapped his phone, which returned a “No Signal” and promptly shut off.
Charles bobbed his head, forcing the last of the cheese sandwich down his dry throat. His jaw worked rapidly, almost independent of the words that tumbled out, “I—I—I don’t know, Travis. The—I’m sending for Carl. I’ve an app—appointment with the doctors—doctors in Seattle tomorrow,” he said. He turned back toward the stairs.
“For what?” Travis asked. His eyes were dark. “Chemo again? Going to let them laser away more of your mind? For what, Charles?”
Paul wandered to a monitor on one of the computer banks, in awe of the technology and all but ignoring Travis’s sudden growls. An animated star bounced around the edges of the screen. He clicked the Enter key on a keyboard below the monitor.
“I need treat—treatment. I don’t—don’t—don’t want to die,” Charles said.
“What are you getting this time Charles?” Travis advanced on the shrunken man, who stared back with wild fish eyes. “Mechanical liver? They’ve already done your kidneys and heart and God knows what else. You’ve more metal and cancer in you than normal cells.”
Hello Paul. The words appeared above the star like a comic thought-bubble. Paul peered closely at the screen in disbelief. He looked over his shoulder at Travis towering over Charles, then back at the monitor. He typed, Hello.
Charles tore at the paper towel in his hands. “But he’s—he’s just—just a boy. I—does it have to be now—now?”
Go with Charles you? appeared below the star. Paul pressed the escape key. Charles uses you? Paul noticed a blinking red light on a bulbous lens attached to a circuit board to his right. He waved his hand in front of it. Hello Paul.
“You’ve been rotting for a decade and you want to wait some more?” Travis barked. He grabbed Charles by the chin. “Your mind is rotting. Go! Fine! You’ve got fifteen years, if that, up those stairs. You have centuries down here.”
Who is this? typed Paul. The star paused in the middle of the screen and spun around. Travis, said the thought-bubble. Paul backed away from the monitor.
“Yeah, um, Travis, buddy? Your computer is talking to me,” Paul said. He forced a laugh.
Travis turned smoothly away from Charles with a charismatic smile that turned his moustache into an inverted ‘W.’ He left the muttering old man at the base of the stairs and moved close to Paul. “It’ll do that,” he chuckled. “Some of those corrupted scans are still floating around in there, awfully hard to root out sometimes. At least for me,” he said, looking back at Charles.
“Say, Paul, I said this project wasn’t a bust, right?” he said. Paul nodded and Travis continued. “When the mind is in the survival mode I was telling you about earlier, it will do anything, anything, to survive. Right before death, the consciousness replicates itself almost instantaneously, for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Your life flashes before your eyes, literally, in an attempt to preserve itself.”
Quartering closer toward Paul, Travis said, “About two weeks ago, I managed to come up with a few neat devices: one which amplifies and transmits that last burst of consciousness, and one which can receive and re-emit that burst. Then a third device which can combine two such bursts, so the first amplifies the second consciousness to a level that can be received and recorded by this equipment.”
Paul felt himself backing up as Travis advanced toward him. He tripped over a tarp on the floor, and put out a hand to steady himself. He touched a sticky and rancid smelling stain on the tarp hanging over the wall. “Yeah, yeah, great,” he said while wiping his hand on his pant leg. He saw Charles shuffling across the room with his hand in his suit pocket. Paul rubbed his hands together, bringing the darkly red substance off in flakes.
“I put the devices on nano-wafers, heat activated colonies,” Travis said, grinning with pride. “Once the wafer gets inside the body, the nano-machines reconstitute in the cerebrum, and in a matter of minutes are fully functional.”
“Great, yeah, fuckin’ good work; I guess,” Paul said. “But, uh, what good is it? No offense, but if it only fuckin’ works when people--“ He stopped abruptly. He cocked his head at the smiling Travis and slowly turned toward Charles.
In a bony and jittery hand, Charles pointed a compact black pistol at Paul. His eyes stood out, huge and round; and his mouth contorted rapidly between smiles and grimaces.
Paul froze, his eyes darting to Travis. “Sandwiches,” he whispered.
“I insist,” said Travis.
The pistol roared. Paul felt a burning tear at his neck.
“Goddamnit, Charles! Not the head!” shouted Travis.
The pistol roared again and Paul felt a punch to his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
Travis rushed to a monitor as Paul fell to his knees. He scanned the rapidly incoming data with expert precision. “Good, alright. We’re getting a good signal Charles!” he said.
Charles Maxell froze in fascination under the silver bowl on the ceiling; watching red stains spread through Paul’s punctured shirt. The body in front of him crumpled slowly, like a time-lapse of a dying plant.
“Looking good, looking good,” Travis drummed his fingers on the keyboard. The banks of computers around him hummed furiously. “Finish it Charles!”
Charles turned slowly to face Travis. “Jesus—God!” he said, voice cracking. He lifted the pistol, pointing it at Travis’s sweat-stained chest.
The younger man noticed the movement, took one stride toward Charles and backhanded the diminutive banker across the face. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ll throw this away?” he yelled.
“I—I’m sorry. I’ll—okay. Here,” the banker mumbled around the blood filling his mouth. He raised the pistol to his own temple.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Travis grabbed the old man’s arm and twisted it so the gun pointed at Charles’s breast pocket. “Do the heart; it’s not even yours,” he said. He turned his back on his old benefactor and went to a monitor.
“God—Oh, God! Forgive me,” Charles said.
“Only if this works,” Travis said to himself.
The gunshot echoed off the underground walls.
Screens all around the room lit up with reams of code, scrolling to fast for all but the most trained eyes to follow. Paul’s dying brainwaves, transmitted via millions of microscopic nano-machines to Travis’s receiver, merged with and amplified Charles’ last burst of consciousness. Charles’ personality and thought processes rode Paul’s brainwaves into the computer’s memory banks, filling thousands of petabytes of digital space.
The computer screens went black. A single green cursor blinked in the corner of one monitor. Travis stepped over a pool of spreading blood and waited at the screen. A coin sized portrait of Andrew Carnegie replaced the cursor. Travis held his breath.
Travis did it work said the portrait. Then, rapidly: I can move and it doesn’t hurt and I’m so free and I can stretch and I can fly. I remember again, Mom and Dad and school and the firm. And Travis? Travis, are you there?
Fingers trembling, Travis typed: This is Travis. Who are you?
Charles Bernard Maxell. I’m alone here. It’s so big. I’m so big. I remember a boy; he looked like a plant on the ground. What happened to Paul?
“I did it!” Travis yelled. “I beat it! I fucking did it!” he jumped in the air. He laughed long and loud at the floating portrait on the screen.
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