The Reality Thief Read online

  Stralasi overlooked the question the stranger chose not to answer. “I presume you will want us to call you Mr. Legsu rather than Emissary Legsu?”

  “Interesting presumption,” was all the stranger offered.

  The Brother blinked a half dozen times in rapid succession. “Might I know the nature of your visit?” he probed.

  “I am resting after a long journey.”

  “But we are at the Edge, where our Holy Alumination is pushing back the Da’arkness. Where could you be returning from,” Brother Stralasi quizzed. “My humble apologies. I meant to say, this is an unusual choice as we are far from any important trade or spiritual routes. Is there any aspect of your visit that I might assist you with?”

  Darak entertained the offer for a moment. “No, I only wish to mix with the people of this outpost so that I may better understand the way things are done now.”

  What a strange thing to say! “But you must have visited hundreds of Foundation planets. Surely there is nothing unique about this place.”

  “No, nothing particularly unique,” agreed Darak. “It is simply among the first I have encountered upon my return to human space.”

  Upon return to “human space”? Not “the Realm”? Is this man claiming to have travelled into the Da’arkness and returned? That’s preposterous! A highly improbable claim, at the very least, even for an Emissary.

  He had to admit, though, the traveler had piqued his curiosity. Proper or not, the curious boy within him was compelled to ask, “From where have you come, then? Was it a long journey?”

  A grimace flashed across Darak’s face. “It was a very long journey.” He looked around the dining room, allowing the painful memories to subside. “The last time I was in a place like this was over…well, let’s just say, it was many years ago. I’ve crossed countless light years to return.”

  Countless light years? That would be physically impossible. What could he mean? But there was an even more puzzling question to address first. “You said ‘return’? Do you mean to say,” he leaned in and lowered his voice, “that you are coming back from the Da’arkness?”

  “I would have to say, yes.”

  “But that’s impossible! No one can go there!" The Brother exclaimed before he could catch himself. He softened his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We both know that only...” He looked around, mindful of the public space in which they sat, “…only automated explorers can travel beyond the Edge of the Realm.”

  “Is that so?” Darak asked, his eyes giving away his amusement. He listened to the gentle tink, tink, tink of his spoon against his coffee cup, and watched the small vortex forming in the middle of the steaming liquid. When he sought the Good Brother’s gaze again, he was serious.

  “I have been to the expanding edge of the universe, beyond the Da’arkness of which you speak, to the Chaos that lies beyond. It took me a long time to return, that is, if ‘time’ can be said to have any meaning there.”

  The white noise of café activities filled the space around them. A few seconds passed while the men pursued their own thoughts.

  “And if, indeed, the concept ‘there’ has any meaning…there,” the traveler added, taking an appreciative sip of his coffee.

  Brother Stralasi couldn’t stop himself, though it was heresy to ask, “Why would Alum, praise be His Name, send you beyond the universe?”

  Darak waved the question away and leaned back, “I have said too much already. At any rate, I am not here to inspect your operations, as you seem to fear. I am merely passing through on my travels.”

  Thank Goodness! The monk released the tightness in his shoulders that he hadn’t realized he’d been building. Still, the man’s story was incredible.

  The monk let out a sigh, a little louder than he meant to. “In that case, please accept the hospitality of the Alumita. We have a number of rooms that, while perhaps humble for one of your station, should prove comfortable during your stay.”

  “Thank you, but there is no need to offer me such comforts. I am not an Emissary of your Alumit. I will make camp outside of town,” Darak offered.

  Brother Stralasi gasped. “You can’t do that; the non-Standard areas are far too dangerous!”

  The small upturn tugging at the corner of Darak’s mouth did not go unnoticed by the Brother.

  “I see,” said Stralasi, regarding Darak with a fresh and wary eye. In truth, he didn’t see at all, but his instincts told him this stranger was more than he appeared.

  “So, if you are not an Emissary, how did you come here to this planet and this town?”

  “There is only one way to travel between the stars, is there not? My method of travel is not fundamentally different from yours.”

  The traveler’s calm confidence should have been reassuring. Stralasi found it suspicious and acutely unsettling. “But, sir, all starstep travel is pre-approved, and none is due for a week,” he countered.

  “Nevertheless, it is as I have said.”

  On the verge of challenging Darak’s outrageous assertions, Brother Stralasi realized the unspoken alternative. Oh! In shock, he pushed his chair back, crumpled to his knees and prostrated himself.

  “Forgive me, my Lord!” he cried. “I am your servant, too simple and ignorant! Please, pardon me, and allow the services of our humble frontier town to be at your disposal!” He looked at the other restaurant patrons expectantly but they only stared back blankly, too confused to move.

  “Kneel before your Lord and Master!” he cried. “For here before us is a Shard of Alum. His is the voice of The Living God!” The others quickly threw themselves to the floor in supplication, following the Good Brother’s lead.

  4

  Her lab business concluded, Sharon locked herself in her office for the rest of the morning and worked on the DARPA proposal. She allowed herself a brief reprieve, grabbed a chef’s salad downstairs, and continued on the proposal until mid-afternoon.

  When it came time to wrap up, she could feel the start of a migraine coming on. She squeezed her eyes to block out the light. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she gently leaned her head back. I’ll never get used to all this grant writing. They hire me to be a productive teacher and scientist, and then they fill my days with grant writing, committees, and admin work. How am I supposed to get any research done? What a colossal waste of time and skills. It made her want to scream and weep but what good would that do?

  She opened her eyes and stretched. I might as well head out. There’ll be time to work on the proposal later. She threw her tablet into her backpack. She checked in with Mei on her way by, put on her hat and sunglasses, and set out on the half-hour walk to her company, Neuro Nano.

  They’d found a great space for the spin-off company, just off campus in Biotech Alley. The head-clearing walk over there turned out to be a bonus; it was when she often came up with some of her best ideas.

  The sunshine warmed her shoulders. That feels so good. She grabbed an iced coffee along the way and washed down a couple of painkillers, hoping they would help with the headache.

  She arrived at the building a few minutes late, and skipped her usual stairwell climb in favor of a quick elevator ride to the main entrance on the fourth floor. The doors parted, and she let the familiar buzz of activity envelope her.

  The enterprise was already threatening to overflow its 300 square meters of combined office and lab space. The offices themselves were tiny. Most of the space was dedicated to biolabs, semiconductor clean-rooms, and medical examination suites. Cramming such diverse functions into a single, open area was budget-friendly and procedurally efficient. It also was claustrophobia-inducing and made organized operation practically impossible.

  Her founding partners, former postdocs Nick Franti and David Arnell, had their own compact offices flanking the small, stylish boardroom where they delivered polished presentations and raised money.

  Lately, much of their day and their patience was eaten up in meetings
with various health industry regulators, reviewing, explaining, and re-evaluating test-animal results. The DNNDs slated for commercial market had already been thoroughly tested and reviewed. There was no valid reason to delay testing in chimps but the FDA wanted to ensure everything was done by the book. And then some.

  Sharon suspected they were stalling for political reasons, or maybe to allow Big Business interests to better position themselves to best capitalize on her inventions. Maybe both. It was getting difficult to tell the many veiled and interwoven interests apart these days.

  She understood that DNNDs were an entirely new class of medical device, and that given their complex nature and potential implications, the regulatory agency wanted to be more cautious than usual. She did. She would also be pleasantly surprised if they got the approvals without word leaking prematurely to the press or, worse yet, to the growing tide of ill-informed skeptics and evangelical naysayers.

  Sharon peeked into the clean-room production facilities. A handful of postdocs were assembling DNNDs using focused ion beam deposition, in the same old-fashioned way they’d been using for the past two years. They’ll be out of work in a year. This current DNND generation merging synthetic biology with patterned semiconductor growth will see to that–she predicted.

  While it was unfortunate to lose such highly skilled people, the only way for technology to make the necessary innovations was to draw from all possible specializations, with no heed to historical boundaries. If they continued within the limitations of linear progression, they could never make the advances available to the public at a reasonable price.

  “Sharon!” David bounded out of the boardroom and delivered a bracing business handshake. He didn't notice it was returned somewhat less enthusiastically. “How goes MIT? How’s Paul? How are you doing?” he asked in rapid fire. “More importantly—how’s our little fetus?”

  She found David’s enthusiasm for corporate style and trappings more disturbing by the day. Even though he claimed to place the baby’s health in paramount importance, the order of his questions revealed the true hierarchy of his concerns.

  Corporate life had clearly been good for David. Despite the constant pressure of having to raise money through the wining and dining of potential investors, he was much happier now than when he was strictly a researcher. He was dressing better, too, she noticed.

  “Sharon, it’s good to see you.” Nick greeted her less ebulliently but more genuinely as she entered the boardroom. “How goes the pregnancy?”

  Nick Franti was the quintessential scientist. Being CTO of Neuro Nano had not changed him at all. His hair was still too long and poorly coiffed, and his casual attire announced that he was more comfortable in the lab than in front of potential investors.

  “Everything’s fine so far,” she replied, patting her belly. She was glad she'd decided to trust Nick and David with her self-experimenting. She needed someone to objectively evaluate DNND growth and monitor any cognitive changes.

  “Actually, I’ve got a bit of a headache right now,” she added. “I’ve been working on the DARPA proposal all day.”

  “That’s too bad,” Nick said; he looked concerned. “About the headache, I mean. Glad to hear the baby’s doing fine.”

  “Thanks,” said Sharon. “I took some painkillers on my way over here. It should be gone soon.” She sat to the right of the head of the table, relinquishing the power seat to David, “Why don’t we get started?”

  “Ready when you are,” answered David. “This isn’t an official board meeting; we don’t need to take minutes. I just wanted to get caught up on things at your MIT lab and discuss the next round of funding. How'd you like to go first, Sharon?”

  I see that it’s “my” MIT lab now, not “ours”—she noted. Interesting. This, despite the fact that until recently David made his research home in that same lab, and all of the research fed directly into product development at Neuro Nano.

  “Sure, I can start.” She took out her computer and set it on the table. “Everything is going well with Version 3.2 of the DNNDs. There have been no visible side effects in the mice, but the neural networks haven’t assembled into a consolidated functional grouping yet. Some local portions of the nets are becoming active. We haven't seen any obvious changes in the mouse's behavior as a result of the localized activity yet.

  “Rob thinks the system would self-assemble faster if we began with more dendies, which we already know to be true from my experience. I’m getting Ami to prepare a series covering a broad range of initial DNND concentrations next week, and we’ll look into it further. Oliver has some versions that replicate and form networks marginally faster, but he thinks we should be okay to keep experimenting with the current 3.2 version in vivo.”

  Both men were nodding. “And what about you?” David asked. “Have you noticed any sign of internal DNND activity in your own system yet?”

  “Nothing I can feel,” Sharon answered. “Even though I started with a relatively higher titer than we used with the mice, I don’t expect to notice any activity for a few more weeks or months. I'm hoping to get more objective data from the CT scan and the fMRI this afternoon.”

  “What about the operating system?” Nick asked, saving her from getting any further mired in her guilt and fear.

  “Oh, right. I’m glad you mentioned that. Howard asked if we were going to get access to that new software.”

  “You mean the parallel lattice traversal algorithm? As luck would have it, MetaCepta believes that particular bit of code is not central to their business plans. Still too conceptual, they said. We can have the program for a small one-time licensing fee. I downloaded it today. In fact, I have it all set up to replace the standard algorithms. You can take it back to the lab and implement it in your mice tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Why don’t we just download it to my lattice right now?”

  David perked up. Nick, however, looked doubtful. “Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked.

  “Why not? What harm could it do, replacing a few algorithms in a net that’s not even functional yet? My mom always said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ Besides, I think I’ve already demonstrated how fully committed I am to this project, wouldn’t you say?” She looked from Nick to David, reading concern from the former but only eager anticipation in the latter. Neither raised an objection.

  “Well then, let’s do that right after the scans,” she concluded.

  “Okay,” David chirped, a tad too eagerly. “Nick, will you set that up, while I go over the latest financing proposal with Sharon? It’s the same one you and I went over yesterday.”

  “Alright,” Nick replied, without enthusiasm. He lumbered out of his chair. He glanced back at Sharon; she met his eyes without wavering. He shrugged. “I’ll only need a few minutes. Why don’t we meet back in the lab when you’re ready, Sharon?”

  “Alright, I’ll be right there as soon as we’re done.”

  David launched into his description of the newest deal he was arranging.

  Sharon had always had trouble dealing with the money aspect of the company. When not evading her entirely, the details niggled at her.

  No matter how she framed it, it still seemed unfair that in order to secure new funds to keep the commercialization moving forward, she, Paul, and Nick would have to give up a disproportionate piece of their shares, while David would remain mostly unaffected.

  As David explained it, this was at the insistence of their main investors who wanted to ensure that he, as CEO, kept adequate "skin in the game."

  Sharon detested the good-ol’-boy jargon of the financial world. Just another glorified boys’ club bent on helping old cronies with money and influence to wrestle control of any promising new ideas from the inventors.

  She agreed with David’s proposal just to put an end to the meeting. Her headache was pounding. She made it to the CT area by gently trailing one hand along the corridor wall to help steady her steps.

>   Nick was ready to go. He noted her weak smile and pallor as she lowered herself onto the scan bed. “Are you alright? We can do this some other day, you know.”

  She smiled feebly. “No, I’ll be okay. It’s just that David gets so intense when he discusses business.”

  “Ha! You know, every time I talk money with him, I know I’ve been screwed. I just don’t know how.”

  “You have to admit, though, he’s done a great job of getting us through most of the FDA requirements. We’re so close to going commercial.”

  “I suppose. And I think we still own the largest percent of the company. I’m pretty sure we could outvote him and the investors, too, if we had to,” replied Nick.

  “Providing Paul sides with us.”

  Nick looked alarmed, “I hope that’s not a problem!”

  “No, no,” Sharon soothed. “Put your eyes back in their sockets, Nick; I’m just kidding. Paul will always vote with us. No question.”

  “Good. Well, if you’re ready, why don’t I run the CT? Then we can install the new software, and I’ll do the fMRI.”

  “I’m ready. Let’s do it.” Sharon settled in, and the bed inched forward into the efficient new scanner.

  Within minutes, she and Nick were reviewing the data. The number and distribution of DNNDs were acceptable, and the micro-scans of selected areas of her brain revealed that the network of nanoscopic fibers was substantially completed.

  Satisfied, Nick had her move into the induction helmet for the new programming. The device resembled an antique beauty salon hairdryer.

  “All this brainpower in the lab and we couldn’t come up with something more elegant?” she joked.

  “You’ll be grateful for this, one day,” he quipped back. In order to prevent direct reprogramming of her brain from outside sources, the DNNDs incorporated security software requiring a complex "handshake" to establish absolutely trusted levels. Once the system was satisfied, the helmet could generate near-field radio signals at a specific frequency that could be used to communicate with the DNNDs. That gave the user both read and write access to Sharon's mind. She was glad Nick was the only operator.