Gene Mapper (11 page)

“Don’t put him on his back! He’ll choke,” Thep shouted. “Hayashida-san, what are you doing?” She was leaning over Kurokawa, shouting in my ear, but her voice seemed far away.

A luminous bar code?

Thep and the others pushed the stretcher outside. For a moment I was too stunned to move. Then I ran into the corridor after them.

I wasn’t used to running in the suit. The tutorial said it would feel as natural as the user’s own skin once AR was activated, but I wasn’t about to do that after what I’d just seen.

They had just wheeled Kurokawa into another room off the corridor when I heard Thep scream. Two staff members with AR glasses backed hastily into the corridor. Their faces were pale with fear.

“Neak Ta! Neak Ta!”

I pushed past them into the room. Kurokawa was sitting on the stretcher in a dark blue suit. He bowed. Thep stared at him, dazed.

How had he gotten a suit on? And why were the two people behind him doing manual CPR into empty space over the stretcher?

“Ms. Thep, Mamoru, I’m sorry this happened.” He hopped down from the stretcher, buttoned his suit coat and bowed again.

“I’m a mess right now. The feedback was too strong. I couldn’t handle it.”

One of Thep’s people laboring away at the empty stretcher turned pale and yelled, “He’s got no pulse! Khun Thep, what are you doing? Get the defibrillator!” He pointed at the orange AED box near the door. I reached for the latch, but Kurokawa stopped me.

“No AED!” His tone was commanding. “I don’t need it, Mamoru. I can communicate with you through my avatar. They’re not in AR.” He pointed to the people hovering over the stretcher. “They can’t see me or hear me. Tell them exactly what I tell you. No matter what, don’t use the defibrillator. It’ll fry my feedback chips.”

Something was wrong. How could he control his avatar with his heart stopped?

“I have to empty my stomach completely. Turn me on one side and keep my airway free. Ms. Thep, I need intravenous glucose. Can you do that?”

Thep shook her head.

“No? Digestion is inefficient … Oh well, tell your people to break a chocolate bar in quarters and put one in my mouth every fifteen minutes.”

“What are you guys standing there for? We’re losing him. He’s got no pulse.” One of the staff grabbed my shoulder and shook it. I didn’t know how to explain what was happening.

“Khun Nimol, he’s going to be okay,” said Thep. “Clean him up and get him into bed. No AED. And get someone in here who can use AR. Glasses are fine.”

“But his heart—”

“Just do it!”

“Thank you,” said Kurokawa. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.” Kurokawa’s avatar glanced at his wrist, as if checking a watch.

“Mamoru, I need both of you to get to the mutation site right away. The feedback was too strong for me, that’s all. Disable your own stage and activate your suit. All the Operation parameters are set.”

He took a step toward me. He looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. The avatar’s forehead glistened with tiny beads of sweat.

“The Operation is in your hands now.”

“But shouldn’t we wait until you stabilize?”

“There’s no time. Two days from now, TerraVu will photograph the site in daylight. We’ve got to get some kind of explanation in place before that happens.”

“What’s so important about TerraVu?” said Thep. Kurokawa checked his wrist again.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get back to my body. My brain needs oxygen. I’ll tell you about TerraVu later.”

He gave us a sweeping bow. “I hate to ask you to carry on without me, but it’s the only way. I have to get my body under control.”

Kurokawa’s avatar got onto the stretcher and lay back. The next instant it was gone, replaced by the real, naked Kurokawa. He lifted his head.

“Mamoru … please …”

“Don’t try to talk. We’ll handle it.”

He gave us a gentle look, then turned onto his side and started vomiting again.

*   *   *

I was back under the UV with Thep.

“Are you really going to risk it?”

After we left Kurokawa I had checked the suit manual, hoping I could use it without activating AR. The answer was negative. The life-support system would not function without nanomachine-enabled neural feedback.

The image of a convulsing, vomiting Kurokawa was still fresh in my mind. I couldn’t quite summon the courage to use the activation command.

I was afraid.

“Hayashida-san, I know your friend is desperate to get us out there, but can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

Thep’s voice was muffled by the clean mask, but she sounded as scared as I was.

“No, we’ve got to do what he asked. Otherwise how can I face him?” I checked my courage for the umpteenth time. Taking samples before TerraVu photographed the site in daylight was important, but was it urgent? Yet Kurokawa had begged us to go, even as he fought for his life.

I blinked twice to deactivate my stage.

“Hayashida-san, take care well.” I heard Thep’s unfiltered English. Her pure, singsong intonation was like a tiny silver bell.

“Thank you, Shue.”

I flashed back to Kurokawa vomiting again. Still, he was probably right. The tutorial said that the risk of unexpected side effects from the suit’s feedback was extremely low for the average user.

I lifted my left hand, encased in the black carbon fiber glove, to my face. I placed the tips of my thumb and little finger at the level of my temples and whispered “Activate.”

A million tiny feathers swirled over my body. The sensation was so arresting that for a moment I had to close my eyes.

Something was touching my temples. I could feel the warmth of my fingertips against my skin. I opened my eyes and saw my hand. The glove was gone. As I lowered my hand, I could feel the current of air it made against my face. The carbon-fiber armor was gone. I was wearing a crisp new rubberized jumpsuit. I could feel its sleeves touching my wrists.

Every sensation—the touch and warmth of my fingertips, the movement of air against my skin—was artificial, mediated through the nanomachines that penetrated my skin to stimulate my nerves, yet everything was completely indistinguishable from reality.

“Mamoru, are you all right?”

Thep was wearing the same-style jumpsuit. Her silky black hair was tied in a pony tail. It swayed gently as she cocked her head.

“Ah … yes,” I answered. “Yes, I think I’m okay.”

OPERATION MOTHER MEKONG FIELD RESEARCH INITIATED 15 JUNE 10:45:22

RECORDING ALL ACTIVITIES

EMOTION CONTROL ACTIVATED

The suit readout scrolled across my field of vision. Again I felt a million tiny feathers stroking my skin. I was filled with an emotion stronger than anything I had ever known.

I had to move out now.

“Shue, are you ready? Suit sterilized? Then let’s get to it.”

“You’re acting strange. Are you really all right?”

Thep’s words betrayed anxiety, but her expression was gentle. Her eyes were filled with trust. Thep was my buddy. We were part of a Mission to investigate the anomaly threatening Mother Mekong.

We had another buddy, Kurokawa. He was injured and had to stay at the base. It was up to us to reach the site, collect samples of the intruder, SR06, and the grasshoppers, and return to base safely.

Grasshoppers? Something far back in my mind protested. Was catching a few grasshoppers such a big deal?

A profound sense of the Mission’s importance welled up in my chest.

Yes. I will capture the grasshoppers.

“Come on, Shue. Let’s move out.”

A fluorescent green carpet spread left and right as far as I could see.

This was my color setting for SR06. I could see white streaks across the tips of the tall rice plants extending out of sight. These were probably the L&B and Mother Mekong logos.

Thep was walking point. We were about ten yards apart. It was slow going because even here on the “road,” we had to push our way through chest-high grass and shrubs. It wasn’t much different from virgin jungle.

I had never given a lot of thought to how these five-star sites operated. To cut emissions to zero, no internal combustion engines were allowed. Active Ground Cover certification meant no paved roads. The “road” we were on was about five yards wide. The only difference between it and the surrounding forest was the height of the undergrowth. The grass was full of insects—no defoliants or pesticides were allowed here. Naturally all the insects were theoretically harmless to SR06, but the sight of them buzzing around didn’t make me feel as if we were on a road.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be like this,” I called to Thep.

“Like what? Are you disappointed?” Her ponytail flipped as she looked back at me. Her flawless teeth flashed in the tropical sun. She looked strong and full of energy. Her lips had an attractive sheen. The big tripod on her shoulder and the heavy camera array in her hand looked practically weightless.

“I mean, couldn’t you at least cut the weeds?”

“You must be joking. You know the Active Ground Cover specs.”

The undergrowth crunched under her boots as she moved forward, opening a path for me to follow.

It hit me that I was starting to forget what Thep looked like. What I was seeing now was a platoon buddy in the same light field gear as my own. An avatar.

The real Thep was encased in her ill-fitting protective gear, sweating like a pig as she trudged through the foliage. I was starting to wonder if my suit’s augmented reality might not be a touch too realistic. The physical environment was indistinguishable from reality, even though the images were thoroughly processed before they hit my retinas, but the suit enhanced my “buddy’s” appearance with such realism that I was starting to forget the real person.

The feel of foliage brushing against my trousers, the smell of grass, the sweet, humid breeze that tousled my hair—everything was augmented reality. Everything reaching my senses was mediated by the suit and the gel covering my body. I had the sensation of bugs colliding with the jumpsuit, sometimes even against my cheeks—modulated, of course, so as not to be actually irritating. But why go to the trouble, when I knew I was wearing protective armor?

“Shue, how far is it?”

“At this pace? Twenty minutes. Your gear is better than mine, so try to keep up.”

I breathed harder as we climbed the slope. As I stepped over a branch, I took a deep breath and had the sensation of an insect flying up my nose. My visor was down, though of course I couldn’t see it. What was the point of all this extra detail?

I was rubbing my nose frantically, trying to get the bug out, when Thep stopped ahead of me. She put the tripod down, opened her workspace in the palm of her hand and stared at it.

“Takashi’s convulsions have stopped. Nimol just sent a message. He’s still unconscious, but his pulse is stable. Sometimes his avatar gives instructions about treatment.”

“That’s good to hear. I was worried about him.”

“How about you? You don’t feel strange at all?”

“No, but this AR is a bit over the top.”

EMOTION CONTROL ACTIVATED

FEAR PHASE 1A: DOUBT

The readout again. I felt a light constriction in my chest. Was the suit adjusting for fit?

“What do you mean, over the top?”

“Kind of like sensory overload. I feel like I’m wearing a woven jumpsuit, and you’re—”

Looking very beautiful.
Right. Better not say that. Thep cocked her head at my sudden silence.

“Anyway, with full-body feedback, it’s impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t. I’m not surprised it made Takashi sick. Total sensory overlo—”

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS

FEAR PHASE 2: PLAYBACK

DURATION: 0.2 SEC

I felt a stronger constriction in my chest. Thep’s face blurred. The edges of my visual field disappeared in a blazing white light.

Kurokawa lifts his left hand to touch his temples.

No! Don’t activate!

His visor goes dark. His head drops. Thep springs to his side.

I open his visor. Vomit spills out.

Get his suit of
f!

Kurokawa’s wildly gyrating eyeballs lock on mine for a split second.

Someone is gurgling. I can’t see! There’s too much vomit.

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS

FEAR PHASE 3: PERSPECTIVE CHANGE

I feel the vomit rising in my throat. The stench makes me vomit harder. The puke fills the narrow space inside the visor.

Pull the release cable!
I’m yelling, but it’s Kurokawa’s voice.

Thep is holding me close as one arm gropes for the release cable.

Please, please get this off me! I can’t— The suit—

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS

FEAR PHASE 4: RECOVERY SEQUENCE

DURATION: 0.2 SEC

As disoriented as I am, I can still see the readout clearly. I feel the warmth of Thep’s arms around me. Our hearts beat with the same rhythm. The heat from her body spreads through my chest and fills me with courage. I have a mission.

Thep clings to me. Her face is inches from mine, eyes glowing with trust and affection.

“Mamoru?” I hear Thep’s voice across a great distance.

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS

FEAR PHASE 5: SEQUENCE COMPLETE

“What’s wrong? Is it the suit?”

Thep is clinging to me, but her voice is far away.

What just happened? What did the status messages mean?

I lifted my leg and took a step forward. The foliage snapped under my boots and brushed the legs of my jumpsuit. I could still feel a tiny flame of resolve in my chest, but the sense of elation was ebbing away rapidly.

“Come on,” called Thep. “We’re wasting time.”

*   *   *

“Take a look. There’s your masterpiece.”

We were midway up the slope that ended at the edge of the site. Thep put a hand against the side of a white messenger tower that looked as new as the day it was installed. With the other she pointed to the fields dropping away in the distance, terrace upon terrace of green.

I had never seen my work from this perspective. Irrigation canals snaked around the terraces and followed the contours of the undulating terrain. The huge logos filled my field of vision, splashed across the landscape four miles across. The Mother Mekong logo was slightly smaller. Kurokawa once told me that the size of the logos precisely reflected the ownership share of each partner.

The terrain, the irrigation canals, the location of the buildings far below us—everything was exactly as I had seen it in the three-dimensional model that had burned itself into my brain as I was designing dispersion algorithms for the towers. Thep had followed my specifications to the letter when she built the site. The hundreds of messenger towers were exactly as I remembered placing them. The signals transmitted by the chemical messengers activated the style sheet mapped into SR06 to trigger color change precisely as specified.

“Sorry, Mr. Designer, but that color is awful. And the nocturnal glow is so bizarre. It really complicated our recruiting. At first even I thought it was the work of Teak Na.”

As the sun dipped behind the mountains, the jellyfish protein in the rice plants would glow faintly blue-white. Barnhard had convinced Mother Mekong to add this feature to the plants. I couldn’t picture how such a huge expanse of glowing vegetation would look at night.

Getting the protein to actually work with SR06 was an achievement, but I felt a surge of regret that I hadn’t at least tried to propose an alternative.

EMOTION DETECTED: REGRET

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS: RECOVERY PHASE

CONFIRMING EMOTIONAL ISSUE

Again the tightening in the chest. Now the edges of my field of vision darkened and blurred.

Why did I give in so easily to that insane idea?

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS: RECOVERY PHASE 2

RECONFIRMATION

*   *   *

The sun falls rapidly behind the mountains. A moonless night comes on in seconds. With no light pollution this far out in the countryside, the stars look close enough to touch. SR06 glows and turns my chest and face blue-white.

Thep huddles at the base of the messenger tower, hands over her mouth in terror. Her body is shaking with fear.

“It was you, wasn’t it? Why did you have to make them glow?”

“Shue, I was just—”

“Stay away from me. It’s too late to apologize.” She starts sobbing. My chest tightens even more. Why did I do this?

Now I’m crying too.

EMOTION CONTROL PROGRESS: RECOVERY PHASE 3

GAINING CONFIDENCE

DURATION 0.2 SEC

My eyes are blurred with tears, yet the readout is sharp and clear.

“I’m sorry. I was too hard on you. Everything’s going to be fine, Mamoru. You know what? Your plants are beautiful. You’re a master of your craft, to be able to do this.”

She unzips her jumpsuit to her waist and walks slowly toward me, giving her hips full play. Even in the dimness I can see her half smile and parted lips. I ignore the faint warning in my head as she bares her breasts and extends her arms invitingly.

“Have faith in yourself, Mamoru.”

Her fingers play over the back of my neck. The scent of her sweat-bedewed skin reaches me, penetrates me, and kindles a fire. I raise my arms to embrace her. My knees are trembling. I feel the blood flowing to my crotch. I inhale her breath and part my lips. Every nerve in my body is on fire.

Reason is down, but not out. I just manage to say it.

“Cancel emotion control.”

EMOTION CONTROL TERMINATED

Emotion control has been terminated. It will not be reactivated unless required for the completion of this operation. Your orders remain in effect.

It was the voice of the tutorial. I was back in daylight, looking out over thousands of acres of rice.

Emotion control. The gel I applied before suiting up not only was creating the world I saw, it was manipulating what I felt. If the system message was to be believed, the whole experience took a fifth of a second.

Showing me an idealized buddy was supposed to bolster my fighting spirit. The tutorial had promised boundless courage even on a battlefield littered with corpses. The flashback to Kurokawa was another “treatment.” The system had amped up my negative emotions to the point where I was able to see them as absurd and discharge them.

That feeling I had, of something rising in my throat—was that real, or another hallucination?

“Mamoru? Did something happen to you?” Thep was standing at the base of the messenger tower.

“No, I’m okay.” I felt something rising in my throat again. I swallowed and got a bitter aftertaste. This was real. There was no gel in my mouth.

“You’re not acting okay.”

She stepped toward me. I remembered how she looked in the vision: the gloss of her lips, her satiny skin, the sweetness of her sweat still in my nostrils. My cheeks burned.

“You’ve been acting strange since we left the facility. Haven’t you noticed? It’s time for a break. Sit.” She pointed to the base of the tower.

“Good idea.” I looked up at the tower. “This is the first artificial structure I’ve seen since we got out here.”

“Not completely artificial. It’s sustainable cement, from terrestrial coral.” She sat next to me. “Or maybe I should say, ‘carnivorous coral.’ ”

I actually stood up in surprise. Thep laughed. Her flashing white teeth reminded me again of how she’d looked in the vision—her lips and the smell of her body. What the hell were the people who came up with Emotion Control thinking anyway? Was the US military that stupid? There was something fundamentally gross about giving people confidence by putting artificial emotions in their heads.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that.” I sat down again.

“It’s what I hear every day. Man-eating cement, vampire soil, killer crops. I know all the insults. In multiple languages.” She started counting terms on her fingers.

“Is that what your staff says?”

“Those guys? You’re joking. No, it’s what
they
say.” She pointed to the tree line beyond the fields. I could see a small black dot hanging above the ridge. As I squinted to bring it into focus, a circle appeared around the object and the image zoomed in. The suit’s high-resolution camera was synced to my attention.

“It’s a kite. There’s a camera array hanging off it.”

“Nature addicts. They’re into aerial photography these days, trying to shoot the progress of the mutation. I told my people to shoot down anything that comes over the fields, but our friends are careful about keeping their kites over the DMZ.”

“All I know about ‘DMZ’ is that it’s a military term. What’s it all about?”

“The DMZ is a buffer zone to protect the crops from insects and weeds. You can just see it there, at the base of the hills.” She pointed. Between the edge of the site and the dense forest beyond was a ribbon of a different green. It looked like only one species of plant was growing there.

“They came up with the concept in the 2010s. It was supposed to make large-scale organic farming possible. Farms were surrounded by barren belts of land that were heavily sprayed with pesticides and defoliants. It was a kill zone for whatever you didn’t want in your fields. Some of the zones were ten clicks wide.

“A DMZ is supposed to maintain peace by keeping combatants apart. I guess the farmers needed a catchy acronym. The thing is, most ‘organic’ farmers still use all kinds of chemicals in the DMZs around their farms.”

“Even around Full Organic distilled crops?”

“Yeah, it’s our dirty little secret. As long as the DMZ is owned and operated by someone else, you can get certified Full Organic without much hassle.”