Crossing the Blood-Brain Barrier
by Peter AndrewsIt was the first time I’d seen Buzz since they’d put the worms into Michaela’s ear. He looked even more like a junkyard, with rusty wires stitched into his face and a slab of new titanium riveted to his neck. He held out his hand for me to shake it, but I couldn’t do it. I was caught up in the smooth hissing rhythm of Michaela’s heart-lung machine. It was an all too familiar sound.
I hadn’t been able to hold a conversation with Michaela for three years. Three years of magnetic purgings, neurotransmitter cocktails and finally, last month, the nanoworms. But I had been able to read the signs. Heart, respiration, EEG, bloods, drips. I recognized emerging problems. I saw the course of antibiotics and the subtle cycles of her dreaming life.
Two days ago, I was told she had returned from the purgatory Buzz’s carelessness had put her into. I knew it from a doctor’s statement, but when I returned to her unit, just yesterday, I experienced it myself. Everything was subtly different.
I immediately looked over the instruments. I didn’t see anything at first. Then I noticed a faint whisper on the EEG. A signature I hadn’t seen before. I touched Michaela’s cheek. A tiny smile cracked her lips, then disappeared. I felt a tender ache I’d forgotten.
Nothing else happened on that first day. Talking and touching had no effect. The doctors were unimpressed; the neuro-nanologist, Dr. Garvey, was completely noncommittal. He wouldn’t speculate on the worms or their possible effects. He just added more sensors. But I got the idea that bringing Buzz in for a visit would jolt her back.
Buzz was usually unavailable. He did not answer his cell and he did not answer a page. Gone when we needed him. What a surprise.
But here he was now, the toxic boyfriend himself, all charm and inhuman hardware.
Buzz was in conference with Garvey. He was getting a complete briefing, a look of concern pasted on his goofy face. I tried to react calmly.
“Dr. Garvey, Mr. Tick is no longer a family member. I’d appreciate it if information went through me.”
“Buzz was just visiting Michaela.”
“I thought I was invited,” Buzz said. He was moped. I didn’t care.
“You were brought in to help. Not as a guest. And certainly not to insert yourself into the situation.”
“Michaela’s eyes are open,” Garvey said.
I pushed past him and went into the unit. Michaela was slowly scanning the room.
“Hey, baby.”
Her eyes passed over me as if I were wallpaper.
“This only just happened,” Garvey said.
“I was on my way back to the hotel,” Buzz said.
Michaela’s eyes fixed on him. They drank him in. Garvey looked over his instruments. He adjusted the visualization. He flipped some switches.
“Keep talking, Buzz.”
“About what? I haven’t had breakfast yet, you know? And I haven’t had any sleep.”
I couldn’t tell a thing from the new monitor Garvey had installed, but some of the blocks of data seemed to flicker as Buzz spoke.
“What’s happening?” I asked
“Later,” Garvey said. “Buzz. Keep talking. Tell me something. Talk about the weather. Anything.”
“Weather?” He had deep shadows under his eyes. He stood there, looking confused.
“Buzz, are you working on any new songs?” I asked.
He looked at me. Then he finally opened his mouth.
“Doing some covers. Some old Stecher tunes. We’ve made them up tempo and added in some Aborigine samples, you know?”
“Any good?”
He smiled. “Man, I always thought those songs were embalmed. But there’s this one…”
Garvey interrupted. “Okay, that’s it. Nothing else is happening.”
I turned my attention back to Michaela. Back to her monitors. Nothing.
“What was it?” I asked.
“I’ll need to do some analysis. There was definitely something new going on when he was talking.”
“Show me.”
Garvey started bringing up the visualization he’d captured.
“Hey, do you want to hear about the song, or what?”
Brain chemistry happens. And it was happening to Michaela the third day after the nanoworms woke her up. The EEG told us everything and nothing. Lots of activity, none of which made any sense. It looked like three earthquakes smashing into each other, then quiet. Then I lost all track of the instruments.
Michaela was making her first sounds in three years - animal cries that tore my heart. So aching. So loud. Emergency personnel come running to us from all over. They wanted to give her something for her pain. They wanted to calm her. They wanted to shut her up.
I wanted it, too. I wanted what was best for her, but it was torture. I ached to put my hand over her mouth.
Thank God Garvey had nerve. We were in unknown territory, and he wouldn’t let them get near her with their needles and their medicated patches.
The staff, desperate to muffle the cries that so upset their charges, solved the problem by covering the walls and the door with mattresses.
I put my hands over my ears and just prayed like a kid caught in a storm. I bit my lip until it bled, working to hold off the panic. And when her eyes lit up with terror, I closed my own. I did not reach to comfort her. Buzz… he wasn’t there. He had gotten caught up in a call, some sort of New Internet performance deal. He only showed up when things had quieted down, while the portable MRI was at work. And that was when the strangeness began, really.
Since the last time I’d seen him, they had given Buzz a new tattoo on his arm. It wasn’t ink; it was a nanobot construct designed to dynamically interpret music. The imposed pattern was Celtic iconography of twists and swirls, but the deep algorithms of each little ‘bot included chaos equations that meant the exact conformations never repeated themselves.
To me, it seemed like he had allowed himself to be infected with a cheap screensaver. Another bad decision driven by his second-rate view of art. But I had misjudged him, or, at least, the creator of this tattoo. This was not a simple skin illustration. It was much closer to the sort of artificial life experiment that we know as Meltdown.
Let me stop right here. I don’t want to exaggerate and I certainly don’t want to frighten you. This is a much smaller scale than Meltdown. No cell phone crashes, no television imagery melting into static, no grinding halt to international flights. The Internet didn't fail again.
Just one family’s story, not a worldwide event. My personal loss on Meltdown was high, but it was all economic. I was lucky compared to some. Maybe you. Are you okay?
Everyone has their own stories. And nothing on that scale happened in St. Benedict’s Hospital. But, for me, for my family, everything changed that day. Call it a technological cross reaction.
The portable MRI that Dr. Garvey was using was simple. The detection system was contained in a pair of gloves that barely fit over his large hands. He moved them over Michaela’s face and her head, and they communicated signals to the instrument tray. These, in turn, pumped images out to the main visualization display and then on to the augmented reality goggles Garvey wore.
I should explain that professional AR equipment isn’t like the X-ray glasses or tourist eyewear you may have tried. The refresh rate is undetectable and the registration is extremely fine, fine enough for surgery. Garvey was, in a real sense, looking into Michaela’s head in realtime.
I could only get a rough approximation of what was going on. I know more about brain anatomy than the average person, but the images were color coded in unexpected ways. I was confused. It was like trying to get oriented to a landscape from a plane when you’ve only seen two-dimensional maps.
But I could tell that there was a lot going on. Through the constant movement of Garvey’s hands, I could see that either the worms were moving or Michaela’s brain was being transformed – probably both. I asked questions, but Garvey ignored me. He was seeing the event of his scientific career. I was seeing my only child being rebuilt from the inside out.
At about that time, Buzz came in. I hadn’t noticed he was there until I heard him scratching his arm. I looked up and nodded.
“So what’s with all the mattresses?” he asked.
“We had some problems earlier on. You missed the excitement.”
“Sorry,” he said. He looked over my shoulder at the monitor. Then he looked over not at Michaela, but at Garvey.
“And the tints?” he asked, pointing to the AR goggles. Garvey looked at Buzz, then at his arm. The monitor showed a few frames of shattered rainbows, and then turned to mud.
“Weird,” Garvey said. “May I?”
Buzz let him slide fingers across the tattoo. Tiny rainbows returned and flickered out like embers from a bonfire.
“What is it?” Buzz asked. To my surprise, Garvey stripped off the goggles and handed them to Buzz.
Buzz put them on and grinned as Garvey ran his hand over the tattoo again. I felt a sound, a low rumble, like an earthquake. Michaela had opened her eyes and was staring at Buzz. The sound was coming from her.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
Garvey looked over at me. Buzz looked at Garvey, me and Michaela, creating a confusion of images on the monitor.
Garvey actually put his hands on the sides of Buzz’s face and directed his view toward Michaela. He studied the monitor. I kept my eyes on Michaela. She seemed about to speak, and I heard and felt another rumble. Then the voice. For the first time. I thought it was coming from Michaela, and maybe it was. An eerie countertenor keen and gentle, but strong. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I snapped my head around to see Buzz singing. I could not see his eyes behind the goggles, but all the nervousness had left his body. He almost seemed to be floating in place.
And the best part? The gentle sad voice coming from Buzz was, unmistakably, Michaela’s.
Then silence. Buzz clawed off the goggles and fled, knocking trays and instruments to the floor with a jarring crash.
I recovered before Garvey did. Michaela’s eyes were closed, but there was color in her cheeks. I kissed her. Then I sat down and held her hand. For the first time in three years, perhaps longer, I felt at peace.
The next day Buzz was not in his hotel, did not answer the phone and left no messages. I was desperate to find him. Garvey said he thought Michaela’s life depended on it.
I made some stupid phone calls. Tried to find a reliable private detective. Appealed to the disaffected remnants of Buzz's family. His retinue would not give him up. Finally, I threatened to have a press conference: Dying Ex-Wife Needs Famous Musician. With the hit song he’d written for her, we’d have a sob story with a soundtrack.
Buzz was calling me within five minutes.
“So how’s Micca?” he asked, using her childhood nickname. I hated him all over again, but I forced myself to sound flat.
“Not so good. She needs you, Buzz.”
“Huh,” he said. “I can get back there day after tomorrow. The afternoon.”
“Garvey doesn’t think she’ll last that long without you.”
“He doesn’t really know, does he?”
“Come. Please.”
Silence. I thought the line had gone dead. “OK. I gotta do what’s best for Micca. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Sure.”
Don’t do me any favors.
I knew he wouldn’t rush over, but I was there at seven the next morning anyway. At 12:30, when I was preparing to bring in the media, he wandered in.
Buzz always looked good. Always ready for his close-up with perfect hair, a jumble of threads that says edgy, and a bit of make-up to hide his heavy beard. His mom would be proud to know that he still stands up straight.
But this time, just beneath the veneer, I saw a sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, scared man. A thirty-five-year old with a face and body ten years younger, but the eyes of a man my age. Maybe older.
When he showed up, I was alone with Michaela who was festooned with wires and probes, courtesy Garvey. How much was for her benefit and how much was his science fair project, I have no idea. The data had become complex and much less readable for me. I was back in neurology kindergarten. One thing was clear; Michaela was failing.
I got up from my chair and greeted Buzz with a handshake. “Thanks for coming.”
He nodded, and I led him over to Michaela. He stood like a zombie. I placed her hand into his.
Instantly, Michaela’s eyes opened. Buzz gasped. He tried to pull away, but she held him with a strength I would not have believed possible. I pushed the panic button, calling the nurse. Then I looked over the monitors. Strong vital signs, but lots of other activity - more like what I saw when Michaela had a seizure than anything else.
The tattoo on Buzz’s arm was going insane, the chaos patterns branching and rotating - and beginning to spread up his arm.
Buzz was on the verge of panic. He struggle to get loose, then pulled his free arm back forming a fist. I wrapped my arms around him and held with all my might. I was not going to let him hit Michaela. And I wasn’t going to let him pull loose, either.
A scream behind me. The nurse. Part of my mind noted that screaming wasn’t a very professional reaction, but I wasn’t seeing the whole scene because I was in it. A scream may have been the most professional reaction.
“Get Garvey,” I said in a level voice. When she didn’t move, I shouted at her.
Buzz slumped, and then started to twitch and mutter unintelligibly. It crossed my mind that he might die. I almost missed him.
Without letting go of Buzz, Michaela started pulling out the feeding tube with her other hand. It came out slowly, millimeter by millimeter. It was longer than I imagined and, after ten centimeters, was coated with bright red streaks of fresh blood.
“Where the fuck is Garvey?” I asked.
“I’m here.”
Stretching my neck, I peered around to see him messing with the monitor.
“She’s bleeding,” I said.
I heard coughing and turned back to see the tubing all out, coiled on the floor and covered with blood. Michaela looked up at me. Something behind the eyes. A real Michaela look.
“Water,” she said.
I stayed the night, sleeping in a chair next to Michaela’s bed. When I awoke, it was dawn, and she was sleeping peacefully. She was free of all the tubes and wires that had bound her for years. The soft light made Michaela look like a kid. I could wanted to wake her for school. "You’ll miss the bus, honey.”
Her eyelids flickered. REM sleep - she was dreaming again. And maybe I was, too. Garvey had the answers. He was gone. Home. His office. Somewhere.
I checked my watch. It was ten after five. His office wouldn’t open for another three hours. And, Jesus, what day of the week was it? I had no idea. I hoped it wasn’t a weekend. The only reference point I could discover was a television show I’d watched, but I couldn’t figure out how many days back that was or what day of the week it was broadcast.
As it happened, Garvey contacted me and I met him at the university. He brought me through the data. Buzz, in his opinion, was essential to Michaela’s recovery. But Buzz was gone again. I hated him and I needed him. How could I keep him around? I couldn’t use the threat of the media again, and I couldn’t exactly kidnap him. Buzz was a prominent individual with his own set of hangers-on and protectors. Grabbing him and secretly holding him at the bedside of an invalid was impossible.
I needed more options, which meant I needed to know a lot more than I did - more about Michaela’s condition and prognosis, more about what Garvey was looking into with Buzz’s tattoo. And I needed to know more about Buzz and his current situation.
In the year Michaela woke up, you could already get a nano tattoo at your neighborhood studio. Even then, nanos were used to make the dyes last and even to switch off and become invisible if you got a job as a minister or changed girlfriends. But ones that moved, that reacted to external stimuli, were only in boutique laboratories.
Wollstonecraft’s was just such a place. It took up a three story brick building that looked like it had been around for a couple of hundred years, though only the façade was that old. Inside there was every twenty-first century convenience and a few that seemed to anticipate the next century.
Stepping into the place, I was taken back by all the nude bodies. Dozens of people were sprawled out on couches, chatting and drinking soft drinks or wine as the tattooing ‘bots did their work. Soft music played and displays provided realtime images of the tattoos as they were created. You could change the magnification and share your images with those of any fellow client. Evidently, tattooing at Wollstonecraft’s was a community event.
A young woman who had vines of color entwining her body came up to me. While most tattoo addicts fill up every square inch, she had a wonderful combination of bare skin and illustration. As she got closer, I could see that birds and insects were hidden among the leaves of almost photo-realistic vines.
She looked over my unmarked flesh and smiled. “May I help you?”
“I’ve got an appointment with Carl Rigueur.”
Her eyes widened for just a microsecond. “Third floor,” she said.
I nodded and headed for the stairs. On the way up, a swarm of Cutters passed me. They were into Cemetery Chic. Parts of their faces and limbs seemed to be decaying. I was startled, but they were all polite and friendly, except one. A beautiful girl who had made half her face a ruin bumped into me, nearly knocking me down the stairs. I was on her alleged blind side, but I thought she could see.
I passed a door labeled cutting and piercing and continued up to third floor. The door did not have sign on it. I just walked in.
Have you ever gotten a pear in a bottle as a gift? It’s an Alsace tradition. Typically, the producer goes out to the orchard early in the season, puts bottles on immature pears, and waits for them to grow up. When they reach the proper size, the pears are cut off and washed within the bottle. Then the bottle is filled with pear brandy, sealed and labeled.
I actually tried to do this myself, with bad results. I got involved in business when harvest time rolled around, and most of my pears grew too big and got smashed and misshapened by the bottles.
I was reminded of this when I went through the door on the third floor. This was not one big room like the tattooing parlor, just a nondescript reception area with a large carboy sitting on a desk. It looked like a two-year-old had been grown in that bottle until the space was too crowded. Correction, a fetus the size of a two-year-old. The body was twisted around, floating in fluid, but the too-big head was caught, its face smashed against the surface. I looked more closely at the creature and its eyes opened up.
I screamed and backed away. Was it some kind of sick joke? I moved to the side and the eyes followed me. They seemed intelligent, which meant either this was a brilliant piece of art or evidence of a horrible crime. I never got a chance to work it out because Carl came through the door.
“I see you’ve met Edgar. He does give people a start.”
Carl extended his hand to me, and I shook it. He was smiling and looked like an exec from a blue chip company, not at all like a mad scientist. He invited me inside.
We went down a short hallway to his office. It had a nice view of the town, and seeing the sunlit, normal world calmed me. He also had a wall full of books - real leather-bound antiques on physiology, anatomy, genetic engineering and half a dozen other subjects. Quite a few folios were on stem cells and nanotechnology.
I didn’t hear most of what he said at first, but I caught that he had done a background check on me. I’d done some checking on him, too. He’d created active nanos for a number of celebrities. I didn’t know for sure that he had worked on Buzz, but it was a pretty good guess that he had.
“You’re Buzz’s father-in-law,” he said. He was sitting behind a big desk, working with his computer.
“Ex.”
Carl shrugged. “Not a stranger, anyway. I understand he’s been by the hospital to see your daughter.”
I’d imagined myself interviewing him, not the other way around. But I needed a sense of what was crawling around under Buzz’s skin, so I played along.
“We’ve got a new treatment. The doctor thought it was important for him to stop by, and he was kind enough to do so.”
Carl asked, so I told him about the nanoworms. He got caught up on the topic. He brought up some images of worms on his computer. I hadn’t looked at the worms before they were inserted. I hadn’t wanted to. And now I didn’t want to look too closely at the magnified versions he had on display, full of teeth and drills and rows of legs or wheels.
Carl was frowning at me. I wanted to do something to satisfy his curiosity, so I provided some details on the stem cell cluster Garvey had injected into Michaela’s prefrontal cortex. This pleased him, and I was oddly pleased myself.
“Buzz had a new sort of tattoo he called a fleshbot. Know anything about them?”
Carl chuckled, and I couldn’t help but like him. Not creepy at all.
“I know a bit,” he said. “Here at Wollstonecraft’s we call that augmentation a DDR, or dynamic dermal robot. Usually, they don’t have many features. You said Buzz’s made him itch?”
I didn’t think I’d said that, but I nodded.
“Here’s what a fleshbot looks like,” he said. He brought one up on the display. Imagine a furry ant. “Each one of those hairs is actually an antenna. When these guys say I’m all ears, they’re not kidding.” He chuckled. Despite myself, I laughed, too.
“You ever hear of a mesh network?”
I told him I hadn’t. “It’s a many-noded, delocalized communications system. It’s usually short range, redundant as hell. The military scatters the nodes over battle sites and all their wireless systems can get a signal.”
“Fleshbots work that way?”
“They have that capability, among others. The worms in your daughter… they might, too.”
He gave me time for that to sink in. I concluded that the worms were chatting among themselves, but they also were making long distance calls to Buzz’s tattoos. Given what I’d seen, the conversations weren’t entirely friendly.
This was levels above me - I felt not just helpless, but obsolete. The world had changed too much in my lifetime. I slumped forward. Carl reached across the desk and put a hand on my shoulder.
“We don’t really know what’s going on, but I think I can help.”
He returned to his computer. He was going through the usual horridly colored visualizations of data the scientists love so much, but I wasn’t paying attention to that. Mostly, I was looking at him.
My past three years had been filled with experts who thought they could help or really wanted to. I’d had a boatload of technical folks like Garvey, who thought people were specimens. I’d had the well-intentioned but feckless round of doctors who accomplished little, each finally coming back to me with a canned look of sorrow that made me want to kill them. I’d had one or two who were both compassionate and clever. They helped me catch up on what was behind the tests, diagnoses and treatments. They had been great teachers, but they had been defeated.
Carl was like them, but he really believed he could help. Confidence. It was like a transfusion for a man who was bleeding out.
“Huh. Maybe we know more than we thought we did,” he said, still furiously manipulating images.
“Should we talk to Garvey?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, just barely sarcastic.
“Actually, we’re lucky he hasn’t managed to kill her. Look here.” More (for me) unintelligible images. “I do have to hand it to him; he has made a terrific intuitive leap. There’s real hope in what he has started.”
“Real hope.” I couldn’t help but repeat it.
“Yes, but it’s as if we were suffering a drought and he sent a hurricane in our direction. He’s solving one problem, but…”
“And you can really do something?”
“Yes.” No equivocation.
“I need two things from you,” he continued.
“I should be able to afford the cost.” I was good for at least one more jumbo loan.
He waved me off. “Don’t worry about that. I owe this to Buzz. No. I need your help getting in with my equipment. And I need you to make sure Buzz is there.”
“You can’t get him there?”
“I could, but it’s better this way. Trust me.”
He turned to me and smiled. An engaging smile, with perfect teeth. Not perfectly whitened, not perfectly straightened, but totally symmetrical and perfect. And the lines around his eyes smiled, too. Kindly. But the eyes themselves were slightly wrong. A little… dead? The kind of eyes I’d expected Edgar to have.
I found a nurse, Neetha Patel, who was a big fan of Buzz. With his celebrity power, it wasn’t difficult to get her to lend a hand. The only problem was she was new at St. Benedict’s, new enough to be really concerned about breaking any rules. Even the magic of Buzz Tick has its limits when your job is on the line.
Luckily, she recognized Carl Rigueur from the celebrity magazines. When I promised she could meet him, she started to act like her silly, star-struck self again. If Buzz wanted Carl to come in with his equipment and Mr.Tick’s ex-wife’s father wanted it, too, there were ways to get around security. She would help.
Buzz, as always, was more trouble. Would he even be in the country? One blog was nattering on about his visit to Slovakia. It took some hours of checking to determine that was a fan’s wishful thinking. The least inept private investigator I’d engaged earlier was able to establish that Buzz was still in the city. In fact, he wasn’t feeling well and had cancelled most of his activities.
I dearly wanted to use Carl’s name as leverage to get him to the hospital. And I had almost broken down when it came to me: the perfect lie. Through intermediaries, I let Buzz know that Michaela was singing. New music. Entirely different, but compelling. A switch on the ventriloquist’s act she’d done with him, but controlled now. Really special.
He wanted to come immediately, but I had to coordinate with Neetha and Carl. Tomorrow morning would work. Tomorrow morning would be best.
Some days look like midnight all day long. It’s not just that the sun never shines. There is a heaviness to the air, and everything smells odd. The whole world feels like your grandfather’s basement with the light turned off.
When Buzz arrived, Michaela was sleeping and none of the nanotechnology was acting up. I was nervous about it, but I left him with her, saying I was going for a cup of coffee. Then I headed out the front of the hospital and around to side entrance.
I had expected Carl to show up with a little bag of tricks, but I got a surprise. He was there getting some sort of big robot out of a truck. It was carrying a large black box and several metal trays. The equipment must have weighed a ton. Robot and tools lumbered along at and excruciatingly slow pace.
Somehow, Carl maneuvered the robot over to the handicap ramp. By the time it made it, so much sweat was coming off me that my glasses were fogging. I was simultaneously hoping the door would open and hoping it wouldn’t. I wanted Neetha to let us in, but I had no interest in having a security guard burst out. I remembered the security cameras. I spotted two before I realized how suspicious it was to be looking for security cameras.
At last, Neetha opened the door. Carl and I went in and she smiled. She had an autograph book in her hand, but she dropped it when she saw the robot rolling in after us.
“You can’t bring that in here.”
“I’m not much good without it,” Carl said.
“Oh. No.” Neetha turned an unhealthy color, made worse by the fluorescent lights.
“This won’t take long,” I said. “Would you like to say hi to Buzz?”
She surprised me by saying no.
Buzz was not in the room when Carl and I got there. I started cursing.
“Relax. He’s around,” Carl said. He opened one of the flat metal boxes and began removing what looked like tool kits for toy soldiers. They were mostly primary colors and a few had tiny lights on them. He took a surgical pad and swabbed Michaela’s forehead. Then he put on a glove that was like Garvey’s MRI glove. He touched her several times with it, but I don’t really know what he was up to. He wasn’t wearing AR goggles and he didn’t have a display turned on.
“See if you can find Buzz,” he said.
It was time for me to get back to work and back to worrying. Where would Buzz be? Mentally, I prepared to check the restroom and the waiting room and the nurses station and a half dozen other places. I headed down the hallway and found him at the first turn, talking on his cell phone.
I was so amazed by my luck that I didn’t know how to react. I stood beside him for several minutes, not saying a word. Then his yammering got to me.
“Buzz.”
He pointed to the phone, giving me an irritated look. Whoever was on the line got a stream of invective at a volume that was inappropriate for a hospital.
I opened my mouth, and he gave me a look that dared me to say anything.
“She’s singing, Buzz. She’s singing now.”
Anger flared, and then turned to interest. Or perhaps greed.
“Gotta call you back,” he said.
I led him back to the room. Only a few more steps.
“I don’t hear her.”
“She’ll be loud enough to hear when we get into the room.”
“She was sitting like a big turnip when I left her. Had been for twenty minutes.”
He stopped. Three steps from the door. I didn’t know what to say to get him in there. My bluff had been called. I had run out of plans. He folded his arms and glared at me, not willing to buy anything. Neetha peeked around the corner, saw an unpleasant scene developing and ducked away.
I wanted to ask him to give me this one break. I wanted to just push him in. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted a different life. I wanted an end to the pain. I wanted Michaela to start singing.
She did.
No words, just sounds. Like scat sung by a choir of angels. Today, they call the form “folding” because it reminded someone of protein folding visualizations. But what you may have heard is a pale imitation of what Michaela was singing. Every emotion I felt was in that voice. It summed up my pain, my sorrow, my hope, my fear and my love. And it got Buzz into the room.
I followed him in, feeling relief so great I could not, for a moment, process what I was seeing. No wonder.
Michaela, still singing, was soaked in blood. Carl grabbed Buzz and tossed him onto the bed with her like a bundle of rags. Then he sprinkled the tiny devices over them both like so much confetti. And Buzz began to tremble.
My only thought was to protect Michaela. I moved toward her, but Carl, without looking back, shoved me away. I smashed into the robot and the box cracked open, then shut again. Edgar was inside. Our eyes met. Lying on the floor, I heard gasping. Not Michaela. I knew what it sounded like when she gasped. I struggled to my feet just as Carl stepped away.
A guard came in and shot Carl through the heart, no warning. But no harm, no foul. He knocked the guard aside and headed out with the robot, carrying Edgar, at his heels. By the time the guard and I got out the door, we saw the elevator closing. While the guard called to a colleague below, I headed for the stairs.
Footsteps echoed below me. I looked down to see Carl running down the stairs with the once wheel-bound, lethargic robot fast afoot behind him. It was a bizarre transformation. Unbelievable.
I heard the door shut below just as the guard came up to me and put his gun to my head. Neetha was behind him.
Michaela walked out of the hospital a week later. She is strong and intelligent and a singer’s singer. Which means she makes a living, but her imitators make the real money.
Buzz is dead. His body, along with a confusing array of nanodevices, was incinerated. After a thorough investigation, of course. When celebrities die, there are always thorough investigations. And you’ll be happy to know that a culprit was identified and put behind bars.
At one time or another, all of us have found exactly what we wanted on some obscure website by following a convoluted series of links. We’ve gotten the reference that proves our point, the goods on an old sweetheart, the most perfect source for gourmet mustards. We’ve found our own Shangri-La. And even though we carefully note the URL, when we look for it again, it’s gone. As if it never had been there.
That’s what happened with Wollstonecraft’s for me. When I needed it, it was gone. Along with witnesses and the camera footage at the hospital. Luckily for them, Neetha didn’t disappear. She was quite angry with me and quite clear about my role in Buzz’s death. She figured out quite a bit and made up the rest.
So the real murderer, Carl, disappeared forever. Or maybe Edgar was the real murderer and Carl was just his puppet. I leave that to you.
All the nice tattoo artists, piercers, cutters and nanoengineers disappeared, too, of course. I went to jail. For seven years I have not had the opportunity to touch my daughter. She visits me through a glass darkly. To be truthful, the woman who comes is more than my daughter and less. She’s a little bit Buzz and a little bit something I don’t recognize at all. She slips into the plural. “We sang in Naples. We have a new composition. We’ll get you out of here.”
And when you ask her a question, there’s a noticeable pause before she responds.
Today I received a letter from her. Snail mail. Paper and ink. I was handed the letter, the envelope and the stamp separately. That requires some explanation. The letter was mailed from San Marco. The stamp actually featured Michaela. Her letter was chatty, pointing out that the stamp was one I could add to my collection and asking me how I liked her in black and white.
A black and white stamp with a picture of Michaela is of no interest to me. I don’t collect stamps or Michaela memorabilia. The stamp was removed because of the authorities had heard the old story about a message being hidden under the stamp. I’m sure it was gone over thoroughly. A very clever diversion.
The real clue was there in black and white. Michaela’s letters are always in blue ink. I do collect her letters. This one was in black ink. I found that her signature contained a number of particles as small as grains of sand. Worms. I carefully removed them and put them into my ear. That was last week, and I believe we’re beginning, just now, to feel a little different. But perhaps it’s our imagination. Perhaps it’s only a hope.
©Peter Andrews
Peter Andrews has worked as a speechwriter, a radio producer, and a chemist. He has written over 200 published articles explaining science and technology. He also has published a handful of works of short fiction, including short stories in recent editions of Burst and Staffs and Starships.