Quarantine

‘Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up..’

My concentration falters, and I lose count. I turn to the histograms again. All the familiar ragged shapes have vanished, replaced by narrow spikes, growing steadily narrower.

‘Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up. Up..’

Dr Leung laughs and says, ‘P has hit ten to the minus fourteenth. I believe we have an effect.’ Dr Lui looks away from the screen, visibly overcome by emotion. Dr Tse glances at him, and scowls.

The strange thing is, there’s no hint in Po-kwai’s voice that she’s noticed her triumph. She just keeps calling the data as patiently as always—and the sound of her voice, even without the hook of randomness, is just as hypnotic as ever.

Three minutes later, the run ends, decaying into the usual noise for the rest of the session. When Po-kwai emerges, sans dark glasses, she stands in the doorway for a moment, shielding her eyes with her forearm, then she squints about the room, looking dazed.

And then, dejected.

Dr Tse says, ‘Congratulations.’

She nods and whispers hoarsely, ‘Thanks.’ She hugs herself and shudders, then her mood suddenly brightens. She turns to me. ‘I’ve done it, haven’t I?’

I nod.

‘Well, don’t just stand there. Where’s the champagne?’

The ad hoc celebration only lasts about an hour; four people (and one zombie onlooker) don’t make much of a party. I know there are twelve other scientists and nine other volunteers working on the project—they’re listed in MetaDossier—but apparently Dr Leung isn’t eager to share the news of her success with these rival teams.

The scientists talk shop, discussing plans to pump their subject’s head full of positron-emitting tracers to confirm certain aspects of ‘the effect’—but nothing they say gives me any clues as to how ‘the effect’ arises. Po- kwai sits by, looking tired but happy, occasionally joining in the conversation and out-jargoning them all.

In the elevator, she says, ‘Well, at least now I know that I’m if.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Not the control. Didn’t you know? In the mornings, another volunteer has been doing exactly the same thing—counting ions from the same Stern-Gerlach machine. It was a double-blind experiment; one of us had a placebo mod, one of us had the genuine article… and only the computers knew who had what—until now. Poor woman. If I’d gone through all of that for nothing, I’m sure I’d be furious.’ She laughs. ‘Maybe that’s what tipped the balance; maybe that’s why I’m not the control.’ I give her a puzzled look; she smiles in a way that makes it clear that she’s joking, but the point of the joke escapes me.

We alight on the thirtieth floor; Po-kwai says she’s too tired to eat. As always, I search the apartment methodically. She sighs. ‘Tell me: even assuming that some rival of ASR found out about the project—and managed to get access to the files showing which volunteers had the genuine mod—do you honestly believe they’d go to all the trouble of trying to kidnap one of us?’

BDI went to all the trouble of kidnapping Laura—for the sake of the very same talent that Po-kwai now possesses. But talk of BDI is forbidden, and Po-kwai knows nothing about Laura; from comments she’s made, it’s clear that she assumes—or was told—that the mod was designed on a computer, from scratch.

I shrug. ‘I’m sure they’d much rather get their hands on the mod’s specifications, but—’

‘Exactly! That would take a thousand times less work than grabbing someone and scanning them—’

‘— but you can be sure that the specifications aren’t exactly unprotected, so it would be crazy to make the alternative more tempting. I don’t think you should be worried—but I don’t think any of the security here is wasted. It’s hard to say how far a competitor might go. I have no idea what the commercial value of this thing might be in the long term… but just imagine how much you could make in a casino in just one night.’

She laughs. ‘Do you know how many atoms there are in a pair of dice? You’re asking me to scale up today’s result by roughly twenty-three orders of magnitude.’

‘What about electronic devices? Poker machines?’

She shakes her head, amused. ‘Not in a million years.’

What about picking locks? Maybe that’s out of the question, maybe it took Laura thirty years to learn how to perform feats like that. This prototype mod is unlikely to include anything but the primary skill, leaving out all of Laura’s experience in applying it… but Po-kwai still deserves to know the truth about the talent she’s received—and surely the more she knows, the more she’s likely to achieve. How can it be in the Ensemble’s best interests to keep her in the dark about the mod’s origins, and potential? Maybe I have no right to question that decision… but I can’t pretend that it makes sense to me.

She slumps down on the couch, and stretches, then glares at me reproachfully. ‘We’ve just made the scientific breakthrough of the century, and you’re talking about poker machines?’

‘I’m sorry; gambling is the first thing that came to mind. I can’t say I’ve given much thought to the nobler applications of telekinesis.’

She winces. ‘Telekinesis!’ Then adds, reluctantly, ‘Well… yeah, I suppose that’s exactly what the media will call it—if we ever get to drop all this security bullshit and publish the results.’

‘So what should they call it?’

‘Oh… neural linear decomposition of the state vector, followed by phase-shifting and preferential reinforcement of selected eigenstates.’ She laughs. ‘You’re right: we’d better think of something catchier, or the whole thing will end up being grossly misreported.’

Her description is meaningless to me, but— ‘“Eigenstates”? They’re something in quantum mechanics, aren’t they?’ She nods. ‘That’s right.’

For a second, I think she’s about to elaborate, but she doesn’t; she just yawns. I’m certain, though, that she’d happily explain everything (or as much as she knows); all I’d have to do is ask: how does this mod actually work? What’s the mechanism, what’s the trick? What’s the secret at the heart of the Ensemble? Just what is it that I’m living for?

She says, ‘Nick, I’m pretty tired—’

Of course. Good night, then. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Good night.’

I sit in the anteroom, dutifully staring at the door in front of me —

— and catch myself, at three fifty-two, listening to the interminable chirping of synthetic insects… mildly, but undeniably, irritated by the sound.

I try to sink back into stake-out mode; instead, I find myself growing bored, and then uneasy. I run P3’s diagnostics, for the twentieth time in a week.

[no faults detected.]

What’s happening to me?

It’s not a disease—it can’t be; all my mods claim they’re intact, and even if their self-checking systems had themselves become corrupted, random damage to the neurons involved is hardly likely to have caused exactly the right changes to generate false reports of good health.

What if the damage isn’t random? What if an enemy of ASR is infecting the security staff with nanomachines? But if that’s so, then their tactics are absurd. Why would they slowly degrade our mods, giving us days in which to ponder the symptoms? It would make infinitely more sense to build latent puppet mods, which could wait in silence, subjectively undetectable, until they were all activated at some predetermined moment.

What, then?

Karen appears in front of me. I try to banish her, without success. She just stands there; silent, frowning slightly, apparently as much at a loss to explain her presence as I am. I plead with her: ‘I’m primed. You know how much you hate to see me primed.’ This argument doesn’t move her, and no wonder; clearly, I’m not primed—whatever P3 might think.

What use is a bodyguard whose optimization mods no longer function? Who suffers