The Devil's Dictionary, page 23
“What did you find?” asks Lion.
“Susan’s PhD thesis, for starters.”
“What’s it about?” asks Lizzy.
“How much do you know about connectome mapping?” asks Penelope.
“Like Sasha and Xui,” says Jenka. “From Hard Pump VR.”
“Who are Sasha and Xui?” asks Penelope.
“Dah,” says Jenka, looking at Lion, “is good question.”
Lion ignores him. “What about connectome mapping?”
“Susan blended three ideas into one technological possibility. All had been around for a while, but she was the first, as far as I can tell, to stitch them together. The first was connectome mapping, specifically what’s called the eye-brain connectome.”
“Why is this useful?” asks Jenka.
“Bionic eyes,” explains Lizzy. “If you want to optimize sight restoration technologies, the human-eye connectome is a great map to work from. Also, diseases like Alzheimer’s have a retinal signature. So connectome mapping gives you a way to track the disease through the brain.”
“What was Susan’s other idea?” asks Jenka.
“She combined eye tracking and neurophysiology,” explains Penelope. “Apparently, you can learn a lot about a person from their eyes.”
“How?”
“I know this research,” says Lizzy. “Most eye movement is spontaneous, but not accidental. The motion is governed by our goals and our fears. We look at stuff we want and at stuff that scares us. So if you combine eye movement with neurophysiological signals—”
“I am coder, not biologist,” says Jenka. “What are neurophysiological signals?”
“EEG, heart rate, stuff like that,” explains Lion. “But what does that combination get you?”
“It’s what happens when you put all three techs together,” explains Penelope. “Susan’s PhD is about combining connectome mapping with eye tracking and neurophysiological data. She thought it would reveal a person’s decision-tree matrix.”
“Impressive,” says Lizzy.
“What is big deal?” asks Jenka.
“The big deal is knowledge,” continues Penelope. “Susan thought you could show a subject anything—a new product, an old toy, a photograph, whatever—and track not just their desire for or aversion to the thing, but every step in the neurobiological chain that led to that reaction.”
“Zhong taught genetics,” says Jenka. “Why would he advise on this thesis?”
“Not quite,” says Lion, putting it all together. “Zhong’s book was about using genetics for neuromarketing. If you had a person’s connectome map and could follow their decision-tree matrix, you’d understand every step in the chain that led to their buying decisions.” He turns to face Penelope. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“You would know all that,” she says, “but you would also know what kind of advertising campaign to run in order to change their minds. You could turn a decision not to buy into a decision to buy.”
“It’s the secret neuromarketing project,” says Lion. “The one Sir Richard was working on with Susan and Zee. The one he shut down for ethical reasons.”
“It was start of war,” says Jenka.
Lion nods. “We need to speak to Sir Richard.”
“Dah.”
Lion thinks for a moment. “But how do we get from Zhong to Zee?” He looks at Lizzy. “You said you read Zhong’s thesis—what’s it about?”
“Creepshow genetics. Designing humans and animals to populate other planets. He figured people would soon be living in space colonies or on Mars, and that they’d need pets and livestock with them. He wanted to make super-animals to go along with his superhumans.”
“Like Dr. Cortex with Evolvo-Ray,” says Jenka. “I told you, is same thing.”
“Worse. At the end of his thesis, Zhong argued for a new Eden. He wanted to use genetic engineering to perfect humanity and to perfect every other species humanity depends upon and then use these creations to populate other planets. He even had a name for his perfect new world, Pandora II.”
“Zee’s funding Zhong’s project?” asks Jenka.
“And Susan was the go-between,” explains Penelope. “She’s the link from Zhong to Zee and from Zee to Sir Richard.”
“Did you find anything else on the laptop?” asks Lion.
“I did,” says Penelope.
“What?”
“She found me,” says Ji Wan Li.
He’s standing in the doorway, wearing the same black motorcycle jumpsuit as Penelope, unzipped to the waist, a black T-shirt visible beneath, and his Buddy Holly glasses.
“She found me,” he says again.
Who Is Zoo You Gang?
Ji Wan Li walks onto the porch and crosses to face Lion. “You are not a slogan.”
Lion glares at him
“Chop me into bits with a battle-axe if you must,” continues Ji, “but first know that you, Lion Zorn, have built a bridge between all species. Your effort is on par with the sacred work of Zhou Youguang.”
“Who is Zoo You Gang?” snarls Jenka. “Is boy band?”
Ji starts to answer. Jenka cuts him off. “We talk on porch, you sleep in back room—how did you know about slogan?”
“Augmented hearing,” says Ji, crossing to sit on the railing. “CRSPR-mods, implanted when I was in the military.”
Casually, Jenka reaches his hand inside his jacket. It’s the universal call sign: I’m getting my gun now.
“The real great leap forward?” asks Lion. “That Zhou Youguang?”
“Yes,” says Ji, nodding solemnly. “That Zhou Youguang.”
“Apology not accepted,” says Jenka, removing the folded-up PHASR from inside his jacket. He flicks his wrist right, then left, snapping the barrel and pistol grip into place, then pointing the gun directly at Ji. “Do not move.”
“Ya numpty,” snaps Penelope. “Put that shite away.”
“Not again,” says Lion, raising an arm to shield his eyes.
“Not again,” says Jenka. “I have switched PHASR setting. Now is set on kill.”
“You mean,” says Lion, “with the polar bears, you went for stun and not kill?”
Jenka nods. “I did not want to kill polar bears, not unless it was real emergency.”
“The bears were charging at me, that wasn’t a real emergency.” Then Lion smiles. “Very cool of you.”
“Dah, empathy for all. Is a good slogan.”
Ji starts laughing.
“What is funny?” asks Jenka.
Ji points at the weapon. “That’s a PHASR.”
“Set to kill.”
“Doubtful.”
“You would like demonstration?”
Ji says, “The personnel halting and stimulation response rifle was developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate. It uses a two-wavelength low-intensity laser, causing temporary blinding and disorientation, with its temporary effects being the only reason the U.S. was permitted to develop the gun, as signatories of the 1995 UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. You’re holding the second-generation handheld model, the Stealth 9, with the Vortex SPARC 7 upgraded red dot sight, and quiver-correction intelligence built into the grip. But that generation PHASR does not have a kill setting.”
“I will still blind you,” says Jenka, “then stomp mudhole in ass.”
Ji shakes his head. “Good luck with that. I’m former People’s Liberation Army, South Blade, special ops, sniper. My eyes have been augmented. They shield out certain light frequencies, including those used by the PHASR. In my professional opinion, you’ll have better luck with the battle-axe.”
Jenka sighs, pushes a button on the PHASR, then snaps his wrists again, refolding the gun in a single motion. “Super-hearing, super-eyes, super-army of super-animals. I am saying, Zee is Dr. Neo Cortex.”
Ji laughs again.
“Now what is funny?”
“Jet,” says Ji. He looks at Lion. “I think, if I heard correctly, Jet is the man you know as Five Spikes.”
“What about him?”
“Jet was a gamer. He also called Chang Zee, Dr. Neo Cortex. Not at first, but after…” Ji falls silent.
“After what?” asks Jenka.
Penelope says, “Zee kidnapped family members.”
“Dah,” says Jenka. “This we know. To force scientists to—”
“It didn’t start with scientists,” interrupts Penelope. She looks at Ji. “Tell them.”
“Everything?”
Penelope nods, “Start with your father.”
“Do not start with father,” says Jenka. “I do not care about kind old man who carves you out of wood and gives you puppet strings.”
“Enough,” says Lion.
Everyone looks at him.
“I want to hear him out. Ji—what about your father?”
“My father is a scientist,” explains Ji, “an evolutionary anthropologist working for the army. He isn’t PLA, but whenever the military wants to build anything, they send his team to survey possible sites. My father figures out if there are fossils worth preserving or if the land is an ancient burial ground. My mother died during childbirth, so my father raised me. We moved from army base to army base. It’s how I learned to shoot. I was good, almost Olympics good, but decided to join the military instead. This was how I met Chang Zee.”
“Zee was in the army?” asks Lion.
“No. I met him because of what I learned in the military. I was South Blade, recon, similar to your Navy SEALs. My specialty was distance shooting and optics technology.”
“You’re a well-trained hired gun,” says Lion. “So what?”
“I’m a filmmaker,” says Ji, smiling. “Optics got me into the movies. Obsessed, really. Especially with some of the new neuro-tech. That is how I met Jet. He was ex-military, and also into movies and neuro-tech. We met at a conference on intracranial movie playback. I was a spectator. Jet was already a rising star with his own start-up. I quit the military to work with him. That’s how I met Zee. He was our first client. He hired us to make movies.”
“About?” asks Lion.
“Is not right question,” says Jenka.
Lion looks at him.
“Question is not, tell me about your movies, Mr. Filmmaker. Why, Mr. Filmmaker, did you make Lion Zorn snuff film—that is right question.”
Lion reaches into his pocket, pulls out a test tube containing one of the Ghost Trainwreck joints. He removes the stopper, slides out the spliff, fires it up, takes a drag, exhales, glances at Jenka, and says, “Shut up and let me work.”
“I vote for mudhole.”
Lion shakes his head and says, “We hear him out.”
“Why?”
“Zhou Youguang,” explains Lion.
“Who is Zoo You Gang?”
“They call him the Architect of the Bridge Between Languages,” explains Lion. “Zhou Youguang invented Pinyin, the system that converts Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. He educated China. Before he invented Pinyin, eighty-five percent of the country couldn’t read. Today, literacy is higher than ninety-five percent. But that wasn’t Ji’s point.”
“There is point?”
“Zhou Youguang is a hero to em-trackers,” explains Lion, “that’s Ji’s point. More than anyone else in history, Zhou bridged the gap between East and West.” Lion stretches out his hand, offering Ji the joint, “Doobage?”
“No thank you.”
“Zee hired you to make movies about what?” asks Penelope.
“Evo-loo-shun,” says Ji.
Lion blinks. It’s Ji’s pronunciation, those three syllables, just like Ramen in that Chinatown alley. You want evo-loo-shun, you go ask Sharijee, Sharijee all the evo-loo-shun you can handle.
“Evolution?” asks Lion. “As in Chuck Darwin, origin of species? Or the drug, Evo, that makes you trip evolution?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” says Ji. “These were not ordinary movies.”
Sugar, You’re Looking Sweet
Wizard technology—that’s Lion’s first thought on hearing what Ji has to say.
Apparently, Jet figured out how to hijack the neuro-machinery behind dreams. All you need is Jet’s nano-encapsulation tech to alter the brain’s dream machinery and an internet connection to download the movie. What you get is Evo—a nasal spray that makes you have prerecorded dreams.
Ji explains further. “It’s less about pumping the entire plot into your head, and more about pumping in sensory patterns that trigger familiar memories. That’s what makes you dream along preexisting plot lines.”
“So you don’t trip evolution,” says Lion, “you dream evolution—and it’s a fake dream?”
“One of four fake dreams. That’s all we shot. It’s extremely slow filmmaking, more like the neurological version of hand-drawn animation. Then Jet discovered the money trail. Zee was funding our films with earnings from the Suicide Girls’ betting site. We were just about to go to the cops—”
“About to go?” asks Lion.
Ji pulls out his phone and shows Lion the image on the screen. It looks like an old Abu Ghraib torture pic, the one with naked prisoners and snarling dogs, except instead of snarling dogs, Lion sees an old Chinese man and a young Chinese girl being threatened by polar bears.
So the stories Jenka heard—they’re more than stories.
Ji says, “That is my father, and Jet’s sister.”
“That’s why we’re on a clock,” says Lion. “Your father, Ji’s sister—they’re still alive.” Then it dawns on him. “Does this mean Kendra and Ibrahim are alive, being held in a prison camp somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” says Ji. “They were kidnapped by a different team, for a different part of the research project, and taken who knows where. If they are alive, they’re in New York. All the prisoners have been transferred to that facility. But it still might be too late—Zee’s been cleaning house.”
“It’s not too late,” says Penelope. “Our ride will be here any second.”
“Our ride?” asks Jenka.
“You thought I only showed up to fight polar bears?”
“Final score: Jenka three; polar bears, zero. I do not see name Penelope on stat sheet.”
Suddenly the sky starts to growl.
Lion looks up to see the gray clouds above the porch quiver, then cleave apart, split in half by the outthrust of the giant rotors attached to Sir Richard’s custom-designed Bugatti Airliner II.
Looking like an art deco masterpiece from the 1930s, the Airliner descends into the clearing, whipping snow into a frenzy. Lion holds up a hand to shield his eyes. He removes it once the plane has settled, just in time to watch an auto-stairway unfold, the main hatch open, and a well-dressed Hasidic man appear in the doorway.
“New York, New York, big city of dreams,” calls Barry. “All aboard.”
A second later, two women appear beside Barry. They’re identical twins, dark-skinned, each dressed like Black Power warriors from 1975, complete with Afros, army jackets, miniskirts, combat boots, and of course, actual machine guns. The woman on the right pegs Lion with a hard stare.
“Lion Zorn,” she says, breaking into a wide smile. “Sugar, you’re looking sweet. It is nice to see you.”
An Army of Nerds
Kali and Shiva—aka the Black Power twins—are Rilkeans by belief and bodyguards by training. Kali is ex-Secret Service. Shiva is just pissed off. Both are coming to New York.
Lizzy can’t make the trip. She needs to stay behind because the polar bear shredded her work and the snake eggs have to be swept from the tunnels. She’s on cleanup duty for at least a week. Jenka stays behind because nobody knows what else Zee might send their way.
“Is temporary reassignment,” he reassures them. “I will update security protocols, clean up snowmaking code, make guards carry bigger guns, then meet you in New York.”
“The bears killed your bike,” said Penelope, pointing at Jenka’s now destroyed flying motorcycle. She tosses him a small black cylinder. “Take my hover coupe.”
Then Lion, Ji, and Penelope head into the airliner.
The inside is just as art deco fancy as the outside: dark, glossy hardwood floors, oval windows running along the walls and ceiling, and sleek recliner seats, with arcing rosewood arms and auto-mold faux leather cushions.
Lion beelines for the closest seat, plops down, and sighs. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, he can barely keep his eyes open.
“You sleep,” says Penelope, walking past him. “I’ll brief.”
“Thank you,” says Lion.
He grabs a blindfold and a pair of noise-canceling earbuds from the seat-back pocket. The buds look like miniature black roses. They expand to fill his ear and hum to life, blocking out the sounds of the world with a gentle forest rain. Slipping on the blindfold, Lion reclines the seat and falls asleep.
He wakes up four hours later, rubs his eyes, and wishes for a cup of coffee. A moment later, Ji appears beside him, holding a black art deco mug. Passing the mug to Lion, he says, “Americano, four shots, nothing else in it. Penelope told me.”
“Appreciated.”
Ji points at the empty recliner beside Lion. “May I join you?”
Lion raises his seat back, nods, and takes a sip of the coffee.
Ji sits. “I am truly sorry for what I did to you.”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
“I had a choice,” says Ji. “I made the wrong one.”
“I missed the briefing, but I’m guessing your father’s being held captive somewhere in New York, along with Jet’s sister?”
“My father, Jet’s sister, perhaps your friends Ibrahim and Kendra, most likely the missing scientists, and definitely Zee himself.”
“Where exactly?”
“That’s complicated. Ever ride the subway in New York?”
“Sure.”
“You know how, every now and again, you flash by an abandoned subway stop or catch sight of a forgotten tunnel?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There are miles and miles of abandoned track down there. New York has the largest underground tunnel system in the world. People say there’s as much unused real estate as used real estate. It’s all owned by the city. Or it was. Five years ago, they geo-mapped all the unused tunnels and put a blockchain layer beneath it.”
