John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

“You’ve been enhanced,” I say, because it seemed to be expected. I turn to Krom. I do not say, Gimme the whole story this time or I’ll kill you, I just feel like saying it.

“I was nineteen years old,” Krom says, “and getting ready to die. Look at that picture again.” She goes to a credenza and finds an iPad. “Look at it on the big screen, you’ll see more.” She locates something on the iPad and shows it to me. It is the same portrait as the one she showed me of herself on her phone, but on the iPad it’s huge and easier to study. There is that obvious intelligence in her eyes, but drug abuse of some kind is a given. Another unhappy outsider: lost, utterly lost, and about to fall further into something tragic. There is no direction in that soul, none at all. I look from her to Madame Ching and back.

Krom takes the iPad to examine the photo. “Look at me. Just another third-world girl feeling like a piece of consumer trash waiting to be gobbled up.”

“But you’re not…”

“Not in the same league as the Messiah? No, of course not. Nothing is permanent with us, we need injections every six months.”

“What happened?”

“The PRC learned about Dr. Christmas Bride quite early on, they made contact. In return for a mountain of dough Bride was able to advise them on certain superficial kinds of enhancement that can be acquired in adulthood, without the high risk of implanting circuits in the brain. His research with LSD and its variants enabled him to develop extra sensitivities in certain areas. We call them Apps, like for smart phones. Yai had the olfactory App, didn’t you, Yai?”

“And echolocation. Both changed my life.”

“And it was Yai who they appointed to take care of my initiation, wasn’t it, Yai?”

The Chinese woman sniffs and smiles. “Now you have the Detective’s attention,” she says. “He is emanating aromas of awe. I think he is finally getting it. Don’t stop, whatever you do.”

“It’s just another revolution,” Krom says. “Technology developed in war shocks everyone when it is revealed. Who would have predicted forty years ago that people of the future would spend most of their lives staring at computer screens?”

“But this is different,” I say.

“Yes. This is the big one. We are all supposed to be discreet for the moment, waiting for the tsunami to hit.” She shrugs. “Because that’s what it’s going to be. Quietly, secretly, a few research groups have been working on something that will sweep the world like cell phones, and for the same reason: it’s what we want.”

“Enhanced bodies?”

“For the masses who love to play with themselves. For the elite, something more radical. Enhanced brains, enhanced horizons. New personalities. The most important thing you will ever witness in your life is the transformation of the Asset. He is ready to spread his wings and fly. Bride and Goldman successfully married his human intelligence and his artificial intelligence so that he has reached the moment where his capacity to learn is accelerated way beyond the human. When he told you he was Jesus Christ he was simply stating a truth within the terms of present-day mythology. What was the original Jesus if not an enhanced human? The Bible is full of stories of humans enhanced by God. Change your definition of God…”

The Chinese woman starts to laugh. “Krom is in total awe of Christmas Bride, whom she’s never met. I met him only once, I could smell the devil in him.”

Krom grins. “Yai thinks Bride took revenge on his Catholic mother by turning himself into God. After all, he is the one who produced the Asset, aka the Messiah.”

“Who also happens to be the most efficient killing machine in human form ever produced.”

“No, the HZs are ahead in that.”

“So,” Madame Ching says, “this is a conversation that will take up the whole of this century and the next as well. Are we good or bad, we transhumans?”

“We are inevitable,” Krom says. “End of conversation.” She turns to Madame Ching.

“Transhumans are a highly evolved, creative, and exciting new species with a weakness for sadism,” Gloria Ching says with a smile.

–

The two women filled me in on a few more details. It was dawn before I left them. Madame Ching clicked her way to the door to see me out, and Krom busied herself feeding the cats. All around the garden the gleaming pink walls of giant skyscrapers rose above the quaint old house, but I couldn’t help feeling that this small center of personal enhancement had the edge on the high-rises. The future, surely, was right here. True, nobody knew that yet, but it would not be long. It was hard to take in, as if the world I inhabited was already so out of date as to be irrelevant. Nothing we do today that will not be swept away in a heartbeat, once the story breaks. How do you feel about that yourself, R? Did we miss the yacht, you and I? We are the Old Humans: OHs, already. If we’re lucky, the NHs will find us quaint; otherwise it’s a choice between the reservation and the zoo. Personally, though, I’m kind of drained this merry morning. They are heavy people, those transhumans, very heavy.

Apologies to you, R, what with all the action and stress I’ve only just realized I left you hanging after the FBI TH gave me that thumb drive with the hyper-secret recordings that self-destruct after six hours. You remember? I’ll shove it in here, if that’s okay. BTW, is there something wrong with the high-tech brain that causes it to miss the obvious? I played the recording aloud into an old-fashioned tape recorder. The files on the thumb drive self-destructed, but I still have the conversation. It is quite interesting and goes like this:

Goldman [out of breath, slightly hysterical]: I’m scared, Control, I have to admit it. I’m damn scared.

Control [in a neutral tone]: What about, G8? The thing we talked about three days ago?

Goldman: Yeah. The same. Only three days is a long time with the ALE.

Control: He’s threatened you?

Goldman [sighing heavily]: I told you, he doesn’t need to threaten.

Control: Oh, yeah. You know him so well, you can read his mind. And what you read there is an intention to harm you?

Goldman: Are you being sarcastic?

Controller: No, just summing up so we can understand each other. [Pause] So, tell me about it.

Goldman: I’ve been with him so long I can smell when he’s about to kill. Do you understand me? The air around him starts to die, it’s like when there’s too much ozone.

Control: Ozone?

Goldman: I’m trying to give you the feel of it. Fuck you.

Control [sighing again]: Well, you trained him to kill, didn’t you?

Goldman: Yeah, I trained him to kill. With approval and assistance from-

Control: Don’t say it.

Goldman: I didn’t say it. But it’s true.

Control: I wasn’t on the case at the time, G8. I was about seven years old when you started this phase of the project.

Goldman: So, what are you saying, you’re not qualified?

Control: I’m saying this has been going on one hell of a long while and from what I’ve seen of the file you’ve had full operational control all that time. Forty years, G8. Forty fucking years on Ultra II. Actually, more.

Goldman: That’s right, forty years I’ve been serving my country, mostly in the jungle. Now I want some help.

Control: You want help. I want to know what’s suddenly gone so wrong. You’re holding out here. Let me put the possibilities as I see them: you’re having a nervous breakdown because you’re way too old, too clumsy, and too out of date for your own program, which you are losing control of just like any old guy. [Silence. The Control continues] The other is that this Asset is no better than all the others, all of whom died at your hands. That’s what I think, by the way. And you can’t admit it because this Asset is all you’ve got right now. The deal with China goes wrong, you are out, discredited. I hope you put some money away for what’s left of your life. Now, there’s just one thing you can tell me that might, just might, get me on your side. What I want is an explanation as to why the Asset is, in your opinion, going wrong now instead of later or earlier?