David Dun: Overfall

Chellis stood inside the doorway of the office he had appointed lavishly as a gift for Jacques Boudreaux, his lead researcher. The imported antique furniture displayed the fantasies of glory dear to its occupant. More significantly, it was a measure of the scientist’s importance within Grace Technologies.

“I am anxious to see the practical application of all this theory,” Chellis said by way of greeting.

“You have Samir Aziz coming in. The largest arms dealer in the world. A dangerous man.”

“Maybe not so dangerous; a little tamer when you are through.”

“Yes. But if I knew…”

Chellis held up his big left hand bearing an oversized gold ring. “Jacques, I do the business, you invent the goodies. It’s a division of labor.”

“But…”

“I know you are going to tell me that if you know the application you can better tailor the product. Well, I don’t care and I own the company. I had to bring Samir. I’ll tell you that much. The Mossad paid a visit to his private residence in Lebanon and they wanted to know what I was up to in medical technology. With a very big gun under his nose they told him that they’re interested in the brain research. They went into his safe, ransacked the place, and believed him when he said he knew nothing. Samir should have been happy that he had nothing in his safe. Instead he was very unhappy that they knew something about Grace Technologies that he did not. Samir is a powerful man and he is not used to being pushed around by the Mossad or anyone else, and it has put him in a very grumpy mood. He and I have a very tidy arrangement and I want to keep him manageable. Like Jason is manageable. That’s where you come in and that’s the only place you come in.”

“I called security. Talked to Claude Balford himself. I asked about the man who came to visit without authorization. Devan Gaudet I believe he was. Our security man, Mr. Balford, was so silent I thought the phone had gone dead.”

“You forget about Devan Gaudet. You assured me you told him nothing. Is that right?”

“Nothing.”

“I am shocked you know that name. You wipe it from your mind, my friend. I cannot afford to lose you.”

“Lose me?”

“In the purest sense, Jacques.”

Jacques looked troubled, and Chellis knew that he should be.

“So am I going to see the real thing used on a monkey before I see it used on my good friend Samir Aziz?”

“Let’s go.” Jacques stood and led the way, apparently ready to accept the fact that there would be no more information. He was short and blond and had a strut that might have suited Napoleon himself.

Chellis followed him to double doors over which hung a sign indicating MOLECULAR BIOLOGY. Inside, a second set of doors was marked PRIMATE WING NEUROLOGY.

They stopped in a large room with multiple cages housing pigtail macaques. In all there were six. Four appeared completely normal.

Behind a plate-glass stood a large cage outfitted with gray tree trunks, rope swings, and a multilevel climbing frame. An obvious effort had been made to introduce natural elements to the enclosure.

“Aren’t these critters mostly terrestrial?”

“More than most but they are still monkeys.”

To one side of the plate-glass was a door that admitted them to an area immediately outside the cage that contained four chairs, small writing desks, and a console. Housed in the cage were a male macaque, Centaur, and a female, Venus. Centaur busily groomed Venus, his eyes concentrating on his fingers as they picked through her coat. Each monkey wore a harness with a small pack in the center of its back. Standing by was a young man dressed in a khaki uniform.

Jacques walked to the console. “Where we can control everything and have instant injection of the various juvenile hormones, we are making rapid progress in our behavioral studies,” Jacques began. “Of course to get the range of behavior that I will now display, we need to have altered neurons from several regions and a direct-access IV drip of the various juvenile hormones. Note Centaur’s calm demeanor.” Jacques reached to the console and typed in a code.

Centaur sat back on his haunches, yawned, and looked out at them, Buddha-like, as if he were gazing into eternity.

“He looks like the Dalai Lama,” Chellis joked. “I understand macaques are cannibals.”

“No. That’s chimps you’re thinking of. But then people are cannibals if they are hungry enough.” Jacques punched in another command.

Centaur began vocalizing and pacing up and down the cage, stretching his arms and making breathy screeching sounds. Again Jacques punched in a code, and the monkey began racing at the bars and screaming with a blood-lust trill. Suddenly he charged Venus, who at first cowered, then ran to a perch in the tree. Centaur followed. When he arrived at the perch, he stood over her, shrieking. Again Jacques typed a code, and the male grabbed the female, attempting to push her from the perch; a fight erupted, and quickly Jacques typed in another code.

Immediately Centaur sat on his haunches as if nothing had happened. After a moment he climbed down and approached the female, who was still trembling and baring her teeth in a grimace.

“That’s actually a submission display.”

“It looks like she’s pissed.”

“No, that means she’ll play ball by his rules.”

Methodically he began once again grooming her, and gradually she calmed.

“And what if you had not canceled the last command?”

“He would have become progressively more agitated and aggressive until he killed her.”

“Very impressive. When will it be ready for the real world?”

“Don’t know. We’re working on it. What you observed is much more advanced in the mood control than we can get without IV access. And of course we placed the receptors over a long period and with much trial and error. We went through five animals.” Jacques stepped away from the console. “Jason Wade is a phase one. These animals are phase three. We use both activating cells and suppressor cells in many cell types.”

“Let’s go get some lunch,” Chellis said.

Jacques did not care for cafeterias, so they adjourned to a conference room adjoining his office that each day was turned into a private dining room, where he entertained various researchers and high-level staff. Chellis was perfectly happy to eat in the cafeteria, and even enjoyed the curious glances of all the employees, but he deferred to Jacques when in Kuching.

Chellis only visited every couple of months, and he appreciated that with Jacques running the facility more frequent visits weren’t necessary. Benoit Moreau, his assistant and his mistress, came a little more frequently. Marie, Chellis’s wife, didn’t care for Malaysia, and although, for appearances, he did not like traveling alone with Benoit, he would not be without a woman. That was the main reason he’d assigned Benoit to monitor Kuching. She had been his assistant for eight years and his mistress for seven of them, and therefore only occasionally resided in Kuching. Chellis’s life was further complicated by that fact that Benoit was Marie’s sister.

This trip he had Benoit meeting with the heads of each department to obtain research summaries and to keep her away from the macaques demonstration.

“You don’t think the aerosol is ready yet, even if we just limit ourselves to a phase-one paranoia continuum.”

“Not quite.”

“If we want only to achieve phase one on Samir with a simple paranoid continuum, do we need to put him to sleep?”

“Yes.”

“But you know the effect?”

“We’ll get the receptors, but the magnitude of the effect isn’t completely dear. It’s a question of how well the gene expression comes through, which depends primarily on the volume of vector particles. And frankly, the human will has incredible powers of adaptation. The mind with all its abilities is created by an odd composite of neuronal activity. The neurons, billions of them working together, trillions of interconnections create consciousness, but they are not consciousness. People can literally sometimes think their way or learn their way out of a change in physiology. Maybe we could say that training or thinking creates physiology. In the end physiology wins.”