Laura Lippman - Baltimore Noir

The problem is the virtual frogs, the ones featured on the poster. They’re big, they’re ugly, they’re mean. And they slobber. There are a half-dozen of them; they’ve been re-engineered by geneticists who’ve broken off from UMBC. They look fine, just like Florida gopher frogs, except they’re three times as big. Part of Frog Cycle’s appeal is designed to be the interaction between the virtual frogs and Florida tree frogs and green tree frogs and several other scarce tropical frogs and toads. The virtual frogs are supposed to be dominant, but in the misfire this morning the virtuals attacked the naturals, killed them all, ate most of them.

The Kel-Shor people have no idea.

I pop a mint into my mouth and smile past the badges and lapels. There’s a lot of dialogue in the air, a lot of bragging and favor-making. I snag a cup of white wine from a waiter, slurp it in two swallows, and duck into the alcove where a smallish crowd ponders a glass-encased model of Frog Cycle that sits on a silver pedestal. I stand on tiptoe and look over the shoulders of some gruff Japanese guys; it’s a bit Disney, the model, and before I know it I say, “Ah, kawai!” That means super-cute .

The taller of the Japanese guys looks sideways at me and nods grimly. “Very very kawai.”

Laurie Hauver’s the money girl. She’s my boss. I usually have a problem with all three categories-girls, money, and bosses-so it’s a pleasure to report that I’m a slave for Laurie, and when I see her disentangle herself from a dilapidated, rouge-unto-death Gilman girl, circa 1990, I kind of plow through the atrium, dodging a Sony robot, an ax-man from used-to-be-Legg-Mason, and a martinet from the Sun’s biz page. I almost bounce against Laurie, but her force field does its work, and I stand a few inches back, giving her the once over. She looks like someone who is written into a number of substantial wills. A couple of them death-bed, chickenscratch revisions, screw the notary. She’s just had her hair cut short and dyed goldenrod; she’s wearing a black backless slip dress, black Laboutin stiletto provocations.

“You don’t look too bad,” I tell her, almost taking her arm. “How was it-Lovely Lane? How was the funeral?”

“It’s something else,” she whispers. “It’s the first time I’ve heard the minister refer to the subsequent amputation of the widow’s arms during a proper kind of ceremony. I mean, I know the story, but I don’t care. It made the minister seem a little bit inside Like he had his own blog or whatever. I took two propranolol-I’m not coming across numb, am I?”

“The opposite.”

“Thank you.”

I check my watch. “Seven-thirty.”

Laurie looks past me. “When the band finishes, we should go in. Oh, I think they may have just stopped. On cue.”

A sweetly modulated voice urges us to head into the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. I’ve got to say, I feel sick to my stomach, but some of the people rushing past me, they look like they’re heading into a medieval tribunal. Someone has defaced one of the Frog Cycle posters; now, a drop of blood hangs from the gopher frog’s bottom lip.

“So the Kel-Shor people seem happy,” I say. “Naïve.”

“They know,” she says. “We had to tell them about the misfire. The scientists, um, I think they were persuasive.” “So I’m the naïve one, actually.”

Laurie nods.

“You ready?”

“Let’s go.”

The Kel-Shor Virtual Pond is a five-thousand-square-foot body of water encased in glass with about twenty yards of open air above it. The scientists have really, really messed with nature and speeded up the virtual frogs’ metabolisms. They’ve rigged the weather in the pond so the frogs go through one year in about three hours. What happens is, you sit there looking at the pond in winter, and the frogs are frozen and the pond is frozen and all of the plants are either dead or frozen and the air looks forbidding. So you watch, and the artificial sun gets brighter and the plants bud and start to grow and the ice on top of the pond breaks and the water totally sparkles and it’s fresh-looking and the frogs start to come to life.

The pond is ringed by a metallic mesh barrier, and it’s covered with a frosted white plastic dome. Beneath the dome, green and brown blobs move like blips on a cardiac monitor.

Movie theater seats run in tiers at a steep stadium pitch away from the pond. The capacity is 312. The first three rows are reserved for staff, VIPs, and the differently abled.

I’m in the front row, at a bad angle, getting settled into my seat, when a taut woman in a forest-green sheath, pearls, and sparkling silver flip-flops gives me her hand and introduces herself as Rie. I’ve already been briefed on her; she’s a potential “problem,” so I’ve got to baby-sit.

“My brother runs Kel-Shor,” she says, and plops into the seat beside me.

Without warning, the dangling halogen chandeliers begin to dim and the Frog Cycle soundtrack-cellos, moogs, crickets, a faux-Enya-swells over the sound system.

The modulated voice, this time slightly perturbed, says, “Welcome to the Kel-Shor Corporation’s Virtual Pond, home to Frog Cycle.”

Applause. Applause. Standing O. Someone says hush. Ssshhh The cowfolk settle themselves.

Rie sort of winces at me, and then the funniest thing happens: She takes my hand.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m scared

“It’s fine. I’ve seen it twenty-seven times. It’s astonishing.”

The voice is back: “The development of a successful farming industry-for any amphibious species-depends on the regular and predictable supply of eggs. To harness efficient, safe technologies, to spawn domesticated amphibious species, is the goal. We look to Frog Cycle in the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. We look. We see.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rie whispers.

“The company thinks it’s subliminal,” I say. “Believe me.”

“I hate my brother.”

“Oh.”

The frosted dome cover begins to gently lift from the Virtual Pond. It hovers for a moment before it snaps into a lattice harness on the ceiling, pulling with it, like so many spider webs, the clinking clear-filament netting that encloses the pond and its environment.

Rie whispers, “Whoa.”

Uncovered, the Virtual Pond looks like a cel from a Pixar movie. The blues are so wet and the greens are so crisp. The plantlife is gnarled but it’s accented with, um, “cute” touches, such as tawny freckled trunks and smile-pattern leaves. The water itself is clear as a spring. Silver fish dive and spiral to the surface. You can see the pebbled bottom-ferns, tricks of light, the blipping brown creatures.

At first, you don’t think that the showpiece frogs, the engineered virtuals, are in the pond. You think they’re waiting for the air to warm up, for the sun to blaze a little bit more brilliantly.

I look down the aisle, trying to catch Laurie’s eyes, when it happens. The gasps-all at once, like the whoosh of a roller coaster twisting its first descent. Rie’s got a strong grip, the muscles in my arm are tense where her fingers poke me.

“It’s them,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

Them. Three chunky brown rocks covered with moss at the edge of the water. The three sit side by side like little lords, grinning insouciantly. Like boulders that grin-broad, immovable.

Until it moves.

The smallest-it’s the size of a small fat cat-opens its mouth and lets out a low rumble. It lifts its head and takes an astonishing leap and lands with a moist thud, eight yards to its left, scattering a group of small navy-green pygmy frogs, who let out high-pitched shrieks.

The voice purrs: “In spring, the frogs come out of hibernation. To mate.”