David Phalen - Chasing the Idea Rat with My Best Friend, Jaime

We go through another door, into a room with a large window overlooking another room. In that room are a half a dozen desks. At each desk, a person sits in front of a monitor while text and diagrams flash by on the screen. The people watch with nearly frantic expressions on their faces, as if desperate to take in everything they see.

“Despite popular misconceptions, we first developed Pinch as a means to speed the learning process of our genius candidates,” Calvin Natt tells us. “It was one of our competitors that realized the dubious potential of selling it on the streets.”

I try to identify something in the blur of images on one of the screens, but it’s impossible. “With proper dosage, Pinch can enhance learning times by over 200 percent,” says Calvin Natt. “More than anything, genius is the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things. The wider variety of knowledge a person has, the better the chance that some connection will be made, given the proper stimulus.”

We leave the observation room through a different door, walking into a hallway with plants and paintings and other superficial decorator touches. The wooden doors in this hallway are less widely spaced.

“The nature of genius is to make unpredictable connections. We can’t just feed a set routine of stimuli to someone with the genius gene and hope he comes up with something new. Who knows what insight will finally kick a genius over into a breakthrough discovery? Our experience animals let us safely expose our geniuses to as many different stimuli as possible. Here we are.”

We stop at a door that looks like every other we’ve passed. Calvin Natt knocks, then puts his card into a slot. The room we enter is twice as large as any place I’ve ever lived, and doors on each of the walls tell me there are other rooms beyond this one. The carpet pushes back on my feet as I walk.

Sitting in a chair at the center of the room is a small woman with short-cropped dark hair. Her features are sharp, nearly rodent-like. She stares straight at us, and I notice her eyes, so dark they seem black, with a tiny glint of hidden intelligence not quite held back. Suddenly she jerks, her expression one of strange, detached terror. She moves a little, and I see the wires hanging from the back of her head.

“She’s running the experiences of her latest E.A.” Calvin Natt smiles at her proudly. “She’ll be through in a couple of minutes.”

Jaime stands frozen. “What have you done to her?”

“You should be very proud,” says Calvin Natt. “In the time she’s been with us, she’s come up with five genius breakthroughs, not including two symphonies which some music critics are calling the wave of the future. Her spent-fuel disposal program may be effective enough to get a steady energy supply back to the inner cities. With proper funding, her suggestions for the maglev system will mean a huge expansion in public transportation options.”

“What are the wires?” Jaime has spent years practicing his self-control. So little anger seeps into his voice that Calvin Natt doesn’t even notice.

“When an E.A. returns, all of its experiences are scanned. These impressions are encoded into software that can be transferred directly into the mind of the genius whose gene was originally used in the creation of that particular E.A. All of the experiences of the E.A. effectively become the experiences of the genius.”

I look at Jaime’s mother. She squirms in her chair and lets out a small squeak.

“Why?” I ask Calvin Natt.

He looks surprised at the question. “Through this process, one woman has produced more breakthroughs in five years than all of humanity might have given us in a century. How can anyone who has lived where you have doubt the need for breakthroughs right now?”

Jaime’s mother makes a loud, high-pitched noise, like a baby either crying or laughing. She reaches up and pulls the wires from her head with a grimace. Then she blinks a couple of times and notices us.

“We finally found him,” Calvin Natt tells her.

She looks at Jaime with eyes dull as a rat’s. the eyes open wide and her mouth moves soundlessly as she tries to say something. “Jaime?” she finally croaks out.

Whatever has kept Jaime stuck in place lets him go. He runs to her chair, and her thin arms wrap around him. “My night-time man,” she says. “Oh, my special night-time man.”

Calvin Natt smiles proudly at the reunion. We watch the two of them for a few seconds, then he motions me toward the door.

“We look forward to having you here,” he tells me in the hallway.

“What?”

“The genius gene is incredibly rare. So far we’ve discovered it in only a couple of dozen people. Of course, our hands are tied by the Barker Act. Maybe you’ll come up with the breakthrough that will let us identify more people like you without further risk of public exposure.”

I remember the tingling in my fingers when my hand was on the sensor. I look down, but the pink lines have disappeared.

“It will take about six months before the first Experience Animals with your genetic imprint can be grown and sent out,” Calvin Natt says. “In the meantime, we need to catch you up on your schoolwork’’ He frowns, shaking his head. “If districts like ICSS don’t validate a need for the work we’re doing here, I don’t know what does.”

I nod my head but it doesn’t mean anything. I’ve caught up with the thing I was chasing, only to find I don’t really know what it is.

Jaime comes out of his mother’s room. His eyes have a red-rimmed, after-crying look, but his voice is steady. He still holds the bag containing the Idea Rat, gripped so tightly his fingers are white.

“What happens now?” he asks.

Calvin Natt smiles, of course. “Now, you’re part of our team.”

Jaime stands next to me, his shoulder touching mine. “We need to get our things,” he says. “There’s some stuff hidden in a place we’ve got booby-trapped.”

“We have what you need here.” Calvin Natt looks at us like a man who has been through this conversation many times before.

Jaime looks at me. “What if we say no?” I tense a little, seeing now how it’s going to be.

Calvin Natt gives Jaime a puzzled look. “What do you have to go back to?”

Then Jaime does something I’ve never seen him do before. He releases a long breath and lets his shoulders slouch forward in defeat. “Maybe you should take us where we’re going, then.”

Calvin Natt smiles again and turns to lead us down the hallway. Jaime swings his bag, connecting hard at the wide place between Calvin Natt’s shoulder blades. Natt falls forward, knees hitting first, upper body following. The dull thump his face makes as it connects with the floor and the muffled whoof of air escaping his lungs are the only sounds that come from him.

Jaime strikes Natt’s body again, so hard that a hole pops open in his bag. At the third blow, the stiff, broken Idea Rat comes flying out. Jaime stands over Calvin Natt, breathing hard. When he finally looks up at me, his face is expressionless.

“You coming?” he asks me.

I imagine Bill’s grimace, the dazed expression of the people in front of their monitors, the not-quite-human squeal that came from Jaime’s mother.

Calvin Natt rolls over just enough for Jaime to take his security card. He groans softly as I jump over him and follow Jaime.

Natt’s card in hand, Jaime leads us through a maze of hallways that all look alike to me. When we leave the Top Security area, we start to pass more and more people. A few give us strange looks, but nobody tries to stop us. They are busy going about their own jobs.

We are on the ground floor when the alarm goes off. As we run past the small reception area, the man behind the desk stands and says something into his microphone. By the time we have followed the yellow tiles back to the main lobby, NattCo policemen are moving into place. A few dozen people who have no idea what’s going on help to slow down the cops, but there’s only one way out, so all of the uniforms are moving toward the revolving door.