Daniel Suarez - Influx

What the hell?

Grady turned to see that he was sitting in a row of empty, modernist chairs in some sort of waiting room. He was wearing his only suit, loafers, and his lucky tie—the fabric a print of helium atoms. He caught his reflection in a mirrored wall opposite. It was the same outfit he’d been wearing three years earlier when he’d been interviewed for a research grant—in other words, the last time he’d worn a suit. Libby had helped him pick it out. Helped him look normal. His hair, too, was cut short, and he was clean-shaven.

Grady searched his pockets and found only a note on which Libby’s clean script spelled out “Good luck! ” in blue ink.

What the hell?

A handsome young man sitting behind a nearby built-in reception desk nodded to him. “Mr. Hedrick will see you now, Mr. Grady.”

Grady turned uncertainly. Social convention required that he get up now. Instead, he held up a pausing finger. “Uh… hang on a second.”

“Can I get you some water or coffee?”

Grady took a calming breath. “No, thanks. It’s just that… I was just…” He considered the possible scientific explanations. He had no idea how he’d gotten here. Just moments ago he’d been strapped to a bomb. Was this a hallucination? A last hurrah from the dying neurons in his brain? Time was relative, after all. This might all be happening in the instant he experienced biological death.

He looked around. It seemed pretty convincing.

“Are you all right, Mr. Grady?”

He wasn’t exactly certain. “I think I might be dying, actually.”

“Excuse me?”

Grady took another deep breath. “Who am I here to see?”

“Mr. Hedrick, sir. I’ll buzz you in.”

The assistant tapped some unseen button, and a nearby set of double doors opened, revealing a huge and opulent office suite beyond.

“Go right in.” The young man smiled pleasantly. “I’ll have some water brought to you.”

Grady nodded as he rose to his feet. “Thanks.” With another deep breath, he wandered over to the doorway and entered the most lavish office he’d ever seen. The multistory bank of windows on the far wall had a breathtaking view, through which he could clearly see the Sears Tower—or Willis Tower or whatever the hell they called it nowadays. Chicago. He was in Chicago. He remembered that he’d met with a grant committee in Chicago years before. But not in a place like this.

The office he stood in could have easily served as a small aircraft hangar, with several closed doors leading out of it to either side. Thirty-foot ceilings and modern burled wood walls—one of which had a large round seal engraved into it depicting a silhouette of a human head with a tree branching within like dendrites in the human brain. Arching around the top edge were the letters “BTC” and rounding the bottom were the Latin words “scientia potentia est.”

Knowledge is power.

Just below the seal a well-groomed and handsome Caucasian man in his fifties stood behind a large, modernist desk dotted with exotic souvenirs—complex Victorian clocks, mechanical contraptions, elaborate sculptures hinting at biological origins, and oversize double-helix DNA strands sealed in glass. The man was dressed in pressed casual business attire. Massive translucent digital displays were arrayed above and behind him, projecting a riot of silent video imagery and digital maps of the world. The displays looked impossibly thin and the images on them vibrant, hyperrealistic.

The man motioned for his visitor to come forward. “Mr. Grady, it’s good to finally meet you. I’ve read so much about your life and work. I feel I know you. Please sit. Can we get you anything?”

Grady still stood twenty feet away. “Uh. I’m… I’m just trying to understand what’s going on.”

The man nodded. “It can be disorienting, I know.”

“Who… who are you again? Why am I here?”

“My name is Graham Hedrick. I’m the director of the Federal Bureau of Technology Control. I must congratulate you, Jon—may I call you Jon?”

Grady nodded absently. “Sure. I… Hold it. The Federal Bureau of what now?”

“The Federal Bureau of Technology Control. We’ve been monitoring your work with great interest. Antigravity. Now that is a tremendous achievement. One might say a singular achievement. Likely the most important innovation of modern times. You have every reason to be proud.”

A male voice spoke just to his right, startling him. “Your water, Mr. Grady.”

Grady turned to see a humanoid robot standing next to him—a graceful creature with soft, rubber-coated fingers whose body was clad in a carapace of white plastic. Its face consisted only of beautiful tourmaline eyes glowing softly. Looking at him expectantly.

Grady glanced down to see a glass of water in its hand. “Uh…” He gingerly accepted the water and held it with increasing numbness.

Hedrick watched him closely. “You really should sit down, Jon. You don’t look well.”

Grady nodded and moved toward a chair in front of the great desk.

The machine stepped aside with the grace of a puma. “Be careful of the step, sir.”

“Thanks.” The moment he sat down Grady started gulping water, glancing around nervously.

Hedrick motioned for calm. “Slowly. I know it can be quite a shock. We would have applied a sedative, but it’s important you have full command of your faculties for this conversation.”

Grady finished the water and took deep breaths. “Where am I? What the hell’s happening?”

“You’ve just been through a traumatic experience, I know. It’s never pleasant, but neither is being born. And yet both are necessary to go on to greater things. And more importantly, it’s now over. And you’re here with us.”

Grady looked at his watch. The one he’d lost years ago. The numbers on its dial glowed in a familiar spectrum. It showed that no significant time had elapsed since the incident in his lab. A few minutes at most. “My old watch. I… What did I—”

“Time isn’t important, Jon.”

“This is Chicago. Two thousand miles from my lab. But… it’s daylight out.”

Hedrick nodded with concern. “Does that trouble you? Here…” He gestured with his hands, and what appeared to be a holographic control panel materialized in midair. He tapped several places, and the view outside the window changed to an uncannily real projection of New York City at night, looking uptown toward the Empire State Building. The interior office lights came on instantly to complete the illusion. “Is that better?”

Grady stared out the window uncomprehendingly. It was as real as reality. “What the hell is this place?”

“I told you, Jon. This is the Bureau of Technology Control—the BTC. We’re the federal agency charged with monitoring promising technologies, foreign and domestic; assessing their social, political, environmental, and economic impacts with the goal of preserving social order.”

“Preserving social order.”

“We regulate innovation. Because, in fact, humanity is far more technologically advanced than you know. It’s human nature that remains in the Dark Ages. The BTC is a safeguard against humanity’s worst impulses.”

Grady turned in his seat to see that the office doors had closed far behind him. The robot stood obediently nearby and nodded to him in acknowledgment.

Hedrick continued as he approached Grady from around the desk, “Mankind was on the moon in the 1960s, Jon. That was half a century ago. Nuclear power. The transistor. The laser. All existed even back then. Do you really think the pinnacle of innovation since that time is Facebook? In some ways, what the previous generation accomplished is more impressive than what we do now. They designed the Saturn V rocket with slide rules. That they could make it work at all. So many parts. So many points of failure. They were the great ones. We’re just standing on their shoulders.”