Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

“Have you ever heard of Kannerism before?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Well, neither had I. But his name in this new MetamorPharma ‘vaccine’ led me to him. Leo Kanner was a doctor in the 1930s, a specialist in child psychiatry. He had a theory about a certain kind of developmental glitch in the juvenile brain that would lead to a supposedly ‘aberrant’ personality type. He said such individuals were suffering from ‘Kannerism.’”

“What’d Kannerism consist of?”

“Oh, stuff like the ability to focus intensely on whatever your main areas of interest were. Your passions, in other words. Then you possibly got hypersensitivity to certain inputs. Some sensory integration problems.”

“What else?”

“Maybe some self-stimulating behaviours. Kannerist kids might also have difficulty interpreting facial expressions and other social cues. But they also had enhanced mental focus, excellent memory abilities, superior spatial skills, and an intuitive understanding of logical systems.”

I was baffled. “But—but that’s just a description of your average geek.”

“Pre-diddily-cisely. Kanner chose to unveil his theory just when the whole world was adapting a new standard of sanity, new geekcentric paradigms of mature adult behaviour. All the very qualities Kanner identified as defects were being hailed as the salvation of the species. Kanner was trying to define the new normal as crazy, and he got laughed into an early grave. Only one other researcher, some guy named Hans Asperger, took his side, and he soon met a similar fate.”

“This vaccine, KannerMax—what’s it do?”

“I got all the specs. It’s not a vaccine per se. That’s bullshit from MetamorPharma, to convince the medical establishment to introduce the drug to the right age cohort. This stuff regulates gene expression. It targets the chromosomes that seem most closely linked with Kannerism.”

A horrifying image walloped me then, of a planet reverting over the span of the next generation to the bad old violent days of pre-geekdom. “Let me guess—it shuts them off.”

Dinky gave a sardonic grin. “Nope. It ramps them up.”

My jaw dropped like Dippy Dawg’s upon seeing Clarabelle Cow in the nude. “What!”

“This drug is a recipe for the production of super-geeks. But it only works if administered to those younger than three. Otherwise I’d be brewing some up for myself right now.”

“But who’s behind this? I can’t see a small firm like MetamorPharma as the masterminds behind such a scheme.”

“They’re not. The research program was initiated by Global Data Management. Specifically, the head of the Bureau of Cultural Innovations.”

“Zarthar,” I said.

That night I met PJ at a branch of Tige and Buster’s convenient to both our residences. I didn’t want anyone overhearing our conversation, and knew the noise of the videogame arcade within the restaurant would shield us from both local and spy-ray eavesdroppers.

Our waiter, of course, was a midget dressed as Buster Brown, accompanied by a real dog. We had to practically shout above the screams of pixel-addled kids to order.

Once the little person left, I disclosed everything to PJ.

She sniffled a bit at this confirmation of her worst fears, but then bucked up, her intellect fastening on assembling a chain of deductions,

“So something made Dad mistrust MetamorPharma. He analyzed KannerMax and figured out what it would do. Dad was always a hella good molecular biologist. He obviously disagreed with the ethics of injecting this stuff without informed parental consent. So he contacted the guy behind it all—and was murdered!”

“Gee, do you want to come onboard Moritz Investigations as a junior partner?”

“Max, this is my Dad’s murder we’re discussing, remember!”

“Sorry, sorry. Please forgive.”

The words weren’t just pro forma . I realized I was sorry, and wanted her forgiveness. Because I couldn’t imagine being happy with PJ angry at me, or being happy at all without her in my life somehow.

PJ must have sensed my emotions, because she reached across the table and gripped my hand. But whatever romantic response she might have been about to utter just then got postponed to our hypothetical future together, because one of the Tiges wandering by chose that moment to piss on her foot.

Once we got that mess cleaned up, PJ was all business again.

“You’re going to see Zarthar, right?”

“Yup.”

“And I’m coming with you.”

Centropolis being the capital of both the USA and the GDM, the city was full of offices and officeholders.

The Bureau of Cultural Innovations was an impressive, civic temple-style building that occupied two square blocks bounded by Disney and Iwerks. PJ and I climbed its broad marble steps and passed between its wide columns to its brazen doors and entered the vast, well-populated lobby.

I had to surrender my blaster to security, and PJ confessed to carrying a vibrablade, which surprised me.

Once we were beyond the checkpoint and on our way up to Zarthar’s office, she volunteered: “Some geeks go way beyond grabby hands, you know.”

“Admitted.”

The GDM is open-source government. Citizens are encouraged to participate at all levels. Which is why we had been able to get a quick appointment with Zarthar himself.

I wasn’t exactly certain how we were going to confront the mastermind behind this secret scheme to produce übergeeks, but I figured some gameplan would present itself.

And then the door of Zarthar’s office opened to our annunciated arrival.

“All geeks are geeky, but some geeks are geekier than others.” Everyone knows George Orwell’s famous line from his novel Server Farm . But you haven’t really experienced it until you meet someone in that leet minority like Zarthar.

Zarthar had been born Dennis LaTulippe, but had refashioned his entire persona somewhere around age sixteen, when he was already well over six feet tall. He legally changed his name, permanently depilated his head and tattooed it with a Wally Wood space panorama, grew a Fu-Manchu moustache, adopted sandals and flowing floor-length robes of various eye-popping hues as his only attire, and declared his major passion to be Situationist Bongo Playing. (This was circa 1956, twenty years ago, when beat-zeks like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Doris Day were all the rage.) He revolutionized his chosen field, and his career since then had been successive triumphs across many passions, resulting in his appointment to his current position.

Zarthar’s voice resonated like Boris Karloff’s. “Chum Hornbine, Chum Moritz, please come in.”

We entered tentatively. I had just begun to take in the furnishings of Zarthar’s ultra-modern office when PJ hurled herself at the man!

“You killed my father! You killed him! Admit it!”

Attempting to choke Zarthar, PJ made about as much progress as Judy Canova might’ve made wrestling with Haystack Calhoun. And when multiple ports in the walls snicked open and the muzzles of automated neural disrupters poked out, she wisely ceased entirely.

Zarthar composed himself with aplomb, smoothing his robes. His next words did not immediately address PJ’s accusation.

“My friends, have you ever considered the problems our world still faces? To the average citizen, it seems we occupy a utopia. And granted, two-thirds of the world—the portion under GDM—deserves that designation. But that still leaves millions of people living in pre-geek darkness. And these seething populations are actively anti-GDM, seeking constantly for ways to undermine and topple what we’ve created. They are ruthless and violent and cunning. All we have to oppose them is our brains and special geek insights.