Greg Egan - Quarantine

It strikes me that Wei has no visible interest in any company old enough to be the cause of Laura's condition; he's only in his early fifties, and he seems to have preferred founding new businesses to indulging in takeovers. Of course, that proves nothing about BDI's clients.

By late afternoon, I'm growing short of productive distractions. My irrational fears about the Children keep resurfacing; I know exactly how to banish them, but I don't want to do that. Not yet.

I flick on the HV, in the middle of an advertisement; I flip channels, to no avail. Panverts don't involve active collusion between rival broadcasters (perish the thought); all stations just happen to have introduced the practice of allowing advertisers to specify the timeslots they want to the nearest hundredth of a second. I could switch right out of real-time, and search for something to download, but it doesn't seem worth the effort when all I want to do is kill time.

A young man is saying,' — lack purpose and direction? Axon has the answer! Now, you can buy the goals you need! Family life … career success … material wealth … sexual fulfilment… artistic expression … spiritual enlightenment.' As he speaks each phrase, a cube containing an appropriate scene materializes in his right hand, and he tosses it into the air to make room for the next, until he's effortlessly juggling all six. 'For more than twenty years, Axon has been helping you to attain life's riches. Now, we can help you to want them!'

After catching the last half of an incomprehensible — but visually stunning — surrealist thriller, I switch the HV off and pace the room, growing steadily more apprehensive. My rendezvous with Culex is still four hours away. Why put up with four more hours of boredom and anxiety? For the masochistic thrill of enduring real human emotions? Fuck that; I had my dose of that this morning, and nearly walked away from the case. I invoke P3.

Sometimes the feel-good subtext is more blatant than usual. Primed is the right way to be: quick-thinking, rational, efficient, free of distractions. It's all perfectly true, although, ironically, the analytic frame of mind that P3encourages makes it hard for me to gloss over the fact that this attitude is imposed arbitrarily. Just about every mod which alters the personality comes with an axiomatic assertion that using this mod is good. Critics of the technology call this self-serving propaganda; proponents say that it's simply an essential measure to prevent potentially disabling conflict — a kind of safeguard against a (metaphorical) mental immune response. Unprimed, I tend to accept the cynical position. Primed, I acknowledge that I lack the data and expertise to evaluate these arguments decisively.

I spend ten minutes reviewing all that I know about the case so far. I'm struck with no new insights, which is no great surprise; P3eliminates distractions and makes it easier to focus the attention — and thus to reason more swiftly — but it doesn't grant any magical increase in intelligence. The other priming mods all provide various facilities: PIcan manipulate the user's biochemistry, P2augments sensory processing, P4is a collection of physical reflexes, P5enhances temporal and spatial judgement, P6is responsible for coding and communications … but P3's role is largely that of a filter, selecting out the optimal mental state from all of the brain's natural possibilities, and inhibiting the intrusion of modes of thought which it judges inappropriate.

There's nothing to do now but wait — so, incapable of boredom, untroubled by pointless fears, I wait.

I return as near as I can to the point of release, but there's no need for precision; the mosquito finds me by scent, and would have shunned a stranger standing on the very same spot. It lands on my palm for an infrared debriefing.

The mission has been successful. For a start, Culex found its own route in and out of the building — no need to ride in on a human back, and no problem returning now. Inside, it located the security station, traced a bundle of cables to the ceiling, then found a way into the conduit and planted the twelve chameleons. Then, it went exploring more widely; the software is grinding away in the background right now, converting the data it gathered into a detailed layout of the building. Finally, it checked back with the chameleons, who'd cracked the security system's signal validation protocol, and reported that, after sampling all thirty-five cables, they'd identified twelve by means of which'a useful set of contiguous blind spots could be created.

I view eidetic snapshots extracted from the mosquito's brain, processed into a form which betrays no hint of their origin in compound eyes. No big surprises. Technicians. Computers. Assorted equipment for biochemical analysis and synthesis. No sign of any bedridden patients — though by now, Laura might be on her feet, and I have no idea what she'd look like; the late Han Hsiu-lien, possibly, but I wouldn't count on it.

Close-ups of workstation screens show flow diagrams of laboratory processes, schematics of protein molecules, DNA and amino acid sequence data … and several neural maps. But the maps aren't labelled with anything enlightening — like Andrews, l. or congenital brain damage study #1. Just meaningless serial numbers.

The layout of the building is completed; I wander through it in my mind's eye. Five storeys, two basements; offices, labs, storerooms; two elevators, two stairwells. There are several regions coded pale blue for no data, where Culex couldn't penetrate unaided, and had no opportunity to hitch a ride; the largest by far, twenty metres square, lies in the middle of the second basement.

This could be some kind of special facility — a clean room, a cryogenic store, a radioisotopes lab, a biohazard area; people would enter such places rarely, with most of the work being done via remotes. But the snapshots show only a drab white wall and an unmarked door; no biohazard or radiation warnings, no signs of any kind.

The chameleons are pre-programmed for two a.m. — just in case the place turned out to be mosquito-proof after hours — but now there's no need to stick to that schedule; I send Culex back in, to tell them to activate in seven minutes' time, at eleven fifty-five. Chameleons are too small to receive radio signals — which is probably just as well; radio is bad security.

As I approach the building, I pass the layout to P2,which superimposes it over my real vision. Fields of view of surveillance cameras, and regions monitored by motion detectors, glow with faint red auras; it's tempting to think of this as danger rendered visible — as if some mod in my head could magically 'sense' the action of each security device — but in truth it's nothing but a theoretical map, which may or may not be complete and correct.

At 11:55:00, 1 switch twelve patches of red to black — purely as a matter of faith. I have no proof that these blind spots have actually come into existence. If not, though, I'll soon find out.

The perimeter fence is barbed, and my field meter says that the top strands are electrified at sixty thousand volts-well within the threshold of the insulators in my gloves and shoes. The barbs look wickedly sharp, but they'd have to be studded with industrial diamonds — and spinning at a few thousand rpm — to make much impression on the composite fibres in my gloves. I swing myself over and clamber down, hitting the ground as softly as I can; there are adjacent motion detectors still active, and I don't know their sensitivity.