Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Spartacus File

Mr. Yamashiro said, with acid in his voice, “You're telling me that this client was imprinted with the urge to stomp on buildings.”

“Basically, yes.” She nodded, then added, “We were lucky in this instance.”

“Lucky?” Yamashiro stared. “We're liable for nineteen deaths and hundreds of injuries and billions in property damage! How the hell can you consider our situation to be lucky?”

The woman flinched. “Well, sir, he was taken down before he did more damage-it could have been far worse if he had been, say, a pilot rather than a crane operator. Also… well, the method used with these files is a wetware flash. This involves the file being fed into the client's brain very rapidly. Optimization is a complex process, and we've discovered that slower methods can sometimes result in psychological damage from conflicts between the old and new patterns. A flash is so fast such conflicts don't have time to develop.”

“Yes?” Yamashiro demanded. “So?”

“Well, sir, ordinarily, before receiving a wetware flash, the client is prepared by a medical technician, with medication and hypnosis. If this preparation is not made, the client can have very noticeable adverse reactions-migraine headaches, nausea, minor memory loss-as the brain readjusts to its new patterns. These can disguise the immediate changes to some extent. More importantly, without the preparation, the skills tend to become available a piece at a time, rather than all at once; compulsions and abilities may remain in the brain as untriggered potential for extended periods before they're accessed. Without the preparation, it may take months or even years before the skills become fully available, and some are lost entirely. We're very fortunate there was no significant delay in Polnovick's case.”

Yamashiro stared at her. “Do you mean to tell me that you consider it lucky that this man went berserk in only a day, instead of years?”

“Yes, sir,” the woman said, holding her head up. “This client was unusually fit physically, and apparently had very few old habit patterns that conflicted with the Godzilla File. He seems to have achieved fairly complete access to the imprinted file within twenty-four hours. Because of this very brief delay, we've been able to piece together what happened. Much of the pertinent information came from short-term data storage, which is kept only twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Now that we have these clues, we'll be able to go over the long-term records and see if this has happened before.”

The chairman nodded. “All right, I see-we were lucky. So what's being done to see that this doesn't happen again?”

“Our technicians are completely overhauling the whole system.”

Yamashiro frowned. “That's not good enough. The system messed up once, it can mess up again. I want those files, the dangerous ones, taken out of the system and locked away in the company vault.”

There was a long silence around the table. The Assistant Executive Director, who had not previously spoken, rolled a pencil between her palms. “That might not be possible,” she said.

“Why not?”

“These files are, technically, not the property of NeuroTalents LLC. They belong jointly to our parent corporation and that client Ms. Valakos mentioned, and we have to be ready to provide immediate access to these files at any time. It's in our contract.”

“What contract?”

“Sir, our contract with that client.”

Yamashiro considered that unhappily for a moment, then yielded. “All right, then. Find some way to make sure there aren't any more accidents. And find everyone that's been imprinted with one of those files. And don't let anyone else find out about any of this!”

Yamashiro rose gracefully and left the room, leaving his subordinates to handle the details themselves.

Despite being active until well after midnight Casper found himself wide awake at six o'clock the next morning.

This was not customary for him; usually he needed half an hour before his eyes would stay open in the morning. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling for ten minutes, simply enjoying the sensation.

He had too much energy to contain it any longer than that; he got up and dressed. Cecelia stirred slightly beside him, then settled back to sleep.

Casper slipped out of the apartment, went down to the lobby, and stopped at the security desk. The guard looked up from his magazine. “May I help you?” he asked.

“Hi,” Casper said, “I'm staying in Four-Ten. I want to go for a walk. Will I have any trouble getting back in without waking the people I'm staying with?”

“I'll fix you right up with a temporary pass, sir,” the guard smiled. “Just put your thumbprint here. This pass will get you in, then the lock will destroy it.”

“Thanks.” Casper took the laminated card and ambled out of the building.

The morning was cool and crisp, and he trotted down the sidewalk. He gradually increased his speed until he was loping comfortably along, despite his uncomfortable shoes. He made it around the block four and a half times before he had to stop. Breathing heavily, he started back towards the apartment building.

A police cruiser sidled up to the curb next to him. “Need any help, mister?” the officer riding shotgun asked.

Ordinarily, any contact with the cops terrified Casper-and just about any other sensible citizen of his class. This morning, though, he couldn't bring himself to worry about it. He felt good.

He didn't know why, but he felt good.

“Oh, hi,” Casper said. He leaned casually against the side of the cruiser, catching his breath. “I was just out for my morning run.”

“You're not exactly dressed for it.”

“Yeah, I know, I spent the night with a friend and I didn't have my sweats.”

“Your friend lives around here?” the officer asked.

Casper nodded and handed him the temporary pass from the apartment building. “Just the other side of this block,” he said.

The officer turned to his partner for a moment, then handed the pass back.

“You want a ride?” the officer asked.

Casper knew that his normal reaction would be to recoil in fear, that he never wanted to be in the back of a police vehicle, that too many people never came back from such rides-but today it seemed more important to be friendly, to observe the cops closely. And acting nervous might make them suspicious, something he'd known since he was a kid but never tried to use; today, for the first time in his life, he was able to not act nervous if he chose.

“Sure, that'd be great.” He gave them a broad, disarming smile.

The rear door of the cruiser popped open, and Casper tumbled in. The cruiser quickly rounded the block and halted in front of Cecelia's apartment building. Casper thanked the officers as he clambered out, then ran up to the door. He noticed that the cruiser remained out front until he was inside.

Careful, those cops, he thought to himself. Good procedure. They hadn't said a word while he was in the vehicle, either. Disrupting the city force could be difficult.

Maybe they could be won over, though.

He stopped and shook his head. Won over to what?

He didn't know. He went on up.

Mirim was in the kitchen making breakfast, wearing a red and white striped robe, when he let himself back into the apartment. She looked up from her batter and smiled.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“I had a lot of energy this morning,” Casper said, smiling back. “I was out running around the block. What're you making?”

“Waffles. Want some?”

“Sure.” Casper leaned on the opposite side of the kitchen's central island from where Mirim was working. “Celia still asleep?”