Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“All right,” she said, and levered herself up with trembling arms. “I sure feel better though.” She climbed to her feet, pulling her skirt down. Then she fetched the box, and offered it. “Here, this is for you. Happy birthday.”

“I don’t have birthdays,” he said.

“Yes, I know that. So I made a birthday present, just for you.”

He found his pants, stepped back into them, and picked up her gift. To his vague alarm, the little ribboned box felt hot to the touch. He stripped off the gaudy paper and the plywood lid. The box was tightly packed with a gray bag of chemical heating element, surround-ing a small curved device. He plucked the gift from its wedge of hot packing.

“It’s a wristwatch,” he said.

“Try it on!” she said with an eager smile.

He removed his classic Japanese chronometer and strapped on Greta’s watch. The watch was hot and clammy, the color of boiled okra. He examined the greenish glowing numerals in the face. The watch was six minutes slow. “This thing looks like it’s made out of jelly. ”

“It is made of jelly! It’s a neural watch!” she told him. “It’s the only one in the world! We made it in the lab.”

“Amazing.”

“You bet it is! Listen. Every mammal brain has a built-in cir-cadian clock. In the mousebrain, it’s in the suprachiastic nucleus. So we cloned a chunk of suprachiastic tissue, and embedded it in support gel. Those numerals are enzyme-sensitive cells that express firefly genes! And, Oscar, we gave it three separate neural clumps inside, with a smart neural net that automatically averages out cumulative error. So even though that’s a totally organic watch, it supplies accu-rate time! As long as it stays right at blood temperature, that is.”

“Tremendous. ”

“Oh, and you do have to feed it. That little packet there is bo-vine serum. You just boil up a couple of cc’s once a week, and inject it through that little duct.” She paused. “Rat brains do leak some waste product, but just a drop or two.”

Oscar twisted his wrist and examined the translucent strap.

They’d made the tooth and buckle out of some kind of mouse bone. “This is quite a technical feat, isn’t it?”

“And you can’t let it get cold, or it dies. But listen: if you want to reset it, you just flip up that patch in the back and expose it to sunlight. We put retinal cells there. When retinal cells see sunlight, they release glutamate. Which binds to receptors. Which produce ni-tric oxide. Which activates enzymes. Which add phosphate to a nu-clear protein. The protein sends a genetic message, and the genes reset the neurons in the clock!”

“So, is there, uh, documentation with this product?”

She hesitated. “Well, never mind all that. You’re just a layman. You don’t really have to understand how a watch works.”

Oscar looked at the eerie device. It was clinging to his wrist like raw liver. “It’s a homemade birthday watch,” he said. “In the middle of all this trouble, you’ve gone and made me a watch. With your own hands.”

“I’m so glad you’re pleased with it.”

“ ‘Pleased’? This is the finest birthday gift I’ve ever had.”

Her eyebrows twitched just a bit. “You don’t think it’s creepy, do you?”

“Creepy? Heavens no! It’s just a step or two beyond the current cutting edge, that’s all. I could foresee big consumer demand for an item like this.”

She laughed delightedly. “Ha! Exactly. That’s just what I told my lab krewe, when we were putting it together. We’ve finally come up with a mass consumer product that has real market de-mand!”

Oscar was touched. “They’ve been harassing you for years about your ‘pure science,’ haven’t they. As if they had the right to control your imagination, just because they pay your bills. Well, I’ll tell you a secret, Greta. There’s no such thing as ‘pure science.’ ‘Pure science’ is an evil lie, it’s a killer fraud, like ‘pure justice’ or ‘pure liberty.’ Desire is never pure, and the desire for knowledge is just another kind of desire. There’s never been a branch of knowledge so pure and abstract that it can’t get down and dirty. If the human mind can comprehend it, then the human mind can desire it.”

She sighed. “I never know what to make of you when you start talking like that… I wish I could tell you everything I’ve been thinking lately.”

“Try me.”

“It’s that… you want something, but you know it’s bad for you. So you deny it, and want it, and deny it, and want it — but it’s just too seductive. So you give in, and then it just happens. But when it happens, it’s not as bad as you thought. It’s not half bad. In fact, it’s good. It’s really good. It’s wonderful. It makes you better. You’re a better human being. You’re stronger. You understand yourself. You’re in touch with yourself. You’re not in denial. You’re not remote and pure. You’re alive and you’re part of the real world. You know what you want.”

Oscar felt a soaring sense of absolute masculine triumph. It lasted three seconds, crested, and left him tingling with premonitory dread.

“A love affair isn’t always peaches and cream,” he said.

She stared at him in utter astonishment. “Oscar, sweetie, I’m not talking about the sex. That’s all very nice, and I’m happy about it, but you and I could have all the sex in the world, and it wouldn’t change a thing. I mean that you gave me a real and lasting gift, Oscar, because you put me in power. And now, I really know what power means. For the first time in my life, I can speak to people. When they’re all there in front of me, a big crowd of my own people, I can tell them the truth. I can persuade them. I can lead them. I’ve become their leader. I’ve found my own voice. I have real power. I think I always wanted power, but I always resisted it, because I thought it was bad for me — but it isn’t! Now I know what power is, and my God, it’s really good. It’s changing me completely. I just want more and more.”

To end her second week as Director, Greta fired the entire Materials Processing department. This freed up a great deal of valuable lab space in the Materials Lab, which was situated on the eastern wall of the dome next to the Plant Engineering Complex. The long-impoverished botanists were overjoyed at their floor-space bonanza. Shutting down the gluttonous Materials Lab was also a financial boon for the lab itself.

It was also a considerable boon for Oscar’s hotel. His hotel was now crowded with laboratory equipment scavengers, fly-by-night middlemen who’d flocked into Buna as soon as the news of a hard-ware sale hit their net.

Most of the materials scientists sullenly recognized the fait ac-compli. But not Dr. David Chander. Chander had been an early and zealous striker, and he was also a quick study. To resist his own firing, he had taken his tactical cues from the Strike Committee. He had superglued his equipment to the lab benches and barricaded himself inside the research facility. There he sat, in occupation, categorically refusing to leave.

Kevin was in favor of bringing in a hydraulic ram and blasting Chander out. The Collaboratory’s federal police were far too con-fused and sullen to do any such thing themselves. Kevin would have been delighted to play the role of strong-arm vigilante, but Oscar considered this a bad precedent for the lab’s new regime. He couldn’t countenance violent confrontations; they were unprofessional, not his style.

Instead, he decided to talk the man down.

Oscar and Kevin went up to Chander’s third-floor lab, and Oscar announced himself. He waited patiently as Chander unjammed his lab doors. Then Oscar slipped in, leaving a disgruntled Kevin lurking in the hall.