Филип Керр - The Second Angel

‘So what? Rimmer is nothing but a little rat.’

‘He hates you, Dallas.’

‘I’m not worried about Rimmer.’

‘That would also be a mistake. You wouldn’t be the first person Rimmer’s had to retire early from the company.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Remember that girl in Accounts? The one who disappeared a while back?’

‘Vaguely, yeah. Alice something.’

‘She had P2. She couldn’t afford a cure. The blood she had on deposit was mortgaged up to the hilt.’

‘That was the rumor.’

‘It was no rumor.’

‘It happens, I guess. I mean, you read about it.’

‘The day before she disappeared, Rimmer made a withdrawal of one thousand credits that was referenced to a computer file called “Flowers.” That was the last time Rimmer had accessed the file. Until yesterday, fifteen minutes after your meeting with the director. One other thing. The company history shows that the last edit also occurred yesterday, at around the same time. It looks like Rimmer has plans for you, Dallas.’

‘Coincidence.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Are you saying Rimmer killed this Alice what’s her name, and now he’s planning to kill me? And all of this with the director’s approval?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh come on, Dixy. It isn’t going to happen.’

‘I certainly hope not. That’s why I’m telling you. Because I care for you. Very much.’

‘I know you do, sweetheart. And I appreciate it. But I think your reasoning is just a little bit faulty here. Terotechnology isn’t that kind of company. You make us sound like — like the Russian Banda. Or the Mafia. Just forget about Rimmer, okay?’

‘If you say so, Dallas.’

‘I do say so.’

Dallas spent the rest of the day distracted by thoughts of Rimmer and the Flowers file and Alice from Accounts. Maybe he was being just a little naive, as Dixy had said. There was no denying Terotechnology’s reputation among the American business community as a ruthless competitor. But competition was one thing, murder another. Of course, Dixy might simply be mistaken; she might have missed some subtle shade of meaning in what she thought she had seen in black and white. She was, after all, only a computer, and computers still made mistakes. Even the ultrasophisticated Altemann Űbermaschine used by Terotechnology and all its major clients found polysemous interpretation quite hard to handle. With numbers there was no problem. But things were different in the human storehouse of meaning, with its sometimes vaguely defined words and their subtle synonyms and finely contradistinct antonyms; there the more literal-minded computers sometimes encountered problems. This was especially true of the artlessly rigid computer translations of verse from one language into another.

Or so Dallas might have thought. The reality was subtly different. Back in the early years of the twenty-first century, computers used microelectronics. These worked by moving electrical charges through tiny wires. Today, however, using nanotechnologies, computers are built using molecular electronics. Like the early computers, they also use electrical charges to create digital logic, but on a much smaller scale — not to mention with much greater speed and efficiency. A microprocessor of the early computer era was about the size of a child’s fingernail, whereas a nano-sized component is infinitely more tiny. If the French Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat’s famous painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte represented one microprocessor, you could fit a whole nanocomputer into a single point of color. Of course, being so small, nanocomputers require nano-sized machines, or proximal tools, to manufacture them, and these are best handled by other computers. For a long time now, man has played little or no part in the process of computer manufacture. This also applies to the software that runs on these machines. Man is then in the curious position of having set off an intelligence explosion, the effects of which he only vaguely understands. His predicament is that he has created machines whose capacities are only dimly perceived and largely underutilized.

So although Dallas may have believed he had a good idea of what the Altemann Űbermaschine was capable of, in reality even his conception probably fell far short of the mark. Dallas was a highly intelligent man, but so altered was man by the power of his machines that even he remained unaware of the profound human transfiguration that had occurred. It was the beginning of the new beginning as the world will soon come to know it — a process that will take many generations yet. But that is another story, and this one is only just begun. Nevertheless this would seem a suitable place for me to say something of myself. Perhaps you have wondered, perhaps you have not. Well, it is true, I have been careful not to be too free with the use of the personal pronoun, but this is as much to do with a wish not to slow down the story with irrelevant questions about whether your narrator might turn out to be unreliable in the great tradition of Joseph Conrad, Henry James, and Emily Bronte. I shall reveal myself when all will be revealed, but for now, at least, let me just say this by way of reassurance: Only connections that are subject to law are thinkable. In my world there is no such thing as a hidden connection. Be patient. To a revelation, no question corresponds.

Dallas awoke with a start.

‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep,’ he told Dixy.

‘If you sleep, it’s because you’re tired,’ she said. ‘And since sleep is a restorative process in which some vital substance seems to be resynthesized in the human nervous system — although I’m not exactly sure how — I judged it to be the lesser of two evils.’

‘It’s these damned nano-tech chairs,’ complained Dallas. ‘They’re so comfortable.’

‘I believe some people use a sheet of plywood,’ said Dixy. ‘To inhibit the molecular transformation and thus make the experience of sitting in their office chairs a little more rigorous and therefore conducive to work.’

‘I’ll have to try that.’ Dallas rubbed his eyes clear of sleep, stretched, and then glanced at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I’m supposed to be going for a drink with someone.’

‘With Tanaka. In ten minutes. I was about to awaken you. But you woke yourself. I’m always impressed by that capacity in humans. It’s your internal clock. Of course, it’s just an echo from a time, billions of years ago, when human beings were simple bacteria and responded to light, so you could gear up your metabolisms.’

Sometimes even the perfect woman could seem like a pedant.

‘My own metabolism could use a drink,’ he said.

‘Then be sure to take a Talisman first,’ advised Dixy.

‘Make sure the morning after feels as good as the night before,’ said Dallas, repeating the advertising slogan. He opened his desk drawer, took out a small packet, and then swallowed a tiny capsule. [43] Talisman is a time-capsule pharmacological nanomachine from Bayer. Principally it contains the hormone vasopressin to replace what is lost from the pituitary gland during the consumption of alcohol. The nanomachine also attacks acetaldehyde, a toxic product produced by the liver, and quickly breaks it down into acetic acid and carbon dioxide. Other slow-release ingredients include vitamin C, vitamin B, milk thistle, and evening primrose oil. Other time-capsule-pharmacological-nanomachine (TCPN) products, such as Pussyfoot and Soberas, prevent any alcohol from entering the bloodstream.

‘You know how alcohol affects you.’

‘You sound like my mother,’ laughed Dallas. ‘Besides, I like the way alcohol affects me. At least while I’m consuming it.’ He reached for his jacket and then his briefcase. Walking to the door, he nodded at Dixy and wished her good night.