Аннали Ньюиц - Autonomous

JULY 23, 2144

It took the dean’s office two days to figure out that Med had released the findings from a major paper to the media without going through the proper public relations channels. The result was that her schedule for the morning had been cleared for a mandatory meeting with the administration.

When she arrived, the dean was having what appeared to be a jovial conversation with a vaguely familiar-looking man and two IPC reps in a conference room.

The man turned out to be Zaxy’s founder, who radiated Vive-induced youth and introduced himself as Roger. He wore a burnished armor belt with an expensive tunic and jeans. Roger spoke with the exact accent that announcers used on ZoneFeed news shows. “Dr. Cohen, you’ve created an extraordinary therapy with Retcon—extraordinary.” He emitted a practiced chuckle. “It’s the kind of thing I’d buy if you hadn’t released it under an open patent.” Then he paused, composing his features into an expression that hovered between genuine concern and fabricated regret. “But I’m sure you can appreciate Zaxy’s position here. Your paper suggests that it’s a ‘cure’ for Zacuity. I’m happy to bring you into Zaxy and let you have a conversation under NDA with our Zacuity team about possible flaws in the drug. However, we are certain Zacuity is a completely safe substance if administered properly.”

“I appreciate your position, Roger, but a reverse-engineered version of Zacuity has killed hundreds of people.”

Roger shot a look at the dean. “The reports that this street drug is reverse-engineered Zacuity are completely unsubstantiated. Associations in the media between our product and illegal drugs—associations encouraged by your paper—have already caused us to lose a tremendous amount of money. Our attorneys tell me we could justifiably sue you and the university for libel.”

“I have no control over what people say about Retcon on the net. But I have analyzed the drug myself. It is clearly a reverse-engineered version of Zacuity.” Beneath the conference table, Med balled her hands into fists.

“Alright, now. Nobody is accusing you of sloppy research, Medea.” The dean was in placating mode. “Retcon is a humanitarian project, and has already rescued many people from crippling addiction.”

Roger took this to mean that the case was closed. “I completely agree. We just want to make sure you’re not doing anything to encourage the rumors of a connection between Zacuity and those… tragic incidents.”

Med started to speak, but the dean halted her with his hand. “Happy to oblige you on that, Roger. As academics and researchers, we consider it our job to correct pseudoscience when it crops up in the media.”

“There is no doubt that Zacuity is addictive.” Med couldn’t keep an angry edge out of her voice.

Roger stopped addressing Med, and gave the dean a sympathetic look. “I love that you inspire such passion in your researchers. Passion is the engine of innovation.” He’d gone into sound-bite territory because he knew he’d won. The university couldn’t afford a legal battle with Zaxy. The upshot of the meeting was that Med would have to delete all references to Zaxy and Zacuity from the Retcon Project’s documentation and public forums. The dean agreed to take down Med’s paper on reverse engineering Zacuity and issue an official retraction unless it survived a rigorous peer review process at a prominent Seviert journal.

Roger and the IPC reps left with hearty handshakes. Med couldn’t believe this was happening. “Zaxy owns a majority stake in Seviert.”

“It’s just politics, Medea,” the dean assured her. “The main thing is that the Retcon Project can go forward.”

Walking back to the Free Lab, Med scanned the feeds. There had been no more manic meltdowns since the Zacuity story broke, so maybe it didn’t matter that Zaxy wasn’t going down. Maybe she’d made enough of a difference. The public knew about Retcon, after all, and sales of prerelease Zacuity to corps were in the toilet. Somewhere on the Anchorage Radical Archive servers back home, there was a mirror of her reverse engineering paper that would never be removed.

She wondered if Jack and Krish knew something like this could happen when they told her to publish the paper. But she couldn’t ask them. She would have to decide for herself.

DECEMBER 5, 2144

Catalyst’s purple vines had gotten boring, so she was talking about growing tentacles from her scalp for a harvest costume party. David was half-listening while he wiped through New Scientist , its image-dotted pages flashing through the air over the projector near his elbow. They were her students now. Med’s gaze swept over the lab, with its clots of researchers and piles of equipment. All of them her responsibility.

With Krish dead, the bioengineering department had a mini-crisis. Free Lab was a perpetual funding machine, a darling among humanitarian donors and wealthy funders. Shutting it down was out of the question. But it was also enormous, a hodgepodge of different projects, and a pain in the ass to run. Plus, all the faculty and top research staff already had their own labs.

Although it was a slightly unorthodox choice, nobody argued when the department chair suggested they seriously consider the job application from recently hired researcher Medea Cohen. She was devoted to the lab’s mission, and had already brought positive publicity to the university with her discovery of the addiction therapy Retcon. Nobody mentioned the little visit from Zaxy, and the paper Med had taken down. And so, late in the winter quarter, Med replaced Krish as the Free Lab’s principal investigator.

Her plain blue foam desk was set up exactly the way she liked it. Tucked into the corner, it couldn’t be seen through the transparent plastic doors to her office. Especially when she had three projectors drawing a wraparound monitor over her chair in a glowing half-sphere. Sitting there, she could network with the server while message alerts collected in the unused space over her head. To make her office comfortable for the students and researchers who constantly visited, she’d dragged in three soft chairs and a slightly crushed sofa, functional but a little battered from life in the Free Lab.

Krish’s office still stood empty and dark. She was saving it for a new senior researcher, though she hadn’t announced that job opening yet. It was another item on her extensive to-do stack.

Settling into her chair, Med waved her desktop into existence, its command line window momentarily forming a dark shell around her body. Then she reached out with both hands, initiated processes, and flooded her desk with every color that could represent data.

Four and a half hours later, sounds of talking broke through the doors as Threezed slid them apart and flopped into the deepest dent on her sofa.

“It’s Friday, Med. Let’s go dancing or something.”

Med pinched off the projectors and seemed to emerge from a bubble of hovering text. This was the same thing Threezed said to her almost every night when he got off work. They both hated dancing.

“Let’s watch a movie,” she replied with a grin. “Something weird and old from your media history class.”

Threezed had taken on a new identity: John Chen, who had been homeschooled and self-employed on a farm outside Saskatoon until his public employment record started two months ago with a cashier job at a thrift shop on Broadway. He’d shut down his SlaveBoy journal and was auditing some media studies classes at U of S while he figured out his next move. Every day, it became more obvious what that move would be.

JANUARY 16, 2145

Algae poaching reminded Jack of being a little girl on the canola farm during harvest. Every week she brought her sub out of the depths, gliding just beneath the surface of the ocean to the offshore algae farms sloshing between buoys connected by long, plastic sheets at the edge of the AU’s south coast. The perimeter alarms here were not sophisticated. She never saw anyone—human or bot—patrolling these far edges of the farm.