Futureland. Part 31

At his station on the upper tier Neil was lost. He looked out at the open sky filled with clouds. He tried to imagine some way to get out from under the weight of his fate. He knew now that GEE-PRO-9 wasn't some kind of test, at least not a test produced by his employers. He'd fallen into a renegade group that had subverted the company's structure. But all Neil wanted was to go back to his previous life. He spent the late morning trying to figure out how he could succeed at staving off permanent unemployment.

Close to noon a red light appeared on the table before him. It was an interoffice e-mail. He touched the light and his table monitor came to life.

Greetings M Hawthorne, I am M Un Fitt, Unit Controller for GEE-PRO-9. I noticed that you haven't been working on our Third Eye project this morning. I a.s.sume this is because you need a handle with which to grab hold of the idea. Your initial notes show that you understand that the major problems here are the size of the processing unit and the type of receptors that can receive on a par with the broad range of perceptions possible for the human nervous system.

I have not worked out the problem fully but I am convinced that there has to be a physiological element to the Third Eye project. As you may know from the vid news programs there has been a great deal of research done on brain functions as both receptors and projectors of ideational material. Sadly, the congress has outlawed this type of brain research because, they say, there are certain const.i.tutional rights that may be violated. In reality international corporate interests have lobbied against such research because it might lead to greater freedoms and access abilities for the common prod.

I have attached several doc.u.ments that were created before the federal laws went into effect. These are basic chip designs that can connect and interact with the human nervous system. I don't expect you to be able to approximate the neuronal connectors, just try to design the chip logic(s) based on the studies enclosed.

Have a bright day.

Yours truly, UF.

By the time he reached the end of the doc.u.ment Neil had completely forgotten about his impending doom. He was amazed by the candid, conversational transmission of the UC. He was also deeply interested in the content of the attached doc.u.ments. He downloaded fourteen segments, each of which contained in excess of a hundred thousand words. On top of these text doc.u.ments he received over fifteen hundred graphs and ill.u.s.trations, and seventeen video presentations. Neil read through the rest of the day and way into the evening. He was so enthralled by what he read that he would forget to look out at the sky for over an hour at a time.

The introductory doc.u.ment Neil thought must have been written by Un Fitt himself (if indeed the UC was a male). This long rambling essay explained how Congress pa.s.sed legislation that allowed neuronal research for use in computer technology but at the same time outlawed any brain implants, neuronal connectors, or mind-altering experiments. This latter prohibition was supposedly based on the possible infringement of individual rights.

From there was a long essay called "The Road to the Mind," which postulated that any working neuronal pathway could extend brain functions using certain octal protocols. This pathway could utilize the brain's instinctual functions to manipulate data calculations. Ultimately, the essay postulated, the only computer a human would need would be an octal interface and the use of his own brain. A footnote from this essay said: Therefore, a comparatively small interface device might be implanted under the subject's skin. This device could utilize the subject's own brain to achieve the bulk of the Third Eye's functions.

But, Neil thought, a device that small could never store the amount of information necessary to make the Eye useful.

He read on through the night. The types of circuits necessary to run the device suggested had not as yet been developed, or, if they had, the corporations using them had not shared or released the technology.

Neil returned home twenty-four hours after he had been taken away by Blue Nile. He fell onto his mattress, slept for five hours, and then awoke in a sudden panic. Everything came back to him. The diagnosis of Labor Nervosa, the promise of forever unemployment, of fifty years underground in the honeycombs of Common Ground. His only other choice, the erasure of his record, was a felony. He began to tremble and sweat. He threw up in his small toilet and collapsed on the floor.

"Can I talk to you, Nina?" he said to the dark young prod.

"Sure, Neil," she said.

Neil was confused by her friendliness and obvious flirtation; by her apparent ugliness and the deep s.e.xual attraction she held for him.

"Could we go in the UC's room."

"Yeah," she said.

She had been sitting next to a male prod, an Asian man. "Excuse me, Nin," she said to him.

The man nodded and smiled at Neil.

"What do you want, Neil?" Nina asked when they were in the back room.

"I want . . ." he said.

"Yeah?"

"I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"The thing, the thing with the records."

"What thing, Neil?"

"You know what I mean."

"No I don't. Not unless you tell me what it is."

"I don't want to say it in here."

"There's no monitor cameras or listening devices here, hon. We had them removed."

"I still don't want to say it."

Nina gave him a broad smile. Her skin was almost black, but not quite. Her smile was happy; red gums and s.p.a.ces between all of her small teeth. Her eyes were deep holes, dull but not lifeless or unintelligent. They were too deep for Neil to fathom. Her hair was thick, braided into a dozen short ponytails.

Neil felt his stomach rumble when he looked at her.

"Come sit with me in the window," she said.

He obeyed and she sat close to him, putting her right hand on his thigh.

"What is it you want from me, Neil?"

"I want you to do for me what they make everybody else here do for themselves."

"Your a.s.signment?" she asked. Her hand began sliding up his leg.

"No."

"Then, what?" Her hand moved further.

Neil squirmed.

"Don't move away," she whispered.

He stopped and her fingers reached the tip of his p.e.n.i.s through the thin material of his tan andro-suit. He became instantly erect. Nina smiled and breathed into Neil's face. Her breath was strong but not bad, sweet. Neil wanted to scream.

"What do you call this?" she asked.

"My, my p.e.n.i.s." As he said the word her hand slid over the erection and squeezed it slightly.

"Is that what you call it? Really?"

"d.i.c.k, c.o.c.k. My hard c.o.c.k."

"Say it."

"What?"

"Say it."

"That's my hard c.o.c.k. Hard c.o.c.k."

"That's right. You see? You know how to talk. You know how to say it."

"Please," Neil said.

Still holding on to Neil's erection, Nina got up on her knees in the window s.p.a.ce. She flipped her dress up, showing that she wore nothing underneath.

"Do me, baby," she said.

"Somebody might come."

"I put a sign on the door."

"What kinda sign?"

"Just to say not to bother us. Do me now, baby. Come on."

"I don't have a condom."

"You don't need it."

"You don't know that."

"If you want me to help you, you have to do me." Saying this she let him go and raised her posterior into the air, spreading her legs so that the sun shone through, illuminating her wild and errant hairs.

Neil had never even dreamed of something like this. The bold blue sky and the bolder still woman who excited him so much that he felt sick down in his core.

He pulled down his pants and fumbled around until he pushed inside her. She moaned and called out a name that was not quite Neil. He looked down at her b.u.t.t thrusting against him and then up at the sky. They bucked hard against each other and for the first time Neil thought about dying without fear or trepidation. When he came he saw his own reflection grinning in an infinite blue sky. A muscle tore in his groin but he didn't care. He tried to pull away but Nina reached her hand around his backside and held him.

"Don't, baby. Don't take him out yet."

"Somebody might come."

"That's me, hon," she moaned. "That's me comin'."

Later, when Nina's spasms stopped, they lay curled against each other in the window.

"Will you do it for me now?" Neil whispered nervously. He was still afraid that someone would walk in on them.

"Do what?"

"Alter my records."

"You have to do that yourself, hon. That's the rules."

"But I thought you said that if I had s.e.x with you that you'd help me."

"I did help you. You needed a good f.u.c.k, Neil. You needed it bad."

5.

That night he was wide awake in his apartment thinking about prison, s.e.x, and the sky. These thoughts brought on bouts of dizziness and confusion. He was afraid and aroused, feeling awe and panic. He considered running but there was no way out of New York. Anyone could leave the city, but in order to live outside your work perimeter you would have to pay a high tax or take up residence in Common Ground.

Neil thought about GEE-PRO-9's window on the sky, about the silicon protocols used to read the electrical pulses generated by nerve cells. He wondered who wanted the Third Eye. Maybe it wasn't even a MacroCode division that ordered the device. Almost certainly it was not, because that kind of research had been outlawed. It occurred to him that no client would order brain-altering technology except a foreign power. That would make Neil's project espionage, and espionage was punishable by death.

Neil thought about calling his mother but he knew that she couldn't help. And even if she could, all of his electronic communications were being monitored by Blue Nile and others.

"I don't want to die," Neil said aloud.

He thought about going to the newly inst.i.tuted CBI. It was a branch of the federal government that investigated corporate fraud and crimes against the state. They had the power to save him if he became a witness. They had the power to save him but they could crush him too.

In prod-ed they taught the future data manipulators of the workplace to avoid reporting infractions.

"It's someone else's job to prove, penalize, and punish--not yours," M b.u.t.terman would say whenever asked about legal aspects of production. "Everything you do at work is either your job or wasting corporate time. Wasting time is wasting money and wasting money is worse than anything else."

Neil was wondering where the main office of the CBI was when the buzzer to his door sounded.

"Yes," he asked, fearing the Bureau had found him first.

"It's Nina," she said over the speaker. "Let me up."

She wore an ankle-length, emerald green, fake leather coat tied with a red sash at the waist. Her hair was combed straight back. Her thick eyebrows had been plucked down to slender lines.

"They want me down at work?" he asked her at the door.

Nina pushed her way in, closing the door behind her. Her eyes seemed to say, There's no escape.

"What?" Neil asked.