Autonomous

19 A DISTURBING WORKPLACE ACCIDENT

JULY 17, 2144

Med pushed an update of the Retcon Project to the Free Lab servers and went for a walk across University Bridge. Early morning light turned the river from black to blue, and she spotted the V-shaped wake of a beaver carrying a last mouthful of reeds to its lodge before retiring for the day. Word about the therapy was already boiling up on forums for doctors, especially in the north where most patients had limited franchises. Open drugs were often the only option they had.

Med checked the project forums once per second, but it would be days before she had enough data to analyze. To distract herself, she tuned some feeds while the forum checks ran in the background of her mind. Hundreds of millions of people were watching a new comedy series about bumbling robots. Record harvests on Mars meant immigration there was getting cheaper. A disturbing workplace accident had left New York City flooded, and police blamed drugs.

Even before she watched, Med knew it was a Zacuity breakdown, probably the worst so far. This time it was a young engineer, just out of university, whose job it was to troubleshoot the software controls on an elaborate set of viaducts, pumps, and valves that kept the rising waters of the Atlantic from seeping into downtown Manhattan. After days without sleep, she’d decided to rethink the fundamental principles underlying the artificial marshland that acted as a massive sponge between the city and its waterways. She began to experiment, taking notes the entire time.

Unfortunately, as the engineer explained in a meticulously footnoted, fifteen-thousand-word document posted on Memeland, she also needed a control for her experiment. Which meant she’d have to look at New York City in its most natural state, saturated with water. Before anyone could stop her, the engineer flooded the subways and streets in downtown Manhattan, drowning dozens of people in underground housing, and forcing a huge evacuation. Many people were still missing. The engineer had been arrested, but it was impossible to undo her work without days of cleanup. Free Trade Zone leaders had declared a state of emergency.

Racing back to the lab, Med ran through decision trees and modeled options.

News about Retcon wasn’t getting out fast enough to stop the damage that Zacuity was causing. They couldn’t afford to rely on the Freeculture text repos and research forums as their only means to circulate information, hoping that somehow the entire Zone would hear about it. It was time to publish a paper showing that the dangerous pirate drug causing so many deaths was actually a reverse-engineered Zaxy pill. Once Zaxy’s name was involved, all the feeds would be on it. And then, even docs in New York City would know about Retcon.

Med burst into Krish’s office and smacked his desk to activate the feed from New York. “We have to go public with what we know about Zacuity.”

She could see Krish’s anxiety stitching a pattern of electricity across his scalp as he watched the video of subway entrances disgorging gray water and worse.

“This is horrifying, but I don’t know if we’re ready to accuse one of the biggest corps in the Zone of breaking the law.”

“It’s the only way we’re going to get enough publicity to stop more of these manic episodes. We’ve got Jack’s schematics of the reverse-engineered Zacuity.”

“Yes, we have the schematics for Zacuity. Yes, we have a therapy for a street drug that a pirate claims is Zacuity—”

“But it’s the exact same drug! We have proof!”

Krish sighed. “We have proof that scientists will believe, if they are so inclined. But IPC representatives, the public, the media—they can’t read a schematic, and all they’ll hear is that some anti-patent activist is shitting on Zaxy, which provides them with all the blockbuster drugs they know and love.” Krish wiped the feeds and documentation out of the air and sighed. “Without something the media can understand, going public now could blow up in our faces.”

The bot shook her head. “We have to do it. This is Zaxy’s fault, and people need to know they’re making illegal addictives with horrifying side effects.”

“I know, and I wish I could do something about that. But for now we’ve made Retcon available, and it’s already doing some good.”

Angrier than she’d ever been in her life, Med slammed the door shut on Krish’s office, enjoying the sting of reverberation in the air. She was going to find the proof he wanted.

Six hours later, Med realized she had no idea what she was looking for. Combing the forums and medical text repos turned up nothing. Contacting her old colleagues yielded more preliminary data that she couldn’t put into a scientific article, let alone release to the public net. Med was so busy being frustrated that she didn’t notice anyone was behind her until someone put hands on her shoulders and shouted “Boo!” Threezed had dropped down from the loft and crept up behind her.

Startled, she looked at him with the back of her head, reading his biosigns with sensor motes built into the dead cells of her hair. His muscles were more relaxed than she’d ever perceived them; his hypervigilance seemed to be ebbing.

“What are you working on? You look kind of pissed off.” Apparently Threezed could perceive things about Med’s psychological state that she wasn’t aware she was broadcasting.

She signaled the network to disengage gesture controls and shrugged. “I’m trying to find some way to explain to the media that Zaxy made Zacuity. Something that anyone could understand.”

Threezed sat beside her on the bench. “Have you looked on Memeland?”

“For what? This is the kind of thing that only scientists would know about.”

“People talk about drugs all the time on Memeland. Just search for… I dunno, Zacuity, Retcon, addiction, mania, freak-out, worker drug… Just see if anyone is talking about it.”

Med was nonplussed. “I don’t see how that will help, and that’s a lot to sort through. I need something now.”

“I’ll do some searches for you. I have some time before work.” Threezed pulled out his mobile and yanked a projection from its display into the air. Med noticed that his collar covered up the number on his neck. He’d used an embroidery machine at the store to adorn the pocket with a nametag that said “John.”

Med was lost in a forum conversation sixteen threads deep when Threezed swiped a file into her shared workspace. It was a post from a developer at Quick Build Wares in Vancouver who was part of a recovery group for people suffering from depression after Zacuity runs. She wrote about “this underground drug called Retcon,” which was the first therapy she’d tried that actually eased her symptoms. At her urging, other Quick Build employees took it, too. In the discussion below her post, they talked about what happened next.

The weirdest part was that they couldn’t remember ever wanting to work at Quick Build. Yes, they recalled getting their jobs and doing them well. They still had the skills required to design circuits and modify molecules. But the idea of using those skills, especially for Quick Build, filled them with repulsion. Some even reported vomiting when they tried to go to work that morning.

This was a new wrinkle. Unlike people who had taken the pirated Zacuity over the past couple of weeks, Quick Build employees had been using the drug for at least a year. They took Zacuity under the supervision of licensed physicians, and always for the same thing: completing difficult work projects. But then they started to feel like nothing in their lives mattered except Zacuity-enhanced work. Because this was in some sense how the drug was supposed to work, it was hard for the employees to get diagnosed as anything other than complainers.

When these complainers took Retcon, however, their yearning for the addictive process—in this case, working at Quick Build—shriveled up as quickly as their dopamine receptors bloomed, and the new receptors sipped dopamine generated by all kinds of pleasurable activities. Suddenly the Quick Build workers wanted to go bicycling, play with their kids, watch videos, or develop software for personal projects. But they didn’t want to work at Quick Build anymore.

It was still too early to tell if these were temporary symptoms of withdrawal, but Med suspected they weren’t. The pirated Zacuity users had recovered quickly, but corporate users suddenly found themselves with months of memories that made no sense. They were unable to bounce back. Maybe they would never be able to do their jobs again without throwing up.

The economic outcome for people who had taken the legal version of Zacuity was potentially catastrophic. It wasn’t ideal, but now Med had proof that Retcon worked on those people. And that was something even the media could understand.

Med sent the data to Krish. As she crossed the room to his office, his fingers were already twitching out a message on the desk. “Great work finding that group from Quick Build,” he said, without looking up. “I’m going to talk to my friend at the Pharma Justice Clinic. He’ll have some ideas about how we should frame this. You should finish our paper.”

The bot thought again about the people who had taken the drug for a prolonged period. “These Zacuity users are going to have to build up new memories of enjoying their jobs. I think Zaxy is going to be responsible for a lot of unemployment. Zacuity users might even be able to sue for damages.”

Threezed listened to their conversation and smirked. “Good job, Med. You gave those people autonomy, and now they can’t work.” Then, seeing something in Med’s face that she didn’t realize was there, he stopped. When Threezed spoke again, his tone was gentler, no longer spiked with sarcasm. “But I guess it’s good that they finally know what work really feels like.”