Autonomous

22 BIG PHARMA

JULY 21, 2144

Med stood in a mote-speckled beam of sunlight that fell from one of the Free Lab’s high windows. She was absorbing energy through the photovoltaic patches knitted invisibly into the tissue of her skin. Absently, she held her hands out in front of her, as if examining her nails. For the hundred and forty-seventh time, she assessed the slight differences in skin texture between her original arm and the new one she’d installed yesterday.

The paramedics were long gone, and Krish’s mother had returned to Vancouver with his remains. You couldn’t always predict strokes with annual medical exams, the docs said, and Krish was never an avid self-quantifier. The lab’s camera network was so glitchy that nobody questioned why it just so happened that he died during a period of down time. Meanwhile, according to the feeds, the notorious pirate Judith “Jack” Chen—jailed once for terrorism in the ’teens, and wanted by the IPC—had been killed in a firefight in her Moose Jaw hideout.

In reality, Jack was hiding behind a haze of bogus mote data in Med’s apartment, recovering from her injuries and grafting purple and black extensions to the stubble on her head. In the cat lovers’ forum, she found a gif of a bot petting a kitten with an encrypted message from Frankie knitted steganographically into it: “Not dead yet.” Jack’s relief was like a hit of Ellondra. She left a picture of a cat sprawled on her back, pink sliver of tongue sticking out, with a reply for Frankie secreted into the code: “Still breathing.”

In one frantic day of work, Jack finished the press release that Krish had started. “Strong evidence shows Zaxy engineered its drug Zacuity to be addictive,” it began. That alone scored Med an exclusive interview with ZoneFeed, to be followed by an in-depth report on New Scientist.

When Med’s research paper went live on the Free Lab text repo, ZoneFeed would publish their interview. Med didn’t need to sit down at her desk and hit the publish button the way a human would. She sent a command to the server using the lab’s wireless protocol. Standing in the middle of the Free Lab, she accessed the feeds with her mind, watching the ZoneFeed story replicate itself and spawn increasingly frantic private messages from other news outlets. The Retcon Project’s code repository was exploding with traffic. Hospitals all over the world were printing out the drug, and the more liberal corps started issuing their own press releases, distancing themselves from Zaxy and saying they would no longer supply their employees with Zacuity.

Med returned to her office to respond to reporters, watching as snatches of their conversations appeared minutes later as video grabs in the feeds.

The Free Lab’s entire staff had basically taken the day off to watch the Retcon Project become famous. Somebody tapped a keg around noon, and by 3:00 p.m., things had gotten rowdy. Catalyst projected four different news feeds into the air over the lab benches. The Free Trade Zone Economic Coalition had finally made a statement: A rep claimed they were launching an independent inquiry into Zaxy’s productivity drug, based on research from the University of Saskatchewan. The entire Free Lab burst into cheers.

Over on the NRx News feed, two commentators discussed the story. “But let’s keep in mind that this researcher is a bot, Larry,” one said. “It’s very possible that she’s been programmed by one of Zaxy’s corporate rivals to make these claims—or by the radical groups in the lab where she works.”

Minutes later, a reporter from Sydney was finishing up an interview with Med. She paused dramatically, then asked her final question. “I have to ask, because this has come up in a number of reports. Has anyone tampered with your programming? Is it possible this discovery was actually the work of a malicious hacker who made you believe it?”

“No.”

Med killed the feed with her mind, stood up, and headed for the humans celebrating around the keg. When she got home that night, Jack was gone. But Threezed’s mobile was still there, on the floor next to a wad of his clothing.

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.

Jack recalled the sun-fed green of Saskatchewan’s growing season as she plunged her hands into the spirulina that slid through her fingers and looked like fine, tangled hair on the drying mats. When she pulled the mats onto the bridge, positioning them under dehumidifiers, she wondered what it would be like to unspool her life back to her parents’ farm. What if she had studied agriculture instead of genetic engineering?

Her days might have ended just like this, quietly harvesting the plants that would fuel her body and machines. That other person, Judith the farmer, would have felt the sun overhead and seen the crop flowing around her feet just the way Jack did. It pleased her to imagine that the safer, alternate version of her life had, at least for this slice of time, subsumed the real one. If you ignored the poaching, of course. And the Freeculture contacts she was making on the AU message boards.

When spring came around, she decided, the safer version of her life would relinquish its hold on her again.