Read Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict Online
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #High Tech, #Hard Science Fiction
“No,” her father said.
And there the question remained—for the moment.
* * *
After they left the meeting in Aunt Callie’s office, Brandon’s grandfather put a hand under his elbow, steered him into the chairman’s office, and closed the door.
“You have to understand Callista …” John Praxis began.
“She’s beyond angry,” Brandon said. “She wants me to go down to Texas and kill him, a family member, and all over a piece of software.”
The old man shook his head. “Richard hurt her badly. He didn’t just force her out of the company, he blackened her name, destroyed her career, damaged her pride. She can never forgive him for that.”
“And so she wants him
assassinated?
”
“Almost ten years in Italy, living among the social circles in which she moved, has given Callista a different perspective, and different psychological reflexes.” He sighed. “In many ways she is—well, not quite American anymore. She’s on a vendetta.”
“What do
you
want me to do, Grandfather? We can’t let that app just sit there and spy on us, either.”
“No, of course not.” The elder Praxis chewed his upper lip for a moment. “As head of security, you’re also in charge of cyber protection. You go to Texas, talk to Richard. Tell him we know exactly what his package is doing. Tell him we want it reinstalled, a whole new version, but without all the special features.”
“What if he claims innocence? Or refuses to take it down?”
“Tell him we have software that sees through his game.”
“I can’t talk the lingo. Why don’t I take Penny along?”
“No. He’d just laugh in her face. You’re more impressive.”
“And if he still refuses to do a reinstall? Do I talk to his boss?”
“He doesn’t have one, except the Tallyman Systems chairman. No, if he won’t authorize a reinstall, I’ll send Antigone down to talk with their legal staff.”
“Why not send her in the first place? Leave Richard out of it?”
“No, you must go because you’re family, and you have a special message to communicate, one that neither Antigone nor the Winston girl can give. Tell him it’s from me. Use my name. Tell Richard to cease and desist, to leave Praxis Engineering and Callista alone. Tell him this goes beyond computer tricks or legal tricks, even beyond blood and family ties. Tell him he’s in danger.”
“Will he believe me?” Brandon tried to smile.
“How many men have you killed?” His grandfather asked quietly.
Brandon sighed. “Too many. But that was wartime—and a period of civil unrest.”
“Just show him the face you’re wearing now. He’ll believe you.”
* * *
Two days after the meeting with Brandon and Penny Winston—close enough to just miss being a coincidence—Callie Praxis received a call on her smartphone sometime after midnight, waking her from a troubled sleep. It was Uncle Matteo, and during the initial old-world pleasantries his voice betrayed nothing out of the ordinary.
“We know what your brother has done to your company,” he said finally, coming to the point. “We are deeply disturbed by this.”
“Thank you for your concern,” she replied. “But we’re handling it.”
“Your business is our business. And now a third party has access to it.”
As she came more awake, a question occurred to her. “How do you know this?”
“Madame Kunstler reported it. She was tardy with the information.”
“Where is the Spider Woman these days?” Callie asked.
“That cannot be your concern. She is gone. That is all.”
“Maybe she paid to put in those hooks? Sounds like something she’d do.”
“She only arranged to have access, to keep an eye on your brother. But now she is out of the picture, and we are left with a problem.”
“We will get the software removed,” she said. “Seal the breech and—”
“Do you know what he has already taken?” Matteo asked.
“No, just that several downloads have occurred.”
“He shared one with her—not the others.”
“Yeah, we’re worried about that, too.”
“We are prepared to help you ‘seal the breech.’ Permanently.”
“That won’t be necessary. This is a family matter, and we’ll handle it as such.”
“It is a ‘family matter’ in more ways than one, Contessa. We insist on maintaining the confidentiality of our relationship.”
Callie could hear finality in his voice, the death she had spoken of behind closed doors, in privacy, but only to her father and her nephew. Spoken rashly, she had since come to realize.
“No—no—please don’t involve yourself,” she said now. “We’ll handle it.”
“I give you a week, Contessa. And I will need proofs, printouts, a data dump—you understand?”
“Of course, Matteo. We’ll get the information back.”
“See that you do.” And the connection went dead.
* * *
Half an hour into his appointment with his uncle in Houston, Brandon Praxis knew he wasn’t getting anywhere. When he described what he and Penny had found out about the Stochastic Design and Development
®
software, the older man just blinked.
“There must be some mistake,” Uncle Richard said smoothly. “Your super-intelligent application—this what? ‘Rover’? one of those artificial intelligences?—must be imagining things. They do that, you know. The Tallyman Systems package is used in many different contexts and companies and has never created a problem.”
Brandon knew for a fact that theirs was the only copy in use, because that had been a key point in their marketing strategy. However, he plowed on over the lie. “It’s our contention—that is, Grandpa’s and Aunt Callie’s—that the software you installed wasn’t the normal version. It had extra features designed to spy on our company.”
“Ridiculous! Have you seen this software in action?”
“Well, no. But our IT manager has watched the process in real time.”
“Then she must have a diagnostic—showing faulty instruction sets, erroneous command calls, port locations, data samples—to support her allegations. Do you have them?”
“I suppose she does. I can ask for—”
“You
suppose?
Then all you have, really, is Callie’s ravings—isn’t that right? And Dad sent you down here to get my side of the story?”
“He sent me to get you to reinstall the SD&D software. I’ve seen the end user licensing agreement—relevant parts of it, anyway—and it says you can do a diagnostic remotely. So do it, and prove that your software is operating correctly. Then Grandpa wants it reinstalled anyway.”
“That’s all?” His uncle seemed relieved. Brandon had sat in on too many disciplinary hearings to miss the signs. He had watched too many soldiers who had been charged with serious infractions like weapons trafficking or drug dealing, suddenly get offered a lesser misconduct like misappropriation or possession in exchange for their cooperation, and seen their eyes go wide and their mouths relax. Brandon knew when a guilty man thought he was about to slip through the cracks. And, like all of them, Uncle Richard now asked for clarification. “All he wants is a fresh reload?”
“That and your solemn promise.”
“To do what?” his uncle asked.
Brandon put on his commanding officer’s face. “ ‘Cease and desist’—those are Grandpa John’s exact words. He wants you to leave Praxis Engineering and Aunt Callie alone, now and in the future.”
“How am I supposed to do that and still run a diagnostic and install—?”
Brandon put on the grim smile he could always feel on his face before pulling a trigger. “You know what I mean. Grandpa remembers that you once saved his life, on the golf course. That was before you dishonored your sister and helped steal the family company. He cannot forgive those actions, but he would like to save your life in return. You fix your software problem. And then you cease all contact with the family.”
“I should call Dad to confirm—”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“But he has to—”
“He won’t talk to you. That’s why I’m here. That’s all I have to say.”
Brandon stood up slowly, consciously broadening his shoulders and flexing his elbows, like a grizzly bear projecting maximum intimidation. He held his breathing under tight control, so as not to appear either breathless or gasping. He kept looking his target straight in the eye, boring into Richard’s brain, mentally beaming images of the dire consequences, of unleashing fierce Aunt Callie upon this hapless man.
He hoped it would work with his uncle.
Some men did not react at all.
“All right. I—promise.”
“Good enough.”
Brandon turned slowly and stalked out of the room.
* * *
At six-fifteen on a Thursday evening, two days after meeting with his nephew, Richard Praxis left his office and took the executive elevator down to the building’s underground garage. His car was in a reserved stall twenty feet from the elevator door. He thumbed his key fob, heard the cheerful
bee-rup!
echo against the concrete walls and ceiling, and saw his parking lights flash. He was at the driver’s side door with his hand on the latch when he saw movement in his peripheral vision.
“Mr. Praxis?” A man in a short tan raincoat and a snap-brim hat came toward him along the row of sleek cars. Richard wasn’t sure where the man had started from, because no one had been standing anywhere near him a moment ago.
“Yes?” he said, turning toward the stranger.
“
Phut!
” The sound was barely audible, just a suggestion of a sound, compared to the chirping of his door lock. It was accompanied by a barely visible flash—or maybe just a puff of dust that caught a reflection from the overhead strip lights.
After a second or two of sheer surprise, Richard felt a burning sensation in his lower belly, just above his groin. Only then did he realize the stranger had shot him. He could also feel a pain in his butt, as if he’d fallen on his tailbone, and realized the shot must have gone right through him.
He was still standing, one hand on his car, but his legs felt rubbery. He suddenly remembered a lot of arteries and veins going through that part of his anatomy. His groin felt soggy, as if he had wet himself.
The man raised the weapon—a short, dark tube—and pointed it at his face.
“What do you want?” Richard asked. “I thought we had an agree—”
The world exploded, taking Richard Praxis out of it.
5. New Body Work
At Antigone Wells’s first visit with Dr. Catherine Bellows, the plastic surgeon had made a number of scans of her head and neck. These included computerized tomography to trace the underlying muscle and bone structures. With each of the slicing x-ray images taken on one-millimeter spacing, this scan functioned as a virtual three-dimensional composite that the doctor could manipulate along the
x, y,
and
z
axes. Other scans included a full-head hologram of Wells sitting still with her face forward, like Queen Nefertiti, and a full-motion capture of her in various poses and actions: smiling, frowning, grimacing, laughing, screaming, chatting, and whispering. It was like the motion captures made of actors wearing bodysuits with strategically placed ping-pong balls or tiny points of light, except this technique used tiny circles of fluorescent paint dabbed on her skin.
At her second visit, Wells and the doctor discussed her concerns and the available options. On a wall-sized display screen, Bellows called up these scans and used a wand to magically alter Wells’s face. By making incisions around her ears and pulling and removing excess skin, Bellows could tighten her cheeks, reduce the folds around her nose and mouth, and trim her jaw outline. An incision at her chin tightened the folds of her neck. One in her hairline lifted her forehead and repositioned her eyebrows. Others around her eyes reduced excess tissue and folding in her upper lids, removed the bags under her lower lids, and enhanced her cheekbones. With each virtual incision, the full-color hologram reacted to show a younger, smoother face—more like the face Wells had seen and touched and made up twenty or thirty years ago. Bellows then tested each of the cuts with results in the motion capture. It all seemed very real, very precise. And yet …
“I look rather—I don’t know—pinched. Like a skirt that’s been taken in.”
“The end result will look better than this,” Bellows assured her. “The computer image is a just suggestion and can’t entirely account for all the work I’ll be doing.”
“What kind of work? I thought cutting and pulling were what you did.”
“Well, I can also redistribute some of the fatty tissue, for a fuller look. Going deeper, I could reposition some of your muscles, especially along the jaw and over the cheekbones, and then redrape the skin on that new framework.”
“I don’t know. …” Wells didn’t like what she saw. The reworked hologram had a prickliness about it, a predatory cast, like a hawk eyeing a mouse at a distance. The new Wells was not a soft-skinned girl but a hard-edged—although still recognizable and beautiful—woman.
“How long do the results last?” Wells asked.
“That depends on you,” Bellows said. “If you keep out of the sun and wear solar protection, avoid alcohol and tobacco use, take care of your body—but I can see you already exercise regularly—and eat a healthy diet, your face should retain this youthful appearance for five to fifteen years.”
“That’s a long time. … I guess.”
“We all experience the burdens of time. This will still be the skin you were born with, just enhanced and repositioned. With advancing age, your skin is destined to become thinner, weaker, and lose its elasticity. Whatever I do, gravity is still not our friend.”
“I suppose there’s no other option. What about chemical peels, dermabrasion—things of that nature?”
“They’re good. They’ll extend your time by a few years. But mostly these are less invasive procedures, mostly used for surface blemishes, like scarring from acne.” Bellows paused. “There is another option, but it’s new and still somewhat risky. Have you heard of the work they’re doing with stem cells these days?”
“Have I heard?” Wells laughed. “Half of my brain and both my kidneys have been regrown from stem cells. Are you saying you can regrow my face?”
Bellows nodded. “It’s a mixture of cells—myosatellites to generate the underlying muscle, and epidermal stem cells to create new skin. The attachment points are complex, and we must reconnect the nerves for both sensation and motor control. It’s a long surgery under general anesthetic.”
“Have you done these stem-cell implants yourself?”
“A few times—three cases. All experienced good results.”
“It will be my own skin, all new? Not just old skin stretched out?”
“Chronologically, it won’t even be your skin. Early stem-cell procedures did not address the aging of the telomeres—the little bits of code on the ends of chromosomes that count down as your cells reproduce and copy the original DNA. In the old days, the donor cells were all just as old as your body, and they continued aging along with the rest of you. Today, we treat the stem cells with telomerase, an enzyme which adds the missing sequences back to the ends of the DNA. These will be, effectively, baby cells.”
Antigone Wells studied the images of her face on the screen—the blown-apart and excised x-ray scans, the pulled and tightened hologram. She made her decision.
“I want the new procedure,” she said. She had done it before for her body and her brain, why not once more for a boost to her ego?
“All right,” Bellows said. “I’ll schedule you for a stem-cell extraction.”
* * *
When word came from Houston that Richard Praxis had been murdered, Callie was called into a family meeting at the Praxis Engineering headquarters. Her father sat at his desk like a graven image, unmoving and unreadable. She could sense his anger and his grief but not see it in his face.
Her nephew Brandon, who came into the room after her, clearly had not heard the news, because the first thing he said was, “Hi! What’s up?”
Her father’s head and eyes shifted focus toward him slowly, almost blindly. “Your uncle is dead. Gunned down in a parking garage in Houston.”
“Oh,” the younger man said. “Oh, gosh! That’s too ba-aa—”
The elder Praxis erupted. “I thought we had an understanding!”
“We did! I did! I gave him your message. I never touched him.”
“What message?” Callie asked. “When did you arrange all this?”
John looked at her coldly. “I sent Brandon down to meet with Richard personally. Get him to change out that Stochastic Design software with a new copy. Then to leave us—leave you—leave the family alone. No more spying. No more contact of any kind.”
“And that’s what I told him,” Brandon said. “And he promised.”
“If you didn’t kill him, then who did?” John stared at Callie as he asked this.
“Maybe it was a simple mugging,” she said. “Some kind of street violence. It happens in Texas, after all, where everyone’s got a gun.” She took a breath to focus her thoughts. “And maybe he had other enemies. Richard was—you’ll have to forgive me, Dad—but he was a devious weasel. Maybe he was making a play for Tallyman this time, or some other client, and someone objected.”
“You are the one who wanted him dead,” her father said. “ ‘Make him stop breathing,’ you said.”
“That was my anger and confusion speaking,” she said. “I didn’t really mean it.”
But she did, of course. Every word. She just shouldn’t have said it aloud.
“And now it’s come true,” John said. “Now my own son is dead.”
“Do the police have any, well, leads?” Brandon asked.
Callie had read the newsfeed from the
Houston Chronicle,
as forwarded by Richard’s widow, Julia. “They say the killer used .22 caliber rounds, probably from a pistol, at close range. They were hollow points—”
“Ouch,” Brandon said.
“You know about this?” she asked.
“With the right load, it’s a devastating round. Cuts you up inside.”
“Well,” she went on, “he was shot once in the groin and once in the head.”
“Execution style,” Brandon said. “First put you down, then finish you off.”
“Could we please not talk about this?” John said.
“Sorry!” Callie and Brandon echoed at the same time.
“We have to go down for the funeral, of course,” her father said. “Comfort Julia, as well as Jeff and Jacquie.”
“I’ll go with you, Grandpa,” Brandon said.
“I appreciate that,” John replied. “Callie?”
She stared at her father. She could keep a straight face in a meeting like this. But … spend a week with her sister-in-law, her niece and nephew? Recalling all the good times, remembering and idolizing her brother? And never once let her bitterness come through? Never once say what she was thinking? That was not possible.
“Someone has to stay here and run the company,” she said. “You two go and give them my regrets. … And my condolences.”
* * *
The chest pains had started when John Praxis was in Houston for his son’s funeral. At first he felt a twinge, or more like a deep, internal twang, while he was sitting with the family after the ceremony. He was trying to assure them that, although Richard might be gone, and they all had not seen each other in a long time because of war and distance, Julia and the children—grown now, young adults almost Brandon’s age—were definitely still his family. They could call on him for any service, anything they needed. He and Callie and Brandon were there to help.
At the time, he thought the pains were a reaction to something he had eaten—heartburn or some variant of acid reflux. When they persisted for more than a night and a day, he considered briefly that the intermittent spasms and the continuing ache might be some aspect of his grief, manifesting itself psychosomatically. But after the agony he had felt on the golf course all those years ago—what? thirteen years? fifteen now?—he couldn’t fool himself. The pain was real. Something had gone wrong with his heart again.
When he and Brandon returned to San Francisco, he made an appointment with his internist, Virginia Mills. After taking the routine diagnostics of blood pressure, pulse, and blood oxygen, she listened to his chest and asked about his symptoms.
“Burning … aching,” he replied. “Kind of a heaviness.”
“Any soreness in your arms or neck?” she suggested.
“Sometimes, but mostly centered in the chest area.”
“Your chart shows you’ve had a heart implant …”
“I was one of the first,” he told her proudly. “Done right here in San Francisco. Within a year I was running marathons. I felt like I had the heart of a year-old baby.”
The doctor’s eyebrows came together. “Well, not exactly.”
“Are you telling me I
didn’t
get a new heart?”
“Oh, no. I’m sure you got a freshly grown organ. But with those early treatments, the doctors focused more on the basics of technique—culturing the stem cells, giving them the right chemical growth signals, constructing and loading the armature—and so they missed some of the subtleties. Any cell that came out of your body then had the exact chronological age of your body, which was what? Mid-sixties?”
“Sixty-four.”
“We’ve since learned to reset the chronological age of extracted stem cells by rebuilding the telomeres, effectively making them younger. The doctors did that with your more recent regenerative treatments. But back when you got your new heart, we didn’t understand the importance of those little bits of DNA. And early researchers into cellular regeneration were getting mixed signals from the cancer crowd, suggesting that telomerase—the enzyme that adds back those fragments—might cause the cells to become cancerous. We’ve learned a whole lot more now and can handle the enzyme without creating monsters.”
“But this heart?” he asked.
“Is aging naturally, along with the rest of your body. I can run some tests, but I think they’ll just show you’re getting the normal deterioration—muscle thickening, arterial dissection, plaque buildup—that comes with growing old.”
Praxis could hear angel wings fluttering in her voice, soft as clods of earth falling on his coffin lid. “Is there anything you can do?”
“Oh, sure! Grow a new heart—a better model this time—then crack you open and pop it in.”
“And how long will this new heart last?”
“Oh, years and years. It really will be a young heart now.”
“To go along with my gracefully aging body?”
Dr. Mills grinned. “Take care of yourself and you could go on for—oh, I don’t know—” She beamed at him without saying more.
“Indefinitely?” he suggested.
“Something like that.”
* * *
After his third date with Penny—real dates, not just business discussions as an excuse to have lunch: dinner and a movie, dinner and a dance club where the bouncer recognized her, Sunday brunch and a stroll in Golden Gate Park—Brandon Praxis knew it was time to make a declaration.
“You know, Penny—”
“What do you suppose that is?” she asked. They were walking through the Museum of Modern Art on Third Street. When he looked up, Penny was pointing at a pile of polished wooden blocks, oak or maple or some other light-colored wood, about three feet high on the black-tile floor ahead of them.
“I don’t know. There’s a card on the wall behind it.”
“Would it tell me anything I don’t already know?”
“The artist’s intentions, maybe,” he said, squinting at it.
“You take a guess,” she insisted, “without looking.”
“Well … children’s blocks? Something about interrupted childhood?”
“A really cool construction?” she offered. “A castle or a cathedral. And somebody just knocked it down?”
“A really cool piece of art—a big ceramic, maybe—that the blocks were holding up. And somebody just stole it?”
She turned to look at him. “Not bad, sir. Not bad at all.”
“Penny, look. Uh … You know I
like
you.”
“Whups!” she said. “Here it comes.”
“What?” He was confused.
“The dump speech.”
“No, not at all.”
“Oh, yeah.”
She took his hand and led him over to a bench, sat down herself, and pulled him down beside her. “You
like
me? Sure. And you’ve shown it how? Kind of a shoulder squeeze, once, after we cracked open that lying piece of shit software your uncle installed. One tentative good-night kiss—a nice kiss, but no follow-up—on our second date. And one hug in the daylight, the sort you’d give when you’re sending Aunt Maude off to Des Moines. … Brandon, are you gay?”
“No! Oh no! It’s just—what I’m feeling—it’s not just about sex.”