Ocean in the Sea Read online

  “I’m Kaya Aoka,” she said, gesturing to the black name tag that identified her as a Doctor of Immunopathology.

  Lewis presented a smile of practiced neutrality. “Good to meet you.”

  She wore latex gloves and didn’t offer her hand. Turning around, she held the door and gestured. “We’ll have a badge for you at noon,” she told him as they walked. “You can pick it up at the reception desk. There isn’t a lot of free space in the building, so contractors don’t get an office, but there’s a cubical you can use while you’re here.”

  “That will be fine. I do most of my writing at home. I’m only onsite for meetings.”

  Her figure was incredibly well shaped. He tried not to stare as followed her. She was nothing like Brenda, and that helped. He strove to focus on business. Human needs and weaknesses – he wished he could eliminate them. We’re all animals, his therapist had told him, and we all have animal needs. Obvious and useless information.

  “That’s good,” said Kaya. “It can be distracting here.”

  She was referring to the work environment, of course.

  “Your cubical is on the fourth floor.”

  They shuffled into a crowded elevator. It smelled of pine cleaner, Lysol, and a mixture of aftershaves, perfumes, and deodorants. On the fourth floor, Lewis followed Kaya through a maze of frosted glass hallways into a large open space filled with cubicles. A continuous murmur of conversations filled the chamber. The brown cloth-covered cube walls stood at half-height. From an upright position one could look down into them. The occupants wore headsets, typing as they talked.

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. “Is this a call center?” He considered his inflection to be standard. It wasn’t insulting.

  “Yes and no,” she replied. “It’s rentable office space. Most of the businesses aren’t based in this building. One is a medical insurance company. Another is technical support. Then there are the developers. Our section is over there.” She pointed and led him to a row of cubes against a wall. “These are our software engineers.”

  Kaya introduced him to several people working on the scanner’s embedded operating system. Their attire consisted of blue jeans and polo shirts. Lewis recalled hearing the office protocol on the West Coast was lax. He felt overdressed, and disliked standing out. Depositing his coat and his briefcase in his cube, he took off his tie before following Doctor Aoka back to the elevator. They descended to basement level 3.

  “I’ll show you to Doctor Graves,” she said. “Do you have any ethical opposition to animal research, Mister Herman?”

  “No,” he said flatly.

  “Good. You might not like what you see. Many don’t.”

  When the doors opened, she led him down a long hall. Large blocky black numbers on white stark walls marked each section. The gray concrete floor was lined with thin strips of colored tape. They stopped at a sealed door and she pulled the latch. A hiss sounded as the seals broke. Yellow jumpsuits hung on the walls in the small room. Doctor Aoka pointed to one. “You look like a medium. They run small to large.”

  “Is this necessary?”

  “It is if you don’t want to stink.” She stuffed her thin legs into a suit. “They sometimes fling feces at newcomers.”

  Shrugging, Lewis sighed and took a suit from the rack marked “standard - medium.” After putting it on, Kaya helped him affix the face shield. He slipped his hands and she tightened the straps. “Ready?”

  “Am I going to need a shower after this?”

  “You might want one. There’s a locker room, but we bring our own towels.” She punched a series of digits into the keypad next to the door. A chime sounded and a red light turned green. Tugging the handle, she stepped into a large open room.

  Lewis followed her into a huge warehouse encompassing an entire floor of the building. Forty foot tall white concrete pillars ran for hundreds of yards. Large metal enclosures and six foot tall sheetrock walls limited the view, encapsulating some areas like cubicles in an office. Tubular conduits of galvanized sheet metal wove like spaghetti over the walls and ceiling, and a deep hum filled the air with white noise, making it difficult to discern speech.

  “This way,” she shouted. Her voice was muffled by the face mask. Lewis gave her a thumbs-up and marched after her.

  To Lewis, the basement seemed more like a manufacturing plant than a research facility, but then he’d never dealt with large animal research. He’d once edited a series of RFPs for a cosmetics company, but that had focused on rodent testing, and their lab had been tiny compared to this.

  Turning a corner, Lewis got his first glimpse of the cages, smaller than he’d expected. Large enough for the chimps to sit in, but not big enough for them to get any exercise. Each of the animals appeared depressed and in various stages of psychological trauma. Stitches were visible over the skulls of most. Some lay unmoving on the floors of their cages. Spotting the newcomer, two began shrieking. Jerking on their bars, they jumped, slapping at the floor and their heads, almost like children playing patty-cake.

  A man appeared at the far end of the aisle holding a long metal rod. He held it up to the two screaming chimps. They grew silent, backing away. Baring their teeth, they clawed at their heads and faces. Rage shone in their eyes beneath a glaze of fear.

  “Sorry,” Kaya shouted to Lewis. “They put the prototypes on the other end of the floor. The only way is through the primate cages.”

  Lewis said nothing. They passed the man with the smooth black shock rod, who nodded at them through his visor. “Kaya, you’re lucky I was here,” he yelled. “23 and 56 are acting up. Next time, tell me when you’re bringing someone new and I’ll meet you at the goddam door.”

  Kaya introduced them. “This is Logan Masters. Logan, Lewis Herman. He’s an analyst. You may see him around for the next few months.”

  Logan held out his gloved hand. Lewis shook it. Logan had a tight grip even through the thick rubber. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. Short and almost painful, implying what? Any message there? Lewis couldn’t’ be sure, but if he were to guess, it would be something along the lines of ‘don’t fuck with me.’

  “I’ll avoid this area if I can,” Lewis shouted over the fans. “But I will need to see the scanner in operation.”

  “Sure,” Logan shouted back. “But call me ahead of time. These animals know us, but strangers get ‘em riled up. They can smell you, even though the suit, and they know people by the way they walk. They’re smart. Don’t come down here by yourself. Got it?”

  “Yes,” agreed Lewis. “No problem.”

  “I’m serious,” insisted Logan. “It will be a problem if you don’t listen. We had a janitor lose several fingers. Just keep away from the cages. Don’t go anywhere without an escort. When people get hurt, management blames me.”

  “Understood,” said Lewis.

  At the end of the aisle, Logan peeled right and vanished. Doctor Aoka muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot to Lewis like ‘asshole.’ It forced him to consider the group dynamic he was about to step into.

  The psychology of human interaction fascinated Lewis, more by necessity than preference. It went hand-in-hand with his personal brand of high-functioning autism. One could not ‘simulate’ being a normal individual without understanding what normalcy meant. Studying others was a necessity, not an option.

  Past the cages upright industrial shelving contained rows of equipment stacked on pallets. Food for the monkeys, extra cages, hoses, generators, lights, and rows of blue plastic barrels. A forklift sat at the end. Beyond that the floor opened up on two enormous transparent plastic bubbles. These were ‘white rooms’ Doctor Aoka explained. They were sealed to keep the scanners clean and relied on a separate ventilation systems. Through the clear plastic lay the scanners themselves – huge devices covered with moving arms surrounding a thick metal tube. Bulbous shapes jutted off the sides. Wires and pipes ran down into the floor.

  Beneath it all sat a metal chair mounted with clamps to h
old the monkeys in place. A circular ring lined with pins and screws surrounded the headrest.

  “It’s not metal,” said Kaya, as if she knew what he was thinking.

  “What isn’t?”

  “That stereotactic frame.” She pointed. “It’s a composite fiber. So are the screws. Once the cranium enters the ring, we can’t have anything metal in there. This is basically a computer-enhanced MRI combined with multi-layered Positron emission tomography. I’ll let Doctor Graves explain it to you, but we can’t have metal, it interferes with the process.”

  Around the side of the bubble, an elderly gentleman sat typing away at a desk encircled by five 200 inch computer monitors. Watching data scrolling over one display, Lewis managed to identify it as assembly code; although what good it did to have it streaming like that was beyond him. No sane person would be able to follow it, genius or not. He looked at the other monitors and saw an unnaturally colored brain, a document describing some type of medical procedure, a screen saver, and an email that, at least at first appearance, appeared to be a grocery list. Unless Doctor Graves really liked fruit, it was probably for the chimps.

  “Doctor?” called Kaya.

  “What!” Doctor Graves spun around, brushing back his wild mop of thin gray hair. Leaping to his feet, a shrapnel-spray of granola crumbs flew from his coffee-stained lab coat and rattled over the floor. His pocket protector, a cheap plastic insert emblazoned with a ‘NASA’ logo, had sprung a leak, exposing a faded blue streak of ink from his chest to his waist. “Doctor Aoka! You’re here already!?”

  Lewis blinked in surprise. The teetering old man stood six foot five, at least, and had the gaunt emaciated build of an anorexic.

  Kaya gestured. “This is Lewis Herman.”

  “Of course it is! Good God, Doctor, I thought he was coming tomorrow. Nothing’s ready! I was going to have number 69 set up for a demo.” Graves slammed a bony fist into his palm and gritted his teeth. “Something’s wrong with my calendar again. I never get a reminder.”

  Kaya gave Lewis a quick glance and rolled her eyes. “I have three reports to write, Doctor,” she told Graves. “And an appointment at noon. I’m going to leave Mister Herman with you.”

  Graves waved his hands in the air. “NO! No, no… you can’t do that. I’m not ready!”

  “You’re never ready, Doctor, so this shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. Show him the scans from yesterday and explain how the tunneling works.”

  “But I don’t know what to… oh, right. Yesterday’s scans.” He looked back to the screen showing the brain and licked his lips. “Yes… yes… those were very promising. Pity 34 didn’t survive, but I wasn’t expecting the stroke. Still, a very good example of our progress! Yes… Come here, Mister Herman. Let me explain what you’re looking at. Very exciting.” He rubbed his hands together. “I have so much to show you! Pull up a chair. There’s got to be an extra one around here somewhere. Where’s my other CHAIR!?”

  Kaya shook her head and slowly backed up. “It’s by the refrigerator.” As Graves began moving in that direction, Kaya marched swiftly toward the rows of pallets. When Graves came back, she was out of sight.

  Lewis raised an eyebrow, wondering if this was typical behavior. It wasn’t exactly how he’d expected this interview to go. Doctor Graves seemed almost senile, but that could be a mistaken assumption. OCD seemed more likely. Or manic.

  “Left, didn’t she?” Frowning, the old man pushed the chair toward Lewis. “I don’t think she likes me. Never stays long. So, Mister Herman, do you enjoy radionics?” He pinched his narrow lips and raised his brow expectantly.

  “I don’t know enough to guess at what I don’t know,” said Lewis, trying to sound witty. He took the chair and pulled his phone out, activating the voice recorder. “Show me what you know and I’ll figure it out.”

  “Ah!”

  And so it began.

  A Grave Conversation

  After five hours with Doctor Graves, Lewis felt like he’d been standing under a waterfall of data with his mouth open. He had that hazy sensation he sometimes got after drinking too much coffee. His mouth was dry and his bladder felt ready to explode. It was two o’clock, and Graves had talked non-stop without bothering for a lunch break. The man seemed capable of ignoring all bodily functions while his brain was snapped-in. Lewis figured there wasn’t much more to the old man besides work. If he had a wife, she was on her own. If he had kids, they might as well be orphans.

  Glad that he’d installed an extra chip in his phone. Lewis finally stopped recording and informed the Doctor that he had enough information for now. “This and the files you sent me should be sufficient for the introduction and statement of purpose,” he told Graves. “I should really get started.” They shook hands. “Thanks for the interview.”

  Graves looked flabbergasted. “We’re done? But-but… there’s so much more to show you, Mister Herman.”

  “I’m sure, and I’ll certainly be back, but I have biological needs that must be tended to, Doctor. My blood sugar is getting dangerously low. You should eat something too. You’re hungry aren’t you?”

  “Food?” Graves squinted his eyes. “Is that it? I have a ham sandwich in the refrigerator. You can have it. And there’s half a mocha in there from yesterday if you’re thirsty. Plenty of sugar.”

  “Thank you for the offer, but my kidneys require something non-diuretic at the moment.” Even though he’d taken the hood off, he probably had three pounds of sweat in this rubber suit. The odor of ammonia and old socks rose from under his color like a relentless tsunami of funk.

  “Water! Yes! There’s a water cooler by the fridge. Your kidneys will be happy and you will too. I’m just getting to the good part!”

  “I also need to use the facilities.”

  “The bathroom? Just go in the corner. The janitors will clean it up. They’re used to that. You should see what the chimps do.”

  So this, thought Lewis, was why Doctor Aoka had left in such a hurry. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I have an appointment with an… um… a Chiropractor.”

  “A CHIROPRACTOR! Those HACKS! Never ever let them get their hands on you, Mister Herman. They’ll give you a temporary fix and your back is SURE to go out again. They’re like drug dealers. Once they get you hooked, you’re theirs for LIFE!” He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a bottle of pills. “Here. Take these. They’re good for you.”

  Lewis looked at the label. He didn’t recognize the drug. He searched his mind for the appropriate response. When nothing came, he cleared his throat and stared at the doctor.

  “They’re for the chimps,” explained Graves, “but they work fine on people. I take them all the time. Blocks the pain receptors. Do yourself a favor. Take two of these and skip the Chiropractor.”

  “Alright, well, I didn’t want to say this, but actually, I have to call my therapist.” Lewis sighed in resignation. “I have to check in. I have a… personal issue I’m dealing with, and it’s important. I can stay longer tomorrow.”

  “TOMORROW!” Graves sputtered and shook his head. “That’s an entire DAY away! By then I might… OH! You’re right. Yes… tomorrow will be exciting. I can show you an actual procedure! Yesss…” He rubbed his hands together. “You can see the neural imaging in realtime. I can get Doctor Mayuu, Doctor Ferrance, and our resident Vet, Doctor Smiff. They’re all available tomorrow.”

  Lewis nodded, backing slowly away. He flipped his hood into place.

  “LOGAN!” screamed Graves. He spun around in his chair to face Lewis. “STOP, Mister Herman. Wait for Logan. NEVER go through the primate lab without him.”

  With a red face, Lewis halted. “Of course.”

  In his rush out of the building, Lewis almost forgot to pick up his badge. Noticing his soaking wet attire, the receptionist gave him a rueful smile. Tomorrow, he’d remember to bring a towel and a change of clothes.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Martin spent the next two days researchi
ng Valon Kang.

  While a boating accident was certainly an option, he considered several others as contingency plans. The actual event would have to be determined by the individual circumstances. Those sometimes fell into place randomly. Being prepared for an event made it a possibility. Unplanned actions remained forever unsanctioned.

  Mister Kang chaired the board of three separate companies, and was a member on the board of four more. The meetings occurred monthly. His routes to and from them were dependent on his current whereabouts. He typically left from home, but not always. It was not entirely reliable.

  Traffic accidents were easier than boating accidents. Particularly with so many automated vehicles. Martin’s swarming software could easily converge a fleet of vehicles on Kang’s limo, but that that would be obvious to any investigator. Additionally, traffic accidents left witnesses, digital records, and video. Records could be modified, videos could be deleted, but witnesses were difficult.

  There was also the possibility of an industrial accident. Kang toured each facility once a year. Some were potentially dangerous, and he was due to tour SUPTAG next week. There was construction in the area. A crane might malfunction and drop something on him.

  Taking a look, he found the ‘Simulated Universe Proof Theorem Analysis Group‘ appeared to be nothing more than a tax write-off. A team of noted Physicists trying to prove that the universe was a computer simulation? Martin almost laughed. It was like trying to prove the existence of aliens, God, ghosts, or the immortal soul. It was all subjective. One person’s evidence was forever another person’s load of shit.

  Monkey Brains

  Lewis was tempted to call in sick the next day just to get some writing done. It was important to get the concepts down before they faded, but Graves had been insistent, and it was too tempting to see the scanner in action. There was no getting around it. He had to go in.