The Second Sphere
Chapter 26

Late in the day, I remembered that Luis Eckhart had called me. By that point, my head burned. I’d spent the day locked in my office, reviewing the interviews on Newberry’s chip, hitting steel walls blocking my progression. There wasn’t a clear way to authenticate them.

The Laslow Corporation employed a few thousand people devoted to the study and improvement of our bio-chips. These scientists were spread over half a dozen floors, crammed into labs, working on how to improve various parts of our lives. They studied our behavior, the way we reacted to the Source, how to enhance advertising and improve security.

But there was a section devoted to the ugly underside of our biochips; those times when they failed. That was the section I headed to, directed by Luis Eckhart: post-mortem biochip evaluation (PMBE), sort of an old-style medical examiner, which sought to replace the causes of suspicious deaths. I knew that he called me to offer some theories about what Malinda and I encountered.

Luis had an office amidst the chaos of the PMBE lab on the 87th floor. When I arrived, there was an argument brewing between a couple of lab rats over an apparently eccentric theory one of them posited about some project they were working on together. They pushed at each other and called each other unflattering names. Other researchers watched as though it were a prizefight.

Small silver carrier bots darted around the floor, flashing between legs, seemingly oblivious to the battle that took place. Luis wedged himself between the two men, telling them that they’d better stop it, or else. Their voices rose and fell until Luis raised his head and glanced at me. He grabbed the men by their collars, pulled them close, and whispered something in their ears. He let the two men go, put a smile on like a pair of cheap loafers, and came toward me, his hand outstretched.

“I was wondering when you’d make your way down here,” he said as he shook my hand. He was one of those who longed for the days of old Hollywood. He liked good-looking leading men and had himself a young newman.

“Trouble with the natives?” I asked.

“Well, when people don’t get any Source for a day or so, you know how it can be.”

“I know how it is not to have Source time.”

“Why don’t we go into my office, let these guys finish sorting out what they need to sort out,” he said. The lab smelled like burned plastics. The centrifuges, link-ups, and other equipment throughout the expansive space flashed reds and blues and emitted various beeps.

We turned several corners and finally reached his office, which was about as neat as mine. Various bins filled with chips covered the floor. Several rumpled shirts were piled on his chair. A few battered link-ups were open on Luis’ desk. He brushed them to the side with his hand, and they clattered to the floor. He gestured at a chair across from him.

“I thought you might be down here earlier,” he said.

“Well, you know,” I said, “had a few meetings upstairs this morning.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry about what happened last night. Sounds horrible.”

I was tired of people talking to me like I’d been disfigured. Apologies wouldn’t scrub the memories from my chip. But I needed to stay on Luis’ good side. “Thanks,” I said.

“That Malinda is good,” he said. “She was down here a couple hours ago, gave us the lowdown on what went on. Knows the technology pretty well, too. Stayed with some of our guys who were pulling the data and started to help them group it.”

“I’m glad she was helpful,” I said. How the hell did she know anything about chip technology? I thought. She was in places that I didn’t want her to be, shoving herself fully into the middle of this investigation

“The chip was pretty screwed up so it’s going to take a little longer than we’d like to have an assessment. We have to go through each data point to see where it’s supposed to go. But the full analysis is what’s going to take a long time,” he said.

I hated playing games about information that I needed to conduct an investigation. I wished he would just tell me what he honestly thought without making me feel like I owed him some kind of favor, especially since he was the one who’d called me.

“Luis, come on,” I said. “Give me a hint about what you’re thinking.”

“Orion--”

“Come on, Luis. You didn’t call me down here for no reason. I know you’ve got a little theory or some preliminary information. I don’t want to wait until tomorrow morning when I could know right now. So tell me what you’ve got.”

Luis made several dramatic gestures, including long drawn breaths, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, and drumming the table before he finally relented. “We’re seeing some interesting grouping,” he said.

“Give it straight.”

“Essentially what happened to Victor Newberry was that something entered his chip and completely disabled most of his higher chip functions.”

“Okay? And what was it that entered his chip?”

“I don’t want to say anything for certain,” he said. “But, I think what we’re seeing is the introduction of some kind of an unknown biological agent into the system.”

“Unknown biological agent?”

“Malinda said that both Newberry and the throwaway went into some kind of trance? Attacked you? And that Newberry only went into this trance after he was attacked by the throwaway?”

I nodded.

Luis nodded, too. “We couldn’t get anything out of the throwaway, unfortunately. That might’ve made it easier to confirm what this is.”

“Is this something that I should start following, Luis?”

“You can talk to Bryant about this.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” I asked.

Luis shook his head again. “Not like this. Never seen anything sophisticated enough to bypass the internal security before,” he said.

I didn’t like his reaction. “So we’re dealing with something new.”

“New to me anyway,” he said.

“So what you’re saying is that the Green Revolution has found themselves some grade-A hackers and that this could be some serious shit.”

“Green Revolution? That’s your department. I’m not here to say who did it.”

“Hmmmm. Have you heard about the TSG working on something like this?”

“Not that I know of,” he said. I’d need time to dig into whether there was a possibility of their involvement.

“Thanks for giving me the heads up,” I said.

“I’ll do a more in depth briefing for all of you tomorrow.”

We shook hands and I left his office.

I made my way to Bryant’s palatial space and gave him the report on what Luis had just told me. When I was done, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

“What the hell did we get ourselves into?” he asked.