Brownian Emotion

[This is a relatively new story, written mostly as an exercise in hard-sf with a softer character focus (and fairly imperfect characters at that). I recently cut it down severely for one market’s requirements (from 6000 to 4000 words) and I’d like at some point to flesh it back out a bit more. But I think it works fairly well as hard-sf as is.]

The Creator’s War 

   
    They fight, unseen, from within their protective shells, as they have since the war began. A billion such shells may comprise one vast mobile fortress, a great war machine, able to span impossible distances and the dangers of open space. But there are billions of these machines in an evolved modern army, times a billion such armies, all fighting the war, every single day. And while these machines are still out there, still fighting away, it has been said that the most crucial battle may be won, or lost, deep within the bowels of a single war machine.

    "I tried phoning you all day," Tracy called as George crept, unsuccessfully, past her workspace. He continued to his desk and sat, gazing out the lab’s eastern window at a reddening sky. On the street below, a hundred students scurried across the campus of Mass General, late to a seminar or evening rounds. But inside the Mouse Imaging Lab, the tension was far less tangible, hiding beneath the surface, like a trap as yet unsprung.
   
    "Did you hear it?" Tracy asked, closing in behind him.
   
    "Eventually," George replied, his gaze still fixed outside.
   
    "I’m so sorry." Tracy put her hand on the back of his chair and leaned in, just enough for him to feel her proximity. "Was it bad this time? I had a feeling it was."   

    George’s eyes followed the motion of his own right hand, down the arm rest and onto his lap. He never, ever looked her in the face, nor at anyone else’s face for that matter. And after  twelve years of collaboration, he didn’t know the color of her eyes or the fineness of her brow. But he knew the sound of her voice well enough. And while most people’s voices overwhelmed him, hers did somehow sooth his tattered nerves.   

    "I don’t know," he said of his episode. "I wasn’t taking notes." He started organizing the pens on his desk.
   
    "Well," she said, "you’ll be happy to know, I did some research in your absence."
   
    "On the sensor problem," he said. His frustration on the issue was evident in his rigid posture, his rapid blinks.
   
    "On your Asperger’s," she said.
   
    He stopped organizing briefly. "That’s not your concern."

    "Well, you’re the boss…"
   
    "Only as long as we’re funded. Now, about the sensors?"
   
    "And I’m just your handy biologist," she added. "But the sensor problem certainly isn’t with the mice. You know I can do more than wrangle mice, don’t you? My Ph.D. is in microbiology, as I recall. And, as it happens, there is some new research on Autism and Asperger’s that’s right up my alley… A protobacter may be the culprit… I might even know enough of this ’science stuff’ to synthesize an appropriate anti——"
   
    "And how does that help save our work?" he said.
   
    She paused. "Forget the grant for a minute. Do you have the slightest opinion on the possibility of your Autism being induced by a bug? Is there any precedent?"
   
    He knew that she damn well knew there was. "Stomach ulcers were found to be caused by a protobacter, H. pylori," he said. "Warren, Marshall, 1979. Cervical cancer is generally caused by HPV, NEJM, November, 2002. Obesity can be caused by a—"

        Tracy spun his chair around to face her. He stared down at her belt buckle—gold with eighteen snake-like fronds.

       "Thank you," she said. "A simple ‘yes’ would do. My point is that if I can synthesize the proper antibiotic, it might actually make things a bit easier for you."   

    Her hand gently touched his cheek. From anyone else, he might have recoiled. But from her, it was merely tolerable.
   
    "Just don’t expect miracles," she added. "It’s not like I can undo 42 years of neurological—"

    "Why do you assume I’d even want a cure?" he interrupted.

    "—dysfunction," she finished with a fizzle. "George, dear, you spend one day in ten, locked inside yourself. You don’t comprehend emotion, mine or yours. You’re utterly incapable of affection. And you don’t want to improve any of that?"

    "NIH funds projects that get results," he said, "not ‘emotion.’ You don’t think my Asperger’s makes me a better scientist? More focused? More rational? More effective?"
   
    She threw up her arms. "I’ve stuck with you for twelve years," she said. "Don’t even ask me why. But when these last two months are up… George… George…"
   
    George peered out the window once more, looking up at the darkening sky, pondering the sheer immensity of the universe. He kept multiplying the number of atoms in his mind, times the number of living things on Earth, times the number of planets and stars, and stopped just short of infinity.
   
    "I’ll get the mice ready," she said, walking away.

   
    Their war has raged for billions of our years, across all known time and space. To those naked souls still floating free, an assault is often just a beat away.

    For the creators in their war machines, life grew more secure—and complex: a billion shells acting in unison means a trillion messages to route, a quadrillion simultaneous jobs to do. Given a few billion years, their messages evolved to song: a workman’s chant, full of spirit and resolve. Their machines evolved too—nowadays capable of self-repair, threat resolution, even multiplying, unaided. But for the creators inside, there was a steep price to pay. They live as one and they die as one—their machines are not immortal—and from defeat or death, there is no escape.

        For the enemy is always on the march, always ready to invade. They attack, en masse, testing a machine’s defenses, stealing away inside. They are small and utterly overwhelming, with the advantage of numbers, simplicity, and sheer ferocity. And their goals are simple too: subvert the machines, enslave the creators, and if all else fails, kill them all.   

~~~

        Tracy grasped a black lab mouse by the scruff and placed it in a small wire cylinder—about the size of a toilet paper core, honeycombed with thousands of metal hexagons and laced up to the computer with a myriad of twisted, colored wires.

        As the sensor hummed to life, a false color image of the mouse appeared on the computer screen, clear as day, but drawn like a trillion tiny sparklers on the 4th of July. Had the mouse not been sedated, the image might have even crawled about.
   
    "Okay," George said, "I’ll filter out everything except glucose oxidation and lets get some results this time…"
   
    "Fingers crossed," she said.
   
    Soon, a clearer, more coherent image of the mouse shimmered to life. The virtual mouse now oscillated in waves of red and blue, like ripples on the surface of a multi-colored pond.
   
    "Is it on?" Tracy asked. "We should be seeing clusters of cellular respiration in the heart, gut, brain. There are up to a thousand times more mitochondria in those cells."
   
    "I’m aware of this." George fiddled with the gain.
   
    "Maybe Quantum Electro-Dynamics just doesn’t differentiate as well as we need?"
   
    "It will," he said, staring straight ahead. "We’re seeing the footprint of cellular respiration in the frequency domain. We just need it to work in time."
   
    "Maybe we should take these last two months to build a time machine…" she said, "watch the first cell adopting a free-living mitochondria, luring it with sugar, leeching the energy it provides… Now there’s a grant the NIH would fund." She tapped on the wire cage, causing the mouse inside to twitch.
   
    The effect on the image was profound. The ripples changed to sharp peaks, reverberating through the mouse like a hall of flying daggers. Eventually, they calmed to the softer waves.
   
    "That’s… funky," Tracy said. "It’s like the mitochondria are all synchronized. Except there’s no way they could do it chemically. No messenger cycles that far, that fast."
   
    "Well, so far this is useless for brain imaging," George said. "We need to see some differentiation in tissue types."
   
    "But I just made it dance," she said.

    "You tapped the sensor."
   
    "I actually thought it was the mouse. It did twitch."
   
    George stuck his finger into the sensor tube, carefully steering clear of any metal bits, but still nudging the mouse.
   
    "George!"
   
    "What?"
   
    "You don’t stick your finger in an active experiment!"
   
    On the screen, they watched his finger touch the image of the mouse. The finger flickered in red and blue as well, but out of step with the mouse, as if they were playing two different styles of music. But where they touched, the patterns grew erratic. They began to synchronize into a single common beat.
   
    He pulled his hand from the cage and examined it, as if for defects. A moment later, he grabbed a plastic computer speaker from Tracy’s desk and smashed it open on the floor.
   
    "George…"
   
    "What?!"
   
    "Can we focus?" she asked, her hands planted on her hips. "We can only sedate the mice for 30 minutes at a time."
   
    "Indulge me," he said. He separated the little round speaker coil from its plastic frame and paper cone.
   
    "Constantly," she said, tapping her foot. "Well, I guess the grant paid for that speaker anyway…"
   
    "NIH can bill me when it’s over. Watch this."
   
    He placed the small speaker coil on the sleeping mouse and touched the two free wires to a power source, just a milliamp, but on and off like an old telegraph. Each time he closed the circuit, the colors of the mouse shimmered a bit.
   
    "The communication seems to be electromagnetic," he said, shrugging, "like some tiny mesh radio network."
   
    "Wow. So you can send Morse code with a mouse," she said, resting her head on her arms. "Watson, come here and shoot me."

    The war was not always so mechanized, nor nearly so complex. It began, as with most things, in the beginning…
   
    In the beginning, they explain, God created light, the photon, conveyer of energy. God followed with a slower form of energy, called matter, and a special form of that, called water. And in that primordial sea, a chain of protein-acids twisted in the current and reproduced, as if on queue.
   
    From such humble origins, swam those blissful strands of life. They swam for untold generations, using their environment, even using each other. Such was the way of things: use whatever doesn’t use you first, survive, reproduce, or be forgotten.
   
    But one of these beings learned to make a shell—to shield it from the open sea, to protect its stuff, to set itself apart. It chose a novel way of life: a little less violence, a little less fear, and less and less with each generation. Their kindred learned to sense one another in the darkness. And it was in each other that they learned the joys of emotion, found the wonder of thought, exerted their collective will to become greater than themselves. These new creators learned to listen to God’s song and they sang along too—resonant, holy, and full of grace.

        But the others rejected such songs in favor of a much more stark and individualistic reality. They hated everything the creators loved. But in their sheer ferocity, they prospered.

    And over time, they, too, evolved.

    By 5am the next morning, George and Tracy discovered one sure fact: mitochondria loved Beethoven. George had wired the naked speaker coil back to Tracy’s computer. And they’d piped in several kinds of music thus far.
   
    "Try the microphone," Tracy suggested.
   
    "Can we go back to using mice?" George asked. His hand was tired, his finger languishing in the sensor cage.
   
    "They’ve almost recovered. Another few hours."
   
    George shook his head and opened the computer’s recording application with his one free hand. The microphone went live.
   
    "Testing," he said. "Attention… finger."
   
    As before, the patterns resonated with the sound.

    But this time, there was an after-effect: a second wave bounced back, rippling through the virtual image of his finger. The pattern seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, like bubbles in champagne, but with structure.
   
    "Can we hear that back as audio?" Tracy asked.
   
    "Use output A3," he said. "My hand is a little busy…"
   
    Tracy finished wiring the scanner’s output back into the second computer speaker and turned the waveform into a simple audible sound. In the resting state, it sounded much like rain on water, a quiet pond under a million dripping leaves.
   
    "It’s beautiful," she said.
   
    "It’s beautiful," her voice came back a moment later.
   
    "Well, we’ve apparently made a bio-circuit that can buffer sound waves," he said. "It doesn’t do us any good, but you can bet your ass the NSA would love this."
   
    "Bet/ass/it/NSA," the speaker said in George’s voice.
   
    George and Tracy both stood there, perplexed.
   
    "It might just be a slow feedback loop," he said.
   
    "Bet/ass/it/feedback," the speaker said.
   
    "I don’t know," she said, throwing her arms up. "Tell me we’re not both having delusions from food poisoning? Those late-night grease burgers were a bit pink."
   
    "Food/poisoning," said the speaker.
   
    "It seems to agree with me," she joked.
   
    And then the speaker said something remarkable. It said something that only George would have known and never told.

    It said simply: "Ass/Burgers."
   
    A shiver ran up and down George’s spine and tingled in his chest, like a wave of electric current, flowing head to toe. It was as if George had been suddenly been screwed in, like a light bulb and, for an instant, turned on.

    "George," Tracy called, as if from far away. "George."
   
    He gradually became aware of the world again. Tracy sat beside him, holding his head like a wounded puppy in her lap.
   
    "I think you had another autistic episode," she said. "One second, you were glowing with inspiration, shouting ‘Eureka’ and all that. And then you just curled up, rocking like a… I’m sorry. It must be awful. I almost called 911."
   
    It was already dark outside the lab. The whole day seemed to have just skipped by.

    "Don’t," he said. "I didn’t actually say ‘eureka,’ did I?"
   
    "No," she said, smiling.
   
    He sat himself up and leaned against the wooden desk. "I don’t know why you even bother with me. I’m so… broken."
   
    She didn’t respond for a long moment. "Why would one bird stay with its partner, even if it had a broken wing?"
   
    "Habituation?" he said.
   
    "Keep guessing."
   
    "Residual nesting instinct."
   
    "Closer."
   
    "But if the wing would never heal," he said. "The lame bird should preferably die to make room for a healthy one."
   
    "Some birds can soar on just one wing, George…"
   
    He stood up. "What the hell are you talking about?"
   
    Tracy let it go with a shrug and stood beside him. "It said you had Asperger’s. We didn’t tell it that. Maybe it heard me talk about it before?"
   
    "Tracy, it said ‘Ass Burgers.’ Two words."
   
    "Then it’s just playing back sounds. It’s a coincidence."
   
    He closed his eyes and sighed. "When I was a kid, when they first diagnosed me, I misheard it too. For years, I honestly thought I had some sort of hamburger of the ass. Ass Burgers."
   
    She started to chuckle.
   
    "Don’t laugh. That’s what I called it."
   
    "I’m sorry," she said. "It’s just kind of ironic."
   
    "Why?"
   
    "Because if this paper I read is correct, then Asperger’s is a result of some protobacterial infection, similar to E. Coli but worse. It’s basically a gut bug, like the hundred trillion beneficial ones we all carry around in there, but not so beneficial, and not so confined to the gut."
   
    George stuck his finger back into the sensor.
   
    "George, wait!"
   
    And as he did, the computer started speaking rapidly in his voice: "Penicillin-binding proteins 1A and 1B are the major peptidoglycan Transglycosylase-transpeptidases that catalyse the polymerisation and insertion of…"
   
    "Fuck!" George pulled his finger free of the sensor as he fell to the floor again, doubling over, crying out in pain.
   
    Tracy rushed to his side.
   
    "I’m okay," he said, panting, holding his belly in pain. "I didn’t pass out this time. But my belly hurt like hell."
   
    "Maybe it doesn’t want us to hear what it has to say?"
   
    "About penicillin binding sites in E. Coli?" he asked. "It was quoting a paper from 1985! I read it in school."
   
    "You remember a paper from 1985?" she asked, stunned.
   
    He nodded.
   
    "You," she said, pointing to a stool. "Sit. This isn’t a damn physics problem. It’s biological. Let me handle it."
   
    She stuck her own finger into the sensor this time. Its image shimmered to life on the computer screen.
   
    "What about the mice?" George complained.
   
    "Shush. It didn’t hurt the mice."
   
    "They were anesthetized…" he mumbled.
   
    "Hello Tracy," the speaker said in her own soft voice. "We’ve been hoping to speak with you."
   
    Her eyes narrowed to frowning slits. "You’re speaking plain English now? How did you learn so fast?"
   
    "Learn?" it said. "We created language. We’ve sung our song your whole life, as we sing to all our creations—to every artist and musician, every shaman and scientist—in dreams and ideas. It is more that you have finally learned to listen."

    She frowned. "So why was George’s finger being so obtuse?"   

    "His shepards are locked in battle," it said. "They may be losing. When you touch him, we barely hear their song."
   
    She turned to regard George. "He’s in danger," she said.
   
    "The enemy is relentless," said the speaker. "They’re trying to control George’s body, subvert his mind, rob him of our spirit and holy song."
   
    "His emotion," Tracy said. "That’s what you mean by song."
   
    "George is right here," George said.
   
    "It’s a protobacter then," Tracy said. "This enemy."
   
    "It is far more ancient," said the speaker. "They are as we once were, before we built the machines. Before the war. This is one of their many modern forms."
   
    "I can’t believe I’m talking to mitochondria," she said.
   
    "What is to believe?"
   
    "To believe? That our own mitochondria designed us to fight some war? Against pathogens? It’s the complete opposite of Endosymbiosis. This is full blown creationism! Good god, the Intelligent Design folks would have a coronary."
   
    "As God lead the amino acids to life," the speaker said, "as our ancestors grew the shells of wisdom, found comfort and joy in each other, left the Eden to explore and build…"
   
    Tracy found herself a stool and pulled it up beneath her.
   
    "But what good is a fighting machine that dies with you inside?" George asked. "Or eats its fellow machines for dinner?"
   
    "The weak must be consumed so that others may grow to fight," it said. "And all machines must wear and die. We would otherwise face an army of our own corrupted machines. But the creators live on with our progeny. That chain of life remains unbroken since the dawn of time——from mother to child, we live forever."
   
    "Look," George said. "That’s all fine. Chain of life. But what if I just don’t want to fight? Where’s my individual free will in all this?"
   
    The image of Tracy’s finger shimmered blue, then red.

    "Which part of George seeks freedom from the rest?" said the speaker. "Which part of George is not George? Individualism is the way of the enemy. They cooperate on nothing, except the war. It is the path of chaos and dismay."
   
    "You didn’t answer his question," Tracy said.
   
    "No," George said softly, as if out of breath. "I think they did. Am I my brain? My soul? Or my disease? That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer my whole career. That’s why we built the sensor, isn’t it? Just because we don’t like the answer we got, doesn’t mean it’s wrong."
   
    "I’m sorry," she said. "I want to help you more than anything, but I’m not buying this mitochondria-as-god religious nonsense. I’m a scientist. And so are you."
   
    "Well, I believe them," George said, stepping forward.
   
    "You believe? What about proof? George!"
   
    "Take George’s hand," said the speaker. "Now."
   
    "No," she said. "It made him sick before."
   
    "We can help him speak," it said, "if only for a moment."
   
    George stepped forward and took Tracy’s free hand. His eyes seemed to glow with the fires of creation. And he looked at her directly for the first time in his life—her beautiful blue-green eyes, her elfin brow, her tears of mournful recognition.

    "My whole life," he said, "I’ve been inspired to do exactly one thing: this. Just listen to your heart instead of that damn speaker. You’d know it too. Imagine what happens if we give every person on earth the chance to speak with their own creators. Imagine what we can all learn…"
   
    "No offense," she said, "but that’s the most unscientific thing you’ve ever said. Where’s Rational George when I need him? What if it’s the damn mitochondria enslaving us instead? What if they’re the ones talking right now instead of you?!"
   
    "I don’t know anything," he cried. His grip loosened. The fire in his eyes slowly dimmed, leaving them pools of fear. Even his voice grew soft, faint. "I don’t even know if I want to fight anymore——for either side. I don’t know who’s right. But I feel… like I’ve been living with this weight around my chest, suffocating me… Tracy," he cried, "it’s me. It’s always me."
   
    Tracy’s eyes began to tear up too. "I think… God, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say you ‘feel’ anything… I don’t know what to think."
   
    "Then feel it," he cried, breathing heavily, under great stress. "Tracy, I know you do. My brain doesn’t understand it, but I do… And I need to tell you, I’ve always felt…"
   
    His legs buckled under him, collapsing him to the floor and breaking the connection. He curled up, slowly, on his side, like a scared child, shaking back and forth, lost to the world.
   
    "Oh, God," she cried. "He was so close."
   
    "George is strong," the speaker said. "But not as strong as the enemy inside. We fear he is—"

    "Oh, shut up!" she screamed, pulling her finger free.

    Tracy sat beside George’s quiet resting form. In the weeks that passed, he’d grown more distant than she’d ever seen him before. No words crossed his lips, not even sounds.
   
    He was breathing on his own again, thank God. But he just lay there in the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly. Each blink counted a few seconds closer to the end.
   
    "George," Tracy whispered. "They won’t listen to me. They all think I’m lying or insane. God knows why? I’d think I was too."
   
    The vertical blinds were partially drawn, like prison bars against a reddening sky. The door to the room was left ajar, but there was just enough privacy to talk.
   
    "I don’t even care about the lab anymore," she said, wringing her hands as George used to do. "They can burn it all down. The mice, the sensor, everything. I just miss you."
   
    George’s chest rose and fell with each slow breath. But there was no fire in him anymore. There was nothing but a shell.
   
    "Why am I so nervous?" she whispered, and took a long, slow breath. She revealed a syringe in her hand, carefully hidden from the hospital staff. It contained a powerful antibiotic——one she’d specially produced.

    "Please forgive me," she said, "Your so-called doctors can’t find any trace of a protobacter in you or up their ass. They don’t even know where to look. This might hurt a bit…"
   
    She pressed the needle to his IV tube.
   
    But she paused, too afraid to go on.
   
    The sun was setting outside and visiting hours were almost up. Tracy had to act now, with what little nerve she had left.

    "I don’t know what to do anymore. Is this what you want?"
   
    George’s chest stuttered as it fell this time. She put down the syringe and held his hand instead. She held it close to her chest, that if the mitochondria could ever help him speak, let them do so now.
   
    "George," she cried. "I’m right here the whole time. I’ll wait for you. And I’m listening, for once. Tell me what to do!"
   
    She lay her head gently on his chest as it rose once more. And on that next exhale, she followed it down, his heart beating strongly in her ear. And the faintest word escaped his lips, the first since he’d collapsed.
   
    "Yes," she said, crying. "I’ll fight. I’ll fight for both of us."
   

    # THE END #