Prescription for Chaos (16 page)

At the count of nine, he scrambled to his feet.

Magnus crossed the ring, hit Bisbee, and hit him again. The blows weren't heavy, but Bisbee couldn't defend.

Bisbee then covered his head. He was fighting now as he had fought in the first round, but now both eyes were swollen, and blood was trickling down as Magnus methodically opened up a cut over his left eye.

Bisbee lashed out at his tormentor, who moved easily aside, and struck back to catch Bisbee in the mouth. Again Bisbee covered himself.

Magnus hit Bisbee, hit him again. Magnus, though obviously tired, was moving with smooth coordination. Suddenly he laughed.

"Sweet dreams," he said, and landed a sudden heavy blow to the side of Bisbee's head.

Bisbee staggered.

The bell rang.

Norton said, "They've got to stop this."

A few moments later, they declared Magnus the winner, and he stood with upraised fists, smiling, as the cheers echoed around him. But Bohlen could see no one close to the ring who was cheering. He glanced at Norton, who shook his head.

Bohlen said, "What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Bisbee had him. Then I looked away. I was tired of watching it."

"You should have bet on it. You wouldn't have looked away."

"The last I saw, Magnus was on the mat. What happened?"

"It was the same thing again. Magnus was out on his feet, but he moved like a dream. Bisbee couldn't connect. His eyes were swollen shut, and he couldn't follow what Magnus was doing."

"I suppose I should be glad," said Bohlen.

Norton grunted. "At the end, I was hoping Bisbee would win. It would have cost me money, but it would have been worth it. Look at Magnus."

Bohlen didn't look at the ring. "He won on luck. And guts, give him that. But the bell saved him at least twice."

"That's not what he thinks."

Bohlen looked at Magnus. "He thinks he's unbeatable. Damn it! It's the implant!"

Norton said, "And you programmed it."

"Not alone," said Bohlen defensively. "It wasn't my idea."

"I'm not blaming you. What I'm saying is, he's standing up there, taking the cheers. It was luck and the implant that saved him, and you programmed the implant, and I put it in. I tell you, one slip, and he wouldn't be here. He wouldn't have lived through the operation. But is he giving anyone else credit?"

"No."

"There's a problem here, Bo."

Bohlen said, "I won't argue with that."

"It never hit me we were making a Frankenstein's monster."

"Well—I wouldn't go that far."

"I would. This isn't the only expert chip there's going to be. This is just the first. This guy is a Boxer. Pretty soon we're going to be making Soldiers. Somewhere, right now, they're doubtless asking how to make Assassins. Sooner or later there'll be a Ninja implant chip. What's it going to be like to live in the same world with this stuff? For the first time, anyone with the money, or who has a backer with the money, will be able to acquire real skill without making the effort to earn it."

Bohlen stared at Magnus, saw Magnus smile easily, condescendingly, to the reporters as they crowded around, asking him to make a muscle, snapping pictures of him with fists raised. Magnus's lip was swollen, and one of his eyes was partly shut, but that didn't dent the easy air of superiority.

Norton said, "How does he look so casual when Bisbee had him on the mat twice?"

"Three times."

Norton blinked. "That's right."

Bohlen shook his head. "Maybe it's just his personality. This may not happen with everyone who gets an implant. He's the first. There will be others. It could even become commonplace."

"Not for a while. There aren't enough surgeons who want to do the operations."

"Yeah, but—"

Norton looked at him.

"But what?"

"That's the next expert implant—the surgical chip."

"You're serious?"

"I wouldn't make this up. It's perfectly logical. The bottleneck, all along, was the interface. A big part of that is the process of implantation. We need capable surgeons. Therefore, develop an implant to increase the number of capable surgeons. That will end the bottleneck. Q. E. D."

Norton swore.

Bohlen said, "Will you refuse the implant?"

"I don't end to end up like Magnus."

"Then you'll be passed by colleagues less capable now than you are."

"I can think of the very cretins who'd jump at the chance." He looked at Bohlen, and suddenly his eyes glinted. "And when does the programmer's chip implant come up?"

Bohlen shook his head. "Third on the list. Another bottleneck."

Norton smiled. "Programming should be a natural for this technique."

"I'm not certain it can be done. But I wouldn't bet against it."

"There are a lot of angles to this thing. Magnus has the idea he is different and superior. I wonder how competition would hit him. I think Bisbee deserves the chance to even things up."

"Would he do it?"

"We could find out."

Bohlen laughed. "It may end up like college. Almost everybody has to have a degree, now. I can see it a few years from now: 'What field is your implant in?'"

"Not so fast. Even with lots of willing surgeons, there's still the operation. Who wants it?"

"It could end up like tonsils and adenoids. Then, after a little more improvement in technique, like going to the dentist."

"People will send their children to the chip-implanter?"

"Why not?"

Norton gazed off into the distance, and shook his head.

"There's one thing we can be reasonably sure of."

Bohlen nodded. "In one sense or another, this technology will be very educational."

Riveracre Farms, R. D. #1
Hewitt's Corners, MN
August 18, 1998
 

 
Interdisciplinary Genetronics
Transportation Division
100 Bionutronics Drive
Detroit, MI
 
Attn
: Gene-Splicing Dept.
 

Dear Sirs:

I am once again writing to you, with considerable reluctance, and more in sorrow than in anger, but I believe you will see, if you will kindly
read
what I am saying, that I have good reasons.

In simple justice, not to mention your own self-interest, I think you
should
for once read this letter. I am not only a customer, but happen to have been one of your earliest supporters. I was all in favor of giving you a chance when you were just an idea pleading for a hearing. I had, at that time, no premonition that you would turn into a gigantic world-devouring monopoly, and I wrote more than my share of letters on behalf of the New Life Bill that finally enabled you to go ahead and show what you could do. Now all
I
am asking of you is a hearing, such as I helped obtain for you.

This is my fifth letter of complaint to you, and I think you had better read this one, at least, carefully. You would not be the first idea to turn into a monopoly and then get shrunk back down to size in a hurry.

To help you get the idea, I want to mention that I AM SENDING COPIES OF THIS LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT, TO APPROPRIATE COMMITTEES OF BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS, AND TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE.

If I now finally have your attention, I will mention, parenthetically, that copies are, of course, also going to all appropriate state officials, and there are quite a few of
them
.

Since my four previous letters were answered by routine computer printouts from either your promotion or your legal department, I suppose I had better summarize everything I said in those letters, which have probably long since been shredded and fed to your secretary's cute little lemon-yellow sports coupe.

In chronological order, here is a summary of my four previous letters:

1) "I am a dairy farmer, and recently purchased one of your new model Superbiometal Traction Servalls. As an admirer of your early Biotank models, I want to complain about your phasing out of these models. Their advantage over the usual all-mechanical tractor in times of fuel scarcity was enormous, since at night you could put a stack of hay, corn stalks, straw, wood chips, or what-have-you on the tank-feed mechanism, and in the morning the biotank would have converted the stack into fuel, and the tractor would be ready to go. With one or two supplemental biotanks, most of a farmer's fuel problem was solved. That was good enough, and this new improved series with so-called 'self-repairable modules' represents a complication I don't need and don't want."

2) "I want to again urgently request that you bring back your Biotank model. I could take an ordinary wrench to that model and fix the usual problems. At worst, I could nearly always take it apart and fix it. If, finally,
I
couldn't do the job, I could get hold of someone who could. But if this present Superbiometal thing, with its 'self-repairable modules,' happens to be set wrong at the factory, and I reset it,
it
then reresets itself to the wrong setting, and neither I, nor my brother with forty years experience on engines, nor your biobefuddled Superbiometal factory-trained regional representative, can figure out what to do. At present, it insists on running too rich; nothing we do fixes it; it leaves a rolling cloud of fine soot behind it, and drinks fuel like an eight-armed alcoholic; it runs feebly at best and jolts to a stop with a cough and a hiccup if there's any serious work to be done. I am not the only one with this problem. You had better straighten this out, or you will be hearing from our lawyers. P.S. Do you realize that if a sharp rock gets flung up, this Superbiometal tractor
bleeds!
"

3) "Kindly do not send me any more self-congratulatory press releases, slick brochures on New Superbiometal Products, or threatening legal form letters with enclosures that I am supposed to humbly fill out and send back to you by return mail. Everything non-legal goes straight onto the tank-feed stack. The legal junk goes to my lawyer, who is beginning to wonder whether an actionable case for mail fraud can be built up out of it. Instead of wasting time with all this mulch, kindly clear up the problem I have been trying to call to your attention:
Your Superbiometal Traction Servall is a disaster
. I am now farming with my old Biotank model, which is in very worn condition, but which works far better than this fuel-eating soot-machine that can barely crawl around the field. There may be someone who admires your Biotechnological Sophistication, but it isn't me. Don't send me any more slick testimonials from your paid admirers. I know what the truth is: The present model is worthless, and all its 'sophistication' won't grow a hill of beans. Bring back the Biotank model! It
worked
."

4) "As you will have found out by now, I have traded in your fuel-guzzling Superbiometal Traction Servall for a new improved even-more-sophisticated Superbiometal Powercat. This is no sign of faith on my part so far as the Powercat is concerned. It is just that the Servall was totally worthless, and it seemed that the Powercat might at least be an improvement. It certainly appears 'more aggressive, lean, and powerful,' as your literature claims, but I frankly don't like the looks of the thing. I also don't care for this proliferation of biometal sports coupes, roadsters, and so on. Though I was one of your earliest supporters, I never expected you to rush all this stuff into production. It is perfectly obvious to anyone who uses your products that you are getting results beyond what you are aiming at. This 'biometal' you talk about is not 'the substance of life itself, shaped and formed to serve Man's every need.' The various manifestations of life always serve their
own
needs. Man only gets cooperation when a deal is struck, and then you have to make it satisfactory or the other side won't cooperate. I don't really know how to express what I am trying to say here, so I will try to make it simpler: If you've got an axe, a gun, a wrench, or a crowbar, they may not be 'the substance of life itself,' but you at least know what you've got, and you can use it. On the other hand, if you've got a cow, a dog, a cat, or a chicken, it
is
the substance of life, but again, you've got a fair idea what you've got, and, within reason, again you can use it. But just note that in this latter case, you've got, depending on the specifics, to feed it, pet it, water it, keep it from sinking its teeth into visitors, and shovel out its trough. Now, either category of thing is all right, within its limits, but
you are mixing the categories
. Do you appreciate what you are doing? Do we honestly want the equivalent of meowing crowbars and guns that can fire themselves? Never mind how sophisticated it all is, and what a tribute to Science that we can make them. Of course, it's wonderful. But do we
want
it?"

That is the greatly condensed summary of my past correspondence. There is no point trying to summarize the flood of material, all beside the point, that you have sent in return.

What is important is what I have been trying to get through to you, and unfortunately I now have a much clearer idea of that than I did the last time I wrote. I no longer have to try to get it across philosophically. Now I can give you examples.

This new Superbiometal Powercat of yours was no sooner in its shed than it gave a noise like a foghorn, and we discovered in the owner's manual that this 'serves as a reminder to load the tank feed.' It gave this 'reminder' at six that night, at ten, at around twenty minutes after midnight, at quarter of three a.m., and then again right on the dot at six the next morning.

It took us most of the next day to cut and weld new rails and push rods for the tank feed mechanism, so that it would be possible to make it hold feed enough to take this monster through the night. In the hope of getting a little peace and quiet, we were loading up this bigger feed rack when there came a thud and a clang, a noise like thirty pounds of muck squelching onto the ground, and a second clang followed by the sound of a latch clicking into place. There was a strong chemical odor, and there on the floor of the shed sat a steaming gob of what looked like lithium gun grease, with odd bits and remnants of straw, corn stalks, and so on sticking out. Excuse me for mentioning it, but this is a complication I don't need from a tractor. I know what to do with cow manure, but what do we do with this stuff?