Wired (17 page)

“That
would do it,” muttered Desh.

“It
was a disaster. Whoever he was, having twenty-three doses of my therapy
instantly made him the most formidable man on the planet. I began to take
elaborate precautions, learned everything I could about bugs and how to find
them, and took some pains to spread my fortune across various accounts. The
next time I was enhanced it became clear to me I needed to create a number of
flawless false identities as well as invent technologies that would help me
stay hidden if I was forced to disappear.”

“Enhanced
intuition also?”

She
nodded. “Intuition is just your subconscious putting together subtle clues and
coming to a conclusion that your conscious mind hasn’t quite reached. Since my
rewiring gives me access to all the memories buried in my subconscious, it
unleashes the full power of intuition.” Kira paused. “As later events were to
prove, this intuition was right on target.”

Desh
said nothing as he finished the breadstick and drained the last of his soda. There
was certainly no arguing this point.

“Three
days later,” continued Kira, “my boss, Tom Morgan, was killed in a car
accident.”

Desh
nodded, almost imperceptibly. Interesting, he thought. Another piece of the
puzzle that was now—possibly—explained.

“I
was never able to find any evidence, but I suspect Morgan stumbled onto what I
was doing and was responsible for having the bugs planted. My guess is he later
approached someone powerful to sell what he knew and access to some of the
gellcaps. My unknown enemy. Moriarty, as you called him.”

Desh
frowned. “And Moriarty had Morgan killed so he would have an exclusive on your
treatment.”

“That’s
my guess.”

Desh
opened his mouth to ask another question but closed it again as the waiter
approached with their pizza. As he carefully placed it on the table in front of
them, Desh reflected on everything Kira had told him. Her chronology of events
explained any number of loose ends. And the central premise of his assignment,
that she was working with terrorists on a bioterror plot, had become laughably
implausible. And she had warned them about Smith and had risked herself to
extricate them.

And
although he tried to resist, her looks and personality continued to cast a
spell on him. As much as he needed to affix his gaze solely on the entrance and
stay alert at all times, he found his eyes inexorably returning to hers as they
spoke. He needed to keep the Greek myth of the Siren sea nymphs firmly in his
mind. Was he really being as objective in considering her arguments as he
needed to be? Were there holes that he was failing to consider?

However
much she explained away, he kept returning to the same place: the deaths
surrounding her childhood were indisputable. Griffin had verified as much when
Desh had been asleep on the hacker’s couch. And the evidence against her in the
killing of Lusetti and her brother was airtight. As appealing as he found her
and as artful as her explanations had been, it was still more likely than not
that most of what she said was an elaborate fabrication.

27

They
both hungrily ate their first piece of pizza in silence, after which Desh
announced his plan to use the restroom and scout the mall once again. He spent
a few minutes in the restroom scrubbing his face with soap and cold water,
feeling reinvigorated as he did so, and then exited the restaurant.

Throngs
of brightly colored shoppers of every description paraded through the mall in
all directions, creating a random, ever-changing mosaic of humanity. Some
race-walked as if on an urgent mission while others strolled leisurely. Some
were empty handed while others carried soft-pretzels, ice cream, elaborate
purses, or plastic shopping bags filled to the brim with recent purchases. A
young girl pointed excitedly to a pair of shoes through a window as her mother
looked on with an amused expression on her face. Desh envied them their
untroubled innocence.

He
pretended to look in a few store windows and wander through the mall for the
next five minutes, furtively scanning the crowd as he did so, but detected
nothing out of place and no sign of pursuit.

He
returned to the booth to find that Kira was almost finished with her last piece
of pizza and the waiter had refilled his drink. Kira eyed him warily as he sat
down. “Any suspicious activity?”

Desh
shook his head. “I think we’re probably in the clear,” he said. “If they haven’t
found us by now, they’ll have moved on. They’ll never believe we’d do something
as stupid as making sitting ducks of ourselves—literally—in the middle of a
busy restaurant.”

“Stupid
like a fox,” said Kira with a twinkle in her eye.

Desh
smiled. He lifted a large slice of pizza and gestured to Kira. “By all means,
continue,” he said. “You left off when your boss turned up dead.”
           

Kira
gathered herself and resumed her narrative. “After the break-in, Morgan’s
death, and discovering the listening devices, I became more secretive than
ever. I routinely swept for listening devices and I performed all animal
experiments in my condo rather than at NeuroCure’s facilities.” She paused. “I
worked on both of my primary goals at the same time, but I achieved the leap
forward in neuronal optimization first.”

“How
long after the break-in?” he asked.

“About
nine months.”

“I
assume you tested it to be sure it worked.”

“Yes.
I engineered a batch with an exceedingly short half-life in case there were
complications. I was only in this state of super-optimization for about two
seconds, but it was enough.”

“Enough
for what?”

“Enough
to be certain I’d succeeded. Those two seconds felt like five minutes. The
first level of optimization is beyond description. The second level is beyond
imagination.” Her eyes widened in wonder. “It was a transcendent level of
thought. Awe-inspiring. So much so that I was afraid to ever try it again.”

This
time Desh knew only too well what she meant. Once again, she had been afraid of
the corrupting influences of untold power.

“The
lower dose was having a cumulative effect,” continued Kira. “The more I
transformed myself the greater my tendency to embrace the idea of ruthlessly
selfish behavior. My emotional side became ever more suppressed, and my feelings
of superiority continued to increase. It’s hard enough retaining the vestiges
of altruism when you become convinced there is no afterlife. And when you’re
powerful enough to do whatever you want. It’s even worse when you begin to see
normal human intelligence as pathetically insignificant.” She looked troubled. “If
this was how I began to view humanity when optimized to the first level, how
would I view our species if I spent more than two seconds at an even more
elevated level?”

Desh
continued eating as she spoke but he was quickly losing his appetite. Was there
really a plane of intelligence so elevated that normal human intelligence
didn’t register? He killed insects without much thought. Beings whose
intelligence was as far beyond human intelligence as his was beyond an insect
couldn’t be blamed for indifference to human life, or even active slaughter of
any human that stood in their way.

God
as ruthless sociopath?

Or
was God, despite infinite power and intelligence, the one exception to the “absolute
power corrupts absolutely” rule? Even assuming everything in the bible was
completely true, the answer to this question was not obvious. Religions that
would be appalled at a characterization of God as anything but a loving father
readily accepted that He had wiped all life from the planet, save for two
members from each species, simply because He was annoyed at humanity’s bad
behavior.

Desh
pulled himself from his brief reverie and considered the woman in front of him,
whose large, expressive blue eyes continued to act as black holes, drawing him
into their irresistible gravity wells, defying his every effort at resistance. He
needed to stay objective. It was time to get at the heart of the matter. “You’re
very good,” said Desh. “I’ll give you that. But before you go any further I’d
like to back up. I want you to explain the deaths of your parents and uncle. And
the murder of one of your teachers and the disappearance of another.”

She
frowned and shook her head. “My parents and uncle died in accidents. As far as
the teachers go, I have no idea what happened to them. But I had nothing to do
with it.”

“So
you acknowledge that one disappeared and the other was killed horribly, by an
obvious psychopath?”

“How
could I not? It’s the truth. I’ll never forget it. It was all anyone could talk
about for a long time.” She leaned in intently. “Are you suggesting you have
evidence that I committed these crimes?”

“No.
But the circumstantial evidence is pretty conclusive.”

“It’s
only
conclusive
because of your bias. There’s no way I can prove I had
nothing to do with those deaths. Whether you believe me or not depends on what
lens you view them with. If you’re looking for trouble, you’re going to find
it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,
if you already think I’m a psycho killer and you examine my past through this
lens, you’re bound to find evidence to support this contention. This is classic
data mining. You draw a conclusion and then mine the data retrospectively to
find support for it. You invariably do. I’ll bet if we looked at your hometown
and vicinity over all the years of your childhood we could find a disappearance
or two, some murders, a few
accidental
deaths. Most that you wouldn’t
even be aware of.”

“Probably.
A few random events can be explained away as coincidences, but there is a
limit. Your teachers—maybe a coincidence. But add in both of your parents and
your uncle as well—I’m not buying it.”

Kira
shook her head, pain etched in every line of her face, as if the wounds from
these tragedies had never entirely healed. “I don’t know what to say. But I’m
willing to bet you can find others who lost parents and also a relative in
tragic accidents. Bad luck happens, David,” she insisted. “One of the ways I
got through it all was by reminding myself of this. I was at least lucky enough
to have many good years with my parents. There are orphans and kids in war
zones who aren’t even that lucky,” she finished.

Desh
frowned. This line of discussion was getting him nowhere. He wondered why he
ever thought it would. What had he expected, a confession? And she did have a
point. He
did
bring bias into the equation. If he hadn’t already been
shown evidence she was a psychopath he would have viewed these events quite
differently. He’d probably be consoling her for her loss right now.

Desh
sighed. “Let’s table this one for a while,” he suggested. “Why don’t you tell
me about your fountain of youth.”

Kira
nodded as the waiter appeared again with their bill. Desh paid him immediately
with cash, including the tip, so he wouldn’t have reason to disturb them
further.

Kira
waited for him to leave and then resumed the discussion. “I had achieved my
first goal, a further leap in intelligence, but was afraid to use it. About
fourteen months after I was robbed I achieved a breakthrough on my second goal.
Smith was accurate. I can double the span of human life.”

“How?”
asked Desh, not wanting to have the conversation bog down but unable to repress
his curiosity. “Just give me the Cliffs Notes version.”

Kira
paused, as if considering how best to frame her response. “As I said before,
our brains aren’t optimized for thought. Well, not surprisingly, our bodies
aren’t optimized for longevity either. Again, all natural selection cares about
is reproduction.” She took a sip of iced-tea and set it back down on the table.
“If you have a mutation that enhances your ability to survive to childbearing
age, this mutation will preferentially appear in future generations. But
longevity genes don’t kick in until you’ve already done all the reproducing
you’re ever going to do. The guy who dies at forty has just as much chance of
having scores of children, and passing on his
poor
longevity genes, as the guy who dies at eighty has of passing
on his
good
ones. There’s no
evolutionary advantage to long life.”

Desh’s
eyes narrowed. “But parents who live longer can increase their
offspring’s
chances of survival. So
longevity genes should confer an advantage.”

“Very
good,” she said. “This is true. There is evolutionary pressure on our genes to
keep us alive long enough to ensure our children can take care of themselves. But
after this point there’s no advantage to further longevity. In fact, there
might even be evolutionary pressure
against
it.”

Desh
looked confused.

“The
elderly can be a burden on the clan when resources are scarce,” explained Kira.
“Decreasing the chances of survival for future generations.”

A
look of distaste came over Desh’s face. “So those clans whose elders have the
decency to drop-dead early on and not drain further resources thrive more than
those whose elders live forever?”

“During
times of scarcity at least, yes. This is one probable explanation for why most
life on Earth, including ours, is programmed to die.”

Desh’s
brow furrowed in confusion. “What does that mean?” he said “I thought aging was
the result of errors accumulating in our DNA.”

“Partially
true. But a large part of aging is due to a form of planned obsolescence. Our
immune systems weaken, we stop producing hormones like estrogen, our hair grays
or falls out, our skin shrivels, the acuity of our hearing diminishes, and so
on. Our bodies are programmed, at the level of our genes, to die.”

“You’re
the scientist, but it’s hard for me to believe that’s true.”

“That’s
because it happens gradually,” she said. “In some species, like pacific salmon
and marsupial mice, it happens all at once. One day they have no signs whatsoever
of aging and the next—bam—they’re dead from old age.” She paused. “Other
species aren’t programmed to die at all, like rockfish and certain social
insect queens.”

Desh
tilted his head. “But they do die, right?”

“They
die. They just don’t age as we know it. Eventually accidents or predators or
starvation kills them.”

Desh
had further questions but knew that now was not the time. “Go on,” he said.

“I
studied these species extensively to understand why they didn’t age. I also
took DNA samples from people who suffer from a rare aging disease called
progeria. By the age of twelve progerics look and sound like elderly people.”

Desh
shook his head sympathetically. “I’ve heard about that. What a horrible
disease.”

He
paused. “Can I at least assume their DNA was illuminating?”

“Very.
It led directly to the breakthrough I needed,” she said. “I had been studying
everything I could find on the molecular basis of aging for years. But when I
added data on the genetic differences between progeria victims and normals my
optimized brain was able to put all the pieces together.”

“And
you’re positive your treatment will work? That it really will double the span
of human life?”

“Absolutely
certain,” she said without hesitation. “One hundred percent.”

Desh
had become stiff from his angled position in the booth as he continued to watch
the entrance, and he shifted temporarily into a more comfortable position. “How
can you be so sure?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand
while continuing to grip the gun with his right.

“There
are a number of ways,” replied Kira. “But you’d need a much deeper knowledge of
molecular biology and medicine to understand most of them. One way is to look
at cellular doubling times. Most people don’t know this, but most of your cells
will only divide about fifty times in culture. This is called the Hayflick
limit. As they approach fifty doublings they take longer and longer to divide
and show signs of aging.”

“What
happens after they divide fifty times?” asked Desh.

“They
die,” she said simply.

Desh
pondered this for a few seconds. “What about cancer cells?” he asked.

“Good
question. Cancer cells are the exception. They’re the immortals among cells. Not
only will they go beyond fifty doublings, they’ll continue doubling forever. It's
this unconstrained growth that eventually makes them deadly to their host.”

Desh
was fascinated by all of this but he was out of his league and knew he needed
to move on. “Let’s say I believe your longevity therapy works the way you say
it does,” he began. “Let’s say I even believe you aren’t involved in bioterror.
But here’s the question: if you really did discover the fountain of youth, why
have you kept it a secret?”