It felt like a rationalization. Three thousand people were dead including nine members of Congress, four foreign leaders, and countless financial people. Ironically, the world’s soldiers hadn’t suffered too badly due to their higher-than-average level of fitness.

“Have you figured out how you’re going to handle this thing?” Randi said.

Klein let out a long breath. “It’s complicated. Dresner Industries has recalled all the Merges and is headed for bankruptcy. We’ll support the buybacks and use LayerCake to find any units still out there. The goal is to account for every one but that’s probably unrealistic. As far as a public story goes, we’re still trying to come up with something credible enough to convince people that this was an accident. Fortunately, the media seem content to fan the hysteria and don’t seem to be looking into the common thread connecting all the people who were killed. In the end, I think we’ll be able to make it go away. But it isn’t going to be easy.”

“And the technology goes away, too,” Randi said, not bothering to hide her pleasure at the thought. “Permanently.”

Klein didn’t respond, deferring to Smith who had been put in charge of a highly classified task force studying that very question.

“The hardware is easy to replicate and while the public can’t access LayerCake anymore, its core is still running in Spain. The key to the technology, though, is Dresner’s algorithm—basically a Rosetta stone that translates machine code into the language of the mind. Without that, we can’t make any of it work.”

“Can you get to that algorithm?” Randi said.

“I don’t think so. It all comes back to the same catch-22: In order to access Dresner’s operating system, we need to know how Merge communicates with the brain—”

“And in order to figure out how the Merge communicates with the brain, you need access to Dresner’s operating system,” Randi said, finishing his thought.

“Exactly. It’d probably be easier to just reinvent the technology than to crack his encryption. So we’re focusing on that—talking to the people involved in development, going through records. But it’s going to take decades. And that’s only if we can figure out how to get the North Koreans to cooperate.”

“Which so far doesn’t seem likely,” Klein said.

Smith couldn’t shake a deep sense of disappointment despite everything that had happened. “It was such an incredible technology. And if Dresner’d had another fifty years, he might have actually done it. He might have perfected humanity.”

Klein dragged thoughtfully on his pipe. “The perfection of our species…It’s an endless historical theme, isn’t it? Eugenics, communism, fascism, genocide, and now this. Maybe we’re not supposed to be perfect.”