“Gentlemen…”
Smith spun in the direction of the familiar voice and saw a screen set into the wall come to life with Christian Dresner’s image. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in person, I hope that Craig is taking good care of you.”
“He is,” Pedersen acknowledged, but Dresner didn’t seem to hear.
“Dr. Smith. I’m a great admirer of your work with prosthetics.”
“Thank you. I’m anxious to see how we can integrate the Merge to make them more useful.”
“We still have some work to do on that front, but the potential is almost unlimited. As you are a doctor and scientist I know you’ll agree that the devil is often in the details. People are so impressed by the integration of the Merge with the human mind, but they have no idea of the incredible challenges presented by complex inputs. Or how much I wanted to include a real-time factual evaluation of what people are saying in conversation but couldn’t because of the glacial speed of the cellular data networks.”
His eyes became a bit distant as he lost himself for a moment in his own incredible mind. When he spoke again, he seemed to be talking to himself. “And then there’s the problem of sarcasm and humor. Absolutely impossible to code for…”
“Maybe you should have just built it to make everybody happy,” Smith said, only half joking. “Then no one would care about the details.”
An enigmatic expression crossed Dresner’s face but then disappeared when Pedersen inserted himself into the exchange.
“I’m interested to learn more about the Merge’s offensive capabilities…”
Dresner nodded politely but his eyes suggested that he was already disconnecting from the conversation. “Craig would be able to tell you more about that than I can. I’ll excuse myself and let him get on with the demonstration.”
Smith chewed his lower lip to hide the anger he felt at Pedersen driving the man away. In truth, though, he wasn’t sure that’s what had happened. While he was normally fully prepared to blame the general for just about anything, the change in Dresner’s demeanor had come not at the question about offensive capability, but at his own comment about happiness.
Pedersen pushed back his chair and stood, looking impatiently down at Craig Bailer. “Did I hear something about a demonstration?”
12
Outside Storuman
Sweden
WHEN HE WAS YOUNG, the darkness had crept up on him slowly—disguising itself as a passing shadow, using the constant chaos of his mind as camouflage. Now it attacked without hesitation or pretense, often prompted by nothing more than an innocuous comment or a brief scent from a forgotten past. And other times it came for no reason at all.
Christian Dresner stepped out into the sweeping garden, his Merge sensing his position within the compound’s walls and shutting down everything but vision correction. The snow was falling in large, drifting flakes that absorbed the sound of his footsteps as he weaved through trees dusted white.
Brushing off a lone bench, he sat and let the cold sink into him. Behind, the bunker-like building he’d just exited stood silent and, in many ways, equally cold. It was one of a collection of similar structures spread across the world. How many now? Ten? Fifteen? Maybe it was his aging mind that kept him from remembering. Or maybe it was that he felt nothing for any of them. They were less homes than self-appointed prisons meant to make him feel safe. And while he recognized it was probably an illusion, it was at least a comfortable one. In these gardens, for brief, precious moments, he could sometimes make everything outside disappear.