Fashioned by flames the.., p.9
Visionary in Residence: Stories, page 9
"Like I couldn't brew up stuff twice as potent myself."
"Of course you could, dear. Especially now, since we can afford the best equipment. With my inheritance kicking in, we can devote your dad's legacy to your hobby. All that stock your dad left can go straight to your hardware fetish, while my money allows us to ditch this creepy old condo and buy a new modern house. Duckback roof, slowglass windows, olivine patio...." 'Ihpper sighed deeply and dramatically. "Real quality, Fearon."
Predictably, Malvern Brakhage showed up at their doorstep in the company of disaster.
"Rogue mitosis, Fearon, my man. They've shut down Mixogen and called out the HazMat Squad."
"You're kidding? Mixogen? I thought they followed code."
"Hell no! The outbreak's all over downtown. Just thought I'd drop by for a newsy look at your high-bandwidth feed."
Fearon gazed with no small disdain on his bullet-headed fellow scab. Malvern had the thin fixed grin of a live medical student in a room full of cadavers. He wore his customary black leather lab coat and baggy cargo pants, their buttoned pockets bulging with Ziploc baggies of semi-legal jello.
"It's Malvern!" he yelled at the kitchen, where Tlhpper was leafing through catalogs.
"How about some nutriceuticals?" said Malvern. "Our mental edges require immediate sharpening." Malvern pulled his slumbering weasel, Spike, from a lab coat pocket and set it on his shoulder. The weasel-biotechnically speaking, Spike was mostly an ermine-immediately became the nicest-looking thing about the man. Spike's lustrous fur gave Malvern the dashing air of a Renaissance prince, if you recalled that Renaissance princes were mostly unprincipled bush-league tyrants who would poison anyone within reach.
Malvern ambled hungrily into the kitchen.
"How have you been, Malvern?" said 'hipper brightly.
"I'm great, babe." Malvern pulled a clamp-topped German beer bottle from his jacket. "You up for a nice warm brewski?"
"Don't drink that," Fearon warned his wife.
"Brewed it personally," said Malvern, hurt. "I'll just leave it here in case you change your mind." Malvern plonked the heavy bottle onto the scarred Formica.
Raised a rich, self-assured, decorous girl, Tupper possessed the good breeding and manners to tolerate Malvern's flagrant transgressive behavior. Fearon remembered when he, too, had received adoring looks from Tupper-as a bright idealist who understood the true, liberating potential of biotech, an underground scholar who bowed to none in his arcane mastery of plasmid vectors. Unlike Malvern, whose scab popularity was mostly due to his lack of squeamishness.
Malvern was louche and farouche, so, as was his wont, he began looting Tupper's kitchen fridge. "Liberty's gutters are crawling!" Malvern declaimed, finger-snapping a bit to suit his with-it scab-rap. "It's a bug-crash of awesome proportions, and I urge forthwith we reap some peptides from the meltdown."
"Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted," countered Fearon. He herded the unmannerly scab back to the parlor.
With deft stabs of his carpalled fingertips, Fearon used the parlor wallscreen to access Fusing Nuclei-the all-biomed news site favored by the happening hipsters of scabdom.
'hipper, pillar of support that she was, soon slid in with a bounty of hotwired snackfood. Instinctively, both men shared with their familiars, Fearon dropping creamy tidbits to his pig while Malvern reached salty gobbets up and back to his neck-hugging weasel.
Shoulder to shoulder on the parlor couch, Malvern and Fearon fixed their jittering attention on the unfolding urban catastrophe.
The living pixels in the electrojelly cohered into the familiar image of Wet Willie, FN's star business reporter. Wet Willie, dashingly clad in his customary splatterproof trenchcoat, had framed himself in the shot of a residential Miami skyscraper. The pastel Neo-Deco walls were sheathed in pearly slime. Wriggling like a nautch dancer, the thick, undulating goo gleamed in Florida's Greenhouse sunlight. Local bystanders congregated in their flowered shirts, sun hats, and sandals, gawking from outside the crowd-control pylons. The tainted skyscraper was under careful attack by truck-mounted glorp cannons, their nozzles channeling high-pressure fingers against the slimy pink walls.
"That's a major outbreak all right," said Fearon. "Since when was Liberty City clearstanced for wet production?"
"As if," chuckled Malvern.
Wet Willie was killing network lagtime with a patch of infodump. "Liberty City was once an impoverished slum. That was before Miami urbstanced into the liveliest nexus of the modern Immunosance, fueled by low-rent but ingenious Caribbean bioneers. When super-immune systems became the hottest somatic upgrade since osteojolt, Liberty City upgraded into today's thriving district of artlofts and hotshops.
"But today that immuconomic quality of life is threatened! The ninth floor of this building houses a startup named Mixogen. The cause of this rampaging outbreak remains speculative, except that the fearsome name of Ribo Zombie is already whispered by knowing insiders."
"I might have known," grunted Malvern.
Fearon clicked the RZ hotlink. Ribo Zombie's ninja-masked publicity photo appeared on the network's vanity page. "Ribo Zombie, the Legendary King of scabs-whose thrilling sub rosa exploits are brought to you each week by Fusing Nuclei, in strict accordance with the revised Freedom of Information Act and without legal or ethical endorsement! Click here to join the growing horde of cutting-edge bioneers who enjoy weekly shipments of his liberated specimens direct to their small office/home office wetware labs..."
Fearon valved off the nutrient flowline to the screen and stood abruptly up, spooking the sensitive Weeble. "That showboating scumbag! You'd think he'd invented scabbing! I hate him! Let's scramble, Mal."
"Yo!" concurred Malvern. "Let's bail forthwith, and bag something hot from the slop."
Fearon assembled his scab gear from closets and shelves throughout the small apartment, Weeble loyally dogging his heels. The process took some time, since a scab's top-end hardware determined his peer ranking in the demimonde of scabdom (a peer ranking stored by retrovirus, then collated globally by swapping saliva-laden tabs of blotter paper).
Devoted years of feral genetic hobbyism had brought Fearon a veritable galaxy of condoms, shrinkwrap, blotter kits, polymer resins, phase gels, reagents, femto-injectors, serum vials, canisters, aerosols, splat-pistols, whole bandoliers of buckybombs, padded cases, gloves, goggles, netting, cameras, tubes, cylinder dispensers of pliofilm-the whole assemblage tucked with a fly fisherman's neurotic care into an intricate system of packs, satchels, and strap-ons.
Tupper watched silently, her expression neutral shading to displeased. Even the dense and tactless Malvern could sense the marital tension.
"Lemme boot up my car. Meet you behind the wheel, Fearo my pard."
'hipper accompanied Fearon to the apartment door, still saying nothing as her man clicked together disassembled instruments, untelescoped his sampling staff, tightened buckles across chest and hips, and mated sticky-backed equipment to special patches on his vest and splashproof chaps.
Rigged out to his satisfaction, Fearon leaned in for a farewell kiss. Thpper merely offered her cheek.
"Aw, come on, honey, don't be that way! You know a man's gotta follow his bliss: which in my special case is a raw, hairyeyed lifestyle on the bleeding edge of the genetic frontier."
"Fearon McClanahan, if you come back smeared with colloid, you're not setting one foot onto my clean rug."
"I'll really wash up this time, I promise."
"And pick up some fresh goat's-milk prestogurt!"
"I'm with the sequence."
Fearon dashed and clattered down the stairs, his nutraceutically enhanced mind already filled with plans and anticipations. Weeble barreled behind.
Malvern's algal-powered roadster sat by the curb, its fuel cell thrumming. Malvern emptied the tapering trunk, converting it into an open-air rumble seat for Weeble, who bounded in like a jet-propelled fifty-liter drum. The weasel Spike occupied a crash-hammock slung behind the driver's seat. Fearon wedged himself into the passenger's seat, and they were off with a pale electric scream.
After shattering a random variety of Miami traffic laws, the two scabs departed Malvern's street-smart vehicle to creep and skulk the last two blocks to the ongoing bio-Chernobyl. The federal swab authorities had thrown their usual cordon in place, enough to halt the influx of civilian lookyloos, but penetrating the perimeter was child's play for well-equipped scabs. Fearon and Malvern simply sprayed themselves and their lab animals with chameleon-shifting shrinkwrap, then strolled through the impotent ring of ultrasonic pylons. They then crept through the shattered glass, found the codeobligatory wheelchair access, and laboriously sneaked up to the ninth floor.
"Well, we're inside just fine," said Fearon, puffing for breath through the shredded shrinkwrap on his lips.
Malvern helped himself to a secretary's abandoned lunch. "Better check Fusing Nuclei for word on the fates of our rivals."
Fearon consulted his handheld. "They just collared Harry the Brewer. `Impersonating a Disease-Control Officer.' "
"What a lack of gusto and panache. That guy's just not serious.
Malvern peered down streetward through a goo-dripping window. The glorp-cannon salvos had been supplemented by strafing ornithopter runs of uptake inhibitors and coun- termetabolizers. The battling federal defenders of humanity's physiological integrity were using combined-arms tactics. Clearly the forces of law and order were sensing victory. They usually did.
"How much of this hot glop you think we ought to kipe?" Malvern asked.
"Well, all of it. Everything Weeble can eat."
"You don't mind risking of Weeble?"
"He's not a pig for nothing, you know. Besides, I just upgraded his digestive tract." Fearon scratched the pig affectionately.
Malvern Velcroed his weasel Spike into the animal's crittercam. The weasel eagerly scampered off on point, as Malvern offered remote guidance and surveillance with his handheld.
"Out-of-Control Kevin uses video bees," remarked Fearon as they trudged forward with a rattle of sampling equipment. "Little teensy cameras mounted on their teensy insect backs. It's an emergent network phenomenon, he says."
"That's just Oldstyle Silicon Valley," Malvern dismissed. "Besides, a weasel never gets sucked into a jet engine."
The well-trained Spike had nailed the target, and the outlaw wetware was fizzing like cheap champagne. It was a wonder that the floor of the high-rise had withstood the sheer weight of criminal mischief. Mixogen was no mere R&D lab. It was a full-scale production facility. Some ingenious soul had purchased the junked remains of an Orlando aquasport resort, all the pumps, slides, and water-park sprinklers. Kiddie wading pools had been retrofitted with big gooey glaciers of serum support gel. The plastic fishtanks were filled to overflowing with raw biomass. Metastasizing cells had backed up into the genetic moonshine somehow, causing a violent bloom and a methane explosion as frothy as lemon meringue. The animal stench was indescribable.
"What stale hell is this?" said Malvern, gaping at a broken tub that brimmed with a demonic assemblage of horns, hoofs, hide, fur, and dewclaws.
"I take that to be widely variegated forms of mammalian epidermal expression." Fearon restrained his pig with difficulty. The rotting smell of the monstrous meat had triggered Weeble's appetite.
"Do I look like I was born yesterday?" snorted Malvern. "You're missing the point. Nobody can maintain a hybridoma with that gross level of genetic variety! Nothing with horns ever has talons! Ungulates and felines don't even have the same chromosome number."
Window plastic shattered. A wall-crawling police robot broke into the genetic speakeasy. It closed its gecko feet with a sound like venetian blinds and deployed a bristling panoply of lenses and spigots.
"Amscray," Malvern suggested. The duo and their animal familiars retreated from the swab machine's clumsy surveillance. In their absence came a loud frosty hiss as the police bot unleashed a sterilizing fog of Bose-Einstein condensate.
A new scent had Spike's attention, and it set Malvern off at a trot. They entered an office warren of glassblock and steel.
The Mixogen executive had died at her post. She sprawled before her desktop in her ergonomic chair, still in her business suit but reeking of musk and decay. Her swollen, veiny head was the size of a peach basket.
Fearon closed his dropped jaw and zipped up his Kevlar vest. "Jeez, Malvern, another entrepreneur-related fatality! How high do you think her SAT got before she blew?"
"Aw, man-she must have been totally off the IQ scale. Look at the size of her frontal lobes. She's like a six-pack of Wittgensteins."
Malvern shuddered as Spike the weasel tunneled to safety up his pants leg. Fearon wiped the sweat from his own pulsing forehead. The stench of the rot was making his head swim. It was certainly good to know that his fully modern immune system would never allow a bacteria or virus to live in his body without his permission.
Malvern crept closer, clicking flash-shots from his digicam. "Check out that hair on her legs and feet."
"I've heard about this," marveled Fearon. "Bonobo hybridoma. She's half chimp! Because that super-neural technique requires-so they say-a tactical retreat down the primate ladder before you can make that tremendous evolutionary rush for breakthrough extropian intelligence." He broke off short as he saw Weeble eagerly licking the drippy pool of ooze below the dead woman's chair. "Knock it off, Weeble!"
"Where'd the stiff get the stuff?"
"I'm as eager to know that as you are, so I'd suggest swiping her desktop," said Fearon craftily. "Not only would this seriously retard police investigation, but absconding with the criminal evidence would likely shelter many colleagues in the scab underground who might be righteously grateful to us and therefore boost our rankings."
"Excellent tactics, my man!" said Malvern, punching his fist in his open palm. "So let's just fall to sampling, shall we? How many stomachs is Weeble packing now?"
"Five, in addition to his baseline digestive one."
"Man, if I had your kind of money ... Okay, lemme see ... Cut a tendril from that kinesthetically active goo, snatch a sample from that wading-pool of sushi-barf . . . and, whoa, check the widget that the babe here is clutching."
From one contorted corpse-mitt peeked a gel-based pocket lab. Malvern popped the datastorage and slipped the honeycolored hockey puck into his capacious scabbing vest. With a murmured apology, Fearon pressed the tip of his samplingstaff to the woman's bloated skull and pneumatically shot a tracer into the proper cortical depths. Weeble fastidiously chomped the mass of gray cells. The prize slid safe into the pig's gullet, behind a closing gastric valve.
They triumphantly skulked from the reeking, cracking highrise, deftly avoiding police surveillance and nasty streetspatters of gutter-goo. Malvern's getaway car rushed obediently to meet them. While Malvern slid through traffic, Fearon dispensed reward treats to the happy Spike and Weeble.
"Mal, you set to work dredging that gel-drive, okay? I'll load all these tissue samples into my code-crackers. I should have some preliminary results for us by, uhm . . . well, a week or so."
"Yeah, that's what you promised when we scored that hot jellyfish from those Rasta scabs in Key West."
"Hey, they used protein-encrypted gattaca! There was nothing I could do about that."
"You're always hanging fire after the coup, Fearon. If you can't unzip some heavy-duty DNA in your chintzy little bedroom lab, then let's find a man who can."
Fearon set his sturdy jaw. "Are you implying that I lack biotechnical potency?"
"Maybe you're getting there. But you're still no match for old Kemp Kingseed. He's a fossil, but he's still got the juice."
"Look, there's a MarthaMart!" Fearon parried.
They wheeled with a screech of tires into the mylar lot around the MarthaMart and handed the car to the bunnysuited attendant. The men and their animals made extensive use of the fully shielded privacy of the decon chambers. All four beings soon emerged as innocent of contaminants as virgin latex.
"Thank goodness for the local franchise of the goddess of perfection," said Fearon contentedly. "'hipper will have no cause to complain of my task-consequent domestic disorder! Wait a minute. . . . I think she wanted me to buy something."
They entered the brick-and-mortar retail floor of the MarthaMart, Fearon racking his enhanced memory for Tlipper's instructions, but to no avail. In the end he loaded his wiry shopping basket with soda bottles, gloop cans, some recycled squip, and a spare vial of oven-cleaning bugs.
The two scabs rode home pensively. Malvern motored off to his scuzzy bachelor digs, leaving Fearon to trudge with spousal anxiety upstairs. What a bringdown from the heights of scab achievement, this husbandly failure.
Fearon faced an expectant Topper as he reached the landing. Dismally, he handed over the shopping bag. "Here you go. Whatever it was you wanted, I'm sure I didn't buy it." Then he brightened. "Got some primo mutant brainmass in the pig's innards, though."
Five days later, Fearon faced an irate Malvern. Fearon hedged and backfilled for half an hour, displaying histo- printouts, some scanning-microscope cinema, even some corny artificial-life simulations.
Malvern examined the bloodstained end of his ivory toothpick. "Face defeat, Fearon. That bolus in the feedline was just pfisteria. The tendril is an everyday hybridoma of liana, earthworm, and slime mold. As for the sushi puke, it's just the usual chemosynthetic complex of abyssal tubeworms. So cut to the chase, pard. What's with those explosively ultra-smart cortical cells?"
"Okay, I admit it, you're right, I'm screwed. I can't make any sense of them at all. Wildly oscillating expressioninhibition loops, silent genes, jumping genes, junk DNA that suddenly reconfigures itself and takes control-I've never seen such a stew. It reads like a Martian road map."
