It didn’t matter what he said, they were afraid. Even more so now that they knew he wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill disgruntled employee out for revenge. At least that was something they knew about. They were afraid not so much because of the prospect of what might happen next, but because they were being shaken out of their familiar routine.
“I’ve been working on a project for the past three years that has enormous potential for the company.”
A few of them relaxed at this. Fine, let them think this was an overly theatrical presentation for a new product. Anything to keep them from panicking.
“One of the side-products of this research is a new kind of biopolymer with properties and applications previously unheard of. My colleagues and I have discovered that it has the ability to replace all our electrical and fiber optic lines with biological conduits, removing the need for an interface between your multi-brains and the transmission lines they manage.”
Some of the accountants murmured with approval, but most still had that “What does this have to do with me?” look on their faces.
“While this is a very exciting development, and will, I’m sure, dramatically boost speed and productivity in the long run, there is bound to be a period of adjustment and for a while things may be... well, a little crazy.”
The accountant who had spoken before said, “When is the new network coming online?”
Hector glanced at his watch. It had been about fifteen minutes since he left the apartment, but without knowing the rate at which the blue poly was spreading, it was impossible to say how soon the change would become noticeable. But Slatermeyer had said that Helix had exposed the wiring to the blue poly just before he got to Hector’s apartment, so the stuff had about fifteen to twenty minutes to spread before he checked the network. He finally shrugged and said, “Some time in the next eight hours, I think, maybe as soon as a half hour from now.”
“Today?” exclaimed a tall, red-haired woman towards the back of the office. The man in the teal suit wrinkled his brow. “We didn’t get any memo on this.”
Hector shook his head. Other people were starting to add their two-cents worth. “We always get a memo,” said the red-haired woman.
A young woman in a pale yellow suit shook a pile of mylar forms in her fist. “We don’t have time for this. We have to get the quarterly reports done!”
“We’ve always had at least two weeks notice before an upgrade. Nothing is backed up,” said a man sporting perfect hair and a red an blue striped tie.
“Yeah, what’s the big idea, coming in here and jumping up on a desk like that? Why are you telling us this? Why didn’t we get a memo?” demanded a heavy woman with bobbed chestnut-brown hair.
“There’s no time for a memo. Please everyone, stay calm. Everything will be alright if you just stay calm. The blue biopolymer was introduced to the building’s electrical system by... accident,” he said. No sense telling them about Helix and the other tetras just yet. They’d find out about them soon enough.
“By accident!” cried the woman in the yellow suit, slamming her mylar forms down on a nearby desk.
“Yes, by accident.” Hector raised his voice over their restless grumbling. “Now to start with, we should try to back-up everything we can. You,” he pointed at the balding man in the teal suit. “Assemble a team and get them started backing up your files. You,” he pointed at the woman in the yellow suit. “Contact as many of the other departments as you can. Tell them the system may be offline for a while, tell them to back up their records, and have them spread the word too. If we act quickly, we may be able to save most of the company’s records.”
“This stuff is going to wipe out the records?” said chestnut haired woman in alarm.
“There’s no telling what it might do,” said Hector.
oOo
Helix looked at Chango, shrugged, and crawled out of her body suit. Chango crouched at the edge of the tank, back bowed, legs braced to take Helix’s weight as she stepped on top of her and got her upper fingers around the edge of the tank. Helix pulled herself up with her arms and hooked her feet on the edge, teetering on the rim of the tank before carefully lowering herself into the waters. Their touch as they surrounded her was different from the waters of the vats. There was a different quality to the currents, a busyness, a subtle hum of activity. It tingled on her skin like a light electrical charge, increasing as she drifted closer to the brain. Now that she was in the waters, she could see it much more clearly, the fine crenelations everywhere on its surface, swirling like smoke rings, like wandering riverbeds of thought. She hesitated, then reached tentative fingers to trace the ridges. The texture of the brain was pulpy like an agule, but soft; yielding, delicate. Steady state polymer prices were up ten points, morphables were down five, she thought, only it wasn’t her thinking it. The garage was at seventy-five percent capacity, electrical usage was nearing ten-thousand units, and the production rates for vats 57, 19, 40 and 28 were sixty percent below quota. There was some connection between these things, some design hidden in their juxtaposition, but it escaped her. She cradled the brain in her hands, squeezing lightly to get its attention, but the stream of thoughts continued, temperatures and humidity levels and payroll activity and personnel changes. There was so much of it; streams of figures marching through her mind like an advancing army, relentless. This wasn’t anything like the experiences she’d had with the other Lilim; nonverbal conversations in her mind. Conversation was impossible, because beyond the ceaseless activity of the brain, the sorting and collating and adjusting, there was no who to talk to. Like a fish swimming upstream, Helix struggled against the flow of information, working her awareness down towards the stem and its interface. oOo
Once he had all the accountants busily backing up files and contacting other departments, Hector decided to try his luck and call Lilith again. To his amazement, she answered right away. “Now look,” he said, before she could hang up. “If you can talk to Helix, another queen, you can talk to me. It’s my mind you hatched yourself out of, after all.”
“That’s true,” she said, “but you are not a Lilim, you are a human being, and you work for GeneSys.”
He shook his head. “No. I haven’t been working for GeneSys for quite some time. Since you were created, I’ve done nothing but try to figure out a way for you to survive, and you’ve done nothing to help me. Now Helix said she was going up to the top of the tower, where the main systems brain is. She said something about taking over GeneSys.”
“Yes. GeneSys is our enemy, it stands in our way. If we are to survive it must fall.”
“I don’t understand,” said Hector. “How is her going up there going to accomplish that?” Alarm suddenly gripped him. “She’s not going to destroy the brain, is she? That would-”
“No,” Lilith interrupted, shaking her head at his ignorance. “Of course not. We would never hurt the brains. They are related to us after all, through you, who created them. The brains listen to us, they like us better than you humans because we can communicate with them directly, through touch.”
“Through touch.”
“Yes,” she said, as if it should be obvious. “The same way we Lilim communicate with each other, through our skin. You always wondered why my daughters didn’t pick up spoken language as quickly as I did. It’s because they don’t need it.”
Hector sat back, taking that in. They communicated through touching each other. No wonder they were always snuggling and cuddling together. He thought it had been for security. How stupid of him. He suddenly realized he’d been overlooking something else as well. Lilith was not speaking to him from the office. She was in her vat. Over her shoulder he saw one of her daughters float by. “How — how are you talking to me?”