Mistletoe in my head, Saul thought, but then remembered that plant was poisonous so decided to drop this analogy.
‘It grew too fast – there are imbalances,’ she said.
‘Inevitable – since it responded to mental pressure, and I was under a lot of it. The epiphyte underwent forced growth. What are the dangers?’
She sat back from her consoles, wiping a hand down her face. ‘Epiphyte, yes, quite . . .’ she said, and then continued, ‘The blood supply in your skull is struggling to keep up. You’re growing new capillaries, and the old ones are expanding, but still demand is outstripping supply . . . You’re going to need supplements.’ She stood up and walked over to a cupboard, took out an electrical pill dispenser and began inserting tubes of pills. ‘You’re eating?’
‘There hasn’t been much time to, but, yes, every opportunity I get. I’m always hungry.’
‘To be expected,’ she said. ‘I would say you are near the limit of what your body can handle without further assistance and, frankly, what it’s handling is already beyond the limit of a normal human body. You should be dead by now.’ She was referring to the things he had done to himself before Smith wiped out his original mind. Using nano-machines and tailored viruses, he had upgraded what nature had given him. As a result he healed faster now, adapted faster, his immune system was boosted.
‘Any further growth and any increase in processing will put you in danger of embolism. You are also at the point of diminishing returns, due to cell starvation.’ She finished filling the dispenser and now began programming it.
‘So what can we do?’
‘We can install carotid valves to control the blood pressure in your skull. There are ways of upping your red-corpuscle count, and I can run nutrients straight into your bloodstream. However, the best option would be for you to shunt some of that processing outside yourself.’
‘Which I already do – since a lot of me is now in the computer systems of this station.’ But, of course, he knew that wasn’t what she was talking about.
‘But you’re disconnected from it right now.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s beside the point, anyway. You do run processing outside yourself, but you mirror and map a lot of it inside your organic brain, because you’re translating from machine code to organic processes. Though what you can do outside yourself is becoming increasingly complex, your organic brain is still the control centre.’ She paused, losing her doleful expression to a glint of maniacal enthusiasm, as she always did when venturing to the cutting edge of her research.
‘Exolocation,’ he said, unable to resist second-guessing her.
She turned towards him. ‘Of course, you already know that.’
‘How would you go about it?’ he asked.
‘Do you need to ask?’
‘Yes, because I’ve decided to give you the opportunity to tell me about it.’
‘Big of you.’ She handed over the dispenser.
‘Do go on.’
‘I would take samples of your brain tissue, place them in nutrient-infused aerogel matrices and, through carbon micro-tubules, feed in oxygen and further nutrients.’
‘How would you take out the waste?’
‘With simplified leucocytes and biomechanical kidneys.’
‘And this would work?’
‘There would be failures, which is why I’d first grow maybe three or four samples.’
Saul smiled. It was a thoroughly fascinating prospect: organic extensions to his brain, extra brain mass grown from his own brain tissue and maintained in portable units. He hesitated. There was so much still to do and he now wanted to get back to his room in Tech Central, plug an optic into his skull and get on with it. However, he understood himself well enough to know that his anxiousness to leave stemmed from how vulnerable he felt when unable to connect into the systems around him.
He relaxed, sat back. ‘Take your samples.’
Earth
During World War Two the British government had developed radar here and, during the ensuing cold war, atomic weapons research had been sited here. Throughout World Wars One and Two, and until the nuclear age, a huge amount of bomb development had been conducted here too. Serene felt that her own work here was thoroughly in keeping with this place’s history.
Orford Ness extended parallel to the coast, from what had once been the town of Aldeburgh, but was now one of the big coastal cities incorporating Orford and Leiston on either side. Over the previous century the spit of land had grown, tidal action heaping up more shingle, while concrete rafts and docks were built out to sea to support first the maintenance of the wind farms, then the spread of fish farms. Upon all this, the Complex itself had been built, also bridging inwards to the land.
Serene took her aero over Aldeburgh itself and sucked in a sharp breath at the extent of the devastation, and again resisted the temptation to seek data from Govnet, which, only ten minutes previously, had begun its secure start-up. She would wait until she was within the Complex and able to ensure that any precautions that could be taken were made.
The city’s population had mostly consisted of government employees running the sub Northeast administration, but now it seemed that the only movement visible down there was flocks of ragged gulls scavenging in the bloody streets, or fires eating through the office blocks. However, there would be more movement some time hence. She had already seen hordes of zero assets, from the massive sectors of the Cambridge sprawl, slowly tramping about in the previously forbidden agricultural lands of Mid-Suffolk. She had also seen much similar movement across Essex.
Though there was some damage in the Complex, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the inward city. She noted people gathering on the landward side of the Ness channel, and she wondered if at least some of them might be her missing staff. Certainly, even if they weren’t, she would be needing recruits.
Beyond the Complex, the sea was chequered with decaying fish farms extending all the way out to the ragged towers of wind turbines, for most of which there had been neither the funds nor the inclination to repair. However, five turbines were now working again, powering her Complex now that the Sizewell reactor was down – another precaution she had taken earlier and further affirmation of what now seemed to be her destiny.
Coming in over the aero-port, she circled for a moment while deciding where to land. She could see bloodstains on the carbocrete and, parked off to one side, a forklift with its tines loaded with corpses stacked like logs. Then, as she began her descent, she saw Anderson striding out with two uniformed security staff behind him. For a second she didn’t like that, didn’t like to see him accompanied by armed men. But in the end she must trust, at least to a limited extent, someone. She took her aero down and landed, shut down its engines and headed for the door.
‘You’re gathering data?’ she said as he held out a hand to assist her down from the aero.
‘As we speak,’ he said, looking grim and slightly distracted – probably by a feed issuing from his fones and the implants in his skull. ‘Chairman Messina is gone, along with most of his pet delegates.’
‘What?’
‘We’re still trying to get the story clear . . .’ Anderson paused, and seemed slightly stunned. ‘You said we were hit hard, but I wonder if you know just how hard.’ Once she was down on the carbocrete he gestured inland. ‘All across Earth, it’s the same as what you probably saw over there. We estimate that over two-thirds of the upper Committee Administration, Military, Executive . . . everything . . . dead.’