Accelerating Returns
By Peter Anthony
Copyright © 2011 Peter Anthony
All rights reserved.
Front Jacket Photograph by Ernesto Jara
www.flickr.com/photos/viernest/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Books written by Peter Anthony can be obtained either through the author’s official website:
www.peteranthonybooks.com
or through select, online book retailers.
Inspired by Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Bill Joy's Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, and Hugo de Garis' The Coming Artilect War.
Chapter 1. Respirocytes - 2008
In a stolen Chevy Silverado, Judith shadowed an unmarked delivery truck that was hauling chimpanzees through Portland en route to Seattle, where Brio-Nano, Incorporated would carry out testing on a new drug in development.
She guided the Silverado toward downtown Portland. She and her husband had scouted the Sunset Highway to find the ideal location for the crash. Near downtown, where the highway emerged from a tunnel and entered the city, stood a short concrete barrier that would buttress an impact. On the other side of the barrier were the resources for terror: apartment complexes, civilians, public parks.
The Brio-Nano delivery truck traveled in the right lane. Two lanes to the left, Judith mirrored the truck, leaving a gap between the vehicles. She rehearsed the plan in her head one last time. She could not miss. It required terrible precision.
Groans came from the back seat. Behind her, the owner of the Silverado sat bound and gagged on the seat. Judith smiled at the man over her shoulder.
"Don't worry. This will be over soon. You know, you should be happy. To me, you'll be a hero. Even after what you did to those kids. All you have to do is lay there and wait. It's quite a feeling to be helpless, isn't it?" She shook her head and put a mouth-guard over her teeth. She chomped down on the molded rubber. "Awful feeling."
The previous day, while the man was dozing at home, Judith darted him with sedatives and thereby hired him as a stooge for her cause. The man was a sex-offender who evaded prison on an appeal, but his despicable status in the public eye made him a fine scapegoat. Already reviled, the man was a placeholder, a body to be found at the scene to stir up the media and confuse police. Her only concern was respirocytes. The first few minutes of media coverage delivered the truth, or a version of the truth. For Judith, the perfect accidental terrorist was the pariah of modern times: the pedophile. The public accepted this as a unanimous object of scorn. He was positioned in the back seat with his neck pinned to a block of wood, so that the whiplash upon impact would break him. Gauze covered his mouth to catch any superfluous evidence.
The tunnel neared.
Coming from the west, both vehicles descended the steep hill that led into downtown Portland. Judith looked over at the driver of the Brio-Nano truck, who was slumped over his steering wheel and singing along with the radio. The poor hump did not deserve this. His downfall was his reliability. Every day, he kept a perfect schedule, hitting the tunnel at 4:45 AM, enjoying the vacant highway, making his Brio-Nano deliveries of specimens and equipment. Today's payload was unique. A tip from the Broker notified Judith and Isaac two weeks ahead of time. Still, the delivery driver was innocent. Judith forced herself to look away from the man before he became a human being instead of collateral damage.
She put on a crash helmet, pulled a dark plastic shield down over her eyes, and gripped the steering wheel with gloved hands just as both vehicles entered the quarter-mile concrete tunnel where the yellow, incandescent light permeated the air. Judith felt an adrenaline cocktail filling her bloodstream. A ray of dawn shined through the other side of the tunnel. Soon she would see the signal to turn the steering wheel. Mount Hood would appear, followed by the Portland skyline, and when the top of the Wells Fargo bank tower came into view, that was her signal to turn a hard right.
Her muscles tensed when the first glimpse of skyline became visible. The concrete curtain started to lift, unveiling the world to Judith as her Silverado neared the exit of the tunnel.
A gray morning sky came into view and she waited to see the top of the Wells Fargo building. Her pulse bounded as the tower rose to meet her eyes.
She cranked the one-ton Silverado ninety degrees, crossed three lanes of empty highway, and aimed for the delivery truck. The man in the back seat wailed as the tires of the pickup squealed. Judith gunned the engine to six thousand RPMs. The Silverado hurtled like a bull into the side of the delivery truck. Before the impact, Judith saw fear in the face of the delivery driver, and the reflection of the leaping Silverado in his driver-side window.
The collision jarred Judith's jaw, but the airbags and the seatbelt kept her in place. The Silverado gored the side of the delivery truck, stopping both vehicles, pinning them against the barricade in a T-bone collision. Judith unfastened her seatbelt as the airbag deflated. As expected, the man in the back seat now was now the man in the front seat, prone in the Silverado windshield. She grabbed his head. In one quick movement, she rammed the man's face upward, into the windshield, slamming him hard enough to ensure that blood stuck to the broken glass. The body slumped back onto the console. Phase one complete - Judith abandoned the Silverado.
On the pavement outside, her boots crunched on broken glass, she noticed the delivery driver, but then looked away. Wild screaming came from the chimpanzees trapped inside the truck body.
Without hesitating, Judith ripped open a Velcro pocket on her vest. She pulled out a veterinarian's intravenous gun and a custom tool made for the job - a handheld plasma torch - shipped to her from the Broker. The beam of the plasma torch cut through the padlock on the rear door, making butter of the steel. She put the padlock into her pocket, taking it with her. When she opened the doors of the truck, a chimpanzee jumped out, into her arms and scratched at her face, but with her helmet on she was impervious to the assault. To subdue the chimpanzee, she squeezed and twisted its testicles, which took the fight out of it. She set the chimpanzee on the pavement, turned his head to the side, and jabbed the intravenous gun into his neck. After pumping the liquid into the bloodstream, Judith grabbed the chimpanzee by the arm and threw him over the barricade, down the embankment, toward the apartment complexes. In a one-step leap, Judith was inside.
The body of the truck contained square cages bolted directly to the walls, like a poultry hauler. Inside, the cages raged with scared and screaming apes. Some of the chimpanzees died from the impact, but most hopped around with excitement or nursed minor wounds. Judith operated quickly, thoroughly, without emotion, moving from cage to cage and inserting the needle into each animal's neck. She administered to each one hundred milligrams of a new Brazilian street-drug, Hallucaline. The drug was known as God's Creator due to the incredible strength it delivered to its users. The mix of hallucinogens and adrenaline pumped Herculean strength and delusions of infallibility into the body and mind. A growing number of murders in the favelas, the slums of Rio, were directly connected to the drug Hallucaline. Judith added sedative to stall the instantaneous effects of the drug. The chimpanzees screamed and raked the cage walls as Judith stabbed them with the needle. Stick and move, stick and move. Twenty-six chimpanzees had been riding in the Brio-Nano truck. The twenty-two chimpanzees t
hat were still alive all received a taste of God's Creator.
Before Judith jumped out of the truck, she opened all of the cages. The sedative took effect immediately. The chimpanzees did not react to their freedom, but licked their wounds. With languid eyes they watched Judith as she moved around them.
A car passed the scene without stopping. While she waited for the road to clear, she grabbed four chimpanzees by the arms, two in each hand, and carried them outside of the truck. She heaved each of the chimpanzees over the barricade into the residential area. She shut the rest of the animals inside the truck, even snapping a new padlock onto the door, to keep the drowsy chimpanzees from escaping until police arrived.
As she closed the door, a motorcycle screamed down the highway toward her, skidding to a stop at the scene of the accident. The motorcyclist waved to Judith. It was her husband, Isaac. She jumped on the seat behind him and the Honda fled the scene, into downtown Portland.
Isaac drove only a few blocks past the exit ramp before turning left into an underground residential parking garage. He accessed the ramp using a stolen entrance pass and parked the motorcycle in a handicapped parking spot, where they stripped their outer layer of clothing off, except for the leather gloves. Judith removed the tear-away Velcro pocket from the vest she had on. The pocket of evidence contained the padlock, the gag, and assorted incriminating evidence. Isaac collected the clothing and deposited it down a garbage chute, which fell to a large dumpster on another level of the parking garage. The two of them walked, did not run, toward a parked Acura SUV with tinted windows. They wore black pants, long-sleeve shirts, and had not yet removed the motorcycle helmets, wearing them in case they had missed a closed-caption camera during their scouting.
Isaac said, "Care to drive?"
Judith did not answer as she opened the passenger-side door, indicating she was riding. Once they were both inside the vehicle, Isaac dimmed the windows to full-tint with the touch of a button. Only then did Judith remove her helmet.
"You look tired," Isaac said.
"You'd be tired too if you did anything," answered Judith.
"If I had done anything?" Isaac scoffed. "Please."
The Acura crawled out of the parking garage and drove back onto Highway 26, in the opposite direction of the accident. They drove slowly down the Sunset highway to gawk at the crash. Only one police car and a news van from Good Day, Oregon! had arrived on the scene so far.
The sight of twisted steel on the road made their ride to the coast a quiet one.
Judith said, "Let's take it slow getting out there. Follow the speed limit the whole way."
"Yes, sir," said Isaac.
Before they reached the coast, Judith and Isaac switched cars and changed clothing again. The ocean came into view, and they turned down a wooded dirt road toward a beach house tucked away in the bluffs near Depoe Bay, a small town on the overcast coast. They entered the house and walked out onto the balcony, and only then did they speak.
On a small balcony that faced the Pacific Ocean, Judith and Isaac watched a gray whale surface in the morning light.
"There's another one," said Judith, pointing her finger.
"Where? I missed it."
"You have to be quick."
Isaac laughed. "I was quick today."
"Keep your voice down."
Isaac argued, "Oh for God sakes, Judith, we're out in the middle of nowhere."
She ignored his argument and remained silent for a moment. Looking out at the water she said, "Let's say no more about it. We have no need to bring up the topic. It is out of our hands now."
"Fine," Isaac said. "Well, can we at least watch the news and see how it's being handled?"
"Let's watch."
"Are you ok?"
"I keep thinking about the delivery driver."
"Casualties are part of the deal," Isaac said. "It's bound to happen."
"I know."
"Longstreet warned us. About these...regrets."
"It's kind of hard the first time."
"I understand." Isaac put his hand on her shoulder.
"Leave me alone."
Isaac left, departing the balcony and going inside the house to watch the network news. After a while, Judith changed her clothing again and returned outside in the cool air, wearing only a sports bra and dark pants. To ease her mind, she watched the ocean closely, hoping to catch another glimpse of a whale breaching. She felt tightly wrapped. When she moved her elbows on the railing, her back and arms flexed but never relaxed.
Isaac changed channels, making sure that all of them were reporting on the events in Portland as they unfolded. After iterating through the channels and confirming that every major news organization was talking about Brio-Nano, he put up his feet and settled on CNN. The breaking news came in haphazard bits, thrown together as the program cut from one correspondent to the next, with each frantically reporting whatever byte they managed to glean from policemen or excited Portlanders.
The news program cut to the studio where the CNN anchor wore a stern face.
"In the last few minutes, correspondent Andrea Sampson has learned more about events unfolding at the scene of the accident."
Judith turned away from her whale-watching and entered the house. Isaac said nothing more to Judith as they absorbed the breaking news.
"Yes, James, this is a live shot from the scene of the accident on Highway twenty-six, just outside of downtown Portland. You can see detectives and forensics teams are combing the area where twenty-two animals escaped from an overturned Brio-Nano delivery truck. So far we have learned that both drivers are dead. As far as injuries to police and fire personnel, two firefighters and one paramedic are severely injured. A Brio-Nano spokesperson has just issued a statement to the press regarding what was being transported inside the truck. We also have footage from NBC that we will now play for the first time. The scenes you are about to see were recorded by a camera mounted in one of the first police cruisers to arrive on the scene."
"Thank you, Andrea." The footage began to roll as the anchor narrated. His voice wavered at certain points as the firefighters secured the scene surrounding the wreckage of the Chevy Silverado and the Brio-Nano truck.
"As you can see, the firemen approach the accident and first check for bodies in the vehicles. One body was found in the delivery truck, and one body found in the Chevy Silverado. The pickup is registered to a man named Arne Calderon, as we mentioned a moment ago, who is known to many in Portland from his trial and acquittal last year. At the outset, the accident appears to be a routine cleanup for the firefighters. But if you listen to the background noise, there is wild screaming and thuds coming from inside the body of the delivery truck. At this point the firefighters call for additional police support. Two additional police cars are then dispatched. Here you can see the EMS staff gathering around while one firefighter prepares to cut the padlock on the rear door of the truck to look for other victims of the accident."
Isaac said, "They only sent three squad cars to the scene?"
"Shh!"
The anchor paused for a moment as the firefighter cut the lock. The rear door of the truck flew open and a pile of chimpanzees lunged out, exposing to the world the research being conducted by Brio-Nano on non-human primates. Five chimpanzees swarmed and tackled the firefighter who cut the lock. The other chimpanzees scattered, climbing on and attacking the other police officers and firefighters. A chimpanzee tore and ripped through one firefighter's clothing. Some of the firefighters and paramedics stood stunned, frozen in their shoes, until the chimpanzees came after them. They turned to run, but fleeing only encouraged pursuit. Two firefighters tried to free the tackled firefighter who had cut the lock, but he fell down. Bright red arterial blood spilled onto the pavement. The screams of the chimpanzees grew more shrill and vicious. Another
firefighter toppled under the weight of several animals. The firefighters knocked chimpanzees to the ground with pipes and the butt-end of axes, but the animals bounced back to their feet and took another hit, and did it again.
The footage continued, the news anchor cleared his throat several times as he was overcome with distress watching the maniacal horror. As the melee overwhelmed a third paramedic, the police officer in command ordered weapons to be drawn. Thirty round clips were emptied into the chimpanzees. Tasers and pepper spray were employed. Everything in the standard-issue police arsenal was used on the animals. In a matter of two minutes, all of the chimpanzees lay dead, wounded, or beaten to submission.
The injured firefighters and the paramedic gasped on the ground. The bleeding paramedic, who wore the least amount of protective clothing, sprayed red onto the street and rolled in lacerated agony. In the aftermath, the firefighters and paramedics attended to the wounded. Two paramedics who never left the ambulance rushed out into the highway to give emergency care.
Police officers moved toward the door of the truck to ensure that no more chimpanzees waited inside. The door had swung shut again. They had to pull it open once more to look inside. Police officers reloaded their weapons and counted to three. The officer with his hand on the door tossed a tear-gas container inside. The door slammed shut again, letting the tear gas steam the truck body. Officers stood with their weapons at the ready position, nervously waiting for another animal to emerge. The first officer yelled, "I hear something wheezing." The two other officers on the scene stopped assisting the wounded momentarily, and drew their sidearms.
"Let's waste the rest," an officer said, his jaw set tight, eyes begging for revenge. With another count to three, the officers gathered in a firing line and waited.
The officer threw the door open.
Three bloodied chimpanzees limped out of the truck and fell gasping to the pavement. Sixty rounds entered the three animals. The officers fired with reckless abandon, sounding like popcorn. One of the officers said, "Cease fire!" He waved an open hand in front of his face. "Let's get a head count of these things. Get on the radio."
The CNN anchor said, "As you heard the policeman say, 'Let's get a count of these animals.' The company who owned the truck, Brio-Nano, has told us that the truck carried twenty-six chimpanzees. It appears that four chimpanzees died in the crash. Eighteen were killed in the shootout with the police, leaving four unaccounted for. As you've heard from our reports over the last hour, all but one of those chimpanzees have been captured or killed, but in the process three dogs and a child have fallen prey to these animals."
Isaac looked at Judith, "Necessary casualties, Judith."
"Do you enjoy knowing that they were hurt?"
"What do you want me to say?" asked Isaac. "This is it, baby, this is what we signed up for. You talked me into this life."
She looked at the TV and folded her arms.
The anchorman continued. "The Brio-Nano spokesperson confirmed that the chimpanzees were being tested with a new technology called respirocytes. From our own science department, we've been told that respirocytes are manufactured molecules refined by Brio-Nano, Inc. These molecules are injected into the blood stream to increase the body's effective usage of oxygen. It is said that a respirocyte molecule can use oxygen two hundred percent more efficiently than natural blood cells. Preliminary speculation from our science team believes that these molecules, when combined with the natural adrenaline produced by the crash, gave the chimpanzees strength well beyond that of an untreated chimpanzee. We will have more on this from our chief science correspondent over the next hour, and to be sure, for quite some time to come, since this topic appears to be much larger than what we've seen in this tragedy this morning."
"Exactly as planned," said Isaac. "A perfect block. Everyone will be talking about manufactured molecules now."
"Enough. Not another word about it," Judith chastised. "This is just the beginning. And we need to start studying for the next job."
Isaac leaned back in his chair, "Oh come on. Can't we relax for one day?"
Judith glared at Isaac. "Don't ever tell me to relax."
"Damn it, we should be celebrating."
She stood rigid but gradually softened as his words sunk in. "You're right." She lifted her hands up and then let them fall to her sides. "You're right." Easing, she breathed slowly to quit her racing thoughts, but then remembered the face of the driver. "Yes, everything went well. Except for the dead."
"For whom the bell tolls. Don't think about it."
"Now, see," Judith said, putting her hands up, "it's comments like that. It's just..."
"What?"
"It just makes me wonder about your seriousness in this project."
Isaac said, "Oh, you've got to be joking."
"I'm not."
"Well, I feel like joking. I feel like celebrating. Let's pop the champagne."
He jumped off the couch and ran to the refrigerator in the kitchen, fished out a cold bottle of champagne, and aimed the cork at Judith.
"Watch out!" The cork popped, and she barely dodged it.
Isaac took a long drink. "Breakfast of champions." Champagne bubbled over onto the floor as he drank directly from the bottle.
"I married an idiot."
"You have another husband?" He grabbed Judith, threw his arms around her, picked her up, and spilled champagne on her tattoo. He kissed her, and finally, she relented.