Double Helix Ch. 06

"What would we use this network for?" Wendy asked.

Stan shrugged. "We would communicate. Find out more about the world and about each other."

"We could work on a way to start getting genemods out of the country again," Nock said.

Stan pointed at him. "Yes! Yes. It would allow us to exchange ideas, come up with new strategies. There are over a quarter million genemods living overseas right now and most of those have been voluntarily funding the agency. I know that they would jump at the chance to do more to help us, and this wouldn't cost them anything."

"So what's the risk?" Sasha asked. "You know that what you would be doing is illegal, right? How do you keep it hidden? And," she added before Stan could speak, "don't think I didn't notice the bit about contacting people on the outside, Stan. We'll have a talk later, I assure you."

"Yes, it's illegal," Stan said, looking uncomfortable under Sasha's scrutiny. "Encrypted internet traffic is outlawed in the United States except by special exemption. Enforcement is fairly lax, though. Unless they were looking for it, no one is going to notice."

"But there is a risk," she reiterated.

"A small one," Stan said. "I think it is acceptable, considering the gains. And, like I said, the agency can get to work on building their own network, maybe a mesh network, to bypass the internet entirely."

"So what is it going to take to make this happen?" Nock said.

"Just time and effort," Stan answered. "I'll need to create client and server software to handle the communication. Probably a couple months."

"I like it," Wendy said, and was echoed by most of the people in the room.

"I need more than your assurances of 'lax enforcement'."

I looked over at Tilly, who was staring at the pad in intense concentration. I wondered what she could be thinking of. She looked at me and then over at Stan. "Have you thought about using IP spoofing?"

Stan, who had been in conversation with Nock, looked around for a moment, trying to figure out who had spoken. His gaze settled on Tilly. "IP spoofing? No, that wouldn't be of much use here. We need two-way communication."

Tilly's brow furrowed slightly. "No, listen. Think of it how NAT works to resolve IP addresses. We could spoof with an algorithm that is known at both endpoints."

Stan opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. He nodded slowly a few times. "Okay, I think I see what you mean. The IP address gets modified in a way that can be decoded by the other endpoint. Kind of like having an encryption key pair, but instead we have a spoofing key pair."

"We would want to generate new address translation keys at known intervals."

Stan snapped his fingers. "So we perform our spoof with a key that changes at set intervals and in ways only someone with the correct algorithm can anticipate. The proxy on other end undoes the spoof and sends responses back to the correct source. So the traffic we send out is spoofed and cannot be traced back, and the traffic coming back originates outside the United States. We can't be held responsible for what some server overseas tries to send to us, right?" He laughed. "This is going to drive the spooks in the NSA crazy if they ever stumble across it."

Everyone by now was staring at Tilly.

"What?" she asked.

I cleared my throat. "So, back to the topic," I said. "Would that help with the risk?"

"Definitely," Stan said. "I'll have to work to refine the idea some, but it should hold up. It should be very difficult to determine where the traffic is coming from."

I leaned to my left, getting my face close to Tilly's to whisper. "How did you know that?"

She spoke in the same low tone. "I had a broad education from an early age. I told you Kelly gave me the same neuro-enhancement as your sister."

"Sure, but you said it was for these simulations your brain runs."

Tilly's mouth curved slightly. "I never said that's all it was for."

It was close to the time for my chat with Kelly McNally, so I claimed the computer before someone else got on it. I thought about having Tilly stay, but decided I needed some time with Kelly to myself, assuming it was even the right Kelly. I had a lot of questions to ask her and I wanted to prepare her for what had happened to Tilly. I found the chat room and logged in. It was currently empty, so I sat back to wait.

When the rest of the room got up to watch TV, Tilly went back to her room. After she was gone, I looked back down at the screen to see a single line of text from user km593. "I'm shocked. You did show up. Now tell me how I can know you're telling the truth. I get crap on CC all the time."

It took me a moment to realize that 'CC' meant 'Career Connect'. "Is this chat private?" I typed.

"It's as private as we're going to be able to get."

"Hold on while I confirm that." I called to Stan, "Can you come here a sec'?"

I explained what I needed. Stan opened a command line over my interface and typed out some incomprehensible strings of text. After a few moments, several more lines of text scrolled up.

"Yeah, it's a privately-owned chat server and it's definitely in Hong Kong," he said. "You're already routing through the Bangkok proxy. Should be safe."

I nodded. "Thanks." I started typing again. "Okay, the server checks out. As I'm sure you know by now, I'm contacting you regarding Tilly. She's here with me."

"How is she?"

"She's safe. I can't tell you where we are." "I understand. I haven't seen her in seven years. I've been so worried. Can I speak to her?"

"I'm not sure she's ready for that," I typed. Now we came to it. "She's had some kind of trauma. I'm sorry to tell you this, but she tried to commit suicide a few days ago."

There was another long pause, then, "That isn't possible. Look, you must have made some kind of mistake. I've taken a huge risk just speaking to you. Good bye."

I began to type a response, but McNally had already logged off. I slapped my hand down on the desk in frustration, getting a startled look from Nissi and Nock. Closing my connection, I got up and went over to sit next to Nissi on the floor in front of the couch. They were watching a Sherlock Holmes movie, BBC-made by the look of it. She clasped hands with me and I kissed her bare shoulder.

"You okay?" Nissi whispered into my ear.

"Sorry for that," I said. "I just tried to contact the researcher who designed Tilly. It didn't go well. I think she thought I was lying."

"Wow, good idea, though. Don't worry, you'll figure out a way to help her."

After the movie, we spent the night together in Nissi's room, this time digging deeply into her blues collection. Sex followed inevitably from there, somewhere in the middle of "Georgia on My Mind", sung by Ray Charles. The sweet melancholy of the song inspired slow, luxurious lovemaking. The feel of Nissi's body beneath me, enfolding me, was so powerful and so perfect. No words could have sufficed, but I told her anyway how much she meant to me. We made love long into the night, and I fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.

After an early shower, I met Wendy for my T'ai Chi lesson, which we had moved into the main room a few days earlier. The reason for that was that she had finally deemed me ready to begin sparring. Our "mat" was the thick rug that normally sat in front of the television, but dragged over to the empty space near the bottom of the stairs. It had taken me most of the first day to get it out of my head that I had to be careful because she was so much smaller than me. She wanted to focus on defense first, and though her strikes were light and controlled, any hesitation from me she took as an opportunity to show me exactly what would happen if I held back in a real fight. It still amazed me whenever she managed to throw me to the ground.

Tilly joined us for lunch, but was subdued and said little, even when Stan tried to engage her in conversation about his network project. After lunch, I went out to work in the greenhouse. I didn't ask Tilly to go with me. I thought it best to break that routine for now.

I had to work a shift that night, so as soon as I came back in from outside, I had to get myself ready and head for the hospital. Nissi stopped me for a kiss. "Have a good day at work, hon'," she said. "And be careful." She always said that when I went out. At first, I had tried to assuage her fears about being recognized and captured by police, but I knew that she was right to be concerned.

I got home after eleven, as usual, and Nissi spent the night in my room. I was tired from my shift, so the sex was brief and less satisfying than usual. I woke when Nissi got up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom. I looked over at her exquisite form outlined in the light filtering in from round the door as she pulled a robe around herself. The sight got me hard, despite being half asleep. I was on my back and dozing when she got back, but instead of sliding under the covers next to me, she peeled them back and wrapped a hand around my cock. I was fully awake now.

"Do over," she said.

"What was that?"

"I want a do over," Nissi said, and climbed on top of me. She faced away from me, giving me a lovely view of her cute ass. I sighed in pleasure as she began to ride me, her head thrown back and moaning each breath. After a few strokes, she paused, resettling herself. "Never done it this way," she explained.

"It's kind of hot," I said. "And very naughty." I relaxed, enjoying the exquisite feel of our bodies' intersecting pleasure, letting her do the work.

A sound to my left made me turn my head and I saw movement. Nissi had neglected to close the door completely and I had briefly glanced a figure looking in at the crack between door and frame. The surprise was enough to take me out of the moment, but Nissi seemed not to have noticed. She picked up her pace, riding me quickly to her own climax.

"You didn't come, did you?" she asked, neatly turning around without letting my cock slip out of her.

"I'm fine," I said, smiling. "And I like watching your orgasms."

"Men really do get the short end on that, don't they?" she said. "That's what I've heard, anyway."

I shrugged. "Sometimes it's better than other times."

Nissi disengaged from me so that we could sleep. I made sure to position myself to the open side of the bed. Once I was sure she was deep asleep, I got up and put on a shirt and jeans. I could have waited until morning, but my instincts told me that it was best to address this now, when the event was fresh in our minds.

I went into the hall and quietly opened Tilly's door. It was dark inside. "Hello," I said.

"I'm sorry, Norm," she said, and snicked on a bedside light. She was sitting up in bed in a rumpled nightgown. "I wasn't sure you saw me."

"Why were you watching us?" I asked.

She looked away, chewing her bottom lip. "It's complicated."

I barked a laugh. "It usually is. Talk to me as your therapist, though. Tell me what you were thinking."

She still wouldn't look at me. Her brow furrowed as though she were concentrating intensely. "I hear the two of you, you know, even through the wall there. And my mind, well, I kind of get a fuzzy picture of things."

"You mean sex?"

"Yes. I hate the thought of it, but I feel drawn in at the same time."

Thoughts of her rape came to mind as she said it, but I put them aside. "So you are curious about sex, even though you are repulsed by it."

"Yes. And when I watched you and Nissi through the doorway, I felt things. Terrible things. Wonderful things. It was all too much, and that's when you heard me."

I sensed there was more. "What else?"

"Well, I . . ." Her gaze flitted to my face and then down again. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. "I've been having sexual thoughts about you, Norm. I don't really want to. It just happens." She must have sensed my surprise immediately because she looked up again. "Maybe I shouldn't have told you that."

"When did this start?" I said, and was pleased that my tone sounded neutral and professional. Her statement had shaken me, more than I might have expected.

"After that first time you took me to the greenhouse." She shrugged. "I don't think I was even aware of it at first, but it's been too strong to ignore. I try to keep it under control. When I feel too strongly, the pain and fear start to take over."

"You know that nothing can come of these feelings," I said. She had put me in an awkward place, because denying her emotions was exactly what she should not be doing. On the other hand, I couldn't encourage them.

"I know. I'm sure it's just part of what's wrong with me." But I knew that couldn't be true. What was wrong with her was that she kept her emotions bottled up. That she felt something for me, misplaced or not, came from her, not from her mental disorder. "It would be better for all of you if I just went away."

I wanted to scream at her. She looked up in alarm, no doubt sensing my frustration. I got my anger quickly under control. "I won't have you say things like that," I said. "All of us care about you."

"You do, but you just don't know." She didn't explain further, and rolled over to face away from me. "I'm sorry I disturbed you, Norm. Please go back to bed."

I went back to my room and lay next to Nissi, but sleep was long in coming. The things she had told me disturbed me, but even more distressing were my own thoughts. Tilly did not possess Stansy's immaculate beauty or Nissi's exotic good looks and grace, but she had a kind of honest prettiness that came out once she had begun to brush off the layers of neglect. And she had a sweet personality, but her depression had that in a stranglehold. I had willfully blinded myself to any attraction I might have felt, out of the need for clinical distance. I was attracted to her, and we had an emotional bond that was perhaps unavoidable under the circumstances.

She was raped, I reminded myself, letting the pain of that thought stifle my mind's wanderings and freeze my libido. I had to be careful, especially given her ability to read my emotions.

In the morning, I sparred with Wendy, coming away with only a few new bruises. I checked the profile that I had used to contact Kelly McNally, and she had left me a message. "I've done a lot of thinking, and perhaps I judged too quickly. I would like to speak again about your proposal. 10 PM tonight?" The tone was intentionally vague, but I got her meaning. I promised to meet here there, but then sat back, considering. She had said that she was taking a risk by contacting me. Could she have been found out? Was this a ruse to try to entrap me? I would have to trust in Stan's expertise on this one, because I wasn't going to miss out on another opportunity to talk to Kelly.

That night, I had Stan check my connection and evaluate the server again, scrutinizing it to the best of his abilities. "It's as safe as we can make it," he said. "The text of the chat can still be captured, so try not to say anything too overt if you suspect someone listening in, okay?"

I logged in and waited. User km593 was already on. "Hi," I typed.

There was a pause of several seconds before the response appeared. "Describe her to me."

"She's a little over five feet, brown hair, brown eyes."

"Okay, but tell me what makes her special."

"She's a genemod," I typed. "She can feel what others around her are feeling."

"Oh my God. That has to be her. Anything else you can tell me?"

"She said you were her mother, but not her biological mother. She said that would be a breech of ethics."

"LOL, that sounds just like her. Okay, you've convinced me, but I don't understand what you mean when you say she is suicidal."

"I know. I know it sounds strange. She's told me about how she was made to maximize happiness, but something went wrong. She can barely stand to feel anything right now. I was hoping that you could help me."

"What happened to her?"

I sighed and typed it out. "I'm sorry, Dr. McNally. I don't think I know the whole story, but I do know that your daughter was raped."

"I see." I sat for at least a minute, unsure if I should add anything. I could only imagine what this woman was going through right now at the news I had given her. "Okay," she responded at last. "I want to help. Tell me everything you know." I summarized all the things that I had experienced with Tilly. Kelly sat through it in silence. I came to the end and typed. "So, what do you think?"

"I'm really not sure. Let me see if I can piece together what we know into a workable hypothesis. Damn, this is hard for me to even think about. I suppose it would actually depend on the rapist. For some, it is power they seek. They wish to subvert the victim's will. But for some, rape is more a matter of sadism. They seek to inflict pain and suffering on their victims. If that happened to Tilly, everything would be turned and twisted around. Her torment would fuel the rapist's satisfaction. She would feel his pleasure even as he was torturing her. Her own impulses would then be trying to drive her to ever greater fear and anguish."

I stared at the words in shock and revulsion. Kelly had stopped typing. I imagined that she was trying to deal with the implications of what she had typed, just as I was. I rested my fingers back on the keys. "Could that account for the anger and aggression she displayed?"

"I don't know," Kelly answered. "She should have been able to move past it. But her unwillingness to feel anything might stem from that, to experience such extreme pain and pleasure at the same time. It never even occurred to us that something like this might happen. And it's my fault. I made her this way."

I couldn't think of an adequate response to that, so I typed. "How can we treat this, if that is what happened to her?"

"You said she avoids the trauma. I think she needs to face it. She's been pushed into the same avoidance cycle as any normal human with PTSD experiences, but possibly more severe because she's designed to never have this problem. Believe it or not, that anger you saw might have been her mind's last defense to keep her from recounting the memory of her attack. It's just a thought."

"I will look into what you suggest." It was worth browsing through the psychology texts that Sasha had brought me, anyway.

"Please be careful, though. I know nothing about you, but I feel like I can trust you. She's a very special girl."

"I know," I typed. "And don't blame yourself for making her the way she is."

"I appreciate you saying that. Listen, I have to go. I'm under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. Someone is likely to check in on me any time. I've got some notes that I think I can get out to you shortly. I'll just send to your profile on CC. I will let you know the next time I can talk."

"Thank you for your help, doctor," I started to type, but just like the last time, she had already logged off. I sat behind the screen for some time, thinking through what I had learned. Things were starting to fall into place. If Kelly were right about her rapists, what had happened to Tilly would be terrible, maybe even crippling, to most people. To her, it must have been an absolute nightmare. In a way, it truly had driven her insane, upsetting the very foundation on which her mind had been built. And now, it was my task to overturn her world once again.

I checked my profile and found Kelly's message waiting for me. There was a document attached. "I'm putting a lot of trust in you. What is in here, and the fact that I sent it to you, could put me in prison for life. Please keep it safe."

I downloaded the file to the terminal's local storage and opened it with the file browser. It was a text document, over two hundred pages, but organized with titles and sub-headings. I found it intriguing that Tilly's model drew on aspects of several other gene models. I knew that she possessed the neural enhancement of a G and had guessed at the Standard Upgrade's health and nearly superhuman physique, but she also been given an Edetic's supercharged hippocampus, a Hedonic's dense clusters of pleasure stimulating nerves and modified nucleus accumbens, and on and on.