Dream Drive Ch. 06

"He would never consent to a section," Charles said.

Chi folded her hands under her chin and looked at him. "I know. You asked for wiggle room. That's all I can think of."

Charles left the office. He walked through the hospital, aimlessly. His head was just too busy to pay attention to where he was going. He was weighing the future of the human species against his friend's livelihood.

Four hours later, he made a decision.

****

"Dude, are you sure you want to see my house?" Jackson asked. "It's kinda a shithole."

"That's the third time you've asked me," Charles said, "and we're here already."

They were standing outside Jackson's apartment. Normally, Jackson didn't much care about the chipped paint and the shouts and sounds echoing in his housing block, but today, everything out of place made him wince. There was a lot of wincing.

Charles's clean clothes and neat hair stood out like a flame in a dark cave. He peered around at the surroundings with more curiosity than distaste.

"I'm just glad Westley didn't want to come," Jackson said.

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"I didn't say that," Jackson said. "Come on." He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Jackson had just cleaned three days ago. That meant three days of half-eaten meals and dirty clothes tossed around the floor from his mother. Jackson wove through the short entrance hall, through the living room, and to his room, ignoring the mess. He keyed in the combination for the door and opened it for Charles. "Welcome to the lair."

"The lair?" Charles asked.

"It sounded better inside my head."

Charles stepped into Jackson's room. "At least you keep clean." He scrunched up his nose and shook his head. "What's that smell?"

"The vents in my room are linked to my mom's," Jackson said. "It's sort of permanent. You get used to it."

"You should think about a filter system. They're not pricy, especially with your pay." Charles rotated about the room, then faced him. "How do you live like this?"

Jackson stared back. "Who said anything about living? Also, fuck you."

"Maybe that was too honest."

"Whatever," Jackson said. "I'd rather you just say what you want to say. God, I hate bullshit."

"Me too."

"Want to play a video game?"

"Eh," Charles said. "They're not really my thing."

"Man, you're worse than Westley about some stuff."

Charles looked out Jackson's sole window. The view of the brick wall of the next apartment wasn't much. "...yeah."

Jackson frowned at him. "You okay?"

"Fine. I hope he's enjoying his concert."

"Considering it's his personal hero, he'll probably have a good time," Jackson said. "Alright, let's get some food. Want a beer?"

"I've never drank."

"Never is going to last about ten more minutes, tops."

"Let me rephrase: I don't drink."

Six beers and one large pizza later, Jackson and Charles were crashed on the couch on the living room, sprawled out over the cushions. The alcohol was just enough to drown out the smell - and their concern about the mess surrounding them. Charles had caved into imbibing adult beverages with a surprisingly minimal amount of cajoling.

The TV was showing an infomercial for exercise equipment. It was oddly enthralling in how cheesy it was. "I can't believe people get paid to make this shit," Jackson said. "The commercial. And that piece of shit, too, but mostly the commercial."

Charles shook his head. "This isn't a commercial. It's like a little stage play. They're all actors."

"No shit," Jackson said. "So, is this like your little vision?"

"Vision?" Charles said. "No. It isn't."

"I know. Fifty bucks for a piece of plastic."

"It's a joke," Charles said. "A damn bad joke."

Jackson looked over at his tone. Charles was not as militant as Westley, but he rarely swore.

Charles was not smiling.

"I hate people, Jackson," he said.

"I hate them too, most of the time," Jackson said. "People kinda suck."

"No," Charles said. "I really hate people. I hate us. I hate the human condition. We're ignorant; we're stupid. We're petty. We like to believe that we're looking to the horizon, but we all end up living moment to moment. We're drug addicts riding on pride and greed and war. We're awful fucking creatures. We're like hairless rats, gutting each other for gain. And the worst part is - I'm one of them. I'm one of them."

Jackson wasn't sure how to react. He'd never seen Charles like this, so visibly upset. He'd only had three drinks - but then, maybe that was enough for someone who'd never drunk before.

"So what does that mean?" Charles said. He started gesturing with his hands. "In hating humanity, do I hate myself? Maybe I should hate myself. But is that hate just another human notion, another pathetic expression of a feeling I can't really describe?"

"If it makes you feel any better," Jackson said, "I'm human too."

Charles thumped his hand on the arm of the couch. "You know," he said, "I realized something a while back. We can't survive like this. We aren't good enough. We'll end up destroying ourselves, or worse, we'll start exploring the galaxy, and find some other race, and we'll destroy them. Or they'll destroy us."

"Aliens?" Jackson asked.

"I'm thinking long-term," Charles said. "No one else does, so I have to. I'm thinking in the longest terms. What is the future for all of us as a race? We aren't up to snuff. These muscles and skin and bones -" Charles pinched up the skin on his forearm. "- they aren't good enough. We have to ascend. Transcend. We have to become better than we are.

"There are two methods to accomplish this objective," Charles said. "They're being exsored - I mean, explored, at the same time. You've got virtual reality, and you've got physical augmentation.

"Virtual reality is a lie," he said. "It's an escape into nothingness."

"You think so?" Jackson asked.

"I mean, what's the endgame for the Dream Hub?" Charles said. "We all upload our brains into cyberspace, leave our bodies behind? Then I guess an army of our robot slaves maintains some giant server that houses our preserved mind-patterns."

Jackson felt that he was intended to play the role of devil's advocate. "Well, that would solve our problems," he said. "No more real pain or disease. Everyone gets what they want."

"But it would still be a lie," Charles said. "It wouldn't be reality. We wouldn't have really solved the problem - it's just a really fancy way to run away.

"The only real option is augmentation - using technology to improve what we are. Faster, stronger, smarter, healthier, longer-lived, here in reality. We've created machines to do jobs for us for thousands of years, and the machines are finally good enough that we can begin to improve ourselves. That is the fate of humanity. Research into prosthetics is the first step.

"That's why I need you, Jackson," Charles said. "You're a little different than I am. I'm good with people. I'm good at planning. But I only came to my conclusions after thinking about it for a good long time. You understand it like an instinct - you just get it. If I can put people like us together in one place, we can start to make a difference. That's my role. That is my purpose in life."

"...whoa," Jackson said. "That was intense."

Charles sighed. "I...is my thinking right? Am I doing the right thing? I'm not sure. Is this what we're supposed to do? Or are we supposed to find souls, or something?"

"Nah," Jackson said. "I think you're right. It's like I said before. What the hell is a soul?"

Charles took another long sip from his beer. He pounded it to the table, then wiped his mouth with the back of his suit's sleeve. He focused on the wall behind the TV and stewed in his thoughts.

Jackson let him stew. Sometimes you had to let it be.

****

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Jackson held Westley's hand.

Westley was back in a hospital bed. The machinery hooked into him gave slow, repetitive chirps to mark his pulse. Janet, his old nurse, worked nearby, adjusting one of the monitors.

This time, Westley's body was almost entirely in a cast.

His limo's guidance system had malfunctioned outside the concert hall. It switched the position of roads with buildings. The car had gone careening at high speed straight into a concrete pylon.

He was alive. That was the important thing. But his body might not handle the strain. His heart was weak enough from Marfan's as it was; this might be too much. But he was holding out.

"Jackson," Janet said. She rested a hand on his shoulder. "You've been here for over twenty hours. Let him rest. Let yourself rest."

"I'm fine."

The door opened. It was Charles. His suit was drenched with rain. "I flew back when I heard," he said. He threw his jacket to the side. "Shit."

"Yeah," Jackson said.

Charles looked at him. "Jackson...go get some rest."

Jackson did not release his grip of his friend's sickly-thin fingers. Westley's nails were an off-color; the skin felt cold. So Jackson held his hand, afraid that if he took his warmth away, some connection would be snapped and whatever passed for Westley's soul would die.

"Jackson," Charles said.

"I'm fine!" Jackson shouted.

"You are not fine. I'm taking over."

"He was awake for a bit, earlier," Jackson said. "Before they pumped him with morphine. You know what he said?"

"...what?"

"I asked him why he always wears black," Jackson said. "He said it's because he wanted to look smaller, because he felt like he was too tall, because of the..." Jackson's face tightened. His lips pressed together. He blinked hard, trying to clear the tears out. "I never knew that. I never knew he felt like that. I'm such a fucking asshole."

Charles grabbed Jackson's shoulder. "You need to go get rest. I'll keep watch. If anything happens, you're the first to know."

"But if he -"

"Go. Rest."

Jackson let Westley's hand slide out of his grasp. He stood. And then he left the room.

He went to his private lab. He curled up in the corner and put his head between his legs. Sleep came slowly, but it came.

****

Jackson sat in his room, at home. Charles had dropped him there after the funeral.

He was wearing a black suit. It was his first and only suit. He was wearing black, like Westley always had.

It wasn't fair.

Weren't they going to change things? Weren't they going to make their own future? What had happened? What went wrong?

He shouldn't have laughed at fate. Fate had struck back.

Jackson clenched his head, and leaned over in his chair. It hurt. He'd rather cut out his heart than keep feeling that feeling - an empty rot, twisted into a knot somewhere inside him.

There was no disease to treat to help the pain. No limb to replace. No gift of modern science could help him, now. No talent or insight would ever be good enough.

Jackson raised his head.

Something wasn't right.

His first thought was that it was just part of what hurt him. But it was different. Something had a grip on him. Something wouldn't let go.

Westley couldn't die for no reason. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

****

Jackson kept working on Charles's leg. It felt like the only thing keeping him going, most days.

His pace slowed down. He knew it, Chi knew it, the rest of the team knew it. Charles didn't bring it up. His method was still yards better than anyone else in the lab.

But he was slow enough that the next main production model from the Ransfeld team came out before he finalized the design for Charles's leg. Charles waved off his concerns, saying that Jackson's designs were plenty good enough to be used for the subsequent release, or as an upgrade package.

And then, a week later, Jackson finished his work, and Charles got his new leg.

Fitted with his new prosthetic, Charles had his moment on stage. Westley had most of his song completed; they filled in the blanks, and a solo piano played in the background as Charles unveiled his company's new product line. In a tribute to his late friend, Westley Prudeau, Charles announced new, sweeping support for the Marfan Foundation; 5% of all profits from the prosthetic would go straight to help sufferers of the disease pay for their medical costs.

The Ransfeld Biomechanical Limb System 2.0 was a huge success. Jackson could hardly go a mile through Boston without seeing a billboard monitor showing someone wearing their BLS-2.0 instead of a normal leg. Analysts were twittering about the Ransfeld strategy; rather than repetitive, minor releases, they focused all their efforts into one generational leap forward. The move stood to revolutionize the way prosthetics manufacturers moved through their research and development cycles - less quantity, more quality.

Support for Marfan's briefly went viral. Charles did rounds on daytime television to talk about his charitable efforts and the latest research of Ransfeld International. The company's market share exploded. Jackson's stock options doubled in value in just a few weeks.

There was nothing but good news.

Nothing made it better.

Jackson lost himself in video games and tried to forget the world.

****

A month later, Jackson had been tooling about in the lab when the thought struck him. Well, it didn't strike him as much as he'd hunted through his brain for it with a single-minded obsession.

He remembered holding Westley's cold, clammy hand. And he remembered that the nail beds were discolored. That meant there wasn't enough oxygen getting to his extremities.

That made no sense. He'd been getting oxygen pumped into his lungs, and his heart was under mechanical assistance. The discoloration shouldn't have happened. Janet was right there, monitoring him; she would have raised the alarm.

Jackson latched onto that thought. He didn't dislike Janet - but if her negligence had caused Westley harm, he'd make sure that Charles buried her.

It wasn't really about Janet. It was about a reason. Westley didn't die because of a pair of poorly cast dice somewhere in the fabric of the universe. There was an explanation.

Jackson dug into Westley's medical records, which, strictly speaking, was illegal. But as a top research employee, he had the credentials to access most major computer systems in the Ransfeld network. He could simply walk into a maintenance area and directly hack the servers. Most of the security was not in cyberspace, but in what was linked to where in reality - and his keycard let him go anywhere he wanted.

Jackson found the recording of Westley's last moments. Every inpatient in the United States was recorded - an old outgrowth from the time when malpractice suits had run rampant. Video evidence was far better than witness testimony.

Westley had died only two hours after Jackson left the room. Jackson moved the recording to when he'd left. He saw himself drop Westley's hand and trudge from the room. He looked like hell. No wonder Charles and Janet told him to get some sleep.

Charles took his seat and took up the watch. He didn't move much.

Jackson watched the video for two hours. Janet would come in, bustle about, leave, come in again.

Jackson sat hunched in front of his computer, staring at the monitor. He didn't know when the mistake would be made; he had to watch every second. He'd left the room. He'd abandoned Westley at the vital moment. This was all he could do to make up for the vigil he should have maintained in the first place.

He should have done it in the first place. Maybe, if he had, he could have stopped whatever happened. Maybe Westley would still be alive.

An hour passed. Jackson chugged a shot of a caffeine-ginseng mix that tasted like radioactive watermelon. He maintained his focus.

One hour and fifty-five minutes into the video, Janet hadn't done much. He had to keep watching. One wrong thing. The wrong mediation. Some tubing that was disconnected. A wire that came unplugged. It could be anything.

Janet left the room. Another minute passed.

Charles stood. He moved to Westley's side. Something glinted. And then he sat back down in his chair.

Westley's machinery started going haywire. Janet was back in the room inside of five seconds. She flew over the monitors; after a glance, she hit the emergency call button.

Other doctors and nurses rushed in. Chi was last into the room.

The sound of Westley's pulse cut to a long, flat whine. They activated the defibrillation nodes buried inside Westley's chest several times. His body arced with each attempt to restart his heart.

It went on, and on, and on. Jackson rubbed his eyes clear and kept watching.

Twenty minutes later, Chi called the time of his death.

Jackson swallowed, and slowly rewound the video. He paused it. And then he zoomed in.

The glint was from something Charles had been holding. It was a syringe.

****

Hacking the security of a graveyard was easy; they weren't broken into very often. After running an AV loop through the cameras, it was just a quick snip through the fence.

Jackson stole into the wooded grove holding Westley's grave. The two robots he'd thought to bring churned along behind him, running over the ground on wide treads.

Westley's gravesite was still easily visible; the patch of grass over where the dirt had been upturned was notably shorter than the surrounding field. Jackson looked up at the night sky; the wind rustled the leaves of the trees. He wasn't used to trees. The ground felt soft and uneven even through his shoes; unsteady. He was over forty miles from the Boston city center; it was as far as he'd ever been.

His stomach churned.

Jackson had looked into the hospital's inventory system. Drug supplies were very carefully tracked. A hypodermic of a powerful anesthesia had been written off as lost. It would be strong enough to overwhelm Westley's weak heart.

Jackson couldn't explain why Westley's nails had been discolored. Maybe the anesthesia wasn't the only drug that shouldn't have been there.

Jackson could simply not believe that Charles would do it.

But it made sense - horrible, logical sense. Charles suddenly wanting to hang out at Jackson's place while Westley was alone at his concert. And then, how he'd acted when he drank, how strange he'd been. Guilt, working its way out? Had he been convincing himself of something?

To top it off, there was the strange coincidence of the BLS-2.0 suddenly coming out after Westley's death. Jackson hadn't thought much about it at the time - he hadn't actively followed what the other members of the team were doing, especially not after he'd helped bury his friend.

But he would have been told if they were that close. He should have been told. Charles would probably want him to shift gears and help out. His own personal augmentation could wait. But Jackson had been left in the dark. It was strange.

Unless they didn't need him to help because they had a full-body neuronal integration sample.

He couldn't believe it.

Jackson started inventing conspiracy theories. Doctored videos. Competing prosthetics firms, trying to frame Charles. Janet trying to cover her incompetence and blame her boss. Something, anything other than the idea that Charles had killed Westley for the sake of getting a prosthetic line to production a few months faster.

But Jackson didn't know what to think, and so he dug. And dug.

He hadn't brought gloves; he wasn't used to hard labor. He hadn't thought about it. But he ignored the blisters and the chafing.

The night wore on. The moon shifted through the clouds. The breeze whisked the sweat off Jackson's forehead. His shirt was soaked through, stuck to his back. He shoveled another pile of dirt out of the hole.

His robot's metallic arm thumped into something.