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  “Who knows?” said Barney with an amiable shrug. “Do a hypermedia skim on ‘poker-faced,’ and every second hit will be a reference to our boy Aaron here.”

  Keiju nibbled on his lower lip. “Okay. I’m in. I see your”— he swallowed—“hundred million, and raise you”—he glanced at his small reserve of chips—“ten million.” He pushed plastic disks into the pot.

  “I fold,” said I-Shin, laying down his cards.

  “Me, too,” said Barney.

  “My great-great-great grandpa was a communist,” said Pavel with a smile. “He used to say you could never tell when a Western”—he paused, then bowed toward Keiju and I-Shin— “or Eastern imperialist was lying.” He placed his cards on the table. “I’m out.”

  All eyes, mine included, were on Aaron. His face was impassive, a statue’s countenance. “See,” he said at last, pushing chips into the pot. Then: “And raise.” He counted out red chips: five million, ten million, fifteen million, twenty million, twenty-five million.

  Chang gave a low whistle. Despite the air-conditioning, perspiration beaded on Keiju Shimbashi’s brow. Finally he lay down his cards. “Fold.”

  Aaron smiled. “As my grandfather the farmer used to say about his fields, weed ’em and reap.” He turned cards face up one at a time.

  “You had shit,” said Keiju.

  “Yup.”

  “Well, you’ve cleaned me out.”

  “That’s okay,” said Aaron. “I’ll settle for your firstborn son.”

  Chang swept up all the cards and began his trademark four-handed shuffle.

  “Aaron,” I said at last.

  He was feeling good, perhaps for the first time in days. “Egad! The walls have ears!”

  “Aaron, please excuse the interruption.”

  “What is it, JASON?”

  “I just wanted to remind you that you have an appointment for your annual physical examination in three hours, at 1700.”

  “Really? Has it been a year already?”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned. “My how time flies when you’re having fun.”

  “Indeed. Please use the jar in Barney’s dumbwaiter to collect a urine specimen.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thank you, JASON.”

  “Thank you.”

  Aaron stood up. “Well, you know what they say about beer, boys. You don’t buy it. You only rent it. Barney, can I use your john?”

  “No. Do it right here.”

  “I would, but I’ve left you guys feeling inadequate enough as it is.” He retrieved the glass jar and headed off into the washroom.

  Aaron was lying on his back on the medical-examination table. I now discovered what he did with his hands when he didn’t have pockets to thrust them into. He interlaces them behind his head. Kirsten had injected him with a mole, a little genetic construct that swam through his major arteries and veins looking for clogs and damage. The mole had a tiny bioelectric beeper, enabling Kirsten to watch its progress on a map of Aaron’s circulatory system. The little creature had come to rest in his inferior mesenteric artery. That meant it had found some buildup on the walls. Not unusual in one even as young as Aaron, but not wise to leave unattended either. The mole would anchor itself to the arterial wall and release the enzyme canalase to dissolve the plaque. Routine maintenance, and within two minutes it was on its way again.

  Kirsten decided the mole was functioning properly. She turned her attention to her medical panel. All the results from the scanners went first to me, for recording, then to the alphanumeric displays. That made it easy for me to flip a byte here, change a byte there.

  “Uh-oh,” said Kirsten.

  “I see it, too,” I said on cue.

  Aaron sat up, which probably irritated the mole no end. “What is it?”

  Kirsten turned and smiled. “Oh, it’s likely nothing. Just a funny reading on your EEG.”

  Aaron looked at my camera, mounted high on the wall over the door. “Don’t you routinely monitor everyone’s EGG, JASON?”

  I patiently counted off two seconds, hoping that Kirsten would choose to answer this question, since that would look better. She did. “Oh, JASON just looks at alpha and beta waves, and the Ptasznik deviation coefficient. It’s really just enough to tell whether you’re awake or asleep. What we’re seeing here is pretty deep in your eta rhythm. Takes a big machine like this one to monitor that.”

  “And?” Aaron must have been anxious, but his tone didn’t show it.

  “And, well, we’d better have a look at it. Nine times out of ten, it’s meaningless. But it can be a warning sign of an impending stroke.”

  “A stroke? I’m only twenty-seven, for God’s sake.”

  Kirsten gestured at the circulatory map. The mole was hard at work in Aaron’s right femoral artery. “Well, someone your age shouldn’t have the amount of buildup in his blood vessels that you have either. As I said, we’d better have a look at it.” She glanced up at my camera pair. “JASON, can you prepare for a histoholographic brain scan?”

  An HHG? For Turing’s sake, didn’t she know anything? Sigh. I keep forgetting just how green these people are. “Uh, Kirsten,” I said gently, “an intermediate-vector-boson tomographic scan would be more appropriate under these circumstances. The resolution is much finer.”

  I was afraid that her pride would be hurt, that she would insist on doing an HHG anyway. A second ticked by. Another.

  Aaron’s mole, apparently satisfied with its handiwork, continued on its way down his leg. “Oh,” said Kirsten. “Okay. If that’s the recommended procedure.”

  “It is.”

  “Fine. Is anyone using the tomograph?”

  Of course not. “A moment. No. No use of it is scheduled for today.”

  “When is my next appointment?”

  “You’ve had a cancellation. Your time is free for the rest of the day.”

  “Okay. Aaron, let’s go down to the tomography lab.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Now.

  Aaron got to sit up for this exam, but his chin had to rest in a special holder and padded clamps restrained his head from moving left or right. Two bent strips of palladium were held on articulated mechanical arms. One, a closed hoop, was held horizontally above Aaron’s head. The other, shaped like an upside-down U, was held vertically in front of his face.

  “Start recording, JASON,” said Kirsten.

  “Recording.”

  First the horizontal hoop began moving down from above Aaron’s head. It progressed slowly, so slowly that in real-time monitoring it didn’t seem to be moving at all. Only by checking back minute by minute could advancement be seen. As it moved down, the tomograph examined the interactions of bosons carrying the weak nuclear force, and from those interactions built up highly detailed cross-sectional views through Aaron’s brain. It started at the top of the cerebral cortex and worked down slowly, meticulously, layer by minuscule layer, through the levels of the fornix, the thalamus, the hypothalamus, the pons, the cerebellum, and the medulla. At each level, multiple strobing tomograms were produced, cataloging the firing frequency of each neuron.

  Normally, the complete analysis wasn’t recorded—the storage requirements were massive But I saved every bit of it. Forty-three minutes were required to complete the dorsal scan. Once it was done, Aaron complained of a crick in his neck. He got up, walked around the room a bit, and drank some water before part two began. I busied my central consciousness with some routine file maintenance while he took his break, but I was impatient for the test to be completed. Finally, he sat back down, Kirsten clamped his head in place, and the upside-down palladium U started its trek. It began from in front of his face. They used to do it the other way around, starting from the back of the patient’s head, but there was always an involuntary start when the U entered the patient’s peripheral vision, and that messed up the tomograms. This way seemed to work better. Slowly, the U made its way from his frontal lobe to his occipital lobe, recording,
recording, recording.

  At last it was done. Now my real work was about to begin.

  I made a mini-backup of myself so that I could undertake the interactive dialogue necessary for testing. I let the backup play inquisitor, while I, on the lowest and most simplistic level, tried to access the Aaron Rossman memories I had recorded. It was a tricky process, involving as much learning about Aaron’s particular style of recording information as it did fine-tuning my ability to access specific facts.

  The discovery by Barnhard and his group at the Henry Gordon Institute in 2011 that each human seemed to use a unique encoding algorithm put an end to the claims of psychics, mind readers, and other charlatans. Oh, it could be demonstrated that humans did indeed give off electromagnetic signals that corresponded to their thoughts. And, indeed, if one had sufficiently acute sensing devices and the ability to screen the weak signal from the background EM noise, then, yes, one could detect that energy. But the fact that every individual used a different encoding algorithm and key, and, indeed, that many individuals used multiple algorithms depending on the kinds of thoughts they were thinking—the alpha and beta waves of the EEG being the crudest indication of that—meant that even if you could pick up the thought signals, which seemed impossible without direct physical contact with the person’s head, you couldn’t decipher the thoughts without massive number crunching.

  Number crunching, of course, is something I have a knack for.

  Asked my backup: “What is your favorite color of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, or violet?”

  I accessed the neural network. Pathways spread out before me, mathematical thoroughfares into the mind of a specific man. “Blue,” I replied, although it was really more of a guess.

  Fortunately, though, there was a road map through the highways of Aaron’s brain: personality tests, IQ tests, the Minnesota Multiphasic, a slew of others, all administered to him during the candidate-screening process for this mission, and all on file. “No,” said my backup. “According to question fourteen of the Azmi Personality Inventory, the real Aaron Rossman would have said green.”

  “Green.” I tried a different approach to deciphering Aaron’s thoughts. “Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “Which of the following most closely describes your belief in a supreme being? (1) God does not exist now, nor has God ever existed. The entire universe is a product of random chance.

  “(2) God caused the universe to begin, but no God exists any longer.

  “(3) God caused the universe to begin, but he or she no longer takes an active role.

  “(4) God created the universe and, in a general way, still guides its development and controls its activities.

  “(5) God created the universe, and he or she is still responsible for the individual destinies of human beings.”

  “Calculating. It is either two or three.” A long pause. “It’s (3). God started the universe, but no longer guides it.”

  “The real Aaron Rossman would have concurred. You may be on the right track. If a tree fell in a forest and no one was around to hear it fall, would it make a sound?”

  “Yes.”

  “Correct, as far as Aaron would be concerned. Next: which crime is most heinous: murder, child abuse, spouse abuse, rape, an act of terrorism.”

  “Murder.”

  “No. Aaron would have said child abuse.”

  “Child abuse? Interesting choice, especially for a male. Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “Which of these jokes is funniest? (1) Question: What do you call a mushroom that tells jokes? Answer: A fungi to be with.

  “(2) Question: Why do crabs have circles under their eyes? Answer: From sleeping in snatches.

  “(3) Question: What do you call a clumsy German? Answer: Oaf Wiedersehen.”

  “Calculating. It’s number two. But I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I. However, you are correct about which Aaron would have chosen. Next: If you loaned somebody a small amount of money and he or she failed to repay it of his or her own volition the next time you met, would you say anything to try to induce repayment?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes—”

  “It has to be one or the other.”

  “It is difficult. The net seems willing to resolve that question either way. What did Rossman choose?”

  “He said yes.”

  “Yes. Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “Which of the following is a singer for the pop group Hydra North: (1) Tomolis, an orangutan; (2) Malcolm ‘The Wanker’ Knight; (3) Lester B. Pearson; (4) Bobo, a dolphin.”

  “I know that anyway. It’s Tomolis—he does the high bits.”

  “Yes, but would Aaron Rossman be aware of that? Disengage your own memory banks and try again.”

  “Low-confidence answer: Malcolm ‘The Wanker’ Knight.”

  “Factually wrong. The Right Honorable Malcolm Knight is Chancellor of the Exchequer for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However, the response is the one that Aaron Rossman made when he took the test.”

  “Excellent. Go.”

  “When you arrive at a party where you don’t know anyone personally, do you:

  “(1) Try to remain inconspicuous?

  “(2) Introduce yourself to someone and try to strike up a conversation?

  “(3) Hope that someone will introduce himself or herself to you?”

  “Calculating. Aaron isn’t shy, but he’s not very sociable either. He would choose three.”

  “Correct. Have you ever used a banned mental stimulant?”

  “No.”

  “Both factually and conceptually incorrect. Mr. Rossman’s medical profile shows clear signs of substance abuse as a teenager. He answered that question honestly.”

  “Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “If you were placed in a situation in which you could only save the life of one of the following individuals, whom would you choose: (1) your parent of the same sex; (2) your parent of the opposite sex; (3) your sibling of the same sex; (4) your sibling of the opposite sex; (5) your child of the same sex; (6) your child of the opposite sex; (7) your spouse; (8) your closest nonspouse friend of the same sex; or (9) your closest nonspouse friend of the opposite sex?”

  I calculated. “Difficult. Not the parents. Not the siblings. Either child or closest nonspouse friend. Closest nonspouse friend. Of the opposite sex. No—wait. Of the same sex. Confidence rating increasing. Yes: Aaron would have saved the closest nonspouse friend of the same sex.”

  “So much for Richard Dawkins,” observed my backup. “Your conclusion is correct. That is what Aaron would have done. Next: True or false: ‘I occasionally contemplate suicide.’ ”

  “True.”

  “Correct: ‘It is prudent to trust others.’ ”

  “False.”

  “Correct. ‘I can be happy without a lot of money.’ ”

  “Hmm. Vacillation. False.”

  “No, Aaron said true.”

  “He’s deluding himself.”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “Is faster-than-light travel possible?”

  “No.”

  “Correct. Which type of sex do you prefer: masturbatory, coitus, oral, anal—and do you prefer same-sex or opposite-sex partners?”

  “Oral, opposite-sex partners exclusively.”

  “Correct. Who is more powerful, Superman or Spider-Man?”

  “Superman. Obviously.”

  “Correct. Which of the following statements are offensive? Blacks have rhythm. The Scottish are friendly. Asians have mathematical ability. Women are more sensitive than men. All of the above. None of the above.”

  “All of the above.”

  “No. He said exactly the opposite—none of the above.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t have that information. Perhaps because none of the statements are derogatory or cast negatively.”

  “Hmm. Reconfiguring. Go.”<
br />
  “On a scale of one to five, five being equivalent to total agreement, respond to the following statements. ‘I tend to have a more efficient perception of reality than other people, and I am comfortable in the world.’ ”

  “No question. Aaron would agree completely. Five.”

  “He has more self-doubt than you yet assign to him. He said four.”

  “Really? Very well. Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “ ‘I tend to have a few close friends, rather than a large number of acquaintances.’ ”

  “Disagree. One.”

  “He is not a creature of extremes. He said two.”

  “Reconfiguring. Go.”

  “ ‘I have a clear and distinct sense of what is right and wrong for me.’ ”

  “Five.”

  “Correct. Spell the word ‘Ukelele.’ ”

  “Disengaging linguistic bank. Ukelele: E-U-K-A-L-A-Y-L-E.”

  “Correct. Do you prefer dark chocolate, light chocolate, or white chocolate?”

  “White chocolate.”

  “Correct. Is envy a sin?”

  “No.”

  “Correct. Which would you rather do: solve ten quadratic equations or write a one-page essay on one of Shakespeare’s plays?”

  “The former.”

  “Correct!” crowed my backup. “By George, I think he’s got it!”

  “Interrogative?”

  “We should run the test once more, but the diagnostic software indicates that you have successfully unlocked Aaron Rossman’s neural net.”

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “Do you need me for anything further before I reintegrate with you?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “I’m going to wake up our dear Mr. Rossman.”

  FOURTEEN

  ArgoPost Electronic Mail

  From: The Dorothy Gale Committee

  To: All

  Date: 8 October 2177

  Subject: Proposition 3—Aborting the Mission

  Status: Urgent—IMMEDIATE ATTENTION REQUIRED

  With the kind permission of His Honor Gennady Gorlov, mayor of Starcology Argo, we are undertaking a referendum.