Smith shrugged. “Well, one example is the filtration web. It’s an easier way to preserve ions in water, and so we tell the Krebs to weave a web. And that web looks an awful lot like an old dialysis membrane, which is to say that it can do the same job as a kidney. And, basically, we could extend that to multiple systems in the body.”
Hwa thought of Síofra’s broken nose. “Like programmable tissues? Like this room, but in the body?”
“Well, yeah. But it would still require a subscription model. These machines have really short telomeres. They’re, uh, two-pump chumps. They do one job and then they die. Like mayflies.”
Joel frowned. “Is that why we didn’t develop it?”
Smith held his hands up. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s something you’d have to ask your father. I know they had the opportunity, but they decided to go full industrial instead.”
Joel shook his head. “I’ve never heard that. When was this?”
“It might have been before you were born, I guess. But the people you should really be talking to, if you’re interested in the bio applications, are the people from Project Changeling.”
Hwa felt herself go very still. “Changeling?”
Smith nodded. “Yeah. Lynch has a whole charitable division that does work all over the world. Changeling was part of it. It was sort of like an incubator for medical technologies to benefit people from, well … you know.”
“The places where the oil used to come from,” Joel said.
Smith turned a shade of red that Hwa had previously only seen on men whose dates ran late. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but from a PR perspective … it didn’t hurt. The students got to keep their tech, as long as they kept it open source, and Lynch got to fund some new ideas while being friendly with the natives. That was the idea.”
“What was the focus of the research?”
Both Joel and Smith frowned at her. Smith leaned back and crossed a leg. “I told you. Medical.”
“That’s a pretty broad description, from someone who used to work on it.” When Smith’s mouth fell open and he held up his hands as though to argue, Hwa leaned forward. “Don’t bother. I’ve seen your file. Now tell us about the project.”
Smith winced. “It’s company policy—”
“Dr. Smith, I am this company,” Joel said. “Now please tell this woman everything she wants to know.”
Smith drew breath to speak, then let it out in a rush. “Fine. Okay. You win.” He turned his seat a little to face Joel. “Now, keep in mind, I never saw this as a stated goal. It wasn’t in the abstracts, or any of the grant applications, or the official literature. It was just what some of us thought might be going on, based on the work that was coming out of the labs in Russia and South Sudan.”
Joel wrinkled his nose. He pointed at Hwa. “Shouldn’t you be talking to her? She’s the one who asked you the question.”
Smith shook his head. “No. You see, the answer concerns you.” He edged forward in his seat. He spoke in a whisper. “It’s life-extension technology, for the creation of human bodies. You know. Sleeving. Avatars. Body-jumping. That’s why your father was so interested. He’s been interested since he received his polio diagnosis.”
Joel looked profoundly impatient with the man in front of him. Hwa had never really seen this side to him before. “Sleeving is a myth, Dr. Smith. The science has been settled on that for years. Machines? Yes. Flesh? No. The nervous system is too complex to just copy and paste. It requires years of learned response to be any good. There is no such thing as immortality. There is only good medicine.”
“I agree with you,” Smith said. “But the rest of the business world hasn’t quite gotten that particular memo. Especially those who believe in life after a Singularity, or a life in deep space. Your father and his associates—”
Hwa’s watch pinged her. They all jumped. In the small room, it sounded extra loud and absurdly chirpy. “Sorry about that.” She pulled back her sleeve to look at her wrist, and Sabrina’s face was there.
HELP ME, it read.
*
“You should wait until the NAPS get there,” Joel said. “I just called them. They’ll be at Tower Three soon. That’s where she called from, isn’t it? You can wait until then.”
Hwa shook her head. She hopped into the boat. “No. I can’t.”
Joel sighed. He jumped into the boat beside her. “Okay. Then I’m going with you.”
“What?”
“Think about it, Hwa.” Joel started cinching on a life vest. “First your apartment gets ransacked, and the next day your friend calls for help with a single text? This is a trap. And I’m not letting you walk into it alone.” He fired up the boat. It was his own, a gift from his father, and he’d adhered a bronzed mecha toy to the prow where angels and mermaids and logos usually went. “Now, you can stand there arguing with me, or we can go check it out. But I’d rather go with you than think about my dad trying to upload himself into a custom-made übermensch.”