Desh didn’t respond. She was trying to get him to lower his guard by giving him false hope, to perhaps stave off an escape attempt, but it wouldn’t work. He would believe this when he saw it. In the meanwhile, he would continue to assume that if he didn’t escape he was a dead man.
Still, he couldn’t help but be intrigued by the unexpected course of the discussion. “Okay,” he said finally, pretending to believe her. “It’s a deal. By all means begin your persuading. Tell me your version of the truth.” He pulled at his restraints and added bitterly, “Consider me a captive audience.”
She winced at this; regret at having to restrain him etched in every line of her face. Her body language seemed totally genuine, and Desh realized she was as brilliant an actor as she was a biologist.
“The information you have on my childhood and schooling is correct,” she began softly. “Except my parents really did die in a tragic accident—I had nothing to do with it.”
“The report never said you did.”
“But you assumed it, didn’t you?”
Desh remained silent.
“Of course you did,” she said knowingly.
“Are we going to argue about what I assumed, or are you going to make your case?”
Kira sighed. “You’re right,” she said unhappily. She visibly gathered herself and then resumed. “I excelled in school and later found my calling in gene therapy. I was told by many in the field I had the kind of insight and intuition that comes around once in a generation. Over time, I came to believe it myself. In fact, I became convinced that I could truly change the world. Make a dramatic impact on medicine.” She paused. “But the key to making an impact is choosing the right problem to solve. I wanted to tackle the most challenging problem right from the start. At the risk of sounding immodest,” she added, “if you come to realize you’re Da Vinci, you owe it to the world to paint masterpieces rather than cartoons.”
“Let me guess,” said Desh. “You’re going to tell me the project you chose has nothing to do with bio-weapons.”
“Of course not,” she insisted, irritated. “I decided to solve the ultimate problem, one whose solution would make the solutions to all other problems, medical or otherwise, child’s play.” Her blue eyes twinkled, even in the dim light. “Any guesses?” she challenged.
She looked at him expectantly, obviously wanting him to arrive at the answer on his own. She waited patiently while he mulled it over.
“What?” he said uncertainly after almost a minute of silence. “Build a super-advanced computer?”
“Close,” she allowed. She waited again for him to connect the dots.
Desh’s forehead wrinkled in concentration. The only way to universally make problems easier to solve was to have better tools to solve them. But if enhancing computer capabilities wasn’t the answer, what was? His eyes widened as the answer became obvious. She was a molecular neurobiologist after all, not a computer scientist. “Enhancing intelligence,” he said finally. “Human intelligence.”
“Exactly,” she said, beaming, as if pleased with a star pupil. “Just imagine if you could have infinite intelligence. Unlimited creativity. Then you could easily solve any problem to which you turned your attention—instantly.” She paused. “Now of course there is no such thing as infinite intelligence. But any significant enhancements to intelligence and creativity would truly be the gift that keeps on giving. What better problem for me to solve?”
“Are you suggesting you actually solved it?” he asked skeptically.
“I did,” she confirmed wearily, not looking particularly triumphant or even happy about the supposed accomplishment.
“What, like a Flowers For Algernon kind of improvement?” he said, knowing that even she wouldn’t have the audacity to claim she had achieved increases in intelligence as great as those described in this story.
The corners of her mouth turned up in a slight smile. “No. My results were far more impressive than that,” she said matter-of-factly.
12
Desh was almost prepared to believe she had managed some kind of improvement in her own intelligence, but not this. “Impossible,” he insisted. “Even for you.”
“Not impossible. I have a deep knowledge of neurobiology and a genius level intuition with respect to gene therapy. Combine this with single-minded devotion and trial and error and it can be done.”
“So what are you trying to say, that I’m talking to someone with an IQ of a thousand? More?”
She shook her head. “The effect is transient. I’m just regular me right now.”