“He was right,” she said. “I’ll go into that in more detail later, but this was one of three major goals I set for myself.”
Desh considered pressing her to talk more about longevity, but decided to be patient and let her continue in her own way. “What were the other two?”
“One was to achieve another jump in intelligence. In my transformed state it was clear that a level substantially higher than what I had achieved was possible.” She took a sip of her iced-tea and set it back down. “My last goal was to um—” She paused and looked slightly embarrassed. “Accumulate massive wealth.”
“And here I was beginning to think you were Mother Teresa.”
Kira nodded. “I had a feeling that would be your reaction,” she said. “In my defense, I didn’t want the money for luxuries. I just wanted to be sure that money would never be an issue if I needed equipment or supplies for my other projects, wherever my enhanced intelligence would lead me.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that immortals would need to have a pretty big nest egg,” he allowed. He fished a breadstick from a small wicker basket on the table filled with an assortment of rolls. “Becoming wealthy is the one goal I’m fairly certain you achieved. That is, if I can be certain of anything these days,” he added in frustration. “But I’m eager to learn just how it is you were able to accomplish this so quickly,” he finished accusingly.
“You think I sold my soul to terrorists?”
“Why not? Even if you aren’t sociopathic normally, you admit you are in your enhanced state. Why let a little thing like the deaths of millions slow you down?”
“Come on, David,” she snapped in annoyance. “Think it through. Even if I acted on my sociopathic tendencies—which I didn’t—I would only be a raving sociopath, not stupid. I had achieved immeasurable intelligence. Creativity that would put Thomas Edison to shame. An intellect that would make Stephen Hawking look slow. With capabilities like these, do you really think I’m going to spend years working on a bioterror agent to sell to people who would happily kill me for not covering my face?” She shook her head in exasperation. “I could make millions just selling the cryptographic software that I thought up in ten minutes, or any number of other inventions that could be marketed immediately. What do you think the government would pay for a material that completely shields heat signatures?”
Desh frowned. “When you put it that way, working with terrorists does sound pretty stupid.”
“Thank you,” she said emphatically. She paused as the waiter came over to check on them.
“Not that it matters,” she continued as soon as the waiter was out of earshot, “but I made my fortune in the stock market.”
Desh raised his eyebrows. “That wouldn’t have been my first guess. How?”
“I analyzed the market while at an elevated level of intelligence,” she replied. “When you’re in the transformed state you have absolute access to your memory. All of your memory. The human brain stores every single input it ever receives: everything you think, read, see, touch or experience. In our normal, un-optimized mode, we’re unable to access all but the tiniest tip of that iceberg. But in my enhanced state I can make correlations and logical connections between bits of information I didn’t even know I had. Treacherously complex patterns become obvious. Market insights quickly present themselves.”
“Did you understand your analysis when you returned to normal?”
Kira smiled. “Not even a little,” she admitted. “All I know is that I was right about eighty percent of the time, more than enough to make me very rich, very fast. I underwent my treatment four different times with the sole purpose of analyzing the stock market. And I only placed the riskiest of bets. Currency fluctuations, options, futures—that sort of thing. Over a three-month period I increased my wealth a thousand-fold. The stock market is legalized gambling and I had transformed myself into the ultimate Rain Man.”
As usual, she made the most fantastic claims seem eminently plausible. “So why the false identities and Swiss bank accounts?”
“I started to get paranoid, so I began taking precautions.”
“Is paranoia another side effect of the enhanced intelligence?”
“No,” she replied solemnly. “It’s a side effect of getting robbed.”
Desh’s eyes narrowed. “Is this where the arch nemesis you wrote about in your E-mail comes in? Your Moriarty?”
“I like that,” said Kira, smiling. “Gives me hope that you aren’t still convinced that I’m Moriarty. If you had said, ‘Your arch nemesis, Sherlock Holmes,’ I’d really be depressed right now.”
Desh couldn’t help but return her smile.
“One of the things that popped out when I was studying you was how wonderfully well read you are,” said Kira earnestly.