Transhuman (27 page)

But it's hard to pull off. Harder than you think, harder than Steven Yirsley ever guessed it would be. Free to do (within limits) whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, he went back to school while his baby face could still pass him off as a nineteen-year-old. He didn't go to Yale or Harvard or anyplace like that, but back to CU Boulder, his alma mater. Not to upgrade his electrical engineering degree into a masters, but to round himself out as a human being. To do his entire college experience over again, and do it right. It was, after all, a luxury he could afford.

He'd only been gone four years, but that was his entire adult life and, what, almost twenty percent of his total life? Going back was strange; the place hadn't changed, but all his old friends were gone. He majored in general studies, taking whatever classes he pleased and generally keeping a low profile. Drinking it in, unhurried.

But there were women in college, all kinds of women, and when spring had sprung and the bare legs and midriffs were out, he went a little crazy. It was so much easier to impress the ladies with raw spending power than with his, you know, actual self. By halfway through his second term, he'd bought a Viper, joined a fraternity, hooked up with a tight little blonde he had nothing in common with, and gone a good ways down the road to alcoholism and worse. Summer vacation in Lisbon hadn't helped one bit. But this was his fourth term, and he was starting to feel some inner pressure, to do something real with his life again. No philosophy courses this time; instead he'd indulged his love of the human brain, signing up for Functional Neural Imaging and Advanced Neuroanatomy, and one art class to round things out. So when his art teacher, the decidedly frizzy Assistant Professor Lydia Englund, M.A., had assigned her class a project to "use your unique, personal skill set to produce unique, personal visuals," it seemed natural enough to build his own event-related positional EEG scanner and show off the twinkling lights of his own brain. Nothing could be more unique or personal than that, right?

But immediately he'd noticed that the pattern changed when he looked at it. Pathways lit up between his visual cortex, amygdala, and fusiform gyrus. The images had an emotional effect—his brain liked seeing itself in action—and the emotions in turn brightened the images, and then responded to the brightening in a funny sort of feedback loop. Hello, me! Hello, me! It didn't get him high or anything, but it was . . . fascinating.

From there, it seemed a simple matter to flash up a set of "reference images"—faces, buildings, landscapes, animals—and feed them through a neural-networked morphing filter that maximized the emotional response as measured by the scanner. And an even simpler matter to collage the morphed images together, apply a Photoshop smoothing filter, and feed it right back into the eyeballs again. The end result: a visual image tailored for maximum emotional impact. In a word, Art. But so far Steven's testing wasn't going too well, and he was running out of Timmies.

A rich woman isn't the same thing at all, by the way. Not at all. A woman—even a dumpy one—already has something every man wants, that loses value if she gives too much of it away. She has to be stingy, and learns at an early age to live with the resentment. Adding money to that mix doesn't really change who she is, or how she moves in the world.

A poor woman isn't the same thing, either, because she's free to marry above her station. Not necessarily able to, but free in principle. On the slightest invitation she could strip off that serving uniform and join the party as a guest, without fear of getting beaten or arrested. You see it all the time in the movies.

Ergo, a poor girl who comes into some money isn't anything all that miraculous. She dresses a little better, gets her hair and nails done by a proper salon, maybe feels the occasional twinge of superiority. But it's easier for her to blend, to feel and act like the mythical "normal person," at least to the extent that any normal person can.

A straight-up sorority girl in many ways—almost stereotypical—Nicole Most was nevertheless a free spirit, fond of Latin dancing and floppy felt hats. For pleasure she read exactly one book every month, favoring romance novels and biographies of famous women. She didn't suffer fools gladly, and she seemed to find a lot of fools in the world. "Mean Girl" was one of the nicknames her sisters gave her, like a superhero moniker, with blue-and-cream sweats in place of a cape. They also called her "Wabbit." What she was doing with a guy like Steven was an excellent question. Shouldn't he be too geeky for her? Did money really make that much difference, or did opposites really attract? Xenophilia: a genetic compulsion to hybridize with someone really different. She liked his sense of humor, and he liked the way she constructed an air of cool wisdom out of basically zero life experience. Anyway, Steven had to admit: in the bedroom they were magic.

And on the dance floor, she was magic. At Paradiso on Saturday nights, the Omega Rho girls showed up tipsy, waved their fake IDs at the bouncer, ordered a quick round of courage, and hopped up on the raised strip that divided the upper and lower decks of the dance floor. The dance was called The Booty Train, and looked pretty much like you'd expect from the name, only . . . what, edgy? Artistic? Nicole in particular lent a sensuous jangle to it, the movement of her arms suggesting not only the wheel rods of a locomotive but the kneading of a masseuse, the jabbing of a boxer, the gripping and tugging of a man doing it doggie-style. "The whimper of rough, desperate, sexuality," Steven's psych professor had called this dance once, during a lecture on crime and courtship behaviors.

Which sounded a lot like sour grapes; looking up at it now, with a beer in his fist, the Offspring's "Spare Me the Details" in his ears and a low, warm buzz in his gray matter, Steven felt a definite sense that all was right in the world. If Nicole was here—the middle car in a Booty Train of five—then she couldn't be all that pissed off at him. This was, after all, a sanctioned Greek event; she knew he'd be here. And it wasn't like it was his fault or anything, that her mind contained, or at least responded to, such weird images. What set her off was a hazy, misshapen picture of a man with his shirt off, with a spatter of blood across his chest and a pile of what looked like dead puppies and kittens at his feet. His face a mask, unreadable. Oversized in the background, even hazier and more distorted, was the face of a woman, haughty and amused and yet also visibly afraid.

It was hard to tell, but Steven thought the man in the picture might be him. The woman was even harder to identify, but it might be Nicole, standing behind her man in some weird metaphorical way. Or even egging him on? Tugging at his puppet strings? Anyway the image, however striking and ugly, was much more her creation than his. If anything he should be mad at her.

Beside Steven now, his friend and frat brother Don "Juan" Cowen was leaning on a brass rail and drawling through an anecdote, half shouting to be heard above the noise.

" . . .so he put the rug vac away without emptying the, you know, the reservoir thing. That crap stain from Dillard's dog was dissolved in there all week, so when he opened the closet it was just a wave of, you know, mildewed excrement. Unbelievable. We washed the thing out, but three hours later it was still fit to knock you over. That's what you get when you leave poop water standing." Steven laughed, adopting the accent of an old Southern gentleman. "Wasn't Poopwater Standing a general in the Civil War?"

"For the Northern side," Don Juan quipped back, in exaggerated New Yorker tones. "He won three medals of freshness before taking a urinal cake to the forehead."

Don Juan was a Tennesseean, and the smartest guy in Gamma Gamma Alpha, with the possible exception of Steven himself. The house was a shallow organization, mostly pointless, but it was fun, and Steven was discovering there were smart people scattered everywhere, like grains of pepper. Frat life wasn't one solid thing; it was personally made up by the individual people inside it.

"Steven?" The voice was female, from somewhere behind him. He turned and saw professor Englund, in a little black dress with black taffeta roses on the shoulder straps. Her frizzy hair tied back with a scrunchie.

"Hi," he said, a little too enthusiastically, taking in the sight of her. Out of context she was . . . whoa. Kind of hot.

"Are you here by yourself?" Englund half shouted.

He shook his head. "Fraternity function. This is my brother, Don. Up there is my girlfriend."

"On the stage? Which one?" Englund sounded impressed.

"Center. Her name is Nicole."

"Wow. Very nice. I figured you for a man of many talents, Steven, but you keep on surprising me." Was that a come-on? Teacher to student, just like that? Surely he was imagining. "I drive a Viper," he said, for no apparent reason. To defuse the moment, maybe, but if so he needn't have bothered; the song was winding down and the Omega Rho girls were stepping back to Earth for a breather.

"Sorry about before," Nicole said as she sidled up, wiping a bead of sweat off her lip. "I shouldn't have walked out like that." She noticed Professor Englund, gave her the quick up and down inspection she called a "county fair": Guessing the weight, checking the teeth, marking points off for skin blemishes and nicked hooves. "Who's your friend?"

"My art teacher," Steven answered. Unspoken but implicit in his tone:
Can you believe it
? In this light, Englund looked barely older than Nicole: they might almost have been sorority sisters. Frowning and then smiling, Nicole moved in behind Steven and wrapped a possessive arm around his chest. "My man's a bit of a genius. I hope you're giving him an A."

"I haven't seen his project yet," Englund answered, with cheerful neutrality. She raised a plastic beer cup in salute and then took a ladylike half chug.

"It's rather brilliant," said Nicole, with the sort of intensity only drunks can muster. "It gets in your head, touches you all up inside."

Surprised at this, Steven said, "I thought you hated it. You said it was stupid. Steven the puppy killer, very aesthetic." Too late, he realized he was sabotaging his own grade. But Nicole apparently meant it. Leaning forward and fiddling with one of the black taffeta roses on Englund's spaghetti straps, she said: "I was a little overwhelmed, is all. You caught me off guard. It was an ugly image, yes, but an affecting one. If the point of art is to provoke an emotion, a lot of emotions, you certainly did."

Her hand was back on his chest now, thumping him reassuringly.

Said Englund, "I thought we were talking about a machine. Some kind of brain scanner."

"It makes pictures," Nicole answered haughtily. Mean girl, yes, putting a lesser woman in her place. Further endangering Steven's grade. Ah, hell, it was just an art class. Not like he needed his GPA anyhow.

On Steven's other side, Don Juan was staring into his drink and smiling. "Poopwater Standing," he said, like the Southern gentleman he was supposed to be. Then, modifying the accent slightly: "Poopwater Harriman Treehug Standing." He killed the drink and looked up, seeming to notice Englund for the first time.

"Hi," he said, holding out his hand. He was earnest, casual, charming. He was being a dick.

"Lydia Englund," said Englund. "Art Department."

"Poopwater Standing," answered Don. "Department of Apocrypha. Shaken, not stirred, I'm afraid, but . . . my God, you're gorgeous."

"She's my teacher," Steven explained.

"She certainly is," said Don, unfazed. "Grading papers this evening?" Englund laughed. "Something like that. You know you're going to put somebody's eye out with that rapier wit."

"Hey," said Don, shaking a finger. "That's an ugly stereotype. Just because a man's in a fraternity doesn't make him a rapier." He furrowed his brow in mock distress, and tipped his cup back until the ice cubes slid into his mouth.

"I want a printout," Nicole said suddenly.

Steven turned to her, ready with his own brand of wit. "Huh?"

"The picture. From your machine." Mean Girl spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable. "I want a printout to hang on my wall. I'll make a little frame for it."

"Um, okay. I'll print one out for you on Monday."

Nicole shook her head. "You misunderstand, sir. Your art. Touched. Me. I want a printout . . . now.
Capisce
?
Comprende
?
Wakaru ka
? One more drink, and then you're taking me to the art building." She looked Lydia Englund over again—not so much a county fair as a where's-your-purse-girl. "You should come with us, Professor. Want to?"

"I have my key with me, yes," Englund said, ferreting out her meaning. "I'll let you in the building if you promise to behave."

"She promises nothing," said Don Juan, now sounding like a gentleman from well south of the border.

"You coming?" Steven asked him.

But Don Juan magically had another drink lined up, some awful blue concoction with a spear of pineapples and cherries sticking out. "And leave all this?" he asked. "Are you mad? I'm this close to a breakthrough." He held up his thumb and forefinger, a centimeter apart. When they left him he was staring into another empty cup, muttering: "Tourist season be damned, Your Honor; this shark is a killer."

Shanique Bentzen was waiting for them outside the art building.

"Hi," she said tentatively, looking right at Steven. Her hands were out, palms up, breath steaming in the glare of the sodium lights. A single word flared in Steven's mind:
supplicant
. Nicole was all over it. "How long have you been waiting here? Shit, girl, are you hanging around here in the cold on a Saturday night, on the off chance Steven might walk by?"

"I wanted to talk," Shanique said, ignoring her. Eyes on Steven. "I owe you an apology." Another one? Hell, even eighteen million dollars hadn't made Steven this popular. What the hell was going on?

"Are you here to see the machine?" asked Lydia Englund.

Shanique shook her head, not so much a negation as a shrugging off of the question. "I've seen it. He used it on me, and now I . . ."

"Want the printout?" Nicole asked archly.