Devil's Plaything (13 page)

I
catch a quick shower, and find that Polly has left me an XL T-shirt from a web promotion she did earlier this year. It hangs loose but at least it's clean.

Draped over a leather recliner in the bedroom, Polly has left Grandma a short-sleeve yellow blouse and a beige cashmere sweater that buttons up the front. Grandma, professing enthusiasm for her “new clothes,” needs only the slightest help from me with the buttons.

In the kitchen, on a yellow pad lying on the black slate countertop, there's a note: “Help yourself. Drink fluids. Regret nothing. File three blog posts.”

It is signed “Polly.”

Below her name, it reads: “PS: CHANGEME.”

I haven't the foggiest idea what she means and make a note to ask her about it.

I pour myself dark coffee from one of Polly's mildly eccentric amenities, a drip coffeemaker she found on eBay that ostensibly was used by the forward generals in Europe in World War II. Grandma drinks grapefruit juice and looks at pictures of dresses in a recent issue of
Vogue
.

I turn gumshoe.

I call Biogen and ask for Lulu Pederson. Again, I get her voice mail: “You've reached Adrianna Pederson in Biogen's Advanced Life Computing department. I'm not available right now; leave a message and I'll get back to you.”

I call the company again and ask to be transferred to the Advanced Life Computing department. The operator transfers me to Adrianna's voice mail.

Adrianna seems to be the sole employee of the Life Computing department. Adrianna tried to contact me with a titillating secret note, and then disappeared. Grandma said Adrianna can't breathe. What could Adrianna or Biogen possibly have to do with Grandma?

I find my backpack near the front door, where I'd left it on our arrival.

I open the laptop and look for a wireless Internet connection. There are several in range in the building but all of them are secured by password. One of them is called “BrotherPhilip,” which must be Polly's network. I call it up and then ponder blankly the password possibilities.

Then it hits me. I return to the note Polly left me on the countertop. She'd left me, without explanation, the letters “CHANGEME.” I type them into the password line. It works. Cute. Password: CHANGEME.

Into Google, I type: “Biogen Advanced Life Computing.” There are no meaningful hits.

I look at Biogen's web site. It is a public company with $25 billion in annual sales, primarily in cancer drugs. The company also spends $2 billion annually in research and development on treatments for a range of diseases, including degenerative conditions like muscular dystrophy, AIDS and illnesses related to aging, like Alzheimer's. There is nothing on the web site related to “Advanced Life Computing.”

I search for recent news on Biogen. It is rumored to be an acquisition candidate of Falcon Corporation, a Swiss biotech giant; Biogen is a jewel because of its sterling drug pipeline. Biogen's stock price has been swinging wildly thanks to the acquisition rumors.

I call Biogen again. When I get an operator, I explain I'm a receptionist at a Berkeley lab charged with sending a FedEx to Lulu Pederson in Advanced Life Computing. I ask which building and floor I should use for an address. She's located in Building 12, third floor.

Then I say I've got a second package for Jack Johnson. It's a name I've made up. The operator says there's no such person.

“Maybe he goes by James,” I say.

“We have a John Johnson, and a Jerry James,” the operator says.

“John Johnson—that must be the guy,” I say. The operator says that John Johnson works in the Bio-genetics division, Building 5, second floor.

“Grandma, I've got a plan, but it's a major long shot in the extreme.”

“That's nice.”

“You're going to dress up like an old person. Think you can pull it off?”

“You don't look so young yourself anymore.”

She grins.

I do one last Internet search—for the medical group of Brown & Morrow, the disappearing dental company.

The web site for the medical group does little to enlighten. It's a region-wide collection of hundreds of doctors, dentists, and other medical practitioners—a very common business setup. I find an administrative number that goes directly to an automated voice service. Dead end.

Our next stop is a diner where Grandma and I order pancakes. She eats voraciously. She tells me the plot of one of her favorite movies,
The Sting
. She's regaled me with this story before, but I love to see her eyes light up when she talks about Newman and Redford pulling off the impossible caper.

We walk to the car.

Across the street, a man in a gray hooded sweatshirt stands out of the mouth of an alley looking our direction. He is well over six feet tall and well built. When he sees me look in his direction, he disappears into the alley.

En route to Biogen, I check in the rearview mirror for a Prius. None materializes. I've been wondering if there's a tracking device on my car. Paranoia is a lovely feeling.

I call Chuck. He answers and says he'll call me back shortly from a “secure line.”

“The guy is a complete loon,” I mutter.

I hang up and I remember a dream I had last night. Polly and I stand on opposite sides of a narrow but deep gorge. She wears tight jeans, a leather vest, and a wedding veil. She stands in front of a microphone. She starts making precise and beautiful bird calls, prompting from around us the roar of applause. I feel myself walking closer to the edge of the gorge. I begin to flap my arms, propelling myself into the air. I elevate over the gorge. I wake up, sweat on my chest and neck, still drunk and pasty, stomach knotted.

Biogen is located just south of San Francisco in an industrial park that might become the place where scientists discover the key to immortality. At the biotech companies here, the best and the brightest combine high math, computing, engineering, and molecular chemistry and biology; in short, they are tinkering with the building blocks of life. They are using test tubes and super computers to dissect our genetic code and look for ways to strengthen it. And they are probing the structures of diseases, looking for weaknesses in their defenses that might be exploited by sophisticated, directed treatments.

This is the northern tip of Silicon Valley—and the region at its most advanced, exciting, and riskiest. The weight and potential of the entire computing revolution brought to bear on our quest for immortality; the fountain of youth sought not by rugged explorers with pickaxes, but by brainiacs wielding algorithms. The companies they work for are investing billions of dollars in support of the cause, often losing that money in the gambit.

And my gut tells me something has gone wrong—specifically on the Biogen campus, Building 12, third floor. In Lulu Adrianna Pederson's office.

We park in Biogen's lot. The company buildings are sleek but not tall, less than ten floors. And virtually impregnable.

I know from experience that it's tough for an outsider to get into these buildings. At the counter of each building invariably sits a twenty-something who looks harmless enough, but whose singular purpose is allowing entrance only to those with the proper badge.

But I've two secret weapons: a demented grandmother and a costume.

I open the hatchback, dig through the umbrellas, baseball caps, old tennis balls, and press releases, and I discover a Warren Zevon CD I thought I'd long since lost, and find what I'd hoped to: a lanyard from a biotech conference I attended. The credential says: “Nathaniel Idle, freelance writer.” I remove the credential, and stuff the plastic rectangle on a string into my pocket.

Folded on top of a box of maps, I also find the white lab coat I got a few months ago when I toured a cryogenics lab in Berkeley for a magazine profile I was doing on the promise of immortality through freezing. The lab had insisted all guests dress in uniform.

I slip on the lab coat, and, Grandma on my arm, walk at her deliberate pace to the entrance of Building 12.

Inside the inviting glass doors sits said twenty-something gargoyle protecting Biogen's innards. His nose cartilage leans slightly left. Deviated septum. From the aged scar to the right of his nose, I'm putting the cause as blunt trauma, car wreck or maybe he head-butted some unwelcome Biogen crasher.

“Fill out the visitor log,” he says in bored monotone.

“I'm from Bio-genetics in Building Five. I'm delivering a study subject to Lulu Pederson in Life Computing.”

At the words “study subject,” his atavistic eyes perk up with the slightest indication of curiosity. Then they dull again.

“Employee badge,” he demands.

“Lost it. Or, rather, it fell off somewhere—honestly, embarrassingly, I think it was in the bathroom. That was two weeks ago.
Two weeks.
How long does it take administration to get a new badge?”

I pull my lanyard from my pocket.

“I've got my lanyard.”

“Employee ID number?”

“John Johnson. Can you look me up? I've got enough to worry about without memorizing my badge number. And, evidently, I can't keep track of my badge in the bathroom, so that's the type of absent-minded scientist you're dealing with here.”

He's doesn't care.

“Lemme ring Pederson and she can come grab you.”

He places a call.

“She's not around. Take a seat and I'll try her back in a few minutes.”

He gestures to a pair of stiff-backed chairs in the small lobby.

“She's probably in the lab,” I say of Ms. Pederson. “She's not liable to pick up the phone. But I know where to find her on the third floor.”

He's considering this. He looks at Grandma. He probably is marginally aware that it is unlikely I'd bring a study subject over from another building and that it is rare that Biogen even would have study subjects on the premises. Most of the clinical trials are done elsewhere—in hospitals and assisted-living facilities. As if by design, Grandma speaks.

“We had a neighbor who used to raise chickens and slaughter them in a room in a shed in back of the house. One time, we watched through a hole in the shed. Blood splattered all over the white walls.”

We both look at her.

“The walls here are very white,” she continues, completing her bit of internal logic.

I lean in to the receptionist and speak quietly, trying to project that he and I have created a bond.

“Dementia and aging study. She's a little agitated. The quicker I get her upstairs, the less likely she's going to start howling at the moon.”

I'm an asshole for selling Grandma out like this.

“Have a seat,” the gargoyle says.

We sit.

I hand Grandma a copy of
Newsweek
. On the cover is a pixilated image of Jesus on the cross. The headline reads: WOULD JESUS BLOG? TECHNOLOGY COLLIDES WITH RELIGION.

“WWJE,” I say to Grandma.

“What?”

“What would Jesus e-mail?”

She leafs through the magazine. I take meditative breaths to stay calm and stare at a large painting of the company's founder. He wears a short-sleeve collared shirt. In Silicon Valley, it's casual day even in our formal paintings.

After a few minutes, I say to the receptionist: “Would you mind trying Lulu again?”

He does. She doesn't answer, which is predictable since she's gone missing.

“I'm cold,” Grandma says.

“She's cold,” I tell the gargoyle.

He sighs.

“Okay,” he says. “Give her a visitor badge.”

I fill out a name tag for Grandma. I tape it to her jacket. It reads: “Eileen Brennan.” The name of an actor who played a brothel madam in
The Sting
.

The gargoyle gestures to the door. I hear it click open. Grandma and I shuffle through.

We are in.

We climb into the mirror-walled elevator and I push the button to get us to the third floor.

“Lane, we should work together all the time.”

“I'd like that.”

The door opens to the third floor.

W
hite hallway. Linoleum floor. Hung along the walls, a series of digitally enhanced photographs. It takes me a moment to realize they are images of the brain shot from different angles, in mood lighting. Abstract art for biology geeks.

We step into the hall. I look left and right. Far to the right, a man in an Oxford shirt tucked into Bermuda shorts exits one room and enters a doorway across the hall.

“Would you mind holding my arm while we walk? These floors can be slippery.”

It's not true, but I want to keep Grandma close. Beneath my lab coat, I'm sweating through my plain blue long-sleeve shirt.

“It would be helpful for me if we could walk in silence. We don't want to disturb the people working.”

“I understand,” she responds.

On the wall, a sign offers direction. To our right are “Offices 301–324,” the “Ocular Lab,” and “Restrooms.” To our left, “Offices 325–335” and “Library.”

Fewer offices to the left. Maybe that means there is space for some other project—like the Advanced Life Computing department.

We walk left. Three doors down on the right side of the hallway, we arrive at the office marked “Pederson.”

I hear voices at the far end of the hallway. A tall woman and a stocky man walk hurriedly, with purpose, chatting. They don't seem to notice us. They pause, talk for a moment more, then the woman enters an office, and the man turns around and walks back the direction he came.

I palm the knob on Adrianna's doorway. It turns. I open the door.

Inside, I hear a metallic
clink
and a plunking noise of something falling onto the ground.

My heart pounds. The inside of my skull now too—a mild hangover accentuated by major trespassing. I pull Grandma inside the dark office. I feel her trembling and sense she might scream. I put my hand on her mouth.

“I'm begging you. I love you, and I'm begging you to not scream. Everything's fine.”

I feel Grandma release some of her tension and slowly remove my hand from her mouth.

I feel for the doorknob on the inside to lock it. I find the knob, but there's a piece missing from its center, leaving a pinky-width hole in the metal cylinder.

I run my hand along the wall and I turn on the light.

On the floor, just at our feet, rests a metal chunk the shape of a Tootsie Roll. Now I understand why Adrianna's door was unlocked. Someone hacked the lock chamber. They must have left in a hurry or not bothered to reassemble the lock. Why not? Did they figure no one would be visiting here for a while?

I check in with Grandma. She's furtive, her eyes bouncing, pupils dilated, a cat amid uncertain circumstances, antenna picking up my anxiety.

“More quiet, please.”

The spacious office screams mid-level executive. Opposite us, a slatted white blind covers a picture window. In front of the window, facing us, a polished black wooden desk, a computer and unkempt piles of paper. Against the wall to my left, two thick wood floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, tinted red, filled with academic-looking texts. On the middle shelf nearest me, there's a gray stuffed toy with short tentacles that it takes a moment to realize is not an animal, but the shape of a cell. Looks to be a neuron.

To our right, along the wall where we walked in, resides a love seat with heinous corporate upholstery.

Over the love seat hangs a rectangular frame filled with what looks to be a child's drawing. It's a poorly rendered double-helix, the representation of DNA, drawn and colored by felt-tip pens. “Someone paid good money for that monstrosity,” Grandma whispers, incredulous. “I'll never understand the art market.”

I nearly laugh.

Inset at the bottom edge of the DNA image is a photograph of a woman and a boy. The woman looks to be in her mid-thirties, wearing a sun hat, her face pretty but serious. Her arm is around the boy. It's Newton, the kid from the playground.

I reach two unsubstantiated conclusions: Newton drew this DNA picture, and the woman he is standing with is Lulu Adrianna Pederson.

Maybe she's his aunt, family friend, or mentor.

Grandma sits on the couch.

I walk to the desk. I sit in an ergonomically precise black chair that feels more comfortable than any bed I've ever owned. Among a certain crowd of middle managers in this region, the perfect chair takes a backseat only to the latest computer, prompting occasional flame wars on the Internet about who produces the finest seat in the land.

I turn on the computer. While waiting for it to come alive, I look at the papers on the desk. They are disheveled, but not strewn. Like someone leafed through them—or perhaps they just weren't stacked well to begin with.

The document on top appears to be a travel budget. It includes a laundry list of items, including food ($55 per diem); sundries ($655); car/taxi ($1,100). I'm struck by one item: airfare $60,000.

Someone has traveled a bunch, or plans to.

Below that sheet of paper is a half-inch-thick document, bound by circular rings. Its title: X86 Server Specification Manual. It's a standard document about how to fix or update powerful servers, something I'd expect to see in the office of tech support, not an executive. Still, it looks insignificant. I leaf through it. On the inside of the last page, something catches my eye. It is neat, fluid handwriting on a form headed, “Record your specifications.”

There are three entries, for “Project,” “Configuration,” and “Location.”

Under “Project,” the handwriting reads: “Advanced Development And Memory (ADAM) version 1.0–1.4.”

On the “Configuration,” someone has written: “HMC Config: 42 Quad Core Verio Server each w/10 GB RAM and 1 Terabyte disk space.”

Under “Location,” it says: “Farm at 155 Industrial Way, SF. (Newt0n123).”

Newt0on. Newton. This is not insignificant, not to Adrianna.

But beyond that, it all strikes me as largely inscrutable, except the address. And the technical part I can run by Bullseye. I rip off the last page and fold it into my back pocket.

Adrianna's computer has come to life. Before I can give it a look, the desk phone rings. The caller ID says: “front desk.”

Grandma says: “If it's for me, please tell them I'm not available.”

“It's probably the gargoyle wanting to know if everything is okay up here.”

I let it ring four times, and it stops.

We're running out of time.

On the computer screen are two standard icons. They indicate that this computer is password protected and has two main users. One icon is labeled “Pederson,” and the other “ADAM.”

I click on “Pederson” and a login screen appears. The user name is filled out: “LAPederson.”

I assume: Lulu Adrianna Pederson.

The password is left blank. I type: “Newton.”

Nothing.

From my back pocket, I pull the piece of paper I just ripped and folded. I unfold it.

Under password, I type “Newt0n123.”

Nothing.

Into the password line, I type: “IAMSOFUCKED.”

I open the other icon—the one headed ADAM. The user name is filled out: “ADAM1.0.”

I stare at the empty password space. I type: “Newton,” then “newton,” then “Newt0n123.” None of them works.

The desk phone rings. It's the front desk. I pick up.

“Lulu Pederson's line,” I say.

“Mr. Johnson,” a voice responds. It's the gargoyle.

“That's me.”

“May I speak to Ms. Pederson?” he asks.

“Let me grab her.”

“She's not there?”

“She's in the Ocular Lab.”

“But you're in her office.”

“She asked me to wait here while she grabbed something. I can snag her, or we can call you back in a few minutes.”

After a pause, he says: “Let's just talk until she gets back.”

“Pardon?”

“How's your day going?”

He's trying to keep me on the line. The news crawl inside my brain flashes with a headline: SECURITY IS COMING.

I hang up.

“Stand up, Grandma.”

“I'm reading now.”

“Please. If we get caught in here, they're going to . . .”

I don't finish my sentence: arrest me, and take you away from me, and who knows where. Or why.

I hustle to Grandma. I lift her by the elbow, and guide her to the door. I open it and peek out. To the right, farther down the hall, a stairway exit. To the left, the elevators. They open. Out steps a security guard.