Pulling The Dragon's Tail (9 page)

Director Martinez was nodding thoughtfully.
“Keagan, your style continues to be unorthodox, creative, but this
time you know, you really were over the top. You must be more
careful the next time you find yourself in a similar
situation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s it?” Dr. Devereaux was outraged.
Glancing around the room she noted the body language of the
participants. She spoke for them. “All he gets is a slap on the
wrist? You will have a staff revolt if that’s the extent of the
consequences.
This
is the kind of incident that needs to be
reported to FIMH!”

Martinez looked thoughtfully around the room.
Others meekly nodded tentative approval to Devereaux’s
proclamation. In turn, Keagan sensed a turning of the tide. For
once, the incompetent director couldn’t protect his embattled
tech.

“I don’t know what the appropriate consequences
should be yet, but perhaps it’s best that you take a few paid days
off. You and I will discuss it further when I return next
Monday.”

“But Pablo! Director Martinez! I think that’s a
bit rash. I’m perfectly capable of performing my duties!” Keagan
pleaded.

Director Martinez ignored his protest. “Dr.
Devereaux, I’m leaving you in charge of staff reassignments in
Keagan’s absence, and with patient Kristopher. Can you handle
it?”

Putting on the most pretentious smile she could
muster, she said, “Aye, aye! There was never a doubt that I have
been and will continue to handle it. We will all be one big happy
family upon your return.”

The Director sighed wearily and hit the end
session key on his internet connection, instantly disappearing from
view.

Keagan, looking like a cornered animal, hurried
out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

“Sit down, Mr. Kristopher!” ordered Dr.
Devereaux without even looking up from her large mahogany desk at
the Ellis Clinic.

Immediately Nate Kristopher complied and sat
down on one of two soft chairs in front of her desk. After waiting
several anxious hours he finally had her full attention. The
e-message he had sent her had worked. However, one more step
remained. This time would she believe his outrageous story about
the anti-aging experiment?

Dr. Devereaux slowly leafed through the paper
version of Nate’s medical chart.

“I see you didn’t have Neuro Shock this morning
as planned,” she said flatly.

“Um, no ma’am, no doctor, I didn’t.”
Isn’t it
obvious?
A lump slowly rose in his throat.

She crinkled another paper, turning it over. “I
see here that you used to smoke.”
God, it’s hard to even look at
him. Do I have the courage to find out the truth about Grandpa
Hilliard?

“Well, I used to smoke many years ago; many,
many years ago. But I quit before the, um, many years ago.”
She’ll barely look at me. Is she upset? Sick? How far back do
their records go? Does she have access to other hospital’s
databases?
He swallowed hard.

Her COMP-MD program screamed into her ear,
“UNSPECIFIED STRESS REACTION IN PROGRESS!” She unclipped her ear
mike and tossed it onto the desk. “I see,” she noted. “How has your
stay been here so far?”

He began to squirm in his chair. “Um—okay, I
guess. But of course the hospital food, you know how that goes,
heh, heh.”

She remained flat and emotionless, flipping
through more pages.
Oh my God! Such high dopamine and serotonin
levels! There’s absolutely no calcification of blood vessels. How
could I’ve overlooked this? Virtually no enlargement of ventricles.
Hippocampus and medial temporal lobes all look so…so… young! It’s
the brain of a… teen-ager. Lipofuscin accumulation is ZERO! My God!
No brain scan has ever been like this before. Grandpa, did you
actually
halt the aging process?

Nate nervously drummed his fingers on the chair
arm.
I’m talking to a robot
, he thought.

Campbell’s pulse throbbed. She fought to
breathe. She closed her eyes tightly and thought,
I don’t know
if I can do this!

Suddenly, a powerful sensation seized her. She
smelled bacon frying. Campbell’s mom yelled, ‘Breakfast everyone!’
The wooden table was spread with eggs, bacon, pancakes, and orange
juice. Her father sat across the table sipping coffee while reading
an e-newspaper. The picture window framed Lake Saskatchewa in the
distance. Early morning mist rose off the lake with snow-capped
peaks in the background. A raspy but pleasant voice behind said,
‘”Guess who?’”

She forced her eyes even more tightly together.
The unmistakable presence loomed behind her. She felt the
rough-hewn hands gently press against her face, smelled his pungent
aftershave.

Her eyes flew open! “Grandpa!”

Startled, Nate asked, “Are…are you okay?”

For a second she looked at Nate as if she didn’t
recognize him. But then she pasted the grim look back on her face.
With a hard set jaw, she said, “Yes! I’m fine!”

She massaged the bridge of her nose with her
fingers, being careful as always to not disturb the implanted
monitor glasses. “It’s been a long day,” she said softly. Sighing
heavily, she turned around and opened the curtain behind her. The
mid-afternoon sun blazed its brilliance through the rain-soaked
windows into the office. Rays of sunlight danced through a round
stained glass picture of a dove flying over the Earth. And for the
first time Nate noticed the vase of flowers on her desk and their
delightful aroma. More bird-themed sculptures and paintings graced
her walls and desk.

Resuming her seat, she leaned forward on her
elbows. She faced him squarely in the eye. Then she began with a
lie. “Mr. Kristopher, I need to apologize for running late. The
staff meeting ran much longer than anticipated, and I had other
business to attend to.”

Following the heated conference, she had been in
no mood to confront this mystery man. Confronting difficult men had
seemed to be her calling, and she had had her fill of them that
morning. With her brain on information overload, she just needed
some space.

She had instructed her staff that she would
return in a few hours and to hold Mr. Kristopher in his room. A
two-block walk to the subway left her drenched from the heavy rain
but also gave her time to think. Although the sidewalk pavement
felt solid under her feet, the morning’s events were rather like a
personal earthquake. With her world quaking beneath her, she needed
all her strength to just maintain her balance.

Issues and concerns swirled around her head like
bees swarming a hive. Try as she might she found she couldn’t elude
them. The ghost of her grandfather’s legacy haunted her again. How
much longer could she put up with incompetence at the clinic? Could
CLUES possibly be mistaken? How accurate was the computer’s
assessment of Keagan’s intentions? Then, of course, the man behind
it all was Nate Kristopher. If only she would have known the havoc
this man would create. She regretted ever letting him into her
private office last week. Yet part of her was somehow grateful for
the encounter.

The nano-wearable in her clothes was already
drying the fabric as she stepped onto the subway. “Monitoring
vitals,” a voice whispered in her ear. Sub-dermal sensors began
performing routine analysis of her physical status. “Personal
stress reaction in progress,” proclaimed COMP-MD. “Heart rate is
145 bpm, blood pressure is 180 over 120, HDL at 239. COMP-MD
recommends for your profile the following coping strategy: aerobic
exercise; length: two-mile walk at three miles per hour; suggested
venue: Central Park or gym at Tenth Avenue and Broadway.” Campbell
usually listened to her doctor’s advice. In fact her vitals were
immediately being sent to her human physician, who was sure to call
her if she failed to comply.

“Other amenities at Central Park include—”

“Shut the hell up!” she yelled, and hastily
unclipped the earrings and stuffed them in her pocket. “No computer
program is going to run me,” she grumbled to herself.

Reaching her office in lower Manhattan, she’d
already chosen how to unwind. A virtual reality relaxation program
was a perfect modality, with or without a computer’s approval.

“Which one?” she mused, looking over the array
of possible VR programming. “A travelogue of Hawaii? No, too
exotic. A hike through the Alps? No, too strenuous. Ah,” and a
smile spread across her face, “a trip in a space ship across the
galaxy to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth.” With eager anticipation
she looked forward to the prospect of visiting the Pisces Nebula.
As an atheist, she nonetheless found solace and spiritual
fulfillment in a worshipful experience on the grandest scale of
all—the universe.

At the last second she decided that the trip
needed one more element. “Computer, please include a flyby of the
Moon.”
As long as I don’t have to deal with any of the
colonists
, she thought, briefly reflecting on her adventure
there seven years earlier.

“Kind of ironic,” she mused as the space ship
lifted off effortlessly, “how I need to engage in a fantasy of my
own creation to cope with reality. Mr. Kristopher, or whoever you
are, you’ll have to wait.”

As the symphony orchestra commenced, the Moon
was already on the horizon. Campbell Devereaux was in a state of
bliss. Momentarily, at least, no computers sought to dominate her
life, and no surprises from humans awaited her.

* * * * * *

“I trust your wait wasn’t too unbearable.”

Nate looked directly into her eyes. Campbell
Devereaux
sounded
sincere enough. But she still wielded
tremendous power over his life.
Can she be trusted? Which Dr.
Devereaux am I dealing with? The surly, monochromatic one, or the
well-balanced one who obviously loves nature, especially birds?
His doubt was healthy and protective, and it led to questions.

“At the risk of sounding paranoid …” he
asked.

“Quite honestly there’s no way to really earn
your trust on this unit. One second.” She typed a few keystrokes on
her handheld computer. “I’ve turned off all CLUES programming. All
computer monitoring devices are off-line as well. And I can show
you if you don’t believe me. It’s just you and me.”

He remained unconvinced.

“Let me start then,” she said. “I believe your
trust in the confidentiality of this session will increase if I
share with you first. And I wouldn’t be so candid if I didn’t fully
believe that all our words stay right here.”

That’s a good start
, he thought. “Okay,
doctor, I’m listening.”

“I don’t understand everything about you, Mr.
Kristopher. It’s whispered among us psychobiologists that our field
has no more enigmas. But right now I think I’m looking at one.”

With a slight twinkle in his eye, he said,
“Actually there are a few more of us
enigmas
around.”

“All right,” she smiled stiffly, noting his
playfulness.
Another lesson in humility. If I actually spend
some time with the patient I’ll start to see a real person behind
the diagnosis
. “Okay, but please don’t send them to my office,”
and she cracked a wry smile. “One’s plenty for right now.”

Her smile quickly vanished. “In the field of
psychiatry—we often refer to it as psychobiology—a high level of
certainty exists about diagnosis and treatment. We believe that
intelligences, such as CLUES, have exhaustively mapped the human
brain and psyche.” Leaning forward, she cleared her throat. “In
other words—”

“In other words, you’re saying that if CLUES
designates me to be such and such, then you professionals also
believe it.”

She nodded, lips pursed into a tight smile. “But
you represent a threat to that, the biggest one I’ve ever seen. A
medical school supervisor warned me about placing too much trust in
artificial intelligence. Naturally I ignored him.” Nervously, she
tapped on her desk with her fingers. Glancing at her tic, she
stopped the tapping and gazed straight into Nate’s eyes. “He
asserted that the field was teetering toward a capitulation of
sorts, giving up our human intelligence in favor of computers and
their dictates.”

Your actions on this unit, most particularly the
video you downloaded into my mailbox, have created enough doubt
about the absolute total reliability of CLUES that I’ve postponed
any Neuro Shock Treatment for the time being.”

Nate immediately felt a flood of relief.
Thank you, Father Abraham
. “I’m very grateful to hear
that.”

She continued. “My job is to first do no harm by
arriving at an accurate diagnosis. And it is clear to me that I
haven’t arrived at that yet. I can’t say with certainty that you’re
free of psychosis, and I can’t say with certainty that you’re
psychotic, with grandiose delusions pertaining to your belief that
you’re ninety-one. However, um, how shall I put this? My approach
though is not without dissenters.”

“So therefore, you’re saying …” A worried look
crossed his face.

“I want to begin in-depth psychotherapy with
you. I intend to get to the bottom of what’s really going on.
Instead of a computer program, I need to go back to basics of my
discipline, that is, listening, empathy, honesty.”

I don’t need therapy. But if that plan gets
me out of this place, I’ll play along.
“Can you really do this
while I’m hospitalized? After all I came to you in your outpatient
office to work on the very stuff you spoke of, that is, to get to
the bottom of what’s really going on.”

“Mr. Kristopher, I have every intention to
discharge you tomorrow, and as you suggest, we will do this work in
my private office. But be advised” she sternly warned, “your
discharge is against hospital protocol. I have other conspirators
in on this plan. Can you maintain this secrecy?”