Egan, Greg - Distress

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Distress

A Novel by

Greg Egan

HarperPaperbacks

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's

imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 0-06-105264-7

Printed in the United States of America First HarperPrism printing: May 1997 Designed by Lisa

Pifher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Egan, Greg, 1961-

Distress/Greg Egan.

p. cm. ISBN 0-06-105264-7 I. Title. PR9619.3.E35D57 1997

823-DC21 96-54709 CIP

Visit HarperPaperbacks on the World Wide Web at http://www.harpercollins.com/paperbacks

Thanks to Caroline Oakley, Deborah Beale, Anthony Cheetham, Peter Robinson, Lucy Blackburn,

Annabelle Ager, and Claudia Schaffer.

It is not true that the map of freedom will be complete

with the erasure of the last invidious border when it remains for us to chart the attractors of

thunder

and delineate the arrhythmias of drought to reveal the molecular dialects of forest and savanna

as rich as a thousand human tongues and to comprehend the deepest history of our passions

ancient beyond mythology's reach

So I declare that no corporation holds a monopoly on numbers

no patent can encompass zero and one

no nation has sovereignty over adenine and guanine

no empire rules the quantum waves

And there must be room for all at the celebration of

understanding

for there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold imposed by force, resisted or escaped.

From Technoliberation by Muteba Kazadi, 2019

Part One

«All right. He's dead. Go ahead and talk to him."

The bioethicist was a laconic young asex with blond dreadlocks and a T-shirt which flashed up the

slogan SAY NO TO TOE! in between the paid advertising. Ve countersigned the permission form on the

forensic pathologist's notepad, then withdrew to a corner of the room. The trauma specialist and

the paramedic wheeled their resuscitation equipment out of the way, and the forensic pathologist

hurried forward, hypodermic syringe in hand, to administer the first dose of neuropreser-vative.

Useless prior to legal death-massive ly toxic to several organs, on a time scale of hours-the

cocktail ofglutamate antagonists, calcium channel blockers, and antioxidants would halt the most

damaging biochemical changes in the victim's brain, almost immediately.

The pathologist's assistant followed close behind her, with a trolley bearing all the

paraphernalia of post-mortem revival: a tray of disposable surgical instruments; several racks of

electronic equipment; an arterial pump fed from three glass tanks the size of water-coolers; and

something resembling a hairnet made out of gray superconducting wire.

Lukowski, the homicide detective, was standing beside me. He mused, "If everyone was fitted out

like you, Worth, we'd never have to do this. We could just replay the crime from start to finish.

Like reading an aircraft's black box."

I replied without looking away from the operating table; I could edit out our voices easily

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enough, but I wanted a continuous take of the pathologist connecting up the surrogate blood

supply. "If everyone had optic nerve taps, don't you think murderers would start hacking the

memory chips out of their victims' bodies?"

"Sometimes. But no one hung around to mess up this guy's brain, did they?"

3 (Note: The numeration of pages preserves the page numeration of the original copy. the page

numbers indicate the bottom of the page)

"Wait until they've seen the documentary." The pathologist's assistant sprayed a depilatory enzyme

onto the victim's skull, and then wiped all the close-cropped black hair away with a couple of

sweeps of his gloved hand. As he dropped the mess into a plastic sample bag, I realized why it was

holding together instead of dispersing like barber's shop waste; several layers of skin had come

with it. The assistant glued the "hairnet"-a skein of electrodes and SQID detectors- to the bare

pink scalp. The pathologist finished checking the blood supply, then made an incision in the

trachea and inserted a tube, hooked up to a small pump to take the place of the collapsed lungs.

Nothing to do with respiration; purely as an aid to speech. It was possible to monitor the nerve

impulses to the larynx, and synthesize the intended sounds by wholly electronic means, but

apparently the voice was always less garbled if the victim could experience something like the

normal tactile and auditory feedback produced by a vibrating column of air. The assistant fitted a

padded bandage over the victim's eyes; in rare cases, feeling could return sporadically to the

skin of the face, and since retinal cells were deliberately not revived, some kind of temporary

ocular injury was the easiest lie to explain away the pragmatic blindness.

I thought again about possible narration. In 1888, police surgeons photographed the retinas of one

victim of Jack the Ripper, in the vain hope that they might discover the face of the killer

embalmed in the light-sensitive pigments of the human eye . . .

No. Too predictable. And too misleading; revival was not a process of extracting information from

a passive corpse. But what were the alternative references? Orpheus? Lazarus? "The Monkey's Paw?"

"The Tell-Tale Heart?" Reanimator? Nothing in myth or fiction had really prefigured the truth.

Better to make no glib comparisons. Let the corpse speak for itself.

A spasm passed through the victim's body. A temporary pacemaker was forcing his damaged heart to

beat-operating at power levels which would poison every cardiac muscle fiber with electrochemical

by-products, in fifteen or twenty minutes at the most. Pre-oxygenated ersatz blood was being fed

into his heart's left atrium, in lieu of a supply from the lungs, pumped through the body once

only, then removed via the pulmonary arteries and discarded. An open system was less trouble than

recirculation, in the short term. The half-repaired knife wounds in his abdomen and torso made a

mess, leaking thin scarlet fluid into the drainage channels of the operating table, but they posed

no real

threat; a hundred times as much blood was being extracted every second, deliberately. No one had

bothered to remove the surgical larvae, though, so they kept on working as if nothing had changed:

stitching and chemically cauterizing the smaller blood vessels with their jaws, cleaning and

disinfecting the wounds, sniffing about blindly for necrotic tissue and clots to consume.

Maintaining the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the brain was essential but it wouldn't reverse

the deterioration which had already taken place. The true catalysts of revival were the billions

of lipo-somes-microscopic drug capsules made from lipid membranes-being infused along with the

ersatz blood. One key protein embedded in the membrane unlocked the blood-brain barrier, enabling

the liposomes to burrow out of the cerebral capillaries into the interneural space. Other proteins

caused the membrane itself to fuse with the cell wall of the first suitable neuron it encountered,

disgorging an elaborate package of biochemical machinery to re-energize the cell, mop up some of

the molecular detritus of ischaemic damage, and protect against the shock of re-oxygenation.

Other liposomes were tailored for other cell types: muscle fibers in the vocal fold, the jaw, the

lips, the tongue; receptors in the inner ear. They all contained drugs and enzymes with similar

effects: hijacking the dying cell and forcing it, briefly, to marshal its resources for one final-

unsustainable-burst of activity.

Revival was not resuscitation pushed to heroic extremes. Revival was permitted only when the long-

term survival of the patient was no longer a consideration, because every method which might have

achieved that outcome had already failed.

The pathologist glanced at a display screen on the equipment trolley. I followed her gaze; there

were wave traces showing erratic brain rhythms, and fluctuating bar graphs measuring toxins and

breakdown products being flushed out of the body. Lukowski stepped forward expectantly. I followed

him.

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The assistant hit a button on a keypad. The victim twitched and coughed blood-some of it still his

own, dark and clotted. The wave traces spiked, then became smoother, more periodic.

Lukowski took the victim's hand and squeezed it-a gesture which struck me as cynical, although for

all I knew it might have reflected a genuine compassionate impulse. I glanced at the bioethicist.

Vis T-shirt

now read CREDIBILITY IS A COMMODITY. I couldn't decide if that was a sponsored message or a

personal opinion.

Lukowski said, "Daniel? Danny? Can you hear me?" There was no obvious physical response, but the

brain waves danced. Daniel Cavolini was a music student, nineteen years old. He'd been found

around eleven, bleeding and unconscious, in a corner of the Town Hall railway station-with watch,

notepad, and shoes still on him, unlikely in a random mugging gone wrong. I'd been hanging out

with the homicide squad for a fortnight, waiting for something like this. Warrants for revival

were issued only if the evidence favored the victim being able to name the assailant; there was

little prospect of obtaining a usable verbal description of a stranger, let alone an identikit of

the killer's face. Lukowski had woken a magistrate just after midnight, the minute the prognosis

was clear.

Cavolini's skin was turning a strange shade of crimson, as more and more revived cells began

taking up oxygen. The alien-hued transporter molecule in the ersatz blood was more efficient than

hemoglobin-but like all the other revival drugs, it was ultimately toxic.

The pathologist's assistant hit some more keys. Cavolini twitched and coughed again. It was a

delicate balancing act; small shocks to the brain were necessary to restore the major coherent

rhythms . . . but too much external interference could wipe out the remnants of short-term memory.

Even after legal death, neurons could remain active deep in the brain, keeping the symbolic firing-

pattern representations of recent memories circulating for several minutes. Revival could

temporarily restore the neural infrastructure needed to extract those traces, but if they'd

already died away completely-or been swamped by the efforts to recover them-interrogation was

pointless.

Lukowski said soothingly, "You're okay now, Danny. You're in hospital. You're safe. But you have

to tell me who did this to you. Tell me who had the knife."

A hoarse whisper emerged from Cavolini's mouth: one faint, aspirated syllable, then silence. My

skin crawled with predictable monkey's paw horror-but I felt an idiotic surge of exultation, too,

as if part of me simply refused to accept that this sign of life could not be a sign of hope.

Cavolini tried again, and the second attempt was more sustained. His artificial exhalation,

detached from voluntary control, made it sound like he was gasping for breath; the effect was

pitiful-but he wasn't actu-

6 ally short of oxygen at all. His speech was so broken and tortuous that I couldn't make out a

single word, but an array of piezoelectric sensors was glued to his throat, and wired to a

computer. I turned to the display

panel.

Why can't I see?

Lukowski said, "Your eyes are bandaged. There were a couple of broken blood vessels, but they've

been repaired; there'll be no permanent damage, I promise. So just... lie still, and relax. And

tell me what happened."

What time is it? Please. I better call home. I better tell them- "We've spoken to your parents.

They're on their way, they'll be here as soon as possible."

That much was true-but even if they showed up in the next ninety seconds, they would not be

allowed into the room.

"You were waiting for the train home, weren't you? Platform four. Remember? Waiting for the ten-

thirty to Strathfield. But you didn't get on. What happened?" I saw Lukowski's gaze shift to a

graph below the transcript window, where half a dozen rising curves recording improved vital signs

were extended by dashed computer projections. All of the projected curves hit their peaks a minute

or so in the future, then swiftly declined.

He had a knife. Cavolini's right arm began to twitch, and his slack facial muscles came to life

for the first time, taking on a grimace of pain. It still hurts. Please help me. The bioethicist

glanced calmly at some figures on the display screen, but declined to intervene. Any effective

anesthetic would damp down neural activity too much to allow the interrogation to continue; it was

all or nothing, abort or proceed.

Lukowski said gently, "The nurse is getting some painkillers. Hang in there, man, it won't be

long. But tell me: who had the knife?" The faces of both of them were glistening with sweat now;

Lukowski's arm was scarlet up to the elbow. I thought: If you found someone dying on the pavement

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in a pool of blood, you'd ask the same questions, wouldn't you? And tell the same reassuring lies?

"Who was it, Danny?" My brother. "Your brother had the knife?"

No he didn't. I can't remember what happened. Ask me later. My head's too fuzzy now.

"Why did you say it was your brother? Was it him, or wasn't it?" Of course it wasn't him. Don't

tell anyone I said that. I'll be all

right if you stop confusing me. Can I have the painkillers now?

Please?

His face flowed and froze, flowed and froze, like a sequence of masks, making his suffering seem

stylized, abstract. He began to move his head back and forth; weakly at first, then with manic

speed and energy. I assumed he was having some kind of seizure: the revival drugs were over-

stimulating some damaged neural pathway.

Then he reached up with his right hand and tore away the blindfold. His head stopped jerking

immediately; maybe his skin had grown hypersensitive, and the blindfold had become an unbearable

irritation. He blinked a few times, then squinted up at the room's bright lights. 1 could see his

pupils contract, his eyes moving purposefully. He raised his head slightly and examined Lukowski,

then looked down at his own body and its strange adornments: the pacemaker's brightly colored

ribbon cable; the heavy plastic blood-supply tubes; the knife wounds full of glistening white

maggots. Nobody moved, nobody spoke, while he inspected the needles and electrodes buried in his

chest, the strange pink tide washing out of him, his ruined lungs, his artificial airway. The

display screen was behind him, but everything else was there to be taken in at a glance. In a

matter of seconds, he knew, I could see the weight of understanding descend on him.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His expression shifted rapidly; through the pain there

was a sudden flash of pure astonishment, and then an almost amused comprehension of the full

strangeness-and maybe even the perverse virtuosity-of the feat to which he'd been subjected. For

an instant, he really did look like someone admiring a brilliant, vicious, bloody practical joke

at his own expense.

Then he said clearly, between enforced robotic gasps: "I ... don't. . . think . . . this ... is

... a ... good ... id ... dea. I... don't. . . want. . . to ... talk . . . any . . . more."

He closed his eyes and sank back onto the table. His vital signs were descending rapidly.

Lukowski turned to the pathologist. He was ashen, but he still gripped the boy's hand. "How could

the retinas function? What did you do? You stupid-" He raised his free hand as if to strike her,

but he didn't follow through. The bioethicist's T-shirt read: ETERNAL LOVE IS A LOVEPET. MADE

FROM YOUR LOVED ONE'S OWN DNA. The pathologist, standing her ground, screamed back at Lukowski,

"You had to push him, didn't you? You had to keep on and on about the brother, while his stress

hormone index climbed straight into the red!" I wondered who'd decided what a normal level of

adrenaline was, for the state of being dead from knife wounds but otherwise relaxed. Someone

behind me emitted a long string of incoherent obscenities. I turned to see the paramedic, who

would have been with Cavolini since the ambulance; I hadn't even realized that he was still in the

room. He was staring at the floor, his fists clenched tight, shaking with anger.

Lukowski grabbed my elbow, staining me with synthetic blood. He spoke in a stage whisper, as if

hoping to keep his words off the soundtrack. "You can film the next one. Okay? This has never

happened before-never-and if you show people a one-in-a-million glitch as if it

was-

The bioethicist ventured mildly, "I think the guidelines from the Tay-lor committee on optional

restraints make it clear-"

The pathologist's assistant turned on her, outraged. "Who asked you for an opinion? Procedure is

none of your business, you pathetic-"

An ear-splitting alarm went off, somewhere deep in the electronic guts of the revival apparatus.

The pathologist's assistant bent over the equipment, and bashed on the keypad like a frustrated

child attacking a broken toy, until the noise went away.

In the silence that followed, I almost closed my eyes, invoked Witness, stopped recording. I'd

seen enough.

Then Daniel Cavolini regained consciousness, and began to scream.

I watched as they pumped him full of morphine, and waited for the revival drugs to finish him off.

It was just after five as I walked down the hill from Eastwood railway station. The sky was pale

and colorless, Venus was fading slowly in the east, but the street itself already looked exactly

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as it did by daylight. Just inexplicably deserted. My carriage on the train had been empty, too.

Last-human-on-Earth time.

Birds were calling-loudly-in the lush bushland which lined the railway corridor, and in the

labyrinth of wooded parks woven into the surrounding suburb. Many of the parks resembled pristine

forest-but every tree, every shrub was engineered: at the very least drought and fire resistant,

shedding no messy, flammable twigs, bark or leaves. Dead plant tissue was resorbed, cannibalized;

I'd seen it portrayed in time-lapse (one kind of photography I never carried out myself): an

entire brown and wilting branch shrinking back into the living trunk. Most of the trees generated

a modest amount of electricity-ultimately from sunlight, although the chemistry was elaborate, and

the release of stored energy continued twenty-four hours a day. Specialized roots sought out the

underground superconductors snaking through the parks, and fed in their contributions. Two and a

quarter volts was about as intrinsically safe as electric power could be-but it required zero

resistance for efficient transmission.

Some of the fauna had been modified, too; the magpies were docile even in spring, the mosquitoes

shunned mammalian blood, and the most venomous snakes were incapable of harming a human child.

Small advantages over their wild cousins, tied to the biochemistry of the engineered vegetation,

guaranteed the altered species dominance in this microecology-and small handicaps kept them from

flourishing if they ever escaped to one of the truly wild reserves, distant from human habitation.

I was renting a small detached unit in a cluster of four, set in a zero-maintenance garden which

merged seamlessly with the tendril of parkland at the end of a cul-de-sac. I'd been there for

eight years, ever since my first commission from SeeNet, but I still felt like a trespasser. East-

wood was just eighteen kilometers from the center of Sydney, which- although ever fewer people had

reason to travel there-still seemed to hold an inexplicable sway over real-estate prices; I

couldn't have bought the unit myself in a hundred years. The (barely) affordable rent was just a

felicitous by-product of the owner's elaborate tax evasion schemes-and it was probably only a

matter of time before some quiver of butterfly wings in world financial markets rendered the

networks slightly less generous, or my landowner slightly less in need of a write-off, and I'd be

picked up and flung fifty kilometers west, back to the outer sprawl where I belonged.

I approached warily. Home should have felt like a sanctuary after the night's events, but I

hesitated outside the front door, key in hand, for something like a minute.

Gina was up, dressed, and in the middle of breakfast. I hadn't seen her since the same time the

day before; it was as if I'd never left.

She said, "How was filming?" I'd sent her a message from the hospital, explaining that we'd

finally got lucky.

"I don't want to talk about it." I retreated into the living room and sank into a chair. The

action of sitting seemed to replay itself in my inner ears; I kept descending, again and again. I

fixed my gaze on the pattern in the carpet; the illusion slowly faded.

"Andrew? What happened?" She followed me into the room. "Did something go wrong? Will you have to

reshoot?"

"I said I don't want to-" I caught myself. I looked up at her, and forced myself to concentrate.

She was puzzled, but not yet angry. Rule number three: Tell her everything, however unpleasant, at

the first opportunity. Whether you feel like it or not. Anything less will be treated as

deliberate exclusion and taken as a personal affront.

I said, "I won't have to reshoot. It's over." I recounted what had happened.

Gina looked ill. "And was anything he said worth . . . extracting? Did mentioning his brother make

the slightest sense or was he just braindamaged and ranting?"

"That's still not clear. Evidently the brother does have a history of violence; he was on

probation for assaulting his mother. They've taken

him in for questioning . . . but it could all come to nothing. If the victim's short-term

memories were lost, he could have pieced together a false reconstruction of the stabbing, using

the first person who came to mind as being capable of the act. And when he changed his story he

might not have been covering up at all; he might simply have realized that he was amnesic."

Gina said, "And even if the brother did kill him ... no jury is going to accept a couple of words,

instantly retracted, as any kind of proof. If there's a conviction, it will have nothing to do

with the revival."

It was difficult to argue the point; I had to struggle to regain some perspective.

"Not in this case, no. But there have been times when it's made all the difference. The victim's

word alone might never stand up in court- but there've been people tried for murder who would

never have been suspected otherwise. Cases when the evidence which actually convicted them was

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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Egan/Egan,%20Greg%20-%20Distress.txtDistressANovelbyGregEganHarperPaperbacksThisisaworkoffiction.Thecharacters,incidents,anddialoguesare\productsoftheauthor'simaginationandarenottobeconstruedasreal.Anyresemblancetoactu\aleventsorpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.Copyr...

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