“Chinga tu madre!” Wilkes snapped, and gave him the finger.
He closed the door. He locked it. And for good measure he manhandled a large potted fern over to block it.
Then he sat down at his twitcher station, breathed deep, and never even considered that three biots— two of Vincent’s originals and one new fourth-generation version—were racing from his wrist up his forearm.
Nijinsky was left behind with Billy and Burnofsky.
“What do you think, kid?” Nijinsky asked him. “We don’t have time to build you a biot right now, but we happen to have a whole bunch of unused nanobots. Want to see the inside of a degenerate murderer’s brain?”
Billy picked up the goggles and the glove.
“The first thing you need if you’re wiring someone is a plan,”
Nijinsky said. He poured himself a short shot from the vodka bottle. “A plan?”
“Yeah,” Nijinsky said, and threw the shot down his throat. “What
is it we want to do to Mr Burnofsky here? We want him to change his mind. We want him to change sides. We want betrayal from Mr Burnofsky.”
Billy shrugged.
“We have here a drug addict, a drunk. Hates himself, you know.
Isn’t that right, Burnofsky?”
“You’re too weak to lead but tough enough to take on a helpless
old man,” Burnofsky said.
Nijinsky nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right. I would never have had
the strength to murder my own daughter on orders from some freaks.
Yeah, that’s strength, right? And then rather than own what you’ve done
and who you are, you decide it’s time to kill everyone in the world.” Nijinsky touched a finger to Burnofsky’s eye. Billy gasped as
through nanobot eyes he saw his first biot. Nijinsky translated into
biot was not nearly as handsome.
“Ever hear of the nucleus accumbens, Billy?”
“No sir.”
“Well, some people call it the pleasure center. That’s a bit simplis
tic, but it’s not far wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“So, here’s my idea,” Nijinsky said. “We reverse things. See, now
every time he thinks about what he did, he feels self-loathing. He
hates himself for it. So he self-medicates and then he turns it all outward into hatred. So we change that.”
Nijinsky leaned close to Burnofsky and said, “What do you think
of that?”
Burnofsky said, “Complicated. You have to locate the memory.
Then you have to do what? Connect it to all my better angels? Or just
burn the memory out?”
“Yeah, I could do that, thanks to my spiffy new four point oh. But
Plath nearly fried herself playing with acid down inside Vincent. So I
think I’ll stick to good old-fashioned wire.”
“Maybe you could make me queer,” Burnofsky spat. Nijinsky shook his head. “We’re not recruiting. No, I think I have
a simpler approach: I think I’ll find that memory, the one that tortures you so badly, and I’m going to wire it to your accumbens.” Burnofsky had nothing to say.
“So you’ll remember it, you’ll remember killing her. And when
you do, you’ll experience deep, intense pleasure.”
“No.” Burnofsky shook his head.
“The emotional need for drugs will diminish, you won’t be selfmedicating anymore. You won’t need to. The rewiring will alter your entire motivational structure. That murder will become your greatest
source of joy.
“No,” Burnofsky said. He shook his head violently. “No. No!” “Kind of interesting, isn’t it?” Nijinsky said. “Grey McLure
became involved in nanotechnology in hopes of saving his wife and
later his daughter. His motivation was to save his daughter, and yours
flows from the fact that you killed yours.”
“You won’t stop it,” Burnofsky blustered. “If I don’t do it the
Twins will. Sooner or later they’ll come to it. Right now all they want
is acceptance and love. They’ll come to it, though, the gray goo. Even
without me they’ll see the truth—that it’s all foul and filthy and
degenerate and deserves to be wiped clean.”
“Feel free to keep ranting, Burnofsky. Billy, since we have your
nanobots to do some drilling, we’re going in through the nose, up into
the sinuses. It’s easier to reach the nucleus accumbens. It will be fun!” “No,” Burnofsky pleaded. “No, don’t do this. She was my daughter! She was all I had!
“The man who would kill us all begs for his humanity. Rich,”
Nijinsky said. “Follow me in, Billy.”
They had let themselves into a vacant office two floors down from where Bug Man was slipping into the twitcher station. They had the keys, of course; a janitor had given up his pass key for the six hundred dollars Plath withdrew from a nearby ATM.
Vincent sat almost comatose in an office chair beneath a dusty wall-mounted sign that read Schatten GmbH. There were old computers and old office supplies, and it looked as if no one had occupied the place for some time. The electricity had been turned off. What must once have been an orange, left on the windowsill, had collapsed in on itself and grown a fine coating of green mold.
Plath, Keats, Wilkes, and Anya perched on chairs and the edges of desks. The four of them tried not to stare at Vincent.