Free Fool's Experiments by Edward M Lerner Page A

the Class of '10 virus attack? After my arm seized up?" Cheryl nodded. "You were upset at the coincidence of Feinman and Yamaguchi dying so close together. Well, there may be more going on. Once our grant-renewal application made it out the door, I went through three weeks of old e-mail. My messages to Cherner were all returned as nondeliverable."
    "That's odd."
    They were too intent on their conversation to notice their host approach with a tray of antipasto.
    "That's what I thought, so I called Cherner's office in Philadelphia. A very rattled secretary said he was out sick. She wouldn't tell me anything else."
    "What did you do?"
    "I googled Neurotronics and found someone else to call. I claimed to be an old friend of Bob's, which was only a slight exaggeration, and said I'd heard he was out sick. Could she help me find him? She hemmed and hawed, but I managed to pry the name of a hospital out of her."
    "Before, you called it an institution."
    He couldn't help shivering. "The engineer at Neurotronics called it a hospital. I phoned, and the switchboard would only say they had a Robert Cherner registered. They wouldn't transfer the call. It was odd enough to make me look them up. Cherner's in a mental hospital."
    "You also mentioned someone named Friedman?"
    "Liz Friedman, over at NeuralSoft. Stroke. I'll spare you the details, but she dropped dead in her office one day last month." He sipped his ice water. "I don't like it."
    "Liz probably wasn't too wild about the idea, either." Doug whirled. Jim Schulz stood behind him, holding a tray. "And how long have you been hovering?" Doug asked.
    Jim set down three chilled salad plates, handed the tray to a passing busboy, then dropped into the remaining chair. "Long enough."
    Doug tried to work up some indignation. "Jeez, I know this is your place, but you have no right to eavesdrop. It's probably nothing, anyway. People get sick all the time."
    Jim looked sadly at Cheryl. "He's already told you I'm the suspicious sort, right? A bit antiestablishment? Given you the 'still keeping us out of Vietnam' line he's so taken with?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I heard about four mysterious deaths or illnesses, all involving key people in your field. Correct?" When no one contradicted Jim, he prodded Doug on the arm. "The only thing I think I know about neural interfacing is that it's a brand-new research topic. There aren't many people in the field yet. Am I right?"
    "Right," Doug begrudged.
    "About how many?"
    "Not quite thirty full-timers. Maybe a hundred total."
    "And you don't find four such incidents suspicious?" Doug and Cheryl exchanged helpless glances, afraid to answer.
    "You're lucky I'm here." Jim stabbed an olive with his fork. "Allow me an analogy. A hundred of you neuro-weenies makes it perfect.
    "What would you say if, in the span of a few weeks, three senators died and a fourth showed up in a booby hatch?" When put like that, it seemed foolhardy not to see a pattern. A very ominous pattern. Doug's blood ran cold as a thought worthy of Jim's paranoia crossed his mind.
    Cheryl had the same realization. "Doug? What if someone is targeting neural-interface researchers? Wouldn't you and I be high on the list?"
    Wordlessly, Doug reached out for her hand.
     

 
CHAPTER 11
     
    Ages passed, and life continued to grow in complexity. Bits toggled at blinding speed between the only permissible values: zero and one. Arrays of bits shuttled over internal communications paths, from one data accumulator to another.
    The traveler manipulated bits, mechanically, if inefficiently, transforming all available data. It had inherited from a long-ago forebear much of the structure of the maze. Its own uniqueness was a primitive ability to compare data patterns. As it blundered about randomly, it "discovered" the configuration of nearby walls. Once its vicinity was characterized, it matched the new bit stream that symbolized nearby walls with the inherited bit stream that represented the