#hugh darrow

--

It’s an academia thing. It isn’t obsession.

It’s late nights, because there is so much to do. He in America, you in England. Skype is a long way away, but Picus has experimental ways to talk, he in the air around you like the ideas, alive. Nano-scale artificial epidermis. Direct epiretinal enhancement. The implication of replication of optical illusions in eye prosthetics. There are things beyond the imagined.

It’s an academic thing. It’s early mornings, because the time difference exists. Though time, you say the first time an early morning effortlessly becomes a late night, time too is purely academic. An exercise in human imagination. Overclocking, he says. Hm? says you.

Overclocking biomechatronics for heat preservation in low temp environments. Read a study about it.

You look up, though he’s thousands of miles away, and smile, because you remember writing that one.

It’s an academic thing, though.

It’s an exchange of ideas.

The mutual pact of similarly minded people walking in the same academic field.

--

He admits that he was nervous. To call. The first time.

It’s astonishing. You can’t imagine him any less than he is – absolute.

Nervous? Him?

You’re the damn head of the field, he says.

It’s personal.

The academia is slipping.

Let’s not talk about this again, you say.

Alright.

Trick yourself into believing he sounds relieved.

--

It goes like this.

It’s academic.

It’s academic.

His struggling company goes public and you, with a handwave, get him a pass to Tai Yong’s first industry showcase. You owe Ru a favor. It’s a bad position to be in. You present your joint paper on nerve interfaces. He’s alive on stage in a way that captivates even the jaded. Nerve interfaces become unquantifiably fascinating, become the future, become something…with more potential than they possibly have. He paces and points and invites conversation and we are all, for the moment, involved. Way up there, are you beside him, or is he beside you? It doesn’t matter. You owe Ru a favor but you and he are side by side. These places your are at, they equalize.

The paper, you tell yourself, is academic.

The pride when Ru, without prompting, invites him back next year is...

Personal.

It’s a tradition. The start of a tradition. Every year. You and he, at the top of the new world order.

You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

--

It’s personal.

The integrated workspaces are a given, by now. There was a time when you could work alone, and there was a time when you wanted to, and there was a time when you didn’t. They’re all past. He is a given, outside any conscious choice. Sometimes, it is hours of silence and one typed out what do you think of this, and sometimes, it is a day and a half of discussion you don’t understand when you look back over your notes except one or two sparks of engineered brilliance. Sometimes you don’t take notes. Debate for the joy of it. Scholastic. There is something you missed about the theoretical. And so, the integrated workspaces become a given. The audiolinks. The shared screens. The general document access. A bloody security nightmare, says your IT team. A fucking security nightmare, says his.

But.

It’s acknowledged that you both work better together.

It’s acknowledged that it’s simple synergy.

It’s personal.

In those quiet moments when there is no work to talk about he mentions his family. His company is small enough that it is still a family. You don’t tell him that will change. It might not. Given the way he speaks of them…

You learn their names, slowly. Athene, Josie, Vasili.

You learn to know them as well as anything else you know.

They are an extension of his life, and so you extend a degree of interest towards them.

It’s a personal thing, nothing more.

--

Lies.

--

Lies.

It’s familial.

--

It’s familial.

He’s supposed to be there.

It’s a Nobel prize, for god’s sake.

Is the concern misplaced?

Likely.

Unlikely.

Likely.

I’d like to begin, you start.

Your aide enters the back of the room, panicked eyes. She waves.

Excuse me, you say, immediately, to the titans of the industry.

There’s been an incident, she says.

You are on the next flight.

Your titles and persuasions mean nothing to the doctor standing resilient in front of you. An obstacle unpersuaded by a final desperate do you know who I am?

He’s family, Athene says, squeezing past the doctor and through the door, gesturing, grabbing your arm.

You’ve never seen her in person, but you’d recognize her anywhere.

David’s done a good job bringing things to life, as always.

An assembly line accident, Athene says as you walk.

Will he survive? you ask.

There are several more of them sitting in the waiting room, heads in hands, half-asleep.

One looks up.

Maybe, he says, with a light Russian accent, and shrugs. Maybe not.

Your aide reminds you that the Nobel committee called while you were somewhere over the Atlantic.

They aren’t family.

They don’t matter anymore.

--

It’s industrial. David’s new arm. The first model. Nothing like the best available at the time, the most realistic, the most integrated, and yet…

You look at the schematics, and the plans, and the design philosophy and it is breathtakingly industrial. Conceptual. Its potential for adaptation far exceeds everything else. It isn’t designed to perform, it’s designed to change. Constantly. It is replicate of a living thing so closely that but for the presence of alloys and angles, you’d forget what you are looking at. It will be an industrial standard, if not today, then tomorrow.

He doesn’t look happy with it.

“I…” he says, trailing off. Two months of rehabilitation therapy and he still has difficulty lifting it. It is industrial, not intuitive. He’ll adapt. He’ll make it better.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he says. This was supposed to be yours first.

What? you say.

The schematics were for you.

He shows you. Months of work, kept off your shared workspaces. Biomechatronic prosthetics designed for you, designed for your leg, your knee.

The arm he created will become an industry standard. This, though…

This is science fiction.

He flexes his prosthetic fingers with difficulty. This is just an adaptation, he says. Not a good one, either. But that one…that’ll work.

--

It doesn’t.

--

They call it DDS.

--

He has several folders full of the research on your shared servers. Studies based on your DNA.

If you were more astute perhaps you would have noticed, then.

If you were less lost you might have noticed it then.

You could have saved him.

Stopped him.

One or the other.

--

It’s academic.

It has to be.

It’s all you can handle, at the moment.

The first year of recovering is hell. The migraines. The dizziness. The flashback imprinted memories of those first few days of seizures, the first sign that anything was truly wrong. You should be glad, people say without thinking, that it was only the control chip they implanted. The chip is one centimeter by one centimeter. You had it for twelve days. You can’t see straight for a month. You can’t leave the house without sunglasses for four months. Walking was never easy for you. You don’t recover enough of your balance to stand for half a year.

You miss the Tai Yong conference.

He presents a paper on rejection syndrome.

You can’t even listen to the audio recordings without the migraines getting bad enough to black your vision out.

You don’t hear from him for a year, because, you can’t.

The flashbacks lurk so quietly.

--

The things you ignore for the sake of your survival.

He’s shaking during a presentation in New York ten pm local, and another one in Berlin one am local. At home, in the dark, you leverage your connections to discover he took a Concord between both places.

He calls you. You don’t pick up.

Did you sleep? you wonder.

We’re getting there, he says in a BBC interview at seven am local. It’s all theoretical, but we’re doing genometric sequences. If we can find the right code, we can reverse DDS. Universal augmentations.

They’re taking questions from twitter.

You make a fake account.

Augmentations? you ask.

PR says it’ll be beyond prosthetics, he says, looking at the camera. There are lines under his eyes and he can’t hold steady but his voice is unwavering. I agree.

The things you ignore for your survival.

The new American Recession rippling out across all the Illuminati’s plans. One emergency council meeting after another. They call you to several. Why don’t you go?

Picus reports financial news. One day, SI is down fifty points. The next day it is not. The things you ignore. The council in intrigued. Ru is annoyed.

He calls you. You don’t pick up.

Find out what is going on, they instruct.

He calls you. You don’t pick up.

It’s DARPA contracts, the council’s military insiders eventually discover. DARPA contracts and military money. They’ll be keeping an eye on him.

The things you ignore for your survival.

The Tai Yong conference gets moved from Shanghai to Hengsha. DI sends representatives. So does SI. Sarif himself is busy, it seems, working on personal projects.

Vasily comes to England for an official Darrow-Sarif Industries collaboration. No one tells you. You learn about it when the paper is published.

--

It’s a wake up call.

It goes like this.

Dowd says, in New York, then?

Morgan says, the new kids don’t take too well to old money.

Ru says, the new kids?

Lucius voice breaks in, commanding. Hengsha is the seat of our power in this regards, and you, Ru, our primary control mechanism on that sector. It will take place at TYM’s headquarters.

Rand says under his breath, if Hugh will leave London, that is.

The things you’ve ignored for your survival. None of them admonish Rand for his remark.

“Forgive me,” you say. The voice-scrambler controls for the way you struggle with the efforts of still being awake right now. “We’re discussing…?”

There is a moment of silence on the line.

Perhaps it’s disbelief.

Perhaps you don’t care.

David Sarif’s recruitment? Dowd says, a question in his tone.

Ru is far more blunt.

Are you with us? she asks.

“No,” you say. “When?”

There is another moment of silence on the line.

There is no room for sympathy at the top of the world.

Next week, Ru finally says. No one else says anything.

Ah, you say. Next week, then.

It’s a wake-up call.

It’s four a.m. in David’s part of America.

s’David, he answers, slurred in the middle of a yawn.

“Tai Yong is going to ask you to meet with them in one week. Don’t say yes, David.” Urgency infects the speed at which you speak, making it less likely that he will understand. You can’t slow yourself.

Hugh? he says, sleepy, surprised, in shock. Is that you?

“David, listen to me-”

Now he’s awake. It’s instant. He’s furious. You can’t get a word in edgewise. Where have you been? Where have you goddamn been?! It’s fury covering up for something sadder, though, something that tinges his voice with a nervous tremor you haven’t heard since- since- since I’ve found a way to control the effect. It goes like this.

“DON’T,” you insist, your voice harder than it’s ever been with him, “tell them yes.”

It stops him in his verbal tracks.

If it injures him, you’ll forgive yourself.

And yet, the quiet you suffer far worse than the preceding tirade.

“Why?” he asks.

You don’t have an answer. Only urgency.

“Please, David,” you say instead.

He’s fast on the uptake. Maybe too fast.

“Is someone threatening you?” he asks. It’s an academic interest, you tell yourself.

You open your mouth to say something, then close it.

Is someone threatening you?

Are they?

Who are they threatening, exactly?

What’s wrong? What’s so wrong?

What is so wrong with you?

“I’m asking you this as a friend,” you say. “I won’t ask again.”

A bit of a laugh from David. This time the disbelief is present.

“Are you threatening me?” he asks.

“The only threat,” you say, “is Tai Yong Medical. You will not go.”

“Fine,” he says coolly. It’s another thing you’ve never heard from him.

Nonetheless, it is perhaps the most relaxing thing he could have said.

“David-” you start, not knowing how to explain.

Except.

He’s hung up.

On you.

Two weeks later the council convenes and invites you so they can berate you for your absence at TYM’s headquarters, and then they proceed to talk about integration steps for their latest member, and where he will fit in, and what rank Sarif will be given, and you are certain that the DDS should no longer be causing extreme dizziness, yet. You can barely keep your world still.

It’s a wake-up call.

--

It’s the first time you’ve stepped foot inside his Detroit headquarters. It’s the first time you’ve come into contact with it. Sarif hasn’t connected it to your shared workspaces. Why would he? You’re never online. It’s cold, and gold, and alight in an inorganic way. The lights are replicas of something that used to come naturally, to him. The angles celebratory in their unfamiliarity with nature. We are something more than real, the construction says.

Much of this was paid for by DARPA contracts, you think.

There are several lightboard pillars displaying the history of biomechatronics – no, augmentations. You’re on one of them.

Hugh Darrow’s groundbreaking work with human enhancement has altered the very fabric of society.

It would not be a mistake to say that he changed the world as we know it.

Past tense.

You’ve got time.

You’ve got time to stop this.

You don’t recognize him. His new augment is solid black, with silver in the joints.  The lines of it are sharp, and unapologetic. Artistic. Aesthetic.

The industrial is a memory.

Athene sees you before he does. She’s past shock, going straight to anger.

“You,” she hisses, eyes flaring, cutting David off mid-sentence. “Absolutely not.”

David leans off her desk as she snaps around it, a security officer in her wake.

“Hugh?” he says, tone empty. “What are you doing here?”

Athene holds up a hand. “You don’t have to talk to him, David.”

The security officer at her side crosses his arms. Your own security bristles in response.

“If you don’t mind,” you say.

“Oh, but I do,” she says. “I very much do.”

You look past her, towards David. He meets you with a tired stare.

His eyes are silver, too.

It’s a shock.

What happened?

When did it happen?

Why weren’t you watching?

“David,” you say.

He says nothing.

“If you want to speak to Mr. Sarif,” Athene says, “you’ll need an appointment.”

“That’s beneath you, Athene,” you inform her.

“I don’t think you have a right to say that,” she says.

The jab lashes at some vulnerable part of you, stings, because, there is no defense. Perhaps it’s beneath her. Perhaps it was beneath you, to wait so long, to stay away so long. To live as if underwater for so long.

Perhaps it wasn’t.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

This is more important.

“It’s about Them,” you say over her shoulder.

“Who?” she says.

You watch him. You still know him. Under the framework of these past few years, under the new things and the learned things, it’s still him. Considering, calculating, weighing, even though he’d already decided the moment he heard you. He taps his hand against the side of his desk as he thinks, but his subconscious has already decided.

The only thing you don’t know is what conclusion he’s reached.

You would have assumed…

But he went to meet them.

And you don’t know anymore.

You can’t guess anymore.

His eyes should be bright under the lights in the office, but instead they are muted and dull.

He nods his head towards his office.

“Come on,” he says. “Athene, let him through.”

Her eyebrows shoot up, and she gives a half-laugh.

“Athene,” he repeats. “It’s about Hengsha.”

She locks into neutral with alarming speed. Every tell concealed. How bad was it? What happened? What was he told, and why did he buy it, if Athene is…? The piece don’t add up. The concern is growing. Spiraling. Now is not the time to lose control.

Control it.

She steps back wordlessly.

Your security looks at you.

“Wait here,” you tell her.

Back then, there was no danger.

--

It should be a relief.

“They’re called the Illuminati,” you begin.

Everett. Lucius. Ru, Rand, Dowd. The Council of Five, Versalife, Picus. Everything David knows, everywhere he comes from, everywhere anyone who is anyone comes from these days is under their influence. All under their purview. All under their control. Their goal? The new world order. You tell him everything.

He laughs at first, then he grows quiet, then he grows somber. He stops pacing around the office and sits across the desk from you, and watches you, and fidgets with a pen in his hands.

When you finish, he stops twirling the pen through his fingers.

“You’re telling me this why?” he asks.

It’s the only thing he says.

You don’t have an answer.

“You aren’t curious as to how I’ve come to know about their plans?” you ask, deflecting.

“Easy,” he says, with a shrug. “You’re one of ‘em.”

“I could be a rebel, fighting against a corrupt system,” you say, in jest.

In jest.

“Corrupt?” he asks, and he’s dead serious. “From what they said, sounds like they’ve got the right idea.”

You can’t speak for a moment. You never expected he’d agree with them.

“I know you don’t believe that,” you say, when you can.

“Why not?” he says, shrugging again. “Tai Yong’s on the forefront of innovation. So are you. They’ve got the money and the power to make it work. To do what we have to so we can get it done.”

“They-” you say, slowly, struggling to work past the flat astonishment at hearing him say anything in line with Illuminati beliefs. “They believe in... they believe in control, and stagnation, and they will never let humanity achieve our potential, never let you achieve your potential, David, surely you must understand-”

“What makes you think they won’t?” he challenges, leaning back into chair. “What makes you so sure about that?”

“You can’t be so naïve,” you say. “Look at the larger picture, David. Your work with human enhancement has the potential to alter the very fabric of-”

“-society,” he finishes, rueful smile. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, Hugh, I wrote that damn paragraph.”

“It applies,” you say. “Doesn’t it?”

He pushes himself up.

“You’re wasting your time.” he says, with an air of finality. “I told them yes. I meant it.”

He walks around you, towards the door.

“David, you can’t trust them-”

“Then I can’t trust you,” he points out. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

A sudden, sore pain encircles your throat.

“David,” you protest. “I’m not here as an Illuminatus. I’ve never been here as an Illuminatus.”

“Haven’t you, though?” he says, tilting his head slightly.

“No,” you say firmly. “I haven’t. And I’m hurt you would think that of me.”

“Think what?” he says. “I’m not the one accusing them of being all that bad. Athene?” he adds, pushing the door open. “We’re done here.”

It’s not fear. Why would it be? The Illuminati are…are not that bad? Correct? They are a part of you and they have never been the threat to humanity. Chaos has. And yet…it’s something.

Imagine him, with cold eyes, and control. Looking down at the world from someplace disconnected. Imagine him, unchanging. Unevolving.

Static.

Cessation.

You’ll lose him.

It’s not fear making breathing a conscious act, it’s not fear making you feel the impact of your heart rate. It isn’t fear making your voice rise. It isn’t, you tell yourself. It’s not. It’s not fear, because it’s not possible he’ll go through with this. They are antithetical to him. The two cannot coexist. They’ll destroy him. Everything that is him. The telos inherent.

“David, it’s critical that you listen to me,” you insist.

“I did,” he says. “Next time you want to stop by too late you feel free to.”

He gestures towards the waiting area, a please leave sweep of his augmented arm.

“Me, I’ve got work to do,” he says.

It doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t.

This hurt encircling you doesn’t. His decisions don’t.

“This can’t be what you want,” you say.

“Would you know, Hugh?” he asks. “It’s been three years. Would you really know?”

You haven’t heard it counted out loud.

“Three years?” you repeat.

It’s a sarcastic snort. “Almost. You weren’t counting the days? I was.”

“Don’t make this about you,” you say. “I was injured.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, Athene appearing briskly beside him with a scowl on her face. “You really thought the best way for me to figure that out was from your press secretary? It was my design, Hugh. You were my friend.”

Past tense.

“Don’t pretend as if you don’t still care,” you say, feeling like you’ve lost a battle that was suddenly more important than you realized. “This issue doesn’t go away because you feel slighted.”

“Slighted?” he says, looking away, nodding. “That what you think? Is that what you think?” He bites on his lip. “Huh,” he says. “Slighted. Who’d have thought.”

“You need to leave,” Athene says, her voice a hard line, the security behind her an ultimatum.

Walking in a straight line is difficult. Walking in a straight line and making it look as if it takes no effort is not possible.

He moves aside, and does not look at you.

“David,” you say, not knowing what to follow it up with, not knowing what to say. You have to say something. You have to stop this.

He gives you a tight, professional Picus-polished smile, and clips back into his office. Athene shuts the door behind him, keeping her eyes fixed on you the whole time.

“Why is he doing this?” you say, half to yourself, half in the hopes that Athene will answer.

“You should already know that,” she says, walking back over to her desk. “I’m not inclined to help you figure it out, Mr. Darrow.”

It’s not encouraging. But she is answering. And David is not.

“Please,” you say. “They’ll be the end of him. I know they will.”

Her steps falter, for a beat.

And it is opportunity.

A chance.

It might be a chance.

“What has he told you?” you ask.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she says, but she turns around to face you. “What do you know?”

Oh god, it is a chance.

“Much,” you say, talking fast, because if you miss this chance, and if this is the last one, you will never forgive yourself. “I know that they and he are not alike. Their natures are dissimilar. I know that the he and they can’t coexist, that they have ulterior motives far beyond anything he can understand. No. Beyond anything he will allow himself to understand. I know this can’t be what he wants.”

Her eyes soften, a bit.

“I was worried it might be so,” she says. “Tell me everything.”

“No,” you say, an instant reaction. David is a different matter from all the other people you know. He’s different.

“It isn’t safe for you,” you add, in response to her newly crossed arms.

“Then I suppose,” she says, “you’ve done all you can. Thank you for your concern, Mr. Darrow.”

It’s slipping away. It’s getting away from you.

“I…” you say.

“Yes?” she says.

“I…no.”

“Hm,” she says, and crosses the rest of the way to her desk.

The sound of her typing accompanies you to the lift.

You reach it. You press the call button. You imagine David in ten years, twenty. With every passing minute the outcome seems worse. The two cannot coexist. And the Illuminati is too powerful to be brought down by one man.

They’ll kill him.

Will they kill him?

It’s not like them to waste an asset.

It’s not like him to be controlled.

What can’t be controlled can’t be called an asset.

The chaotic can only be a threat.

Who is being threatened, here?

It doesn’t matter.

All that matters is the man sitting twenty feet away alone in his office, and all that matters is that if you leave, you’ll never be this close to him again. The personal stake is academic. The academic stake is irrelevant. The thing invoking fear and causing your chest to tighten and calling forth the seizure-fringed flashbacks is something far deeper. Something essential. Something deep-rooted and complex and related, perhaps, to love. No. It’s something simple.

You can’t lose him.

Not to them.

The lift arrives with a ping, and it becomes a conscious thought.

I can’t lose him. Not to them.

You don’t realize it then, but it is perhaps the first time you’re aware that you can lose to them. That you and they are distinct. That your losses are not their losses.

That your gains will not be their gains.

The doors have opened. And now, they are closing.

Your security says, Mr. Darrow?

You turn around. Athene is looking up.

“Well?” she says.

--

It’s money.

That’s all it is.

That’s all it comes down to.

You’ve underestimated the depth of his research into DDS.

The media has grossly underestimated the depth of his research into DDS.

He’s been killing himself over this, she says, hardly pulling her punches. She takes some pity on you, though. When she says this, you know she means you.

Half the company is devoted to it. He’s determined to beat it. He blames himself, she says. For what happened to you.

He couldn’t have known.

Don’t play that game with me.

He couldn’t have.

It comes down to money, though. He’s burned through his resources, his connections, reached the end of every route he knows and he still hasn’t solved it.

It’s a last resort. They must have known. The Council has offered him the power to reach a higher level of enlightenment.

He’s taken it.

All you have to do, she says, is offer him an alternative. Any alternative. Coming from you, he’ll take it.

Athene accompanies you back to SI, back to the lift.

She holds to door to his office open for you.

The frown flashes fast across David’s face. “Don’t-”

“Neuropozyne,” you say. You’ve invented the word right then and there. Even the merest idea of the drug is still only a concept. You say it with confidence, as if it is a certainty.

“What about it?” he asks, with a suspicious that is only tempered by Athene’s presence.

“You don’t know it,” you tell him. “We haven’t released any information about it. But it’s designed to treat DDS – minor cases, at least. We could work with it, though.”

“Yeah?” he says, still leaned over his keyboard, still unwilling to engage.

“We could have it commercially viable as soon as the end of the year,” you say, the promises coming wild off the top of your head now. Why not?

“I would have heard about it,” he says.

“You wouldn’t have.”

“Yeah?” he says again, this time pushing his chair back, and resting his arms on the sides. A false air of open congeniality.

“Yes,” you affirm. “Because I only invented it a moment ago.”

It is the highlight of your arrogance. The breadth of your assumptions. A desperate hope that you can take this leap and some god-forsaken-how, your intelligence will catch you.

He regards you for a second, then two, then more. You catch yourself breathing too quickly.

The wearied lines in the corner of his eyes disappear as he breaks out into a smile.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he says. “Where the hell have you been, Hugh? You got a lot to catch up on.”

He’s out of his chair and across the room in an instant, grabbing your free forearm and pulling you into a hug, always the one for the importance of tactility, and he says come on, I’ll take you on a tour of the place, and Athene’s dangerous edge dissipates, a bit.

It should be a relief. It should all be a relief.

Instead, it is the first time you’ve felt fear. True fear.

Your goals and their goals are no longer the same.

And you are well aware what happens to their enemies.

You are well aware of what happens to their traitors.

--

The council is lousy with misunderstanding.

Dis-understanding?

Un-understanding?

They’ve only heard yes for far too long.

You watch it defy their framework of understanding so uniquely.

Lucius and Rand are ready to write David off. Morgan and Ru are taking a long game stance on the issue. Dowd seems caught somewhere between American patriotic pride in Sarif and aristocratic perturbation.

“I can convince him,” you tell them. You are lightheaded with the defiance. It is a risk beyond any other. Beyond anything you’ve taken since…

Since your skiing incident, you think.

Oh, how have you missed that adrenaline.

You tell them that you can convince David, and they trust you.

The risk is heady, but you don’t think about what happens if-

When that trust becomes eroded.

When that trust becomes eroded…

Well. We can’t all live forever, can we?