Mindhive: Chapter Two
Certainly There Is Nothing Ominous About Being Assigned An Impersonalized Number
The crowd of trial volunteers smushes together at the lobby entrance while ReGene’s security team vets each and every one of us out on our way in. I keep to the back, checking and re-checking my pockets to make sure I have everything I need.
Eventually, one of the guards nods me forward. “Name.”
“Nathaniel Emersin.”
I try not to stare at the tranq gun hitched to his belt. It’s hard to tell what he’s feeling behind his sunglasses. Bored, maybe.
The guard nods. “ID and invitation.”
I hand over my state ID and my envelope. Hopefully there isn’t anything wrong with either of the documents. There shouldn’t be; everything’s in order, and I even got the ID updated last month. And yet, my palms are sweaty as the fresh plastic glints under the scanner.
“Checks out. Looks like you were assigned volunteer number 43. You read the section about contraband, right?”
I swallow drily. “Yes?”
He nods in the direction of my pockets. “Then you know that you need to hand over your phone and any other contraband on your person. If you refuse, you will be subjected to a full body scan and a pat-down.”
Good to know that the pat-down was optional! Bad to know that it was an option at all.
“Sure thing,” I tell him. I put my phone on the counter. As I do so, the guard has me take off my glasses and lazily hovers a handheld metal detector over me. No beeps.
Over to my left, at another station, a girl in a wheelchair vehemently defends the necessity of her brand-new Android Holophone Era. To my right, the same enby who’d been sleeping on the bench is painstakingly removing their pronoun pin and many, many piercings, one at a time.
The guard puts my phone into a box and sends me forward.
The busy lobby opens before me. It’s sterile. Colorless. The white walls, glass ceiling, and underlighting make me feel like I’ve walked into a populated microscope slide. The front desk is tidy, but no-one is sitting behind it at the moment. A few plastic plants are scattered around in an unhelpful attempt to make the place feel more alive. I wonder if anybody ever waters them by mistake.
As if all the chattering crowd isn’t enough, a small flatscreen is inset into the wall, set to a news program. The woman narrating the broadcast has a perky Midwestern accent that fills the room. I keep hearing bits and snatches as I wander, trying to figure out where I’m supposed to go.
“It’s urban smog season on the east coast again, and . . .”
“Video of dog riding delivery drone goes viral . . .”
“ReGene’s stocks soar above Future Body and DNAssets, touting breakthrough projects to shareholders . . .”
A couple people in lab coats high-five after that one is announced. It’s easy to tell the staff from the scraggly flood of volunteers, what with the yellow t-shirts and ReGene branded pens.
“Shoot, sorry,” I mutter as I bump into a burly scientist.
“Oh, you’re good.”
“Um, excuse me, but do you happen to know where exactly I go from here? As a trial volunteer?”
He beams. “Don’t worry about it. I think the director’s going to sort everyone out in a minute or two.”
Sure enough, someone shuts off the tv, and the crowd hushes. The staff turn expectantly toward one end of the room. I follow their gaze.
A singular bald man in formal wear stands on a small platform above the gathering trial volunteers, waiting patiently as the last few people file in. Though he stands at a normal height, something about this man is larger-than-life; there’s unshakable calm in his posture, and he adjusts his tie with a one-handed ease. The clamor of the crowd dies down as he taps his podium. His voice is clear enough to be heard across the room without a microphone.
“A good evening to you all. I am Dr. Morton Markim, director of this research facility.”
The volunteers in the crowd respond with a shy lack of enthusiasm. A couple people parrot “good evening” back, but aside from the staff, most of us stay quiet.
The ends of Dr. Markim’s mouth twitch upward. “Oh, you can do better than that. Good evening!”
I can’t help but grimace in distaste. A tip for public speakers and all my least favorite professors; nobody finds an ego trip charming. Still, when the crowd roars “good evening,” I mouth the words along with them.
Markim gives a weighty, approving nod, and paces the length of his stage. “It is with great pleasure that I welcome you volunteers to our scientific trial, and thank you for being here today. If the Worker Bee implant proves successful, then your participation will benefit society for years to come. Unfortunately, to maintain the integrity of the trial, we are not permitted to disclose the nature of this implant yet. All we may tell you is that we are working on an exciting form of mental enhancement. You read this in the pamphlet, yes?”
The crowd mutters in agreement.
“Do you need me to refresh you on the other information therein, or can I trust that we all have some degree of literacy?”
I hold back the urge to roll my eyes as the crowd agrees again.
“Then we are at an understanding! From this day forth, you are living on our Facility’s dime and care as our employees, and I trust that you will act accordingly. If you ignore your duties, if you harm yourself, staff, or other volunteers, if you tamper with equipment, or if you disregard our delicate schedules, then privileges will be revoked. You get a total of three demerits before consequences ensue. We are making history here at ReGene. So please conduct yourselves like it!”
This was also in the pamphlet. I try not to think about how — and why — I might butt up against these rules during my stay.
Dr. Markim halts at the edge of his platform, extending a hand to gesture at the wall behind him. “Now that we’ve gotten that dreary business out of the way, I would like you to meet your caretaker.”
A giant, pale screen flickers to life on the wall behind the director, one that had blended in perfectly with the white paneling seconds ago. The image that winks into existence is a very simple smiling face, a living emoticon, wavering with irrepressible joy. I get the sense that it had been waiting with bated breath to make its appearance.
“Hello!” the emoticon says. “My name is V.E.R.T.I.G.O! If that’s too many letters for you, then just Vertigo is fine. I am the safety system that will monitor the Research Facility — someone has to make sure you don’t oversleep and miss your appointments, right?”
In spite of ourselves, he earns a few chuckles from the crowd. Since Markim made it clear that we were here under intense scrutiny, Vertigo’s warm welcome is almost human by comparison.
(Feels like a good-cop-bad-cop kinda thing.)
“Now, I may have been coded last year, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Help me out by being on your best behavior, alright?” Vertigo asks us.
I want to like him — at the least, my impulse is to like him more than Markim right now. But my heart sinks. I wasn’t told that ReGene had anything like a security AI. Why wasn’t I told about the security AI?
Worry about it later. Pay attention to what’s happening now!
Vertigo’s face glides over to the edge of his screen, tilting toward one of the hallways out of the lobby “Anyway! Your official tour is scheduled for tomorrow. We’re sure that the lot of you are all tuckered out from the ride over, so I’ll be escorting you to your rooms now so you can get some shut-eye. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
A few yawns crop up around the room.
“You’ll each be rooming with two other volunteers,” Markim adds. “For the purposes of a blind trial, your groups have been randomized in advance.”
“And your placement must remain consistent for the entire trial, so please don’t ask to be reassigned to a different group. Let’s get the roll call started!”
Finally. The overfilled lobby empties, bit by bit, as Vertigo sends people into the hall. I wait anxiously as numbers and unfamiliar names fly over my head, crossing my fingers and hoping I don’t miss my own name amid the bustle.
“Group Fifteen: Emersin, Nathaniel. Yun, Avery. Roscore, Lucine,” Vertigo announces. “Left hallway, straight ahead into the trial wing, then make a right . . . !”
By the time I find the right door, the rest of my testing group is already there.
The first person that I notice is a girl with silky blonde hair pulled up into a high ponytail. Holophone Girl. She sits in a light, maneuverable wheelchair, with grippy wheels and a comfortable footrest. The metal parts are a slick, sparkling red. Holographic stickers and painted doodles plaster the backrest. Though her jacket is faux leather studded with fake rhinestones, more glaring are the perfect teeth behind her grin. Her features are sharp as knives, with supermodel cheekbones and a piercing amber gaze to match.
I immediately ping her as genetically altered, like most of the staff. She looks too rich to be a volunteer.
The other guy is tall, with a linty sweater and long, dark hair that wisps about them in sleepy disarray. Dark bags hang under their eyes. I blink, realizing this is the same enby who’d been sleeping on the bench. Minus their piercings, of course. What are the odds?
“I don’t think you can brute-force the door open,” they tell Holophone Girl, leaning against the wall as if they could fall asleep again standing on their feet.
“Yeah?” she replies. “Maybe not by myself. Come over and help me.”
“Um, those’re Eston-pneumatic sliding doors, probably. Good luck getting them open without a handle to grab, ‘cause those lock up tight. And I don’t think they open in the direction you’re pushing anyway.”
“Ahh, fuck it. How do the staff get them to open?”
“I dunno, they probably . . .” Sleepy glances around her and down at me, putting the previous conversation on hold. “Hey there,” they say, plastering on a nervous smile. “You must be our other roommate, right?”
I nod, hastily adjusting my new glasses. They keep slipping down my nose. “Of course, of course!” Do I sound friendly, or just pushy? I already feel rude for interrupting. No room to overthink it at the moment, though. I schedule my overthinking for late at night, making rorschach tests out of the ceiling tiles when I’m supposed to be asleep. “I’m Nathaniel. And you must be . . . ?”
“Avery.” They swallow nervously. “I go by, uh—”
“They/them, I saw the pin,” I let them know. “I’m a he/him kind of guy, personally.”
Holophone Girl wheels around Avery, just a little too far into my bubble of personal space. “And I’m Lucine! I have nice tits and some basic bitch girl pronouns. You know the ones.”
I no longer feel like the rudest person in the hallway.
As if that wasn’t a jarring enough introduction, Lucine spits on her palm, and holds it up to me for a handshake. “Nice to meetcha!”
I stare, my hands limp at my side.
It doesn't take long for her to become impatient with the delay. She raises an eyebrow. “So, where I'm from, we shake hands when we meet someone new.”
“Where I’m from, we think that’s a good way to spread germs.”
“Are you willing to shake or not?”
Awkwardly, I take her hand, trying not to think too hard about the saliva squishing between our palms. The Facility has decent healthcare. I’ll be fine if I get sick. Just. Fine. But like a sensible person, I wipe the residue of our handshake off on my slacks right away.
Lucine's smile doesn’t falter. “Oh yeah, I’ve already got your type pegged down. You’re a softie, like Avery over here. A bit snobbier though. Don’t worry Glasses, I’ll be gentle with you.”
As Avery meets my gaze, shrugging as if to say ‘I don’t know what her deal is either,’ the door to Room Fifteen hisses open of its own accord.
“Whaddya know?” Avery says, stepping in. “Pneumatic.”
Lucine makes a face at them and rolls inside. I hesitate, and then trail after them. The door hisses shut behind me.
The inside of our room doesn't look much different from the hallway. The walls are made up of these cheap-feeling glossy panels, like literally every other wall in the building. Three spacious bunk beds are built right into the wall one on top of the other, but other than that, the room is bare. Glancing down, I see myself reflected in the linoleum. Are we the first people to step inside this room? It feels like it.
“Have you ever seen so much white?” I ask as I brush a hand against one of the flawless walls. “I might go blind if I have to stare at this every day.”
Avery ducks their head. “Makes me feel like I need a shower.”
“HELLO!”
Everyone jolts, and my heart practically explodes in my chest at the unexpected shout. A center panel in the wall lights up with a cheery glow. Vertigo’s face beams over at me, his voice issuing from all corners of the room, omnipresent and impossible to pinpoint.
“Got you. Welcome to your room!”
“You almost gave me a heart attack!” I accuse, clutching my chest. Vertigo’s interface flickers through several apologetic expressions. That makes me feel a touch better.
Lucine stares with an open mouth. “Shit, man. Can you just appear like that anywhere in the building?”
The question brings Vertigo’s grin back. “Just about. Dr. Markim had me integrated into the old security system, and set up screens for me in key locations. It makes it easier to interact with people on an individual basis — and easier for you to get ahold of me. You don’t have staff keycards, so you need my permission for a lot of things. Feel free to shout if you need anything.”
“So you can watch us?” Lucine asks. “Here? At any moment?”
On the ceiling, a little white camera I hadn’t noticed before swivels cheekily on its post. “Pretty much.”
I try not to wince. No matter how nice he is, I do not feel at ease knowing that this computer will be watching me sleep
“That’s freaky, my dude,” Luce says, already transferring herself from her wheelchair onto the bottom bunkbed, claiming it for her own. “Who are you, God?”
Vertigo’s screen tints pink, imitating a blush. “Very flattering, but not quite, Ms. Roscore. I can divide my attention many more times than a human can before my performance suffers, but true omniscience would be a little much for my processing power.”
Lucine leans over the side of her bed, a thoughtful look coming over her. “Can I give you orders?”
“If you would like to.”
“Overthrow Markim! And then you can make me the new director, as a thanks for giving you the idea.”
The AI’s face slides around his screen, as if mulling the instruction over. “Mmmm . . . how about . . . no? It seems that you have exactly none of the security credentials required for me to obey such a command. Funny, that.”
Lucine’s mischievous look turns into a pout. “Can you fetch me, like, a bedtime glass of water, then?”
“I am a mathematical function that maps complicated sociological inputs into simple, friendly outputs. I regret to inform you that I have no arms.”
Just as Lucine looks like she’s winding up for another snarky comment, I feel the urge to intervene. “Don’t harass the AI.”
“He’s not an AI,” Lucine and Avery both say at the same time.
(“Jinx,” Avery mutters under their breath.)
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“AI is what hacks use to pretend they’re an artist,” Lucine says testily.
Avery rubs the back of their neck. “No? That’s not right either? Those are Artificial Image Generators. AIG. Um, honestly, all the confusion with this stuff caused the word ‘AI’ to be entirely retired from the tech field. It doesn’t have much use when people just slap the label on any old learning algorithm now.”
“Cool.” I point to Vertigo’s monitor. “So, what is he?”
“I am an EIS!” Vertigo helpfully informs me. “This means that I am an Emotive Intelligence System.”
Avery laughs. Their eyes are bright with interest, and suddenly they don’t look so sleepy. “Large language models, the stuff that people used to call AI — those are just glorified input-output services. They need a lot of babysitting in order to get good results and a human has to feed it data and prompts to get anything out of it. An EIS is able to synthesize context and information on its own, and after a while, it develops enough awareness to work independently on any goals assigned to it. Good EIS can even pass the Turing test with learned social skills instead of brute-forcing acceptable answers via trial-and-error.”
“I . . . actually don’t really get the difference, when you explain it all at once,” Lucine says, deflating. “How do you know all that?”
“I uh, just have interests.”
Everyone glances up as Vertigo beeps.
“Thank you for sharing those interests with us. It's nice to see that everyone is all acquainted now,” the EIS says brightly. “But that’s enough messing around for me. I had better let you pick your beds and make yourselves comfortable, because you're going to be seeing a lot of this room in the future. Have a good night.”
The lights dim. We kick off our shoes. Everyone’s silhouettes are faint, and I can make out shapes just well enough to avoid tripping over Lucine’s empty wheelchair. I find the ladder and grab the middle bunk.
Avery clambers onto the bed above me. “Finally,” they whisper into the darkness. “I was wondering if we were ever going to get any shut-eye.”
I fluff my pillow. “You got some shut-eye earlier, didn’t you?”
“You saw that? It’s been a rough week.”
“Shut up and night night,” Lucine calls out. Avery and I each mumble a pillow-muffled “goodnight” in reply. Except for a faint electrical hum in the walls, the room falls uncomfortably quiet.
I wait for a while, listening to Avery and Lucine’s breathing until I’m absolutely sure that they’re asleep. And then I burrow under my covers and take off my glasses. A quiet, radio-like static flares up as I press a small indent inside the frame — a hidden button — and then a secondary hidden scroll wheel, to turn the volume down to its lowest point. A nervous breath quavers on the other end of the line. And then, my contact speaks.
“Hello, Nathaniel.” Jessica’s voice is calm but relieved. “Did you make it safely into the research facility?”
“I did.”
“Future Body is glad you’re reporting in so soon,” she says. I suppress a smile at the praise. I’m nothing if not an overachiever. “How’s your mission going so far? We’re eager to know if you’re blending in.”
“I think so.”
“Wonderful,” she hums. “Do you have access to anything yet? Have you found out where they’re going to be storing all the data on this trial?”
“Not yet. Orientation is tomorrow. I’m going to see if I can find the director’s office.”
There’s a clacking at the other end of the line, like Jessica’s typing on a keyboard. “Good, good, sounds like a good start. Have they revealed to you what the Worker Bee implant is actually supposed to do yet?”
“They won’t tell us.”
“Okay. Have you seen any unexpected advantages or setbacks?”
I grit my teeth. “I’ve encountered one major problem, and that’s why I’m contacting you so soon. ReGene’s acquired an EIS.”
The typing pauses. “An EIS?”
There’s recognition and alarm in Jessica’s voice. Boy am I glad Avery taught me the right word for this. “Yeah. Some actual interactive intelligence of some kind.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know. It works security,” I whisper angrily. “It’s acting as this cheery minder for all the trial volunteers — always watching, always listening. There’s a camera in the room as I speak. No doubt, the hallways are full of them too. I won’t have a minute to myself.”
“Shit,” Jessica swears softly on the other end of the line. I don’t think I’m supposed to hear that. Frankly, I’d swear too if we weren’t supposed to be professional about this.
I steady myself with a deep breath. “If I’m going to do anything at all, then I need to either take it down, or figure out how to sneak around it. I’m not sure which is the better option.” Admittedly, Vertigo seems like a nice person. Nice computer? Either way, I didn’t come here to get violent.
“Take it down,” Jessica suggests immediately. “You can’t tip-toe around a security system like that. I’ll see if I can source killcode for you.”
I sigh. “Alright.”
“And I’ll update the higher-ups about what you’ve discovered. It’s annoying that ReGene’s gotten self-important enough to implement something as untested as EIS technology into their security. Either this implant is an even bigger deal than we thought, or the CEO’s ego has finally trickled down into the company as a whole.”
“Oh yeah. The director is swaggering around like he’s the new dictator of a small, Windex-shined country.”
“Yikes. We’ll get you out of there as soon as possible.”
I can’t help but shiver, despite how stuffy it is under the covers, breathing in my own carbon dioxide. “And how soon is that?”
“As soon as you stick a few wrenches into this trial, and get us all the information we need.” Jessica tsks softly into the microphone. “It was nice talking to you, Nathaniel, but I need to go. Every call comes with a report to fill out.”
“Gotcha. Bye.”
The communication cuts off with a soft click. I pull off the covers, and set my glasses into the wall cubby next to my pillow. Somehow, I feel worse for having talked with Jessica. Her reassurance just reminds me of how horribly, terribly illegal everything I’m about to do for Future Body will be.
What the fuck have I gotten myself into?