White Matter

Kurt - Back at work

An unlikely scene: I was in the Inspiration Room at Spurious. If you put aside what went on down in the basement, this room constituted the sole evidence that we were in, not a conventional, workaday office park, but a dynamic, state-of-the-art technology hub. It was decorated in retro dot-com chic: a scattering of rubber balls and an arrangement of bean bags in a variety of colours. I was slouched on one and Karen had moulded herself into another.

The rest of the building was fitted out as a conventional open-plan desk farm, inhabited by support staff and a team of programmers who stamped out brain scanner firmware under James's direction.

Karen was dressed in jeans and a singlet-style top that exposed the tattoos on her arms and belly, the intricacies of their minor key shades made to look incongruous by the coarse mosaic of confectionary colours that decorated the walls. Whoever did the tats must have been a true artist.

It was the Tuesday following Easter weekend. Through all my recent excursion, I had only missed one work day.

The first hours of the morning I had spent working at my computer, wondering for a time whether Graeme's side project in Japan should be worked into this official record that Spurious was paying me to create, and if so how. With plenty to be getting on with, and deciding I knew too little of what Graeme was actually doing to write anything coherent, I happily shelved the problem as one for another day.

At around ten-thirty I gave it up and took myself for a walk. Seeing Karen alone in the Inspiration Room, I went in to join her, asking if I would be intruding.

She smiled at me. "The thing about us research scientists, Kurt, is that some of our most valuable work is done when, to the outside world, we look most completely inert."

"So I am intruding?"

"No. It's okay." She gestured at a vacant beanbag. "The mental gears were turning, but they were just throwing up sand. Truth is, I'm stuck until I get more feedback from James and his machines, and James is waiting on work from your good friend Graeme."

This seemed an opportunity to throw out a speculator: "This other thing Graeme is working on – do you know much about it?"

Her response – I interpreted it as a puzzled expression – was cut short by the arrival of Miranda. After a disapproving glance at the bean bags, she went out again, returning with a stool from the lunch room next door. Seating herself upon it, she leaned slightly forward with hands together over clenched knees so that the grey fabric of her business suit stretched across her haunches. There was no smile of greeting; her expression was prim and preoccupied. Given a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, she would have looked like Miss Moneypenney about to take dictation.

"I'm back," I said by way of greeting.

"Is everything all right?" Miranda asked, ignoring my statement of the obvious.

"That depends on which part of everything you're referring to." This didn't raise a smile either.

"What happened in Japan." A statement, not a question.

"What's all this about Japan?" asked Karen.

"I've just been there, for the weekend. Another special mission. Called in by Graeme."

There was a brief twitch in her expression, a pursing of the lips, followed by a summoning of what felt like considerable dignity for someone reclining on a bean bag.

"Are you saying Graeme is in Japan as well?"

"You didn't know?"

"I don't recall seeing him lately. Graeme's movements aren't any business of mine."

I glanced back to Miranda; she was fidgeting with her fingers. "Mr Coriolis didn't want anything done that would draw public attention to Graeme's disappearance," she said.

Karen turned her head sharply in Miranda's direction. "What do you mean, disappearance? And I wouldn't have thought I was one of the public."

"Graeme was gone for a whole week. If you had noticed, you could have asked," said Miranda. She turned back to me: "What happened in Japan?" Definitely a question this time.

I told them about my meeting with Graeme at Narita Airport and our return to Shigeru's apartment, about his spare-room laboratory.

"Shigeru? Is that a man's name?" asked Miranda.

"Yes. He's Graeme's number-one sidekick over there. There's one other, apparently. Name of Junko, but I didn't meet her."

"Her?"

"They have a laboratory? In this apartment?" asked Karen.

"Something to do with neural networks, as I understand it. But you know me. The technical details are not my strong point. It's to do with those scans they did on my brain downstairs. Apparently they needed to do a few more tests on me to add to the data they already had."

"Did Graeme say when he'd be coming back?" asked Miranda.

Karen wriggled herself into a more upright posture, transforming the bean bag into a shape more like a chair than a couch. As she did so, the movement of her belly muscles caused the exotic creature depicted there to flex its wings.

"So you knew about his going, but not his coming back?" she said.

Miranda turned her eyes toward the bright colours of the wall. "He didn't tell anyone where he was going," she said.

"They're up to something over there," I interjected before Karen could respond. "But they're being very cagey about it. They give the impression there's a reason for all the secrecy, though it's hard to tell when you don't know what it is."

"Sounds like you are well out of it then," said Karen, her voice implying she might like to take my place.

"I got back in one piece, I guess." I paused and corrected myself: "Well, make that almost one piece." I told them about my agreeing to Graeme's request for a sample of neural tissue, leaning forward at one point to show off the scar on my skull, though there was little if anything to see beyond a tiny bald spot.

"Why did you let them do it?" Karen wanted to know.

"Well, you know, ... figured I ought to take one for the team. This is my job now."

"So first they drag you over there on false pretences, then you let them talk you into something like that?"

"Not exactly 'talk into'. This was Graeme, remember. You know how he is. Like a cat expecting to be fed. The idea that things might not get done the way he wanted never seemed to enter his head. I just went with the flow."

This at last drew a smile from Miranda. Given her mood, it was the most I could have hoped for in the circumstance.

"If you are in such a hurry to find out what Graeme is doing, why don't you just call him and ask?" said Karen.

"I'm not in any hurry. I only just left him yesterday remember. He'll be back when he's ready."

"It wasn't you I was talking to," Karen murmured, but she didn't pursue the point.