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Once Zeb was inside HelthWyzer West, he learned its memes and set about mimicking them as fast as he could. Displaying the right memes was the yellow brick road to blending in and thus surviving, so that when the giant Rev monster eye came looking for him via the giant Corps network, as it might at any moment, it would pass right over his head. Protective colouration, that's what he needed.
The officially promoted view of HelthWyzer West was that it was one big happy family, dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the betterment of humankind. To dwell too much on the improvement in value for the shareholders was considered bad taste, but on the other hand there was an employee options package. All staff were expected to be unremittingly cheerful, to meet their assigned goals diligently, and - as in real families - not to ask too much about what was really going on.
Again like real families, there were no-go zones. Some were conceptual, but some were purely physical. The pleebland outside the HelthWyzer Compound was one of these, unless you had a pass and designated protection. The firewalls around IP had become thick and in some cases impenetrable, unless you had an inside track; so if you couldn't hack the system, you grabbed the primary source material. Brainiacs from Corps of all kinds were being kidnapped and smuggled abroad, or - some said - into rival Corps Compounds - and then strip-mined for the gold and jewels their heads were assumed to contain.
This was a cause for serious concern at HelthWyzer West - which meant there was some fairly important stuff going on behind locked doors - and barriers had been put in place. The top biogeeks carried alarm beepers that registered their whereabouts, though these had sometimes been adroitly hacked and then used as a means of targeting their bearers and tracking them down. Here and there on the walls of hallways and meeting rooms, posters reminded the unwary of ever-present perils. FOLLOW THE SAFETY RULES AND KEEP YOUR HEAD! AND ITS CONTENTS! Or: YOUR MEMORY IS OUR IP, SO WE'LL PROTECT IT FOR YOU!
Or: BRAINS ARE LIKE MEADOWS: A CULTIVATED ONE IS WORTH MORE. On this last poster, someone had written with a Sharpie: Get more cultivated! Eat more shit! So, thought Zeb, there was at least some hidden dissent among the smiley faces.
As part of the happy family ethos, HelthWyzer West threw a barbecue every Thursday in the central parkette of the Compound. Adam had told Zeb that these affairs should not be missed, as they were prime territory for eavesdropping and figuring out the invisible power filaments. Those wearing the most casual clothing would most likely be the alphas. Adam also said that Zeb would find some of the recreational pursuits of interest, especially the board games; though he hadn't said why.
So Zeb turned up at the HelthWyzer West barbecue on the first Thursday after his arrival. He sampled the eats: SoYummie ice cream for the kids, pork ribs for the carnivores, SoyOBoy products and quornburgers for the vegans. NevRBled Shish-K-Buddies for those who wanted to eat meat without killing animals - the cubes were lab-cultured from cells ("No Animal Suffered"), and he figured that with enough beer they wouldn't taste too bad. But he intended to limit his drinking because he needed to stay alert, so he stuck with the ribs. You didn't have to be half-cut to appreciate those.
Around the edges of the crowd, various geeky sports were in progress. Croquet and bocci in the sun, ping-pong and foosball under the awnings. Circle games for the under-sixes, variations of tag for the older ones. And for the serious and superintelligent and potentially Aspergerian child brainiacs, a row of umbrella-shaded computers where they could do obsessive-compulsive things online - within HelthWyzer firewalls, of course - and challenge each other to combat without making eye contact.
Zeb scoped out the games: Three-Dimensional Waco, Intestinal Parasites, Weather Challenge, Blood and Roses. Also Barbarian Stomp, a new one on him.
Here came Marjorie with the spaniel's eyes, making a beeline towards him, her beseeching smile at the ready, enhanced by a smear of ketchup on the chin. Time to duck and cover: she had the look of a woman who'd already staked out a claim, and would go through a guy's pants pockets while he was asleep in search of rivals, and would most likely read his email. Though maybe he was being paranoid. But best not to take chances.
"Want to go a round with me?" he said to the nearest youthful brainiac, a thin boy in a dark T-shirt with a stack of gnawed pork ribs on the paper plate beside him. Was that a cup of coffee? Since when was coffee allowable for a kid that age? Where were the parents?
The boy looked up at him with large, green, opaque but possibly mocking eyes. Even the children wore name tags to these barbecues, it seemed: Glenn, Zeb read.
"Sure," said young Glenn. "Conventional chess?"
"As opposed to?" said Zeb.
"Three-dimensional," said Glenn indifferently. If Zeb didn't know that, then he couldn't be a very good player. Blatantly obvious.
So that was how Zeb first met Crake.
"But like I said, he wasn't Crake yet," says Zeb. "He was just a kid then. Not too much bad stuff had happened to him, though 'not too much' is always a matter of taste."
"Really?" says Toby. "That long ago?"
"Would I lie to you?" says Zeb.
Toby thinks about it. "Not about this," she says.
Zeb generously and also patronizingly let Glenn play White, and Glenn walloped him, though Zeb put up an honourable fight. After that they did a round of Three-Dimensional Waco, and Zeb beat Glenn, who immediately wanted another game. This one ended in a tie. Glenn looked at Zeb with a small increase of respect and asked him where he'd come from.
Zeb then told a couple of lies, but they were entertaining lies: he put in Miss Direction and the Floating World, and some of the bears from Bearlift, though he changed the name and the location and left out anything about dead Chuck. Glenn had never been outside a Compound, or not that he could remember, so these tales must have had mythic dimensions for him. Though he made a point of not looking impressed.
In any case, Glenn started turning up in Zeb's vicinity at the Thursday barbecue events and hanging around at lunchtimes. It wasn't hero-worship, not exactly; nor did Glenn want Zeb to be his dad. More like an older brother, Zeb decided. There weren't that many kids his age at HelthWyzer West for Glenn to play games with. Or not ones as smart as him. Not that Glenn thought Zeb was up to scratch, smarts-wise, but he was within range. Though there was a slight air of command performance about these proceedings: Glenn as the crown prince and Zeb as the somewhat dim courtier.
How old exactly was Glenn? Eight, nine, ten? It was hard for Zeb to tell because he didn't like to remember what his own life had been like when he'd been eight or nine or ten. He'd spent too much time in the dark back then, one way or another. All of that needed to be forgotten, and he'd worked at forgetting it. Still, when he saw a boy of that age the first thing he wanted to say was, Run away! Run away very fast! And the second thing was, Grow bigger! Grow very big! If you could grow very big, then whoever they were would cease to have power over you. Or so much power. Though it hadn't worked for whales, he reflected. Or tigers. Or elephants.
There must have been a they in the life of young Glenn, or maybe an it: something that was haunting him. He had that look about him, a look Zeb used to catch glimpses of when he saw himself unawares in the mirror: a wary, distrustful look, as if he didn't know what bush or parking lot or piece of furniture was going to chasm suddenly to reveal the lurking enemy or the bottomless pit. Though Glenn had no scars, no bruises, and no difficulty eating his meals, or not that Zeb could see; so what was that haunting entity? Nothing definite, perhaps. More like a lack, a vacuum.
After several Thursdays and some close observation, Zeb concluded that neither of Glenn's parents had a lot of time for him. Nor for each other: from the body language, they were well past the stage of irritation or even occasional dislike and were deep into active hatred. When they met in public they resorted to iceman stares and monosyllables, and to walking quickly away. There was a pot of boiling rage on a private stove behind their closed curtains: that bubbling cauldron was taking all their attention, with Glenn relegated to a footnote or else a trading card. Maybe the kid gravitated to Zeb for the same reason children like dinosaurs: when feeling abandoned in a world of forces beyond your control, it's comforting to have a huge, scaly beast who is your friend.
Glenn's mother was on the food admin staff, tracking supplies and devising meal plans. Glenn's dad was a semi-top researcher - an
expert in unusual microbes, wonky viruses, odd antigens, and offbeat variants of anaphylaxis biovectors. Ebola and Marburg were among his specialties, but right now he was working on a rare allergic reaction to red meat that was linked to tick bites. An agent in the salivary proteins of ticks caused it, said Glenn.
"So," said Zeb, "a tick drools into you and then you can't have steak any more without bursting out in hives and suffocating to death?"
"Bright side," said Glenn. He was going through a phase: he'd say "bright side," then add some gruesome sidebar. "Bright side, if they could spread it through the population - those tick saliva proteins embedded in, say, the common aspirin - then everyone would be allergic to red meat, which has a huge carbon footprint and causes the depletion of forests, because they're cleared for cattle grazing; and then ..."
