of coffee in his hand. “Oh, coffee! When did I manage to make that? Some things get done on autopilot, as if you have your own barman sitting inside you,” Isaac chuckled to himself, but he wasn’t feeling cheerful. “Stop.
Why go straight to the computer? That’s a habit. I have to call the hospital and find out about Vicky.”
“Grace Kelly Hospital, how can I help you?” the phone said in the familiar rapid patter.
“My name is Isaac Leroy…” Isaac cleared his throat, his voice was hoarse. “I’m calling
to find out about the condition of my sister, Victoria Frank.”
“One moment.” He was put through to a different number, introduced himself again and
was reconnected again. Finally he heard the duty nurse in the right department rummaging through her papers and the clatter of a keyboard and then a considerate voice chirped in his ear.
“Monsieur Leroy.” Isaac could never get used to that ceremonial form of address, and he winced every time. “Monsieur Leroy, your sister has stabilized and the worst has passed. At the moment she is listed as serious but in stable condition.”
“But I was told she’s in a coma! I want to speak to her doctor.”
The stupid, pathetic hope aroused by the medical term “stable condition” had been a
mistake. The doctor confirmed that Vicky was in a coma, but only yesterday her condition had been much worse. She could have died. It was all over now, the doctors were monitoring her progress and it would be clear when the surgery could be performed.
“There’s no need to hurry with the money, Monsieur Leroy, but nonetheless we have to
be ready to carry out the operation,” the doctor concluded, said goodbye and hung up.
Isaac was trembling, he instantly pictured Vicky so pale, so fragile, so seeking help and sustained by hope only. Something inside of him broke down and Isaac burst out crying. It was painful to realize that he had delayed for far too long, he felt sorry for himself. She could have died as I didn’t even consider downloading till the very end. The intrusion of the dumb-ass terrorist could have taken the lives of both of us. Why did I not come at least a day before? What a fool I was! Worse than any Veggie. The damned Agency!
“They have everything they need to cure people: the technologies, the methodologies, the high-class specialists – and all of that thanks to sucking creativity out of people like me and Pascal. But no one benefits from it all because the treatment has to be paid for. Until we go to that freaking Agency to sell our creativity, people, our nearest and dearest, just keep getting worse!”
What was going on? The media were choked solid with praise for Collective Mind. The
whole world was rejoicing at the rosy forecasts of a happy future for mankind. Problems were being solved, scientists had been given answers to their questions, and solutions had been found for the technical puzzles. Even the people who became total Veggies after offloading their creativity were happy and looked content. What about those who fell sideways? We have no choice: it’s either Einsteiner or the abyss, right?
No one paid any special attention any longer to terrorist attacks, like the one Isaac got involved with yesterday. Even the police ignored the feeble street protests. Solitary messiahs, protest graffiti – there were always plenty of mental cases and petty hooligans around. These troublemakers claimed we should be afraid of the power held by Collective Mind. Some
opposition scientists claimed that pooled creativity was only useful to make progress on the kind of projects that had some prior work already done. Not even a billion donors, they said, could be helpful to start novel ventures of the future, such as conquering the deep space or curing future viruses. Thanks to Collective Mind, people could accelerate research and bring it to a conclusion more quickly, but without prior developments, pooled creativity was useless.