Welcome to Golden, Chapter 4

Billy was trapped in darkness and when he opened his eyes, the darkness remained. The mask of his suit was over his face, and he could feel himself being lifted out of the vat of goo. It really was electronically charged glutamate that had the consistency of snot, but to Billy, it would always be goo.

He’d been through the process hundreds of time, and each time a slight chill of panic tiptoed down his spine when he returned from Golden. This was the most perilous part of the process and a reason very few people traveled back and forth into the computer. The best way Billy could explain to people who had never gone through it was that coming back from Golden was a lot like the tingling when an arm falls asleep, only throughout your body and a lot more intense. The doctors said the physical effects was most likely due to all the nanoprobes in his body being disconnected from their computer brain at the same time. As painful and shocking it was to a body, it was harder on the mind, which had a hard time adjusting to the real world after hours inside a dream. The doctors arbitrarily determined that a person shouldn't be in Golden more than seven hours, which is why Billy's shift lasted only six.

“How you feeling?” Ollie said as he removed Billy’s mask. Billy didn’t answer, he couldn’t. His brain hadn’t quite caught up to being back. In about thirty seconds, he knew a killer migraine would come, and it would take sumatriptan succinate to make a dent in it and a mild sedative to help him sleep through any pain. He would be incapacitated for the next hour at least.

He stood as quickly as he could in order for the techs to get his suit off. By the time the pain to his head struck, he was nearly out of his get up, and had gotten the injection of drugs. The techs led him away to the decompression room — his term. It was a small dark room equipped with a comfy bed and a small bathroom and shower. It smelled lightly of lilac and honeysuckle, to fool his senses into thinking he was still in Golden. Once there, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep as the drugs took over.

After an hour, music and soft light came on. Billy didn’t open his eyes, he wanted to rest some more. He knew, though, that one of the medical team members — usually a pleasant woman named Barbara — would come in and give him his solution. He wasn’t sure what the mixture was, but it had the consistency of soupy mashed potatoes and tasted of overcooked carrots. It worked wonders for making a body feel better, though.

A knock came on the door, which meant it wasn’t Barbara, who never signaled her entry. Billy heard the rapping, but couldn't immediately move. It was as if his muscles were learning to work for the first time. He had read about astronauts returning from long visits at the International Space Station needing months to re-acclimate themselves to Earth's gravity when they came home. Billy felt a bit like those astronauts right now.

“Come in.” In stepped Jenny McKenzie, a tall, blond tomboy who had grown into a fine woman. She also was Billy's boss, Fred's daughter and an all-around genius having earned a medical degree to go along with an MBA. For those reasons and more, Billy loved her. She smiled shyly as if she were interrupting something. He knew she was up to something because she never came to wake him, and she certainly was not shy about anything. Billy was taken by her every time he saw her, especially her deep blue eyes that seemingly looked in to his soul.

“How you feeling?” she asked after stepping in with the glass of frothy purple liquid. “The doctors and techs said everything went well. The effects of the trip should wear off soon.”

One of her nervous habits was a tendency to give only lip service to what she was saying, really not caring for an answer until she said what she had to say. When he first met her, Billy was annoyed by this. As he got to know her he discovered she really did care about other people, but had a problem expressing herself. Now it amused him more than anything.

“Your vital signs were okay the whole time you were in, except for one time in your first hour. Was there something that happened? Was it my father?” She didn't wait for an answer as she sat down in a chair next to the bed and grabbed Billy’s arm to check his pulse, which raced a bit when she touched him. “I swear, that man can get anyone's blood boiling. I don't blame you for getting upset.” She continued talking about Fred while she took out a small flashlight and had Billy follow the beam. She carried a clipboard and made notations after every test. It was done every time he came back from Golden, along with a battery of exams to check his mind. The Foundation wasn't too worried about the patients in Golden, they were all terminal. There was a modicum of concern about the town's doctor, though. No one was really sure what his numerous trips in and out of Golden would do to him mentally and physically. The consensus so far: the number of trips in and out should be limited. The process was taking a physical toll on Billy's brain, although the doctors were telling him the damage seemed to heal after a period of rest. Billy doubted that any side effects would appear in the short term, but in the long term … The doctors were predicting problems, they just weren’t specific about what those problems would be. It was a risk he was willing to take, though. A twenty-four hour recovery period was required as a precaution for return trips into Golden. It was becoming increasingly obvious to Billy that as the only staff member to go into the computer on a regular basis, he would soon have to be replaced. Furthermore, there should be more than one doctor going to the town. Jenny claimed she was searching for more psychiatrists to hire, but had not found anyone yet.

She pulled a medical tree equipped with an electronic blood pressure monitor, heart rate monitor and thermometer close to Billy. Some might have thought it odd that the president of the Foundation was taking his readings, this was really grunt work. Billy was not surprised, though, her presence and her constant dialogue meant she wanted something from him.

“How is he?” she finally paused and waited for an answer.

“About the same. I didn’t notice any degradation in his mind. But …” Billy swung his legs over the edge of the bed and took a swig of the purple drink. “… he is pretty good at hiding anything he wants to. Hell, Golden was made to his specifications, he can manipulate it better than anyone.”

Jenny laughed at him and shook her head.

“That’s why he’s there, he’s our man on the inside.” She leaned back in the chair and spit out a sigh. “I still worry about him. I wonder if I did the right thing putting him in there.”

Billy stood at side of the small bed while bunching the covers over his nudity. He was still a little light headed, but otherwise felt like he'd spent a night drinking too much. He was normally in a foul mood after waking, which was exacerbated by the lack of orange juice waiting for him. Every time he returned from Golden he had a craving for juice and had requested time and again that whoever woke him to bring a glass of orange juice. No one ever did. Furthermore, a robe was never available and many times they would forget to bring him any clothes. His first stop after waking and showering was usually the small commissary that served the hundreds of Golden Foundation employees.

“Jenny, you would have been hard pressed not to put him there. He’s fine. I think he really gets a kick out of when new residents recognize him. It’s almost like he gets to be a star again. Did anything wrong show up with his numbers?”

Each patient was constantly monitored; their brain waves were measured, watched and recorded. Each emotion and physiological reaction could be interpreted through the monitoring. That’s how they would know something was wrong or if death was near. Of course, they were always getting brain waves they couldn’t interpret. That’s why Billy was so necessary to the Foundation. He was the eyes and ears on the inside, and one of the reasons the government would grant a charter to run Golden. Billy wondered why the Foundation even worried about the American government, it could have been located anywhere in the world instead of a warehouse in Albuquerque.

Billy was officially an employee of the Golden Foundation, and Jenny, as director of the Golden Project was his direct supervisor. The project was required to file weekly reports on each of the town's residents, an enormous amount of paperwork that Billy could not do all on his own. Usually, he would dictate his reports and they were transcribed by a cadre of nameless people who also handled filing the paperwork in the proper format to the proper agency. In addition, Billy was required to meet with any number of congressional staff members, the congressmen and senators themselves, as well as bureaucrats from Health and Human Services and any agency that might have an interest. When there was an emergency, he was required to notify all of them ASAP. Throw into that mix the hierarchy of the American Psychiatric Society, the AMA and various other medical fraternities and organizations — most of whose members looked upon Billy with curious contempt. At thirty-four and only five years out of school, he was far too young to have been given the opportunity to work in Golden. And yet these professionals did not want to be left out of any research information that might come from Billy's work; there was an incredible amount of pressure from those in his profession for detailed notes and a week didn't go by when someone wasn't contacting him about his work. He didn't mind helping out, but it took time he didn't have.

In short, Billy worked long hours in a stressful job; but he loved it and he also got to be around Jenny. They shared many things in common, including their drive and lack of a social life.

“What did the numbers look like?” he asked, making his way to the small bathroom attached to the room. Jenny followed him, never considering he might want privacy.

“It looked like he was stoned again.”

“Fred was smoking a lot,”

“That stupid marijuana,” she said. “He said he was going to stop.”

“If his mind thinks it is real, it’s real,” Billy said. “That means he can develop the same psychosis as any addicted personality.” He reached in and turned on the shower, nice and hot.

“You can’t let that happen.” Jenny was standing in the door, not minding that Billy was getting in the shower.

He wasn’t so sure she was right. At first, he had agreed with her, but the more he thought about it the more convinced he became that there was little harm in Fred’s weed habit. Bad habits were an action of the mind, the only thing that stops it is a will to stop it, usually in response to a physical reaction. Fred was a functioning stoner when the ALS struck. But he also knew that Fred had no good reason to give it up, just like he had no reason to stop smoking cigarettes. Golden was perfect for addictive personalities, they knew the reality that they were no longer smoking or drinking, but could do it to their hearts were content without any physical harm.

“I’ll see what I can do, but it really should be you that confronts him. I don’t have any authority with him. He’s smarter than I am and he knows that. He’s not smarter than you, though.” Jenny actually blushed and turned away from Billy.

Billy got in the shower and immediately felt better. Jenny went on talking to him about Fred but he barely listened. He loved Jenny, but on this day, he'd wished it had not been her to come wake him. He would have rather enjoyed the silence as he tried to come back to Earth. He knew he had a couple hours of paperwork to do and Jenny was distracting him. Of course, that also made him realize that she was still anxious about something — Fred must not have been the only thing on her mind. He was going to have to wait it out, but she was starting to make him a little nervous.

He finished showering and dressing and headed out to dictate notes in his office.

“Did someone meet with Peter Boone's son?” he asked Jenny. “How did his trip back go?”

Jenny was excited by this question, for good reason. It wasn't every day a multi-billionaire takes a tour of your business. It could mean one more investor in a project that needed sugar daddies.

“You did a great job in there with him,” Jenny said. “It was pretty rough getting him back, but once he came to, he was raving about Golden, and especially about you. We've made a powerful friend, Billy, and we need all the friends we can get.”

She was following him down the corridor to his office. It was easy to get lost in the labyrinth of corridors and offices in this section of the 400,000-square-foot building. Compared to the attention to detail in creating Golden, the real workmen who converted this old paper warehouse located in Albuquerque's industrial section did a poor job. Well, maybe poor wasn't the right word, Billy thought. It was adequate for its function. The office area had nondescript hallways lined with the initial artistic drawings of Golden. The office furniture was modern and boring and uncomfortable.

A third of the warehouse was offices and another third was “the hospital wing” where Golden's residents were cared for. That area was restricted to essential medical personnel and Billy. It was there where he was dipped in his vat of goo and sent to Golden. Although he had full access, he tried not to linger in the wing — it was disturbing to see. Each resident had their own pod that looked like an open high-tech coffin where they were submersed in the solution and hooked to hundreds of cables.

The third wing of the building housed the control room in which hundreds of technicians monitored Golden's residents and the town itself on thousands of monitors. One section of the wing was dedicated to the computers that did everything. The area was kept cool to keep anything from overheating and there was a constant sound of fans running. It was no surprise that most of the techs wore sweaters and listened to music piped in through the headphones of their phones during their shifts.

“Is Ollie around?” Billy asked. “I need to talk to him about the glitches.” Jenny indicated he was probably in his office, a large room off the control room with computer monitors on every empty space on the wall.

“Fred said Ollie needs to check out the base code, see if the glitches are coming from there,” he said. “He wasn’t real happy about my hand looking like it was a cartoon, said that Golden isn't supposed to be perfect, but it should at least be right. He was kind of pissed about it as a matter of fact.”

He headed toward Ollie’s office but Jenny reached out and grabbed his arm.

“I've got something else, Dr. Watson?” she said. Finally, she was going to tell him what was going on; she only used his professional title when she was really serious.

“What's up? Is something wrong?”

“We're starting to get a lot of pressure from Gray Peterson, the senator from Arizona.

“Yeah, I know him. What's his lackey's name, George?”

“Very funny,” Jenny said, but she didn't mean it. “You know perfectly well it's Jordan. He's been creeping around here all day, wanting to look at your patient files.”

Billy grabbed her by the shoulder. Patient files were private, he was the only one who was to have access to them.

“You let him?” Billy said. “He's not allowed to look at those files. He can get the reports we send. There's confidential information in those files. He'll need a subpoena for this.”

“Do you seriously think I would let him look at those files?” Jenny stared at him, her jaw set firm and her eyes wide open. She was serious, she knew how to run the project and always took exception when anyone thought otherwise. Billy knew from experience, though, that government officials and bean counters were real good about mucking up valuable research. His already foul mood was starting to get worse.

“He's got a subpoena from the congressional medical ethics subcommittee. I have no idea what he's looking for, but our lawyers told us there is nothing we can do. They'll be back tomorrow to go through your office. Until then, they've got it under guard to keep you from going in and changing anything.”

“What about the files, is he taking them?” Jenny didn't answer immediately, and in fact turned away and made her way to her own office.

“Jenny?” Billy said, catching up to her. “Tell me what's going on?”

“We're being investigated by the ethics committee and they are hinting at indictments. I'm not sure what they're looking for or what the investigation is focusing on. The lawyers seem to think that Peterson is on a fishing expedition, looking for a way to shut us down. We'll have to go and testify. They’ve been trying to close us down, but we've got some pull on Capitol Hill, too. They weren't able to get an injunction, but a federal judge ordered us to turn over any of our records that they ask for.”

“Why didn't you tell me this earlier?”

“The board wanted to keep this … quiet. They didn't want the word to get out to the press, and I agree. We didn't say anything to any of the employees, it was a management decision. Although, this is probably going to break any minute now. I talked to the crew while you were in Golden. More than likely there's a few who are going to help the feds. Not everyone agrees with what we're doing here, Dr. Watson.”

“So, it's Dr. Watson now? Not Billy?” he said with an edge in his voice. “I'm just another employee to you? I thought I was something a little more than that.”

He quickly walked away, toward the exit, hurt and angry. At that moment, he didn't care to talk to anyone and he certainly didn't feel like filling out any paperwork. The daughter wasn't much different from the father, charming to be around, but never really close to anyone. It was excruciating for everyone in their sphere, because they both truly were charismatic, and intelligent, and … special. Maybe it was that specialness that caused that separation from real emotions and real relationships, Billy thought. But he pushed those thoughts from his head as he made his way to his old Ford pickup truck in the lot. He welcomed the anger and would deal with the guilt later.

Jenny considered following him, hoping to make him see things her way. But Billy would be angrier if he knew what she was doing by keeping him away from all the problems. She was trying to protect him, and even now, she debated telling him everything. Golden was her whole life, her father was creating it since before she was born. She'd been trained by necessity and promises to build it for him. She knew she was the smartest person in the room most places she went, and she knew that people are intimidated by intelligence. Her dad used to tell her all the time, “You have to dumb it down sometimes, sweetie.” The message from him was that you could trust no one to understand. She fought these feelings her whole life, but the message time and again was proven true.

But Billy was different. It wasn't so much his intelligence that attracted Jenny; it was his empathy. He understood things without having to be told. He was an instinctual being and Jenny found that fascinating, because her instincts were something she rarely considered. Her life and the way she ran the Foundation was guided solely by data and logic.

And for now, the data and logic told her it was best to keep him in the dark.