Michael Crichton - Prey

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PREY -- Michael Crichton -- (2002)

(Version 2003.01.25)

Within fifty to a hundred years, a new class of organisms is likely to

emerge. These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will

originally be designed by humans. However, they will reproduce, and will

"evolve" into something other than their original form; they will be "alive"

under any reasonable definition of the word. These organisms will evolve in a

fundamentally different manner...The pace...will be extremely rapid...The

impact on humanity and the biosphere could be enormous, larger than the

industrial revolution, nuclear weapons, or environmental pollution. We must

take steps now to shape the emergence of artificial organisms...

-- Doyne Farmer and Alletta Belin, 1992

There are many people, including myself, who are quite queasy about the

consequences of this technology for the future.

-- K. Eric Drexler, 1992

Introduction

Artificial Evolution in the Twenty-first Century

The notion that the world around us is continuously evolving is a platitude;

we rarely grasp its full implications. We do not ordinarily think, for

example, of an epidemic disease changing its character as the epidemic

spreads. Nor do we think of evolution in plants and animals as occurring in a

matter of days or weeks, though it does. And we do not ordinarily imagine the

green world around us as a scene of constant, sophisticated chemical warfare,

with plants producing pesticides in response to attack, and insects developing

resistance. But that is what happens, too.

If we were to grasp the true nature of nature-if we could comprehend the real

meaning of evolution-then we would envision a world in which every living

plant, insect, and animal species is changing at every instant, in response to

every other living plant, insect, and animal. Whole populations of organisms

are rising and falling, shifting and changing. This restless and perpetual

change, as inexorable and unstoppable as the waves and tides, implies a world

in which all human actions necessarily have uncertain effects. The total

system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance

the consequences of anything that we do.1

That is why even our most enlightened past efforts have had undesirable

outcomes-either because we did not understand enough, or because the ever-

changing world responded to our actions in unexpected ways. From this

standpoint, the history of environmental protection is as discouraging as the

history of environmental pollution. Anyone who is willing to argue, for

example, that the industrial policy of clear-cutting forests is more damaging

than the ecological policy of fire suppression ignores the fact that both

policies have been carried out with utter conviction, and both have altered

the virgin forest irrevocably. Both provide ample evidence of the obstinate

egotism that is a hallmark of human interaction with the environment.

The fact that the biosphere responds unpredictably to our actions is not an

argument for inaction. It is, however, a powerful argument for caution, and

for adopting a tentative attitude toward all we believe, and all we do.

Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the

past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future.

We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem

to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in

the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result

of bad thinking by less able minds-and then confidently embarks on fresh

errors of its own.

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-

aware,2 yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our

kind.

Sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will

collide with our growing technological power. One area where this will occur

is in the meeting point of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computer

technology. What all three have in common is the ability to release self-

replicating entities into the environment.

We have lived for some years with the first of these self-replicating

entities, computer viruses. And we are beginning to have some practical

experience with the problems of biotechnology. The recent report that modified

maize genes now appear in native maize in Mexico-despite laws against it, and

efforts to prevent it-is just the start of what we may expect to be a long and

difficult journey to control our technology. At the same time, long-standing

beliefs about the fundamental safety of biotechnology-views promoted by the

great majority of biologists since the 1970s-now appear less secure. The

unintended creation of a devastatingly lethal virus by Australian researchers

in 2001 has caused many to rethink old assumptions.3 Clearly we will not be as

casual about this technology in the future as we have been in the past.

Nanotechnology is the newest of these three technologies, and in some ways the

most radical. It is the quest to build man-made machinery of extremely small

size, on the order of 100 nanometers, or a hundred billionths of a meter. Such

machines would be about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

Pundits predict these tiny machines will provide everything from miniaturized

computer components to new cancer treatments to new weapons of war.

As a concept, nanotechnology dates back to a 1959 speech by Richard Feynman

called "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom."4 Forty years later, the field

is still very much in its infancy, despite relentless media hype. Yet

practical advances are now being made, and funding has increased dramatically.

Major corporations such as IBM, Fujitsu, and Intel are pouring money into

research. The U.S. government has spent $1 billion on nanotechnology in the

last two years.

Meanwhile, nanotechniques are already being used to make sunscreens, stain-

resistant fabrics, and composite materials in cars. Soon they will be used to

make computers and storage devices of extremely small size.

And some of the long-anticipated "miracle" products have started to appear as

well. In 2002 one company was manufacturing self-cleaning window glass;

another made a nanocrystal wound dressing with antibiotic and anti-

inflammatory properties.

At the moment nanotechnology is primarily a materials technology, but its

potential goes far beyond that. For decades there has been speculation about

self-reproducing machines. In 1980 a NASA paper discussed several methods by

which such machines could be made. Ten years ago, two knowledgeable scientists

took the matter seriously:

Within fifty to a hundred years, a new class of organisms is likely to emerge.

These organisms will be artificial in the sense that they will originally be

something other than their original form; they will be "alive" under any

reasonable definition of the word...The pace of evolutionary change will be

extremely rapid...The impact on humanity and the biosphere could be enormous,

larger than the industrial revolution, nuclear weapons, or environmental

pollution. We must take steps now to shape the emergence of artificial

organisms...5

And the chief proponent of nanotechnology, K. Eric Drexler, expressed related

concerns:

There are many people, including myself, who are quite queasy about the

consequences of this technology for the future. We are talking about changing

so many things that the risk of society handling it poorly through lack of

preparation is very large.6

Even by the most optimistic (or dire) predictions, such organisms are probably

decades into our future. We may hope that by the time they emerge, we will

have settled upon international controls for self-reproducing technologies. We

can expect such controls to be stringently enforced; already we have learned

to treat computer virus-makers with a severity unthinkable twenty years ago.

We've learned to put hackers in jail. Errant biotechnologists will soon join

them.

But of course, it is always possible that we will not establish controls. Or

that someone will manage to create artificial, self-reproducing organisms far

sooner than anyone expected. If so, it is difficult to anticipate what the

consequences might be. That is the subject of the present novel.

Michael Crichton

LOS ANGELES, 2002

It's midnight now. The house is dark. I am not sure how this will turn out.

The kids are all desperately sick, throwing up. I can hear my son and daughter

retching in separate bathrooms. I went in to check on them a few minutes ago,

to see what was coming up. I'm worried about the baby, but I had to make her

sick, too. It was her only hope.

I think I'm okay, at least for the moment. But of course the odds aren't good:

most of the people involved in this business are already dead. And there are

so many things I can't know for sure.

The facility is destroyed, but I don't know if we did it in time.

I'm waiting for Mae. She went to the lab in Palo Alto twelve hours ago. I hope

she succeeded. I hope she made them understand how desperate the situation is.

I expected to hear from the lab but so far there has been no word.

I have ringing in my ears, which is a bad sign. And I feel a vibrating in my

chest and abdomen. The baby is spitting up, not really vomiting. I am feeling

dizzy. I hope I don't lose consciousness. The kids need me, especially the

little one. They're frightened. I don't blame them.

I am, too.

Sitting here in the dark, it's hard to believe that a week ago my biggest

problem was finding a job. It seems almost laughable now.

But then, things never turn out the way you think they will.

Day 1

10:04 A.M.

Things never turn out the way you think they will.

I never intended to become a househusband. Stay-at-home husband. Full-time

dad, whatever you want to call it-there is no good term for it. But that's

what I had become in the last six months. Now I was in Crate & Barrel in

downtown San Jose, picking up some extra glasses, and while I was there I

noticed they had a good selection of placemats. We needed more placemats; the

woven oval ones that Julia had bought a year ago were getting pretty worn, and

the weave was crusted with baby food. The trouble was, they were woven, so you

couldn't wash them. So I stopped at the display to see if they had any

placemats that might be good, and I found some pale blue ones that were nice,

and I got some white napkins. And then some yellow placemats caught my eye,

because they looked really bright and appealing, so I got those, too. They

didn't have six on the shelf, and I thought we'd better have six, so I asked

the salesgirl to look in the back and see if they had more. While she was gone

I put the placemat on the table, and put a white dish on it, and then I put a

yellow napkin next to it. The setting looked very cheerful, and I began to

think maybe I should get eight instead of six. That was when my cell phone

rang.

It was Julia. "Hi, hon."

"Hi, Julia. How's it going?" I said. I could hear machinery in the background,

a steady chugging. Probably the vacuum pump for the electron microscope. They

had several scanning electron microscopes at her laboratory.

She said, "What're you doing?"

"Buying placemats, actually."

"Where?"

"Crate and Barrel."

She laughed. "You the only guy there?"

"No..."

"Oh, well, that's good," she said. I could tell Julia was completely

uninterested in this conversation. Something else was on her mind. "Listen, I

wanted to tell you, Jack, I'm really sorry, but it's going to be a late night

again."

"Uh-huh..." The salesgirl came back, carrying more yellow mats. Still holding

the phone to my ear, I beckoned her over. I held up three fingers, and she put

down three more mats. To Julia, I said, "Is everything all right?"

"Yeah, it's just crazy like normal. We're broadcasting a demo by satellite

today to the VCs in Asia and Europe, and we're having trouble with the

satellite hookup at this end because the video truck they sent-oh, you don't

want to know...anyway, we're going to be delayed two hours, hon. Maybe more. I

won't get back until eight at the earliest. Can you feed the kids and put them

to bed?"

"No problem," I said. And it wasn't. I was used to it. Lately, Julia had been

working very long hours. Most nights she didn't get home until the children

were asleep. Xymos Technology, the company she worked for, was trying to raise

another round of venture capital-twenty million dollars-and there was a lot of

pressure. Especially since Xymos was developing technology in what the company

called "molecular manufacturing," but which most people called nanotechnology.

Nano wasn't popular with the VCs-the venture capitalists-these days. Too many

VCs had been burned in the last ten years with products that were supposedly

just around the corner, but then never made it out of the lab. The VCs

considered nano to be all promise, no products.

Not that Julia needed to be told that; she'd worked for two VC firms herself.

Originally trained as a child psychologist, she ended up as someone who

specialized in "technology incubation," helping fledgling technology companies

get started. (She used to joke she was still doing child psychology.)

Eventually, she'd stopped advising firms and joined one of them full-time. She

was now a vice president at Xymos.

Julia said Xymos had made several breakthroughs, and was far ahead of others

in the field. She said they were just days away from a prototype commercial

product. But I took what she said with a grain of salt.

"Listen, Jack, I want to warn you," she said, in a guilty voice, "that Eric is

going to be upset."

"Why?"

"Well...I told him I would come to the game."

"Julia, why? We talked about making promises like this. There's no way you can

make that game. It's at three o'clock. Why'd you tell him you would?"

"I thought I could make it."

I sighed. It was, I told myself, a sign of her caring. "Okay. Don't worry,

honey. I'll handle it."

"Thanks. Oh, and Jack? The placemats? Whatever you do, just don't get yellow,

okay?"

And she hung up.

I made spaghetti for dinner because there was never an argument about

spaghetti. By eight o'clock, the two little ones were asleep, and Nicole was

finishing her homework. She was twelve, and had to be in bed by ten o'clock,

though she didn't like any of her friends to know that.

The littlest one, Amanda, was just nine months. She was starting to crawl

everywhere, and to stand up holding on to things. Eric was eight; he was a

soccer kid, and liked to play all the time, when he wasn't dressing up as a

knight and chasing his older sister around the house with his plastic sword.

Nicole was in a modest phase of her life; Eric liked nothing better than to

grab her bra and go running around the house, shouting, "Nicky wears a bra-a!

Nicky wears a bra-a!" while Nicole, too dignified to pursue him, gritted her

teeth and yelled, "Dad? He's doing it again! Dad!" And I would have to go

chase Eric and tell him not to touch his sister's things.

This was what my life had become. At first, after I lost the job at

MediaTronics, it was interesting to deal with sibling rivalry. And often, it

seemed, not that different from what my job had been.

At MediaTronics I had run a program division, riding herd over a group of

talented young computer programmers. At forty, I was too old to work as a

programmer myself anymore; writing code is a young person's job. So I managed

the team, and it was a full-time job; like most Silicon Valley programmers, my

team seemed to live in a perpetual crisis of crashed Porsches, infidelities,

bad love affairs, parental hassles, and drug reactions, all superimposed on a

forced-march work schedule with all-night marathons fueled by cases of Diet

Coke and Sun chips.

But the work was exciting, in a cutting-edge field. We wrote what are called

distributed parallel processing or agent-based programs. These programs model

biological processes by creating virtual agents inside the computer and then

letting the agents interact to solve real-world problems. It sounds strange,

but it works fine. For example, one of our programs imitated ant foraging-how

ants find the shortest path to food-to route traffic through a big telephone

network. Other programs mimicked the behavior of termites, swarming bees, and

stalking lions.

It was fun, and I would probably still be there if I hadn't taken on some

additional responsibilities. In my last few months there, I'd been put in

charge of security, replacing an outside tech consultant who'd had the job for

two years but had failed to detect the theft of company source code, until it

turned up in a program being marketed out of Taiwan. Actually, it was my

division's source code-software for distributed processing. That was the code

that had been stolen.

We knew it was the same code, because the Easter eggs hadn't been touched.

Programmers always insert Easter eggs into their code, little nuggets that

don't serve any useful purpose and are just put there for fun. The Taiwanese

company hadn't changed any of them; they used our code wholesale. So the

keystrokes Alt-Shift-M-9 would open up a window giving the date of one of our

programmers' marriage. Clear theft.

Of course we sued, but Don Gross, the head of the company, wanted to make sure

it didn't happen again. So he put me in charge of security, and I was angry

enough about the theft to take the job. It was only part-time; I still ran the

division. The first thing I did as security officer was to monitor workstation

use. It was pretty straightforward; these days, eighty percent of companies

monitor what their workers do at terminals. They do it by video, or they do it

by recording keystrokes, or by scanning email for certain keywords...all sorts

of procedures out there.

Don Gross was a tough guy, an ex-Marine who had never lost his military

manner. When I told him about the new system, he said, "But you're not

monitoring my terminal, right?" Of course not, I said. In fact, I'd set up the

programs to monitor every computer in the company, his included. And that was

how I discovered, two weeks later, that Don was having an affair with a girl

in accounting, and had authorized her to have a company car. I went to him and

said that based on emails relating to Jean in accounting, it appeared that

someone unknown was having an affair with her, and that she might be getting

perks she wasn't entitled to. I said I didn't know who the person was, but if

they kept using email, I'd soon find out.

I figured Don would take the hint, and he did. But now he just sent

incriminating email from his home, never realizing that everything went

through the company server and I was getting it all. That's how I learned he

was "discounting" software to foreign distributors, and taking large

"consultant fees" into an account in the Cayman Islands. This was clearly

illegal, and I couldn't overlook it. I consulted my attorney, Gary Marder, who

advised me to quit.

"Quit?" I said.

"Yeah. Of course."

"Why?"

"Who cares why? You got a better offer elsewhere. You've got some health

problems. Or some family issues. Trouble at home. Just get out of there.

Quit."

"Wait a minute," I said. "You think I should quit because he's breaking the

law? Is that your advice to me?"

"No," Gary said. "As your attorney, my advice is that if you are aware of any

illegal activity you have a duty to report it. But as your friend, my advice

is to keep your mouth shut and get out of there fast."

"Seems kind of cowardly. I think I have to notify the investors."

Gary sighed. He put his hand on my shoulder. "Jack," he said, "the investors

can look out for themselves. You get the fuck out of there."

I didn't think that was right. I had been annoyed when my code had been

stolen. Now I found myself wondering if it actually had been stolen. Maybe it

had been sold. We were a privately held company, and I told one of the board

members.

It turned out he was in on it. I was fired the next day for gross negligence

and misconduct. Litigation was threatened; I had to sign a raft of NDAs in

order to get my severance package. My attorney handled the paperwork for me,

sighing with every new document.

At the end, we went outside into the milky sunshine. I said, "Well, at least

that's over."

He turned and looked at me. "Why do you say that?" he said.

Because of course it wasn't over. In some mysterious way, I had become a

marked man. My qualifications were excellent and I worked in a hot field. But

when I went on job interviews I could tell they weren't interested. Worse,

they were uncomfortable. Silicon Valley covers a big area, but it's a small

place. Word gets out. Eventually I found myself talking to an interviewer I

knew slightly, Ted Landow. I'd coached his kid in Little League baseball the

year before. When the interview was over, I said to him, "What have you heard

about me?"

He shook his head. "Nothing, Jack."

I said, "Ted, I've been on ten interviews in ten days. Tell me."

"There's nothing to tell."

"Ted."

He shuffled through his papers, looking down at them, not at me. He sighed.

"Jack Forman. Troublemaker. Not cooperative. Belligerent. Hot-headed. Not a

team player." He hesitated, then said, "And supposedly you were involved in

some kind of dealings. They won't say what, but some kind of shady dealings.

You were on the take."

"I was on the take?" I said. I felt a flood of anger, and started to say more,

until I realized I was probably looking hotheaded and belligerent. So I shut

up, and thanked him.

As I was leaving, he said, "Jack, do yourself a favor. Give it a while. Things

change fast in the Valley. Your résumé is strong and your skill set is

outstanding. Wait until..." He shrugged.

"A couple of months?"

"I'd say four. Maybe five."

Somehow I knew he was right. After that, I stopped trying so hard. I began to

hear rumors that MediaTronics was going belly up, and there might be

indictments. I smelled vindication ahead, but in the meantime there was

nothing to do but wait.

The strangeness of not going to work in the morning slowly faded. Julia was

working longer hours at her job, and the kids were demanding; if I was in the

house they turned to me, instead of our housekeeper, Maria. I started taking

them to school, picking them up, driving them to the doctor, the orthodontist,

soccer practice. The first few dinners I cooked were disastrous, but I got

better.

And before I knew it, I was buying placemats and looking at table settings in

Crate & Barrel. And it all seemed perfectly normal.

Julia got home around nine-thirty. I was watching the Giants game on TV, not

really paying attention. She came in and kissed me on the back of my neck. She

said, "They all asleep?"

"Except Nicole. She's still doing homework."

"Jeez, isn't it late for her to be up?"

"No, hon," I said. "We agreed. This year she gets to stay up until ten,

remember?"

Julia shrugged, as if she didn't remember. And maybe she didn't. We had

undergone a sort of inversion of roles; she had always been more knowledgeable

about the kids, but now I was. Sometimes Julia felt uncomfortable with that,

experiencing it somehow as a loss of power.

"How's the little one?"

"Her cold is better. Just sniffles. She's eating more."

I walked with Julia to the bedrooms. She went into the baby's room, bent over

the crib, and kissed the sleeping child tenderly. Watching her, I thought

there was something about a mother's caring that a father could never match.

Julia had some connection to the kids that I never would. Or at least a

different connection. She listened to the baby's soft breathing, and said,

"Yes, she's better."

Then she went into Eric's room, took the Game Boy off the bed covers, gave me

a frown. I shrugged, faintly irritated; I knew Eric played with his Game Boy

when he was supposed to be going to sleep, but I was busy getting the baby

down at that time, and I overlooked it. I thought Julia should be more

understanding.

Then she went into Nicole's room. Nicole was on her laptop, but shut the lid

when her mother walked in. "Hi, Mom."

"You're up late."

"No, Mom..."

"You're supposed to be doing homework."

"I did it."

"Then why aren't you in bed?"

"Because -- "

"I don't want you spending all night talking to your friends on the computer."

"Mom..." she said, in a pained voice.

"You see them every day at school, that should be enough."

"Mom..."

"Don't look at your father. We already know he'll do whatever you want. I'm

talking to you, now."

She sighed. "I know, Mom."

This kind of interaction was increasingly common between Nicole and Julia. I

guess it was normal at this age, but I thought I'd step in. Julia was tired,

and when she was tired she got rigid and controlling. I put my arm around her

shoulder and said, "It's late for everybody. Want a cup of tea?"

"Jack, don't interfere."

"I'm not, I just -- "

"Yes, you are. I'm talking to Nicole and you're interfering, the way you

always do."

"Honey, we all agreed she could stay up until ten, I don't know what this -- "

"But if she's finished her homework, she should go to bed."

"That wasn't the deal."

"I don't want her spending all day and night on the computer."

"She's not, Julia."

At that point, Nicole burst into tears, and jumped to her feet crying, "You

always criticize me! I hate you!" She ran into the bathroom and slammed the

door. That woke the baby, who started to cry.

Julia turned to me and said, "If you would please just let me handle this

myself, Jack."

And I said, "You're right. I'm sorry. You're right."

In truth, that wasn't what I thought at all. More and more, I regarded this as

my house, and my kids. She was barging into my house, late at night, when I'd

gotten everything quiet, the way I liked it, the way it should be. And she was

raising a fuss.

I didn't think she was right at all. I thought she was wrong.

And in the last few weeks I'd noticed that incidents like this had become more

frequent. At first, I thought Julia felt guilty about being away so much. Then

I thought she was reasserting her authority, trying to regain control of a

household that had fallen into my hands. Then I thought it was because she was

tired, or under so much pressure at work.

But lately I felt I was making excuses for her behavior. I started to have the

feeling Julia had changed. She was different, somehow, tenser, tougher.

The baby was howling. I picked her up from the crib, hugged her, cooed at her,

and simultaneously stuck a finger down the back of the diaper to see if it was

wet. It was. I put her down on her back on top of the dresser, and she howled

again until I shook her favorite rattle, and put it in her hand. She was

silent then, allowing me to change her without much kicking.

"I'll do that," Julia said, coming in.

"It's okay."

"I woke her up, it's only right I do it."

"Really honey, it's fine."

Julia put her hand on my shoulder, kissed the back of my neck. "I'm sorry I'm

such a jerk. I'm really tired. I don't know what came over me. Let me change

the baby, I never get to see her."

"Okay," I said. I stepped aside, and she moved in.

"Hi, Poopsie-doopsie," she said, chucking the baby under the chin. "How's my

little Winkie-dinkie?" All this attention made the baby drop the rattle, and

then she started to cry, and to twist away on the table. Julia didn't notice

the missing rattle caused the crying; instead she made soothing sounds and

struggled to put on the new diaper, but the baby's twisting and kicking made

it hard. "Amanda, stop it!"

I said, "She does that now." And it was true, Amanda was in the stage where

she actively resisted a diaper change. And she could kick pretty hard.

"Well, she should stop. Stop!"

The baby cried louder, tried to turn away. One of the adhesive tabs pulled

off. The diaper slid down. Amanda was now rolling toward the edge of the

dresser. Julia pulled her back roughly. Amanda never stopped kicking.

"God damn it, I said stop!" Julia said, and smacked the baby on the leg. The

baby just cried harder, kicked harder. "Amanda! Stop it! Stop it!" She slapped

her again. "Stop it! Stop it!"

For a moment I didn't react. I was stunned. I didn't know what to do. The

baby's legs were bright red. Julia was still hitting her. "Honey..." I said,

leaning in, "let's not -- "

Julia exploded. "Why do you always fucking interfere?" she yelled, slamming

her hand down on the dresser. "What is your fucking problem?"

And she stomped off, leaving the room.

I let out a long breath, and picked the baby up. Amanda howled inconsolably,

as much in confusion as in pain. I figured I would need to give her a bottle

to get her to sleep again. I stroked her back until she settled down a little.

Then I got her diaper on, and brought her into the kitchen while I heated a

bottle. The lights were low, just the fluorescents over the counter.

Julia was sitting at the table, drinking beer out of a bottle, staring into

space. "When are you going to get a job?" she said.

"I'm trying."

"Really? I don't think you're trying at all. When was your last interview?"

"Last week," I said.

She grunted. "I wish you'd hurry up and get one," she said, "because this is

driving me crazy."

I swallowed anger. "I know. It's hard for everybody," I said. It was late at

night, and I didn't want to argue anymore. But I was watching her out of the

corner of my eye.

At thirty-six, Julia was a strikingly pretty woman, petite, with dark hair and

dark eyes, upturned nose, and the kind of personality that people called

bubbly or sparkling. Unlike many tech executives, she was attractive and

approachable. She made friends easily, and had a good sense of humor. Years

back, when we first had Nicole, Julia would come home with hilarious accounts

of the foibles of her VC partners. We used to sit at this same kitchen table

and laugh until I felt physically sick, while little Nicole would tug at her

arm and say, "What's the funny, Mom? What's the funny?" because she wanted to

be in on the joke. Of course we could never explain it to her, but Julia

always seemed to have a new "Knock knock" joke for Nicole, so she could join

in the laughter, too. Julia had a real gift for seeing the humorous side of

life. She was famous for her equanimity; she almost never lost her temper.

Right now, of course, she was furious. Not even willing to look at me. Sitting

in the dark at the round kitchen table, one leg crossed over the other,

kicking impatiently while she stared into space. As I looked at her, I had the

feeling that her appearance had changed, somehow. Of course she had lost

weight recently, part of the strain of the job. A certain softness in her face

was gone; her cheekbones protruded more; her chin seemed sharper. It made her

look harder, but in a way more glamorous.

Her clothes were different, too. Julia was wearing a dark skirt and a white

blouse, sort of standard business attire. But the skirt was tighter than

usual. And her kicking foot made me notice she was wearing slingback high

heels. What she used to call fuck-me shoes. The kind of shoes she would never

wear to work.

And then I realized that everything about her was different-her manner, her

appearance, her mood, everything-and in a flash of insight I knew why: my wife

was having an affair.

The water on the stove began to steam, and I pulled out the bottle, tested it

on my forearm. It had gotten too hot, and I would have to wait a minute for it

to cool. The baby started to cry, and I bounced her a little on my shoulder,

while I walked her around the room.

Julia never looked at me. She just kept swinging her foot, and staring into

space.

I had read somewhere that this was a syndrome. The husband's out of work, his

masculine appeal declines, his wife no longer respects him, and she wanders. I

had read that in Glamour or Redbook or one of those magazines around the house

that I glanced through while waiting for the washing machine to finish its

cycle, or the microwave to thaw the hamburger.

But now I was flooded with confused feelings. Was it really true? Was I just

tired, making up bad stories in my mind? After all, what difference did it

make if she was wearing tighter skirts and different shoes? Fashions changed.

People felt different on different days. And just because she was sometimes

angry, did that really mean she was having an affair? Of course it didn't. I

was probably just feeling inadequate, unattractive. These were probably my

insecurities coming out. My thoughts went on in this vein for a while.

But for some reason, I couldn't talk myself out of it. I was sure it was true.

I had lived with this woman for more than twelve years. I knew she was

different, and I knew why. I could sense the presence of someone else, an

outside person, some intruder in our relationship. I felt it with a conviction

that surprised me. I felt it in my bones, like an ache.

I had to turn away.

* * *

The baby took the bottle, gurgling happily. In the darkened kitchen, she

stared up at my face with that peculiar fixed stare that babies have. It was

sort of soothing, watching her. After a while she closed her eyes, and then

her mouth went slack. I put her on my shoulder and burped her as I carried her

back into her bedroom. Most parents pat their babies too hard, trying to get a

burp. It's better to just rub the flat of your hand up their back, and

sometimes just along the spine with two fingers. She gave a soft belch, and

relaxed.

I set her down in the crib, and I turned out the night-light. Now the only

light in the room came from the aquarium, bubbling green-blue in the corner. A

plastic diver trudged along the bottom, trailing bubbles.

As I turned to go, I saw Julia silhouetted in the doorway, dark hair backlit.

She had been watching me. I couldn't read her expression. She stalked forward.

I tensed. She put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest.

"Please forgive me," she said. "I'm a real jerk. You're doing a wonderful job.

I'm just jealous, that's all." My shoulder was wet with her tears.

"I understand," I said, holding her. "It's okay."

I waited to see if my body relaxed, but it didn't. I was suspicious and alert.

I had a bad feeling about her, and it wasn't going away.

She came out of the shower into the bedroom, toweling her short hair dry. I

was sitting on the bed, trying to watch the rest of the game. It occurred to

me that she never used to take showers at night. Julia always took a shower in

the morning before work. Now, I realized, she often came home and went

straight to the shower before coming out to say hello to the kids.

My body was still tense. I flicked the TV off. I said, "How was the demo?"

"The what?"

"The demo. Didn't you have a demo today?"

"Oh," she said. "Oh, yes. We did. It went fine, when we finally got it going.

The VCs in Germany couldn't stay for all of it because of the time change,

but-listen, do you want to see it?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have a dub of it. Want to see it?"

I was surprised. I shrugged. "Okay, sure."

"I'd really like to know what you think, Jack." I detected a patronizing tone.

My wife was including me in her work. Making me feel a part of her life. I

watched as she opened her briefcase and took out a DVD. She stuck it in the

player, and came back to sit with me on the bed.

"What were you demoing?" I said.

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PREY--MichaelCrichton--(2002)(Version2003.01.25)Withinfiftytoahundredyears,anewclassoforganismsislikelytoemerge.Theseorganismswillbeartificialinthesensethattheywilloriginallybedesignedbyhumans.However,theywillreproduce,andwill"evolve"intosomethingotherthantheiroriginalform;theywillbe"alive"underanyr...

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