The Media Candidate: politics and power in 2048

By Paul Dueweke

The Media Candidate is a rigorous, high-tech, action-thriller novel studying the merger of politics and the media, set in the presidential election year 2048.
Politics in the mid twenty-first century has evolved to political game shows they call elections and to multimedia hype, sex, and trivia that sustains and embodies society. These are the icons of the reawakening of the American spirit of political participation. But behind this facade lurks an age old establishment sired by opportunities that aggressive humans have seized in every generation and in every fold of the social fabric.
This social revolution mirrored a dazzling technology upheaval, an eruption which engendered a new player in the Government’s bureaucracy: an advanced neural-network computer. Trained to serve, to be a neurocrat, it transmuted into a clandestine monarch. This super computer contrived its own Boolean paranoia and a ruthless strategy that served it well against humans. Only a pair of humans struggled to understand it—its creator and a hacker. But neither had the insight to fear it.
The computer lives at COPE, the Committee for Political Equality, a powerful Government agency formed by the first US President from one of the new “media parties.” COPE’s function is to maintain “a level playing field” for the political process, thus tightly controlling the political arena. Sherwood is a sinister and brilliant engineer turned spy and behavioral scholar. He teams with another nerd, the same hapless hacker who is on a collision course with the neural network, to tackle one of the most sensitive jobs at COPE—debugging COPE’s most efficient enforcer of the new century’s “disciplined democracy”: a cunning spider robot.
The insightful neural network discovers the benefit of commanding such arachnids. COPE may control the masses, but the real master of this media republic controls COPE, and does it with such finesse that no one even suspects it ... at least no one who lives.
The tragic hero, Dr. Elliott T. Townsend, enters this strange world after a career buried in the depths of a high-energy physics lab. He encounters Guinda Burns, a beautiful, young, and naive worker for the CBS Republican Party, and they find themselves opposed by COPE and its enforcers and confronted by Sherwood. But Sherwood stuns Elliott with his insight that human nature is immutable, and that society has evolved very little despite harsh cosmetic changes.
Elliott overcomes robotic spies and spider assassins, but he is not a leader, he is just a fossil of a bygone era, just as Guinda is a loyal daughter of her century. The ultimate question Elliott confronts is—does anyone care?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Dueweke
• Release date: Sep 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370806324

Paul Dueweke

I was a research physicist long before I turned to writing. But I’ve written five novels and am presently working on numbers six through twenty-seven. My first was an autobiography, MY LIFE AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN — a memoir for readers who find memoirs disagreeable and reality tedious, inspired by my lifelong obsession with Don Quixote and his ingenious view of reality. It took first place in the 2002 Independent E-book Awards - Humor Division. THE MEDIA CANDIDATE is a near-future, speculative science-fiction thriller inspired by watching too much TV. PRIONA is a multi-cultural, multi-generational story of love, poetry, music, and the dividing waters of race, set in the Jemez Pueblo of northern New Mexico. LAMB OF GOD is a psychological drama of how a young boy, surrounded by the racial and commercial tensions of the Arsenal of Democracy, Detroit during World War II, deals with the guilt of being too weak to save his twin from tragedy. It won second place in the 2003 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards in a field of 370 entries. Finally, HORSE CAMP WEST is a modern western drama set on a dying ranch in the highlands of southern New Mexico. It was a 2002 EPPIE Award finalist. These books should be available at Smashwords later in 2016, but for the time being, you can get a taste of them at my website fictionQ.com. If you would like me to notify you when my next books hit the ground at Smashwords, drop me a line at editor at fictionQ. I have spent forty years as a physicist in Ohio, New Mexico, and California. Some of those years I did basic physics research at The University of Dayton in the areas of ionizing radiation detectors, shock waves in solids, and infrared measurements. This stuff probably doesn’t excite very many of you, but it has been breathtaking for me. Call me a nerd, but I love science. I spent some years at a beltway bandit* doing a funny thing they called system studies. Then I evolved into a mid-level manager for a big defense hardware company. I learned pretty quickly that upper management is really, really hungry. That's why middle management has to run so fast. Now I have become an even higher lifeform. I work off and on for an itsy bitsy company right in the bosom of Silicon Valley. My business card has a blank under my name so I can be anything I want. And I haven't needed a security clearance for the last twenty years. I’m a firm believer in second careers. When I was doing physics research, I had to do mostly what other people wanted me to do. That was still great because it was such exciting stuff. But now I can write whatever I want to. Maybe that’s just as good, in a way. I think every writer should write as a second career, not as a first. It gives my writing roots and a unique point-of-view beyond writer. I married Marilyn where we met at the University of Dayton. We moved to Alburquerque** where our two daughters grew up; and now we all live in the San Francisco Bay Area. FOOTNOTES: * Beltway Bandit — For those not conversant in Government Speak, a Beltway Bandit is one of the companies clustered around the Washington, DC Beltway that sells “professional services,” which is stuff the Government could do itself if they had any idea what they wanted done or if they weren’t fighting among themselves about who should do it. ** Alburquerque — Most of you traditionally educated readers are probably under the mistaken opinion that the dusty little town in central New Mexico is Albuquerque, not Alburquerque. It was, however, named after Don Francisco Fernandez de la Cueva Enriquez, Duke of Alburquerque, Spain, and Viceroy of New Spain in 1706. About a hundred years later, it was misspelled to its present form. I, in the spirit of Don Quixote de la Mancha, have taken up the cause to redress the evil of misspelling the name of one so highly born.

Book preview

PART ONE

Elliott

—the present—

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

— Paddy Chayevsky

CHAPTER ONE

State of the Union

Isn’t that Lizzie Special something, Elliott? Martha said. I just knew she was going to win the primary. Didn’t I tell you that a month ago?

Elliott Townsend looked toward his wife seated beside him to respond, but she was already turned away from him toward one wall of the Clifford Hotel ballroom, which exploded with TV coverage of the NBC Party primary. From his elevated position near the center of the speaker’s table, he scanned the ballroom audience, his co-workers. They were gathered here to honor him, to usher him into retirement. But Hollywood had seized them, had plucked their psyches with measured strokes, and they resonated with tuned ardor.

Then his gaze tumbled to the program lying on the table in front of him. Dr. Elliott T. Townsend, Director, HyperPhysics HyperCollider. While the cadence of the candidate birthing wrenched everyone else’s attention to the TV, Elliott moved his coffee cup and continued reading through a crescent stain. We present you with our sincere gratitude on this sixteenth day of July, 2048. The world joins us in thanking you for your guidance and inspiration and forty years of dedication to science and human development that … The program blurred as his mind focused on those two words—human development. The words stung as he rambled among the images of his distinguished career, strewn about like fallen trees awaiting the sawmill. And not caring.

He assessed his career, and human development, while the ballroom thumped to the media show. He stared through the distortion of his wineglass stem at those two words. How had anything he’d ever done had any positive influence on human development?

His eyelids twitched reflexively in time to the drumming music as the words dissolved. He’d spent forty years in the world’s most advanced scientific laboratory, surrounded by some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the century. Tremendous technical challenges filled his life. There were the accolades including a Nobel Prize, The President’s Science Prize, and two High Energy Physics Medals. He’d played an essential role in the most sophisticated symphony of technology ever composed. But what about human development? He worked it like a Rubik Cube that didn’t quite square.

The applause brought him back. He looked up in surprise, glad he’d lapped the media blitz. The audience began to refocus its attention on him as Dr. John Gingman rose to the podium. We’re all indebted that you’ve offered to share your special evening with the NBC primary, Dr. Townsend. The room filled with a few seconds of applause as Elliott smiled to the assembly. During this commercial break, we can continue with our tribute to Dr. Townsend. Dr. Gingman recited a litany of Elliott’s achievements at the world’s premier high-energy-physics laboratory.

Elliott graciously accepted a piece of simulated black walnut with a brass plaque. They had named the new wing of the computation center after him, the lobby containing a similar plaque. He delivered a minute of forgotten oratory about his role in the evolution of the laboratory, about the endless quest for quarks, about the great advances that they’d bestowed on science—and human development. He retreated to his seat beside Martha. The applause faded.

Dr. Gingman took the podium once more. Dr. Townsend’s great accomplishments could easily consume us for several evenings like this. As you all know, the NBC primary didn’t end Wednesday as expected because Junkie and Tab have made spectacular comebacks to catch Lizzie Special. I know you’re all as excited as Dr. Townsend to see who will be the NBC Party candidate for president. I think the final game of the evening is about to start, and then we’ll get back to the real reason we’re here this evening.

This must be a very proud day for you, dear. Martha presented him a camera smile just before she turned toward the giant TV screen.

Yes … Yes … The answer tumbled into his half cup of coffee and cooled it further. It must be, he thought. He sipped his merlot.

As the room darkened again and the thunder and lightening of NBC’s most spectacular offering broke over the audience, Elliott’s gaze tangled with the hair flowing from Martha’s head. Did she see the same thing in him that he saw? Did she see in him a skeleton of empty years, a lost family? But where did I lose them, he thought. Of course, and she knows, too.

His eyes pierced the evening and clung to those times gone by, and the pain that had only subsided as he learned to anesthetize himself with years of long nights at the Lab. But the price of that anesthetic had been dear. It cost him Susie and Luke—and Martha.

The science fair, he whispered to himself. That’s where I lost them. The science fair … and Dobbs.

He was revered at the Lab, more like an old warhorse than a hero; but they didn’t know about Ms. Dobbs. They didn’t know that the Lab was just a hiding place for him.

Suddenly a blinding flash, then a crash, sliced through the room so even Elliott couldn’t ignore it. Another world snarled at him, swamping his trance.

The game show MC prodded his simulated audience, arousing its synthetic emotions. His digital audience erupted, programmed with spontaneity, saturating the airwaves with ordered zeal. "This has turned out to be one of the tightest races in Election Beat history! Right now, Lizzie Special and Tab Hardman are both within fifty points of being the NBC candidate for President of the United States, and Junkie Gordon is right behind them with forty-six hundred points! The last time I saw a race this tight was for the Sixteenth Congressional District in North Carolina six years ago! This next set could put either Lizzie or Tab over the top. Or if Junkie wins it, we could be in an unprecedented three way tie!"

Lizzie, Tab, and Junkie all pulsated before the cameras, whooping for the support of hundreds of millions of viewers. A little American flag danced in Lizzie’s hand, throbbing into a blur as she skipped out from the contestant booth. She tucked the flag handle into her cleavage, and performed an erotic dance, calling on all the physical assets she could reveal in this relatively low-key environment. If she’d been at a rally or a chat-up, she could have campaigned her fans with much more than a mere suggestion of her assets. But Election Beat maintained a conservative image, and she honored that tradition.

Within a heartbeat, she was joined by Tab and Junkie who feared she might upstage them. Tab’s youthful, tanned, athletic body and his prodigious biceps and surging groin twisted in sensual rhythms. Junkie pranced about with jewels glistening, shadowed eyes flashing, and a finely choreographed smirk seducing his adoring admirers.

A laser show extravaganza heightened the mayhem; a bare-chested band, sporting peacock plumes, added cacophony. Screams and wails and applause flooded the broadcast and permeated the spirit of the American voter. This was primary night for the NBC Party. The soul of America lay exposed.

* * *

The NBC computer ran with all the speed and power humans could build into it. It commanded the studio, keeping every player on cue, switching the active camera, balancing light and sound according to complex optimization codes, adjusting prompts to fit the evolving scenario, which is never quite as rehearsed, synthesizing ecstatic audience responses, and interfacing with computers at a dozen NBC regional centers all over America that were taking the real time pulse of the electorate via millions of interactive TV dialogs.

The NBC computer executed countless instructions every second, calling subroutines and macros at a hundred software levels. Everyone expected a flawless production, and no one was disappointed. Network executives savored their system’s performance. Party leaders inhaled the rating uptick. Americans devoured the carnival.

But the computer was just a machine, just doing its job.

* * *

After a sustained frenzy, the MC joined the three contestants amid hugs, thumbs up, and smiles. Everyone was exuberant, confident, and young. They played their roles, but not just to the sterile eye of the studio camera. Each could sense the invisible sea of neutered minds wedded to that camera. The MC gathered them together, and with a communal embrace, shouted into the collective ear of America, One of these three contestants will be your next president!

The scene erupted once more as the primeval ritual soared to another orgasm and then slowly retreated back toward the game show whence it had evolved. The breathless candidates were coaxed back to their booths where light and sound began to slow the pace, a signal that the serious business of picking a presidential candidate was about to begin.

Elliott’s eyes wandered from this media event to the people collected in his honor. His gaze stopped first on Martha, who clutched her purse, her fingers fondling it as they would have the multimedia controller in her living room. Every pair of eyes in the room, save one, was transfixed by the historic moment. Every face but one was upturned and bathed in the glow of feral allegiance.

The game-show camera zoomed in on Lizzie’s bronzed face, and the MC squeezed his face in beside her to nurture civic pride across America. Ready, Lizzie?

She rapped back, Well don’t you know … I’m ready to go … The band thumped it’s accompaniment. Need a blow? … just flash the dough.

The MC roared with delight and wagged his finger in front of the naughty guest. Lizzie grabbed his finger, swallowed it up to his knuckles, and sucked with her whole body in a convulsive rush, her eyes rolling heavenward. The band blasted ascending scales as the network computer broadcasted a sea of applause and whoops. In spite of the careful rehearsals, Tab nervously tried to interrupt this routine to steal the spotlight. The cameras ignored his gestures.

Oh, Lizzie, the MC groaned, you just got my vote! If you’re elected president, can I be your first man?

That job was filled a lot of men ago, Rod, but you can sure be my next one.

With a high five and an intro from the band, the MC stepped over to Tab, who leaped into the charged aura surrounding the MC. Tab wore a multi-colored sleeveless shirt with a black tie to accentuate his conservative appearance.

Well, Tab, you look like you’re ready. Do you—

Hey, I do! I sure do! I’m like up with you, like scratching the score! I mean we’re together—but not thick, you get my mean. He rocked side-to-side so far that the camera had to zoom out to keep him in the picture.

The MC thrust himself into the camera and gestured with his eyebrows. Okay, cits, sounds like Tab has got himself … in the mooood! Relinquishing the camera to Tab again, he said, Tab! Is there anything else—

My people says … I’ll be the Pres … It’ll be toooo rad… in my White House … ah … in my White House … place.

Despite the MC’s prodding, Tab didn’t respond to the teleprompter, which futilely flashed PAD. But the computer directed a world-class audience response to his patter. And viewers across America, and around the world, devoured it just the same.

You’re my man, Tab! the MC shouted into the din in mid high-five. And you are up for the presidency!

A hand grabbed Tab and held him back as the MC stepped to the last booth where Junkie stood, seemingly oblivious to the scene. His head was shaved save for one dread lock that curved around behind his head toward his chin and was interwoven with his beard. He claimed it gave him continuity with the universe and allowed him to recycle wisdom that most people let escape through their hair.

No incertitude, Flash, Junkie assured. He looked directly into the camera, raised and cocked his head, and blew a diminutive kiss. The slightest of grins diffused from his eyes to his cheeks as thunderous applause, whoops, and foot stomping radiated across the globe from the NBC transmitter and was echoed by countless millions of feasting fans.

I’ve knocked balls, Junkie said, with tougher scabs; and I always—always—come up with my pectoral per - pen - dic - u - lar. The airwaves erupted once more as Junkie gazed coolly into the camera and stroked his rope of hair as if asking for direction from its recycled wisdom.

You have said it all, Junkie! the MC testified with mock bows. You have said it all! There’s no doubt! You’re king of the queers! Once more, the airwaves resounded as Tab scowled and Lizzie applauded politely.

The camera slowly zoomed out during the applause to show all the contestants, each doing what their adoring fans had come to know and cherish them for. Each appealed to an element of the electorate in ways startlingly like their twentieth-century presidential ancestors.

Elliott’s eyes wandered out into the audience that had gathered in his honor. Nearly all of them were much younger than him. His gaze rambled from face to face, each upturned to the iridescent banquet, each feasting.

Now it’s time for each candidate to pick your topic, the MC said in a hushed tone. And all you cits at home get ready to vote. Okay, now each candi, project your hologram for the cits to see. The studio lights went out as three colorful holograms danced out of the contestant boxes and swirled together in a ring of brilliance before coming to rest. Each candidate gripped a signal wand and waited for the first round of play.

* * *

There was another computer, larger, more complex than the NBC main frame—and more mature. It lived about twenty miles from the studio in a big white building in the Hollywood Hills. It was tied to its disciple by a fiber optic network that carried data at thousands of gigabits-per-second tonight. This computer didn’t execute instructions. It performed. And it was ecstatic.

This was payday. It was going public tonight with an incredible new technology, one that the masses would never even suspect. This computer lived a life of secrets—secrets it shared with a select few humans in the media. And somber secrets it shared with no human.

* * *

Elliott’s gaze rebounded from the display, almost not seeing it. The antics, the staging, the battle of light vs. sound, all seemed so foreign to him. He reached for a bottle of cabernet, his eyes fixed on infinity.

It was 2010, he thought. That’s when it happened—2010.

He knew how long ago that was. If he could just cut that year out of his life, just cut it out. He looked at the field of daisies on the cabernet label. A beautiful, slender woman with barely-reddish hair sat on a blanket holding her glass toward a man as he filled it. She wore a white dress, too, just like Susie did on her wedding day, at least according to the photo she sent him.

Last time he said more than a handful of words with Susie was at Luke’s wedding. She and John wanted to get married away from the world. He accepted the maroon liquid tempting his lips. Away from me, he thought.

That was more than a dozen years after the science fair, and she still couldn’t forgive her father. And now, so many more years had elapsed. I won’t have my lab to hide in anymore. No more Higgs particles and quarks to count. Just me and Martha—and our ugly history—and all this bullshit around us.

CHAPTER TWO

Threat to the Republic

Terra Halvorsen, a political science professor, sat in her living room about a mile from her office at the University. Curled in her lap lay Samantha, purring quietly and unresponsive to the commotion on the TV before them. But Professor Halvorsen made up for Samantha’s lethargy. She watched the Primary with singular intensity.

She didn’t care about choosing a candidate or playing the games everyone swilled. Her focus slashed through the peripherals, digesting every facial expression, every movement, every shadow. She wasn’t just watching; but dissecting, penetrating, analyzing. Her attention spotlighted the details, looking for flaws, searching for any glimpse or clue to support her belief.

She’d developed a simple but controversial theory with painstaking research. But her effort had been met first with an artificial indifference that intellectuals reserve for issues that offend their faith, but which they hope will just wither with neglect. This seeming indifference turned into hostility by the university administrators as it became clear that Professor Halvorsen wouldn’t just go away.

Professor Halvorsen nudged Samantha, and the black and white ball turned her head sideways and looked up at her with one eye. She nudged her again. Come on, Sammy. I have to get up now. Vamoose.

Samantha stretched one paw far up her robe until it came to rest on bare skin. Ouch! Not with your claws, Sammy! She stood up with Samantha who jumped down in displeasure.

* * *

The sudden movement caused a pair of eyes to retreat quickly and silently from the skylight. A dozen feet over the professor’s head, this pair of eyes had watched the scene intently. The brain behind these eyes, however, was assimilating data in a different way and for a different reason than was Professor Halvorsen. Although this being was as intent on her as she was on the candidates, it had vastly different motives. With the stealth of a cat, it repositioned three of its legs on the wooden shakes. The two eyes telescoped forward again until they could once more observe the setting below. It was trained to be exceedingly cautious, and it carried out its missions with diligence and tenacity. It had been an A+ student. A jaw was carefully tucked beneath it like a napalm bomb beneath an attack plane. It would be called on at the proper time.

Its control system continually checked the status of each critical subsystem, maintaining a readiness for any eventuality. A single drop of venom fell on the roof, and as if embarrassed by this tiny infraction of robotic protocol, it adjusted the pressure on the injector to prevent another such occurrence. Meanwhile, it resumed its surveillance on the target human.

* * *

Professor Halvorsen’s hair was long and blond, like her name. Though in her late forties, she had no trouble avoiding accumulations of fat since she subscribed to the latest regimen of drugs that sculpted her body chemistry to her desires. Her slender legs rose like saplings into the terry cloth attending her. She brushed her hair behind her right ear and walked toward her study where she sat down before a computer. Her hair slowly regained its desired position, strand by strand, like a child testing a distracted parent.

The dormant computer surged to life with a touch. With a few glances at icons and some verbal commands, she had ultra-high-resolution images of the three candidates from the Primary at her command. Now she could examine them again, but at her leisure and with all the power of the best image analysis software at her disposal.

She had worked at the University for nearly twenty years, though they’d not been easy ones. The problem wasn’t lack of publishing. She had seventy presentations and journal articles to her credit. She’d chaired numerous symposia and co-edited two books, one of which became a popular text book early in her career. The problem wasn’t her relationship with students or lack of teaching ability. The undergraduate course she had regularly taught was popular and received the highest grades from her students.

The University, however, hadn’t allowed her to teach a course for years. She was told that many of the students completing her class had demonstrated an unhealthy attitude toward many of the basic tenants of twenty-first-century disciplined democracy and that many parents and alumni had complained about her iconoclast views.

Cynical was the University’s word describing her view of Government, and there was no need for cynicism. The Government had taken dramatic steps to insure total and uncompromising honesty in the political process. Technology wrested every bit of lying and empire building out of the political arena. In fact, the socially correct term for politician had recently become social principal, which had been shortened to sopal and was being further shortened to pal by a subtle media campaign.

But Professor Halvorsen refused to believe that Government could be trusted to monitor its own integrity and maintain the degree of discipline presumed by its new role. Since the media’s traditional watchdog role had become compromised by its alignments with political parties, she felt there might no longer be anyone overseeing the overseer.

Most skeptics like her had been weeded out of the education establishment over the last twenty years. But her brother-in-law occupied a very influential position at the National Subsidy Foundation and she had an aunt at the National Pension for Preceptors. This helped make her maverick ways tolerable to an intolerant aristocracy.

Technology had become the principal tool of the many tentacles of Government. Not only did it allow unprecedented access to the minds of the electorate, it provided a subtle wall between it and them, a barrier that ordinary people could neither understand nor penetrate. Technology was the most effective isolation Government could maintain during a period when it claimed to be bringing both the leaders and the led into a historically unique milieu, a oneness of body and function that would preserve fundamental rights into the centuries that followed.

Professor Halvorsen had her PhD in political science, but understood that the science of poli-sci wasn’t the science of the technological elite. She felt she would have to understand technology if she were to understand the workings of this new republic, so she studied communication engineering. But this had become another wedge between herself and the Political Science Department. They resented her as uppity, an engineering transvestite. Her research into political trends and electro-optical imaging technology made her aware of the fantastic potential for its use and abuse.

This research and her outspokenness had gelled in the events of this evening. Tonight she would test her theory based on thousands of hours of research. It would be her vindication to the University. She would have hard data that not even an academic community, dedicated to the status quo and fearful of government funding agencies, could ignore.

* * *

Her rooftop visitor began the next stage of its mission. It opened the skylight with its myriad of tools and used its eight perfectly coordinated legs to climb into the skylight well where it was only a short drop to the floor. Attaching itself to the roof with a silken thread of carbon nanotubes, its jet-black body, about the size of a cat, lowered into Professor Halvorsen’s living room. It descended its slender thread as if it had evolved for a billion years for just this task. Eight legs flexed gracefully to a silent ballet in its brain.

Its goal, however, wasn’t centered on illuminating beauty, but on extinguishing truth. Reaching the floor, it disconnected the silken tether and examined the surroundings with both visible and infrared sensors. A single-minded goal drove each movement.

Its feline size and spindly legs did not suggest the immense power built into it or the intelligence, which allowed autonomous completion of the most complex assignments. It was a monument to the highest callings of human ingenuity and art. It was also a terrifying and vulgar machine—the progeny of the excellence and the malignancy of man.

Silently creeping toward Professor Halvorsen’s study, its arachnid movements were controlled by a brain whose evolution was integrated with that of man, not spiders. It entered the room where its target was seated facing sideways so her peripheral vision intersected the robot. Her attention, however, was focused on her own mission.

Samantha napped with her head buried in the folds of a mauve robe. The spider’s movements slowed to mimic a stalking cat as it approached its victim, a victim who was at that moment reveling in her future, a future the spider was committed to erasing.

Suddenly Samantha raised her head, her ears at first forward to sense the silence, and then lay back to the frontier of terror. The spider now had its injector fully armed, its legs tensioned for attack, its brain calculating angles, forces, trajectories, maneuvers, sequences.

Professor Halvorsen looked down at Samantha, then turned her head slowly toward the doorway. A gasp rose involuntarily from her throat, a beautiful soft throat that was now at the center of the spider’s zoom-optics field-of-view. In a fraction of an instant, the spider was wrapping its legs about her head and her shoulders in the last embrace that Professor Halvorsen would ever experience. The injector plunged