The Field - Part 17
The contract felt heavier than paper should. Richard turned it over in his hands, watching afternoon light from his office window catch the government watermarks. One signature, and BeeVision would be split—consumer applications proceeding normally, but all security and defense applications belonging to the Innovation Security Council. A compromise that would free him from liability from the last agreement.
1.7 billion dollars. Enough to fund research for decades. Enough to ensure the technology developed properly, safely, ethically.
Enough to cage wonder and call it responsible.
His phone buzzed. A picture of a picture—a scanned letter from Zin, finally breaking her Canada communication blackout. Her handwritten words filled the screen, somehow making the distance feel both infinite and intimate.
I trust you. Not the managed version of you that I sometimes try to create, but the actual you.
Richard read it three times, typed a response, deleted it. Then, he nearly pressed the call icon but didn't. He set the phone aside and really looked at the contract.
Clause 7.3.2: "All developments related to emotional state detection, micro-expression analysis, and behavioral prediction shall be classified as defense technologies."
Clause 9.1.7: "The Council maintains rights to all derivative technologies developed from the core platform."
His laptop sat open to the latest build of BeeVision's codebase. Six months of eighteen-hour days—of reading research papers aloud while his team soldered connections, of breakthrough moments at 3 AM when the universe felt generous with its secrets. The pattern recognition algorithm alone had taken two months—teaching machines to see what lovers and artists and children naturally knew: that truth lived in the spaces between what people said and what they meant.
A knock at the door. Jennifer from HR—no, Jennifer, the VP of People Operations now, after the restructuring Zin had suggested before she left.
"Director Walsh is here," she said. "Conference room two."
"Five minutes."
Jennifer hesitated. "Richard? For what it's worth, I think you're making the right choice. However this goes. The fact that you're thinking this hard about it... that matters."
After she left, Richard opened his consciousness research folder. Page after page of notes about perception and reality, about the brain as filter rather than generator, about the possibility that seeing more clearly might be a human birthright rather than a technological achievement.
He thought about the field of bluebonnets. About Zin's skin painted with impossible light. About the moment he'd understood that attention was prayer and perception was grace and maybe, just maybe, consciousness was bigger than any individual brain.
Then he thought about those same lights being used to identify dissidents. To predict behavior. To strip away the privacy of human interiority.
His phone buzzed again. Marcus, from Canada:
The trees have opinions about your situation. They suggest a dinner date with Z. Honestly, I'll even pay. Also, I may have invented a new form of non-Euclidean geometry. Miss you, brother.
Richard smiled despite everything. Zin's family had become his—their strange wisdom infiltrating his engineering mind with possibilities beyond optimization.
He picked up the contract and walked to conference room two.
Walsh sat with perfect posture, her team arranged like chess pieces around the table. The afternoon sun slanted through the windows, casting shadows that looked like decision trees.
"Mr. Smith," she said. "I trust you've had adequate time to review our proposal."
"I have." Richard set the contract on the table between them. "I have questions."
"Of course."
"The derivative rights clause. Does that include consciousness research applications?"
"Potentially. If such research has security implications."
"Everything has security implications if you squint hard enough."
Walsh's smile was sharp. "Precisely why we need to be involved from the beginning. To ensure responsible development."
"Responsible," Richard repeated. "Like using micro-expression analysis for pre-crime detection?"
"Like preventing terrorist attacks before they happen."
"Or identifying political dissidents. Or mapping the emotional states of entire populations. Or creating a world where human interiority becomes government property."
One of Walsh's colleagues leaned forward. "Let's stay pragmatic. And keep the drama to a minimum."
"Am I being dramatic?" Richard pulled out his phone, showing them a visualization from the latest BeeVision beta. "This is my emotional state for the last hour. Anxiety climbing, confusion steady, moral certainty fluctuating like a sine wave. The technology can see it all. The question is who gets to look."
"We're offering you partnership," Walsh said. "Input on ethical guidelines. Oversight of implementation."
"You're offering me a leash and calling it partnership."
The room went cold. Walsh studied him with eyes that had seen too many idealists bend.
"Mr. Smith. This technology will be developed. If not by you, then by others with fewer scruples. We're offering you the chance to shape its deployment."
"No," Richard said. "You're offering me the chance to be complicit in its weaponization."
He stood, leaving the contract on the table.
"We'll develop it anyway," Walsh said quietly. "Reverse engineering, parallel development, industrial espionage if necessary. You're choosing irrelevance, not principle."
Richard paused at the door. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm choosing to build something you can't steal. Something that exists in the space between technology and consciousness—in the realm where perception meets ethics meets love. Good luck reverse engineering that."
He left them in their conference room—shadows and certainty in equal measure.
Later that night, Richard sat in the condo he'd once shared with Zin, surrounded by hardware and hope. The Canada crew would be back tomorrow. He'd have to explain his decision, face the board's fury, and figure out how to proceed without government backing or protection.
His laptop showed forty-seven messages from investors. He ignored them all, opening instead a new document:
Specifications for Open-Source Consciousness Enhancement Platform Version 0.1
Core Principle: Perception enhancement as human birthright, not commercial product or government tool.
Primary Features:
Full spectral vision (UV through near-infrared)
Pattern recognition without judgment
Emotional resonance mapping (opt-in only)
Synesthetic bridge modes
Meditation enhancement protocols
Creative flow optimization
Security: All analysis happens locally. No data transmission. No central servers. No surveillance capacity.
Distribution: Peer-to-peer, encrypted, unstoppable.
Cost: Free forever.
His phone rang. Zin.
"Hey," he said.
"David felt a disturbance in the force. Said you did something brave and stupid."
"Stupid might be underselling it."
"Tell me."
So he did. About Walsh's certainty and his doubt. About choosing irrelevance over complicity. About the open-source plan that would probably tank the company but might, just might, democratize wonder.
Zin was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I'm proud of you."
"Even though I just threw away a billion dollars?"
"Especially because you threw away a billion dollars." He could hear her smile. "Richard, do you know what I fell in love with?"
"My spreadsheet skills?"
"Your poetry. Your willingness to follow lights only you could see. Your belief that perception could be prayer." Her voice softened. "Don't lose that. Not for all the government contracts in the world."
"The board's going to crucify me."
"They already started. I got a call—subtle pressure, asking if I'd consider returning in an advisory capacity. They noticed I haven’t been around and decided to pull the thread."
"Wow."
"Yeah. But I told them the truth. That I’ve never believed more in you than I do right now."
Richard closed his eyes, the weight of it all folding into a rare sense of clarity.
"Tomorrow we'll strategize," she said. "Tonight, just... be proud of choosing wonder over weaponization. It matters."
After they hung up, Richard returned to his specifications document. Outside, Austin glowed with its million small lights, each one a life, a story, a consciousness experiencing reality in its own unique way.
He thought about Walsh's threat—that they'd develop it anyway. Maybe they would. But they'd develop surveillance, not sight. Control, not consciousness. They'd build tools for seeing through people, not for seeing them clearly.
But BeeVision was already evolving.
Within days of the open-source drop, modified versions appeared: in Korea, a research team added multisensory fusion for smell. In Kenya, a collective of artists used it to generate light-based performance scores. Engineers in Argentina redesigned the headset for accessibility, while rogue hackers in Berlin started exploring telepathic feedback loops.
Purple Bonnet, the core team, was overwhelmed—but listening. Learning. Evolving BeeVision faster than Richard ever could have imagined.
It was no longer his baby.
It belonged to the world.
And with that came consequence.
Not everyone who picked up the code wanted to illuminate beauty. Some were already testing emotional manipulation engines, targeting teens with empathy spikes or bias filters to influence elections. Others had begun crude attempts to intercept and catalog user resonance patterns.
Richard knew he had started a wildfire—one with the potential to warm or destroy.
He stared at the screen, then added a new section to the document:
Addendum: Known Risks and Ethical Guidelines
Third-party adaptations may destabilize emotional integrity or manipulate subjective state.
Community enforcement required. Open-source does not mean ungoverned.
We recommend a global ethics council—cross-disciplinary, cross-border—to respond in real time.
Trust must be earned with every update.
He paused. Then typed:
Love cannot be legislated. But it can be encoded.
The stars outside his window flickered like neurons. He thought again of Zin’s letter. Of Marcus’s trees. Of Sarah’s fractals. Of David’s fierce calm.
Then he got back to work—building cathedrals in silicon and light.
Because the world had picked up his signal. And it was building, too.