by Jaq Wright
It was not the first time that something like this had occurred, and therefore more annoying than shocking. He rode the elevator up to the next floor, and entered the surgical ICU. There were seven patients. None of them were Luis Martinez. Puzzled, he went to the computer and searched for his patient. There was no record of him in the hospital. He checked the surgical log file. No neurosurgery had been done the day before. The record had been hacked and deleted. He felt a pit in his stomach. He went up to Dr. Lyman's office.
Lyman was in his mid-sixties, and his weight was in the mid three hundreds. He looked like what he was – an apathetic, mediocre functionary in a sub-par ghetto hospital.
“Why did you feel compelled to move the Neuro ICU patients in the middle of the night?”
“What are you talking about? I didn't do any such thing.”
Why did I even bother? Overbridge thought. He shook his head. “Never mind.” He strode out the door. Lyman blinked a couple of times, then went back to contemplating the stain on his tie.
So, the transfer phone call had not come from Lyman. He went to his office, where there was a pink phone memo. “Call Maxwell.” He retrieved the phone Maxwell had given him from his overcoat, and pressed one. A voice answered that he recognized as Blaylock, the head programmer.
“Sorry to surprise you, but we decided to move Mr. Martinez to the medical facility here at the lab. He is doing fine, we have excellent nursing, but it would be good if you could come check on him. The car will pick you up at noon.” The line went dead.
◆◆◆
Felix had ridden the trains for a couple of hours, thinking. He could try and contact Overbridge at the hospital, but probably not until eight. He did not know where he lived, and had no phone number.
He went into a CVS and bought a burner phone. At eight sharp, he called OLSP. Overbridge was not in his office, so he had him paged overhead. No response. He hung up, planning to try again every fifteen minutes.
◆◆◆
Overbridge could think of three general options. He could involve the governmental agencies in some way. He could stop the upload by destroying the device. He could kill Perez. While distasteful, he thought that killing him might be the best. After all, he was no longer in the hospital, and so there would be no inconvenient autopsies or paperwork. He would need some way that was not instant, and would not be obviously due to his attentions. It was a little tricky to kill someone in an ICU-type setting. Paralytics and sedatives would not work, since he would be on a ventilator. There were things that would stop the heart, but most of them would lead to awkward questions if he tried to acquire them in sufficient quantities. Plus, they would be bulky and hard to conceal. He had a thought. Digoxin. It would be easy enough to get what would normally be a one-month supply of pills, and then if he crushed them and dissolved them, a syringe-full injected into Perez's IV bag would fairly reliably do the trick. He wrote a prescription for himself and sent it to the hospital pharmacy.
To disable the device was Plan B. Maybe destroy the connector? That would also perhaps make them want to keep me alive for a revision or replacement. I’d need to avoid being noticed. The connector was external, and could be accessed directly. It would be easy enough to bend some of the little prongs. No, the techs could repair that too easily. He had a sudden inspiration. Perfect.
He went down to the pharmacy, picked up his prescription, and a pill-crusher. He returned to his office, and retrieved one of his most treasured possessions from his desk drawer. He then went down to the pathology lab. Not likely Perez has surveillance down here.
After carefully crushing the entire bottle of the tiny pills, he added water drop by drop until he had them dissolved in the minimum amount possible. He then pulled out the item he had taken from his desk. It had belonged to his grandfather. It was a 1920's era Mont Blanc fountain pen, sterling silver with gold inlay. It had a reservoir that was filled by unscrewing the top, and was perfect for holding the digoxin solution. He removed the nib, and mounted a short needle in its place, then replaced the nib. It would certainly pass a quick look. He filled the reservoir with the poison, and put the pen back together. He clipped it in his pocket, and headed back upstairs. As he was walking across the lobby, he heard his name paged overhead. He went to the nearest phone.
“Dr. Overbridge,” he announced into the receiver.
“This is Felix. They tried to kill me. They killed Susie. They killed Peter. We need to get the police.”
Overbridge was silent for a moment. “The patient is not here. He is at the facility in Queens. I will solve the problem myself.” He hung up.
◆◆◆
Felix stared at the phone, barely able to comprehend the arrogance of the man. He did not know what to do next, when suddenly he had a thought. Jack Tucker. Jack had been in the OR for the first mesh implant, and had seen Overbridge at least twice more in the past two weeks. Maybe Jack knows something. Then another thought. Maybe Jack is a target.
He called LexMed and asked for Jack's nurse. She was in, and he asked her to please get Jack, and have him talk on her phone, not transfer it into his. She thought that was a little odd, but he had a way of being very convincing, so she complied. Jack came on the line in a minute.
“What's going on, 'Dr. Felix?'”
“Something truly, truly bad. I need you to meet me. You are in danger. Cathy, too.”
“What are you talking about? Danger from what?”
“I'll explain it all, but you have to leave work now, and meet me at the deli on 40th and Madison as soon as you can. It has to do with Overbridge. Over a dozen people have been killed already. It will be better for you to get out of your office NOW. Find your wife and get her, too. Turn off your cell phones, make sure no one follows you. Trust me, Jack, go NOW.” He hung up.
Jack stared at the phone in his hand. This is insane, he thought, I can't just leave. But there was something in Felix’ voice. He stood for a minute, then decided. He grabbed his coat and ran down the stairs and out the fire exit on the alley. He hailed a cab on Madison, and was just coming around the corner on his street as Cathy was walking towards the cab stand on Fifth. He yelled out the window at her, and she slid in when they pulled up.
“What's up, sweetie?” She kissed him on the mouth.
“40th and Madison,” he said to the cabby, and then to Cathy, “I really don't know. We are meeting Felix. He thinks we are in danger. And I believe him.”
Felix was waiting when they got to the deli. He looked around, then pulled them to a booth in the back.
“Overbridge is mixed up in something that may get us all killed.”
“Why us? We really just met him. We've only seen him a few times in the past month.”
“Maybe, but that is practically the sum total of his entire decade of social interaction. Plus, you are a neurosurgeon, and you were there. I was there, twice. They won’t know what you know, or what he may have told you. Or what he DID tell me. I know they have already tried to kill me once, and Overbridge is getting ready to try something desperate.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Jack was getting impatient.
Felix started going through what Overbridge had told him.
“That was Pierre LeMieux? The poet? I didn't see Overbridge do anything unusual.”
“You left before he closed. He knocked out the video monitor and so I didn't see it either. Was there anything unusual that you DID see?”
“Well, the bone window was much larger than I would have thought necessary. Nothing other than that, but that would make sense if he were putting in this mesh you are describing.”
Felix went on to describe the experiments that had been taking place. Jack was fascinated. “That kind of interface could be the key to solving untold problems in brain science. This is incredible.”
Felix went on, “That would all be great, but the memory experiments have only one clear goal. He wants to transfer his consciousness to a computer system. If successful, that ki
nd of sentient machine would be able to control every system linked to the internet. And he is NOT the kind of guy you want running the planet.”
“Is that really possible,” asked Cathy? “Seems very far-fetched.”
Jack was thoughtful. “I really don't know. I don't believe his soul would follow into a machine, but if this did lead to a self-aware machine, it would potentially be completely amoral and therefore just as dangerous. Short term, as long as he is still alive, if he was completely integrated with the servers, he would have the same power of control even without the transfer of the ability to think.”
“Well,” Cathy looked grim, “I agree with Felix that Perez is a really bad actor. I haven't talked that much about him before, but he seems to be the power manipulating both the governments and the gangs in Central America. I want to get in touch with a guy I know at CIA who may be able to help.” She pulled out her phone.
Felix snatched it out of her hand and turned it to airplane mode. “Are you nuts? This guy is the telecommunications king! If that phone is transmitting, he can know where you are!”
Jack sheepishly pulled out his phone and turned it to airplane mode as well.
“Let's go.” They left the deli, hailed a cab, and headed downtown. Felix handed Cathy his burner. Cathy looked up the number of her contact at CIA and dialed.
◆◆◆
Detective Terrence was typing on his computer in the squad room when an email popped up from the lab. It was the enhanced version of the witness' video. He still could not really make out features, but as the two figures were running down the street, he could see that the man had a rather distinctive gait. A slight limp. Like the one he had noticed on Agent Cameron Hansen. He picked up the phone to call over to the ATU, then thought better of it, and decided to take a drive. He was a big believer in surprise in-person questioning. Always so much more satisfying.
Chapter 37
Monday, November 7
Queens
Perez had finally awakened around three a.m. The nurse immediately called to Blaylock's room down the hall. He came at once.
“How are you feeling, Boss?”
Perez was semi-reclined, the ventilator was making its rhythmic hum, but his eyes were alert. He motioned for paper.
“Get this tube out of my throat,” he wrote.
“Sorry, Boss,” replied Blaylock. “I think we better wait for the doc. Maxwell will be bringing him around noon.”
“I don't want to wait until noon to get started,” Perez wrote in response.
“No need to wait,” Blaylock assured him. He left the room, and came back in a few minutes rolling a tower mounted with computers and a large screen, which he positioned so it was easily visible to Perez. He uncoiled a cable, which he carefully plugged into the connector protruding from the back of Perez's scalp. Then he taped a small chip camera just above each eye, and microphones next to both ears.
“Okay,” he said, “we did analytics on the contours of your brain and that of the boy's, and used a sophisticated algorithm to predict the positions of the motor and sensory areas, including speech, vision, and hearing. The dogs were fairly consistent from one subject to another, and if humans are the same, we should be pretty close. More a matter of calibrating than actual programming. Let's start with vision and hearing. Focus on the screen, try to look exactly at the center, don't move your head or eyes around, so the camera will see exactly what you see.” He stuck a round white sticker in the exact center of the screen. “Just look at the dot.”
Perez focused on the screen. The entire screen was red, which slowly faded through orange to yellow to green to blue to purple, then back to red. After that, a series of lines and geometric shapes were shown, then multiple people and faces, then several animals, flowers, and trees, and finally cars, airplanes, and buildings.
At the same time, the room was filled with sounds, first simple tones, then musical scales, then sounds of nature, then speech.
Blaylock was at a console on the side of the tower, and was watching with satisfaction as the superimposed images from the cameras and the mesh cortex slowly became more and more similar. After about twenty minutes, they were indistinguishable.
“Okay,” he instructed, “now close your eyes.”
The screen now was showing a movie, and Blaylock was watching the same film on his monitor, taking the feed from Perez's cortex. It was slightly grainy, but otherwise the same, with the exception that some of the colors were slightly off.
Perez opened his eyes and picked up the clipboard. “It is like a TV with bad reception,” he scrawled. As he wrote, a garbled noise came out of the speaker on the tower.
Blaylock winced. “The resolution will improve over time, but even as good as the mesh is, we still only have about ten percent of the effective neural density as the actual visual cortex. You will get to the equivalent of standard def TV, but probably never HD. Let's put on the goggles and get eye movements.”
The goggles were adapted from those used to study eye movements in dizzy patients, tracking the eyes with infrared light, and those movements were used to control cameras mounted with tiny motors. He peeled the sticker off the screen and encouraged Perez to continue to watch the screen, but also to look at different parts of the screen and around the room.
All the while, the sounds in the room were being tracked as waveforms on another monitor, with the actual sounds in blue, the sounds detected from the cortex in yellow. By the time they had finished with the vision, the two waveforms had completely superimposed into green. Blaylock put earplugs into Perez's ears, and spoke quietly into the microphone.
“How is the sound reception?”
Perez wrote again. “Fine. Get this tube out or give me speech.” Once again, garbled noise came from the speaker.
Blaylock typed a command, and words started to scroll down the screen. “Read these out loud to yourself, and try to only think of what you are reading, nothing else,” he instructed, “I'll listen on headphones so you won't have to hear that noise.” He turned off the room speaker, and sat listening as he also watched the words scroll. The process was slow, and it was an hour before he turned on the speaker, and a completely intelligible voice filled the room.
Perez stopped reading. “Good work,” the robotic voice said. Then some more garbled sounds. “That was me speaking Spanish. Maybe not such good work.”
“No worries, Boss,” replied Blaylock. “We have Spanish calibration text as well.” The screen started to scroll again. “This should go quicker.” Which, indeed, it did, and a half-hour later, Perez was able to converse fluently in both languages, despite the tube in his windpipe.
By then, it was nearly seven a.m., and Perez was showing signs of fatigue. “How about taking a rest before we do the sensory calibration,” suggested Blaylock. Perez was adamant.
“No, I am fine.
“The next part,” Blaylock told Perez, “is where we calibrate feeling, including touch, heat, cold. And pain.”
“I watched with the boy,” Perez reminded him. “I know what's coming.”
“Fortunately for you, again it is really more a matter of calibration. My plan is to do one area, say the left forearm, for calibration, then let the program predict the remainder of the skin surface. If the other arm matches, then, with just a few confirmatory touches on the face and chest we should be good. Probably less than an hour. We should be all done by eight, and then I will insist on a nap.”
Perez was puzzled. “You told me that you needed twenty-four hours of consciousness, and that it would be torture.”
Blaylock looked at him. “It is running the memory acquisition that will be the hard part. I have designed a process of rapid stimulation and recording, which should do it, but the experience will be very unpleasant. The good news is that everything so far has been going faster than expected.”
“Let's move it along.”
The sensory calibration went smoothly, and although the burning, freezing and stabbing were p
ainful, it was, as promised, brief.
Blaylock turned out the lights and left the room. Perez fell into a fitful sleep, and woke up after less than an hour, rang his buzzer, and insisted that the nurse bring Blaylock back.
The memory acquisition program was more than a little uncomfortable. Images, sounds, feelings, even smells, pulsed through his brain, first every few seconds, then faster and faster until it seemed like they were coming a dozen a second. It was overwhelming, disorienting. It was horrible. Perez stood it as long as he could, then waved his arms and said, “Stop.” Just over an hour.
Blaylock stopped the program.
“Let me analyze what we have so far while you take a break,” he said.
Perez took a break. He was exhausted, although, in fact, his body had been resting comfortably in his bed the entire time. After letting his mind settle for a few minutes, he asked for a report.
“Actually, going very well,” reported Blaylock enthusiastically. “The process is working. What the computer has so far is random bits from throughout your brain. Like a large mosaic where only five percent of the tiles are in place. Try remembering something specific. Let’s say when you first met me.”
Perez complied, and Blaylock was able to see and hear the sounds and images detected on his cortex. He then ran a comparison program with what had been stored in the system memory to that point.
“Yes,” Blaylock said, “I can access that memory using the pathway detected. It is just very incomplete. We need to continue acquiring. Are you up for more?”
“Resume,” he responded simply.
This time, he was able to tolerate it a little longer, and, in fact, it was Blaylock who called a time out, as he said the data was getting a little fuzzy.
◆◆◆
Cameron and Mitzi arrived at the Anti-Terrorism Unit as planned, and sat down with SAC Crawley in his office. “I spoke with your DDO yesterday,” he started, pointing at Cameron. “He tells me that you are probably right about all this insanity, but that you have nothing like legally useful proof of any of it.”