“What’s not fun is the information blackout,” I massage myself, stretching some more.
“As the old adage goes, what you don’t know won’t hurt you,” he pulls the covers off my legs, the air cool on my bare feet. “It’s not always true but in some cases.”
“It seems that what may or may not hurt me is one more thing I should have a say about,” I unwrap my wrists, the green gauze self-adhering and stretchy, the kind Mom keeps in the medicine cabinet at home.
“Don’t forget, you’re not new to this rodeo,” he cuts through the flex-cuffs around my ankles. “You accepted a very decided flight path long before you gave your official consent.”
Consent that was caught on film, and I hate to imagine what else. I remember the cameras in the ceiling of room 1, just as there are cameras here. My every utterance and move are recorded as if I’m the subject of a science experiment. And apparently, I am. And have been since birth. And maybe before that.
I start on the gauze around my ankles as Dick folds his knife, tucking it back into a pocket, leaving a mess of cut plastic and rope for someone else to clean up. I neatly place my balled-up gauze on the bedside table as he walks off through the living room to the kitchen with its countertop, cabinets, refrigerator and microwave oven.
A table is before a curtained window overlooking the back entrance, trees, a large parking lot and other similar buildings. I know the view very well, having delivered my share of VIPs requiring protective escorts when they stay in the enclave of officer’s quarters back here.
“What does Fran think is going on?” I pull the covers up to my chin, studying puncture wounds in the fold of my left arm from injections and IV lines. “Does she assume Carme is deployed overseas somewhere? Busy flying her fighter jets, doing her special ops stuff?”
“That’s the word on the street, and we want to keep it that way.”
“And what has Fran been told about me?”
“The origin story you and I just went over,” Dick turns on the water in the sink. “That you’re here for safe custody and debriefings, which is factual.”
“I guess that’s how it works. Fiction starts feeling like fact, and what you want to think becomes what you believe,” I reply as I rub my ankles, my wrists . . .
Wondering what’s become of my sports bra and boxer briefs . . .
And my tactical cargo pants, shirt, jacket, socks, boots, knife, gun, badge wallet . . .
What about the temporary ID smartcard I was issued after mine disappeared, for that matter . . . ?
“Ready for coffee?” Dick opens a white bakery box from the Grey Goose restaurant, reminding me of their Brunswick stew, my stomach growling again.
“High-test black,” I remind him while inspecting myself, finding little obvious damage beyond bruised knuckles from throwing punches.
7
“I BELIEVE I know how you take your coffee after all these years,” Dick says with a trace of warmth.
He’s more personable now that he’s on the other side of the room, a safe distance away, and it must have been difficult watching Carme and me grow up, twins he’s groomed and might love too much. Guiding, nurturing us in ways our father couldn’t, and then what?
“To give credit where it’s due,” Dick pours water into the coffee maker’s reservoir, “I have to say you’ve handled chronic discomfort remarkably well,” as if that was reason enough to tether me like a hostage, a sex slave, a lunatic for days on end.
“What am I supposed to be doing today? And from now on?” I’m reluctant to get up in nothing but flimsy cotton scrubs too snug in all the wrong places, not to mention the diaper.
“You’ll head out to protective services HQ this afternoon once we’ve finished up here. You’ll be meeting Fran.”
“Then I guess I’ll need my truck.”
“Not anymore.”
“Ummm? Did something happen to it?” I envision my Silverado parked near the Denali at the Point Comfort Inn.
“In light of the cyberattack and other events you’re better served with something more appropriate that will blend,” Dick says, and as usual it’s up to him. “An SUV with special features courtesy of our Secret Service friends. Your Chase Car is waiting for you in the parking lot, the key on the table by the door. Although a physical key isn’t necessary.”
He opens a jar of coffee whitener, clinking the lid down on the countertop, stirring in his usual heaping teaspoon of what I tell him isn’t real creamer or even food. Then he’s headed my way, carrying our coffees in his strong steady hands, a paper plate of muffins balanced on top of the mugs.
I don’t stand on ceremony, helping myself as starved as I am. Biting into a muffin, crumbs going everywhere, I blow on my coffee, taking several greedy sips.
“Absolute power, a galactic dictatorship, that’s the prize and what we’re up against,” Dick retrieves a laptop computer from the SIPRNet desk. “It’s all about who’s the gatekeeper, and we sure as hell don’t want it to be Neva Rong.”
He paints the scenario of someone like that in charge of the world’s GPS, internet, TV and radio networks. Imagine such an entity deciding which streaming entertainment and news programs we’re able to access or whose astronauts explore the moon and other planets.
“Not the theory of everything but the takeover of it,” he settles next to me on the bed, leaving his desert boots on. “And locking up Neva wouldn’t solve the problem. Eliminating her wouldn’t either.”
“Similar to taking out a head of state, or the leader of a terrorist organization,” I reply, already starting on a second muffin. “You still have to deal with thousands of employees, followers, a global network.”
“She doesn’t operate alone, is heavily embedded in US government projects, including extremely sensitive ones,” Dick arranges another pillow behind him on the bed. “She has friends in high places, as much money as a country, and knows how to play politics. Neva’s been at it for years and will stop at nothing.”
“It looks like my sister and I have our work cut out for us,” and I wonder when Dick first cooked up his secret agenda.
When Mom was pregnant? When he found out she was having twins? For sure, he was involved with my family prior to Carme’s and my arrival on this planet, going back to Dad’s short-lived stint at the Air Force Academy. Supposedly, he and Dick sat next to each other in basic cadet training class their first year, were instant comrades as tight as brothers.
That’s according to their origin story, which I’ve always found a little fishy since they aren’t really all that compatible or even friendly with each other. Truth be told, Dick’s closest ally isn’t Dad. It’s Mom and always has been.
“How about turning on the TV and we’ll catch up on the news before we get going,” he nods at the flat-screen on the wall across from the bed. “Go ahead. Just point your finger. The one with the scar.”
“Say again?” I reply with a mouthful of muffin. “Do what?”
“Try it, point your right index finger at the TV,” he says, and I do it, feeling foolish.
To my amazement the local news blinks on without benefit of the remote control.
“It’s surprisingly intuitive,” he demonstrates with hand gestures that have no effect since he’s not wired the way I am. “An upward movement raises the sound, a downward one lowers it, providing you’ve done certain other things first,” and it wouldn’t matter if he has or hasn’t.
Presumably, Dick’s not equipped with the same sensors in his fingers, hasn’t been implanted with a SIN, the original version or the latest. I’m quite certain that for reasons of national security, it wouldn’t be allowed, reminding me yet again that Carme and I have little or no say, are expendable compared to him. And he tells me to go ahead and try out my new powers.
Pointing at the TV, I make a series of rapid upward motions as if conducting an orchestra, and the volume booms . . .
“. . . The wildly popular Tidewater International Car Show opened Friday at the Hampton Coliseum, and the now-missing hot rod and hearse had been the biggest attractions . . . ,” the Channel 10 anchor says, and I mute the news with a cutoff gesture, a scuba I’m out of air hand signal.
“Not so different from swiping your finger across your cell phone if you want to hide the keyboard or zoom in on a map,” Dick seems proud of what he’s wrought. “Only in this case, motion is captured by the TV’s built-in camera, and an end receiver converts certain physical actions into commands.”
It doesn’t necessarily thrill me to hear that soon enough I won’t have to do much more than gesture, blink or use my eyes to make something happen or not. That’s assuming the parameters correctly line up as they did when I adjusted the volume, and they did only because Dick changed variables in a biofeedback algorithm.
After making his dramatic point, he changed the variables back to what they were before, and should I point at the TV again, it won’t have the same effect. Not until I meet various mathematical conditions, he says. It will be up to me to learn what those are as I return to my day-to-day activities.
Somehow, I’m supposed to figure out things as I go along, interfacing machine and biology, being a test pilot for my own SIN while doing the best I can to live as usual. Or as Dick puts it, practice makes perfect, and there will be plenty of that simply dealing with my work spaces on the NASA Langley campus.
Let’s say Building 1232, where I often park myself when test piloting and programming scenarios for autonomous vehicles (drones). Dick walks me through what it will be like accessing my office there, starting with the two outer doors that require my ID badge.
Once I scan open those electronic locks, next is my office door, including the fail-safe push-button code I’ll have to enter manually before I can use hand gestures to turn on the lights inside. But I won’t be able to unlock my desktop computer with a wag, jab or snap of my fingers unless I also insert this same ID badge into the card reader.
00:00:00:00:0
“THE NUANCES are infinite and beyond mind boggling,” I state the obvious. “I’m going to look like a wackadoo if anybody’s watching,” and I can’t begin to imagine the misfires as I point and blink like abracadabra. “Not to mention, if the wrong people catch on, Carme and I could end up dead.”
“The plan isn’t to have you dead, coming across as I Dream of Jeannie or a wizard,” Dick opens his laptop. “The idea is for both of you to be stealthy, to draw zero attention while you constantly acquire and transmit data.”
Everything will be analyzed and tweaked as we conduct high-risk activities with remote human guidance and the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), he describes what sounds like a high-tech nightmare.
“How are we supposed to live with something like this?” but I already know the answer because it couldn’t be more glaring.
By and large Carme and I are on our own, the first of our kind, prototype 001 with no precedent, no other matching siblings who’ve come before us. One day we’ll be the models for others, Dick says as if we could aspire no higher. We’re the test pilots and guinea pigs in his top secret project, code name Gemini, which is Latin for “twins.”
Including digital ones, and based on electronic blueprints and schematics, Carme’s and my individual configurations of implants are identical. Our SINs are extensive with room to expand, Dick says as he continues to unfold our destinies, a life plan that wasn’t decided by us even if we agreed to it.
It wasn’t our idea for NASA and the military to repurpose our existences, and I don’t appreciate Dick’s presumptions. Especially when he shows me a female body diagram that supposedly represents the way I’m shaped.
“No good,” I shake my head vigorously.
As unimportant as it is in the grand cosmos of things, I don’t like being depicted as chunky. I like it less when my sister’s noticeably slimmer and more buff body diagram fills the other side of the split screen.
“Nope, nope, nope. Maybe I have to watch what I eat more than Carme does but that doesn’t mean we don’t weigh pretty much the same,” I let him know. “It’s just that we aren’t built alike. And I have to work harder. And might have a little more body fat.”
“All that can be tweaked,” he promises.
Not some things, I think dismally. My sister and I may be identical but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our physical differences. Most notably, I began my precipitous slide into puberty almost a year before she did, doubled over with cramps, outgrowing everything. When it was her turn, she got by with undershirts and extra-slim-fit jeans, never needing a hot water bottle, underwire or a Midol.
“There’s not much that won’t be fixable and changeable eventually,” Dick predicts, and it’s unnerving to contemplate the microscopic mission control that’s monitoring everything about Carme and me.
From the amount of cortisol, epinephrine and dopamine we secrete (how stressed or aggressive we are). To our blood sugar and other hormone levels (diabetes, PMS). In addition to the early detection of emergency conditions in the making (heart attacks, strokes).
And diseases we might beat if caught early enough (cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, suicidal depression). Plus, what annoys, relaxes, arouses, distracts, bores, thrills, entertains, and whether our mode is flight or fight given the predicament. Also, how we honestly relate to and perceive everything and everyone.
Meaning there will be few secrets anymore as we’re watched over by an electronic God. A well-meaning but demanding one with judgmental tendencies and a need to know.
“It’s not all that different from chipping your pets in case they get lost,” Dick shows me another diagram, and let’s be honest, what he’s talking about is nothing like that.
Implanting a silicon Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) microchip in your poodle is one thing. It’s another to inject a human with scores of sensors and other microdevices, unleashing them under the skin and into deeper spaces like an array of nano-satellites or a virus.
“Made of hydrogel and other biocompatible materials, including your body’s own proteins to prevent inflammatory responses and scarring,” Dick shows me on his laptop as we lean against pillows on the bed like roomies. “As you can see, your SIN is only partially switched on so far.”
“When might I expect that to change?” I want to know. “And will I be aware of it?”
“As they say in quantum computing, it all depends,” he answers, and I ask him who’s in charge of the so-called switching.
“It’s only fair that I know, considering the power that person has. Or maybe it’s more than one,” I add, studying digital schematics and downloads of what should be intensely private.
“You and Carme are in charge of your own switches, of what you’re ready to handle and when,” Dick replies. “The good news is, much of it won’t be conscious. You’ll automatically adapt for the most part.”
“For the most part doesn’t sound reassuring or what I’d consider good news. This is getting more unmanageable by leaps and bounds,” I complain. “Not to mention what you’re describing is ridiculously dangerous and scary.”
“You’ll have robust assistance that I’ll introduce you to in a minute,” and he goes on to explain that in the main I shouldn’t be aware of devices as small as ground pepper flakes, some no thicker than a human hair.
It’s hard to know what to expect when it’s largely uncharted territory, he adds. I shouldn’t feel pain from injection sites, most of them no longer visible. But I might be aware of a vague tenderness near the foramen magnum, the opening at the base of m
y skull. Beyond that, I probably wouldn’t have a clue what’s been done to me had he not begun to paint a vivid portrait of what I am under the hood, of how I’m configured and connected.
I wonder when it would have dawned on me that I’m not myself anymore, perhaps when my physical actions and gestures cause manipulations and disturbances of televisions, locks, other electronics. Maybe I would have been alerted by the strange vibrations and tingles like I’m experiencing in my scarred finger.
Unusual thoughts and moods might cause me to suspect I’ve been altered or worse, fear I’m becoming delusional, possibly paranoid and psychotic. How awful it would be if nobody told me what’s really going on. How distressing for Carme if the same thing were done to her and she didn’t know.
Thinking back on her increasingly erratic behavior over recent months, I sure hope Dick and his Gemini project don’t turn us into something we’re not . . .
Hostile, destructive people ruled by bias . . .
Supremely selfish ones with no empathy or remorse . . .
Coldly calculating automatons that get the job done at any cost . . .
Ruthless cyborgs who will charm your socks off . . .
“The race is on to combine telemedicine with AI and quantum computing,” Dick continues describing why it was necessary to appropriate Carme’s and my double lives.
The potential benefit to the public is extraordinary in terms of health and safety monitoring, he says.
“Also, the implications for the intelligence community, for law enforcement and the military,” he makes his bigger point.
“Except for one thing,” I remind him. “Anybody with a signal sniffer is going to see me coming. In fact, if someone in the area has one powered on right now, it should be ringing like a bell.”
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 6