by James Codlin
Dennis adjusted the microphone in front of his mouth and cleared his throat. “Marty… wake up.” They listened. The breathing didn’t change.
They had debated whose voice should be used for the first contact. Gina wanted to do it, but Nicolás had argued that they should consider the potential for shock given that Martín believed she was dead. In his current state, Nicolás had said, Martín was likely to believe that Gina’s voice was a hallucination generated by the drugs and exhaustion. The same was true for Lenin and even Nicolás.
“Marty,” Dennis said again. He turned a knob, increasing the volume of the transmission. “Marty… Marty… Marty!”
They listened. The breathing changed ever so slightly, and sheets rustled. “Marty!” Dennis said.
There was no response, and the breathing resumed its steady, rhythmic pace.
“Marty!” Dennis repeated with a hint of exasperation.
For the next fifteen minutes Dennis periodically called out Marty’s name, but mostly he sat and listened with a growing sense of dread and despair. He put his head in his hands and rubbed his exhausted eyes. He was about to ask Gina to pour him a cup of coffee while they waited when he heard a shrill tone come through his headset. Martín’s breathing rate and depth increased dramatically.
“Marty, my name is Dennis Prinn. If you can hear my voice, don’t move. Just pat your pillow twice.”
They heard some incomprehensible muttering, and scratching as the pillowcase rustled against the microphone.
“Marty, can you hear me?” Dennis asked. “If you hear me, pat the pillow twice.”
After a long silence, they heard two thumps. Gina squeezed Dennis’s shoulder as the thumps echoed through the container’s interior.
“Marty, I’m here in Mexico City to help get you out. We can hear the alarms going off inside the complex you are being held in. If you believe that the alarms mean that someone will be coming for you in less than five minutes, pat your pillow twice.”
He and Gina again heard two thumps.
“Okay, I understand they’ll be coming within the next five minutes,” Dennis confirmed. “Listen carefully. There’s a transmitter for a wireless television camera and earpiece under your pillow. Don’t touch them for now—just leave them there. If anyone will be in your cell while you’re out, and if you think they will do anything that might reveal the equipment, give me two pats now.”
There was no sound. “Okay, I understand no one is likely to find the camera and microphone if we leave them where—”
There was a muffled sound of wood banging iron. A door hinge squeaked. “Come on, Ibarra,” a man said. “Time for another session.”
Prinn and Gina heard cloth rustle against the microphone, the door clang shut, and then silence.
*
Father Serrano looked at himself in the mirror as he slipped a fresh collar around his neck. He was satisfied that he had kept himself in excellent physical shape. The bruises where the peasant had bashed him with a rusted pipe were still visible, but apart from that—
His phone rang, interrupting his reverie.
“Yes?” he said, putting the phone to his ear.
“What is your update?” the Spanish cardinal asked.
“I expect the subject to be ready for trial tomorrow.”
“You’re cutting it very close,” the cardinal complained.
“Why do you insist on telling me what I already know? Arbitrary time frames can’t be imposed upon the process.”
The voice from the phone was cold. “Tell it to the pope. Get your part done.”
The line went dead.
Serrano cursed softly, then marched out of the room and down the colonnaded corridor overlooking the courtyard. From the darkness below he could hear movement from the prisoners. He enjoyed the cool morning air only momentarily before he was inside again, in a dark room with lockers and benches. He opened a locker, withdrew a pair of soft-soled shoes, and sat on the bench to put them on. He pulled on skin-tight gloves, donned night-vision goggles, and then made his way through an opaque revolving door, emerging into a pitch-black room.
Serrano’s eardrums strained in the anechoic chamber that suppressed all sound to the point of causing his heartbeat and blood circulation to roar in his ears. He looked around in the darkness and pulled down his goggles. He could see the half-dozen kidney-shaped pods standing on end, each measuring two meters tall. They were supported by a series of hydraulic cylinders actuated by solenoids wired to the main console.
Serrano nodded at the man sitting at the control console and went to the pod with “1” painted on the side. There was a computer keyboard and small monitor on a plinth beside it. He touched the keyboard and the screen illuminated. The priest clicked “System Check” from the onscreen menu. At the top of the screen, it read, “Ibarra, Martin, male, age 31, education 18.” He scanned the biofeedback data, seeing the heart rate was now less than 30 beats per minute and blood pressure less than 70 over 50. Something on the history chart caught his eye. Each morning when Ibarra had been connected to the bio monitors, his heart rate had been around 70 beats per minute, but this morning it had been up to 110. He wondered what had made today different. Dreams? He wasn’t supposed to have any after getting his usual cocktail of drugs at the end of each session.
A graphic readout of the electroencephalogram showed the alpha waves associated with relaxation and creativity active within their low frequency seven to 12 hertz range. The beta waves, normally around 40 hertz during periods of alertness, concentration, and cognition were flat, indicating the narcotics were having their effect. The delta waves hovered around two hertz, and were being carefully monitored by the computer to be sure that Ibarra did not lapse into deep sleep, releasing hormones that would regenerate his body and refresh him. Ibarra was also on a chemical cocktail that activated theta waves whenever the delta waves were suppressed by normal sleep. This would move him into rapid eye movement sleep, and any images introduced to his mind would seem as real as a wakeful state.
The priest noted the history again, which also revealed an elevated state of wakeful brain waves when he was first hooked up this morning. Interesting, but not necessarily alarming.
Serrano marveled at the computer technology before him that in the next five hours would control every aspect of Ibarra’s existence. From here Ibarra’s body temperature could be regulated, as well as his states of consciousness. Even more impressively, Serrano could introduce visual, tactile, audio, olfactory, and taste stimuli at will. The pod delivered straight into Ibarra’s ocular and auditory senses a lifelike but altered multimedia recreation of key moments of his life. It was a parallel version meticulously created from family photos, videotapes, CDs, digital files, and voice recordings purloined from the Ibarras’ Miami home, online social media, Martín’s apartment, and the public domain. Various additional media had been spliced into the narrative, including videos produced by the Inquisition during the last two years—all of it digitally mastered into a virtual reality that was now being transmitted directly into Martín’s compromised brain. His memories were being reconstructed from data gleaned from three years of intensive research, with every detail corroborated and every sensation faithfully reproduced. His memories would be refreshed, reinforced, and sculpted, modifying them with variations so subtle that they would not awaken any dissonance between his conscious and subconscious memories.
Everything seemed to be on track, but Serrano still felt a faint anxiety. Was it because of the call from Spain? The odd readings from this morning? He couldn’t pin it down. He walked to the control console outside the chamber. “Call security and have them double the guard, day and night.”
*
Martín drifted on an elastic timeline that at times stretched out into infinity and at others compressed to a singularity. He was meeting Gina Ishikawa for the first time, sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Miami, feet shuffling around him, folding writing tables squeaking and clanking, w
hiffs of perfume mixed with mildew in the air-conditioned but humid air of a crowded room. He felt the slight movement of the chair next to him being occupied and turned his head. The girl was Asian, compact and slender. Every movement of her hands had drama and grace. Her dark eyes fixed on his and she spoke. What were the words she was saying? He could hear but not comprehend. She spoke for some time, smiling at first, but over time subtly changing her expression. Her face shaped into—forbearance was the best way to describe it. Her words were still incomprehensible, but her tone became clipped and increasingly harsh.
Suddenly Gina recoiled from him and put the palms of her hands out defensively. Her mouth had formed a contemptuous grimace. She whispered something. Martín reached for her hand, but she snatched it away.
Now he was dancing with Gina. He looked down at himself, seeing he was dressed in a tuxedo. She wore a simple, short black cocktail dress. He couldn’t place the name of the song, but it was slow and tender and filled with warm memories. He stroked Gina’s back. Her lips were close to his ear, murmuring. Her breath was minty and warm, but the words… he couldn’t understand them. He drew his head back and smiled at her, but she was pulling away from him. Her face had contorted into a kind of snarl. She was saying a word over and over again, but he couldn’t understand.
New sounds and smells crowded into his mind. He was lying down, and the surface was hard and smooth under his back and buttocks. He felt a slight rocking movement and heard water gently lapping against fiberglass. He smelled lemon oil, suntan lotion, damp canvas, salt, and diesel fuel.
Gina stood above him, gazing into his eyes. She was naked, and Martín looked and saw he was too. He was hard and she crouched down before him. But then her smile disappeared and her eyes became cold and her mouth showed teeth through a sneer. She spoke. What were her words? She stood back up and moved away from him, hands raised. Her mouth formed the same word again, just a single syllable, but he didn’t understand.
Gina’s voice rose to a shriek that vibrated his chest cavity. In his nakedness, he looked around and saw not the boat but a jury box packed with hundreds of people, laughing and jeering. Gina now sat in an impossibly high witness chair, looking down into his eyes and laughing with them. They intensified their taunts and whistles.
Gina pointed her index finger and abruptly all was silent. There were only the sounds of Martín’s heartbeat and breathing. Gina’s mouth slowly formed a word, shouting a shrill exclamation, its single syllable blaring with such force that it set off explosions of light in his head. The word blasted with a fervor rooted in the preceding centuries and rolling forward, gaining strength and hatred and breaking over him like an enormous wave:
“Jew!”
*
Father Serrano scanned the brain wave chart on Martín’s capsule. He checked off the twentieth name on the list, Gina Ishikawa, and circled the twenty-first, Teodoro Lenin.
The next tranche of memory modifications would now begin.
*
Colonel Gustav Lavigne, commander of the infantry company of the French Foreign Legion billeted in French Guiana, peered down at the jungle below him. The Dauphin 2 helicopter skimmed over the thick canopy at five thousand feet to maximize horizontal visibility and minimize the risk of being hit by ground fire. Lavigne’s gray hair under his maroon beret testified to his age and experience. His camouflage-mottled battle dress with infantry insignia covered a lean body. Major LaForge sat next to him, scanning a military map.
“This is useless,” Lavigne said. “They could be directly under us and we still wouldn’t see them. We couldn’t defend this border with two full divisions.”
LaForge clucked his tongue in sympathy. Lavigne stabbed his finger on the map. “This is the last place the Americans had acoustical contact, right?”
“Yes, sir, in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela.”
“And there have been no updates on their position?”
“Negative, sir. Just small movements—individuals on the Orinoco River. No mass troop movements.”
“And what does the Latino Union say?” Lavigne asked.
“Nothing, sir,” LaForge said. “Their command post says it is a sovereign matter of the LU, and we are to respect their borders.”
Lavigne shook his head. “I don’t know who’s worse. The LU, who don’t give a shit that its revolutionaries are about to attack our space center, or our own politicians back in France. One helicopter to search all this.” His arm swung in a wide arc toward the window. “No intelligence, no mobility. Unbelievable.”
LaForge blankly gazed back at his commanding officer. He had heard this rant before.
Lavigne put on a headset and said, “Captain DuPont, patch me to the command post in Paris.”
“Baton One, this is Chain Mail, go ahead.”
“Chain Mail, this is Baton One Actual,” Lavigne said into his microphone. “We have conducted a search along eight-zero-zero kilometers of border. Negative contact, negative intelligence update. I repeat my urgent, I say again, urgent requirement for reinforcements to be dispatched from France without further delay.”
“Baton One, Chain Mail understands negative contact with enemy force. Return to base, maintain defensive alert, stand by for further orders.”
Lavigne grunted in disgust and threw down his headset. LaForge kept his face down and stared at the map, trying to look busy.
*
A light began blinking at the Moto Electric world command center near Tokyo. The shift supervisor noted it immediately and swiftly coupled a high-capacity computer to the satellite downlink circuit. The flashing light signaled that this was a digital message, encrypted using a public and secret key—and highly compressed—which would be transmitted in its entirety in a nanosecond.
The technician intently watched his monitor, and the moment the word “Transmitted” appeared on the screen, he isolated the computer. He entered the commands to begin the decryption process, but large kanji appeared on the screen saying, “Eyes Only, Waro Moto.”
Across the city, a laser printer in Moto’s bedroom sighed and a page slipped into the tray. Moto picked it up and read, “Advance team is ashore in French Guiana. No resistance. Linked with friendlies. Main body of forces now moving from Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname. Expect to be on land after midnight. Diversion force in Albina, Suriname, awaiting orders.”
Moto checked his watch, calculated the time difference, and nodded. The final stage was now in progress, and it was time for him to depart for San Juan Diego.
*
Dennis Prinn, Nicolás Ibarra, and Gina Ishikawa were seated at the console in Dennis’s control container. On screen, Martín stood in his yellow sanbenito, and above him a monk in his white hooded cassock sat on a velvet chair. As before, Martín’s eyes were unfocused.
Another priest stood beside Martín. “The twentieth accuser of this suspected heretic, Martín Ibarra, is Miss Gina Ishikawa,” he said, “a Christian of the Holy Catholic Church.”
Gina let out a startled gasp, and Dennis reflexively turned the volume up. The camera closed in on the priest’s face.
“On the second of January in this year of Our Lord, the accuser did say to you, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Gentile.’”
Gina’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “I did say that. I remember that conversation. Martín had called me in Rome. But how could they know my exact words?”
“On the third of January in this year of Our Lord, the accuser did say to you, ‘Martín, you raped me. You forced me to take you in my mouth—that circumcised penis of yours.’”
Gina rose to her feet and violently shook her head. “No!” she shouted.
“Also on the third of January in this year of Our Lord, you said to the accuser, ‘I love to rape Christian women and I love to humiliate them and I love to have them on their knees in front of me and to tell them, let your Messiah save you now.’”
Gina clapped her hands over her ears and turned away.
&n
bsp; Nicolás and Dennis watched as Martín stood, swaying slightly, his unfocused eyes glazed and staring straight ahead. The camera angle changed several times, ending with a static close-up that captured Martín’s dazed look of confusion, doubt, and fear. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His head jerked back as if he had been struck each time the off-camera voice read another quotation.
Dennis finally turned the sound down. Gina had thrown herself back in her chair and put her face in her hands.
“Gina… did Martín say those things?” Nicolás asked.
“No,” she said through sobs. “No! Well… yes… but not like that or in those words. And the context is all wrong. It was an intimate running joke between us—sexual role-playing. Who are these people? What are they doing?”
On the silent screen, the litany went on and on. The pain in Martín’s face made it clear he was nearing a breaking point.
*
Father Serrano slapped the thick file on his ornate desk. “It has to happen tomorrow morning,” he announced.
The physician sitting across the desk from him, also wearing a priest’s collar, shook his head. “Impossible,” he said.
Serrano brought his fingers to his temples and said in a reasonable tone, “Explain it to me, Father Silva.”
“I note your emphasis on my role as a priest,” Silva said. “But remember, for this Inquisitorial assignment, you have relied on me as a physician. To substitute memories of events that really happened to the patient with fabricated ones, I have to keep him in stage five rapid-eye-movement sleep. But there are three sub-stages within REM sleep, and the balance among them is critical. The introduction of synthetic cortisol timed exactly with stress-provoking stimuli he is getting by visual, aural, tactile, and olfactory cues is a critical process. This keeps him aroused with high heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration—ready to run away from the frightening stimulus, if you will. It is such a high state of arousal that it reinforces the stimulus and drives it deeper into the subconscious memory. This makes the memory more easily retrievable, and therefore more believable than the true memory we’re replacing.