One of the men at the table stirred. “We have theories. If you know more, why don’t you tell us?”
Break it to them gently? Michael wasn’t sure how to do that. How do you gently tell a man that he was dead. “Okay, here’s what happened—the exosuits that Remington Simulations gave you had a couple of extra functions that nobody was aware of, including, apparently, Remington Simulations. The suits were designed to deliver just enough energy to one of the OSCI components on the chest plate to cause your hearts to fibrillate. You’re all dead. Really dead.”
One of the men sighed. Another shook his head. “That’s…unfortunate.”
Ralph ruefully shook his head. “Pretty much what we figured. We’re not actually dead, though,” he said. “We’re undead.”
What they were, Michael thought, were computerized copies of their prior personalities, subprograms in a much larger program. “The headsets contained high-density EEG arrays,” Michael said. “The suits were reading, and presumably recording your brainwaves, while you played the game and while you died.”
“Mind uploading,” Ralph said.
One of the men rolled his eyes at him. “Bullshit,” he said. “Our minds—our former minds—are gone. We’re copies, ghosts in the machine.” He turned to Michael. “And not very good copies. None of us remember more than bits and glimpses of our past. It’s like we’ve always been here, killing zombies and vampires, playing this stupid game.”
Ralph sighed. “Yeah, well…” His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here?” he said to Michael. “Are you dead, too?”
“No. I’m investigating your murder.”
Ralph blinked at him. “You’re a neurosurgeon, and you play the piano. You haven’t the faintest idea how to investigate anything.”
“Things have changed. I’ve been getting pointers from the FBI.”
“Have you? And what have you and the FBI discovered?”
“Obviously, a conspiracy to commit murder.”
Something hard poked Michael in the back. “That will be enough of that,” a voice said. A hand reached down and plucked the goggles from Michael’s head. “Stand up,” the voice said. “Turn around.”
Oh, shit, Michael thought.
Four big, hard men. They wore suits. Only one of them held a gun in his fist, which he carried with casual assurance. No doubt all four had weapons stashed inside their clothing. They moved as a team, each keeping an eye on his surroundings, never getting in each other’s way. Two of them put on gloves and quickly searched him. They took his cell phone, made certain that it was not recording and placed it on the table. “He’s clean,” one of them said.
The guy holding the gun nodded. “We’re going to go down the elevator and walk out through the lobby. Don’t say anything. We have orders to bring you along but if you make things difficult, we’ll just kill you. It’s easier.”
Hospital Security, Michael well knew, was rarely very secure. A bored, sleepy guard, a sign-in book, or sometimes a computerized kiosk into which a visitor punched his name and the patient he was there to see. Selwyn had a kiosk. But all that was for visitors entering the hospital. People leaving the hospital were rarely even glanced at.
And the rest of the complex was a lot easier to get into and out of. The school and the lab buildings were locked at night. Faculty could enter with the proper keycard but none of the three buildings had guards. All three buildings would undoubtedly have surveillance cameras in the lobby and outside of the building. The parking lot would also be covered. There might even be a Security Station somewhere in the complex with a retired cop supposedly keeping a constant eye on things. The cameras would pick up Michael arriving and possibly leaving, but by then, he and his captors would be long gone.
What to do? Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne would no doubt be able to kill or disable all four of the bad guys with a series of lightning fast moves. John Wick? Forget about it. The fools would be dead within seconds.
Michael’s green belt, obtained at the age of ten, and still hanging in a closet somewhere, was not going to cut it.
The four guys looked as if they broke bones for a living. Maybe they did. They surrounded Michael on all sides as they walked down the hallway, took the elevator to the ground floor and walked out of the building toward the parking lot.
“You guys ex-military?” Michael said.
Two of them ignored him. One glanced at his face and gave a minute shake of his head. The fourth one said, “Yup.”
Clinically, in the back of his mind, Michael was surprised at how calm he felt. Well-bred neurosurgeons and piano players were not supposed to get kidnapped by bad guys. It was almost embarrassing.
It was a pretty night, with a faint mist haloed around the lamp posts, moths and mosquitoes fluttering around the lights. The moon was big, almost orange on the horizon. What did they call that? Oh, yeah…a harvest moon. Warm, no breeze, and not a lot of stars. The mist made stars hard to see.
A big, black van was parked on the bottom floor, near the back of the lot. The guy to Michael’s left opened the back door. “Get in,” he said.
Two of them kept their attention focused on Michael. The other two scanned the area, no doubt looking for threats. Michael swallowed and got into the van. All four followed. A fifth guy was sitting in the driver’s seat. He barely glanced around before starting the engine. The van slowly pulled out onto the nearly deserted street.
“So,” Michael said, “what’s this all about?”
One of them rolled his eyes. The guy sitting next to Michael said, “You’ll find out when we get there.”
“Can you give me a clue?”
“Shut up,” the guy said.
Michael sat back in his seat and shut up. They drove for over thirty minutes, first highway, then a cross street which turned into a neighborhood of large houses, each surrounded by five acres or more. The land here was flat, with a few live oaks, gnarled and withered, reaching upward. The homes, while large, were built on pylons. They were close to the Mississippi. The area must flood periodically. Finally, they rolled down a cobbled driveway, through a security gate and through an archway into a paved courtyard. The car stopped. Three of the four bad guys got out of the car and arranged themselves around the side near Michael.
The first guy, who had held his gun pointed at Michael’s chest for the whole ride, waved it at the door. “Get out.”
Michael got out. The bad guy followed. The sky here was cloudier than in the city. Tall, antique looking lamp posts lined the courtyard, insects fluttering in and out of the light. Crickets could be heard chirping. “This way,” the first bad guy said, and led the way toward a broad, stone staircase.
They walked up the stairs, through a glass and wrought iron door, then down a black and white tiled corridor, which opened onto a large room filled with furniture of a type that Michael, no expert on furniture, thought looked expensive. It was mostly wood, with fragile looking legs and embroidered inlays. Very modern looking monitor screens covered most of one wall. Two men sat on chairs surrounding a low table. A decanter of some sort of red wine sat on the table. Both men held snifters. They looked up, smiling, as Michael and his escort entered: Silas Munro and James Garrett.
“Dr. Foreman,” James Garrett said. “Please sit down.”
Silas Munro grinned wolfishly. “Port?” he said.
Michael shrugged. “Sure.”
Silas Munro poured a snifter a quarter full and held it out to Michael. “Taylor, Fladgate Vintage Port, 1977. A very rare wine from an excellent year.”
If you say so. Michael sipped. It was excellent, not that he was an expert on Port. He sipped again. “So,” he said, “you’ve brought me all this way. I assume you want something?”
James Garrett pointed a hand-held controller toward the wall. A screen lit up. It showed Michael entering the server room in Garrett and Munro’s conjoined lab, examining the stack of games, then wandering on. The screen flickered. Michael was shown again, entering the same room, putting on the headse
t. The image paused. Silas Munro looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “You entered a locked space, that you had no legitimate business in. We would like to know why.”
Michael shrugged. “I was curious, that’s all.”
James Garret stirred in his seat. “Obviously, you were curious. The question remains: why were you curious?”
“It seemed strange, all the secrecy. I would not have been surprised to find a series of advanced bio-prostheses, or perhaps a prototype headset that would allow for a more realistic immersion into virtual reality, or maybe plug in modules that would allow for a direct brain-computer interface.” Michael sipped his Port, swirled it around his tongue. “I didn’t know what I would find. I had no expectations, really. I was curious.”
Silas Munro sighed. “Your curiosity has landed you in considerable trouble.”
Michael glanced at the four bad guys, standing in the four corners of the room. “Since I’m here, why don’t you satisfy that curiosity. First of all, who are these guys?”
“Employees,” James Garrett said. “Well paid and loyal employees.”
Loyal, as long as they’re paid, employees, Michael thought. “Ex-military.”
Silas Munro nodded. “I made many useful contacts during my years at DARPA.”
Michael looked at him. To this point, Michael had displayed nothing more than an obnoxious and annoying amount of curiosity. Such curiosity would almost certainly get him fired but would probably not get him killed. In for a pound, he thought.
“Including Jason Grundy, Vice-President for Development of Industrial Dream Machines.”
Silas Munro raised an eyebrow. “Correct,” he said.
“So, where does Industrial Dream Machines fit into all this?”
“Into what exactly?” James Garrett frowned. “What do you think you know?”
Michael sipped his Port and pondered the question. He eyed the four hard men standing in the corners of the room and made a decision. “Ten people were deliberately killed while playing a video game: Virtually Undead. While they were playing the game, and then while they were dying, their brain waves were recorded by a high-density EEG array. A simulacrum of those ten people has now been incorporated into the game, at least the version of it on the computer in your server room.”
Silas Munro made a small, unhappy noise. James Garrett shook his head. Neither of them said a word.
“Shall I go on?” Michael said. “Remington Simulations is bankrupt. Their assets are going to be sold off, most likely to Industrial Dream Machines, for far less than their value. Suspicious, no?”
Munro and Garrett stared at him. Munro seemed to slump. “Anything else?” Garrett said.
“Isn’t that enough?” Michael smiled at them both. “Of course, there is still the little matter of fifteen separate payments to Sandra Devine and Gary Woodson, deposited into supposedly secret accounts in the Cayman Islands.”
Munro’s face was pale. Garrett sighed. “We’re not going to let you leave, you know that? We can’t afford to. You know too much.”
“Do I? Actually, I know very little. Most of it is supposition. I still don’t know exactly what you’ve done, and I certainly don’t know how you’ve done it.”
Garrett shrugged. He pointed the controller and pressed a button. One monitor lit up. On the screen, a young man in a wheelchair could be seen. He had a helmet on his head that trailed wires to a server bank against the wall. The young man glanced toward the camera, nodded and grinned. “My son,” James Garrett said. “He suffered severe brain damage in a car crash when he was very young. That was twelve years ago. Since then, with the help of Silas, I have made a series of adaptations that have helped him to cope with his…disabilities.
“My research has focused on the interpretation of brain waves, and on how the individual operator can directly interface his mind with the machine. Silas,”—he pointed his chin toward Silas Munro—“has concentrated on how data, and the artificial minds in which that data resides, can be used to manipulate and effect the operator’s corporeal environment.”
“Virtual reality,” Michael said.
“Much more than virtual,” Garrett said. “What we’ve been able to achieve is a near total melding of mind, machine and environment, to the point that virtual reality and, for lack of a better term, actual reality, become seamlessly integrated.”
“The traffic lights,” Michael said. “The power outage and the gas explosion.”
“We had nothing to do with the gas explosion. That was a coincidence.”
“What about the storm drains? Did you have anything to do with that?”
Silas Munro looked at Garrett. “It was a proof of concept. The drainage system has no connection to the internet, none that would allow it to be manipulated from a distance, at any rate. In such a situation, it becomes necessary to work through intermediaries.”
“You contacted somebody through the internet,” Michael said, “made a deal and wired the money. The person you contacted either sabotaged the drains or hired somebody else.”
“In a word, yes,” Garrett said. He swirled the wine in his snifter, shrugged, and drained it, then leaned forward, picked up the decanter and re-filled the snifter. Somehow, he did not seem happy.
“We already use brain implants,” Silas Munro said. “Cochlear implants, retinal implants, implants to simulate the effects of dopamine in Parkinson’s patients. There are a hundred other projects underway at dozens of different universities and think-tanks.
“We have gone just a bit further. James’ son, Benjamin, has been linked to his computers for so long that the computers are effectively integrated into his brain.”
Benjamin, still visible on the monitor and apparently listening to this conversation, smiled and nodded.
“If his body were to pass away at this instant, his mind, much of it, would live on. To most of humanity, this is not the sort of immortality they would prefer, but it is the sort most likely to be achieved. I predict that within twenty years, most of humankind will be seamlessly integrating into the virtual world.”
“Mind uploading,” Michael said.
“Yes,” James Garrett said.
Michael drained his Port and placed the snifter back down on the table. “You still haven’t told me how Industrial Dream Machines comes into the picture.”
Silas Munro stared at Benjamin Garrett on the monitor screen. “Both James and I were lucky enough to be born to somewhat wealthy parents. Far from super-rich, but comfortable to the tune of a few million or so. Both of us have invested the majority of our inherited funds in Industrial Dream Machines.”
“Remington Simulations has had a long history of poaching from other people’s products,” James Garrett said. “They were an annoyance, an annoyance that we have now removed.”
“At the cost of ten peoples’ lives,” Michael said.
“They should feel grateful to have contributed so successfully to the advancement of knowledge.” Garrett shrugged. “And they shall live on, inside the machine.”
Michael scratched his head. “How were these grateful victims chosen?”
Munro looked at him. “Randomly.”
“Randomly…” Michael sighed. “And what do your team of post-docs know about all this?”
“They know the details of the science. They feel privileged to be on the cutting edge of human knowledge. None of them are privy to the rest of it.”
“You mean the bribery, the sabotage and the murders?”
Garrett frowned, as if Michael had said something crude. “Well, yes.”
Michael, a neurosurgeon, was well-acquainted with obsessed, high IQ lunatics. Still, he had never expected to run afoul of the mythical evil genius, let alone two.
“And what do you intend to do with me?” Michael asked.
Silas Munro shook his head. “As I said, you know too much. The Mississippi is less than a mile away. Your body will never be discovered.”
Michael smiled. A moth crept out from under
his collar, then another. Both moths took wing, fluttering around Michael’s head. “You know about the HI-MEMS project?”
Silas Munro stared at the moths. His face grew white.
“Of course, you do,” Michael said, “having worked for DARPA and all.” He grinned. “The FBI has heard everything you’ve said. By now, this building will be surrounded. Your cell phones are about to ring. When they do, I suggest you answer them.”
A vibrating noise could be heard from the vicinity of both Garrett and Munro. Garrett winced. Munro looked sick. Both reached into a pocket, pulled out a phone and switched it on.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Greg West said.
Chapter 23
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Sure? Not entirely, no…but he was going to do it anyway. Michael had looked Greg West in the eye, pasted a firm, resolute expression on his face and said, “Yes.”
Greg West had sighed. “On your own head be it.”
Michael, so far, was only an annoyance. Killing him would cause more trouble than it was worth (he hoped). He tried hard to believe it. Garrett and Munro would want to talk. They would want to find out what Michael knew, and what he thought he was doing.
So…bait the lion in its den and then see what happens.
And wonder of wonders, it had worked… All of them sat silently as the FBI swat team marched in. Michael, simply relieved at being alive, watched and sipped his Port. It really was excellent Port.
James Garrett and Silas Munro, not accustomed to violence, and not inclined to sacrifice themselves in a futile gesture of defiance, did not resist. Neither did their evil minions (as Michael liked to think of them), though one or two hands twitched toward their guns. After all, no crimes could be attributed to them beyond Michael’s abduction, admittedly a serious crime, but all four had enough dirt on their employers to bargain with the Feds.
Jason Grundy and the other principal officers of Industrial Dream Machines were arrested the next day.
The FBI, happy for a little good publicity after the scandals that had plagued the organization in recent years, were eager to spread the story, and Michael’s role was not kept secret. Upon his return to New York, he found himself the object of popular curiosity, notorious, if not famous.
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