Phoenix thought it did.
“Our country had initially limited our participation to economic sanctions, partnering with our allies in the West to limit the influence of our enemies in the East. We were still living prosperously compared to the rest of the world, so it didn’t make sense to drag our resources into a war that offered us few, if any, benefits. But then they dropped the bomb – and we were left with no choice.”
Phoenix wondered if this was the same bomb she’d remembered reports of. But he continued with his story, and she didn’t have time to ask.
“Things deteriorated quickly from there. We retaliated with nuclear strikes of our own, their allies bombed our allies, and pretty soon there was enough debris in the air from all these explosions to partially obstruct the sun. Global temperatures dropped – only by a few degrees – but it was enough to seriously impact crop yields and we entered into a worldwide famine.
“According to your files, you grew up in a wealthier family, so you may not have noticed any changes at this point besides a cooler than usual summer. But many families in our country went hungry for the first time in generations.”
Phoenix just shook her head – she didn’t remember having a personal experience of any of this.
“The phenomenon that caused the shortage was called ‘nuclear winter.’ It was a known possibility, but it still took the scientific community by surprise how few bombs were really required to impact the ecosphere. It’d all been theory up to that point, and the consensus had been that much more firepower would be needed to really see the effects. But as it turned out, the science was wrong.”
Phoenix noticed that he seemed particularly dismayed by this point, his mouth set in a grim line. It was almost like his faith had been shattered. She could understand that – the hurt of your beliefs being torn from you. She couldn’t remember why exactly, but something about that loss felt familiar to her, something about the stoning maybe. He wasn’t the most sympathetic character with his brusque demeanor and calculating eyes, but she felt a pang of pity for him nonetheless.
“Our planet was a fragile creature,” he continued, “and it was in turmoil. We were headed toward the total destruction of our only home, and no one seemed able to put on the brakes. What we needed to do at that point was call a ceasefire, but the leaders on both sides wouldn’t hear of it – there was too much animosity by that time. Too much injury had been sustained by both parties. It wasn’t about peace anymore – it was about revenge.
“And so the fighting continued. More bombs were dropped, though at a lesser rate, thankfully. But even so, within five or six years it became clear that we were headed for catastrophe.
“Already much of the third world – the poor, the uneducated, the unemployed – had starved.” He shook his head sympathetically, though for some reason the gesture rang false to Phoenix. “Our country had sustained itself by releasing reserves of food into the local economy through the national service program, which helped a lot of families manage the shortages. But it was not a long-term solution – eventually, if bombs continued to fall and crops continued to fail, the food supply would run out.”
This seemed like a hopeless spiral to Phoenix – she couldn’t imagine how the cycle could have been broken. “So what happened?” she asked.
He folded his arms authoritatively, just a trace of a self-satisfied smile crossing his visage. “That was when I first heard from the Developer. I was a leading geneticist at the time, working on mapping the human genome and understanding the intricacies of our DNA, what made one person’s genetic makeup superior to another’s. ‘Eugene,’ he said, ‘I need your research to set things right. I need your help to change the destiny of the world.’”
Phoenix didn’t follow – what did genetics have to do with stopping nuclear war? “So what was your role?”
“I was to become the Doctor.”
“Like a medical doctor?”
“No,” he corrected. “The nickname is a reference to my many PhDs. You see, the Developer had an intuition that we were headed towards… a severely reduced population. And he knew that in order to ensure the survival of our species, we would need the right genetic mix to create strong future generations. So he looked to me and my knowledge of the genetic code to provide guidance.”
Phoenix still hadn’t pieced together what exactly the Doctor was responsible for, but he didn’t give her long to consider.
“And sure enough, within the year a viral outbreak had decimated everything. The 125,000 or so who survived convened at the quarantine zone here in Paragon, and we got our chance to start over. Only, the people were impatient, and they grew restless. We had to pull some –” he searched for the right word, “– troublemakers out of the population set, to keep the peace. That’s when we started experimenting with the memory alteration technology, as a relatively benign means of control.”
Memory alteration? “What did you use it for?”
The Doctor looked surprised. “You don’t remember your friends from the sorority?”
Phoenix shook her head.
“Most curious,” he muttered. “Well, we had some problems with insurgents stirring up –” he paused, considering, “– conflict. We eliminated the majority of the issue by lacing the compound’s food supply with a harmless mild euphoriant which helped everyone to relax, but there were still some stubborn pockets of resistance. We managed to catch quite a few of them, but with the gene pool so small to begin with, we couldn’t afford to execute them – no, we hoped someday to be able to reform and reintegrate them.”
Phoenix frowned. She didn’t like the idea of slipping drugs to people against their will, even if it was supposedly harmless.
“For the time being, though, they were a danger to the rest of the colony, and incarceration didn’t seem to be the humane solution – it only enraged them further. And at the same time, we needed something to placate the masses, something to occupy them while we planned for the long-term. And that’s when it dawned on us what we’d been missing – entertainment.”
“How did ‘entertainment’ solve both issues?” Phoenix wondered aloud.
“Well, working on the television dramas was a more productive use of the prisoners than sitting in their cells – and the dramas themselves provided peaceful recreation for the rest of the population. The only problem was that, of course, the prisoners refused to cooperate, and we couldn’t afford to pull other citizens from the work that was needed to build and maintain the settlement. So that’s where the memory alteration came in.”
The Doctor paced to the other side of the room, more buoyant than before. “We knew we’d have to coerce the prisoners into participating. It seemed the most robust way to do that would be to somehow convince them that they were the characters we wanted them to play. And my colleague, the General, happened to know of a technology that would allow us to do just that.”
Phoenix knew she wasn’t thinking clearly, but using mind control still struck a dark nerve in her. She understood that this kind of technology might be better than jailing people, but it still seemed wrong, she thought. And impossible. “Where did you get it?”
“The General had heard through military intelligence that one of our enemies was experimenting with it, and our country had managed to steal a good portion of the research shortly before the outbreak. So the Developer hacked into the defunct military databases to retrieve it.”
Phoenix suspected he was making this sound a lot simpler than it must actually have been. “So how does it work?”
“It’s quite remarkable, actually.” He was suddenly animated. “Believe it or not, the patient’s brain does most of the work. Our brains are designed to make sense of what we see and feel and hear around us – as human beings, our natural impulse is to explain,” he remarked.
“Memories are fashioned much like striking the keys on a piano. In reality, all you’re hearing is a bunch of vibrations at different frequencies, but what your brain hears is a partic
ular pattern of tones which it resolves into a song. In this case, we’re just doing this on a grander scale – choosing a particular set of sensory inputs in a particular order which the patient’s brain resolves as an experience.”
“But how do you actually get that memory into a person’s head?”
“It’s basically a chemical cocktail that goes to work on the patient’s neurons, plucking the right ‘strings,’ if you will. Whoever programmed the software must have spent years determining which neural pathways correspond to which sensory inputs, and which biochemical combinations would activate them in the right order. But now with the completed program, it’s quite simple for us.
“All we have to do is describe the experience to the computer, and it automatically converts the required inputs to an algorithm with the right variables, which is then programmed into a set of chemical molecular reactions that we inject into the patient’s system.
“That cocktail essentially rewires the memories stored in the brain, replacing what was there before with whatever we choose. Or,” he scowled, “as we’ve learned more recently, perhaps it just buries those old memories under the new ones.”
Phoenix didn’t understand how a false memory could ever replace a real one. “But how could all these prisoners mistake these constructed memories for reality?”
A look of reverence overtook the Doctor’s face. “Ah, that’s the beauty of it. The brain wants the patient to believe. Despite all its complexities, the brain is actually a very single-minded organ – it doesn’t know how to do anything except try to make sense of the world around us. So we just apply another chemical booster to encourage the brain’s natural instinct to resolve whatever input it’s interpreting, to only see what it wants and expects to see.
“It’s called selective perception. It’s actually a primitive defensive process, to filter out excess inputs that would distract you from what’s important. As humans evolved, we needed to be able to prioritize essential information – like movement of a predator from the corner of our eye – from less crucial information – like leaves blowing in the wind – in only a fraction of a second. In a primal world, this could be the difference between life and death. So our brains trained themselves to recognize certain patterns, so that even if we only see a part of that pattern, we can quickly make an educated guess about what to expect.”
That certainly seemed useful, Phoenix agreed. With her recent injuries, she knew what it felt like to not be able to process stimuli efficiently – everything from the light of the sun to the beeping of the machines beside her was startling in its intensity. She imagined that was why she’d spent so much time asleep lately, blocking the world out so her brain could heal.
The Doctor continued with his explanation. “This process is already going on in our heads all the time. To hide the gaps in the memories we created – and the new worlds we placed the prisoners into – we just used a special biochemical to help the brain narrow that filter a bit, allowing the patient to focus only on the immediate tasks at hand. The brain takes the sensory input we’ve given it, resolves it into a memory, and any conflicting information that comes in is automatically dismissed, keeping the illusion alive as the patient goes about their daily lives in the world we built for them.”
Phoenix didn’t understand why he was taking the time to explain all of this to her. It was fascinating, surely – if somewhat disturbing – but she didn’t know what he was expecting her to do with this information. There was a pause in the conversation as he waited for her response. She decided to be direct. “And why are you telling me this?”
The Doctor sighed and looked at her earnestly. “Because I want you to understand, Phoenix. There will come a time – probably not long from now – when others will try to fill your head with lies and misinformation, to lead you down a path that may not be in your best interest. I want you to know why Paragon came about, and why we – the Engineers – have taken the measures we have to keep the peace amongst Paragon’s people, so that one day you’ll be able to make your own decision about who’s really working for the good of the collective. Do you understand, Phoenix, why we did what we did?”
Phoenix nodded. Everything he’d said had made perfect logical sense, from the disaster of their dying planet to the need to maintain order while their colony recovered from near extinction. Even though she had some arguments with the ethics of tampering with a person’s brain, she guessed it was still a better alternative than killing off prisoners, especially when there were so few survivors left to begin with.
“You were trying to protect the people from themselves,” she responded. “To ensure the survival of the human race.” She wasn’t sure if she truly believed that yet, but she thought it was what he wanted to hear.
The Doctor smiled. “Excellent. You’re a quick study, Ms. Phoenix.”
He folded his hands and headed toward the door, looking back briefly before his exit. “And with that, I’ll let you get some rest.”
16. INFIRMITY
The symptoms were all too familiar to Alessa. First the sneezing and cough, mild enough that – if she hadn’t known better – it could just have been a simple cold. But despite her mounting dread, she’d held out hope as they’d made their way out of the mall and camped for the night in an old post office. The whole evening through she’d sung the mantra in her head like a prayer: only a cold, only a cold, only a cold, only a cold.
But her pleas went unanswered, and the next day Isaac plunged. Taken with flu-like symptoms – a slight fever, headache, aches and pains, fatigue – he was exhausted, but he still insisted on pressing onward.
And so they made progress, albeit slowly, and with every painstaking mile the buildings crept closer together, their crowns stretching higher into the sky. And still neither of them spoke the words looming in their heads, as if saying them aloud held some morbid power to make them true. So they’d kept their reservations to themselves.
For Alessa it was deja vu, this slow march, the hacking coughs at her back haunting her every thought. It’d been the same with her parents and brother as they’d trekked the final miles to Paragon. Only this time, she had no delusions about what they were marching toward. She knew there was no magical cure at their destination. She knew that getting there sooner would do nothing to delay the inevitable. And she knew not to get her hopes up for a miraculous rescue that would never come.
And now, two days after Isaac’s first fateful sneeze – the same day that Isaac had paused every few steps to catch his breath and rest, the same day he’d finally succumbed to the need to sling his full weight on Alessa’s shoulders just to shuffle forward – she couldn’t deny it any longer.
Isaac was sick. And it wasn’t just a cold, wasn’t the flu, wasn’t any malady she had any hope of curing no matter what tonic or elixir she could get her hands on.
He had the virus.
He was going to die.
Isaac coughed, a deep viscous cough that betrayed the bedlam churning inside his body. He pitched forward, his weight dragging Alessa with him as the force of the spasm in his lungs stole his strength and hurtled him toward the ground. Alessa braced her legs and caught them both at the last second, the effort sapping the last of her vitality.
“Isaac, you need to rest,” she pleaded.
He relented, sliding from her shoulder and slumping into the street, the small of his back pressed low against the curb. The city’s tall buildings loomed over him like cruel sentinels at the gates of hell. He’d never looked so small, Alessa thought.
She crouched next to him, trailing her fingers gently over his face. His fever raged. She tried to whisper his name, to say anything at all to comfort him. But her throat seized and all that came out was a choking sob.
Mortified, she cupped her hand over her mouth and stood, turning around and sucking at the air to quash the pathetic whimpering in her chest. This wasn’t fair to Isaac. She needed to be strong now. She needed to give him peace, to let him go knowing that
if she survived this, she would be okay.
It wasn’t true – it couldn’t be further from the truth – but she owed him that much at least. He couldn’t die feeling that he’d failed her. She wouldn’t allow it.
Steadying herself, she turned to face him, stretching a false, hideous smile across her cheeks. She couldn’t muster the resolve to lie to him with words, but she could force her muscles to do it for her.
Gently, she tugged his limp body forward, tucking a folded blanket behind his head to cushion against the pavement.
“Drink this,” she instructed, handing him a canteen. She used her own water bottle to douse a t-shirt which she draped carefully over his scorching forehead. He moaned with gratitude.
Ominous shadows from the buildings on either side stretched ever longer as the sun pitched toward the horizon, and Alessa cursed. Shadows, her nemesis. The shadows of dusk and the impending night’s strangling cold, the shadows of death deepening every moment under Isaac’s eyes, the shadows of the predator lurking between buildings that she caught whenever she drew her eyes from Isaac’s face – the shadows foretold nothing but pain for Alessa.
She knew they’d get no further before nightfall and scanned their surroundings, resigned. It was not an ideal location, a street corner – too open, too exposed, both to the brisk winter wind rushing the corridor of the avenue and to the countless darkened windows that flanked them from every side, hiding who knows what from her view.
But none of that mattered now – she didn’t have a choice. The creatures may be waiting for them in the darkness, but this is where they would stay tonight. This street corner may very well be – if she was honest, would almost certainly be – the last that Isaac would ever see. So she would have to make it work, and she would do her best to bring him some comfort in these final moments. Her self-pity could wait for tomorrow.
Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) Page 10