MINDFRACK

by S G King

  He sat up, a grin spreading across his face. Urgently, he began to go through his earlier work. When he found what he was looking for he implemented the hack-reversal app that he always had running, just in case.

  “Come on, my little hacteria,” he cooed excitedly. He checked on Diaz. Shit, she was running the query.

  In the same moment a sound like a light-sabre scooping the air behind his lounger told him his hack-reversal app had finished.

  Outside the forensics laboratories Adams would now appear as himself, not the detective …

  … All that was a while ago. They’d taken his bait like the dumb goldfish-brains they were.

  He made a face at them like a gaping fish, then gulped down the remainder of his Coke, unaware of the dribbles running onto his onesie, and lobbed it over his shoulder towards a bin. Chortled to himself as he drummed out Darth Vadar’s march on the arms of his lounger.

  Someone was going to crap themselves soon, he thought.

  17

  This time Salvatore assumed he’d awoken in a hospital recovery room, though he couldn’t see a bed. His eyes were drawn to a window with blinds that held off daylight, before moving to a small table and a vase holding a selection of flowers. Shadows of the blinds swept across an adjacent wall upon which hung a large oil painting of a brightly coloured hot-air balloon. Next to it was a large old-fashioned wall clock with a second hand that reassuringly swept around the dial; it was nearly ten o’clock. Directly opposite the window on the other side of the room was a door. Taking up the floor space were a couple of chairs and another table mounted with monitoring equipment.

  Salvatore became aware of a familiar whirring sound, like a pump though it was barely audible and every minute – he could tell by the clock – it was accompanied by a medley of soft beeps.

  Looking down he could see a white plastic table-top that he took to be his stand. The thought caught him: my stand.

  Straining his eyes left and right, he could make out the metal frame that held his head in place. He wondered what was behind him.

  As he felt around his limited world, a new sensation came to him. An itch at the back of his head, though not one that you could scratch. It was more like something touching him inside his skull.

  Before he could explore the phenomenon further, the door opened and Ade, the doctor, entered. He looked rested and clean-shaven, and he was beaming. He pulled up a chair and straddled it, so he could face Salvatore at eye level. Tossing his scrolled tablet onto the table, beside the vase and flowers, he looked at his patient in the manner of a father looking proudly upon his child.

  Despite Salvatore’s growing fear and revulsion for Ade, he thought his manner signalled that things were going well. Salvatore even flirted with the idea that Ade might tell him he would be fully healed in a day or so, his body reattached, and he could go home. Of course, “home” meant a concrete niche below an overpass – though, at this moment, he could think of no other place where he would rather be.

  Maybe delusion was the only path out of this nightmare.

  Ade grinned and said, “Well, well. It seems our patient has come around from his long sleep. You do look the picture of health. You have good colour and your eyes are bright.” He held a pen-light to each eye and made ‘uh-huh’ sounds.

  Salvatore looked on, uncertain how to react, until Ade said something that would have made him sit up if he’d had the means to do so.

  “Let’s see if you can say something, my friend. Go ahead, tell me how you feel.” Ade sat back and crossed his legs before picking up his scrolled tablet, unfurling it in one flick so it was rigid, and viewing its screen intently.

  Salvatore was unsure what exactly he was supposed to do. He could feel his mouth but knew he was unable to open it as he had tried again, soon after waking. And there was still no sensation of his tongue. Maybe it was a cruel joke.

  “All right, that’s all I need to calibrate. A little ambitious, eh? I didn’t expect you to speak just yet. I only required your attention. Very good …” He put his tablet to one side. “Perhaps if I explain what we have done for you. It’s a completely standard procedure in this day and age. Pretty much everyone has one.” He tapped the back of his own head. “It’s called a cerebellar biochip or iCBC. Strictly speaking, its connective functionality extends further than the cerebellum although not many people are aware of that. It simply allows us to use iSense. You’ve not heard of that?”

  Salvatore blinked twice.

  “Hmm, I suppose you have been out of the system for a while. Well, this technical marvel allows us to interface with our internal smartlenses and buds – but you don’t have those; and here’s the clever part, it can pick up on simple thoughts including motor instructions from your cerebellum. Simply put, to interact with any app and drive anything biomechanical. Turn us into cyborgs …” Ade held his hands up like claws and made an “arghhh” noise before catching himself and lowering them. “Ha, I’m kidding. But you see where I’m going with this? No? I’ll explain some more.”

  Ade got out of the chair and paced around the room. Salvatore zoned in and out from Ade’s lecture while mentally feeling around at the back of his head.

  “Yours is a modified iCBC, to account for your unusual brain configuration. It’s also more invasive in its dendritic connectivity …

  “… so I have added a new app to iSense that will translate your linguistic motor output into …”

  Salvatore thought he could feel something different, like the itch had substance; it was hard to make sense out of it.

  “… and into this speaker over here …”

  He returned his full attention to Ade because of what he was now saying.

  “… so I want you to try and say something. Think ‘Hello, world’ and repeat it to yourself over and over. Imagine you are actually saying the words. That part is necessary. You understand? Good. Now give it a go.”

  Ade sat motionless, watching him intently.

  Salvatore shut his eyes and did exactly as Ade had told him.

  At first, he made the thought, “Hello, World”. He imagined himself saying this to strangers he saw on the streets as he walked through East Harlem, visualising the shop fronts and the buildings as though he were watching a movie; this part came easily to him, it was his special gift from God, as his mother had told him. He said, “Hello, World” to the unabashed and brightly attired people of the La Marqueta, then to the Gospel Street Choir on 7th Avenue. He continued to repeat the words as he imagined himself leaving Harlem, his home village, and visiting his favourite places of New York, old friends, cabbie mates, other homeless buddies he saw day-to-day. It invoked the same obsessive desires he experienced when solving puzzles.

  “Hello, World, hello, World … HELLO WORLD …”

  There was a sound growing outside his head. He opened his eyes.

  Ade was staring at him, slack-jawed. “I, uh, hey – wow. I didn’t expect this to work so quickly. Can you do that again? Do what you just did – the last few seconds – can you remember?”

  Salvatore complied as he was glad to be doing something to distract him from this waking nightmare.

  “Hello, World.”

  The words had filled the room the instant Salvatore had thought them, as though he had spoken them himself.

  “Again,” asked Ade, the request catching in his throat. He looked past Salvatore and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Salvatore picked up on this tiny gesture as it confirmed what he had guessed, that there was something going on behind him. And he knew in that moment that this room and the window was a sham.

  “Hello, World ...”

  Salvatore looked to his left as that was where the voice emanated from.

  “Hello, World, hello, World, hello, hello, hello, hello …” The voice was devoid of any emotion and it lacked his New York nasal lilt. Neither was it as deep; and it was too slow. But he had little doubt the words were his.

  “Let’s slow this down a lit
tle,” said Ade. He continued to look unsettled, though excited.

  “Wharoodouingtomeeee … weramibenghd …”

  “Stop.” Ade held up a hand. “Stop … please.”

  “IIII … wntto –”

  Ade stabbed at his tablet, and Salvatore’s manufactured voice was cut off.

  Salvatore halted his effort to communicate, and watched Ade, eagle-like.

  “Look, you need to understand. I have to tell this program what words you are trying to say and it will match them to what you think. It needs to learn.” He stopped and looked up to the ceiling, collecting his thoughts. He returned once more to his tablet and typed something. Returning his gaze to Salvatore, he said, “Okay, one moment … there – can you try saying, This room is nice?”

  Salvatore closed his eyes and this time, rather than imagining himself talking to people as he walked through New York, he found himself drawn to the thoughts themselves.

  As he mentally repeated the words he felt them interact with the itch at the back of his head. He repeated them in different ways, experimenting with tone and loudness, which of course was within his imagination. He focused upon the itch and what was occurring there. The itch sensation morphed into an image, at least to his mind’s eye, which in turn resolved itself into patterns. Patterns and puzzles were something he understood and obsessed over.

  The external voice returned. “This room is nice, this room is nice, this room is nice …”

  Ade was shaking his head in disbelief. “This can’t be correct.”

  The interplay between Salvatore, Ade and the itch within his head went on for twenty minutes until Salvatore began to tire. He closed his eyes.

  Ade picked up on the silence. “Of course you’re exhausted. Look, we have a vocabulary of eighteen words already. This is incredible.” After some consideration, he said, “This is what we will do. I’ll re-program this app. It will show you words. And I’ll leave the speaker on. It will cycle around the words and whenever you feel like it you can practice saying them. When you are successful it will remove that word from the list and will replace it with another. Then …”

  Fatigued, Salvatore’s attention drifted away from Ade’s voice and to memories of a time before he became one of the homeless of New York. He’d been employed as a Cabbie; it was the only suitable job he could find, and he excelled at it, since he’d digested and memorised Google maps as a child for fun. Didn’t need the GPS, since he knew precisely where he was using the maps within his head. He experienced happiness until technology overtook him. When his parents died he was left to fend for himself. The years slipped by …

  When Salvatore reopened his eyes, Ade had gone. Instead he was greeted by Ade’s tablet, which had been set upright on the table directly in front of him. The screen was slowly cycling through a list of words. Salvatore experimented for a while, choosing those words that were more appealing. He did this since he enjoyed the way the words interplayed within the itch at the back of his head and the visual patterns they created in his mind’s eye. He considered this odd effect to be caused by one of his “obscure abilities”, one he’d always thought of as useless. The child psychologists documented this quirk as synaesthesia.

  He allowed his mind to be drawn along by the patterns, unaware that he was moving past the itch and then beyond the confines of his own brain, through network connections ...

  His sensory world exploded around him and he found himself standing in the middle of a vast cubist painting with swathes of silvery geometric fish that darted this way and that. He began to adapt to the rhythms of the shifting patterns, since patterns were nectar to his gifted brain.

  After a time, his mind found a way to make sense of the kaleidoscope that he was part of. It was as though an optical illusion had clicked into place and he was subjected instead to a vista of three-dimensional objects that were held within the familiar framework of perspective.

  At first, he was disorientated, since he was again looking at the room, but from a different viewpoint than his own eyes. He quickly realised that he was looking out from the cam within Ade’s tablet. His attention settled on the nearest shape, one that was instantly recognisable since it was his own face.

  He “stared” for a time at his head. The eyes were closed, giving it an eerie appearance. It was a sorry sight, hairless and saggy, like an old leather cushion.

  Beyond the array of frightening and mysterious objects surrounding his head was a large window. Instinctively, he used the zoom capability of the tablet’s cam to focus into the small room beyond.

  There were three doctors, dressed in white coats. Ade was at the centre. He was grinning and shaking his head. The other two were congratulating him. There were frequent gestures directed towards Salvatore’s head. More smiling and back-slapping.

  Salvatore failed to understand what was so amazing. Why were they so pleased that a man had been reduced to a mere part of his whole? Why would they celebrate such a pathetic creature as himself?

  Disturbed, he withdrew his attention from the observation room and retreated into the strange though comforting world of the tablet.

  He began to explore in earnest.

  18

  Logan did a loop by coming off the Bronx Expressway before coming back through Belmont towards Adams’ address. As the car drew closer to his destination his mind ran faster and faster, raking over the facts that powered the green light in his head, justifying his crazy pig-stupid stunt, as Diaz had called it. Beads of sweat popped across his brow. He threw another blue into his mouth that afforded him a brief respite from his inner conflict, time enough to arrive at his destination.

  Meanwhile, Diaz kept an eye on the location of Adams’ SUV from the comfort of their forensics lab. It was currently parked up over the other side of Manhattan. They’d agreed that he would only go ahead with the plan if Adams’ apartment was empty, meaning no confrontations. Research indicated Adams lived alone and the apartment was at ground level and accessible.

  Logan let the 5thgen driver take the car past Adams’ address before pulling over further on.

  Nothing appeared threatening. A few locals wandered up and down the sidewalk, and there were some kids on light-weight hover-bikes doing stunts off the walls and steps across the other side of the street.

  “Diaz, update on Adams?”

  “He’s still in Harlem. Parked up – watched him go into a drugstore.”

  “Good – just make sure he stays away.”

  “You sure you still want to do this?”

  He wiped his brow with his forearm. “Not really, but here goes.”

  Logan picked up a black shoulder bag and a folder harbouring his tablet. After locking the car he walked purposefully along the street. The idea was to look officious and if anybody should ask at any time what he was doing he’d go into a rehearsed spiel about gathering stats for the Seniors Benefits Office. It was the least offensive department they’d found on the government site. Diaz had found a few innocuous forms for his tablet to add authenticity, should he be confronted.

  Directly opposite Adams’ apartment block was a recreation area surrounded by twenty-foot-high chain-link fencing containing an area dedicated to public basketball courts. Over a similar dividing fence was a children’s play area. All empty. The recreation area had cams, but they were all inward facing.

  As Logan approached the frontage of the building he had a good look right and left. Adams’ apartment block was like many others here. It was small, with a half-dozen or so floors. The building butted up to another block on the right, the fake pink fascia bricks of one block giving way incongruously to the grey pebbledash of the other. On the left, after a narrow gap, was another block that was less maintained with flaky white paint and a rusty fire ladder that cried yellow-brown trails down the wall.

  Logan pressed the buzzer for “Apartment 1” and pretend-waited while looking around surreptitiously. Everything was quiet, including Diaz; he’d asked her not to talk unless she spotted a
nything that might be a threat. He shared his iSense view using realtime MyLife, so Diaz could witness everything within her own smartlenses in glorious 3V.

  They’d decided against tailgating. Logan wanted to extract Carrie without having to go through the front door.

  There was a narrow alley running off between buildings.

  Logan released a forensics spycam into the air. It was a compact type, no bigger than a bluebottle. He directed it into the alley with iSense and took in the length and breadth of the gloomy passageway as he continued tapping on the tablet, hoping to appear like an officious bureaucrat.

  The first window the spycam came to was frosted and had bars inset into the surrounding bricks, agreeing with their research. The second window was the same and the third was too high up to reach. The spycam was now at the end of the alley and confronted by a heavy and high wooden gate with nasty-looking spikes on its top edge; Logan knew it led through to the back of the building, but only to Adams’ back door. He sent the spycam over it and into a small courtyard-come-garden that was rammed full of junk including a broken sink and a rusty, defunct bike. He sent the cam up to the lock of the patio door so Diaz could see it as well. She emoji’d a thumbs-up. He turned it back to the gate. It had a simple latch mechanism on the inside, but no padlock. He could open it without too much problem from the other side, using the spycam to guide him.

  Lastly, he made the spycam pan up and down the back of the condo building for any obvious cams of its own – nothing. There were a couple of cams on adjacent buildings, but they were not aimed at this one.

  Logan entered the alley, blanching at the stale cocktail of alcohol and piss.

  By the time he got to the gate he’d fished out a length of wire from his pocket and created a loop at one end.

  It took little effort to loop the wire around the handle and yank it up. He quickly let himself through and into the courtyard. He winked at the spycam as it settled onto a shallow brick wall. Diaz huffed at him. “That was the easy part dumbass,” she whispered.