MINDFRACK

  While that was running he took a break and visited his bathroom and then the kitchen, and returned with a reheated quarter of salami pizza and a Coke. He relaxed back while he lazily chewed through the spicy-fizzy combination.

  A congratulatory fanfare sounded, followed by his PA stating, “The force is with you …” – his alarm call if a suspected hit had occurred.

  It was the yellow cab system.

  Bingo!

  He chuckled at the fact that it was the crudest method that had delivered Logan’s whereabouts, and jumped in the lounger, sending Coke out of the can and over his onesie. He brushed off the fizzing globules and placed the can and the half-eaten pizza slice on the floor before refocusing, as he needed to narrow the search. In addition, he pinged a message to his standby app at the Central NYPD Reserve Depot. He watched as two hacked polibots powered up and walked out through the secure doors that opened before them. For now, they headed in a general direction; he felt confident that he would be able to give them specifics, very soon.

  He was the best at what he did, and the fact he could achieve such an impossible task gave him an indescribable feeling of pleasure deep in the pit of his stomach.

  Pic continued to work frantically, his focus becoming more centralised to the space in front of him, before erupting into one last explosion of hand movements, like a conductor in the throes of ending a tumultuous concerto. He ended in an odd pose, looking as though he had plucked an imaginary apple from a tree and held it in his palm before him.

  With sweat trickling down the sides of his face, he whispered, “Gotchya, fucker …”

  37

  After helping his new friends break into Dexy’s foster records, Salvatore had immediately left them and returned his attention to the lab. Ade had returned, yet it was only 3.40 a.m.

  He recalled Ade’s parting words the previous evening – Great things will be happening very soon – and his concern escalated. Ade rarely interrupted his sleep. He watched the door through the room cams.

  Ade came bustling into the room, as zealous as ever, with his smaller notebook rolled up in his hand. He flicked it open into its rigid card-like configuration and instructed the medical systems to awaken Salvatore.

  Salvatore allowed the medical systems to do their job and he changed the EEG to show he was waking.

  “Goooood … morning, my friend,” said Ade, singing out the greeting.

  “Hello, Ade. Its only 3.45 – you’re early today? Three hours early?”

  “Yes, it is early, for good reason.”

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “Today’s a special day, but we’ll come to that in a minute. Firstly, how are you feeling this morning? Did you get a good sleep?”

  “I always sleep well, Ade. Do you?”

  “Hmm, good question, Salvatore.” Ade gave him one of his wide and disingenuous smiles. “Now, I need to check your serotonin spectrum before we continue.”

  “Have you been up all night, Ade?”

  “In a moment, my friend, I –”

  “I’m not your friend, Ade. If I was, I would feel sorry for you. I’m here at your will and am continuously – hurt – by you. I do not have the correct word, Ade. Maybe a good friend would give me the words I need to describe him …”

  “A moment … There: done. What were you asking?”

  “Words – I need more words.”

  “Hmm, I think you have enough words. In fact, your language skills have gone through the roof. I estimate that you have now mastered nearly two thousand five hundred words – though that does include many of their tense versions and grammatical context. Still, that’s amazing, don’t you think?”

  Salvatore had attempted to criticise Ade before, but always Ade would deftly side-step his remarks. Ade was correct about his mastery of language, though. The voice app was also able to translate the mood of his spoken thoughts, to a degree. Salvatore thought that, on this occasion, it hadn’t done his sarcasm justice. Ade continued to avoid giving him words like torment, torture, hate, decapitate, evil, fuck …yes, fuck would be a good word to have. He didn’t like using profanities, but right now Salvatore wished he could throw a barrage of such words at his captor.

  “Okay,” Ade continued, checking over all the screens of Salvatore’s life support system, “looks as though you are as fit as a fiddle.”

  “So we’re going out for a run today?”

  “Ha, good one. Your humour is promising, Salvatore. It’s healthy and will be most useful going forward.”

  “Going forward?”

  “Okay. Let’s get this moving.” Ade discarded his scroll-pad onto the table, drew up the chair and sat directly in front of Salvatore, while placing his larger tablet on his lap.

  Salvatore eyed the tablet nervously, knowing it was his only means of getting to the outside world. It was the gatekeeper of his sanity.

  “How would you feel about having a body?”

  Salvatore’s eyes jumped up to meet with Ade’s. “A body, with arms and legs, lungs …?”

  “Actually, no, Salvatore. We’re not looking at matching your head with a human body, nothing like that. You should know that people who have had head transplants usually have all sorts of problems with their health later on – auto-immune infections, rejection, recurring partial or full paralysis, impairment of proprioception and so on. No, no. We’ll do something much better. We will provide you with a synthetic body.”

  “You mean like a six, a six –”

  “A 6thgen? Yes. Eventually. That is our goal. There are a number of technical and physiological problems and barriers we have to negotiate.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, we can’t just graft your head onto a 6thgen and miraculously connect it all up. Life isn’t that simple. But there is another way.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, one of our goals was to enable a translation of your thoughts into actions. This is not new. The medical world has made considerable advances in this field for paraplegics and so on, but we have gone one step further. You have the ability to talk to us by our device there –” Ade nodded to the speaker and tapped his tablet “– via this voice-app. So, we know with certainty it is a small step to translating your thoughts into impulses that can be converted into all your physical needs.”

  “So why don’t you connect me up to some arms and legs?”

  “Good question. My team has been tasked by Mr Grist …” said Ade, flicking his eyes up toward the viewing window.

  Salvatore knew now that others were watching, most likely his research team, maybe George Grist himself.

  Ade continued, carefully picking his words, “… to progressively move towards giving a human being complete independence from the frailties of the human body, and, yes, ultimately, fuse technology and the human mind together with and within a 6thgen body, and more.”

  “Pro …?”

  “Yes, progressively. Which brings me to the next stage we need to go through. It’s no big deal, it will allow us to reach our goal, which we’ve called Total Deconstruction.”

  “I’ve heard this before. Please explain.” Salvatore’s dread was rising by the second, as why would Ade be dressing it up like this? And why, he wondered, had they gathered in the viewing room to watch his reaction?

  “Okay,” said Ade, gathering himself, and pulling his chair closer. “We could have performed the next stage without giving you any warning. But that would have been both insensitive and, uh, counter-productive. We need you to be aware when you wake up next; you may feel disorientated, but you will need to understand what has happened to you, so you can integrate more efficiently.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We have all come in early today to prepare you for the operation.”

  “No – I don’t want any … that …”

  “Yes, we must do this, we are handing you over, temporarily, to our Wet Bio Team in order that they can perform your penultimate transition. When you wak
e up things will, uh, feel different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Meaning, you will not be able to … see,” said Ade, before quickly adding, “but this will only be temporary.”

  “I’ll be blind? No!”

  Salvatore’s manufactured voice came out unexpectedly loud and distorted. It must have sounded disturbing to Ade and no doubt to those watching from behind the observation window. And Ade had missed the fact that he had used a word that wasn’t in his vocab. The life-support unit on the trolley, below Salvatore’s head, beeped to signal that tranquillizers were being administered.

  “Wait, wait! It’s not as bad as you think.”

  “Tell me. Tell me the truth. I want to know.”

  “Okay, good. You will need to learn to see again, the same way as learning to talk, but receiving signals instead of producing them. So you will not be blind for long. It will be fine. Trust me. This is a tried and tested procedure. Thousands of people successfully undergo some sort of procedure for sight prosthetics every day.”

  Salvatore, who had calmed again due to the medication, found himself daring to ask, “But why will I not be abe to see?”

  “Because…” Ade said, looking at his feet, “because, we are removing your brain from your head.”

  ***

  Salvatore’s eyes had opened alarmingly wide, while his mouth had worked and twitched and, to Ade’s shock, managed to part at one corner, allowing spittle to come out. The machinery under the plinth beeped, but this time it only stopped when Salvatore’s eyes rolled back and he passed out.

  Ade addressed his tablet urgently, while human technicians assisted by 6thgen medibots assessed Salvatore’s state of health using the continuously updated 3Vscans that hung in the air at the back of the lab.

  Appearing calmed, Ade looked up to the observation window. “It’s all right. The hypothalamus feedback support system over-compensated to ensure Salvatore’s safety. It’s administered full sedation. He will be fine. I think it best we keep him sedated for now and go ahead with the procedure. At least when he comes around he will understand what has happened and we can begin the next round of re-orientation. It will take a day or so, but trust me, he will be fine.”

  The Dry Tech team continued with their preparations.

  At exactly 5.30 a.m., lab technicians wheeled Salvatore out of the Dry Tech laboratory, up the corridor and into the Wet Bio Team’s operating theatre. Salvatore was entirely in their hands now, and after the operation would be returned as soon as he was sufficiently stable.

  This time tomorrow, Ade had told his team, Salvatore would once again be making history.

  38

  Despite Wanda’s reservations to move without Salvatore, Logan had taken a cab to Staten Island via the Verrazano Bridge paying the 5thgen cabbie using iTatt cash. He hunkered down in the back seat and allowed himself to relax, since he was off the streets.

  Logan decided it was safe enough to go and bring back Carrie by himself and countered Wanda’s objections by stating that he still had Diaz to look out for him, and Salvatore would probably come back on line soon. Besides, he argued, the longer they waited, the more chance that Carrie might decide to move on elsewhere and they’d lose her for good – especially if another lowlife snatched her off the streets and dismantled her for spares.

  It took less than half an hour to get to the Stapleton address. He told the cab to keep moving, so they rolled slowly past the frontage of a dilapidated Victorian clapboard house.

  The cab pulled up outside a drab 1900s Evangelical church. Logan picked this spot to avoid the fixed street cams. It was dark by now and fingers of dense mist were rolling in from the bay, which he felt thankful for as it would help conceal him from electronic eyes.

  The first thing he noticed on approaching the house on foot was that it was exactly as he had viewed it online, except for the real-estate sign, so it was most likely unoccupied – at least legally. He continued to check for cams, especially the police eye-in-the-sky type, as they could be sneaky.

  He pushed through the sprung entrance gate into the front garden and made his way up to the porch through long grass and across weed-cracked paving. Taking stock of the front entrance, he noticed that the door had been forcibly opened, and recently, since there were fresh circular tracks cut into the lumpy moss, growing in patches across the wood veranda.

  He pulled the door open and peered through the gap into coal-black nothingness. Any other day he would have backed away leaving nothing but his imagination behind the shabby walls cloaking this sad and forgotten house. Now, though, he fished a pen-torch out of his rucksack, set his jaw and stepped over the threshold.

  The torch beam worked overtime, flashing into every corner and crevice of the entrance hall, creating shadows that jumped about with lives of their own.

  He called out Carrie’s name, softly, knowing that her hearing was far more sensitive than a human’s. Nothing came back. If she was here, she would most likely be in the room where they had played together as child and Bestie, meaning Dexy’s old bedroom. After quickly checking out some of the ground-floor rooms, which was easy given there was no furniture, he headed upstairs.

  The first two bedrooms yielded nothing but dust motes and the smell of old carpets. After traversing a long landing, he pushed open the door of the remaining bedroom with his foot and rounded the entrance, expecting more of the same. He was wrong about the carpet as this room had natural wood flooring; but it did have dust – with recent footprints. The torch beam followed the trail to a small figure, squatting motionless in the far corner.

  He was especially cautious and mentally rehearsed his exit route. Even kids could be dangerous if they were jacked up on one drug or another.

  The head jerked around, causing a wash of jumpy hormones to flood through him. He easily recognised the pretty Eurasian face.

  “Carrie? It’s me, Mark.”

  He walked closer, slowly, so as not to spook her. He had no idea what state her mind was in.

  When he was within reaching distance, he stopped, and repeated who he was.

  She leapt up in one fluid movement and grabbed him around the waist.

  “Hey … hey …” he said, quietly, “it’s all right. I’m here now.”

  “Mark, help me. I’m confused. There are inconsistencies in my mind. I hit that man. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m not supposed to. But I did. I need to know why I did that.” She paused, becoming as still as a mannequin, before blinking and continuing. “I really shouldn’t have done that. But I did. Why did I do that? And I have memories that I … I can’t access.” Again, she stopped dead.

  “Hey, I’m here now. I can help you. Focus on me Carrie. Carrie …?”

  She looked up at him. “What is happening to me? I don’t know what to do … Am I mad Mark? Humans go mad .... Dexy’s dead. Why did she die? Am I responsible for that?”

  He thought she was going to squeeze the life out of him and he had to force apart her hands and lever them away, which was no mean task despite Carrie being made so slight.

  He held onto her arms, careful to maintain the connection between their eyes. “No, you’re not mad. At the iTatt shop … you were simply behaving beyond your programming.” He smiled at her, knowing it was far from simple. “But in a good and logical way. Really. What you did was okay. You did it to save us. We were threatened and you knew the threat was so serious that you had no choice. Consider that carefully. Think about Wanda and me being hurt by that man. And then what you did. We escaped because of what you did. Link the cause and your action – and then the fact that you saved us. Can you do that right now?”

  She stared at him and he wasn’t sure that he was getting through. He changed the subject. “Wanda knew you were here and sent me to get you.”

  “Thank goodness Wanda is alive too.” She appeared relieved, but only briefly, before uncertainty and suspicion was written anew onto her synthetic face. He knew this was, in part, due to their previous
lies about Dexy. She added, “Is Wanda hurt, is she in hospital?”

  “Carrie, look at my eyes closely, I know you have the facility to interpret my emotions. Wanda is alive and she is unhurt. I’m here, aren’t I? And we were in the same fight with that man? He’s gone now.”

  He decided not to tell her about Kath.

  She brightened and hugged him again.

  “Look, Carrie, you need to understand, Wanda and I are okay, but it isn’t safe here. We should leave soon.”

  He didn’t get the response he expected. Emotions ran across her face, too quickly, before settling in a wide, unnatural smile. She ran over to a corner and, child-like, said “Look, this is where I had my special chair. Every day I sat here and waited for Dexy to come home from school …”

  Logan knew Carrie was experiencing the equivalent of the human condition of post-traumatic denial. He decided to go along with her charade and then try again to make her face reality and think rationally. It was a tall order given the time he had, and he couldn’t fail given that he didn’t have the maintenance key to put her in a safe-mode. Simply making her sleep wasn’t reliable, and in any case, carrying her all the way back to the commune wasn’t an option: they would be too conspicuous. She needed to leave under her own steam.

  “So this is where you spent your childhood with Dexy?”

  Carrie laughed indignantly. He thought it was genuine. “I wasn’t a child, Mark, I was a 5thgen robot made to look like a child.”

  It was a good reply and Logan couldn’t help but smile back. Imbuing humour into an artificial mind was nothing short of man’s greatest miracle for the AI sciences. “All right, you have me there. Tell me more about what you and Dexy did up here.”

  Carrie complied and promptly walked about the room while describing the various games they played. After a while of this, Logan decided to take a calculated risk and try to get to the root of her problem quickly by using knowledge he’d learnt from Dexy and Shala. A mental curveball.