Mind Games

by Alan Brudner

  "That's ancient archeology compared to what's going on at Cybronics. We're working with the idea of influencing whole concepts, ways of thinking. Changing a person's point-of-view without him even realizing why. The theory is that if it requires only one or two subliminal words or images to plant a simple desire, it will take a lot of repetitions and variations to change more complex thought patterns. And the suggestions have to be hidden throughout different applications of the computer. So whatever you're doing—word processing, creating a spreadsheet, reading your e-mail, playing a game—aspects of the subliminal message will be getting through. Your subconscious mind eventually puts it all together. You might wake up with an idea, a change of heart about something, a light bulb seems to go off in your head, but you wouldn't have a clue how it really got there."

  "You learn about this stuff at Yale?"

  "Not really. Mostly, I've been learning about the concept at Cybronics. Some other guys started to develop it a few years ago, but the technology wasn't advanced enough to handle it. Now they're refining and adapting it to see if they can get it to work in programs."

  "That's what you're doing out there?"

  "Not exactly, Dad. My job is to stop it, treat it like a virus. Learn how to detect that the program's in your computer system, and cause it to be dismantled and removed. Deactivated and destroyed."

  "So other people are on offense, and you're on defense?"

  "You got it, Dad."

  "But just to keep it simple, what if this subliminal suggestion program suggested a Coke but I didn't want one?"

  "It can't force you, Dad. It can only plant the idea in a strong way. Your brain does the rest. If you're receptive, or even indifferent, you'll probably do what it prompts you to. But if you absolutely hate Coke or the name CHIP, your mind will reject the idea and you'll never know it. Or your brain might shuffle it around a bit to make it acceptable, so you'll buy a Seven-Up or name the machine CHUMP or something like that. People aren't robots, you know."

  "Still sounds pretty dangerous. What if Kord uses it on the Internet or in software that you buy in the store? He could—"

  Sky shook his head and held a hand up. "Let me put your mind at ease, Dad. They're creating it for a single purpose: so I can devise the best strategy for counteracting it."

  "Why do that?"

  "Because Avery believes one of our competitors has it. NanoSoft, the company's called. NanoSoft's gained 6 percent in market share over the last six months, for no good reason. That's a whopping increase and a threatening trend. We think they're using it to influence our customers, maybe even to make people dislike Cybronics."

  "Maybe they make a superior product of some kind."

  "Superior to ours? No way. Not a little start-up company like that. That's why Avery's sure they've got this program or an equivalent. Which means we need to find a way to disable it, counteract it. So I'm the head of the team working on destroying it. I've had to learn about the concept and understand its architecture so I can determine the most effective way to bomb it."

  "Scary analogy."

  "But just an analogy. And it's how we work. We have one lab that creates viruses so that one of our other labs can learn how to destroy them. They're generically referred to as Creation and Control."

  "What I called offense and defense."

  He nodded. "But with one exception. Let's suppose this subliminal suggestion program really can work. What if the CIA were to decide it could use our software to convince a terrorist like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden to kill himself? Or at least that it could convince one of their own men to do them in? That'd be a worthy cause for the program, don't you think? To eliminate a dangerous killer?" My son winked slyly.

  "You're not saying it could convince—"

  "No, I'm not, Dad," he shook his head. "But it's a supersonic secret even if I am. And think what the government would pay for such an application."

  "The program sounds illegal, Sky. A monopolistic way of fighting a competitor. And frightening as hell."

  "I agree, Dad. That's why I'm working eighteen hours a day on building a defense. The only person on earth who understands that program as well as its creator is me."

  "I know you have good intentions, Sky, but—look at what they tried to do to Microsoft—"

  "We have only good purposes," my son continued over me. "To develop the program so we can best counter it in case someone else has it. To protect a business Avery's spent most of his life developing. And maybe—maybe, as a one-off exception—allowing it to be used to help the CIA get rid of a terrorist or two. That's it. You have to trust me. Avery's a great man. A visionary."

  "I know. A real Yoda."

  Chapter 7

  Sky had been home for ten days. At his urging, I finished inputting the words on the voice recognition list—zygote was the last of them—and could get the computer to do what I wanted simply by speaking to it. The machine was truly a wonder, far more advanced and simpler to use than any computer anyone I knew owned. I didn't ask, but I knew it cost a fortune. Sky and I used it, with various joysticks and special attachments, to play virtual basketball, to go virtual fishing with a virtual rod and reel and virtual worms on a virtual motorboat off a virtual Block Island where we caught some virtual Atlantic cod despite the virtual bad weather, and we also spent time together surfing the Net, but we hadn't really gone out and done anything together. Not a real ballgame or a round of real golf or a real movie in a real theater. Oh, there was one nice dinner at Wong Fat, Eliza's favorite Chinatown haunt; but after it I drove home alone because Sky had another one of those group meetings.

  With the computer, I had progressed to the point at which I felt comfortable dictating—talking is more accurate—and manipulating the mouse. I was still a loser with the keyboard, but voice recognition was changing my attitude about high technology, and my results. The damned thing looked cold and plastic, but it understood me. I'd never tell Lucille, because she'd fear for her job, and I'd long ago promised to keep her gainfully employed as long as I was a worker bee. But CHIP was quickly becoming an efficient helper, a good first drafter, with hearing that seemed better than hers. CHIP also didn't usually talk back, although it did talk; Sky showed me how to turn the voice mechanism on and off. When his voice was on, CHIP sounded like a slightly electrified Mister Ed, and had the same sarcastic edge to many of his comments. I wondered whether Sky hadn't used some old Mister Ed reruns in programming the voice and what he called CHIP's "artificial personality."

  Despite my son's apparent good health and positive outlook, though, I worried about him. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something was wrong, odd, awry. He had always expressed his feelings, sometimes to excess; but now his emotions seemed subdued. He never said a negative thing about Avery Kord or Cybronics. I had been a corporate employee for a long time, and one thing I was certain of was that no corporate employee could go more than a week without voicing some complaint, some criticism of something or someone connected with some aspect of the company. Complaining was the American Way; wasn't that why we had the First Amendment? Yet he worshipped Avery Kord and seemed almost entranced at the merest mention of Cybronics.

  He also was taking photographs of everything around the house with a digital camera, the kind of pictures he could download into the computer. Sometimes I even think he was taking photos of photos. Maybe photography was in his genes. But going out every evening to meet the people he called his "fellow geeks" sure wasn't. When I asked about them, he just chuckled mechanically and repeated his mantra: "Don't worry, Dad." And there was the earring as well, a small glittery thing. No big deal for many guys his age, I knew, a commonplace thing. But Sky had always been so—well, uncool—it just didn't fit my image of him. When I thought about it, I realized I didn't even know for sure why he was visiting home for two weeks; he had already missed Christmas and it wasn't a holiday. And he often had a faraway look in his eyes, a look only a parent would recognize, a gaze that demonstrated t
hat although he was holding a conversation with seeming normality, he was actually engulfed in thoughts about something completely different—which, in Schuyler's case, could involve something as simple as who won last night's ballgame or as complex as particle theory. Whatever that is.

  When he was out of the house, I tried every which way to get into the "Mom.ava" program, but I simply couldn't figure out the password. And 'ol CHIP certainly wouldn't tell me.

  IT WOULD BE LIKE TRESPASSING, he announced one time in his equine voice.

  COME ON, MR. LIGHTMAN! YOU DON'T WANT ME TO BREAK THE RULES, DO YOU?

  His best was: ONE MORE TIME AND I'LL TELL!

  No way I was going to let CHIP the computer rat me out. I turned off his voice mechanism.

  I decided to simply ask Sky about the program. He was planning to be around only a few more nights, so I was running out of time.

  I waited for what had become his nightly post-dinner routine: he'd go out for a few hours in his typical jeans or chinos and a t-shirt, returning out of breath and sweating from his jog home; then he'd clean up and sit down with some kind of technical manual or his laptop. This night, he chose the laptop. Before it had completed its start-up routine and virus check, I approached him.

  "Sky, there's something I have to know."

  His mouth curled downward as he stared into my eyes. "We broke up, Dad," he said, after I left a long silence uninterrupted. "We grew apart. I finally developed some focus in my life and she was too lackadaisical."

  "Thanks for the info, Sky. Although I always liked Scarlett. A happy-go-lucky type. And her name—"

  He nodded in agreement. "She likes you too, Dad. But trust me. Scarlett's not the one for me. She's certainly not Mom."

  I could feel my eyebrows rise. "Funny you should mention Mom, Sky. What I was wondering was about the computer. I want to know what 'Mom.ava' is."

  "Mom.ava?" Sky's eyes strained upward, as if he was in thought. He took his time, rubbed his forehead. Cracked his knuckles. Then he spoke.

  "I've been working on designing and fine-tuning that program in my spare time, Dad. Since I got to Cybronics. It's not an official company program, it's my own. But I still need to tinker with it. I've been working with something called evolutionary logic—circuits that can learn and adapt on their own. It's a pretty new field, and I think the program's still got some glitches. Anyway, I want you to learn your way around the machine first, so you won't get frustrated with the Mom.ava program. It's as complex as they come."

  "What does it do, Sky?"

  "I'm going to demonstrate it soon. If I can, I'll complete it and input the remaining code over the Internet from Portland, so you'll be able to use it. It'll be like a website I'm designing just for you. But right now it isn't ready yet." He paused in obvious debate about what else to tell me. "It's an avatar, Dad," he finally said. "That's what the letters 'a-v-a' stand for. The on-screen representation of a person."

  "What?"

  "Virtual reality. An illusion I'm working on. We usually use VR for flight simulators, to analyze wind flow over your car, that sort of thing. Makes it feel like you can see things you wouldn't ordinarily be able to."

  "Why's it called 'Mom?'"

  "That's just a code, Dad. An acronym for Magic Or Memory, my name for the program."

  "Magic Or Memory," I repeated. "That's it?"

  "That, and the fact that if it works, the character you'll see on the monitor will look and sound like Mom."

  Chapter 8

  Sky was out meeting his computer friends one night when the phone rang.

  "Mr. Lightman?"

  "Yes?" I wasn't sure I recognized the voice. It was a female talking fast. On the street. Sounded like she had a cellular phone.

  "It's Scarlett. Scarlett Exner. Schuyler's friend."

  "Yes, how are you Scarlett?"

  "I'm okay, sir. But that's irrelevant. It's your son I'm calling about."

  "He mentioned that you two broke up. We were just talking..."

  "Also off-point right now, Mr. Lightman. Please, you've got to meet me downtown right away. Someplace near Saint Andrew's Church. Let's say at the coffee shop on Broadway and Duane."

  "You're in town?"

  "The dinerish place with the green sign. We don't have a lot of time."

  "Please, Scarlett. You're not making sense. I'm sorry about my son's breaking up with you, but—"

  "No! It's not that!" She shrieked into the cellular. I'm sure any passersby on the street near her were contemplating whether to dial 911.

  "I'm on my way," I said, and I was.

  •

  The place was called Stardust. We sat in a dark corner booth amid framed old black-and-white photographs of freshly scrubbed young women with bouffants and beehives who had been chosen as Miss Subways in the fifties and early sixties. They all looked innocent and eager, and the brief resumes under their pictures read like answers to the final question in the Miss America pageant. "I plan a career in acting," many said. "I love children and want to be a schoolteacher." "I hope to make the world a better place to live through music." I wondered how the Miss Subways looked now, how many lines currently etched their faces. I figured a good many were no longer alive. Or as old as the waitress, whose wrinkles were so deep they could have been cut into her skin with a butter knife.

  Our coffees cooled on the table before Scarlett finally spoke.

  "I've been concerned about Schuyler," she began. She looked heavier than I recalled her, rounder, disheveled and a bit paler, or perhaps it was just the contrast of her light complexion against her strawberry-red hair and the shiny lipstick that matched it. A pleasant but troubled face I had once thought might become that of a daughter-in-law.

  "What are you worried about, Scarlett?"

  "I don't know what he's told you about these people he keeps meeting with, Mr. Lightman."

  "Just computer geeks," I shrugged.

  "Well, they think they're just a group with common interests. In techie stuff. But believe me—" She twirled a stained stainless-steel teaspoon around in her coffee. "Look, Sky's been through a lot. With Mrs. Lightman and all. He still gets really blue."

  "We've had a lot of coping therapy." I wondered whether, consciously or not, Scarlett was here to try using me to win Sky back. But I listened with an open mind.

  "I know it helped. Schuyler certainly thinks so. But he's had more to deal with than the average twenty-something."

  "Sky's always landed on his feet, Scarlett."

  "You know why he started drinking at Yale? Even before the accident? He weirded out about the money from Cybronics. The 'Kord scholarship,' he called it. He told me he had made the decision fast but that he was having second thoughts. Angst. He was depressed and worried that he had sold out. Reading stuff like Karl Marx and Kafka and Faust didn't help."

  "All college kids read that stuff." I smiled. "But Cybronics was his own decision. Although I sometimes felt a little guilty myself. But I figured the money was worth an Ivy League education and a couple of years devoted to Avery Kord."

  "That's what they all figured, Mr. Lightman. That's why I called you. We need to talk about Avery Kord."

  "What about him?"

  She didn't respond immediately and seemed troubled by her thoughts.

  "I still have strong feelings for Sky," she finally said. Scarlett took the teaspoon out of her coffee cup and put it on the table. It clanked against the glass overlay that covered the tablecloth. Her lips tightened and she stared past me at empty booths across the aisle.

  "You don't live with someone for three years and not have feelings, Scarlett," I said, trying to sound comforting. "You probably saved his life."

  "Maybe I ruined it." She smiled sadly, avoiding my eyes. "Anyway, you should know what's going on."

  "I'm all ears."

  She ran her fingertips through her long tangled hair, nodded and spoke faster than before.

  "You know how there's always a flurry of press coming out about Aver
y Kord? Making him seem like some kind of capitalist pig, a power-hungry wacko? Constantly being sued by the Justice Department and private parties and stuff? Congress? The antitrust investigations?"

  I nodded. The man and his company had been vilified in the papers on a daily basis for years. IS IT THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY OR AVERY KORD'S PRIVATE TURNPIKE? THE INFORMATION AGE VERSUS THE CYBRONICS AGE. KORD TIES UP THE INFO INDUSTRY. Only a handful of articles humanized him. Eliza once joked that Kord probably owned those publishers. Maybe he did. Or bought them later.

  "Well, it's true. He hires geniuses, but a lot of them are troubled or depressed. Like Sky was. Then they get—kind of—converted. They look for the meaning of life in high technology. Avery Kord becomes some kind of Messiah to them, and they're like—like a cult or something."

  "What are you telling me?"

  "Each of them is working on his own special project. Designing top secret software and stuff." She sipped her coffee, leaving the red imprint of her lips on the cup. I began to wonder whether she was playing with a full deck.

  "Sky's told me a little about his work, Scarlett. But very little. And he asked me to keep it secret." I thought the subliminal suggestion software was treacherous, but Sky was assigned to defend against it, if I understood him correctly. I trusted my son. Or wanted to.

  Her almost imperceptible nod made it clear she already knew something. "Avery Kord likes to divide people into teams and have them compete against each other. He believes it's the best strategy for developing cutting-edge technology. Get one genius to develop a product, get another Einstein to ruin it. So Genius A makes it better, stronger, and Genius B then has to find a better defense. And so on. Both sides improve until he's happy with the end result. Which could be the marketing of either the positive program or the negative one, or both. And all the while, he's convincing everyone he has some humanitarian motive. Not to mention the elimination of competitors who are using some kind of unethical means of competition. It's what he tells all of them."