NLI-10

by Lee Isserow

  “S'ti yllaer ysae” Micah replied, to giggles. “fi uoy og otni eht unem, rednu 'hceeps', taht enituorbus nac eb nettirwer.”

  “You know I literally have no idea what you're saying, right?” said Sarah.

  “Haey! eno ces...” he looked away from her as he went through the menus, digging deep into the infrastructure of the operating system to find a way of communicating what he was trying to explain.

  “Ym doG!” he said.

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “Siht si gnizama!”

  “Seriously, what?” she said.

  Micah looked back over to Sarah, having activated the protocol he found buried in the code.

  'Check this shit out.' he said to Sarah.

  The words didn't come from his mouth. She could hear them in her head, as if they were thoughts of her own, but in his voice.

  “What the hell?” she said out loud, staring at his goofy expression.

  'Pretty cool, huh?' he replied, as a whisper in the back of her mind.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  'It's a hidden protocol in the operating system' Micah said, his thoughts still running through Sarah's brain. 'Network infrastructure, buried crazy-deep. I'll run you through it.'

  Micah took her through how he got to the networking options and she activated the protocol.

  'How is this possible?' she asked, her thoughts now in his head.

  'No idea, maybe it's something people are capable of with the right psychological or hypnotic manipulation?' he replied. 'Or maybe it's the drugs, or the room tones, or the surgery. Could be anything.'

  'It just doesn't seem real.' she said.

  'Tell me about it.'

  “Are you guys having a moment?” Pete asked. “Am I interrupting? You've been staring at each other in silence for the last few minutes...”

  Micah passed the instructions on to Pete, then shared them with the rest of the group. Soon they were all talking, yet not a single word was spoken out loud.

  Whark watched on her monitor at the subjects progress and smiled to herself. Her problem had been removed, and now the group was excelling beyond her wildest expectations. With the potential black spot taken out of the equation, there was no longer a distraction weighing them down. In the long run, it didn't matter that there wasn't a 'normal' brain to compare the results with. Anyone could be dosed with a psychoactive compound before being turned into an NLI asset, and this round of subjects were proving that with the latest version of the memetic software, only a limited amount of hand-holding was necessary before they started investigating the interface and teaching themselves how to use it. Ten years of testing, seventy patients in this facility alone, and it was looking like the NLI project was finally ready for market.

  APEX PROJECT AP_NLI-10

  Marion Whark Daily Report #29

  Last night's test was a success. All subjects excelling at the use of hypersight, with not a single collision. As you'll no doubt recall from the previous trials, we have never had such a positive result from the first live fire.

  The casualty report for Leah Cavendish has undoubtedly been received and reviewed by now, and based on the autopsy carried out this morning I can relay that it appears that the subject was in poorer health than we were lead to believe, with an enlarged left coronary artery, apparently stressed by a narrowing at its most distal portion leading the subject to suffer an acute myocardial infarction. This is of course rare in someone of such a young age.

  Doctor Markham is currently under the impression that the subject had an undiagnosed case of systematic hypertension, and I shall be thoroughly investigating how the patient managed to become inducted into the trial, let alone make it to this stage without the abnormality being observed.

  On a more positive note, the subjects are deep into Phase Two, and are progressing beyond our expectations. At least one of them has taken the initiative to explore beyond the basics they are being taught, and Subject8 is monitoring and reporting all Network chatter whilst he prepares for Phase Three, which has been moved up in the schedule due to the NLI-10 subjects' aptitude.

  If all continues according to the amended plan for this latest NLI trial, we will not only have six viable subjects, but a fully operational procedure by the time it is complete.

  The lights came up in the living quarters, and as the group went to breakfast they no longer needed to converse out loud, each having become accustomed to communication through the Network.

  'This is like something out of a movie.' said Pete, unable to actually pick a specific title, but assuring the others it was definitely like something that could only happen in a film.

  The nurse and orderlies took them along the hallway leading back out to the entrance into the daylight, where they were taken to one of the sideways-cylinder buildings.

  'What is this?' Alex asked, to no reaction from the nurse.

  “Sorry, what is this?” she asked out loud, forgetting that apart from the other five, nobody could hear her thoughts.

  At the far end of the room were cardboard cut-outs of men, women and children, and in front of the group were boxes of bean bags.

  “This is a test of the targeting system.” said the nurse. “The intention of this trial is to hit the men, and avoid the women or children.”

  'On behalf of my gender, I'm going to take that personally.' said Pete, to chuckles from the others.

  The nurse waited for them to compose themselves after the joke only they could hear.

  “Everyone take a beanbag and have a throw, let's see how you do without the targeting first.”

  The group did as instructed, and all but one either didn't reach the targets, or ended up taking a woman or child out in the process. Alex's bag hit a male cut-out straight in the face, throwing him back against the wall, before falling flat on the ground. The others looked at her in amazement.

  'Targeting.' she said, over the Network. 'It's right here.'

  The group found themselves being offered an invitation to her projection, and upon accepting it, had Alex's point of view layered over their own, passing through menus until she came to the targeting options, and then activated the settings. She was then able to pick a target in her UI, choose the force, and activate an automated procedure that Micah called 'a macro', which took control of her arm and fired off the beanbag with pinpoint precision, hitting the target dead on. Before too long they were all hitting their targets accurately, and once the 'hostiles' were knocked to the ground, threw the beanbags at one another, which were caught or dodged based on yet further options in the targeting menu.

  At lunch, they discussed the reasons behind the targeting features in the operating system.

  'It's got to be for military use, right?' asked Farah.

  'Or for sale to the highest sportsman bidding... imagine a golfer or football player who could hit a target without breaking a sweat?' said Rob.

  'Military makes more sense though, for all of this. Imagine an elite fighting force that can turn off exhaustion, pain, anxiety or hunger, hit a target miles away, that's fucking terrifying.' said Sarah.

  'With the automation functions, and the right mental cleansing, they wouldn't be people any more.' said Micah 'I mean, soldiers do awful things at the best of times, but imagine if they turned off their empathy, and ran on robot mode...'

  'Killer robot mode.' Pete added, sending a chill through the group's spines.

  In a dark room deep in the facility, behind a door none of the subjects had walked through or even seen, a tall muscular blonde man sat at a cloud-connected typewriter. His pale sun-starved hands whittled back and forth across the keyboard, transcribing the unspoken conversation that was happening over the Network.

  Pete: Killer robot mode.

  Rob: Well, that's fucking terrifying. Thanks for that.

  Pete: My absolute pleasure. I bring joy and light to your day, like a unicorn shitting rainbows and glitter.

  (laughs)

  Alex: It doesn't mat
ter what the unicorn shits, shit is still shit.

  The man sipped at a protein shake and listened intently to their voices, continuing to type with one hand. He absorbed the cadence and dialect, linguistic choices and tonal shifts. He had never met these people, and yet he knew them. Between their files, personality reports, eavesdropping on their thoughts and now Networked conversations, he knew them inside and out, biding his time until he was activated.

  Whark read the live feed coming from the blonde man's typewriter. She had a great disdain for his insistence on using archaic mechanical keys, when a tablet or laptop would have sufficed. They had spent the three months of his trial, and the years since, attempting to wipe him of all his infuriating personality traits and yet this one remained. It was as if one small part of his personality was so ingrained that no amount of mental cleansing or re-education could scrub it clean.

  Farah: Do you think we should worry about their intentions? I mean, if they're going to use this for military means, should we try and fail? Give them bad results and take them back to square one?

  Micah: I doubt we're the first trial... and I don't think even a small failure would put them off at this point, not when we've already shown them so much promise.

  Alex: So, we just keep on keepin' on? Proving to them that people can become killer robots and it's a great fucking idea?

  Rob: What do you expect us to do? Just start failing?

  Alex: I don't know, but something needs to be done.

  Sarah: We'll come up with something. Together. The six of us have made it this far, we can work this out.

  Whark watched the words appear on her screen and grimaced. The tones she had implemented were suppressing the memories of Leah, but they were playing in lieu of the sonics that crushed subversive attitudes. The calming tones were the very reason the subjects had been acting perfectly for the duration of the experiment. Now, they were starting to consider revolt. She decided it was time to introduce a calming influence. Calling the nurse, Whark informed her that the tests that afternoon were to be postponed, and instructed the orderlies to set up the re-education room “straight a-fucking-way”. It was time for Phase Three to begin.

  The group had an extended lunch break. Whark eventually walked down to the mess hall to inform them of a change to their schedule.

  “We've got a little firmware update for the operating system, if you'll come with me please.” she started walking to the door without waiting for a response.

  “Firmware?” Rob asked Micah

  “It's software that changes how hardware works, like when Windows or OSX gives you little updates. But I guess this is for how the OS runs in our heads, right Miss Whark?”

  She huffed an agreement to his statement, leading them through to the room she had the orderlies set up, sitting them down on the six leather chairs lined up in a row, ordering them to close their eyes and breath deeply. Once they had begun to do so, Whark left the room and returned to her office to observe the procedure far from the sonics, knowing the adverse effects it would have. On her watch she cycled through the tonal registers and picked the one labelled 'Phase Three Initiation'.

  In the re-education room, the sounds reverberating through the walls, that had been following the group for the last two days, fell silent. As they sat in their chairs in the darkness, the fog was clearing in their memories. Imagery and conversations once suppressed were returned to them from the tonal haze, each slowly coming to a realisation that one of their number was missing.

  'Something's wrong.' said Rob. 'Someone's not here.'

  'I know... I think I see them.' said Farah. 'Little blonde girl, young and sweet, but I can't quite picture her face properly.'

  'Here.' said Alex, sharing an image of Leah that had fully returned. 'Is that her?'

  The three dimensional projection of Leah hung in the air in front of them all.

  'Who was she?' asked Sarah.

  'It's like her name is on the tip of my tongue, but something's stopping me from remembering.' said Pete.

  'Do you hear that?' said Micah. 'There's no noise, the room tones aren't playing.'

  'You think they were interfering with our memories?' Sarah asked.

  'They must have been. But then why have they stopped them?'

  “Leah!” Rob shouted, out loud. He was exasperated as the name suddenly came to him. “Where did she go? What did they do to her?”

  'She was running with us.' said Alex. 'I don't remember what happened after that...'

  'We got in the car.' said Farah. 'There were, sounds were playing through the speakers- - '

  'Then we forgot her.' Pete added. 'Like, straight away.'

  “We've got to find her.” said Rob.

  'Before that we have to block the tones out.' Micah said 'If they turn them back on, we're going to forget this all over again.'

  He got up, walked over to the door and grabbed the handle. It didn't respond.

  'Locked?” asked Sarah, to a nod. 'Do you know how those locks work? They're locked for us, but unlock for the staff.'

  “I don't care about the tones or the locks, we'll block out the sounds and break the doors down if we have to, we've got to find Leah.” said Rob, getting up from his chair.

  'He's losing it.' Micah said to Sarah.

  'Don't say that!' she said.

  Rob stomped to the door, pushing Micah out of the way and started kicking at it, but it refused to move at his command.

  'I'm not saying this to the group, I've set up a VPN, it's just a conversation between the two of us.'

  'What can we do?' she asked.

  'The door's not going to budge.' he said 'It's got locking mechanisms all along the sides of the frame, and probably into the floor and ceiling too. It's only wood covering the front and back, looked like metal all the way through.'

  'What about the lock?.' she asked.

  'Looks like some kind of smartlock, runs through a NeuralNet I reckon. The staff probably have RFID chips implanted in their hands, or biometric profiles stored in the system that give them authorisation to open the doors, maybe it's hooked up to FaceRecog? There are cameras by pretty much every door.'

  'So there's no way past it?' she said 'Other than through their NeuralNet...' a smile started to form on her face.

  'Yeah... why are you smiling?'

  She shared the memory of the lights in the memory-tagging room going out, coming back on and her being able to see not only what was in front of her eyes, but from every other camera in the building.

  'That's not possible...' said Micah. 'Unless - -'

  His words were cut off as the the room shook with vibrations, sonics echoing through the walls louder than ever before. All six of them were knocked to the ground, heads pounding, pressure building inside their brains, digging claws deep into their neural tissue as it made its way from the back of their heads to encompass their minds, filling their heads with smoke, clouding all thoughts. It was disabling every manual function from their motor cortex, throwing nerve impulses under assault, spasms rocketed through every limb, as the sonics made their way through their hippocampus, forcing synapses to misfire, rewriting memories, removing images and replacing them. They struggled to hold on to the projection of Leah that Alex shared, tried to relive conversations, attempted and failed at blocking out the sounds and projecting the memories before they could be contaminated.

  The projections weren't being deleted. They were being altered. The face of the blonde girl was a distant reminiscence. Then a half-remembered dream. Then it was gone. In her place, in the memories which Leah once lay, was someone new. A man they didn't know, a tall muscular blonde stranger that didn't have a name. Then he did have a name. A clear face. Played a part in every memory for the last month. He had been there with them through it all, from stepping out of the cars to their tour, the first night through to the first test, alongside them every step of the way, every memory they had made in the last four weeks, laughing and drinking at dinner, running alongside
them through the streets of Glasgow, and he was there with them, in that very room before the test that hadn't yet begun.

  The group woke up in darkness. Their internal clocks telling them five hours had passed, but they couldn't remember anything beyond stepping into the room and taking their seats as instructed. The door unlocked and swung open. Whark stood, silhouetted in the halogen glow of the hallway.

  “Did you enjoy your nap?” she asked, to much confusion as the group searched through their memories up until their blackout.

  “It was a sleep study?” asked Pete, a hazy memory forming in front of his mind's eye.

  “Indeed. And you all did a marvellous job of it. Why don't you go get yourself some dinner...” she held the door open for the subjects, as all seven of them left the room.

  Sitting round a table in the mess hall, none of them felt like eating.

  'It's so weird.' said Alex. 'I don't remember a thing about the test. I don't even remember falling asleep.'

  'I guess that means we're great at sleep studies, huh?' said Pete.

  'Do you feel like you slept? I feel like shit.' said Farah.

  'I wouldn't worry about it, sure we'll get a great night's sleep tonight.' said Liam.

  The others were compelled to agree.

  Marion Whark watched on her terminal as her subjects sat around their table and conversed through the Network, as if Liam had been with them from the beginning. Installing him in the group meant that she was no longer able to keep track of the content of their discussions, but it didn't matter. The re-education was a success, and they had accepted him as one of their own with no immediate adverse side effects. If there was any further dissent, he would act as a calming influence, bring order to the group.

  As she watched them shuffle through the hallway to the living quarters, she couldn't wait to take her toys out the box as the weeks went on, and fuck up their memories a little more.

  10