by Rayya Deeb
“In order for you to become a Senecan as a minor without a parent also joining, your mother had to sign a lot of legal documentations. One of the releases was an ‘in loco parentis’ for me, so that in the event I couldn’t contact her and you were under emergency medical care, I would be the one to make decisions.”
“Hmm.” I pondered that. Of course my mom made sure I would get the medical attention I needed. She had told me Ellen would act as my guardian when it came to certain things, but this just seemed too major to be allowed.
“But does the ‘in loco parentis’ really still apply considering my mom is in Seneca now?”
“Because it is tied to something top secret in nature, yes.”
It wasn’t exactly comforting to know that someone other than my parents could make these sorts of decisions regarding my mental and physical states, but if it was going to be anyone, I could accept that it was Ellen. She and my dad were on the same page.
As we descended inside the dome to the fantastic Claytor Lake hub, I felt exhilaration seep into my bloodstream. It was about to go down, and down we went. How ironic.
Yesterday’s chat with Reba resurfaced in my mind. Yeah, I had confidence in my capabilities to reverse engineer quantum computing formulas, but it wasn’t as clean as me hacking gambling websites. This was my brain we were talking about. What if he was right about this whole soul thing? What if I was handing my brain over to be a guinea pig for Seneca and that had ramifications beyond my skill jurisdiction? The reality was that I was the golden girl here, the one player currently up to bat. “The plan” to defeat “the Departers mission” took precedence above all else.
A gray-haired woman in her sixties greeted us the moment our ascension dome opened to the Claytor Lake hub. This woman looked like a boss. She wore a fitted, powder blue lab coat, gray pants and a FlexScope around her neck. She had a team behind her— four young men and a woman in white coats.
“Ellen Malone and Dorothy Campbell, I presume?”
Ellen extended her hand. “It is such a pleasure.”
“Dr. Renee Cairncross. The pleasure is mine.”
I loved that worldly British accent and her husky voice. But I recalled Dr. Kulkarni had pulled one over on me at first sight with his doctor’s coat, worldly accent, and kind old eyes, and he turned out to be Gregory Zaffron’s go-to doctor for erasing people’s memories inside Seneca before they were banished to the Aboves.
Ellen turned to me. “We are in good hands here, Doro. Dr. Cairncross is a phenomenal doctor. She went to one of the best schools in the world— Oxford.”
Dr. Cairncross was quick to add, “American-educated as well, my dear. I went for my PhD at The University of Maryland.”
“Nice,” I said. I could play the flattery game, for now, but what school she went to didn’t mean squat to me. “I should be applying to college right about now, but, well—”
Ellen gave me a look and continued, “Dr. Cairncross started out in anesthesiology before moving deeper into applied consciousness studies when she came to the United States.”
One of her team members, a slender young man, maybe twenty-five years old, stepped forward, right next to Dr. Cairncross and added, “Only to become the world’s leading expert on quantum neurology and consciousness.”
Her accolades were impressive, but let’s be real. They didn’t give me the certainty I needed to hand my brain over to an experiment. This wasn’t biology. I wasn’t a frog.
“Shall we?” Dr. Cairncross asked.
Reba’s warnings resounded in my head. I wasn’t moving forward with a sense that this was all safe and sound, but I trepidatiously nodded and would continue in this direction while looking out for red flags every single step of the way. Ellen put her hand up as if to say, “Let’s go.”
With Ellen on one side and me on the other, Dr. Cairncross escorted us through the colossal complex of doctors, scientists, technologists and scholars collaborating in the symphony of genius that I admired. The doctor’s team trailed behind us, all typing notes on their pads and scurrying along to keep a tight follow on their leader. Truth be told, I was terrified, but this sort of erudite arrangement mitigated my anxieties to a degree.
I kept my mouth shut out of respect for what I was witnessing, and also in order to keep my eyes and ears wide open to recieve information. We happened to retrace the steps I had taken when I came here for the Necrolla Carne vaccine upon my induction into Seneca. I realized this was about the same time in the morning that I had come back when I had seen Dom helping the man in his regenerative medicine session. As we came upon that very location, I noticed a group of scholars working on the other side of the glass wall and there was Dom!
My heartbeat jumped and I stopped in my tracks. One of Dr. Cairncross’s assistants bumped into me and dropped his pad. Everyone stopped.
“Sorry.” I picked the pad back up for him. He swiped it from my hand, annoyed, and resumed what he was doing. I looked back up at Dom, but it wasn’t Dom at all. For milliseconds my mind had played a trick on me, where I felt like I was a stone’s throw away from him but, in reality, we were countless miles apart.
My body snapped to and continued to follow the group while my heart melted into a puddle on the floor right then and there. I blinked and I was under the ice cold rapids at Difficult Run with Dom, but the muffled sounds of Dr. Cairncross talking and feet walking wouldn’t let me stay there. As we rounded a corner, my attention snapped back to the present. My hand was on the necklace Dom had given me, rubbing the moonstone to soothe my aching heart and worried mind.
A shiny white wall opened at the end of the hall and we entered what seemed like a transitional area. The wall closed back up and the eight of us stood inside a small cube-shaped room, shiny white on all sides including the floor. It was claustrophobic but I knew this moment would quickly pass. A light beamed over us and the moment it turned off, the wall opened on the other side of the room.
31
OUR GROUP, CONSISTING of Ellen, Dr. Cairncross, her assistants and myself, walked into the center of an oval laboratory that encompassed maybe five thousand square feet. The walls that encapsulated us were constructed of big, dark gray limestone bricks that they called, “Hokie Stone.” It rang modern, yet archaic, haunting in a way, and there was a chill in the air which I used to my advantage. I swallowed a shot of invigoration.
In the middle of the room there was a vessel with glowing, lightly bubbling, clear liquid inside. It was similar in size and shape to the BioNan. Maybe a bit larger, like the size of a personal flighter vehicle, upright. There was a hefty chair next to it with a screen connected to an arm— all sleek, black on black, and it sat on wheels. Instinctively, I was wary but treated this room and its contents with a calm respect, as did Ellen.
The mixture of excitement and nerves rendered me silent but I think on the outside I appeared deceivingly calm.
I was increasingly fascinated by the brain and was arriving into a greater awareness of its unparalleled complexity set off by my experience with the flex implant. These brains of ours weren’t merely some gelatinous, melon-sized gobs that made us think and instructed our bodies to move. I was on the cusp of realizing firsthand just a wild bit more of what the brain was capable of, and what we were capable of doing with it, particularly when paired with technology.
I took a moment to acknowledge that I, Doro Campbell, had been inducted into a place where the mastery of the inner-workings of the mind was underway. The notion of that grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and lifted me to my toes. I absorbed every detail in my periphery. The monitors powered up and prepped for procedure, the doctor’s assistants focused on their work. In order for me to move forward, I needed to fully recognize myself as an active participant in all of this rather than letting the cynic in me think I was simply some experimental game. I looked at each individual. These people were not here to play games. Seneca was not a game. Dr. Cairncross wasn’t some player here to brainwash or fool me. I mean, ye
ah, the thought crossed my mind more than once, but come on, who would I be fooling besides myself to believe such an elaborate set-up as this would have been created to trick me?
One of Dr. Cairncross’s assistants FlexCommanded a bench to rise from the ground. “Please sit here,” he said to Ellen and me, while keeping an eye on his pad and not sparing his gaze on us for even a second. So we sat. He then commanded another bench to rise diagonally next to us and the five assistants took a seat as well. I didn’t know each of their respective functions, but I eyed each one and wondered.
Dr. Cairncross took a seat in the sleek black tech seat and rode it right up in front of Ellen and me. It was wild— she didn’t even touch a control.
“Ms. Campbell, Ms. Malone. Welcome to the Center for Quantum Neurology and Consciousness Experimentations.”
Ellen quickly replied, “It is an honor to be here with you and your team.”
Something about being with an esteemed British doctor made me want to enunciate, “Thank you.”
With a single hand motion, Dr. Cairncross pulled up a 3D holographic orb control from the arm of her sleek black tech seat.
“This is the NeuroQuE,” Dr. Cairncross said, allowing a moment for us to absorb its unique beauty. “It is the only one of its kind in the world.”
Now the BioNan was cool, but there certainly were more than one of those. Dr. Cairncross looked to me. “This machine is much more powerful than a BioNan, which I understand you are acquainted with considering you have the flex implant.”
I nodded. “What does it do?”
“It has a wide scope of functions. The one which we will utilize today is a process that, in simple terms, deletes current memories and information in the brain and restores it with a back-up from a previous date. This restoration is not a copy of brain function, it is the data contained throughout the brain.”
The pit of my stomach growled. I suddenly appreciated my simple life of lame calculus tests back in my Culver City public school that I’d so desperately wanted to get away from.
“How is it even possible to safely manipulate memories like that?” I asked.
“Quadrillions of operations occur per second per neuron, and the NeuroQuE precisely retraces all of them from your visual cortex to amygdala and so on and so forth. Today we will restore your neurological data to where it was on, the 20th of May. Does that put the scope in perspective?”
I nodded with a straight face. “That’s some heavy-duty processing.”
Dr. Cairncross finally cracked a smile.
Still, I had to know. “So, you’re saying that as long as the bug still exists in my Veil back-ups, you’ll be able to just re-set me to that state and—”
“Not if the bug still exists. It absolutely still exists. I am looking right now, at the back-up made on 20th May,” Dr. Cairncross said with certainty.
“What?” I suddenly felt naked. Nobody could access my Veil, and she just had. “How did you access my Veil?”
Dr. Cairncross looked up from her screen. “Firstly, Miss Campbell, I can commend you on your brilliance as exhibited in the Aboves, but the range of your skills thus far may only be measured by the tools you have been given. This will change. Secondly, it is crucial to understand that privacy is a commodity in this subjective experience of ours. It can be bought and sold, it is never permanent and never guaranteed.”
I swallowed hard. Dr. Cairncross breezed right on into my Veil without blinking an eye. The bug hit me on May 20th— the day I landed in Peru and went to the outfitter in Lima. What Ellen and Senator Gilroy had said was piecing together. Someone absolutely knew I was getting close to my dad and rather than letting that happen, they distorted and manipulated my reality in an effort to deliver me into the hands of the enemy. But then Jadel showed up. It made total sense. Exactly who was responsible, though? It was clearer than ever: There was only one way to find out, and I was going to do it.
I chomped at the bit to understand the technological process before I closed my eyes and relinquished control, so I proceeded with my inquisition. “Then after we identify the culprit, you can immediately bring me back to the present version of my brain?”
“Correct,” Dr. Cairncross answered in a flash. “First, we shall make a near instantaneous deletion of all memories since the 31st of May. We will transfer the most recent, non-bug-infected copy from your Veil back in. This will include everything from speech to motor skills to language.”
“What about my memories?”
“Good question. You see, your memories are stored all throughout your brain. Through a complex system of EEG and multi-functional lasers that measure and decipher neuronal firing, the NeuroQuE will detect the patterns that make up your memories and make duplicate copies of them. Then, when you come back, to put it in simple terms, it will shock the brain and replant those specific patterns and clusters of neuronal data.”
She looked at me as if this was a walk in the park. “Okay?” she asked.
This was crazy. Or maybe it was just the new normal that life had become some techno-neurological Wild West and we were at the forefront. But I wanted to protect my memories from the gun battles. I wanted to be the one to hold them and cherish them and replant them on my own, in private.
“Who will have access to my memories? I mean, aren’t you, and this whole place, under the watch of S.O.I.L.?”
Dr. Cairncross let out a small chuckle. “Of course, we shant ever deny our interminable relationship to intelligence. But, even if anyone, myself and S.O.I.L. included, were interested in your memories, they couldn’t decipher any of it. Only your brain can decipher your memories because they are made possible by working in conjunction with every other piece of data in the history of your brain, and in my opinion there is no such technology that would make it possible for someone to tell you otherwise.”
We all sat in a beat of silence. This. Was. Heavy.
“Shall we proceed?” Dr. Cairncross asked as she reversed her chair next to the NeuroQuE. I could tell by her tone she was a bit irritated by the fact that I was questioning her, but she wasn’t the one going under, so I didn’t feel bad in the least bit.
Ellen looked to me and nodded.
I was as ready as I’d ever be, “We shall.”
I stood up. I got light headed recognizing that I was on the verge of relinquishing my own mind control here, “Wait.”
I closed my eyes. I played back all my doubts. The room spun. There was no right or wrong answer here. There was always the chance that these people were about to put me under and turn me into some cyborg, but the sum of all parts said the odds were that they were on my team and we had to keep playing the game. I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t forfeit. I focused my eyes back on the prize— revealing the deception of the Departers, bringing the greatness of Seneca discoveries to the world, and bringing my family back together.
Everyone’s attention was on me, awaiting the go ahead. I took a huge breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
One of Dr. Cairncross’ assistants stood up. “I’m Doctor’s NeuroQuE tech, Richard. I will be giving you the directives.”
The guy was as monotonous as a loaf of white bread. He clearly took his position very seriously, though, and for that I was grateful. I could be down with a loaf of bread if it kept me safe.
“It has been a pleasure,” Dr. Cairncross said with a grin. I detected under her calm and stoic demeanor that she was excited with the undertaking at hand. Before I could reply, her chair backed away as she engaged with her screen.
Another “assistant,” a thin, dirty-blond guy with a French accent stood up from the bench. “I’m Nurse Beauchemin. I’ll show you to the lab where we will get you hooked up for vitals and go over risks.”
“Great.”
We were off, but not too far. The lab happened to be in a cubicle that opened along the brick wall. There were all sorts of systems and monitors. My nerves were popping off like Mexican jumping beans.
Nurse Beauchemin h
anded me a bag that contained a set of white silicone underwear, a tube of gel and a cap. “I’ll give you some time to change and cover all of your skin in this gel, and then I will connect you to our system and you will return to Dr. Cairncross and Richard for the procedure.”
“Okay.”
“You can put all of your belongings in the bag.” He didn’t leave the room; he just turned around.
I had to spontaneously come to terms with losing not only my mental privacy here but my physical privacy, too, because in order to enter the NeuroQuE machine I had to remove all of my clothing and lather my entire body in a freezing cold gel. And I basically had to be in front of everyone half-naked. I took off the necklace that Dom had given me, knowing that I would forget that beautiful moment we’d shared when he gave it to me.
I pulled the contents from the bag. The hair cap was really interesting. I looked it over before putting my hair up into it and pulling it down around my hairline. It was filled with EEG electrodes.
Nurse Beauchemin turned around but didn’t look directly at me yet. “I will connect you now.”
He walked towards me with a bag full of white suction cups. My body tightened up and I had to remind myself to try and relax. Getting tense wouldn’t change a thing. I just had to take these moments to chill as Nurse Beauchemin attached me to a number of quarter-sized white suction cups that were electronic sensors.
“While I understand you have signed away on liabilities via Senator Malone, I do have to reiterate that with the NeuroQuE there are additional risks such as, but not limited to, OBB or out-of-body experiences, feelings of disconnectedness, memory loss, brain death or even death. Do you understand?”
I couldn’t bring myself to verbally agree to that because then it would feel too real. I just nodded, telling myself that would not, could not happen to me. On that awfully creepy note, I was instructed to return to the center of the room.