Reset

by Brian Andrews

  “I’m sorry, Beth,” he said, taking her hand and not sure what else to say.

  She looked at him and said, “I’m telling you this because something happened to me in the BRIG this morning. Something that triggered a feeling I haven’t felt since I was that lonely little girl with an alter ego living inside her head.”

  “Go on.”

  “It talked to me, Legend. That fucking thing in the BRIG talked to me inside my head, just like my sister used to do. It asked me my name.”

  “And did you tell it? Did you tell it your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “She, er, I mean the orb, said it wanted to know me.”

  A chill ran down his spine. The orb had said the same thing to him. It had been inside his head too. Coincidence? Definitely not.

  “Do you believe me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I believe you.”

  “I can see it on your face. Legend, there’s something you’re not telling me?”

  “Okay, here it is,” he said, and then let out a long slow exhale. “I’m worried that not only can it input thoughts inside people’s brains, but that it can read our thoughts as well.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “During the rescue, there was this moment when I made the decision to blast it out of the sky, but a split second before I gave the command to shoot, it disappeared and juked out of the line of fire. It was like it heard my thoughts and capitalized on the millisecond delay between when my brain made the decision and the signal was sent to my mouth and vocal cords.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Dr. Madden has a theory,” he said, lowering his voice. “That this thing can use magnetic fields to influence people’s thoughts. Apparently, the technology exists and has been used in laboratory settings to induce thoughts and physical movements in both animal and human test subjects, but nothing to the degree we’re talking about. Whatever the orb is, it’s something new and highly advanced.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The only thing I can do: send a report up the chain of command and let the big boys and girls with stars on their shoulders decide what to—” His mobile phone rang, interrupting him. “Just a second,” he said, fishing it out of his pocket. The caller ID showed the call as coming from Westfield Dynamics. “Tyree,” he said, taking the call.

  “Major, this is Cyril. I think you’re going to want to come back to the facility. There’s stuff happening you’re going to want to see.”

  “By ‘stuff,’ do you mean stuff, or do you mean stuff?” Tyree said, playing the kind of communication word games one does when discussing sensitive information on unsecure lines.

  “I mean stuff.”

  “On my way,” he said and ended the call.

  “Gotta go,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’ll be back to check on you this afternoon.” Then, after a quick look around to make certain no one was watching, he gave Beth a quick peck on the forehead. “Bye.”

  She flashed him an approving little smile. “Hey, Zelda,” she called as he got to the door. “Don’t do anything stupid, like going back in there with that thing, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me?” she said, worry lines suddenly creasing her forehead.

  He met her gaze. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER 19

  1155 Local Time

  BRIG Control Room

  Westfield Dynamics

  Culpeper, Virginia

  The control-room door flew open and slammed into the doorstop, making Malcolm jump in his chair.

  “Bring me up to speed,” said a breathless Major Tyree, striding into the control room, his gaze going immediately to the monitor bank.

  “We tried to pre-position the six-wheel rover as we discussed,” Cyril said, “but we hit a snag.”

  “It looks like the Mars rover,” Legend said, staring at the screen.

  “Very similar in design,” Malcolm said, “but this rover has two articulating arms. One is equipped with instrumentation including a multispectrum camera system, a Mössbauer spectrometer, an X-ray spectrometer, a microscopic imager, and an ultrasonic probe. The other arm is equipped with a grinder, a drill, a laser, and an articulating claw designed for sample collection and object manipulation. Our plan was to try to abrade some material from the shell of the object for compositional analysis and to date the object. Also, we were hoping to photograph the object up close in high resolution.”

  “What happened?” Legend asked, staring at the static rover on the screen.

  “When the rover got within one meter of the orb, it stopped responding to our commands.”

  “Did you retain your datalink with the rover?” Legend asked.

  “I had the datalink deactivated prior to sending the rover in,” Malcolm said. “For security reasons.”

  “Smart thinking,” the Major agreed. “So how are we controlling it?”

  “With the backup method,” Malcolm said with a smile.

  “Which is?”

  Malcolm raised a handheld remote-control radio unit that looked like a glorified RC-car controller.

  “And you’re sure that transmits reliably through the concrete walls?” Legend asked.

  “There’s a radio repeater inside the BRIG.”

  Legend nodded. “So just to confirm, Wi-Fi is still turned off?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “How do you know the rover has power?” Legend asked. “Maybe the battery is dead.”

  Malcolm pointed to one of the monitors on the control panel that showed a close-up of a status panel on the rover’s rear quarter. LED indicator lights were on, indicating a 93 percent battery charge remaining.

  “Hmm, okay,” the Major said, rubbing his chin. “So do we believe the orb is jamming your signal, overriding it, or has it hacked into the rover and taken control?”

  “It appears the object is using destructive interference to counter any commands we issue. If you watch here,” Malcolm said, picking up the remote control, “I’m going to issue a command to the right set of wheels.” He moved the right toggle stick forward. The rover jerked with a counterclockwise rotation for a millisecond before stopping. “I believe what you’re seeing is the orb’s real-time response rate. It’s monitoring for relayed command signals. Upon detection, it transmits a virtually instantaneous and perfectly calibrated countersignal. You’ll see the same reaction when I let go, terminating our signal.” When he let go of the toggle, the rover jerked back and went completely still.

  “I know this is not the data you were hoping for, Major, but this is data nonetheless,” Cyril said. “Even from its passive state inside the box, the object is exhibiting intentional strategic behavior—employing countermeasures to prevent us from learning more about it.”

  “So what the hell do we do?” Legend asked, running his fingers through his hair. “We can’t interact with it in the flesh, and we can’t interact with it via robot proxies. We need to think of a third option.”

  “I believe I mentioned a third option earlier,” Malcolm said. “We could introduce a nonhuman primate.”

  “No monkeys, Malcolm,” Cyril said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then what about rats?” he countered. “We could introduce a half dozen rats into the environment and see if the object interacts with them.”

  “What can a half dozen rats tell us?” Legend asked, his expression dubious.

  “A great deal, potentially,” Cyril said, suddenly championing the idea. “So far, six of the unwitting human test subjects who have had interactions with this thing have had grand mal seizures afterward. It would be nice to know if this pattern holds true for rats.”

  “Exactly. If all six rats fall into the trancelike state we witnessed earlier, and all six rats have seizures afterward, then we can hypothesize that trancelike state is priming the brain for synchronous firing activity,” Malcolm added.
“Major, you and I have both been within two meters of the object, but we did not experience a trancelike state, nor have we had a seizure. This may indicate that it is safe to be in the object’s presence, so long as one does not venture close enough to become ensnared in its TMS vortex . . . so to speak.”

  “We should stage magnetometry equipment inside prior to introducing the rats,” Cyril added. “If the object does indeed use TMS on the rodents, we want to be able to record data on the field type, strength, frequency, duration, and the like.”

  “How do we get the equipment inside the BRIG? I’m not going to authorize opening the blast door and sending in a fork truck,” Legend said.

  “We might have to make do with something small enough that we can shuttle it in on the back of another rover,” Cyril said.

  “Do we have another rover?” Legend asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Yes, but only one.”

  “Okay,” Legend said. “Let’s get to work.”

  The next several hours were spent locating the needed equipment, prepping the second rover, developing a safety and abort plan, and calibrating the magnetometer. When everything was in position, the entry into the BRIG was accomplished once again via the personnel-access door with an impressive entry completed in less than twenty seconds. The orb was monitored via the bird’s-eye camera during the process, and it remained passive for the duration.

  The magnetometer was too big to mount on the rover, so the decision had been made to tow it behind on a four-wheeled cart; the rover’s rear cargo deck was used to mount the rat cage. Both practical and cybersecurity concerns dictated that the magnetometer’s wired display console remain clipped to the side of the unit itself. No real-time adjustments or changes to the measurement parameters would be able to be performed, so Malcolm had had to make an educated guess about the properties of the magnetic field he thought the orb was utilizing and then adjust the instrument’s measurement parameters accordingly—an exercise he had likened to being told to calibrate a radar gun to measure pitch speed at a baseball game without knowing anything about baseball.

  When it was time to begin, Legend looked at him. “You sure you know how to drive this thing?”

  “Child’s play,” Malcolm said and winked at Cyril, but she apparently didn’t notice.

  “Commence the approach.”

  Malcolm took the joystick in hand. The six-wheeled rover jolted to life and began advancing on the orb. “Approaching the five-meter radius,” he said after thirty seconds.

  “Hold at five,” Legend directed.

  “Roger, stopping at five meters . . . and the rover is stopped.”

  “Orb reaction?” Legend asked.

  “No reaction,” Malcolm reported, checking the bird’s-eye camera and then the camera trained on the magnetometer display.

  “Advance to three-meter radius,” Legend directed.

  “Advancing to the three-meter radius,” Malcolm said. “Approaching three meters . . . The rover is stopped.”

  “Orb reaction?”

  “No reaction,” Malcolm said after checking the bird’s-eye camera and the magnetometer display.

  “Advance to one-point-five-meter radius,” Legend ordered.

  “Advancing to one-point-five meters.”

  Malcolm had chosen the one-and-a-half-meter radius because the previous rover had been incapacitated by the orb at the one-meter mark. The objective of this operation was to get as close as possible without losing control of the rover. One and a half meters was the target distance for releasing the rats and taking measurements. The control room was so quiet, Malcolm could actually hear his colleagues breathing. This was the moment of truth. Only hindsight would tell if it was the right call.

  “Crossing the two-meter radius,” Malcolm said.

  “Orb reaction?” Legend asked.

  “No reaction,” Malcolm reported, eyeing his two displays.

  “One-point-eight . . . one-point-seven . . . one-point-six . . . one-point-five meters, and the rover is stopped.”

  “Orb reaction?” Legend asked, his voice betraying his nerves ever so slightly.

  “No reaction.”

  “Execute a one-second reverse bump to validate you still have control.”

  “Copy. Executing one-second reverse bump.”

  The control room sighed in collective relief when the rover lurched backward several inches.

  “Good work,” Legend said. “Time to let the rats out of their cage.”

  Malcolm used the rover’s articulating arm to pick up the rat cage from the rear cargo deck. The cage door had been positioned facedown on the cargo deck and left open to negate the possibility that he would be unable to execute the fine motor manipulation of opening the cage door remotely. Two rats immediately fell out when the cage went into the air. The others clung to the wire mesh, waiting. Malcolm rotated the cage ninety degrees on its axis and set it on the floor.

  “No reaction from the orb,” Cyril said, staring at the monitors.

  Within sixty seconds, the remaining four rats were out of the cage and scampering over the concrete floor.

  “Maybe it doesn’t detect the rats?” Legend proposed when the orb still did nothing.

  “Possibly,” Malcolm replied, “but unlikely given the capabilities we’ve seen from it so far.”

  “Should we try to breach the one-meter barrier with this rover?” Cyril posited for the group.

  “Or we leave this rover in place and monitor the magnetometer to see if the orb generates a magnetic field,” Malcolm said.

  “We introduced two new variables, the second rover and the rats. Let’s not further antagonize it into action,” Legend said. “I’d like to wait and watch; let’s see what the orb does.” After fifteen minutes of waiting, the Major sighed and said, “Is it just me, or do either of you get the distinct feeling this thing is just fucking with us?”

  “Now that, Major, is the most interesting thing you’ve said all day,” Malcolm said as he stared at the little sphere in the box displayed on the bird’s-eye-view camera feed.

  “Excuse me?” Legend said with irritation in his voice.

  Malcolm turned to make eye contact. “What I mean by that is, What if we’ve been underestimating the orb at every step of the engagement? What if it is anticipating our moves and planning its responses accordingly?”

  “Like a chess match.”

  “Precisely, except while it has been behaving strategically, we’ve been behaving reactively. Before every move we make, we need to ask ourselves, What could the orb do to counter or obfuscate what we’re trying to accomplish?”

  “And by answering that question, we can ready our second- and third-level responses accordingly,” Cyril chimed in.

  “Precisely,” Malcolm said, meeting her gaze and smiling.

  Legend’s mobile phone rang, and he took the call. While the Major talked with his back to them, Cyril mouthed the words “Major Fischer?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  She arched her eyebrows and shot him a mischievous little grin.

  He mimicked the gesture and nodded back.

  Legend ended the call and turned around to face them both. “That was Major Fischer. She’s being discharged from the hospital along with Dixon and Harris.”

  “What’s the prognosis?” Cyril asked.

  “She has a mild concussion. But other than a headache, she says she’s feeling pretty much back to normal. Dixon also has a concussion and had a laceration that required stitches. Harris fared the best: no concussion, no stitches. He’s coming back here for debriefing, but Fischer and Dixon are going to recuperate at home the rest of the day.”

  Malcolm and Cyril both nodded. Then, after a beat, Cyril said, “I can tell you have something on your mind, Major. Spit it out.”

  “The neurologist gave Beth, er, I mean Major Fischer, a CAT scan and an EEG; both came back normal. Same with Harris and Dixon. I got a similar update when I called the doc at Walter Reed regarding Sergeant Pitcher
and Corporal Wayne; they’ve both been released on two-week convalescent leave with medical monitoring at Fort Drum. At face value, this all sounds great. We ran the right tests, checked the right boxes, but something doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “I like where your train of thought is going,” Cyril said. “Keep teasing it out.”

  Legend blew air through his teeth. “Their scans came back normal, but does that really tell the whole story? What about their state of mind? I mean, the medical community is just starting to understand the long-term impact of PTSD on the brain and mental health. Should we be worried about more subtle neurological effects that might not show up on the standard tests?”

  “Yes, I think there is reason for concern,” Cyril said, her expression turning serious. “Without a baseline CT and EEG to compare to, the tests are only as informative as the neurologist reading them can deduce from comparing them to a generic baseline. And you’re right, there could be changes in their brains that a CT scan and EEG are not sensitive enough to detect. These might not even be the right tests. So yes, Major, your line of reasoning is spot-on. We cannot and should not presume that they are—what’s the military expression—five by five?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” Legend said with a grin, but it quickly evaporated. “So what do I do? Do I force them all to Walter Reed for more tests and keep them checked in and under observation until we understand what’s going on? Do I confine them to quarters at the Holiday Inn Express here in Culpeper and monitor them ourselves? There’s no simple solution. What do you think, Malcolm? What would you do?”

  Malcolm already knew what he would do. He would throw the lot back in the BRIG, lock the door, and watch what happened; that’s what he would do. But he didn’t dare say this, even in jest. So instead he said, “The lengthy postictal states following the seizures are unusual, but seizures are not catching. What I mean by this is that quarantine protocols are not required because we’re not dealing with a contagion. Worst-case scenario, their neural pathways and architecture have been permanently influenced on an individual basis. The threat is to their mental acuity, judgment, stability, etcetera. So provided they are not driving or making decisions that jeopardize the lives and safety of others, I don’t see how letting them convalesce at home is a problem. I would recommend morning and afternoon check-ins with each of them for the next few days. If they develop full-blown epilepsy, then medication might be required.”