by Morgan Bell
The young man smiled. “I did as you asked. I tested the entrainment code.”
“What entrainment code?” Dr. Gottfried asked.
“Doctor, don’t pretend not to know. It’s the same code that you fed into the brain of every one of your patients since you arrived here. It’s the direct access code you’ve been trying to perfect.” The young man turned and crossed his legs.
“How did you ‘test’ the code?”
“Remember the problem you kept running into? How the neural resistance in the higher centers caused a slow deterioration of cognitive function? I simply reworked it and determined that an accelerated deterioration was preferable for the establishment of a permanent underclass,” the young man said.
“You caused rapid brain death,” the doctor told him, his voice, for the first time, sounding distressed.
“They’re not brain dead. I mean, they are and they aren’t. They still walk. They still talk.”
“They have no pulse!” the doctor pointed out.
The young man smiled. “Lower energy state. Only intermittent need for a heartbeat.”
“But how did you deliver the entrainment?”
“Doc, have I got a message for you,” the young man smiled broadly. The image froze.
Another addendum came up, a report. The report indicated that med tech victims persisted with outward signs of function for over 900 days. A final note showed a transfer of the study findings to Cyber Warfare Base.
“One of the kids they were researching killed four med techs. He did it using an entrainment. It caused rapid brain death. But here is the thing; the four dead med techs were kept in an isolation ward after the insurance payouts to their families. The notes say they persisted with outside signs of activity for over 900 days, then the whole project got shipped to Cyber Warfare,” Jamie said.
“How does that help us?”
“Dr. Gottfried did the interviews on the incidents and was the one who sealed the records. It looks like he followed the research to his current post with Cyber Warfare. It also means that whatever this virus is, it was developed using the tech we took with us out of the hospital.”
“Ok, great news, Doc. Now what?” Blaise asked, sarcastically.
“If we can dump out the code, print out the messages and I can figure out these parameters, Fenwick and I could crack the code.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Fenwick remarked.
“Get us somewhere that we can work on this, then we can knock out the ifs.”
“We can get a plan together once we get to where we are going,” Blaise said.
“And where is that?”
“The mall. Next stop, Big Beaver!”
∞
The People’s NAFTA Friendship Plaza, (formerly the Sommerset Collection Mall at Big Beaver) was like many post confiscation and federalized facilities in Michigan. The two enormous buildings that stood either side of the Big Beaver were bridged by a walkway, with the ancient people conveyors the original designers had installed. The smaller of the two buildings had, for a time, been converted to federal offices for the Federal Reorganization Authority. Most of these had been returned to commercial lease spaces that were now home to expensive shops, selling luxury items to the federal officers who oversaw the regulated industry that the federal government had installed in Michigan’s “commerce corridor.”
There were a few “entrepreneurs” of the now microscopic “free enterprise” entities that continued to persist, despite the federal crackdown. Most of them, however, did not frequent this section of the mall, because buying an embroidered cloth, or a reproduction pen, at one of these stores, could result in an audit and confiscation of your business if an envious federal officer determined your earnings ratio was out of line with federal guidelines. For that reason, most citizen shoppers confined themselves to the larger building, window shopping and the food court.
Blaise waved his badge when they reached the parking garage and was directed to the HDMP parking spots near the second floor entrance. An HDMP officer, who was standing guard at the entrance of the mall, scanning citizens’ passes, region data and purchases, stepped away from his post to challenge them.
“You can’t park those vehicles there,” he said, bringing his weapon up.
Blaise put his gun in the young officer’s face and barked, “Do I have your attention?”
The officer nodded his head.
“Can you read?”
The officer nodded his head a little less. Blaise held up the badge. The officer inspected it.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry sir,” the HDMP officer sputtered, lowering his weapon.
Blaise holstered his weapon. “Your commanding officer directed us to park here.”
“We got no notices,” the young man said.
Blaise looked at him. He was all of twenty years old, a beef faced kid, whose pale white cheeks were streaked crimson. “Have you had any violent episodes at this facility?” he asked.
“Violent?”
“We had three officers disarmed, killed and a dozen other casualties from just those three incidents in the last twenty-four hours.”
“No, sir. I hadn’t heard about…”
“Where is the substation?” Blaise asked.
“The what?”
“Substation, local HDMP substation. You do know what you are doing here, don’t you?”
“Our station is on the first floor, across from the pizza place,” the kid told him.
Blaise smiled. “The pizza any good down there?”
The officer looked trapped. “I’ve heard.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t bullshit me, they send over a pie, once a shift. That’s just bennies when you’re stuck with this assignment.”
The officer looked shifty. “Their Pad Thai Chicken pizza is good, I hear.”
Blaise got out of the Mustang. “Two things. One, you pass it along to every HDMP officer in the mall to be on the lookout for any citizens or officers that start acting strangely.”
“Strangely?”
“You’ll know it when you see it. If they can take them alive, bring them down to the first floor. We will need them. But do not look at, read or otherwise handle any tech they have on them. You isolate the tech and we will send someone up to get it,” Blaise said.
“What’s the other thing, sir?” the HDMP officer asked.
“What’s your name?”
“Chad, Chad Pollick.”
“Well, Chad, Chad Pollick. When you get a break, you go on down and tell the pizza place we’ll be wanting three Pad Thai Chicken pizzas,” Blaise ordered.
Fenwick cleared his throat.
“Oh, and one large quattro formaggi pizza,” Blaise added.
“Um…” Chad stammered.
“I know, not part of the bennies. Tell them we will pay. I’ll give you credit transfers to cover it. Any problems, contact HDMP command and tell them Captain Jericho Blaise asked for it,” Blaise said.
“Yes, sir.”
Fenwick, Baxter, Ganos and Drake got out of the cars and started unloading their gear. Chad watched as they brought out large weapons, the panels and the entrainment harness.
“Have you got a medic bay in the station?” Jamie asked the officer.
“We’ve got a full medic bay and we are five blocks from the Healthcare Campus.” Chad informed him.
“Thanks,” Jamie said, and followed the team into the building.
At the door they were met by another HDMP guard who waved them in after Blaise waved his badge. There were ancient escalators on either side of the entrance leading up and down. To their left was an elevator.
“Taking the elevator?” Fenwick asked.
“Negative.”
“Less conspicuous,” Fenwick observed.
“Great place to get trapped,” Blaise answered, and pointed to a door.
“More stairs,” Drake said.
“Yep, but we are goi
ng down.”
CHAPTER 16
NAFTA FRIENDSHIP PLAZA HDMP SUBSTATION
The HDMP substation – whose designation as a “sub” station had been obscured by the theft of the letters that spelled out “sub” – was in a corner near the first floor entrance. HDMP officers who were on break or were done with their shifts were milling around talking outside the entrance. Blaise went past them to the screening entrance and placed his badge on a pad, then submitted to the retinal scan. A panel illuminated and the face of an older officer, with short cropped hair and a salt and pepper mustache appeared on the screen.
“Captain Blaise, what can I do for you?” he asked.
“We are checking in. We will be using the data office,” Blaise informed him.
“Just a second,” the man said.
There was a buzz and the door opened.
“Welcome,” the old man greeted them, coming from around the desk. “I’m Sergeant Wolinski. Let me show you to the data office.”
“Much obliged,” Blaise said.
“We’ve got standard port access, trunk and federal,” Sergeant Wolinski said, ushering them into an antiquated data room.
Fenwick frowned.
“Something wrong?” the sergeant asked.
“I kinda figured you’d have the newer panels,” Fenwick said, sitting down at a data station.
“Budget issues. We’re commercial activity monitoring out here. So our substation is budgeted under the FDA food inspection budget.”
“Really?”
“Yup. One arrest for petty theft or one transaction violation interception is re-categorized as one chicken sampling per 100,000 for salmonella check under the federal temporary continuing operational budget. This is what they give us,” Sergeant Wolinski explained. “And they send us fifty pairs of latex gloves and 100 hairnets per month.
“What do you do with those?” Rosen asked.
“The gloves we can use for old school inspections,” Wolinski said.
“And the hairnets?” Rosen asked.
“A couple of the boys have been using those as cheese cloths.”
“Cheese cloths?” Jamie asked.
Wolinski’s mouth twisted a little as he was considering what to say.
“Most of the officers assigned to commerce are from the rural counties; farm boys. They use their commissary rations and credits to pick up things you and me wouldn’t know what to do with. Their headcheese is pretty good, if you’re hungry, and they make a very good soft cheese. Last month a couple of deer wandered into traffic down at Corporate and Big Beaver. Killed three motorists. Totaled seven e-cars. Couple of the boys lit on out of here on their breaks and got down there ahead of federal sanitations. We had venison chili every night for a week and they did up ten logs of summer sausage.”
“Sounds like you eat well here,” Blaise observed. “But we need tech access.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll have one of the boys run down to the other side of the mall and get you a terminal access,” Wolinski said.
“Is there another substation over there?” Ganos asked.
“Nah, Cutting Tech Store, we will just send a commandeering notice if they won’t lend it,” Wolinski smiled.
“Bennies,” Blaise smiled back.
“I don’t mind telling you, after being on street supervision for fifteen years I wasn’t too pleased to be sent over here. But this is the first time I got to watch the entire world’s cup uninterrupted. We used to have to raid houses in the federal officers’ district if we wanted to watch the games,” Wolinski said.
“If we could have that terminal access, that would be great. Oh and I’ve left a couple of cars parked in the HDMP spaces on the second floor, if you could have someone make sure no one tows them or disturbs them.”
“Cars? You mean e-cars.”
“No, cars. A 1965 red Mustang and a 1940’s armored sedan,” Blaise grinned.
“You’re shitting me!”
“No,” Blaise said.
“I haven’t seen a Mustang since I was in grade school and we did a field trip to the museum over in old Dearborn.”
“Probably is the same one. Commandeered.”
“Would you mind if I went up and…sat in it?” Wolinski asked.
Blaise tossed him the keys. “Knock yourself out. Take pictures if you like.”
Wolinski was momentarily speechless. “You’ll have your terminal in ten minutes.”
The sergeant rushed out of the data room.
“Why’d you do that?” Jamie asked.
Blaise shrugged. “We’re going to have to ditch those cars. It buys us some good will and who am I to deny a fellow Mustang fan a once in a lifetime experience.”
∞
Ten minutes later Fenwick did not have a terminal interface. Instead, he had the full array of Cutting Tech’s latest “no profile” interface equipment.
“We emptied out the display window because we weren’t sure what you wouldn’t need,” Chad and another officer said, setting out their procurements.
“This will do,” Fenwick grinned a manic grin.
“Your pizzas will be over in about twenty minutes,” Chad advised, and he and the other officer left.
“Magic time,” Fenwick said, and lit up the interface array.
“What do we have on the black copter they left the hospital with?” Blaise asked.
“Give me just a second. There you are. They made an emergency landing in downtown Detroit. I’ve got recordings, here.”
The images displayed on the panel showed a helicopter, pitching and moving erratically above the buildings and then coming to land on a flat top building. Five people left the copter, all in HDMP issue uniforms and wearing balaclavas. One of them was leaning heavily on another and had to stop. Another ran back and helped to raise the injured one up and get them off the roof top, and the helicopter exploded.
“They landed at a healthcare campus,” Fenwick said.
“Ok, so we know they’re still alive,” Blaise pointed out.
“I’m checking admissions.”
“You can check, but they’ll have wiped them,” Blaise stated.
“That is affirmative. No one received treatment in that facility in the last three days and…wait for it; all street level surveillance was shut down or wiped. So no exit images, no direction and no other information,” Fenwick agreed.
“Have you gotten any secured lines we can use?” Agent Drake asked.
“I’ve got a couple. Who would you like to reach?”
“I’d like to know where we stand with KVB activity and possibly report in to the FBI,” Drake said.
“KVB activity reports all come from Cyber Warfare at this point. Do we want to be in contact?” Fenwick asked Blaise.
Blaise shook his head. “Hack Cyber Warfare and get the data. Do not open any official channels. We are out in the wilderness and we don’t know who our friends are. Until we can contain or eliminate this cell, we are going to limit our communications.”
“Yes, captain,” Fenwick said.
“Ganos, Drake, maybe you two can help Baxter. He’s over in the medic bay working on something.”
∞
“These all read like they’re from my sister or my ex,” Jamie muttered as he read the messages that were streaming on the panel.
There was a knock at the door.
“Don’t come in! Give me a second!” he called out, scrambling to shut down the panel.
The door opened. “Catch you alone with some lotion in a private moment?” Drake asked.
“No. I was streaming KV messages to the panel,” Jamie said.
“Shit, you should have the door locked if you’re going to do that,” Drake said, averting his eyes from the panel.
“It’s all right, I shut it down. What are you doing here?”
“Blaise sent us over to help you,” Agent Ganos told him.
“I really need Fenwick.”
“Well, you really have us,” Drake said, �
��so what can we do?”
Jamie sighed and looked around the medic bay. “Ok, tell you what. I’m going to hard copy the messages so that they will be safe for the two of you to handle. Then I’m going to hard copy the Cronus parameters. I think whatever the current virus is, it is a version of the original Cronus project, and one of the subjects modified it.”
“Modified it, how?” Agent Ganos asked.
“You see that harness? It’s called a cephalic entrainment unit. It’s supposed to induce certain brainwave states that allow for the alteration of behavior. Cronus was about accessing the brain through the visual cortex and delivering a series of entrainment instructions. The original program, the one Locum, Wickham and Gottfried developed, caused a slow, degenerative brain death. Those test subjects actually died with the brain death. One of their subjects who survived the tests figured out what they were doing. He changed the parameters and developed a delivery system that didn’t involve the cephalic harness with the visual field coordinator. He did it in a way that Dr. Gottfried didn’t understand at the time. But in the interview, he said something that suggests he had already done the first data tech transmission. He said, ‘I’ve got a message for you.’ So what I’m trying to do is figure out the current parameters in the data tech transmissions, and find any data that shows what exactly is being transmitted. The message in hard copy doesn’t cause any damage. So that suggests there is something in the tech delivery that must be using some or all of the original parameters.”
“Yeah, sounds like you need Fenwick,” Drake suggested.
“No, we can at least get started,” Ganos said. “What do you have on the message side?”
“I have a couple ‘fuck you if you don’t get me’ long form messages sent among family members. I have about a dozen ‘with all due respect, you’re an asshole, and I don’t see why you’re not responding to my messages’ and ten ‘you fucked up my life and I hate you, why haven’t you called me?’ messages,” Jamie said.
“Any ‘where is the child support, it’s ten minutes late you asshole, you call yourself a father, your kids are being adopted by my boyfriend and changing their last name’?” Drake asked.
“Hundreds. But I’ve had to put them aside because I can’t figure out which of those are KV messages and which of those are just the average angry ex. Why?”