Controller

by Stephen W Bennett

  “They held off assaults on the Sky Box by crazed and controlled fans, the stadium police, and some of the security detail on outside door guard duty until the infiltrator ceased broadcasting commands, and apparently escaped.”

  “We’ll soon have videotapes of the events at the stadium, and we’ll also evaluate what went wrong with their protective methods and what parts worked. We may have to adjust our procedures accordingly. That was the first large-scale and real-world use of such suits by a security detail with real government leaders involved in a psych attack.”

  “Boss,” it was Hector. “How small is that stadium? A stadium-wide riot overwhelmed several Sky Boxes? That sounds like a lot of people were involved, spread over a wide radius.”

  “There’s the crux of the reason for the recall to Washington. Per the report, perhaps seventy thousand people were involved. Sixty-six thousand seven hundred people were inside the stadium, and some unknown number of people just outside the stadium became involved.”

  Mike Gorka looked amazed. “How many damned Compellers did you say were there? I don’t think all of us combined could Compell that many people in a large stadium. And you said they all became extremely violent, without resisting, as many people would do if we Compelled them to violence?”

  “Yes. Murderously aggressive. Tens of thousands of them acted that way. Think, if something like that hit our House of Representatives or Senate, and they turned on each other. We’re going to need a lot more Faraday suits than for the handful of people we protect now. One for every government official needing protection from mass control, and for their Secret Service agents and the Capitol Police. The politicians will need to know why they have them, and how to pull them on and close them as quickly as possible. The existence of the BII may not remain very secret after this week.

  “The Tin Man suits may need modification if it takes too long to dress those we protect. We might need to switch to a larger foil bag or tent that one or more people can step inside, which might be faster than inserting arms, legs, and heads into the suits, one person at a time. There may need to be armed security people dressed in the foil suits at all times, or else the armed police and Secret Service can become the greatest hazards.”

  “Crap. The suits are hot as Hell. I want mine air cooled,” James complained.

  Grayson was playing catch up. “Why do BII agents need the insulated suits at all?”

  Brogan smiled, “We Immunes don’t. Compellers do. They aren’t immune to thoughts being inserted into their minds to distract them or trick them into using their weapons for the wrong reason on the wrong people. That’s what could have happened in Seoul if an armed South Korean Compeller was in that Sky Box. He’d be as potentially dangerous as the other armed members of the detail.”

  The scale of the stadium attack didn’t make sense to Grayson. “You said North Korea might only have two or three Compellers born from their entire population. Your sniper killed one of them over here. Do you think they solved the genetic insert problem to create more of them?”

  “God, I hope not. But the intercept of the South Korean Immune’s transmission to the security detail sounded certain there was only one Compeller involved. I think North Korea may have done something worse, and probably easier to do than gene insertion and activation.”

  “Which is?”

  “A psych ability amplifier that broadcasts the mental commands of a Compeller, increasing their power and range. I wonder what a man like Stiles could do with that technology, the first person we’ve placed in the new Controller class of psych ability.”

  “Oh. Damn.”

  “Indeed. This attack was a very close thing for the people protecting those political leaders. That small security detail couldn’t have held off more than sixty-six thousand rabid attackers for very long. Apparently, the perpetrator didn’t know which Sky Box to order the people being controlled to attack, and he may not have known if any government representatives were at the game. They didn’t publicize their attendance and were guests in one of 75 private Sky Boxes; a longer report I skimmed says the box is corporate owned and had a capacity of 20 people. That may be why the Compeller targeted all the boxes in general, to kill any influential people inside. The mob breached several boxes, and people inside them died, although the people in the boxes were already fighting with one another.”

  Dalia asked, “Richard, how are we supposed to find out if this was a technological breakthrough like you suspect? I doubt the SK government wants us sticking our noses into their security business. None of our other allied governments do, outside of the UK and Israel, with whom we’ve shared psych information.”

  “I said we would have stadium video soon. We’re not going to request that from them officially because they might say no. They don’t trust our loose-lipped president to stay quiet about this incident. Thanks to my former CIA connections, I made a call to the director while I waited for our plane to taxi over to the terminal. The stadium cameras are probably on a network since selected public pictures get sent to the stadium JumboTron and provided for commercial TV coverage. I asked the director to set our CIA snoop hounds loose to download everything they can find around and inside that stadium.

  “Some of you will spend time with CIA analysts looking at the recordings, to try to identify the Compeller in the crowd. We sort of know what to look for but they don’t know what a Compeller is, and we aren’t authorized to tell them yet.

  “He, or she, had to be somewhere centrally located to involve the entire stadium. And that may mean they were on the field or its sidelines. That places them at the approximate center of influence.”

  After a few more questions, Brogan let the other agents move away to talk among themselves, but asked Grayson to remain. “We obtained some of Stiles DNA from his house and compelled his employees to forget we were there. He does have two active copies of the Compeller version, making him stronger than a Compeller, and thus a Controller, since I decided to use his description of his stronger ability. He has no copies of the Immune gene.”

  “I don’t get it.” Grayson pondered. “If ordinary people don’t have the genes and no brain organ, why are they sensitive to being controlled?”

  “A person’s entire nervous system acts as the body’s antenna, as it were. You and I and Compellers radiate a blank and unmodulated signal all the time when awake. A Compeller has a genetic variation that can modulate the signal with their thoughts if they deliberately attempt to direct thoughts to an individual or a group of people. An Immune’s brain organ somehow disconnects and isolates the incoming signal from entering our minds as if they were our thoughts, so they can’t influence us even though we know they tried. The Compeller gene doesn’t do that in their brain organ, so another Compeller can influence them using their same ability. Stiles, who is stronger, could Control them. It appears this person in Seoul also Controlled thousands of people.”

  “What happens to the signal you said we Immunes send?”

  “Nothing apparently. It’s always unmodulated. It seems to be like the white noise in a TV or radio carrier signal that carries no information. You and I have a missing genetic component that is present in the sender version of the gene. It’s what we want everyone to have if we’re ever to free humanity from being involuntarily controlled by those with the Compeller gene version.

  “We suspect some of the greatest despots in history were unrecognized Compellers, able to create a close circle of dedicated followers. Perhaps some of their strongest opposition was Immunes, but because they can’t control outside forces to oppose the leaders, we don’t know.”

  “Sir, I also heard you call the insulating Tin Man gear Faraday suits. What’s that mean?”

  “I asked the same question when I heard the term. Our scientist named the shielding suits after an English scientist, who discovered that an enclosure surrounded by conductive material or mesh would block electromagnetic fields. The translucent faceplate of the suits also has a metalized
coating, to prevent a Compeller’s mind control signal from passing through.

  “It’s amusing, but the crazy people we’ve heard about who wear tin foil hats to block mind reading or mental control were partly right. I’ve had the DNA of some of those people tested, and thus far they all seem to be paranoid mental cases and not unidentified Immunes. Simply covering their heads won’t prevent reception over the remainder of their bodies anyway.”

  The flight to Joint Base Andrews was under two hours, and Grayson listened raptly for most of that time to real-world examples of the threats that free societies were being exposed to since psych ability was recently recognized. Nations with large populations had the advantage of more carriers of the genes, and also the vast task of finding the citizens with the abilities. Authoritarian governments ordered most of their Compellers to leave the homeland, paid them, or forced them by threatening their families to exert an influence on governments the dictator opposed.

  Immunes became everyone’s warning system, like canaries in a coal mine, sensing outside influences on their government leaders. But Immunes could also act, and they carried guns.

  Brogan offered a cautionary warning, “Technology may have suddenly expanded the risk to the free will of every human on the planet. So remember this Dan. A nominally friendly person under strong control can kill an Immune while you’re busy exercising your free will. Watch your ass.”

  ****

  The CIA Deputy Executive Director met the C-17 after it landed at Andrews. He and Brogan knew one another by sight. Two other men were with him, who looked less officious and proved to be from two CIA directorates, there to serve as liaisons with the BII agents. One, Mitch Ballard, was from Analysis, and Thomas Bacon was from the Science and Technology Directorate.

  Brogan parted company, leaving his five agents with the two liaisons to travel by helicopter to CIA headquarters in Langly, Virginia. Brogan said he was attending a meeting of the National Security Council at the White House.

  He paused a minute with Grayson, who appeared to feel out of place. “Just follow the examples of your fellow agents. They each were new to this life six months to a year ago before I recruited them. I think only Hector has ever been to Langly. By comparison, the BII has been secret enough that this is my first meeting with the entire NSC. I think our true nature is about to be revealed to the Intelligence Community, and to the senior national security advisors and the Cabinet. I may be awhile.

  “As a former detective, use your instincts to see if you can spot the Compeller in that stadium crowd. We need to find out how he did what he did. Call your wife on the chopper flight and let her know you arrived safely, but not what you’re doing. OK?”

  “Yes, Sir. I’ll pretend I know what I’m doing.”

  “Good. Me too.” And he walked towards another of the ubiquitous black government SUVs waiting on the ramp.

  ****

  The BII agents were escorted through a side entrance to an elevator and walked a few corridors until they reached a secured door, where Ballard used his card and retinal scan to admit the group. Next, they showed their IDs to a uniformed guard, signed a log, and received visitor passes with restricted access to a specific area.

  Soon, the five BII agents were divided up with other analysists sitting at video terminals, which already were playing images that appeared to be from inside the stadium. Ballard paired off with Grayson and led him to a console where there were three screens with images frozen.

  “I had just started watching these before I was told to hop over to Andrews to pick up some BII agents. I’ll admit, I asked who the Hell is the BII? My boss told me I couldn't ask. I presume you can’t tell me either.”

  “Nope. But I wasn’t told I couldn’t tell anyone that I’ve been in the BII less than twenty-four hours. That means I couldn’t tell you much even if I was allowed.”

  Ballard looked at the tall, muscled and well-dressed man, then glanced down at the rumpled casual clothes he was wearing, and said, “You look like what I’d think of when they said you were agents. More so than the other four with you, if I’m not speaking out of turn.”

  “Don’t worry. None of them were agents either, not so long ago.”

  He only raised his eyebrows, and then asked, “Do you know what we’re supposed to be looking for in these images? I skipped ahead and saw some of the rioting and mayhem, then backed up and paused shortly before the trouble began. According to what I was told, a penalty on the field started the riot. Are we looking for instigators spotted around in the crowds?”

  “An instigator, not plural, I think only one.”

  “Out of that entire stadium? Must be fifty thousand people.”

  “Over sixty-six thousand.”

  “This is going to be a long day. Everyone in that stadium went nuts. It started gradually, but in minutes they were killing one another, from out on the field, up to the nosebleed seats. Even people in one of the parking lots. Unless they had a TV or were live streaming, I don’t know how they knew about the penalty. They rammed their cars into other vehicles or hit people on foot. How could you get so emotionally involved in what’s just a damned game?”

  Grayson said, “Can you show me the parking lot where they fought?”

  “Sure. But the stadium coverage doesn’t have close-up shots good enough to ID an individual. The people starting the riot must be inside anyway.”

  “Person, not people, and they were in the stadium, but perhaps not in the middle. Do you have images from all around the outside at the height of the riot?”

  “I think so. We haven’t had time to organize the cameras in zones yet. We simply downloaded copies of everything they recorded. Let me select the time hack, and step through still frames of all the cameras.”

  Ballard made notes each time he found a camera that showed an outside view, using the camera log registered in the bottom right corner of each screen, as he stepped through over a hundred cameras. The inside views were frozen images of people caught in a murderous rage, tearing at clothes and even biting one another, men using shoes to hit women in the face, umbrella tips used to stab people in the back, ripped off plastic seats used to batter other fans.

  “OK,” he finally said. “There aren’t as many parking lot cameras, but some are out in the lots, others are on the stadium walls.”

  “Just show me those placed on the stadium walls that cover the parking areas, so we can see if there are signs of trouble on the various sides.”

  Ballard seemed ready to question what value the images of the outside would be to help find where the riot started inside, but he went along with the request.

  It was quickly apparent that one side of the stadium was a sea of tranquility. Two sides, closest to the goal ends, were partially involved, but opposite the calm side, cars were ramming one another nearly halfway to the outer edge of the parking area. People walking by were looking on in apparent confusion at the demolition derby happening closer to the stadium.

  “Mitch, see if the Sky Boxes inside the stadium on the side away from that parking lot are under attack at this time.”

  “Sure.”

  In a moment, Ballard uttered a, “Huh.”

  Grayson, seeing the imaged said, “The rioting only extended a few rows up on the second level seats over the roof of the Sky Boxes.” All of the boxes formed the front of the second level.

  “Can you estimate the distance from the front of those Sky Boxes to the middle of the parking lot on the other side, where the car wars were happening? If we find the halfway point between those two extremes, that will be inside the stadium. Near that spot is where we need to look for the instigator.” He’d almost said Compeller.

  Ballard worked his magic on the keyboard and using an aerial view photo of the stadium on his screen, pointed to a place on the partially open dome roof. “The rows of seats under the roof where my finger points would be about the midpoint from those boxes to the center of the parking lot. That’s also on the extended midfield
line from the playing field.”

  Ballard was a quick thinker. “You’re looking for a geometrical center of the riot. Why?”

  “Because that’s where our guy will be. At that center. And I guess that as with the eye of a cyclone, there will be a spot of relative calm around him.”

  Ballard called up a seating chart and then cross-checked that with the surveillance camera stations someone else had finished correlating for organizing the video search.

  “I have overlapping images from several cameras of all the blocks of seats near that spot. Want to step through them?”

  “Yes.”

  It took only two angles before Ballard said “Son of a bitch.”

  “I see him too,” Grayson told him. “Not fighting with anyone, standing all alone where a horizontal lane around the stadium and a line of steps intersect. He’s in the open and looking around.”

  Ballard checked the seating chart on another monitor. “He was on the lower level, in the lane just above two VIP seating areas, where the steps split them in half. He’s standing still, arms folded. As you said, I think he was just looking around.”

  “Can you rewind the pictures from those cameras back to just before the official called the penalty?”

  “Sure. And I’ll place all three camera angles that cover that spot on each of my monitors. You want it in slow motion or real-time?”

  “Real-time for the first pass.”

  At the start, the man wasn’t visible on any of the views, but he came into the frame from along a wider walkway above the VIP seating, just after the yellow card for the foul stirred protests. There was no audio track on these tapes, but the hands cupped around mouths, and fans standing demonstrated their displeasure at the penalty. The stranger, who looked to be a male, had puffy black hair that almost resembled an afro, not a style many Koreans had ever worn.