There it was. She could see the bloody outline of the implant. She traced its contour with the forceps. It looked intact.
There has to be something there. She glanced back at Sarah, who watched her from a distance.
Julia traced the contour of the implant with a probe to search for fractures in the shielded housing, weak spots. She found nothing. There were so many components on the chip. A small integrated circuit? It could be anything.
She remembered what Chang had said about needing to take it out. She looked back to her patient. Ian’s expression was blank. She had to find a way to repair it for Ian’s sake - they were going to take it out one way or another.
She traced the delicate wires emerging from the tip, then felt something give under the slight pressure of her probe. She doubled back, felt it again.
Of course. She should have thought of that first. The most basic principle of electronics. Components almost always fail at switches or connectors. The wires fed into a microarray of pins that snapped into a housing along the edge of the chip. It was loose. The impact must have severed the connection, and the wire array probably gradually worked itself out of the housing.
Julia rummaged through the tray. She needed a microscope, at least a magnifier. There were thousands of channels in each array. The components had to fit together perfectly. Ian was lucky. If he had walked by something with enough alternating current it could have triggered seizures.
Perfect wasn’t likely to happen. Not here. Especially if the component was bent. Julia meticulously cleaned the contacts with tiny droplets of sterile saline. She blinked her eyes to clear them of sweat. Her hands performed over and over the tedious small movements. She hooked the probe under the implant to stabilize it, then turned to the tray.
She found a small glass tuberculin syringe and using the scalpel as a wedge, she tapped the back of it with a retractor. The syringe severed cleanly.
Julia held a piece of the syringe to the light. Perfect. Then she held the makeshift lens over the incision and secured it in place with a hemostat. She found the tiny black line on the housing, a fraction of a millimeter wide, and lined it up with the matching line on the wire assembly. Meticulously, with movements so small she could only see them through the lens, she slid the assembly back into the housing until it was fully seated. She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed.
Her fingers ached. She stretched them out and clenched her fists. Then she removed the probe from under the implant and let it slide back under the muscle. She clasped her bloodied hands together as a reminder to keep them sterile, and walked back to Sarah.
“I think I’ve got it. The wires detached from the chip, but I was able to reconnect them. If that’s not it, there’s nothing more I can do here.”
Sarah’s face brightened. “How can we test it?”
“I’m on it,” Chang said. His laptop was already open. “When the wires are detached, it trips an auto shutoff on the chip. Give me a sec to reset the chip.”
Julia turned back to Ian, put on a fresh pair of sterile gloves, and sutured the wound. She had just finished cleaning the wound when she heard Chang and Markov talking in a low voice.
“It’s working.” Chang grinned, watching diagnostics on the computer screen. “She did it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Julia felt triumphant. She had nailed it, and couldn’t keep herself from smiling. Never mind impressing Sarah, she especially loved showing up Markov and Chang. There was nothing like a well-executed surgery to lift her spirits. That she’d succeeded under substandard conditions made her feel all the better. Sarah didn’t seem to notice when Julia walked up. She was studying Chang’s computer screen over his shoulder. Julia wiped her forehead with her forearm and crowded in next to the others.
“So how do we retrieve the data?” Sarah asked.
Chang didn’t look up from the screen. “Once the diagnostics run, I send a command to the implant to switch to replay mode.”
“So you just rewind a few days and push play?” Sarah asked.
At that question, Chang turned around. “If you’re expecting high definition video feed out of this box, you’re going to be disappointed. There’s a lot of data in there. It’s going to take a few minutes to download, even with a fast wireless connection.” A window opened on the computer and Chang turned his head back to read the diagnostic results.
“And then we can watch it?” Sarah asked.
Julia said, “It’s not quite that simple. The data is stored as tens of thousands of traces. Each one shows the electrical activity in a region of the brain that’s smaller than a millimeter in size.”
Sarah turned to Julia as Chang typed. “So it’s like an EEG? It measures brain waves?” Julia could tell that Markov was listening too. She’d always thought that for someone so involved in the project, Markov had been resistant to spending the time to understand how the implants actually worked.
“Sort of,” Julia answered. “Only at much higher resolution. Even the best EEG recordings measure activity from brain areas the size of a quarter. In an area that size there are tens of millions of brain cells. To figure out what all those cells are doing would be like taking a hot air balloon ride over a football stadium and listening to the crowd. You can hear a roar whenever there’s a touchdown or an interception, but you’ll never pick up the individual conversations.”
“Sports metaphor?” Sarah asked.
“When in Rome,” Julia said with a smile.
“Downloading now,” Chang said.
Julia glanced at the computer to see another window open with a progress bar slowly moving across the screen. She turned her attention back to Sarah and Markov. “Anyway, recording from thousands of tiny electrodes right on the surface of the brain is like having a spy in each section of the stadium. He can pick up individual conversations, get a feel for what’s being discussed. Find out if there was cheering or booing in each area. When you look at the data from all of those spies, you can piece together an awful lot about what the crowd is thinking and experiencing. Put together the whole football game, if you will.”
Sarah paused to think for a minute. “So we just need to find which channels record sound and video and analyze those traces?”
“That’s actually not too far off for video. We have about a thousand electrodes in the primary visual cortex. That’s the part of the brain where vision is first processed. Visual information is stored in at least thirty areas in the brain, each processing a different feature, but that first area behaves like a camera, and each tiny cluster of cells processes information coming from the eye about a specific part of visual space. Think of it as a 100 by 100 grid that works kind of like a low resolution TV monitor.”
“So we can see what he sees?”
Chang put his hands behind his head and leaned back to look at Sarah upside down. “Actually the idea that we can see a picture is a myth. The eyes are constantly moving, analyzing different features of an image. Information about movement, color, texture, context. They’re all processed in different areas of the brain. There is no one spot in the brain where the entire picture is represented.”
“Then what we’ll be able to see is a low resolution feed of where Ian is looking. Like a grainy video?”
“Right,” Chang said. “Think of one of those annoying, jerky art films, where the camera never sits still. Now look at that picture reflected through a mirror at the fun house.”
“Almost all of the visual part of the brain is devoted to a tiny area in the center of the visual field,” Julia added. “Peripheral vision occupies a few pixels at the edge, so to speak. But it’s adequate. We can even read text through the subject’s eyes if he reads slowly enough and focuses on each letter.”
“Not that they ever do,” Chang said with a measure of disgust. “Field agents apparently can’t be bothered. I told them about twenty times and they still don’t hold still enough.”
Julia could see Markov nodding in agreement, ev
en though it was clear this was all new to him. It was petty, but it felt good to finally know something he didn’t. As for Chang, she had to admit she was impressed. His communication skills were plenty good when he got excited about some technical subject.”Get back to the point,” Sarah said. “How long does this take?”
Markov found his opening. “It’s quite impressive,” he said. “I managed to get an entire wing of NSA’s supercomputing center on demand, just for this project. We send the data by satellite, query a specific time frame, and we can get images back almost instantly. There’s some sophisticated programming involved…”
Markov trailed off as Sarah asked Julia, “That’s video. What about audio?”
“Audio is more tricky,” Julia said, glancing over Chang’s shoulder to see how much time was left on the download. She turned back to Sarah. “Seems counterintuitive, given that recording sound is much easier than video in the real world. But not in the brain. It stores audio information as frequencies. And it takes a lot of post processing to coax that sound out. The implant doesn’t have enough resolution to get an audio recording with good fidelity.”
Sarah frowned. “Good enough for speech?”
“If we filter it enough, sure.”
“I’m working on that,” Chang said. “It’s mostly a question of stripping out the noise in the signal. Turns out it’s synchronized in corresponding areas in the left and right side of the brain. So by subtracting the opposite side, you clean out a lot of noise.”
“It matters a lot what the subject is doing,” Julia added. “If they’re moving, there’s interference from electrical activity in the muscles. If they’re holding still, it’s better. Fortunately, we also have recordings from language areas.”
“Language areas?”
“The brain has dedicated language centers. One for hearing what other people are saying, and one for phrasing what we want to say.”
“So there’s a cell that only fires when we hear the word ‘touchdown?’” Markov asked. Sarah’s eyes narrowed and fixed on Julia’s at the reference.
“No, not at all,” Julia answered. “That was a huge breakthrough in this project. There’s an old idea in neuroscience of something called the grandmother cell, meaning a cell that fires only when you recognize your grandmother. It’s been known for a long time that this is mostly wrong, and that information is spread over a lot of cells. It’s large patterns of cells that encode information. Anyway, during training for Ian and Kendall we tried using something called a classifier technique. It worked beautifully.”
Julia looked at Chang. She mostly understood the idea, but the truth was she still felt uncomfortable with the details of how the algorithm worked. She’d tried to get Chang to explain it a couple times during the training period, but he always seemed so impatient and she felt stupid to ask questions. She could only imagine how the non-technical types would find it.
“I should probably know this,” Markov said.
“Kind of complex stuff,” Chang said. “Too complex for lay understanding.”
“Try me,” Sarah said to Chang.
He gave an exaggerated shrug. “All right. Here’s how it works. If you look at an individual channel in the implant when the subject hears the word ‘shopping,’ you might get a similar response to when the subject hears the word ‘shipping.’ It’s overlapping, non-discrete data, doesn’t lend itself to facile algorithms. Only when you look at thousands of channels can you parse the difference between similar words. You have to record from those channels over and over again with a test set of key words before you can train a computer to recognize the probability that the subject heard shipping rather than shopping. There’s a lot more to it, but I’m sure it’s way over your heads.”
“What do you mean by probability?” Markov asked. “I don’t like the sound of that. You mean we just guess?”
“Each sound the subject hears is assigned a probability of a word by the computer. Then a kick-ass algorithm I developed myself matches which words are most likely to fit together based on the context. For example, you’re more likely to hear ‘shopping’ with ‘shoes’ than ‘shipping’ with ‘lose.’ Eventually the computer spits out a transcript.”
“So how long does a transcript take to process?” Sarah asked.
“Sometimes hours of work on the supercomputers. It’s pretty involved.” Chang turned back to the computer and started typing. “But again, I’m working on that. It’ll get better.”
“And thoughts? Feelings?” Sarah turned back to Julia.
“As far as I know,” Julia said with an irritated look at Markov, “people are working on that. I haven’t been updated because of my need to know.”
Chang interrupted the group. “Hey guys, data’s all downloaded onto the supercomputers. Where should I start querying?”
Sarah stiffened. “All of the data? Anything missing? Everything he saw and heard?”
“How am I supposed to know until I look at it?”
Sarah turned to Markov. “We’re done here. Let’s get back to the States where we can analyze this properly. Nice work, Julia. I’ll see that there’s a commendation in your file. Anton, could you please see to arranging for more suitable flight arrangements for Julia? I have some business to attend to in the Capital.”
Julia protested, “But we’re just getting started. I thought…”
“That will be all.”
“What about him?” Markov gestured to Ian.
“Those arrangements have already been made,” Sarah said. “I’ll brief you when we get back.”
Julia bristled. It was coming into focus now. She’d let Sarah knock down her defenses with sweet talk. Markov, at least, was direct in his assholery.
“No,” she said firmly. “Not yet.”
Sarah stopped, turned with a look of surprise that became a frown. “Dr. Nolan,” she said in a warning tone and Julia caught Markov giving her a look that might have been his own irritation or maybe a warning to shut up.
“Ian’s a mess,” Julia pressed on. “There’s no way I’m leaving him looking like this.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Sarah looked furious, Markov stared at Ian, his expression unreadable, and Chang watched Julia with a half-smile that reminded her of nothing so much as a ten year-old boy cooking a grasshopper under a magnifying glass.
Julia wasn’t ready to give it up. “At the very least, let me give him a more thorough examination, make sure he doesn’t have any broken bones or internal bleeding. And there are a couple more wounds that could use sutures.”
“Fine,” Sarah said at last. “But make it quick.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Julia got off the plane refreshed, happy to be home, but was quickly deflated to discover that her husband was not waiting for her at Dulles.
It had been a revelation to fly in first class—at Sarah Redd’s insistence—with plenty of space, delicious food, and personal attention from the crew. She’d spent several restful hours in London at the Cavendish Square hotel, on the CIA’s dime, taken room service and a massage before flying Virgin Atlantic back to Dulles in what the airline called “upper class.” And she’d actually slept several hours on the plane, which was a rarity for her.
She’d called Terrance from London. He’d known what time her flight was scheduled to arrive, but he wasn’t waiting for her when she scooped up her luggage and passed through customs.
Julia looked around for several minutes before she flipped open her cell phone and called. She got voice mail.
“Hi, I’m at the airport and wondering where you—oh, never mind.”
She stopped as she saw a man holding a sign with her name on it.
It proved to be a driver, hired by her husband. By the time the driver dropped her off at the house, she was wondering what had kept Terrance.
But he was at home, working on his laptop in the atrium. He glanced up, then turned back to his work. “Oh, hey hon. Welcome home.”
She drap
ed her garment bag over the nearest chair and stood at the entrance to the atrium with her rolling suitcase in hand.
“Love you too.” She made no attempt to hide her irritation.
“What? Are you pissed that I didn’t come get you at the airport? You are, aren’t you? Look, I’m sorry about that, but I’m really busy.”
“You could get off your butt and give me a hug, at least. I just got back from Africa.” She regretted her words at once, the tone of her voice even more. Maybe she was more tired than she’d thought.
Terrance got up and gave her a quick hug, then went back to his computer. “It’s not like I forgot about you.”
“You mean the car? Who paid for it, the company?”
“No, not exactly. It wasn’t really company business, I just couldn’t get away.”
“But how much does it cost to rent a car from Dulles to Langley? It can’t be cheap. I could’ve taken the bus.”
“I said don’t worry about it.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, I guess it’s no big deal.”
“Look, you sound tired. Why don’t you go take a nap and we can talk tonight, when you’re feeling more yourself.”
“Maybe you’re right. But first, can you tell me what happened in Namibia?”
“What makes you think I know anything more than you do?” he asked.
“Just a feeling. You work with Markov, you have conference calls with Sarah Redd. I’ll bet you had some sort of discussion with those guys, a debriefing. Maybe even two, once before I went to Namibia and once after the data extraction.”
He closed his laptop, but slowly, as if trying to collect his thoughts. She’d nailed it, then.
“Let me get this straight,” Terrance said, “you’re asking me to share top secret information with you. Operational information that might put current and future missions at risk.”
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