Mindstormer

by AJ Steiger

  No. No. Make it stop.

  And then it does stop, and a huge, smothering calm descends on me. The screen goes blank, then displays an image of a group of men and women sitting around a table in a sunlit room. A gentle female voice intones: “The Institute for Ethics in Neurotechnology was created by a coalition of scientists and government officials with the goal of maintaining a safe, secure country through nonviolent means.” The voice continues, reciting statistics about the reduction in various forms of crime since IFEN was created, as the screen displays photos of clean, orderly streets and smiling people in white lab coats. After awhile, I can’t even focus on what the voice is saying. The gentle tones wash over me, sinking into me.

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  30

  When the screen finally goes dark and the machine shuts off, I’m numb, inside and out. The table slides out with a faint whir and clicks into place.

  The world is enfolded in a soft, white haze. Colors are muted. Nothing seems quite real. Slowly, the haze clears, and I find myself staring at my own left hand, idly studying the folds in the skin of my knuckles, the ragged edges of my fingernails. I wiggle my fingers. Hands are funny things. Like elongated, hairless paws with opposable thumbs.

  Idly, I note the straps holding my arms down. I can’t quite remember why I’m restrained.

  When I look up, Dr. Swan is sitting in a chair across from me. “How do you feel?” he asks.

  I blink a few times and wonder how to answer that question. My mind feels weak and wobbly—fragile, like it might break apart under a puff of air and scatter like dandelion seeds to the wind. What am I doing here? “I feel…” I moisten dry lips with my tongue. “Thirsty.”

  He holds a cup of water to my lips, and I sip. It’s cool and has a faint, flat, metallic taste. “Do you know why you’re here?” he asks.

  I know this room. “Conditioning,” I murmur. I’m here for Conditioning because…

  Because I’m grieving for my father, and I’ve been depressed. A lump fills my throat. Father is dead. A tear slips from one corner of my eye and falls down my cheek.

  No. Wait. That was years ago. So why—

  “You’ve been very sick,” Dr. Swan says, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Sick?” I murmur.

  “That’s right. You ran away. Do you remember?”

  That does sound familiar. But I can’t recall why. I know all the information is there in my mind, but it’s all scattered, disassembled. I can’t connect the pieces.

  “Don’t think too hard,” he says, smiling. “It’ll come back to you. The important thing is that you’re safe now. The nightmare is over. You’ve come home.”

  “Home,” I murmur.

  His eyes light up. “Yes, that’s right.” He holds the cup to my lips again. I stare into the clear water. The cup is plastic. Pale blue. Like Steven’s eyes.

  The thought is a lighted match tossed into my brain. The fire grows and spreads, illuminating everything.

  Dr. Swan’s face hovers over mine. With all my strength, I spit up at him; a white glob lands on his cheek. Dispassionately, he wipes it away and sighs.

  “You can do whatever you want to me, but it won’t change what’s happening in this country,” I say. “You can’t Condition everyone. The people have woken up. They’re sick of your lies, and they’re going to change things.”

  He narrows his eyes. “And how do you expect them to do that?”

  I’m still weak and fuzzy-headed, but I manage a wobbly sneer. “You’re getting a little nervous over the Cognitive Rights Act, aren’t you?”

  “Oh. That. Would you like to see how that played out?” He rises, walks over to the other side of the room, and waves a hand over a wall sensor. A holoscreen appears, floating in front of him.

  Jana Rice—the head of the National Ethical Committee—stares into the camera. Her graying blond hair is neatly trimmed, face expertly made up, manicured hands folded. “Good evening,” she says in a smooth alto. “We, the representatives of the people of the United Republic of America, have reached a decision. We’ve sought the counsel of experts at IFEN, and of course, we have taken the public vote into consideration. Rest assured that our decision has been carefully calculated to ensure the greatest good for the greatest possible number of citizens.”

  I hold my breath, but I have a sinking feeling that I already know what’s coming next.

  “In the best interests of the United Republic and its people, we have decided not to pass the Cognitive Rights Act.”

  “No,” I whisper aloud.

  “We understand the concerns of those who support this Act,” Jana continues. “But the simple fact is that, given the nation’s tumultuous state, the drastic changes proposed would result in—”

  Dr. Swan waves his hand, and the screen disappears. “Was there ever any doubt?” His voice is oddly gentle.

  I turn my face away, staring at the opposite wall. The hollowness in my chest grows, spreading, eating me from the inside.

  Dr. Swan approaches the Conditioning machine, his footsteps slow and deliberate.

  “Don’t put me back in there,” I whisper.

  “It will happen as many times as it needs to.” His face is weary, lines cast in deep shadow. “I’m not cruel, Lain. I just do what needs to be done.” He pushes a button, and I descend back into hell.

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  31

  For a long time—days, it seems—I drift in and out of a dreamlike state. I’m plunging into a dark well of terror. A heartbeat later, I’m floating in a sleepy golden bliss. Then a heavy nothingness descends over me like a blanket made of lead.

  It would be so easy to give in, like sinking into a warm bath. I can barely even remember why I’m resisting. I’m so tired.

  When I come back to myself, I’m drenched in sweat, lying on a narrow cot in a small, dimly lit room. My body is strapped down, immobilized.

  “Lain,” a familiar voice whispers. “Lain, can you hear me?”

  I blink a few times, struggling to focus my eyes. The pale, blurry oval above me resolves itself into a face—a young man with dark hair, glasses, and bright green eyes. It takes me a few seconds to put a name to the features. “Aaron?” I murmur, puzzled. “What are you doing here?”

  He gives me a pained smile. “You recognize me. It was you who saved me, wasn’t it?”

  My breath catches. “You—you remember that?”

  “No. But it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. I knew that someone erased my memories, and I knew that the Blackcoats wouldn’t have been so merciful, left to their own devices. If you hadn’t been there, they would have killed me.” He swallows, his expression tight. “I’m sorry about this, Lain.”

  I squeeze my hands into fists. “If you’re really sorry, then help me get out of here.”

  “I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”

  I turn my head away.

  “I swear, if I could stop this, I would.” A trace of desperation creeps into his voice. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. I’m here for Conditioning. Dr. Swan thinks I’m too unstable. He keeps telling me that if I want to work here, I need complete mastery of my emotions. Which means, basically, that I’m not allowed to have emotions.” He lets out a flat laugh. “I’m starting to understand why you left. I—I don’t think I can keep doing this. Still… I never imagined he’d go this far. I never thought he’d do this to you.”

  “Then you don’t really know him.” I roll my head back toward him. His eyes are wide, frightened, but filled with concern. “Aaron.” My voice shakes. “If there’s anything you can do, anything at all, I’m begging you. Help me.”

  He winces and bites his lower lip. “I—I might be able to help you after.”

  “After? After what?”

  He glances over his shoulder. Footsteps echo down the hall. “I need to go,” he whispers. “I’ll come back later, if I can.” Quickly, he slips out of the room through a door in back. The footsteps draw closer. Sweat trickles down
my temple. The other door creaks open and Dr. Swan steps in.

  He pulls up a chair. Slowly, as if the movement hurts, he sits. For a moment he just looks at me. He doesn’t even try to disguise the raw exhaustion on his face. Deep lines stand out, carved into his cheeks and around his eyes. “Have you had enough?” he asks.

  I turn my head away.

  He breathes a small sigh. Silence fills the room like a tangible presence.

  “Lain,” he says. “If you keep fighting me, I will have to dig deeper. I’ll have to erase the memories of everything you’ve been through. You realize that, don’t you?”

  My heartbeat quickens. Steven’s face blazes in my head. Dr. Swan is going to make me forget him. I try to sit up, but of course, I can’t. “So why haven’t you done it yet?” I squeeze the words between gritted teeth. “It would be easier, wouldn’t it?”

  A brief pause. “I wanted to give you the chance to repent.”

  Repent? I laugh, a thick, choked sound. “You’re disgusting.”

  He regards me with an empty expression. “Let me tell you a story.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  He continues as if I haven’t spoken: “There was a woman, once. Your father loved her dearly. I don’t suppose he ever told you the details.” He reaches up and pulls a square of paper from his pocket. A photograph of a woman with straight black hair, warm brown skin, and large, dark, doelike eyes.

  I stare.

  Father did mention that there was someone very dear to him—someone who took her own life. All he’d ever said was that she had been kidnapped by some men who did terrible things to her, and afterward, the pain had been too much for her to bear.

  “She was a Type Four,” Dr. Swan says, “a deeply disturbed person. Lain was convinced he could help her. That was his weakness, you know. He wanted to fix everyone. He had a brilliant mind, but a weak and foolish heart.” He tucks the photograph into his pocket.

  “What does this have to do with anything?” I ask, but my voice comes out unsteady.

  “He told you, I understand, that she was attacked by a group of men who hurt and violated her, and that she killed herself afterward. What he probably didn’t tell you is that she took their daughter with her.”

  For a moment, I can’t respond. “Their daughter?”

  “Yes. Your father had another child, before you. Kalila—that was the woman’s name—jumped off the top of a building with the infant in her arms. In the note she left behind, she said that she didn’t want their child to grow up in such a cruel world. You can imagine his grief. I was the one who urged him to clone himself, so he’d have a successor… and a reason to live. I convinced him that he had to keep living, in order to help create a world where people like Kalila could be helped. If not for me, you wouldn’t exist. In a sense, you are my child, as well.”

  “I’m not yours,” I murmur, but there’s no force behind the words. I’m aching and confused.

  Is it true? Was I born just to fill the hole in Father’s heart? A tear leaks from the corner of my eye, down my temple.

  “There’s a great deal of suffering in the world, Lain,” he continues softly. “By now, you’ve seen that. People lash out in anger and fear, and they hurt not only themselves, but everyone around them. Believe it or not, I’ve suffered too. I’ve lost people I loved.” He smiles tightly. “You’re so like him. You’re attracted to lost causes. Like that boy. You want to help everyone. What you fail to understand is that I’m on your side. I want to ease the suffering of the world, just as you do. Perhaps I’ve made mistakes. Perhaps we don’t always agree on the best methods. But we are both fighting for the same goal. Understand that much, at least.”

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to listen to him or talk to him. I just want to sleep. Ask him about Project Mindstormer. At the sudden thought, my eyelids fly open. Ask him. The words are in my own voice, inside my own head, yet they feel somehow separate from me. My brows draw together.

  This is your chance! the voice—mine and yet not mine—hisses.

  “Lain? Are you all right?”

  I take a shaky breath. Something tells me that this is important, even if I can’t remember why. “If that’s true…” I try to swallow the dryness in my mouth. “If you really believe we’re on the same side—then answer this. What is Project Mindstormer?”

  His face is stone. “And where, exactly, did you hear about that?” he asks, voice dangerously soft.

  My pulse thuds in my wrists. “So it does exist?”

  “I would advise you not to put too much faith in rumors.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” My voice rises. “You’re building a weapon, aren’t you? If you’re willing to use things like that, then how are you any different from the Blackcoats?” The anger burns away my fear and fatigue, giving me strength. “All these conspiracies, all these secrets. Yet you want me to believe that you have the best interests of the American people at heart?”

  “Some degree of secrecy has always been necessary. Every government keeps classified information.” But there’s the slightest hesitation in his tone, as if he’s been knocked off balance.

  Keep pushing him, the voice in my head whispers. Convince him that you want to work with him. “I’m not asking you to tell the public. I’m asking you to tell me,” I say. “I’m not a Blackcoat. I don’t want another war. I just want a more equal world, a world where a person’s worth isn’t measured by Type. I want to believe that there’s still goodness in IFEN, that it can be a force to help people instead of keeping them enslaved. But how am I supposed to believe anything you tell me if you won’t even give me the truth?”

  “Last time you learnt a delicate truth, you went public with it. You betrayed me.”

  Betrayed him. I almost laugh. Instead, I give him a pained smile. “Obviously, I can’t do that now. Even if I wanted to, there’s no one I can tell. And you can always erase my memories afterward if you feel like it. So please. Just tell me. I want to understand what IFEN is really about.”

  Another long silence.

  At last, he lets out a small sigh. He pushes a wheelchair up to my bedside and unbuckles my straps. “Get into the chair.”

  My limbs are weak and shaky. Making a run for it isn’t an option, and there’s nowhere to run, anyway. But with his help, I’m able to climb into the padded seat. He secures leather straps over my wrists and ankles, but they seem redundant. If I tried to stand up, I would collapse.

  I try to keep my breathing steady. Good, the voice in my head whispers. I wonder if this is a form of stress-induced schizophrenia.

  He wheels me down a long series of white hallways. We get into a tiny, gray elevator, which goes down and down, the buttons lighting up one by one—the ground floor, then the basement, then a sub-basement, then a level marked SB2. I didn’t realize there was anything below the ground level of IFEN. Just how deep does it go?

  The elevator stops, and the doors slide open to reveal a cavernous white room lit from above by fluorescents. The walls are lined with steel panels covered with rows and rows of blinking green lights. I stare, unsure of what I’m seeing.

  “This is Mindstormer,” he says. “Not a weapon. A computer.” He wheels me forward, into the room. The air is unnaturally cold, perhaps to keep this enormous machine from overheating.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  “Think of it as an extremely powerful Gate, one which is not limited by distance. It sends out pulses of energy that interact with the human brain. In its final form, it will be able to target specific individuals or a large group of people, all at once. The technology is still in development—still in the theoretical stage. But we are close, now. Our scientists are working around the clock, tweaking the programs and scrutinizing the logistical issues from every angle. As soon as we make that breakthrough, we’ll move onto the experimental phase.”

  Which means they’ll be using this thing on people. The machine hums softly, a low drone, more in my bones and teeth than
in my ears. This whole thing feels unreal. “Interact with the human brain,” I repeat slowly. “To do what?”

  “Anything. As I said, it’s still in development. But in the future, we may be able to, say, suppress aggressive impulses. Or even subtly influence an entire population’s mood to make them more peaceable, more cooperative, more empathetic.”

  This has to be a lie. Something like this is not—should not be—possible. “You’re talking about mind control.”

  “Not control,” he says. “Guidance. We refer to the theoretical uses of this machine as ‘nudges.’ Subliminal suggestions. Most people won’t even be aware of when they’re being nudged. The human psyche, after all, is already influenced by a wide variety of external factors. Personalities are shaped by upbringings, by genes, by advertising, by the opinions of friends and family. Even a persuasive argument can do the trick. When you revealed the truth about St. Mary’s, you knew it would have an impact on people’s behavior. Were you controlling their minds?”

  “That’s not the same.” My breathing has quickened. The dreamlike quality of the experience is starting to fade, replaced with growing fear and anger. “There’s a difference between influencing people and taking away everyone’s choices.”

  “This will not take away everyone’s choices. Do you imagine that we would be able to monitor and control all people, every moment of every day? Do you think we could create a nation of zombies, or that we’d want to, for that matter? Absurd. Most individuals will go about their lives unhindered, as they always have. But we will watch the patterns. We will intervene in careful and specific ways, to avert tragedies and to guide our country along the right path.”

  My pulse drums in the hollow of my throat. “If you wanted to target and erase a specific memory in a specific person—you could do that, too?”