And then she was in his arms, and there was no more time— or need—for talk.
Dreamland
Thursday, 11 June 1996, 0712 PDT (1012 EDT)
“You realize, Patrick,” Dr. Alan Carmichael said, “that nothing at all may happen.”
McLanahan and Carmichael were in a special steel-lined chamber early the next morning. More a huge underground vault, the chamber contained the original laboratory version of the ANTARES thought-controlled flight-and-avionics system. Concerned more with performance in the early years of the project than size, the chamber housing the ANTARES system was massive—the size of a basketball court. The complex was controlled by its own super-fast CRAY computer that, even though encompassing state-of-the-art very high-speed integrated circuits, artificial-intelligence electronics capable of performing billions of computations a second, was larger than a refrigerator and had to be cooled with liquid nitrogen at two hundred seventy-five degrees below zero.
In the center of the three-story chamber, dwarfed by massive banks of electronics gear and environmental system ducts, was an F-15 single-seat fighter simulator. It had none of the advanced multi-function displays and laser-projection devices of Cheetah—it still used ordinary electric artificial horizons and pneumatically driven altimeters and turn-and-slip indicators, and most of those were barely functioning. The ejection seat was an old Mark Five “Iron Maiden”-type seat from the early 1980s, stiff, straight-backed, and uncomfortable, its special anti-G padding and shoulder harnesses having been cannibalized for spare parts long ago.
Patrick was not secured in that ejection seat, but neither was he free to move. He was wearing an early non-cushion version of Ken James’ metallic-thread flight suit. It was far more bulky than the actual operational model, with thick fiber-optic bundles interwoven all around the suit, circuit boxes attached to every conceivable inconvenient point on Patrick’s body, and, unlike James’ suit, this experimental model had no integrated cooling systems built into it. Icy blasts of cold air were directed on Patrick to help keep him cool, and when the skin’s resistance was completely unbalanced by sweat and vascular dilation on account of the extreme temperatures inside the suit, the session would be ended.
“I’ve been trying out this system for a few months now,” Patrick said. “My brainwaves or whatever they are ...”
“Theta signal threshold complex.”
“Yeah, right. Anyway, they should start working, shouldn’t they?”
Carmichael shook his head. “If it was that easy, we’d have a squadron of ANTARES pilots now. We don’t fully understand how ANTARES works, how the neural interface is achieved. We can get it to work but we’re not sure, for example, why it works with James and nominally for you and J.C. and not for anyone else. We’re getting closer to the answer but it’ll still take some time.”
“What is it with James?” Patrick asked. “I can’t mentally control an itch on the back of my neck. He can control a two million dollar fighter at Mach one.”
Carmichael ran a hand up his forehead and across the top of his bald head—even though it was the style of the mid-1990s for some men to have a shaved head, Carmichael came by his naturally, involuntarily. “The sheer strength of his mind is enormous. The ANTARES interface is another addition to his mental gymnasium, so to speak. He’s strengthened by it every time he uses it. We’re learning a lot from him.”
“But he’s not any smarter than anyone else at HAWC.”
“I’m not talking about intelligence . . . stop squirming.” Carmichael motioned to one of his assistants, who ran a cool towel over Patrick’s sweaty face. “He’s quite intelligent—an I.Q. of well over one-fifty. But what counts more is that his mind is fluid, adaptable, agile. Are you at all familiar with taekwondo, Patrick?”
“Taekwondo? You mean martial arts?”
Carmichael nodded as he scanned an instrument panel beside the simulator. “A special form of the martial arts that combines karate, kung fu and judo—James happens to be a black belt in taekwondo, by the way . . . did you know that? Almost made our Olympic taekwondo team. It’s not an offensive, attack-style of fighting. In taekwondo the attacker is allowed to engage—as a matter of fact, there are few moves in taekwondo that can be performed unless in response to an attack.”
“Get to the point, Alan.”
“The point is, James’ mind works much the same way as the taekwondo style of combat. He allows the flood of information created by ANTARES to invade him. He opens up his mind to it—exactly the opposite of the normal reaction to such an invasion. Most of us build barriers against such an onslaught— James allows it to move in, even expand. But he doesn’t surrender to the information that bombards him. Once ANTARES unlocks the inner recesses of the mind, the ones we have no conscious access to, he’s somehow able to reassert his conscious will. At first it’s little more than gentle mental nudges, but then he’s able to control ANTARES, steer the mass of information his way. It’s the mental equivalent of a single tree changing the course of a raging river.”
“You’re talking in riddles.”
“For a good reason.” Carmichael’s features turned stony. “I’ve already said there’s a lot we don’t understand about ANTARES. We’re tinkering with this technology before it’s fully understood, but neither of us has the authority to stop it. I just hope I can learn enough before some disaster happens.”
He studied McLanahan. “That was meant as a disclaimer, Patrick. You’ve been strapping this stuff on a few times a month now, probably with faith in me and all this high-tech government equipment. We use it because it works. Period. We don’t know why it works, and so we won’t know what happened if something goes wrong.” He picked up a very large, bulky helmet with all sorts of cables and wire bundles leading to the banks of computers below. It was a much larger version of the ANTARES flight helmet, obviously not designed for flight—its wearer would be completely immobilized by its sheer size and bulk. “Still want to subject yourself to this, Colonel?”
Patrick shrugged. “Here’s where I’m supposed to say ‘I regret I have only one brain to give to my country . . .’ ”
“You’re the project director, it’s not your job . . .”
“ ‘It’s not my job.’ That’s the most over-used and annoying phrase in the Air Force.” Patrick stopped, looking at the menacing ANTARES helmet as if it was some medieval torture device, then nodded. “I need to know how it works. I need to understand what it does to the pilots that I’ll order to wear this thing. Let’s do it.”
Carmichael and an assistant proceeded to lower the heavy helmet onto Patrick’s shoulders and fasten it in place.
The helmet was very tight and heavy. Once attached to the clavicle ring on his flight suit the device pressed down on his breastbone and shoulders like a heavy yoke. The superconducting antennae pressed unmercifully on several spots on his head and neck, corresponding to the seven areas of the brain that were constantly being scanned and measured by the ANTARES. There was a smoked glass visor in the helmet, but Patrick could barely see anything outside. The thick rubber oxygen mask that enclosed his mouth and chin was hot and almost suffocating.
After a few seconds, Patrick could hear the faint click as the tiny headphone in his helmet was activated. “Patrick? All set in there?”
“Check the oxygen flow. I’m not getting any air.”
“You’ve got a good blinker and all switches are set,” Carmichael replied. Just then Patrick’s oxygen mask received a steady flow of cold, dry air. “I gave you a shot of oxygen. I can’t give you too much or you could hyperventilate. Try to relax. Start anytime you’re ready.”
Patrick sat back in the hard ejection seat and began the relaxation routine taught to him by Carmichael over a year earlier when he’d first begun experimenting with the ANTARES trainer. He began the familiar process, letting the spurts of pure oxygen in his mask slow his breathing and force the tension from his body. In his case it was his toes and calves that seemd to be perpetua
lly clenched, like a swimmer on the starting block, as if he was always trying to grip onto something. It was refreshing to feel how good his feet felt after forcing them to relax.
Slowly, he worked his way up his body, ordering each muscle group to relax. One by one he managed to relax his body parts, letting the stiffness of the metallic flight suit support him in the ejection seat. He knew he’d have to reexamine his leg muscles now and then, but after dozens of these sessions his relaxation technique was getting much better.
“Very good,” he heard Carmichael say, “much better. Minimal beta activity. Very steady alpha complex.”
“It seemed to go easier this time,” Patrick said. “How long did it take?”
“You did pretty well, only one hundred and thirty minutes this time.”
“Over two hours . . . ?”
“Easy, easy, maintain your alpha level . . .”
Patrick fought to regain his body-relaxation state, despite his sudden confusion and disorientation. “I thought I was getting better, it seemed like just a few minutes.”
“A good sign. You enter a state of altered consciousness, much like hypnosis but more so. Losing track of time is a good sign—if you had said it took two hours it would mean your mind is still focused on external events like time—”
And then he felt it, a tiny jolt of electricity shooting through his body. It was like diving into an ice-cold pool of water—the jolt didn’t start or stop anywhere in particular but it shocked his entire body all at once. It was not totally uncomfortable, just unexpected—more attention-getting than painful, like a mild static electricity shock. His body jerked at the first jolt, and he fought to relax his body again. Surprisingly, he found it much easier to relax this time.
“Just relax, Patrick.” Carmichael sounded as if he was calling from the bottom of a deep well. “You’re coming along fine. Relax, Patrick . . .”
Another jolt of electricity, harder and deeper this time, creating a shower of sparks before his eyes. There was real pain this time, completely different from the first. Patrick remembered the three deadman’s switches rigged to the seat—one on each hand and one on the back of his helmet, where all he had to do was release his grip on the handles or move his head in any direction and the power to the simulator box would immediately cut off. The electricity was still there, still intense ... all he had to do was hold on long enough to command his hands to move . . .
“Remember taekwondo, Patrick,” he heard a voice from nowhere say. “Allow the fight to come to you. Accept it. Be prepared to channel it.”
Another surge of energy, powerful enough to make Patrick gasp aloud in his mask. There was a brief shot of oxygen, but now it felt blasting hot, like opening an oven door . . .
“Don’t fight the energy. Relax ...”
“The pain ... I can’t stand it . . .”
“Relax . . . regain theta-alpha.”
Another intense wave of electricity, and he involuntarily grunted against the pain. The shimmering wall of stars washed over him—but they were different this time. The lights remained, and amidst ever-growing jabs of pain throughout his body the stars began to coalesce into images. Faint, blurred, unreadable—but they were not just random stars. Something was forming . . .
Here was finally something to latch onto, to grasp and hold firm, for no other reason than to preserve his sanity and keep from screaming out in terror and pain. When the pain increased in severity, Patrick let it hit him head-on, enduring it long enough just so he could reexamine the sparks of pain floating in his mind’s eye and form another concrete mental image.
He was experiencing what James already knew and had gone through . . . His whole body was on fire. The pain was continuous, but so were the sheets of light—and they were definitely taking shape. Flashes of numbers, some logical, others unintelligible, zipped back and forth in his subconscious mind. The images were beginning to organize themselves— there was now a sort of horizontal split-screen effect, with darkness above the new horizon and floating, speeding numbers and polyhedrons below. He could hear short snaps of sound, like a stereo receiver or short-wave radio gone haywire.
The sounds were the key. Patrick now began to concentrate against the pain, channeling it along with the confusion, trying to slow the jumble of numbers and letters and shapes into one positive, concrete form. With each push in the desired direction, ANTARES would give him a burst of pain for his trouble.
But the pain didn’t matter any more. There was an objective now, a goal to reach, if a childishly simple one . . . three letters—A, B, C—and one device—the simulator’s intercom.
The letters were becoming as large as the lower half of the split screen, but they were finally becoming solid, aligning themselves beneath the blackness. Soon they remained steady, and even began to slide away from the center toward the—
“Patrick?”
The voice was like a distant, relaxing whisper, like a church bell off in the distance, like the friendly toot of a boat horn on the Sacramento River back home. “Powell?”
“Welcome back, boss. Have a nice trip?”
“Not sure. I’ve got a lot of pain. Dr. Carmichael?”
“Right here.”
“How long did it take this time?”
“You tell me.”
Patrick tried to remember back through the interfacing period, through the waves of rolling pain, through the fleeing mental images. “I felt out of control, it must’ve taken another hour.”
“Try nine seconds,” J. C. Powell said.
“Nine seconds?”
“Nine seconds on the dot from the moment you went into theta-alpha,” Carmichael said happily. “Even faster than Ken’s ever done it, although he doesn’t take two hours to get to theta-alpha.”
Patrick tried to turn his head, but found it impossible—it was as if two red-hot hands held his head cemented into place. “How can anyone function with all this pain? I feel like I’m being microwaved, I can’t move a muscle.”
“All I can say is that Ken James is different. He’s also been using the ANTARES system for a long time. Don’t focus on the pain, and don’t worry about being able to move around. Relax and try to enjoy the ride.”
A moment later, Carmichael clicked the intercom back on. “We’ve repositioned the simulator at thirty-five thousand feet and five hundred knots. Take the aircraft when you’re ready, Colonel.”
Patrick concentrated as hard as he could on the image of the instrument panel. He had managed to slide the image of the intercom channel off to the left, but the rest of the panel was blank. Like a television screen with nothing but snow across it.
Okay. Aircraft attitude was important. Maintain control. Keep the airplane flying.
Instantly an oval drew itself on the upper half of the cockpit image. It was sitting horizontal across the windscreen, a deep white line bisecting it, forming a horizon. In the exact center of the oval was a wide T, representing the aircraft.
“Release me,” McLanahan said.
The T jumped up and to the right just as Carmichael said, “You’re moving.”
Patrick concentrated on keeping the T in the center of the oval. Slowly the T moved back in the center.
“Good start at least, now where the hell am I going?”
The oval disappeared, replaced by the image of a long ribbonlike street on the upper portion of the screen. The street was straight for a distance, but Patrick could see a few gentle twists and turns in the distance. At the bottom of the screen was a tiny picture of a jet fighter plane—it appeared to be resting right on the road.
“Hey, I’ve got the flight-plan depiction.”
“Good,” Carmichael said. “That’s a major flight image. Follow it as long as you can. How’s the headache?”
“It went to splitting migraine long ago, Doc, but as long as I keep my mind off the pain it’ll be okay.”
Keeping the simulator flying upright was more difficult without the artificial horizon, but no amount of
mental effort would bring it back, so Patrick used the visual cues on the road itself— the recommended altitude was to surface on the road itself, which also represented the proper pitch and bank to follow; as long as he kept the little fighter model on the road he would be following the computer’s recommended flight path. The road’s curbs represented the allowable lateral flight corridor to follow, and tiny signposts represented planned turn-points and recommended altitude-changeover points.
As long as the “road” was straight and flat, the ride went well. But after a few moments the road began to make small left and right turns, and the going got much tougher. The tiny fighter icon penetrated through the road several times, porpoising up and down through the recommended altitude block, and Patrick had to apply harder and faster corrections to keep the plane steady.
“Stabilize, Patrick,” he heard from J. C. Powell.
“I’m trying.” The fighter icon slid through the right wall of the road, skidded sideways, then entered an uncontrolled spin.
“Let the computer recover the plane,” Powell said. “Don’t try to fight it.”
Patrick forced himself to go along. He concentrated on the surface of the computer-generated road without thinking about the aircraft control. Suddenly he knew that ANTARES had placed both mission-adaptive wings in high-lift modes and deployed both dorsal and ventral sets of rudders to maximize directional control. The fighter icon dove through the right side of the flight path depiction, but by rapid lift, power and drag changes under precise computerized control, the fighter was soon out of its uncontrolled spin and stabilized in a steep dive. A few moments later the fighter slowly leveled out and returned to its desired flight path once again.
“Good recovery,” Carmichael said. “ANTARES will always try to save the aircraft whenever possible, but you still have to tell her where you want to go, even in an uncontrolled situation.”
After a few minutes of straight-and-level flight to get his confidence back, Patrick accomplished a few turns, with bank angles and altitude changes mixed in. “I think I’ve got the hang of it again,” Patrick said.
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