by David Archer
“She really can,” Ron said. “Expert in several different martial arts, proficient with almost every weapon you can imagine, and she’s a former Marine who spent two years in Afghanistan as a security officer for ranking visitors. Not someone you want to get on your bad side.”
“I can think of cases in the past where you’d have been a help,” Sam said. “If you regard your appearance as a tool, you can expect me to think of it the same way.”
“That’s how I want it to be,” Summer said. “All good.”
The next man was sitting quietly at his desk, with one finger tapping the surface in a rhythmic pattern. Ron smiled down at him, but he didn’t look up at first.
“Sam, this is Walter Rawlins. Walter is what we call an adept, a specialist in determining from an examination of a crime scene exactly how the crime took place. Nobody is quite sure how he does it, but he has never been wrong. He’s got an eidetic memory and seems to think much faster than most people, so don’t let him get you drawn into an argument; you’ll lose, and he can read your expressions to anticipate what you’re going to say. Walter, this is Sam Prichard. He’s your new boss.”
Walter looked up at Sam, but Sam got the impression he was looking right through him. At a guess, Sam would have put him in his very early twenties. “I’m Walter,” he said. “I’m mildly autistic, but I can function on my own. I see things nobody else sees, sometimes, so they like me here.”
Sam had dealt with an autistic man some months earlier, and knew that most of them do not like to be touched. As a result, he refrained from extending a hand. “Walter, I’m very glad to meet you. I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do.”
“I’m very good at it. Very good. I can function quite well. I drive my own car, have my own apartment. I’m very good at what I do. I’ll be glad to show you.”
“I’m certainly looking forward to it,” Sam said.
Walter nodded, and Ron turned to the last man. “And this,” he said, “is Darren Beecher. Darren came to us from the FBI, where he worked with the BAU. His experience helps us figure out a lot about people we’re investigating.”
Sam shook hands with Darren and smiled. “Like on Criminal Minds, right?” he asked. “I've always wanted to meet one of those guys.”
Darren grinned. “Keep hoping,” he said. “That show is nothing at all like reality at the behavioral analysis unit. For instance, nobody ever refers to an ‘unsub,’ there aren’t any Gulfstream jets in the FBI, and nobody in the unit ever gets to be involved in an actual arrest. In fact, ninety-five percent of the time, they only consult over the phone.”
“Well, you just ruined my dreams. Still, I’m glad to have you on the team.”
“Thank you, sir, I’m glad to be here. Heard a lot about you, and I’m certainly looking forward to working with you.”
“That’s your team, Sam,” Ron said. “I thought you’d want to get to know them all, so I suggest you have them all in to your office this afternoon for a conference on the case. And incidentally, everyone here at Windlass has at least a Top Secret clearance, so you can discuss any details you need to with any of them.” He glanced at his phone. “We’ve got about half an hour before C-link gets here. Ready for the grand tour?”
“Sure,” Sam said.
Ron took him through the building then, showing him the rest of the offices and other areas. There was a small suite of offices for the security team commanders, and one of the old parts warehouses had been turned into a weight room and gym. There was a large machine shop in another old warehouse, and a laboratory adjacent to it. Between the two, Ron told him, the techs could make just about anything. The head man there, whose name was Fred, was nicknamed “Q,” after the James Bond character, because some of his gadgets were that impressive.
The second floor, where the tires had originally been stored, had been converted into hotel-like living spaces. Ron referred to them as “safe points,” and explained that they were used occasionally when someone needed to be placed in extreme protection. There was also a communal kitchen with a pantry that was kept stocked.
When they came back down, Ron announced that they still had ten minutes. “Want to grab some coffee?”
Sam grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
6
Sam and Ron stopped in the break room and got themselves a cup of coffee each, then went back to Sam’s office. Ron sat in the chair in front of Sam’s desk again, so Sam took his own chair behind it.
“So, I take it I’m going to be briefed on the situation?” Sam asked.
“Well, they’ll probably give you some more details about it,” Ron replied, “but this is mostly just an introduction. They want to establish a liaison with you, so they’re bringing one of their own people to work with you. I don’t know a lot about him, other than that his name is Joel Streeter. I gather he’s one of the scientists who were working on the chip, so he might be pretty valuable to you.”
“At least, he might be able to help me understand what it is we’re looking for. To be perfectly honest, Ron, even with everything I’ve read, this is all still feeling a lot like science fiction to me.”
“I can understand that,” Ron replied. “A lot of the cases we’ve dealt with since we went private have been connected to new technology, and I've seen and heard things that I never would have believed could exist in my lifetime. I mean, we had some pretty neat stuff when we worked with Harry, but there are some technologies out there today that are simply beyond anything most of us can imagine. I’m not talking as much about computers as things like artificial organs, or growing new organs directly out of cells taken from one that’s failing. The day is not that far off when a bad heart can be replaced with a brand-new one grown in a laboratory from your own cells, so your body won’t reject it. They’re gradually learning how to make new stem cells from already mature tissues, and those stem cells can then be coached into growing a new organ.”
“I've read a few things about that,” Sam said, “but it didn’t sound like we were really that close.”
“That close? If you were a powerful politician and needed that new heart right away, there are a few labs that would actually start one going for you today. It might not turn out perfect, but it could certainly keep you alive longer than one that was already failing, while they work out the bugs and grow you an even better one. Or, you hear all this talk about going to Mars? What would you say if you knew there was a propulsion system that can take a spaceship to Mars and back in less than a month, and might cost less to operate than what you spend on gasoline in a year?”
Sam grinned at him. “I’d say it’s a good thing spaceships don’t use gasoline, because the oil companies would go ballistic. Can you imagine how much money they would lose?”
“Of course,” Ron said, “but you missed the hint I dropped to you. If it can take a spaceship millions of miles, what could it do for getting across town? Those oil companies you mentioned are not going to be happy when this thing is unveiled, and part of our job is to make sure nobody finds out about it before it’s time for it to be announced.”
“Okay, I can see that. Tell me something. How did your company come to be involved with CerebroLink in the first place?”
“Oh, we’ve been involved. The CEO came to us about a year ago, when we were just really making our name. We had done some impressive work for a company he is loosely connected to, and he decided to ask us to clamp down on his internal corporate security. He had been having a few minor leaks, mostly just slips of the tongue among some of his people, so we put together a seminar on the importance of secrecy and then we started vetting his employees. Some of them should never have been privy to any of his proprietary information, and it took a combination of high-value severance packages and threats of life-destroying litigation to convince them that they didn’t ever want to let any of that information become public. Since then, we check out all potential new employees before they are hired, and there hasn’t been a leak o
f any importance since we took that over. When this happened, he just naturally came to us to ask about investigating it, and when we mentioned you—well, let’s just say he got excited.”
“Excited?”
“Yes. He had heard of you, over the Lake Mead incident, of course. If you remember, you even made CNN on that one.”
The phone on Sam’s desk buzzed, and he hit button one. “Yes?”
“Mr. Rice and Mr. Streeter are here,” Jenna said.
Sam looked at Ron, who nodded. “Send them on in, please.”
Sam and Ron got to their feet, and a moment later the door opened. Jenna stepped through and escorted two men inside, then asked if anyone would like coffee. Both men declined, so she closed the door.
“Gentlemen,” Ron said. “I’d like you to meet Sam Prichard. Sam is our new chief investigator, and will be running the entire operation. Sam, this is Dr. Gerald Rice and Joel Streeter.”
The man introduced as Streeter smiled as he accepted Sam’s extended hand. “I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Prichard,” he said.
“All good, I hope,” Sam said. “A pleasure to meet both of you gentlemen. I thought perhaps we might take the conference table?”
Rice, who was holding a large briefcase, smiled and nodded. “I think that might be a good idea,” he said. “We have a lot of material to show you.”
The four of them moved to the conference table, and Rice set his briefcase on the table and opened it. From inside, he extracted three bound reports and passed them out as they all took their chairs. Sam noted that Streeter didn’t get one.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is the prospectus on the BCI project. It will give you some general information about the project, as well as some background on exactly what brain-computer interface is all about. There are some case studies in there, detailing certain experimental cases we’ve already worked with. Some of them I believe you’ll find quite amazing.”
He turned toward Streeter. “One of them is about Joel. While this is extremely sensitive information, we felt it necessary to be perfectly open with you during this investigation. Joel is the first human recipient of the augmented fourth-generation BCI chip.”
Sam’s eyes opened wide. “Fourth-generation? That means you actually have the chip inside your head?”
Streeter nodded. “I do. The one that was implanted in me was the fourth generation, the one just before the prototype that was stolen. Along with the special cell phone that I carry, it allows me to have instant access to just about any information available through the internet. I can basically Google anything I want to simply by thinking about it, and the information is relayed back to me and instantly transmitted directly into my brain.” He grinned. “It's actually quite awesome, but occasionally it’s a little overwhelming, as well.”
“The fourth-generation,” Rice said, “was the first of our chips to utilize LED light transmission of information into the brain. It utilizes the ability of the brain’s gray matter to absorb light, something that was first discovered when it was learned that light could activate certain pleasure centers in the brain. Further investigation led to the realization that specific areas of the brain, in particular parts of the prefrontal cortex and the temporal lobes, have the ability to interpret extremely high speed flashes into unbelievably small bits of information. Using an AI system of our own design, we were able to gradually determine which specific sequences of flashes are translated into specific bits of information. In essence, you could say that we were able to discover the brain’s inherent Morse code. To give you an example, if I say the word ‘lamp’ out loud, your brain receives the sound input through the appropriate neurons, which activate an electrochemical transmission of information across a specialized connection known as a synapse. That information reaches the part of your brain that recognizes language, and then contacts that portion of your memory that contains the cerebral definition of a lamp, causing the appropriate area of your temporal lobe to present you with a mental image of something that you naturally consider to be an example of a lamp. Are you with me so far?”
Sam and Ron both nodded. “Just barely,” Sam said, “but go ahead.”
“Okay, that’s an example of the way the brain naturally learns and accesses information from the world around it. In the case of BCI, however, that information is transmitted by flashes of light that happen so fast that the human eye would never even see it. In the time it takes me to say the word ‘lamp,’ and for you to hear and recognize it, the BCI chip is capable of imparting directly into the temporal lobe and long-term memory the entire, word for word content of, for example, the Holy Bible. Communicating the word to you for recognition takes an average of 585 milliseconds, or about three-fifths of a second, but that adds up to about six hundred million nanoseconds. In that tiny amount of time, light can travel 114,000 miles. Since, in the case of the BCI chip, it’s moving only millimeters, at most, you should be able to get some concept of just how much information can be transmitted in that short a time, but to further illustrate, the flashes of light in a single nanosecond can transmit roughly the equivalent of fifteen average words. There are slightly over seven hundred and eighty-three thousand words in the King James version of the Bible. Transmitting the whole thing would take roughly half of the time it took me to just say the word ‘lamp.’ Make sense?”
“I’m sort of following,” Sam said. “And are you telling me that the brain would be able to remember the entire Bible?”
Rice smiled. “Choose a chapter and verse,” he said.
Sam narrowed his eyes and took out his cell phone. “Second Peter, chapter 3, verse five,” he said. He typed the reference into the browser of his phone, but Joel began speaking before he had finished the first word.
“‘For this they willingly are ignorant of’,” he said, “‘that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.’”
It took almost three seconds for Sam’s phone to call up the verse, but he nodded appreciatively. “Word for word,” said. He looked at Joel. “I take it this was one of the experiments you’ve been through?”
“Yes, sir,” Joel said. “I have roughly eighty thousand books stored in my head, although the list of titles is stored in the computer I’m paired with. Once I decide what I want to look up in what book, I can find any part of them at any time. It's really amazing, because my own memory was never that good. It just seems like whatever gets shoved directly into long-term memory is always going to be there, always accessible. It's pretty awesome.”
“Good grief,” Sam said. “You must be the smartest man in the world.”
Joel chuckled. “No, sir, far from it. I’m more like that guy who won Jeopardy!; I have tons of trivia in my head, but I’m not any better at correlating facts or coming up with theories than anybody else. I mean, I have probably six hundred different science textbooks in my head, but the only way I can perform an experiment is to look up how somebody else did it and replicate their efforts. If I tried to set up an experiment of my own, it would take me weeks to figure out where I wanted to start. Having a lot of information in your head is not same thing as being unusually intelligent.”
Ron grinned and leaned toward him. “Eighty thousand books, you said? Have you ever read, by any chance, a book called Magic Trixie and the Crystal Witch?”
Joel closed his eyes and kept them closed for about four seconds, then opened them. “I have now,” he said, “in a way.”
“Can you tell me the very last line in the book?”
Joel grinned. “Sure. It's ‘Because, of course, it is.’ Right?”
“That’s correct,” Ron said with a grin, “but can you tell me what the book is about?”
Joel looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. “I’d have to scan through it, which is almost the same as actually reading it. If you want to know what’s on a specific page, I can call that up instantly in my memory, but this is not exactly the same thing as havi
ng read the book. Basically, all I’ve done is download it. I could kick back and close my eyes and let it play in my head, and basically read it in about fifteen or twenty minutes, but I think you made your point.”
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to make a point,” Ron said. “I was just trying to get a grasp on what you’re actually capable of. Having the entire text of a book in your head is obviously not the same thing as having direct knowledge of the subject matter of the book.”
Joel nodded and grinned. “That’s actually a better way of putting what I was trying to say a minute ago. I got all this information in my head, but it doesn’t do me a lot of good unless I actually take the time to study through it. Now, since it’s already in my head and I don’t have to read it off the page, I can actually absorb the subject matter a lot faster. Like I said, I could read the book you mentioned in my head in fifteen or twenty minutes, because it’s not exactly an epic novel. If it was five hundred pages, it would take me longer. Incidentally, I’m kind of scanning through it as we talk in the back of my mind; is this a children’s book?”
“It seems to be something that every age can enjoy,” Ron said, “but it was my ten-year-old daughter who got me to read it, so I guess it is. It was just the first book I could think of for a quick test, one that I didn’t think you would have come across before.”
“It was an excellent test,” Rice said. “I’ll remember to suggest it, if I have to do this in the future.” He looked at Sam. “Does all of this give you a little bit of understanding of how the chip works?”
“Actually, I think it does,” Sam said, “and it actually relieves a bit of concern that I had. I was thinking of the chip as something dangerous, something that might lead to computers taking over the world, someday, but this is really just taking augmented reality a few steps further.”