by Stephen King
Jerad looked confused. “How …?”
“It’s a helmet addition, a chipset, that permits short-distance telepathic speech undetectable by outsiders. It amplifies thoughts when the user makes a determined effort to communicate.”
Jerad nodded, motioning for Andrew to carry on.
“All that was good to go; where the problems arose in the previous build were with the ‘enemy combatants’—avatars which were apparently rendered so realistically that it pulled our testers out of the scenario; instead of immersion, it seemed to tip off the observer that they were in a simulation. As a result, they drifted toward the uncanny valley effect, which changed their behavior in less predictable ways.
“So now,” Andrew continued, leaning forward to grab a pen and paper off Jerad’s desk. He wrote a list of the items as he spoke: “I’ve fixed that problem, as I suggested to you at the time, by introducing an ‘enemy’ that isn’t as ‘real’; so I went with physically intimidating amalgamations of demons, mythic beings, aliens … like Pazuzu, Grendel, Cthulhu, and so on, then added culturally-sensitive bits of the person’s actual personal background based on our preliminary questionnaires—stuff about their families, religious beliefs/imagery, bad personal experiences, phobias and the like—all pulled from the interviews. Then I randomized all of it with an AI script I wrote in PS-VRML to avoid the worst pitfall that PDS reported—the Artificially Aggregated Sentience effect, where a memory leak caused characters in the VR realm to become self-aware; it was an easy thing to remedy, actually, just a bit of code to modulate the signal-to-noise threshold in the sim environment …”
Jerad squinted his eyes as he tried to follow.
Andrew chuckled. “Sorry, got a little carried away. So, anyway, the upshot is that we’re able to get our participants into a ‘suspension of disbelief’ headspace more quickly by feeding into this ‘subliminal’ stuff, using their real life against them in a sense, while avoiding the problems PDS ran into—”
“Does that actually work? ” Jerad interrupted. Andrew raised his hand to silence him, then smiled.
“I know—it’s counterintuitive. Making it look less like, say, Osama bin Laden, or a member of the Taliban or Daesh, and more like a continually shifting ‘monster from the id.’ But, as I can attest, it works, man! Think of it like this: You go see one of those old movies with the stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen—Jason and the Argonauts, or Clash of the Titans—and you’re on the edge of your seat, right? You go see something with more ‘realistic’ CGI—the recent War of the Worlds or the Keanu Day the Earth Stood Still, for example—and your mind refuses to accept it. For buildings, vehicles and such it’s fine; for the human figures and avatars, you lose engagement, and we must have that—total engagement. Complete control of the heart and the mind.”
“But you said you’d been having these sleep issues now, correct?” Jerad asked, rubbing a day’s growth on his chin. “Is that a side effect of this immersive stuff, of tinkering with the subconscious? And is that going to hinder us in the implementation department? I mean, why would someone return to a situation that’s so frightening that it interferes with sleep?”
Andrew relaxed into his seat, sighing in thought. “Yeah, it’s a bit of an issue, I won’t lie. It’s too much. But I suspect I now understand the mechanism; I even ran it past Marni, the neuropsychologist here. See, we’re right in this sweet spot—or we want to be, at least—between reality, and belief. In reality, the ‘good’ past was never as great as we think we remember it; and the future can be much worse than we want to believe. So we need to blunt expectations of both. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish. We need the past to seem a little worse than the future with respect to combat scenarios and the like, but the future can’t be so incredibly optimistic that we become unrealistic in our assessment of danger, whether to ourselves or others. That could make some folks reckless.”
Jerad nodded again. “Yeah, I agree. But what’s the point here?” He glanced at the clock on his desk.
“The point,” Andrew continued, “is we’re trying to dull those emotional reactions not with reason—which can work against our overall logistical goals sometimes, or even be countered by various mental approaches—with what I have come to term ‘Socially Induced Apathy,’ or SIA. We use past actions and context to create the future reactions we desire. It’s a way to negate fear, or pity, or overconfidence, or nostalgia where it’s not wanted. I think it can be targeted. Could be used in therapy for PTSD, too, but I honestly see it as a tool for hostile engagement, more realistically.”
Jerad held his hands up, his brow furrowed: “Socially Induced Apathy? What is it?”
Andrew sat forward again, his gaze intense as he spoke. “Not to be too Orwellian, but it’s tied to something first observed by the writer Edgar Allan Poe. He developed this concept called ‘the unity of effect’—all the pieces of a story or poem work together to build to a climax a little at a time. Brick-by-brick, you might say.”
“Okay, I remember that.”
“Right, so with SIA, I think we can do a sort of meta-analysis of reality and, bit-by-bit through extreme stimulus/exposure, create what I call ‘the unity of affect ’—in other words, we can flatten emotional responses through intensive contact with violent or pornographic depictions—images as virus, infecting mind-to-mind, bypassing biology and personality. Also, it exploits the old notion of ‘the dose makes the poison’: The more intensely our personnel experience this stuff, the more we disrupt their mental defenses, and the greater the internal resolve they’ll have to muster to be able to ‘move’ themselves into other mental/emotional states. Their excitability level will have been lowered and they become in effect ‘emotionally neutered.’ This way, we can calculate a ‘dosage’: a reaction threshold. Hence the ‘induced apathy.’ I call it ‘social,’ as it’s been happening on the Internet for years, but in crude, random, and unfocused ways.”
“Really? Like—”
“Well, we can see a little of this ‘flattening of affect’ in popular culture. A sort of crudeness, a coarsening. Potty humor in TV and movies. Add to that a blandness—Katy Perry, Disney-fication, Justin Bieber … all that shit. That’s one part. On the flipside, we see things like ‘snuff’ websites such as CharonBoat.com or Rotten.com, and before that the VHS tapes like the mockumentary Faces of Death or, much worse, the real stuff in Traces of Death. I mean, even in-the-news death cults like Daesh do this on their Twitter accounts and YouTube channels. They desensitize and manipulate people with editing techniques, iconic imagery, music and sound—high production values, in other words—which opens up an avenue … a gateway of sorts into the mind, where they—we, as content creators—can re-form ingrained responses, change conceptions of right/wrong, good/bad. Even flip ‘em by eroding that psychic interface, breaking down personal boundaries … It’s a type of mind control, in essence; call it ‘matter over mind.’ Hopefully it doesn’t let anything out! Just kidding … sort of. Anyway, there’s a kind of dark allure, a taboo-breaking aspect; people are attracted to it, even though they’re disturbed by it. They’re also fascinated, aroused—in every sense of the term.”
Jerad’s eyebrows arched. “Really? How so?”
Andrew jotted down another thought before continuing. “See, kids these days are raised online, right? Cell phones, tablets, the Internet, blah-blah-blah … The old ways, how we were brought up, are fading. And fast. They’re jaded, bored by the things that we thought were cool or interesting growing up. As a result, we’ve entered into this uncharted sociocultural era; we’re now starting to see new legends spring up, a kind of ‘digital folklore’—Slender Man, Ted the Caver’s blog, “Pale Luna” and other creepypastas—memes and themes that behave remarkably like oral traditions in the way they circulate online. What we want to do is harness that, but instead of a single mind doing the work, we’ll have a collective creating the experience. A hive mind. I mean, there’s a whole Dark Web out there we could exploit. Silk Road and s
tuff you can only get from I2P or other darknets using programs like Tor anonymizing software—another pie DARPA had its fingers in, incidentally. Strangely, there was a game exploring this very notion which bubbled up into the mainstream not too long ago: Sad Satan. Later, some questioned its authenticity, but it had a certain cache, a mystique, because of its origins in the Deep Web. But that’s just stuff not crawled by search engines; the Dark Web is an even more extreme resource we can tap.”
“Did you access it? Sad Satan, I mean? Is there something we can reverse engineer for our purposes?” Jerad asked, a hint of a smile on his face.
Andrew nodded. “Yeah, we looked at it … There was disturbing shit in it, no doubt—pedophilia, real death imagery, avatars perpetrating atrocities … it even had scenarios where the avatars would try to rape or torture you, then commit suicide if you stopped them. They had a kind of autonomy that I hadn’t seen before, a life of their own, so to speak. It was some sick shit. Extreme. Of course, everyone knows that exposure to extreme material, whether on porn sites or whatever, sort of ‘inoculates’ one against it in the future. You need more and greater stimulus to achieve the same level of gratification or disturbance, as it makes one increasingly indifferent to the plight of the ‘Other’; it trains the mind to forego empathizing, to accept suffering, to accept even dire personal consequences, or work against one’s own personal self-interest.”
Jerad leaned forward, intrigued. “How does the stimulus accomplish this?”
“Well, the exposure has to be continual, or the ‘inurement effect’ wears off. That’s why, if we control it, we can modulate the flattening of the affect, create a way to govern a person’s will—and therefore their willingness to do and accept things they normally wouldn’t …,” the wind gusted outside as Andrew paused to let his words take hold. “Consider it a kind of social control ‘rehearsal’ mechanism to guarantee an ‘agreement of predictable actions,’ even in the initially unwilling. I mean, you’ve played the game a few times, demoed it for the higher-ups here and there—”
“Scared the hell out of them. And me!”
“Right, well, that’s the point, but there’s more to it, when used as I’ve been explaining, with long-term exposure. For example, we could use it as a tactic for gleaning information: It has the potential to be much more powerful than waterboarding or other, messier interrogation options for strengthening the resolve of the good guys, think SERE training—”
“Or for breaking the bad guys,” Jerad said. He tapped his fingers on the desk, thoughtful. “SIA, huh? Unity of Affect. I like this. And you’re saying your new approach is hitting that, eh? But the nightmares? That seems unpredictable—”
Andrew nodded. “Agreed. As I mentioned a minute ago, the crux is that it’s been almost too successful. It’s terrifying—overly stimulating, instead of desensitizing. But this is just a detail to be sorted out; we fix that, and we can then use this unintended side issue it presents as a way to degrade hardened fighters. Break the enemy more quickly. Fits in neatly with other deprivation solutions; we could also use it to heighten their fears and generate psychic trauma—program and personalize this to an individual’s fears, their unique ‘terror signature.’ And the good part: No visible scars.”
Jerad nodded. “Okay. I’m with you. We have to wrap this up. I need to get to the DARPA meeting today and update everyone on your progress. I’ll try to buy you another few weeks. Good work, Andrew.”
VI
[ What’s happening, Andersen? ] Gates asks.
We hear Andersen reply via MORPHEUS: [ Not seeing anything, Sarge. Routine recon. I checked in with Wagner and Schultz a few minutes ago. All’s well. ]
[ Looks like bugs are working out], Gates replies. As the sun drops below the horizon, Gates feels relief. After weeks of battling resistance, finally they have made headway against Pazuzu and his supporters.
[ Sarge, Wagner just MORPH’d me—says he got some real useful stuff about an upcoming event from a captive back at base. Pazuzu shit.]
[ Roger that ], Gates replies. [ See you back at camp. ]
Three hours later.
We see that darkness has engulfed the region. The desert is cooling; overhead, a canopy of stars glimmers down on the encampment. The four soldiers have gathered after dinner and are debriefed about Wagner’s information from the enemy combatant. It is decided to regroup and set out early. Everyone retires for the night as—
Andrew sits up in the dark. He looks over at Cheri: The bedside is empty. He looks toward the bathroom; light seeps under the doorframe.
Getting up, he walks past the small window: There is a full moon; crisp silver moonlight spills onto his naked body. A gentle rain begins to tap-tap at the outside, rivulets of water staggering dreamily down the panes of glass.
At the bathroom door, he places his ear to the cold wood. He thinks he hears a thin, far away voice, possibly a woman: Cheri? But Cheri’s in Europe on assignment …
He listens more intently; the female is joined by another, male voice:
“… r get it to work. I’m just an artificial representation of evil … your evil.” “It’s like a wound that doesn’t heal properly—sometimes it scars, leaves a reminder; other times it never closes all the way, just keeps weeping.” “You’ll find out …” “Go North. Hang on a sec…”
Andrew hears footsteps on the other side. He pulls back just as the door is thrown open, flooding the bedroom with a terrible white luminance broken by a hulking, monstrous silhouette—
VII
Two weeks later.
Jerad stared from his office window, catching a glimpse of his own half-reflection in the glass: His eyes were puffy, tired. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
Andrew was pensive. He smiled nervously from the other side of the desk, smoothing his hair. “Problem, boss?”
After a pause, Jerad turned in his chair to face him. “Afraid so.”
Andrew: “What is it?”
“Well … you know the Senate just released the updated ‘Torture Report’ with all the photos from Iraq and Guantanamo—”
“Right.”
“As a result, funding dried up …” Silence. Jerad continued: “And cuts were made to DARPA programs. Even though we’re on Republican ‘safe lists’—”
“Oh shit …”
Jerad raised his hands. “Hold on, hold on. It’s not all bad—”
Andrew huffed, staring at his boss from beneath skeptical eyebrows as he crossed his arms. “Okay. What else?”
Jerad loosened his tie. “They’ve turned the whole funding process into a bureaucracy worthy of Kafka. Hoops within hoops within hoops. So, they’re consolidating some things, and pulling the plug on others.” He paused, massaging the back of his neck. “We’re now going to be subject to periodic budgetary scrutiny … and a re-org of DARPA that puts us into DARC.”
“DARC?”
“Yeah—it’s a highly-classified subdivision of DARPA. Stands for the Department of Augmented Reality Conceptualizations. Its focus is to understand the benefits and drawbacks of AR tactics and other novel conflict-resolution solutions. Also to develop in-theatre strategies for their use. Domestic applications, too; they’re quite enthusiastic about turning all this over to law enforcement after the Middle East conflicts fade away. They want to extract a bit of profit out of their investments in R&D. They’ve been partnering with Microsoft and other OEMs on HoloLens and all kinds of second tier products, too, in an effort to begin the shift away from outdated VR; to establish a footing in the AR milieu. VR’s gone too mainstream—we’re seeing virtual terrorism, even virtual journalism. It’s beginning to invoke not just a shared realistic experience, but even emotional states—empathy, compassion, hate.”
“Sounds familiar …”
“Exactly. You’ve been knocking on that door with Pazuzu and SIA.” Jerad slid a few sheets of paper across his desk for Andrew to peruse. “DARC is nimble; they aren’t hamstrung by process-itis, or analysis-paralysis. They
want results, ASAP. Just check out the list of things DARC already placed into alpha- or beta-testing, or are about to …”
Andrew scanned over the document. Just under a TOP SECRET stamp, the list of items was remarkable:
STAGING: PRE-ALPHA (Proof of Concept – Need to Know Eyes Only)
1) Contagious Neuro-Dementia Acceleration Syndrome (CoN-DAS): A fast-acting, engineered viral agent and extreme BSL-4 contagion which initiates profound hallucination events and violent behavior. The primary effect on males promotes aggression and self-destructive derangement; in females it results in paralysis and a comatose state similar to the mysterious early 20th century outbreak of Encephalitis Lethargica/von Economo disease, though the biological foundations for this difference in presentation are still being researched. HIGH PRIORITY
2) Metamaterial Cloaking (MmC): The novel use of optical materials which can influence the route lightwaves take by directing and regulating the spread and transmission of quantified parts of the light spectrum, thereby rendering an object seemingly invisible. PRIORITY
3) Mnemonic Transplantation (MT): Injectable serum which enhances suggestibility to a point permitting the “editing” or outright verbal implantation of false memories that permanently replace real ones. HIGH PRIORITY
4) Neuroplastic Growth Stimulation (NGS): An ingestible synthetic hormone concentrate that promotes rapid brain development (so called “Limited Benevolent Tumor Formation,” or LBTF) in adults, primarily in the Limbic System, including specifically the hippocampus (memory formation/storage), hypothalamus (circadian rhythms, emotions, some motor function), and the amygdala (strong memory impressions), but also the pons (arousal and consciousness), and neocortex by way of new connections to parts of the parietal (touch), temporal (auditory), and occipital (vision) lobes. In principle, these become new organs of perception, enhancing sensory impression, memory, intuition, and facilitating telepathic communication. PRIORITY