by Craig Boldy
"Can we get something a little more comfortable for Hanson please?" I asked as I lay back on the table, "I don’t want to have to spend the first ten minutes getting the feeling back in my shoulders and ass." One of the techs murmured "We'll look into it", and I began to feel for the switch at the back of my head. It took me a few attempts to find, it was that small. It did feel like a small piece of cartilage, right at the base of my skull where the spine meets it. I pressed it softly, and the blackness returned. It was as if all the lights switched off. I was back in that odd dark room again, with the feeling of getting smaller and smaller, then finally I seemed to feel a pressure building in front of me as if I were being expelled from the room.
I stood there in the corridor for a few moments before it began to fade and dissipate, leaving me with only the darkness behind my own eyelids. I opened them just at the point where they pulled me away from the amplifier.
Sutton leaned over me and shone his light in my eyes. "Pupil response is good. How are you feeling? Any ill effects at all?"
"I'm a bit drained but other than that I'm fine." It was a small lie, but I think he spotted it. The truth was I was only just holding it together. My head was buzzing as if I hadn’t slept for a week and I felt like I had just pulled an all-nighter studying. My head was fried.
"We'll give you a sedative and let you sleep it off. It's like a muscle you haven’t used before. The more you use it, the more you get used to it and the longer you can use it for."
One of the techs put a needle in my arm. I almost missed it if I hadn’t turned my head at the right time. I felt the effects almost immediately. Not the complete shutdown that the last shot had provided but just the gentle warmth of relaxation. From my vantage point, I could just see the medical team reinserting the tube to keep Hanson breathing.
I was feeling a little conflicted over it. On the one hand, the poor guy had effectively died and should be allowed to die, but on the other he was advancing the boundaries of science, not to mention allowing a paraplegic the gift of being able to walk again, if only for a few hours at a time. I must have been rooted in thought as I barely noticed that they had moved the bed back over to the lift. I blinked slowly and must have fallen asleep for a few moments as when I opened my eyes I saw the bare sights of the room I had been in originally. The nurses came and saw to my body’s care before leaving me alone to sleep. I didn’t have any strange dreams that night.
Over the next few weeks, they gradually increased the duration I spent inside Hanson’s body. At first, it felt like I would never get used to the mental drain. It wasn’t until I was spending more than about four or five hours a day using Hanson's body that I finally began to adjust. The rest of the time I spent relaxing or sleeping in my own body. The new technology in my wheelchair made it possible for me to control it without having to have the piece of rubber in my mouth, so I was finally able to talk at the same time as wheeling around.
Eventually, I was able to spend a full day in control, only returning to my own body to sleep; the rest of the waking hours, I spent training. Hanson had lost some of his muscle mass while I was getting up to speed but I was putting the work in to bring it back. He had been a Marine, before his accident, so he had a very well maintained body. I was quite muscular before my own accident, so I was used to the drill of eating right and working out every day. I also had the added advantage of the combat training that they were putting me through daily. I found it odd in the beginning, before finally making the connection. Regardless of being in Hanson's body, I was training my mind. It wouldn’t matter whose body I was in, my response times and tactics would be all the sharper.
They even found a way to alter the programming of the nanotech in Hanson's brain to allow me to retain long-term memories when I transferred back to my own body, something to do with the injury he had sustained allowing more nano-machines to replicate than usual. That coupled with the constant proximity to the amplifier made the whole process much smoother.
I spent quite a few hours in the gym with Wilson, generally sparring in the boxing ring. It seemed odd, but he was faster than I was, or at least faster than Hanson; if I had been able to use my pre-disaster body, I would have run circles around him. I had the weight and power advantage over him which made the whole thing sort of equal as he could dodge most blows but with the strength of my punches I only needed to get a few in to knock him over.
Once we had had enough of hitting each other, we generally went to the cafeteria to eat and talk. Wilson was as closed a book as I had been before the accident. No family and a work-life balance severely weighted towards work. We sat in the cafeteria together one day, sitting in the warmth of the sun streaming through the tall glass windows, when he began to talk about the project.
"You've been doing well at this, you know." I looked at him questioningly, although happy to be praised, "We almost thought the funding would be cut unless we could find a suitable candidate who could take to it as well as you have."
"That’s the problem these days," I said reassuringly, "Everything's controlled by the money."
"Isn't that the truth? I do have some good news for you though; we are ahead of schedule, and the results we are getting from both you and the machines are simply fantastic. The higher-ups are ready to move this into Phase Two."
"Phase Two? What's that?"
"Phase Two is the operational stage of this little experiment. Where we put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. You know how in the movies and TV shows there's always some bungling cop walking into an undercover operation and blowing years of work and millions of dollars of resources. Well, this is kind of the answer to that. The only money we spend is for the upkeep of this facility, and we can never have a blown cover or any at-risk assets."
"Sounds plausible."
"They want to start putting you out 'in the field' from next week. There is a briefing later today to bring you up to speed. How do you feel about that?"
"I can't wait." I could barely contain the excitement boiling up in me. After a couple of months looking at the same walls every day, a person can get a little stir crazy. Granted, it was a bigger prison than my own body and wheelchair, but there was something nice about walking around in the fresh air.
I walked with Wilson back to my room to freshen up. I stripped out of my sweaty gym clothes and stood under the shower. I had plenty of time before the meeting, so I just stood, allowing the heat of the water to seep into my skin. I always took for granted the simple things like being able to stand under a hot shower and even to wash. The torrent of blissfully hot water was substantially different from a lukewarm sponge bath.
I spent some time reading while I waited for hours to pass. I was so engrossed in my book I almost wasn’t ready when the knock sounded at my door.
Wilson poked his head in, "You ready?" I nodded, and he opened the door fully. One of the nurses wheeled in the ventilator as I put my book down and lay on the bed. Looks like I will have to go to the meeting in my own body.
I laid on the bed and reached up to press the switch on the back of my head. Seconds later, I opened my eyes to Wilson standing in front of me. I checked my connection to the wheelchair, and we set off, Wilson leading the way.
We ventured into one of the large meeting rooms I had passed on my way in on that first day, and Wilson proceeded to introduce me to some very senior looking officials. Among them, and clearly, the most important people in the room were the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army and the heads of the FBI and CIA. They were all stern looking, military type men and women, some in uniform and some in the unmistakable dark suits of the Agency.
The person leading the meeting, a tall woman in a dark suit, greeted us and then proceeded to hand each of us at the table a thick folder. Momentary concern faded away as the digital contents of the file opened up on my chairs monitor. I flicked through it, speed-reading some of the text before turning my attention back to the speaker.
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br /> ‘The Infiltrator Project’s main aim is to find a way to install an agent into a criminal gang or paramilitary organisation without the need for cover stories, years of building trust and millions of dollars in funding.
Phase One is the codename given to locating and training a suitable candidate who was willing and most importantly capable of using the billion dollar mainframe and amplifier we have designed. The best engineers, scientists and biologists along with the world foremost neurosurgeons have provided expertise to fulfil the objective of the technology aspect of the project, with special thanks to our outside contractors FutureTech, for the final push. I would also like to thank our candidate," she pointed me out and introduced me to the room, "for his outstanding commitment to the Agency.
Now that we have had a suitable amount of time to assess and test the interface and the candidate’s performance, I would like to officially state that Phase One has been a success and we should begin Phase Two immediately."
The remainder of the meeting took the form of a Q&A session where each of the officials in the room had some time to ask various questions about the project. Some were directed at me, and I was required to answer them as best I could. Once everyone was satisfied, we left the higher-ups to continue to discuss it in a closed session and vote on the outcome of the project.
In the end, it took about forty minutes to reach consensus. Fortunately, they had decided to ratify the decision to go forward into Phase Two. After the meeting, the VIPs toured around the facility before finally going back to their cars and setting off for wherever it is important people go after an important meeting. Once the final VIP was out of the building, we returned to the room. On the way, I called back to switch over to Hanson's body. I had to admit, I was getting too used to being able to do things for myself again. I knew it wouldn’t last so I was savouring it as much as I could.
The briefing they then gave me lasted all of three hours. They had provided refreshments for the officials, and someone had been in to refill the containers in the centre of the table. I offered everyone coffee, and before long each of the team had a steaming cup in front of them. Back when it was my own hand lifting my own cup, I generally drank my coffee black and without sugar; I kept having to remind myself that I was tasting with someone else's tongue. Hanson apparently liked plenty of milk and half a spoonful of brown sugar in his. It had taken me about twenty cups to finally discover what tasted good; maybe I should switch to tea. I made a mental note to find out more information about Hanson rather than just his service history.
I looked into the cup in my hands; I had drunk about three-quarters of it. The coffee itself prepared and delivered by the catering staff, who resided somewhere else in the building. A fresh pot was generally already present for us whenever we needed a room.
Wilson began with a brief explanation of how they infected their targets. When they were initially testing the nanotechnology, they had envisioned some kind of dart gun, like the tranquiliser guns at zoos, but they decided that it was too conspicuous. I couldn’t imagine it being very covert if the target was walking down the street and suddenly there is a dart with a red tail sticking out of their neck.
They had discovered that the nanotech was capable of surviving for extended periods in food and drinks. I considered how they would do it, plant someone in a coffee shop and hey presto a coffee full of microscopic machines ready to take over your brain.
Everybody had to eat and drink, and it only took a small amount of detective work to find out where people go. We are creatures of habit, very few of us will go to different places; we go to one place, and if it's OK we stick with it. It doesn’t even have to be a great place, so long as the food is fine and it’s either easy to get to or quick to deliver.
All it takes to do the job is one nano-machine; they are capable of rapid self-replication, but the ideal would be to get a large quantity into the target to speed up the process. The more you can get into someone the quicker you could take control. They had used this technique to infect the first target.
“Your first assignment is to take control of Grigory Mitrov; a Russian mercenary at the head of an illegal weapons shipping consortium.” He passed a folder to each of the people in the room. The folder contained pictures of Grigory and their suspected base of operations along with details of the next assumed delivery. “The Agency managed to pay off a local liquor store clerk to sell Grigory a specially dosed bottle of Russian vodka a couple of weeks ago. We need you to take control of Grigory and find out where and when the next shipment will be coming in. This one is the first field exercise, so we are taking it easy. Your main objective is to get the information back to us; when are they coming into port and who is being paid off to let them in? Secondary objectives, and this is only if you can do it while being covert, find some way of disabling the ship and bring it to the attention of the US Coast Guard.”
"Roger that."
Wilson ended the meeting, and we walked over to the amplifier room, Sutton and Filch took up station at the controls as I returned Hanson to the medical bay. I went through my usual process of returning to my own body and opened my eyes to the bright light at the top of the platform.
"What do you call this process anyway? I never asked.”
Filch was comparing some of the data on the monitors to the information on her tablet. Without turning around, she said, "Transference of Consciousness through Direct Host Brain Stimulation."
I looked at Wilson, and we smiled at each other. "Can we please come up with a shorter name than 'Transference of Consciousness through Direct Host Brain Stimulation' It's a mouthful, to say the least."
"The acronym isn’t much better - 'TOCDHBS'. We could call it 'hosting' as the target's brain hosts your consciousness." Sutton suggested.
"More like ghosting, considering he possesses them." Wilson smiled and made a woo noise while waving his hands.
"Ghosting sounds good," I said, smiling at the noise, "I'm ready when you are."
I started my usual meditation routine. Generally, it didn’t take me long to jump into Hanson's body, I could almost do it without the need to go into that corridor, but for this, I would need to concentrate.
∆∆∆
Chapter Five
I held the mental image in the forefront of my mind once more, the corridor forming quicker each time I tried. The white light all around gave way to the walls and series of doors as it always did. The first door to materialise was the one allowing me to move into Hanson's body. Appearing slowly out of the light came the next door, right next to the first, becoming entirely solid before the handle appeared. I looked down and was surprised to see a body. I lifted my hand and turned them over in front of me, they left an after image as they moved, a short trail of colour as if my perception of them had sped up to the point where they seemed to be in slow motion.
I reached out to the door and pressed my hand against the top of the handle, my fingers closing around it slowly. As soon as I made contact, a wave of warmth swept through me. This had never happened before. I assumed it was something to do with the new experience and pressed down on the handle. It moved about halfway down before stopping. I pushed at the door but to no avail. Either it was stuck, or the handle wasn’t pressed down enough. I gave the handle another hard press, and it started to move upwards on its own, pushing my hand up with it.
The warm glow started to get hotter, and my hand froze. My fingers would not open to release the handle. Hotter and hotter it became until pain flooded my senses. I tried to open my mouth to shout, but the moment I did, the white light all around became a blinding flash, cutting out to blackness as quickly as it had come. Everything stopped; the heat, the pain and the light. I was floating in an endless black void. I tried to form the mental image of my body to transfer back, but it didn’t work. I tried repeatedly; panic growing in my mind, but there was nothing there.
I don’t know how long I was floating there in the void before I started to see a tiny point
of light in the distance. It grew and grew, slowly at first then rushing towards me. I could just make out the outline of a door. The light was flooding through it, a beacon in the dark. I reached out towards it, moving faster and faster until it was within a few metres. The door was closing; I didn’t notice at first, but the glow was dimming the closer I came to it. I had no choice, no time to be cautious. The door could lead to any mind, but it would be better than stuck in the void. I curled up into a ball and cannoned through the opening, hearing a slam, mere seconds after passing through.
I opened my eyes in panic, swivelling left and right until they settled on the familiar sight of the amplifier room ceiling and the large piece of tech suspended above me. My nerves calmed at the sight, and the familiar numb feeling rushed back into my mind.
"What happened?" I stammered.
"It's OK, stay calm.” Filch was tapping away at her tablet once more, a slight furrow of annoyance on her brow. I had to admit, she was quite cute when she was working out a problem. “There was a power surge; the firewalls went up to protect you. We'll give it a few moments and try again."
I waited on the table, going over the experience in my mind. I don’t know what the void was, but it scared me. Was it a construct of my own mind, trying to make sense of what was happening to the technology and the unfamiliar signals it was receiving or was it something more sinister, as if the connection between my mind and any of the available bodies, including my own, was not there.
After a little while, the various tech people seemed to be happy with the power supply and Filch, orchestrating the whole thing from the platform and her tablet gave the OK to try again.