The Genius Plague

CHAPTER 32

They locked me in the base’s correctional facility, usually reserved for military personnel. They took everything in my pockets, including the iPhone, and put me in a tiny room with a plastic bed, a foam mattress, a toilet, and nothing else. I could hear other inmates drilling and responding to shouted commands like it was boot camp, but I was in isolation, and they left me alone.

I had a lot of time to think.

I had hurt someone I cared about. I knew now that Shaunessy would live, but when I’d shot her, I had no way of knowing she was wearing a vest. I had actually tried to kill her. I looked at my hands as if they belonged to someone else. I had betrayed my coworkers, betrayed my country, betrayed the NSA. Worse, I barely cared. I felt more emotion over failing at my mission than I did over betraying my friends.

Of course, I had also been betrayed. First by Paul, then by both of my parents. Instead of unifying us, the fungus was dividing us. We couldn’t trust anybody. Not even ourselves.

I didn’t really blame my mom or dad or Paul for what they’d done to me. They were under the compulsion of the fungus. It wasn’t their choice. On the other hand, I felt entirely responsible for shooting Shaunessy. I remembered doing it. I had stood there, gun in hand, and I had pulled the trigger. I had resisted for a time, so clearly I had the power to fight it. But I wasn’t strong enough. I had given in, and it was Shaunessy who had suffered for my weakness.

I sat on the concrete floor, my back against the wall, and buried my head in my hands. I couldn’t trust my own mind. Which emotions were mine, and which were from the fungus? Even when I could tell, that knowledge didn’t help me change them. I couldn’t even feel horrified about the thought of a fungus living in my brain. I knew, inside, that it was horrible, and that formerly I would have found it horrible, but when I thought about it, all I felt was a flood of warm and satisfied feelings.

Thinking about McCarrick’s version of the fungus, however, prompted no such positive reaction. It was a competing species to the fungus inhabiting me, trying to coopt the same available resources. In this, the two parts of my mind agreed. I could actually think clearly about it, without unwanted emotions clouding my perceptions.

But how did it know? How could a fungus think through an issue and come to a conclusion? The answer, once I considered it, was obvious: it couldn’t. The fungus itself didn’t think at all. It improved my brain’s efficiency and affected its workings, but ultimately it was the same as the mycelium in the NSA basement, wrapped around the fiber-optic cable—a complex data filter, able to evaluate feedback and respond. It was me doing the thinking. The fungus was just integrating with my brain like it would integrate with and make use of anything else.

If I thought something was against the fungus’s interests, it flooded my brain with chemicals paralyzing my ability to say or do it. If I thought something would benefit it, it prompted me to act. The same thing must happen on a larger scale with a group of connected humans, where the consensus opinion mattered. Here, however, I was the only one judging what the result would be. Since I thought McCarrick’s strain of the fungus would be harmful, perhaps fatal, to the original organism, it encouraged my thoughts that it had to be destroyed.

And it was only a matter of time before they dosed me with McCarrick’s spores. I knew it was coming. I would be just like all those other captured Ligados—slaves to General Barron’s every command. It was utterly terrifying. Having my consciousness altered by another species was bad enough, but the idea of another human being having that kind of power over me was the worst sort of violation I could imagine.

Which meant that I was now thoroughly a traitor to my country. Even thinking clearly, I opposed the choices of my own government. I didn’t want Aspergillus ligados in my head, but I didn’t want General Barron in my head even more. I didn’t want that B-2 to take off and fulfill its mission. I had no illusions that turning people into mind slaves would stop once the war had been won. If that cat got out of the bag, so to speak, there would be no stuffing it back in again.

For me, McCarrick’s spores would mean living as a puppet, perhaps for the rest of my life. For Aspergillus ligados, however, it could mean extinction, a complete replacement by a hardier species. Taking control of humans might turn out to have been a disastrous strategy after all. It would have been better off sticking to the rainforest.

The thought made me sit up straight, suddenly alert. It wasn’t uncommon for an evolutionary step that initially helped a species to ultimately lead to its extinction. Specialization to a specific kind of food, for instance, might lead to mass starvation when that food became unavailable. Modifications that increase offspring survival rates might lead to overpopulation and the extinction of a prey species on which the population depends. Survival of the fittest was greedy and shortsighted.

This expansion into human symbiosis might be just such a step for the fungus—initially advantageous but ultimately catastrophic. We might help it to spread around the world, but we might also create a rival that would ultimately eradicate it. If so, then having the fungus in my mind was actually detrimental to the organism as a whole. Extricating it from my mind—and from all other human minds—would be in the fungus’s best interest. Humans were toxic to its survival. Most people just didn’t know it yet.

I found that as long as I thought in that way, using my intelligence to consider what would benefit the fungus, it didn’t fight me. I felt no overwhelming emotional response that buried my thought processes. We were working together, using my mind to determine a strategy to improve the fungus’s chances of survival.

Could we actually get it to extract itself from our minds for its own future good? I wasn’t sure. But one thing was certain: if it meant destroying McCarrick’s spores, then the fungus and I were on the same team, at least for a little while.

I rattled the door of my cell until my guard—a big blond with senior airman’s stripes—opened a slim window slat. His flat stare made me think he’d been on correctional guard duty for a long time.

“I need to see Melody Muniz,” I said. “Please, tell her I have information on the Ligados attack that I’m willing to share.”

“No visitors allowed,” the senior airman said. “Orders from General Barron.” He slammed the window shut.

“I can help us win!” I shouted. “I just want to tell someone what I know!”

He slid the window open again.

“Please, can you just tell Melody Muniz I was asking for her? Just that. Tell her I have information.”

“Let’s get this clear,” he said. “I’m not your messenger, and I’m not your maid. I can, however, make your life a living hell if you don’t shut your hole right now. Are we clear?”

“It could mean the war,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “She can ignore me if she wants. The general can forbid her to see me. Just, please, don’t let thousands of people die for lack of information.”

He stared at me, his facial expression not changing remotely, and then shut the window again. It was the best I could do. I lay down on the bed and wondered how long it would be before they dosed me with McCarrick’s spores, and how many of the people I loved would survive the week.

When the door finally opened, it was Shaunessy, not Melody, who came into my cell. I pulled myself up to a sitting position. She brought a small stool with her and sat. One of her sleeves had been cut away to make room for a thick bandage around her arm.

“No guard?” I said. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll hurt you?”

She pulled a small pistol out of her pocket and held it casually in her hands. “You shot me,” she said. “I’d be happy to return the favor.” The way she said it, I thought she might be looking forward to the chance.

I pulled my legs up under me and leaned back against the wall. “Why did you follow me? If you knew I was infected, why didn’t you all just grab me right away?”

“Melody wanted to. I convinced her to play you a little, see what you would do. The truth is, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think you could really switch sides, not after all you’d seen. Even when you walked into that hangar, I told them I could talk you down. They let me try. No one knew you were armed. Where did you get a gun?”

“Another Ligados left it for me.”

“Another one? There are more on the base?”

I nodded. I tried to say, “a lot more,” but the fungus wouldn’t let me. Our fragile peace didn’t extend that far.

Which was crazy. The fungus wasn’t thinking anything. It was my own brain deciding what was or was not in the fungus’s best interests. All the fungus did was dose me with strong emotional chemicals to prevent me from acting against it.

“I’m sorry,” I said instead.

She narrowed her eyes. “How can you be sorry? Isn’t the fungus controlling your mind?”

“That’s why I wanted you to come,” I said. I explained my theory that the fungus was reacting to my own evaluations of what would benefit it, and my further reasoning that infecting humanity would ultimately lead to the fungus’s own destruction.

“There’s no grand plan here,” I said. “It’s just humans, or connected groups of humans, acting on what they believe will help the fungus survive. That’s why so many people in South America started caring about environmentalism and protecting the rainforest. It’s why they started assassinating leaders who had policies allowing logging rights or who were in other ways threatening the Amazon. It doesn’t mean killing those people actually would benefit the fungus. Just that the infected people thought it would.”

“So it’s not actually controlling anyone’s mind?”

“It is. But it’s not some super-intelligent organism working thousands of people like puppets, like what General Barron wants to create. The fungus is pretty sophisticated, sure, but what it’s doing isn’t all that different from what its ancestors have been doing in forests for millions of years. It branches out into host organisms and then uses its precise control of nutrient flow to augment the functions that benefit it and diminish those that don’t. In this case, that means intelligence. It means heightening brain function and manipulating brain chemistry to reward thoughts and actions in its favor. The fungus is using our intelligence, but that doesn’t mean it’s intelligent on its own.” I thought about it. “Though it must have co-evolved with mammal brains in its environment to some extent, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to distinguish between favorable intentions and unfavorable ones.”

Shaunessy nodded, but her body language still communicated distrust, and she kept the pistol pointed in my direction. I wondered how good a shot she was.

“Let’s say I believe you,” she said. “What does it matter? The effect is the same.”

“The difference is that we can manipulate it. If we can convince a substantial number of the Ligados that a particular action is beneficial to the fungus, then they’ll do it. If we could go far enough to convince them that infecting humanity at all is actually detrimental to the fungus, then we might even get them to take antifungal medication. The fungus itself would compel them to.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Convince the fungus to kill itself? Sounds like a long shot.”

“That’s the beauty of it. The fungus doesn’t need to be convinced of anything. The people do. And they’re not rewarded for protecting the little mycelium in their heads. They’re rewarded for protecting the survival of the organism as a whole. If they think extricating it from humans is the best way to improve its survival chances, they’ll go ahead and do it.”

“It’s a nice theory…”

“When ordinary South American citizens got infected, they started caring about the Amazon enough to kill for it. But when drug lords got infected, what did they do? They didn’t worry about environmental policies. They made a drug out of the spores and smuggled it into the United States through cocaine routes. Everybody does what they think would best help the fungus to survive. When it infected me, I attacked what I thought was the biggest threat to fungal survival: that B-2 and its payload of rival spores. This whole war is just a result of ordinary people thinking the best way to ensure the survival of the fungus is to spread it around the world.”

“So, if I wanted to get the Ligados to retreat? Not to attack Albuquerque?”

“Convince them it’s in the fungus’s best interests. You already have the means in place to do it—that worm you hid in media outlets around the world. Give them a reason to believe that turning around and heading back south would be the best thing for the survival of the fungus.”

She started to cross her arms, then remembered the gun and pointed it at me. “Why should I believe you? You’ve been lying to us for days, smooth as a con artist. This could all be some kind of manipulation to distract us from the war, or to fall into some Ligados trap.”

I shrugged. “That’s for you and Andrew and Melody to decide. But what do I have to gain? It’s not like you’re going to let me out of here. If you could get the enemy to turn back, that would be good. If they ignore you, you haven’t lost anything.”

She looked at me for a long time. “I trusted you,” she said. “I knew you were arrogant and immature the day I met you. The kind of charismatic charmer who everybody likes, who can talk his way out of anything and never faces up to the consequences of his actions. I told Melody from the start that I didn’t want you on my team. But despite all that, you got me to like you, and I gave you my trust. And you manipulated me. You lied to me, and you made me look like a fool.”

“The fungus—” I said.

“Shut up. I know all about how it wasn’t your fault and you couldn’t help it. That doesn’t change how it feels, and it doesn’t make me like you any better. Your problem is, it’s too easy for you. You’re so smart you make everyone around you look stupid, but you don’t seem to realize it, and so they all like you anyway. And when you start lying through your teeth, nobody can tell the difference. They just swallow it down and pat you on the back. Even now, even after this, you’ll probably come out of this smelling like a rose. They’ll give you an Exceptional Service medal and call you a hero. You just watch.”

I was floored. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. I didn’t think I was any of those things. I’d done nothing but screw up since I joined the agency, and this was the worst failure of all. I’d nearly gotten arrested on my first day. I’d been the one to let Paul into Fort Meade, where he planted the spores and spread the fungus into the server network. It was my poor handling of my family’s infections that had led to my own capture and infection. And now I had betrayed my country and shot one of my colleagues. How could she think I led a charmed life?

She shook her head. “Forget it. I just wanted to see you. To look in your eyes and see if I could tell that you weren’t in control.”

“And can you?”

She stared at me, her lips pursed. “I don’t know. You seem perfectly rational, not like a puppet at all.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said.

“I know. I see what all these other people do, and I know it’s the same. You were under compulsion. But I still… never mind.” She stood up. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“You’ll tell Melody, though? About what I said?”

“Of course I will.”

She took a step toward the door, but before she could knock on it to be let out, an earsplitting siren wailed. It came from outside the correctional facility, and, from the sound of it, the noise could be heard across the entire base.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Her eyes met mine, and I saw the fear in them. “We’re under attack.”