Brain Storm

11

Mervin Fischer quailed nervously in his seat before asking the question. "Is this ethical?"

Holz dismissed the possibility as irrelevant. "He's already agreed to it."

"I'm not sure it's right...."

"I am not interested in your opinion. You've seen Newton's data?"

"Yes."

"So you understand the possibilities? If we can download selectively?"

"Theoretically. But your host is a mess. He's not living in the real world. The delusions will be prob-lematic. They'd be a real danger in practice."

"You'll weed them out."

Holz was very persuasive. But he should have understood that this wasn't exactly Mervin's area of expertise.

For the past hour, Mervin Fischer had examined the data as it streamed from the temple electrodes into the mainframe. The individual with the deep-set eyes that seemed to glare at everyone in the room at the same time had remained rigid beside the terminal throughout the entire procedure.

Mervin was glad the man couldn't move. There was something in those eyes—as cold and limitless as the far reaches of space—that the young programmer found unsettling.

Fortunately the signal from the mobile interface unit had been transferred to the lab when Holz had returned to the PlattDeutsche complex in Edison, New Jersey, and so the man was sustained in his immobile state. Good thing, too. If this subject was as dangerous as Holz said he was, it was a risk to even let him out of prison. Mervin wondered what kind of warden would allow a dangerous psychotic out without armed supervision. Of course, they had tested the interface on prisoners early in the developmental stage, but the experiments had always been on volunteers and always under strict supervision.

And never, ever outside of prison walls.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have doubted the veracity of the storyteller, but he had heard this from Mr. Holz himself.

Dr. Newton had gone to his own lab with a few information CDs and a single hard drive from the mobile lab. The driving force behind the entire interface project had been upset that he didn't have primary access to the volunteer. When Mervin had arrived, Newton had left, griping that he was being shut out of his own program. He hadn't even had time enough to download all of the subject's file from the van.

When the programmer requested the backup information to confirm what he had gotten from the subject, Newton had refused.

That didn't matter to Mervin. In fact, it was probably better this way. There were still problems with the radio interface hookup.

Sometimes the signal deteriorated due to background radio signals, atmospheric conditions or just a plain lousy signal. He couldn't count the number of times the tech people had to replace the little black signal antennae on the backs of all the computers.

No, in Mervin Fischer's view, whenever possible it was better to use a physical link. Hence, the electrodes on the volunteer's temples.

Mervin didn't really need the original files. He was just being anal. At least, that's what everyone always accused him of being.

Carefully he created his own backup file from the man's brain.

He had barely downloaded the information before Mr. Holz had stormed into the lab. A crew of technicians led by Ron Stern transferred the interface signal from the lab back to the van. They then trundled the test subject with the frightening eyes back outside on some kind of mysterious mission. Lothar Holz himself gave a few hushed last-minute instructions.

Mervin Fischer assumed his work was done once the information was downloaded. He was wrong.

Moments after the van had passed through the gates of PlattDeutsche America, Holz returned to Mervin's cramped office. What he asked from Mervin made the young man's forehead itch. It always itched when he was placed in a difficult moral situation. He could feel the large red blotches already forming.

"I'm uncomfortable with this, Mr. Holz."

His boss was asking him to do something that would push the interface technology further than it had ever gone before. And he wasn't quite certain if he was the right man to do it. But Holz didn't seem to have the same reservations.

"Fischer, I don't want your input. I want you to do it."

"Dr. Newton is probably best suited to perform this sort of test," the programmer said uncertainly.

"You know how to program a computer?" Holz asked testily.

"Yes, but—"

"You understand the interface programming?"

Mervin was sure that Mr. Holz knew he had written much of the interface programming himself. He nodded nonetheless.

"You're one of the ones who kept telling me that a computer was just a less complex version of the human brain. And if we can download human

thought into one of these blasted machines, why can't we download the duplicated information into someone else's brain?"

"Theoretically..."

"Don't give me theoretically!" Holz exploded.

"I've had it up to here with all of your theoretical garbage! Can you do it or not?"

Mervin was frightened. Barely twenty-two years of age, he was a brilliant computer hacker who had graduated from college three years early and moved swiftly into the work force. But he was hopelessly inept in most social situations. Mervin could remember being yelled at precisely twice in his life. Once by his father for breaking into his savings account and increasing the balance by eleven million dollars and once by a stranger when he had stepped in front of the man's car, his nose buried deep in the pages of Star Trek fan magazine. Both times he had responded to the shouting the same way. His bladder had burst like a mud-and-twig levee in a monsoon.

"I can, um... That is, urn..." Mervin looked at his computer screen. He nodded dumbly. A shiver pulsed through his body, and a flush rose to his cheeks.

"Is that a yes?" Holz snapped. Mervin nodded again. Holz was mollified. "Perfect. Great. That's the answer I expected after all the money we've dumped into this ridiculous program." He paused, sniffing the air. "What's that smell?"

Holz found a volunteer in Zach Pendrake, one of the white shirts from marketing who had been coordinating with the PR boys to put a positive spin on the bank fallout from the day before. Pendrake was a loudmouth, opinionated on any subject from poli-tics to software to anything in between. He was the type who thought shouting down an opponent in a debate was the only way to win. Knowledge and experience be hanged.

Pendrake had taunted Mervin in the cafeteria for the past eight months to the point where the timid young man had taken to eating in the diagnostics lab.

Holz had moved Mervin into the large fourth-floor laboratory where the PET team and others connected with the early stages of the interface study had worked. The room was spacious and filled with equipment that had outlived its usefulness but had been stored here on the off chance that it might be needed once more. Nearly everything was covered with sheets of thick, translucent plastic.

Holz, accompanied by his young male assistant, led Zach Pendrake into the sterile room.

Mervin's stomach knotted when he saw whom

Holz had tapped as a volunteer. Pendrake, on the other hand, seemed absolutely delighted.

"Mervin! Buddy! How ya doing, pal?" He slapped the nervous programmer on the shoulder.

Mervin winced. He bruised easily.

"Zach," he said with a timid nod.

"Mr. Holz didn't tell me you'd be testing me."

Pendrake glanced at Holz. "Mervin and me are old buddies." He turned back to Mervin. "Why haven't I seen you at lunch, Merv? Got a little chippie stashed away somewhere?"

Mervin looked horrified at the idea. He glanced nervously to Lothar Holz and his silent assistant, stammering. "Mr. Holz, I... That is, I..." His eyes were watering.

Holz held up a hand. "Pendrake, calm down."

The marketing man smiled but grew silent.

He allowed Mervin to steer him to a wheeled table to one side of the lab, beneath the large bar-covered window. It was like a regular doctor's examining table. Right down to the sheet of disposable paper over the plastic-coated foam pad.

Mervin smeared a set of electrodes with a noxious-smelling gel and affixed them to Pendrake's temples.

These led to the back of a small computer console that was hooked into the mainframe in the corner.

Mervin had already transferred the information Holz was most interested in—the data on physical feats—

into this larger computer.

He had Pendrake unbutton his shirt and proceeded to attach a second set of electrodes to his chest.

These ran to a portable EKG monitor that had been shipped in from a subsidiary pharmaceutical company in New York. Mervin snapped on the machine, and instantly a steady green vertical line appeared across a small monitor in the face of the device. At regular intervals, a reassuring open-ended triangle spiked up from the solid line, accompanied by a familiar electronic beep.

Holz watched, anxiously wetting his lips, as Mervin slipped onto the rolling stool before his computer and began typing swiftly at the keyboard. He talked as he worked.

"I culled the stuff you told me to, Mr. Holz," he said. He avoided Pendrake's bemused look. "You wouldn't want anyone developing the psychoses your prisoner had. It's all about killing and stuff."

He shuddered as he thought about the man with the deep-set eyes who was, at the moment, in the interface van somewhere on the Cross Bronx Expressway.

"Anyway, what I concentrated on was the physical aspects of his nature. I tried to keep it pretty basic."

He was no longer glancing at Pendrake but was becoming more engrossed in the data stream on the monitor before him.

The marketing man looked bored. He had volunteered for this latest experiment for the same reason he had volunteered for some of the earlier ones. To suck up to the boss. Plain and simple. And, as he had been with the earlier PET experiments, Pendrake was bored out of his skull in less than a minute. He exhaled deeply as the first bits of data began to download into his cerebellum.

All at once, he sucked in a sudden, unexpected lungful of air.

The EKG pinged once. It almost sounded questioning. As if the device were uncertain of the data it was collecting.

Mervin glanced up curiously. Lothar Holz

watched, his face growing more expectant with each electronic spike of the EKG.

Pendrake felt the air pull down to the bottom of his lungs. It flowed into his heart and forced itself, fresher and fuller than ever before, into his blood-stream. The cleansing air coursed through his body, opening floodgates that someone who had dedicated his life to bar charts and smoke-filled rooms never knew were closed.

He felt suddenly invigorated. And light-headed.

For some reason, he found himself rotating his wrists absently. Holz was standing close, practically salivating.

"Is it working?" he asked Mervin. His eyes never strayed from Pendrake.

Mervin nodded. "He's absorbing it. Slowly, but it's working."

Pendrake knew what the little nerd meant. As he felt the power within him grow, he gripped the cold metal lip of the examining table in both hands. Still in a seated position, he twisted his hands. A simple action. He felt the strength of the metal beneath the pads of his greasy fingers. The strength of the metal was as nothing compared with what now flowed within him.

There was a loud wrenching noise, and when the others in the room looked they saw that Zach Pendrake had ripped a pair of foot-long sections of lead-enforced metal piping from the edge of the table.

He held the twin silver pipes in the air, a baffled expression on his face. It was as if he was wondering how they had gotten there.

Mervin looked on in wonder, Holz in slavering awe. Only Holz's assistant showed no sign of interest in the proceedings.

Pendrake no longer seemed to be aware of the others. In a crystalline moment of pure realization, he understood. Understood everything. The point of existence. The perfection that could be derived from the simple act of breathing. He knew that the limitations on the human body were placed there by men afraid to achieve. Terrified of true success.

The epiphany was short-lived.

Pendrake suddenly sat bolt upright on the examining table, as if jolted by a massive surge of electricity. The calm, soothing spikes of the EKG monitor stabbed sharply and held at a constant, dangerous peak.

Mervin frantically wheeled on his computer.

Holz took a few cautious steps back.

Pendrake was jolted again. His head snapped back and smashed against the painted cinder-block wall of the lab. They all heard the solid crack of bone. Pendrake snapped forward once more. A smear of hair-mottled blood stained the whitewashed wall.

"I think he's going into shock!" Mervin said desperately.

"Are you getting everything down?" Holz asked, his voice growing excited. He ignored Mervin, concentrating on the man on the table.

"I can't break the connection!" The information was being drawn into Pendrake too quickly. He was absorbing the new data like a sponge. The speed was frightening. As Mervin watched in horror, he understood what was happening. Pendrake's brain was overloading.

"Mr. Holz, we have to call someone!" But even as he pounded uselessly on his keyboard, Mervin knew there was no one he could call who could possibly help.

"Leave that alone," Holz ordered, pointing at the keyboard.

"Mr. Holz!"

"Leave it!" Holz yelled, wheeling on Mervin. He had a wild look in his eyes. He spun back to Zach Pendrake.

The marketing man was twitching spastically, as if someone had dumped a carton of red ants down the back of his shirt. His gaze was distant. When his neck twisted from side to side, a maroon patch of thick, coagulating blood on the back of his head was revealed. But no matter how hard he jerked in every direction, the electrodes didn't come loose. The EKG

monitor continued to shriek a warning to those in the room, as if the pain Pendrake was feeling had somehow been transferred to the machine.

The steady high-pitched whine grew more intense inside Mervin's head. It rattled against his eardrums until he could nearly feel the power pouring through the electrodes himself. And when he couldn't bear the noise or the angry thrashing of the man on the gurney any longer, he did something totally uncharacteristic. He disobeyed a direct order.

Mervin stepped over to the examining table.

"Stop!" Holz barked.

But Mervin didn't listen.

Woodenly he reached for the pair of temple electrodes. His pudgy hand never got closer than a foot away.

Pendrake's hand shot out, faster than a cobra, faster than the pairs of binary numbers could be downloaded, faster than the human eye could perceive. It struck the young programmer squarely in the chest.

The fingers snapped like dried twigs against the solid sternum. No matter. The chest bone groaned in protest and collapsed inward.

A spray of blood erupted from the open chest cavity as shards of shattered bone pierced the heart. Several of Pendrake's own wrist bones shattered as the hand continued. Through the spine. Out the back, clutching air. Return.

Mervin looked down at his now open chest cavity as the arm withdrew. His mouth gulped, but no words came out. Only a small trickle of blood gur-gled from between his parted lips.

With nearly no sound, he fell to the floor. He didn't move again.

Pendrake didn't feel the pain of his shattered forearm. It was as nothing compared with the symphony of exquisite torture in his own mind. Though science had determined that the brain had no true pain sensors, Zachary H. Pendrake would have disputed that theory with anyone. Except for the fact that the syn-apses in his own brain were popping like flashbulbs at an old-fashioned Washington news conference.

His thoughts were roiling into a supernova. His spine was acid dipped and on fire.

And all at once, his mind exploded in a flash of pure, searing energy.

Pendrake sat bolt upright one last time and then dropped like a sack of wet cement to the floor of the lab. He landed atop Mervin's prone body. The two electrodes on his forehead and one from his chest were wrenched free in the fall. The EKG monitor spiked one last time and then leveled out in a single, steady line. The keen of the electronic device buzzed quietly in the otherwise silent room.

After a moment, Lothar Holz stepped gingerly over to the bodies. The marketing man continued to twitch occasionally. In one such move, the watch on his shattered wrist chipped a silver-dollar-sized chunk out of the concrete floor.

Holz glanced at his silent assistant, then at the EKG. Pendrake was still flatline. He was dead.

Holz placed his toe beneath the man's shoulders and flipped him over. Pendrake rolled off of Mervin and against the legs of the examining table. The last electrode popped loose.

His eyes were opened wide. Wider than they could have been if someone had grabbed onto both lids and pulled. The red-streaked white orbs bugged unnaturally from their sockets. What was also visible by its lack was that he had bitten his own tongue off in the excitement, his lips a red-ringed O of dismay and surprise.

"It's remarkable, wouldn't you agree?" Holz asked, grinning. He looked up at his assistant expectantly. His silent companion said not a word.

Holz sighed. "We are close. Closer than we have been in many years," he said quietly to himself. He straightened himself up.

"Von Breslau will be here soon. In the meantime, clean this mess up." He waved a manicured hand at the bodies on the floor. Picking his way carefully through the carnage, Lothar Holz left the room.