The Steel Shark

Chapter 1

One wall of Joe Tesla’s office displayed a giant transparent brain. Red, green, and blue lines flashed as synapses fired wildly. The amygdala was overloaded. The owner of that brain had been in distress.

He didn’t have to study the moving images to know, because it was his own. The footage had been captured by performing an MRI, then overlaying the 3-D representation with a visual representation of an electroencephalogram, or EEG, that showed his synapses reacting to external stimuli. In this case, his terror whenever he tried to go outside. The brain was a movie of the agoraphobia that had trapped him in Grand Central Terminal.

His company, Pellucid, created brain maps like these and used the data to help people recover from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, and phobias. They had an amazing track record. Soldiers were able to let go of fearful experiences. Ordinary people were able to overcome phobias. The system was working brilliantly for many people.

But not for Joe. At least not yet. The neurologist said he was making progress, but that Joe was pushing himself too hard. Baby steps or some crap like that. Joe was tired of baby steps. He wanted to take some damn adult steps. He’d been trapped inside for over a year, and he was very tired of it.

He switched to another brain, and his psychiatric service dog, a golden retriever/yellow Lab mix named Edison, rose from his bed next to Joe’s desk and put his head on Joe’s knee.

“It’s OK, boy,” Joe said, but the dog knew better.

The new brain pulsed chaotically, with intense and random streaks of light. Then it went quiet and dark. The subject had been treated with electroconvulsive therapy — electrical currents passed through the brain to trigger a seizure. The seizure was the moment when the synapses went crazy. He watched the seizure repeat and repeat in the poor defenseless brain.

“Consciousness is just electrical impulses,” he told the dog. “It’s an ephemeral thing — flashing and changing instantly. And stopping.”

Edison licked his hand. Joe traced the frenetic movements of discharging synapses on his wall. “So fragile.”

A quick knock on his door, and Dr. Gemma Plantec entered. A tiny but formidable woman, she worked as Pellucid’s chief neurobiologist.

“I want to go over some data before you leave.” Her brown eyes flicked to the brain displayed on the wall. “Are you finally ready for it?”

“The evidence on ECT for my type of disorder is inconclusive.”

“It helps with depression, and there are preliminary indications it might help with PTSD.” She moved close to the brain on the wall and scrutinized it as if it had the answers. Edison peeked around the side of the desk. “Hello, Edison.”

The dog wagged his tail once, then returned to Joe’s side.

“I can arrange for you to have a treatment,” she said. “Bring everything you need here.”

“We could.” Most of his medical care was attended to at his office or his home, as he couldn’t go outside. Fortunately, he was wealthy. He felt for those who were trapped in even smaller realms than he was, with even fewer resources. “But I’m not ready.”

She ran one hand through her close-cropped black curls. “You’re the patient.”

“I thought I was the CEO.”

“That, too.” She conceded the point with a shake of her head. “You’re making good progress, even if it’s slower than you’d like.”

“I feel like I’m going to spend the rest of my life haunting Grand Central and the tunnels like Erik in Phantom of the Opera.” Even to himself, he sounded bitter. He hated being trapped — Grand Central, the tunnels, buildings he could access via steam tunnels. His entire world. No fresh air in his lungs, no rain on his skin, no true stars above his head. He was closed inside an artificial universe, his life as constrained as a player in a video game.

Her face softened, and he wanted to apologize, because this wasn’t her fault, but someone knocked.

“Come in,” he called.

Marnie, his executive assistant, opened the door and stuck her head through. “Sorry to interrupt. You’re due at the sub in a half hour.”

“Five minutes.” He had synesthesia and the color for five (brown) appeared in his mind. This brain quirk often came in handy in his mathematical world, helping him to find patterns in massive arrays of data.

The brain on the wall pulsed, and Marnie looked over at it. “What’s happening to that brain?”

“Electroconvulsive therapy,” Dr. Plantec said.

“Like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?” Marnie’s eyes never left the convulsing brain.

“Kind of,” Joe said.

“It’s come a long way since that unfortunate depiction.” Dr. Plantec pursed her lips. “And it wasn’t even accurate at the time.”

Marnie glanced between them. “Just say no.”

She stepped back and closed the door.

“She makes a compelling point,” Joe said. “Succinct, too.”

“Shall we review the data?” Dr. Plantec set her tablet on his desk, and they spent the next few minutes discussing her latest results. She was brilliant, and he was lucky to have recruited her.

And she was usually right.

Nothing else was working fast enough — drugs made him stupid and slow and still didn’t help, talk therapy made it worse, and his Pellucid desensitization was proceeding by only millimeters at a time. His condition was caused by an untested drug, not an actual memory, and it responded differently than other people’s phobias.

Maybe ECT was the answer. But a side effect of that treatment was amnesia. Sometimes, the patient just lost memories from around the time of the treatment, but other times, longer-term memories disappeared, too. He wasn’t ready to part with those. He’d lost too much already.