A female voice with a complex, vaguely French accent said, "Detective Roth, my name is Code, Dr. Bianca Code. I'm returning your message concerning the MindNet security matter. I would like to assist you but am too busy at the moment. Perhaps you can contact one of the other members of the faculty. I know several of the professors take on occasional consulting assignments. Best of luck in your investigation. Good bye."
"Good bye.", I mumbled to myself.
I supposed I could contact one of the other professors at the Vienna Institute where Dr. Code worked. I could talk to some dusty old fellow, get the information I needed and move on. Or not.
My thoughts were interupted by my implant computer: [INCOMING PRIORITY MESSAGE, ONE-TIME PAD ENCRYPTED. DO YOU ACCEPT?]
"O.K. play it.", I said.
"Vic, I got some bad news about your friend Mills. Seems one Darius Mills planted his plane into the side of a mountain not far from Polamar. The black box has been recovered but so far we don't have any leads on the cause of the crash. The cabin recording is attached but it's just nonsense."
[PLAY ATTACHMENT?]
"Yes."
It was Mills' voice, somewhat abstracted as if he were watching something, "Oh...So that's it! It all connects... That's the sound, the sound of one..."
[END OF ATTACHMENT] [END OF PRIORITY MESSAGE]
"...hand clapping.", I said finishing the sentence that Darius would never complete. "What is that sound, Darius?", I said.
The virus was real and it had just claimed another victim.
I put a call through to Dr. Code's office and got the voice mail again, "Dr. Code, thank you for returning my message. There have been some recent developments in the case I'm working on that make it essential that I meet with you." [CLICK]
"Hello? Hello? I'm here. May I help you?", asked a quiet voice.
"Dr. Code, my name is Detective Victor Roth.", I began.
"Yes, I received your earlier message. I'm really quite busy at the moment.", said Dr. Code.
"I can appreciate that but this morning a man died because I wasn't busy enough doing MY job. Could you spare a few hours next week so I can ask you some questions? It really is very important.", I said.
"I'm afraid that's impossible. I'll be delivering a paper at a conference next week and will be out of the country," Dr. Code replied.
I said, "Look, Dr. Code, I can go to where you will be next week and my department will pay you for your time."
A couple of seconds of silence. "Very well.", Dr. Code said. "I'll be at the Royal Lotus Hotel next week on the Big Island of Hawaii. I'm scheduled to deliver a paper to the Aristotle Symposium on Tuesday and can arrange to talk to you at some point after my presentation."
"Thank you very much, Dr. Code. I won't take any more of your time. I'll leave word at the front desk at the Royal Lotus next Tuesday and we can take it from there.", I said.
"That will be fine. Good bye, Detective Roth.", said Dr. Bianca Code.
"Good bye.", I said.
I took a sub-orbital shuttle from LAX to the Big Island. An air car lifted me to the hotel.
From the air I could see the Royal Lotus Hotel perched on the rim of a jungle-covered crater situated at the border between the wet and dry sides of the island.
Waterfalls from the wet side of the property flowed down terraces, leading in stages to the dry side. Air cars floated silently in and out of the landing zone next to the hotel bringing tanned, beautiful people to paradise for a vacation. Or business.
Classical Greek sculpture brought in for the Symposium could be seen as white slashes peaking out from luxurious gardens. Quiet laughter came from the pool area beyond a curtain of gigantic ferns. A domesticated black panther with a diamond-studded collar padded gracefully around the corner of a marble building to disappear from view. Fragrant flowers and the sound of falling water and jungle birds completed the impression of bounty and benevolence.
After checking in I left a message at the desk and wandered across the lobby to the terrace level where conferences and meetings were held. The schedule board listed the presentations, times and room numbers. I found one that looked interesting:
3:30 Plumaria Room,
Dr. Bianca Code,
"The Subject/Object Relation in Aristotle's Mathematics"
Motion caught my eye as I glanced up from the schedule board.
I focused on a yellow and blue fish placidly swimming in an aquarium embedded in the black lava wall of the hotel hallway. Towards the bottom, a big grotesque fish with a jutting lower lip and vacant eyes drifted aimlessly.
I was startled by a voice behind me.
"Can I help you find something?"
I turned around to see a gorgeous Polynesian woman in an elegant flower print dress. She wore a single black pearl suspended on a gold necklace that glowed against her brown skin. Her large brown eyes locked mine.
"Are you looking for a conference room?", she offered.
"Oh. Do you..., uh, could you tell me where the Plumaria Room is?"
"It's to the left but it's kind of hard to find. I'm going that way, I can show you.", she said.
"Thank you very much.", I said. Thank you VERY much.
We walked down the hallway in silence, passing outside to a covered walkway leading through a garden of ginger and elephant ear palms.
The walkway became a winding path and eventually we arrived at a small auditorium sunken into a natural lava flow. It was covered by a translucent canvas suspension roof but it had no walls to block the warm air and sunshine.
"Here we are," my guide said with a smile. "Will you be staying for
my presentation on Aristotle's mathematics?"
--chrispt@hotmail.com
I replied "Yes."
"Good, Then I'll meet you after the presentation, in the lobby," she
replied, then turned around and walked into the conference room.
The presentation was actually informative but didn't have any real
bearings in the brainbomber case except for Dr. Code's assistence.
After the presentation I waited in the lobby of the building for her.
She met up with me about twelve minutes later. "So what did you think of the
presentation?" she asked.
--Falbe
I replied, "You did great. I see you have a detective's passion for the truth. But you surprised me earlier, I thought you were one of the hotel staff."
"You were expecting me to look different, more like Grace Kelly perhaps?" Bianca laughed.
"Well yeah, I mean that's sort of what your picture looked like on your website. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining..."
Bianca flashed me a smile that was all woman but also all business. "I get a lot of attention, some of which I don't appreciate. The picture you saw is a synthetic portrait, a projection of my values but not of my physical appearance. To protect my privacy I blended pictures of my favorite actresses, the idea being that what I like will attract people who like the same thing. You can think of that picture as the visual equivalent of an alias and a fish lure all rolled into one."
"That explains it!" Victor said laughing. "So does it work? I mean do you find that the people who are attracted to your synthetic portrait are people you like to be with?"
"For the most part, yes, it does work," she said quietly looking into my eyes. "But there are some exceptions."
I tore my eyes away from Bianca and scanned the lobby. "I was thinking we could conduct our interview out near the waterfall. The white noise will give us natural cover in case anyone tries to to listen to our conversation, not that there's much chance of that. Still it's a good idea to err on the side of caution."
"That's fine," she said.
We walked through the lobby, to an atrium and out into the garden again, this time following a path that wound downward to a waterfall. We arrived at a bench shaded by palms near the falls. As we sat down a dragonfly flew past toward the tall grass on the bank of the stream.
"O.K. I'll start from the beginning and recap the investigation as I know it. Then I want you to help me fill in gaps," I said. "What I'm about to tell you is highly confidential. Do you agree to keep it that way?"
"I do," Bianca replied.
"Good. As you know I'm investigating a case for Mindnet, what we're calling the 'Brainbomber' case. We have solid reason to believe that one or more individuals have released a mental virus into the Mindnet system. We don't know how it propagates, how it chooses a target or who is responsible. Many people have died or gone insane and the potential for an epidemic has Mindnet scrambling.
Bianca held up her hand, "I think I have the basic picture. Perhaps the best way to brief me is to let me ask the questions from this point on, let me drive your mind like a doctor with a patient. My PhD thesis was on communicable psychosis so I know what's important and what isn't."
"O.K.", I said feeling a little adrenalin rush. "What do you need to know?"
"First, we need to identify exactly what type of mental virus we're dealing with, and for that I'll need to take a couple of minutes to give you a bit of background knowledge," Dr. Code said.
Bianca continued, "I'd like to know what level of the mind is being attacked by the virus. Is this a perceptual level attack or conceptual level?
"Let me explain the difference by example: it's long been known that a certain percentage of the population are sensitive to flashing light at a certain frequency, around 10 cycles per second -- they get epileptic siezures in response. The news media occasionally carries stories about videos being banned due to this health risk. The flashing light is a perceptual level attack.
"A conceptual level attack entails the communication of a destructive idea or anti-concept that causes the victim to lose control to some degree, to become out of phase with reality.
"For example, during the Dark Ages entire towns went insane due to the widely held belief spread by St. Augustine that the world was essentially supernatural and symbolic, that everything you see is just a symbol of some aspect of Christianity. A rose means Love, a crow means Death and so on. Occasionally a perfectly ordinary event like a crow flying across the sky would send people into a blind panic, complete with frothing at the mouth and raving. Naturally this response was interpreted as demonic possession leading to witch burnings and so on."
I said, "Whoa. Now I know why the Dark Ages were called 'Dark'."
Dr. Code continued, "The point here is that it was the notion of the symbolic nature of everything we see that was the 'virus', the bad idea that separated everyone from recourse to commonsense.
"Commonsense depends on things being taken literally, not symbolically; things must be seen as what they are and therefore limited by their nature.
"A similar case was recorded by Christian missionaries in Japan in 1862. There was a period of nationwide hysteria that lasted three days, being spread from villiage to villiage by people who were actually foaming at the mouth from insane fear.
"The common element in both these cases was a culture based on mysticism rather than on commonsense. The appearance of a single bad omen was enough to spark a chain reaction of insanity that engulfed an entire nation because there was no countervaling force to damp the spread of hysteria.
"Detective Roth, does your 'Brainbomber Virus' fit the description of a conceptual level attack?" Dr. Code asked.
A dragonfly on a nearby strand of grass placidly adjusted it's micro-mechanical wings to enhance the phased-array sound pickup device embedded along it's tail.
"Yes... yes it does.", I said.
--chrispt@hotmail.com
In a garden beyond the waterfalls, the gracefully postured spiritual guide surreptitiously turned away from her wristlink computer that was tracking the DragonSpy. She was sitting quite alone, as she often did before leading a group, as the meditation garden slowly filled with loosely robed hotel guests. They were entering the world-famed Kohala Center for Spiritual Enlightenment and the ajoining Honu Healing Spa and Waters.
The spiritual guide nervously pushed her soft mahogany hair aside and netlinked to the hotel's management suites.
"Hey Nash? Satva here. The DragonSpy worked great. It seems as though our detective Victor Roth is talking to a Dr. Code who is lecturing here at the hotel. Have Gref take her in, you pick up all her incoming links and communications and set up auto replies," she paused and narrowed her eyes very slightly, "and, Nash, we may need to clean up the...uh...static in the transmission."
As she offlinked, Satva closed her pale jade colored eyes and breathed in deeply. In and out. This is what it was all for. Her mission was to teach, yes, to teach without teaching, to guide without guiding. To transform all these people in a way they have never experienced before, to transcend the Ultimate Reality. No one must get in her way.
Bianca Code said she was expected to sit on a Teleology panel with some of her colleagues so we returned from the waterfall and I watched as she strode away towards the conference room.
"Ms. Code?" a slight, wiry gentleman with impeccable manners approached Bianca before she reached the conference room. "The panel has been rescheduled because one of the panelists has been delayed with a... uh... his snorkeling tour guide unfortunately beached the boat and another boat is on its way to fetch him." The man smiled apologetically. "I know this is unexpected and an inconvenience, so the Symposium's organizers wanted to ameliorate the situation by giving the remaining panelists time to unwind in the hotel spa. If you are interested, I can show you the way."
Bianca was suddenly aware of the tightness in her neck from lecturing. A nice long soak. . . ahhh . . .
"Yes," she flashed the gentleman a quick, slightly embarrassed, smile. "I think a good soak is exactly what I need."
She followed him out of the conference area, past the waterfalls and meditation garden, along a stone path leading to the Honu Healing Spa and Waters.
"The attendants there will help you," the man said, nodding towards the spa's staff. "Again, I apologize for the inconvenience."
Bianca quickly glanced at his name tag and said, "Thank you very much. . . Gref." As she walked towards the baths, the tension already seemed to be melting from her body.
I was busy trying to sort out the conversation I had with Dr. Code and was wandering the halls of the conference area, back and forth and back again. Why not listen to what the panelists had to say? I may not understand anything, but then again there might be a little something that will help crack this case.
I went to the assigned conference room and the panel discussion had not yet begun even though the schedule said it should have started 15 minutes ago. Nowhere was Bianca to be seen. Oh, okay, I get it, I fumed. She said she had to get to the panel discussion 'cuz she was just trying to get rid of me. Yeah, heard that before. I turned to walk out.
A group of people near the door were all conferring quietly, some were shrugging their shoulders. A man turned on a microphone and addressed the impatient audience.
"I apologize for the delay, but we seem to be missing one of our panelists. Has anyone seen Dr. Code since her last lecture?"
I turned back around and flushed.
"Well, I was just with her about 20 minutes ago," I said. Everyone turned
towards me. My mind was racing. It was just 20, maybe 25 minutes ago. I
recalled watching her walking towards these rooms. . . but then why wasn't she
here???
--Casablancq@aol.com
At that point I began to put two and two together; Ms. Code's sudden disappearance, Darius' untimely death, my computer access to the precinct altered, and the so-called mindnet rejection that happended to me.
"Every time I get closer to solving this case, someone always seems to be one step ahead," I replied to myself.
Then and there I decided I wasn't going to lose any more leads, I was going to have to devise a way to find Dr. Code, but to do so I would have to think like the suspects in question. Then an overwhelming feeling, almost a sixth sense, told me to take cover for while. I was right, too. My Apartment and my new hovercar were leveled and also there were notes in the wreckage: "Leave the well enough alone Detective."
Two Days later, an APB was Issued for my arrest on the charges that I was
the conspirator in the brainbombing and disappearance of Dr. Code. One more thing that really bugged me was they charged me for the apartment and the
hovercar getting toasted. I couldn't go any where because the mindnet
Newscouriers posted my face with a bounty attached of $10,000,000. The
Brainbombers were obviously having a field day with me.
--Falbe
Bianca carefully threaded her way down the jungle hillside toward the compound. For the last three weeks she spent her days hiking and exploring the territory surrounding the isolated plantation house that had become her prison.
The first thing her captors told her when she opened her eyes from her drug-induced sleep was that she was a guest of "The Nameless One".
Bianca was told that she was free to go where ever she wanted but that the jungle stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions.
In practical terms she was caged. Like a panther in a zoo she paced to the limits of her cage, exhausting herself each day on hikes that took her as far away as she could get while still being able to return to the plantation by nightfall. Out and back, once a day, everyday.
The dusk made walking more difficult but Bianca was no stranger to the jungle. As a young girl she often played with her sisters in the coconut grove that sloped up the mountain behind her home on Bora Bora. Then as now her footsteps were sure and agile, avoiding roots and vines that might have snared her.
In the gathering darkness she heard the faint sound of music coming from the plantation house and the jungle insects were starting to warm up. Bianca stepped on a rotting coconut shell and it collapsed. A simple thing, a natural thing, but here in this place it reminded her of a human skull.
Dr. Code shuddered and walked into the clearing. As she did an aircar came in for a landing, rapidly scanning the terrain next to the plantation house with a blue laser, almost as if it was feeling it's way in the near darkness.
The car landed and four figures stepped out, all with shaved heads and dressed in orange robes.
The music from the plantation house got louder as servants immerged to greet the new arrivals. Bianca recognized a classic song from the late 20th century. She could just make out the lyrics, "...Haven't you heard it's a battle of words and most of them are lies?...".
Bianca boldly walked up to the small group near the veranda of the plantation house.
"Ah! Here she is! Dr. Code it's such an honor to finally meet you.", said the tallest of the robed figures. "My name is Nash," he said extending his hand.
Dr. Code ignored the hand offered in friendship and coldly demanded, "Why are you keeping me here?"
Nash smiled, "I completely understand your discomfort Dr. Code, but I'm afraid your stay here has been necessary. I trust you have been well taken care of?"
"That's irrelevant. The fact that this is a minimum security prison doesn't make me free."
"But we've come free you... provided of course that we can reach some sort of agreement. Come, let's go in for some refreshments," he said.
The assembled group went up the stairs into the plantation house and servants hustled to provide drinks for everyone.
The robed ones sat on cushions but Dr. Code preferred a high-backed wicker chair.
Nash began, "Dr. Code I know you like directness so I'll be direct. There are perhaps five people on this planet who know as much as you do about cognitive virus technology. This makes you valuable to us in our Process."
He continued, "At the same time you know about us so
you're a security threat. Naturally, we can't let those
who are opposed to The Process go free. But there is a
middle way", he said leaning forward. "You could work
with us -- The Nameless One himself has specially
ordained it."
--chrispt@hotmail.com
I found myself in no better circumtances that of Dr. Code. Being a marked fugitive for three weeks isn't what I called fun. The streets everywhere the eye could see were filled with the once strong moral people now sunken to the pits of greed with the notion of the so-called greater good it would bring if I were to be caught. Aside from being on the opposite side of the law that I had sworn to protect when I joined the force, I had found no new leads on Mindnet or finding Dr.Code. But I did learn that the Mindnet Brain Virus had increased more violently than before and was striking a larger crowd. I knew since the beginning when I was first marked as fugitive that I was the scapegoat for the real criminals. Now it became more blatently obvious. I just wished the world knew but of coarse I was branded the fugitive.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a dragonfly which bore uncanny resemblance to the one in the lobby of the complex the day of Dr.Code's abduction. At first I thought I was being paranoid. Then every place I went there it was lurking in the shadows behind or perhaps ahead of me.
Hiding in the shadows didn't do any more good than if I had been caught and placed in a cell. I knew that Bianca Code's abduction leads could still be inside the complex. I owed her that much to find her, for it was I that brought the attention of the Brainbomber upon her indirectly.
I grabbed my TR-EP Rifle, a very experimental electro-plasma rifle I recently bought off the blackmarket, and proceeded to the complex. I was surprised to see the complex so under-guarded, aside from the civilian bounty hunters that roamed the streets. I used a holoprojector to hide my appearance as I made my move. I concealed the weapon under my coat and walked into the complex, walking in the spots where the complex's inner cameras didn't work as well as they should. So far I was far into the complex without so much as a glance or grin. I started to make a tourist style approach to the rooms of the complex so I wouldn't seem out of the ordinary. Then my watch signaled; I checked my watch to see that I had only 20 minutes left on my holoprojector. I headed toward the spa when I noticed scuff marks on the floor, which appeared as if someone had been running and then stopped suddenly, or was being forced and was trying to break free. Then inside a plant pot in the hallway I noticed a microtransmitter which wasn't made after the invention of mindnet, so I considered this a huge lead. It may have been dropped in the struggle with Dr. Code. I also noted that the two cameras in the hall didn't appear to be scanning the hall, or anything for that matter. I figured since my holoprojector was running low I needed to get out while I still could.
I came out of the complex, then quickly went back into the shadows and
turned my holoprojector off to recharge. Afterwards I started to stare
at the transmitter and thought if I used it right this could lead me to them.
--Falbe
Bianca laughed, "Me work for mindless little men in monkey suits?! What makes you think I would?"
Nash was oddly not insulted. He merely paused. He said, "Well, one of your esteemed colleges has chosen to work with us, a Dr. Moscowitz."
"I'm not surprised. Steve was always eager for an offer in compromise, even if it meant his own soul", she said. "I'll never work for your damn Mindless One."
"That's truly a pity. We had hoped to obtain your voluntary cooperation. You see, while we adopt dialectical methods for our own spiritual enrichment we are fully aware of it's lack of efficacy in the physical world. Unlike our Marxist brethren of the last century we freely acknowledge our dependence on minds with a capacity for demonstrative reasoning. We need people like you to promote The Process."
Nash sighed deeply. "But if you won't help us willingly we shall be forced to convert you. A shame really, you have such a strong mind, too strong for the virus."
He removed a small black case from his robe and lifted out a hypodermic needle and a small vial of liquid.
Bianca didn't move.
"This is NeoHaldol," he said holding the vial up so it glinted in the light, "a drug that produces psychosis. It isn't so much what this drug does to your BRAIN as what it does to your MIND.
"This amazing drug will help you to directly perceive the true nature of reality, the river of forms and the constant melting and flowing of everything," he said with his eyes shining brightly.
"You will see the essence of The Process for yourself. When you gain this insight you will experience a sublime pleasure, a sense of knowing everything, an Inner Light -- you will become ENLIGHTENED. You will become one of us. But sadly, you will also lose your ability to reason."
At that instant a deafening roar from a helicopter directly overhead brought everyone to their feet.
Detective Victor Roth glanced down at the plantation house from the cockpit where he had just flipped off the active sound canceling circuit.
He thumbed the safety off the machine gun trigger and sent fifty pounds of enriched uranium into the grounded aircar which flipped end over end, exploding in flames.
Victor landed the chopper on the far side of the plantation house and ran up the steps with a 9mm automatic gripped in his massive fist.
People scattered in the chaos, all except a tall man in an orange robe who grabbed Bianca by the wrist and headed for the back of the house.
Through the smoke Victor saw a man holding Bianca. The man whirled around, gun in hand and Victor pumped three slugs into his chest before he hit the ground.
Flames had started up the side of the house next to the
aircar. Victor grabbed Bianca and headed for the chopper.
In seconds they were airborne, leaving the flaming wreckage
behind them in the darkness.
--chrispt@hotmail.com
