Jim narrowed his eyes, focusing all of his hate on the Module’s tranquil face. The network was worried about their health now. Supreme Harmony wanted to make sure they were in good shape when it took possession of their bodies.
While keeping his right hand over Jim’s mouth, the Module put his left hand in the pocket of his lab coat. “We wouldn’t have awakened you either, but we need to ask you a question. We’ve analyzed your activities at the radio tower and concluded that you were trying to input Arvin Conway’s shutdown code into our network. We haven’t isolated this code yet, but we believe it’s likely that you’ve shared it with others. Therefore, we need to protect ourselves before someone makes another attempt to disable our implants.”
He pulled something out of his pocket. Jim expected it to be some kind of torture accessory—maybe a knife or a gag or a pair of electrodes. But, instead, it was a small metal disk, about the size of a nickel. It was Arvin’s Dream-catcher, the electronic device Jim had hidden in his sock.
“We found this in your clothes,” the Module said. “And we recognized it immediately. When we recovered Arvin Conway’s body, we observed that he was missing the external part of his pulvinar implant, where his most recent memories were stored. We confirmed that this disk is the missing part by collecting trace amounts of Arvin’s DNA from its surface.”
Jim had cleaned the device but not thoroughly enough. As the Module held the silver disk above Jim’s head, it reflected the fluorescent lights on the ceiling of the operating room.
“When we downloaded the data from the device,” the Module continued, “we discovered that all but one file had been deleted. The remaining file, which is labeled Circuit, has been encrypted, most likely with an Advanced Encryption Standard key, but we can make a guess about its contents. Before Arvin died, he told us he’d hidden a fifty-megabyte file holding the information needed to disable the shutdown switch in our implants.” The Module lowered the disk until it was a couple of inches above Jim’s nose. “Although we can’t read the encrypted file, we see that it contains approximately fifty megabytes of data.”
Jim closed his eyes. He didn’t want to reveal anything else. Supreme Harmony was very good at making guesses.
The Module lifted his hand from Jim’s mouth and pressed a finger to his right eye again, pulling up the lid. Then he raised his penlight and pointed the beam at Jim’s pupil. “Now that we have the file, we need to decipher its data. So here is our question for you, James T. Pierce: Do you know where we can find the encryption key?”
Jim tried to look away from the light, but the beam followed his pupil. “Shit,” he said. “Why don’t you just go into my head to find out?”
“Yes, we intend to do that. We’ll insert the retinal implants to send commands to your brain and the pulvinar implant to extract your memories. We’ll have to change the implantation procedure, though. Ordinarily, we lobotomize the patient first, then insert the implants. But because the lobotomy disrupts the neural circuits, we can’t access the long-term memories until the connections are reestablished approximately six hours later.” The Module closed Jim’s right eye and moved on to his left, performing the same inspection with his penlight. “On the other hand, we can retrieve the memories immediately if we put in the implants first. Once we have the information we need, we can proceed with the lobotomy.”
Again, Jim tried to look away from the light. He found it difficult to think with the beam shining in his eye, but he saw one thing clearly: Supreme Harmony was worried. The network was accelerating the implantation procedure because it feared that someone was coming to shut it down.
Jim’s heart knocked against his sternum. He knew who was coming. “Kirsten,” he said. “She did it. She called for backup.”
The Module didn’t respond. He continued examining Jim’s left eye for several seconds, then switched off the penlight. “We have the answer to our question. From analyzing the changes in your heart rate and body temperature, we’ve determined that our guesses are correct. The encrypted file does indeed contain the information for disabling the shutdown switch. And you can tell us where to find the key for deciphering it.” He turned away from Jim and bent over a medical cart between the two operating tables. “Now we can begin the procedure.”
“You’re fucked, you know that?” Jim curved his numb lips into a defiant grin. “My people are coming. They’re gonna pull the fucking plug on you.”
The Module stayed bent over the cart. “The Operations Center is well defended. We have a garrison of Modules armed with surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. The American helicopters are outmatched.”
Jim’s heart beat faster. “So they’re coming in helicopters? That’s even better than I thought.”
When the Module finally turned around, he was holding a syringe. He leaned over Jim and stabbed the needle into his left shoulder. “You won’t be fully conscious during the procedure. It’ll be more like a vivid dream. But it’s a dream we’re going to share. Once the neural implants are inserted, we’ll be able to communicate directly with your brain.” The Module pushed the plunger all the way down, then pulled out the needle. “It may get a little uncomfortable. It’ll be less painful if you don’t resist. You can’t stop us from extracting the memories.”
Jim had no idea what drug they’d just given him, but it acted fast. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. “Just… try me. I’m a stubborn… son of a…”
“Yes, you are. But you won’t be the only one in pain. Your daughter will be in the dream, too.”
SEVENTY-FIVE
Supreme Harmony observed the pair of UH-60 Black Hawks as they skimmed over the mountains southwest of Yulong Xueshan. The helicopters flew too low to appear on radar, but the network could track them by following the signals they exchanged with the U.S. Air Force AWACS plane cruising over southwestern China. The plane, an E-3 Sentry, was monitoring all the American aircraft in this section of Chinese airspace by continuously broadcasting friend-or-foe queries to the bombers, fighters, and helicopters in the area. Because Supreme Harmony had access to all American military communications, it could detect the coded signals sent in response by the Black Hawks’ transponders. The helicopters were currently near the village of Shiguzhen, less than thirty kilometers from the Yunnan Operations Center.
The network issued new orders to the Modules stationed in the fortifications at the center’s entrance. The flight path of the Black Hawks hugged the western face of Yulong Xueshan. Under ordinary circumstances, this approach would prevent the Modules from firing their surface-to-air missiles at the helicopters until they came within a few hundred meters of the Operations Center. But Supreme Harmony had modified the missiles so that they could be guided by the transponder signals emitted by the Black Hawks. The Modules would be able to fire at the aircraft as soon as they came within six kilometers, which would happen in approximately five minutes.
Meanwhile, on the lowest level of the Operations Center—about two hundred meters inside the mountain —Modules 32 and 67 removed the bone drill from James T. Pierce’s skull and prepared to insert the pulvinar implant. It was a superb piece of microelectronics, smaller than an apple seed, so tiny that that the Modules could attach it to the tip of a surgical probe and slip the device through the brain’s lobes without damaging the tissue. Using a CAT scan of Pierce’s brain to guide them, the Modules maneuvered the implant to the very center of his skull, where the walnut-size thalamus relayed and coordinated the billions of neural signals that generated the man’s consciousness. Then they embedded the device in the pulvinar nucleus, the part of the thalamus where the brain’s visual perceptions were collected. Within seconds the implant’s minuscule radio transmitter started to send those neural signals to Supreme Harmony.
The radio receiver had already been embedded in Pierce’s scalp and the retinal implants inserted into his eyes, so the network was now fully linked to his brain. But the first signals that Supreme Harmony picked up from Pierce were very different from what it usually received from its Modules. After the six-hour waiting period that followed implantation, the mind of a lobotomized Module was like a pool of clear water, perfectly transparent. The network could easily retrieve the Module’s long-term memories and put its logic centers to work. But because Pierce hadn’t been lobotomized yet, his mind was more like a roiling ocean. In his semiconscious state, his visual perceptions were a maelstrom of remembered images and absurd fantasies. Supreme Harmony had to dive into these swirling waters to find the encryption key. Nevertheless, the network was confident of success.
