“They took one of the Sovereign people that worked on Laura as a hostage,” I said, “and did some kind of reverse engineering.”
“If they reverse engineered it,” Akira said, “it might not be exactly the same as Laura’s. I’ll be very interested in seeing Laura’s high-res scan. But for now, we’ve got a real-time image of your activity,” she signaled to another monitor, the pattern of colors sloshing through a 3D image of my brain. “Isn’t it incredible?”
“If I knew what it meant, maybe,” I said.
Akira and Doctor Taylor exchanged glances, both of them almost giddy with excitement. Doctor Taylor said, “This is a high-resolution dynamic image of your brain activity. This is state of the art technology. My hospital has an older version, but not like this.”
“It appears normally abnormal,” Akira said, “That is, you usually have an abnormal brain pattern, so this is what I’d expect from your brain. It doesn’t look like the architecture nor the split-brain episodes have altered your brain activity in any significant way since the last time I looked. That in itself is quite fascinating.”
“Do you think it’s possible that the brain merger between Laura and me could have screwed her brain up?”
“Why would it-” She started, then, “Oh, right. Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a brain merger between two otherwise typical brains, much less a brain merger between an immortal being and someone that spent over a decade dead and cryogenically frozen and who hasn’t slept in three years.”
“I guess…I mean, could that chemical have transferred to her?” I asked, “The one that was screwing up kid’s brains back in the DRC?”
“Not likely,” Akira said, looking to Doctor Taylor again.
“There’s no vasculature going through the implant,” Doctor Taylor said, “No neurotransmitters, either.”
“Why?” Akira asked, “has she started acting more strangely that usual?”
“She’s been very dodgy with me,” I said, “but I’m not sure if that’s because of the experience itself or something more chemical.”
Both of them looked to each other again. Doctor Taylor finally said, “I just don’t see how it would be possible for any actual substances to transfer from one brain to the other.” She turned back to the monitor, “I can see right here that the implant responds to neural activity, but it translates it into its own electrochemical signals using Solberg-Morse interfaces. There isn’t any direct transfer of molecules at the brain-architecture interface.”
“Can you do me a favor, though?” I asked, looking to Akira.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Check her for the chemical anyway?”
Akira hesitated, furrowing her brow at me, “sure, I guess. I’ll have Masaru bring her out. I think we’ve accumulated enough data on you for now.”
“Okay,” I said, waiting for Doctor Taylor to take all the electrodes off.
A couple minutes later, once most of the instrumentation was removed from me, Laura opened the shed door and walked into the debugging air jets. Her drowsy gaze fell on me as the air washed over her, blowing ear length blonde hair about. Only the tips of her bionic fingers protruded from the end of her oversized jacket sleeve. I watched her carefully as she waited her turn, wanting to see if there was anything off about her behavior, but it looked much the same. Sleepy and detached.
“Ready for your checkup?” Akira asked Laura as I slid off the chair.
“I’m always ready to have people poke around in my brain,” Laura said, avoiding my eyes.
Doctor Taylor hooked all the instrumentation up to Laura, who kept her eyes down at her feet. Looking for abnormal behavior in Laura would have been like looking for a specific needle in a needle stack. The fact that she was resurrected from death and couldn’t sleep was bad enough in itself, but I now knew exactly how unhealthy Laura had been before she died. But I also had a theory as to why that might be.
It took about fifteen minutes to get Laura all hooked up. She sat there with a patience that can only come from night after night of sleeplessness, her eyes never meeting mine. Finally Doctor Taylor finished and Akira started gathering data.
“MRI image looks normal,” Akira said, “or at least as normal as it can be with this architecture there. They didn’t screw it up any more than it already was,” Akira smiled, but it quickly faded when nobody else returned the expression. “I’m now going to check brain activity.”
The second monitor started flashing with different colors, showing different kinds of activity in the brain. Akira studied the moving image for some time before looking over to me then back to the monitor.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Not sure about wrong,” Akira said, huddled around the monitor with Doctor Taylor again, “but different.” She glanced at me again.
“What the hell isn’t wrong in my head?” Laura asked, “I’d be more worried if the way I feel all the time was normal.”
“Look at the activity here,” Akira said, signaling for me to come closer, “the patterns in these cortical areas are very reminiscent of…” she looked to me, “of your abnormal brain patterns.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Akira said, “but the merger…it must have altered her resting pattern in some way.”
I looked to Laura, her face still drowsy and detached.
“I’ll say one thing though,” Akira said, keeping her eyes on the screen, “I’m also very interested in a blood sample now, too.”
“Blood sample?” Laura asked, “I didn’t know I was getting penetrated today.”
“Just a theory,” I said.
Laura didn’t protest further. She watched as Doctor Taylor gloved up and stuck a needle in her arm, taking a vial of blood. Laura then shot me a quick look as Akira handed the sample over to Aveena who took it to the house to start testing in the partially reconstructed basement lab. Akira looked back to the computer and Doctor Taylor started to remove the instrumentation from Laura.
“It’ll take a while to analyze all the data we’ve collected and run the blood work,” Akira said, talking mostly to Doctor Taylor, “I’m sure Eshe wouldn’t mind if you stuck around over night, but I can give you a copy of the data to examine independently if you want.”
Doctor Taylor pursed her lips, “I think I’d do good to sleep in my own bed, but I’ll take you up on your other offer. Might be good to have two people look at it independently, anyway.”
Akira smiled, “that’s what I was thinking.” She pulled a drive from the tower, “I’ve saved it all on here for you.”
“Can I get out of this thing?” Laura asked.
“Of course,” Doctor Taylor said, “it’s all removed.”
Laura slid off the chair, walking to the door without saying anything, shutting it behind her. Doctor Taylor left as I followed Akira back into the house, going into the basement lab.
All the broken equipment was removed. The giant hole in the wall was boarded up. New equipment sat in various stages of assembly, boxes still taking up much of the room.
Akira removed her jacket, revealing the colorful tattoos swirling over her forearms – the fractal water on her left and repeating flowers and feathers on her right. Aveena was already down in the lab, standing near the mid-sized centrifuge that was spinning Laura’s blood down.
“I’ve had a chance to look at that tech you got in Florida,” Akira said, the three of us standing in the cramped basement. “I was a bit worried at first given our past experience with AK tech. I thought it might be a trap of some kind. That maybe it would just dox us and release all our data online, crashing our system. I bought another computer just to examine it,” she smirked, “One that wasn’t on any mesh networks. Fortunately, the tech was legit. It had exactly what that guy said was on it. An evolved version of Shirou’s virus. It has code that allows remote activation and an ability to get around even some of the most advanced security systems. It’s actually i
ncredibly well written code. Better than I’ve ever seen. It’s very…novel. Not something I would have expected even a great hacker to come up with. Not even Shirou himself. It’s not that it’s even complex or sophisticated. In fact, it’s somewhat simple and some of the coding is quite crude. It’s just very unintuitive. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how it all works.”
“But it also contains the inoculation?” I asked.
“Yes, it does,” Akira said, “and that’s also quite ingenious. The inoculation seems to use another simple modified version of Shirou’s virus to actually parasitize the original virus. I can run the evolved version of Shirou’s virus on an inoculated computer and it just runs its program, but each time the routine initiates it detects an error in the code. In healthy parts of the code. It then excises those healthy parts, eroding its own code away, truncating the virus into an inert form that can be cleared away with other simple security software.”
“Like a digital phage,” Aveena said, nodding.
Akira grinned, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Aveena blushed.
“It’ll work on the network Sachi’s contacts are using in the CSA?”
“I’m looking to do more testing on it,” Akira said, walking over to the centrifuge is it began slowing, “I’ve given a copy to LoC Security so they can use their more sophisticated security systems to test it out, too. But so far it looks very promising.”
“What about the tech I took from Benecorp?” I asked.
“Most of that was personal files from this Colburn guy,” Akira said, opening the centrifuge and taking the sample and its counterweight out, “security access and so forth. All of which aren’t working anymore – Benecorp changed it all up after what happened in Atlanta.”
“Anything about reincarnation?”
“No,” she said, “but it did have more information about Asset A.”
“Yeah?”
“She was born in Saudi Arabia,” Akira said, “to a woman named Amina and a father named Kadar Ibn Affan. She ended up being adopted by a family near Dearborn, Michigan, but both those parents are dead. Murdered.”
“By someone trying to get to this woman?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “there weren’t any details in Colburn’s files and I haven’t been able to access police reports for anywhere inside the PRA. The thing that interested me, though, was this Kadar Ibn Affan, guy. He was involved in Saudi Arabia’s booming oil business back in the nineteen thirties and forties. He died in nineteen seventy-nine. Before Asset A was born.”
“Maybe it’s a fake history,” I said, “or their wrong.”
“I don’t think so,” Akira shook her head, “because this Ibn Affan guy…he worked with Charles Lind after the second World War. Calvin Lind’s father, back when Benecorp was still quite small. Meaning Ibn Affan was…
“One of Imelda’s prior lives,” I nodded.
“You were right.” Aveena said, keeping her gaze on the computer monitor.
“About Imelda?” Akira asked, “we don’t have any proof, but it’s a-”
“No,” Aveena said, turning to look at me, “I mean…yes, you’re probably right. I’m talking about Laura’s blood work. That chemical that’s in you,” she signaled to me, “it’s in her, too.”
Akira raised an eyebrow, looking at me.
“I’m confused,” Aveena said, “I thought Doctor Taylor said there wasn’t, like, an exchange of any chemicals or whatever.”
“No,” I said, stepping closer to the GC-mass spec monitor, seeing the 3D image of the compound inset near the peak on the graph, “it’s because Laura is Sachi’s granddaughter. From one of Sachi’s past lives.”
Akira’s eyes widened in surprise.
“I had been starting to suspect,” I said, turning back to look at both of them, “I kept wondering why Laura was so important to Sachi. During the brain merger, I saw Sachi two incarnations ago. She told me back when we first met that she had died in Germany before being born as Mike. She was Laura’s grandmother.”
“But why?” Akira asked, “Why would that make Laura important to her?”
“That,” I said, “is why I want to talk with Sachi.”
Chapter 49
“Did you have to get her something that makes noise?” Masaru asked.
I took a sip of my expensive Canadian whiskey, grinning, “I couldn’t find a toy sitar, so I had to get the next best thing. Besides, one person’s noise is another’s music.”
Yukiko looked down thoughtfully at the small black plastic guitar toy I had given her. It looked large in her hands, but she seemed naturally good at holding it. She only managed to make a racket as she ran her chubby fingers across the plastic strings, looking back up at me and smiling.
“I play with you?” Yukiko asked, talking in Japanese but still struggling, having only fairly recently been able to stand keeping earpieces in to translate for her.
“Maybe later,” I said, “why don’t you go set it down next to mine. I’ll show you how to play later.”
Yukiko ran excitedly for the stairs, almost tripping as she kept her eyes down on the instrument, and then went up one step at a time.
The party was actually going to be larger than Masaru had anticipated, but the reason why didn’t bring anyone much comfort. Gabriel Mitchell was now the unopposed, and very popular, dictator of the CSA. One of the first things he did after the Atlanta incident was increase their military presence in Nebraska and New Mexico, northeast and south of the LoC. Both Sachi and Colonel Riviera had dispatches keeping watch on what was developing in those areas. Lately it had begun to look unmistakably like preparations for an invasion, although Mitchell’s rhetoric was still that this was purely defensive. As a result, both Sachi and LoC Security had people in the south. Including in Cortez.
Despite these developments, Masaru tried his hardest to keep moods elevated as people began showing up. Yukiko was predictably ecstatic, running to the door every time someone else showed up so she could be doted on. Sachi came by with Rocky, Rosy’s family showed up before she did, Doctor Taylor came by along with Deidre, John, Tea, and Carmen. Aveena was already at the house. I found Laura conspicuously absent.
“I’m glad everyone could make it,” Masaru addressed the room of people before Akira brought out the cake he’d bought, “I know everyone’s very busy with everything that’s going on, but I think it’s good for you to take time out once in a while to remember why you’re doing it.”
“I’m doing it all for some cake,” Rocky said, seeing Akira walking out of the kitchen holding the large rectangle, three lit candles sticking out of it, Yukiko trailing excitedly behind her.
Masaru smiled, “a noble cause if ever there was one.”
Everyone gathered around the dining room table while Akira handed out pieces of cake on small paper plates, making sure to serve Yukiko first. It was nice seeing everyone in good cheer, but my mind frequently wandered to Laura. I knew she was up in her room drinking, as she had been for weeks. I considered sending Yukiko up to guilt her into coming down, but I didn’t know what that might accomplish.
So instead I found a seat in the corner where I could drink my Canadian whiskey while watching everyone else chat. I looked down at the glass of amber liquid in my hand, freshly topped off. I’d found myself drinking more since Atlanta. Still not nearly as much as Laura drank, but it was the first time in this lifetime I even really had an urge to do it.
I’m lonely and depressed after all my failures. Besides, what do I have to-
“Just going to sit and mope?” Sachi asked, sitting down on a foldout chair next to me.
“I like to think of it as being brooding and mysterious,” I said, taking another sip, head at a full buzz.
“More like being a black hole of fun,” she said, “are you still getting those migraines?”
“Yes,” I said, “almost as frequently as split-brain episodes, which I actually find less annoying.”
“You sure it’s not the drinking?” she asked, signaling to my glass.
I put the glass to my lips and sucked down the last finger width of liquid. “Akira and Doctor Taylor both think it’s the brain implants.”
“Well, it could’ve been worse,” Sachi shrugged, “you could’ve lost your ability to sleep.”
“I’m still waiting to find out what the results say.”
“Think it’ll be something that can be fixed?” Sachi asked.
“Probably not.”
“You going to start over?”
“Start over?” I asked, “Oh, right. I don’t know. Maybe. Depends how bad things get.”
Sachi sat quiet for a few moments before saying, “you know that if you do, I’ll do what I can to find you again. Faster than last time.”
I nodded slowly. “Shouldn’t be too difficult to do now days.”
“I really wish we’d been able to do more shit together,” Sachi said, “missions…or even just talking.”
“Yeah, well…” I said, “how’re things looking down in New Mexico, anyway?”
Sachi shook her head, “I’m getting a lot of…mixed signals, I guess?” She inhaled and started talking fast. “Savita says they’re going to invade. Markus says they won’t. Carlito says they’re more worried about the PRA and Enduracorp down in Mexico than they are us. And it’s certainly true that they’ve sent way more reinforcements to the Mexican border than they have the LoC border. Savita says this is probably to make sure the Brazilians don’t retaliate when the CSA invades us. Markus says they’re more likely to push into Mexico and make sure we don’t do anything to their rear. Carlito says it’s most likely all defensive position and muscle flexing. Then Savita points to the gathering in Nebraska. Then Markus says that has more to do with Wyoming, which has a government and a militia of its own. So, of course, Carlito tells me that PRA might get involved if the CSA tries to attack either the Brazilian occupied Mexico of the LoC. And, get this, if that happens, Canada might end up getting involved on the side of the CSA.” She sighed.
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