Of Half a Mind

by Bruce M Perrin

  “Would it be the same as the salmon-colored form I just signed?”

  “Exactly the same,” replied Huston.

  “OK,” I said. “We’ll watch for it.”

  “Thanks,” said Scott. She paused. “You should also know that what I found in those boxes – well, it isn’t what I’d expect a scientist to be recording during a study. It’s mostly hand-written notes about his daily activities and to-do lists.”

  I nodded. “Some of what we’re looking for, like his observations after each session might look like that,” I volunteered, partly to ease her mind and partly to convince myself this wasn’t a wasted effort.

  “Good,” she replied. “I hope you find what you need.” She stopped and wrung her hands, again searching our faces. “Beyond the consent form and your files…. Well, I was hoping you’d watch for anything that seems unusual or out of place, and let me or the police know. Would that be possible?”

  What did she think was in there?

  In the end, the question that flashed into my mind made no difference. Now that I had heard Scott’s story, I could no more erase her concerns from my thoughts than I could swim the length of the Mississippi. We were in this together for the duration. “Yes, of course, we can do that.”

  Scott smiled – the smile of someone who is trying to take some small comfort from an infinitesimal gain in an otherwise losing effort. She glanced at Huston, who responded with a slight nod. “I wish you the best on finding what you need,” she said as she stood to leave. “But frankly, I hope you find something to help me even more.”

  “We’ll do our best,” I said, as Scott shook each of our hands and left.

  With much to do, we thanked Huston for his time and moved the boxes to the reception area. After promising Laverne I’d return for the last one, we each took one downstairs. When we stepped out the front door of the building, I said, “Nothing like a little light reading.”

  “And this is nothing like it,” said Sue in reply.

  “Sorry I didn’t tell you more about the call from Worthington earlier, but it seemed irrelevant after he was found dead,” I said, setting my box on the sidewalk next to theirs. “Truthfully, I was never sure it was a call for help, but I was going to meet him at a Ruger-Phillips building. One with an armed security guard.”

  “I would hope so,” said Sue, “after you warned us over and over to be careful.”

  “Yeah, and that hasn’t changed,” I said. “You should stay vigilant.” I was relieved when neither of them rolled their eyes and both simply nodded.

  Sue scratched a cheek, then looked at me. “You still think Huston’s just a little too helpful…like he might have something to hide?”

  I turned to her and moved to within inches of her face, a snarl coming to my features. “His motives are obvious, if you weren’t blind. Do I have to explain everything to you?”

  Sue stepped back, her eyes blinking. “Blind?” she said with a look of concern. Then, a smile overtook her face and she shook her head. “Good one, Doc. You had me going there for a second.”

  “Yeah, just a case of PBS from my three-minute exposure. That’s post-Blocker syndrome, in case you didn’t know.” I said, grinning back at her.

  “And you,” said Sue, looking at Nicole. “I heard that titter behind my back. He didn’t fool you, did he?”

  The sun was behind Nicole, but I could still see the smile on her lips, the twinkle in her hazel eyes. “Nope, not at all. The clenched fists were a good touch, but we communicate without words.”

  Sue shook her head again. “Doc, live in fear, because now I gotta get even.” She grabbed Nicole’s elbow, saying, “You’re parked by me. I have something to show you.”

  They picked up their boxes and departed, leaving me standing alone on the sidewalk. I’d hardly heard Sue, her words finding no room among thoughts filled with Nicole’s comment. Could it be that she and I were developing a rapport?

  No, that wasn’t possible. A mental bond isn’t formed in one evening of techie talk. She just wanted to tease Sue.

  Right?

  Thursday, August 20, 8:36 PM

  The Experimenter finished updating his notebook and turned his chair to face the one-way mirror. The chamber was empty, producing a pain that was physical, even if the origin was his mind. But he would endure it. He knew the price the Blocker would exact for haste, and so, Subject 4’s training would wait until the upgrades from the Advanced Design Document were closer to completion.

  Turning back to his computer, the Experimenter saw several notifications for videos waiting for his review. It had been a simple matter for him to rent a small office – little more than a storage closet – on the second floor of the building housing the WHT offices. A few days after securing it, he had the locks changed and a surveillance camera mounted above his door. No one seemed to notice that the camera focused on the stairs rather than on his nonexistent visitors. And since the camera was motion-activated, he could watch an entire day’s worth of stairway activity in a matter of a few minutes. He had a similar system in the storage area, which was also misaligned. It showed the WHT share of the basement.

  With Worthington gone, the research should die, and the Experimenter wondered if there was any reason to watch the comings and goings at WHT. He dismissed the notifications, then dragged the video clips to the trash. But as he dropped them, pain flared in his missing finger. He should know better.

  He pulled the files back to his desktop. The clips from the basement were small and he played them first. Each consisted of a trip or two by an unknown office worker, none of whom had accessed the WHT storage area. There was nothing of interest.

  Next, he opened the file covering the stairway. “Elizabeth Scott,” he said to himself when her face appeared on the screen. “Just what are those two goons of hers carrying?” But he knew what it was. He’d seen these boxes in Worthington’s home the night he had killed the good doctor and later, in the pictures he took there.

  They were Worthington’s replacement for the part of the brain that stored new situations and unfamiliar people. He too had the same…characteristic. But while Worthington dealt with this trait by generating reams of daily trivia, now stored in these boxes, the Experimenter used his notebook.

  His approach was so much more elegant. Each day, he would review the last week of entries in the notebook, copy a few notes forward to the current date, and discard the rest, making it work much like memory. If something was repeated frequently enough in real life, it was remembered. If he recopied something often enough in his notebook, it too became permanent.

  “No,” he hissed, when more arrivals appeared onscreen. He paused the video.

  Staring back at him were Sam Price, Sue Jordan, and Nicole Veles. Yes, he knew them, even though he had never met them. But like bad pennies, they kept turning up. They kept earning mentions in his notebook. They kept showing up in his videos. And now, their names and faces were seared into his memory.

  “So, cutting off the head didn’t kill the beast,” he muttered to himself, as he leaned closer to the screen to study the images. Worthington was gone, but the study remained. Jon Huston would have had a hand in its survival, but someone else had to be breathing life into its corpse. Someone else was giving the VA hope that Worthington’s findings were not a sham. Someone else was trying to make sense of the mixed messages that surrounded the study and the technology.

  That someone was Price, Jordan, and Veles. They had to be eliminated. He had an idea.

  The Experimenter rose from his desk and cut through the experimental chamber on his way to the residence. He flipped on the light switch. Subject 4 sat up, glaring at him. The man had adopted noncooperation as his best weapon and had yet to eat or speak since arriving. The Experimenter wondered how long that would last, once the treatments with the Blocker started.

  He removed a prepackaged sandwich and a drink from a refrigerator and tossed them into the cage. They landed next to the sandwich he had given
Subject 4 nearly a day ago, when he first arrived. “Don’t eat the old one,” the Experimenter said. “It might make you sick.”

  Subject 4 said nothing.

  Looking now at the cages, the Experimenter wondered why he had doubted himself. He could fit a half dozen people in the larger cage, if necessary. “Must be lonely in there,” the Experimenter said. “Think I’ll get you a roomie.”

  The Experimenter returned to his work area and examined the paused video closely. Price looked healthy, hardy. He would last a long time under the rigors of the Blocker. In fact, the more the Experimenter thought about it, the more he liked the idea. Now that the computer controlled most of the training, he could have two subjects on 12-hour shifts. Or three working eight hours at a time. Then, when one died, he wouldn’t have to start over. One of the others could step in and continue the long, hazardous journey through these new mental realms.

  That left the question of Jordan and Veles. Unfortunately, they would have to die from mysterious, ‘natural’ causes. But maybe not Veles. She wasn’t his type – he liked the dark, tall, statuesque beauties. But she was appealing, full of life, and he had his needs. She might make an interesting plaything, once relieved of some of her intellect and all her independence. And if the Blocker could recreate him, it would be a simple matter to strip her of some of her more objectionable traits.

  Yes, he could have the device configured for that task in a week…two at most.

  Friday, August 21, 10:36 AM

  I went to the window in my office, hands in my pockets looking out at a corner of the parking lot and the freeway beyond. Each Friday morning, I prepared a status report on my projects. Today, the words were coming slowly…or not at all.

  So far, my report contained more holes than information. It covered our meetings with Huston and Scott. It highlighted receipt of the Blocker specifications. But there are only so many ways you can take credit for obtaining one notebook, and after I had covered all of them, our lack of progress was apparent.

  For the rest of the report, I had pages for what I hoped to find in the next 20 minutes. I had a page showing the number and size of external disk drives we had found. Maybe I could even copy their directories and include that information. The listing wouldn’t have any significance, but it would look good. I had a page for the number of observation reports, the number of mood surveys, and so on. I had all those blanks, just waiting for a number…any number.

  Since I hadn’t bothered Sue for an update since early morning and Nicole not at all today, I wandered over to Sue’s desk.

  “Doc,” she said, when she saw me approaching. “I just ran across a statistic I know you’d love.”

  It sounded like a set-up, but then, I was talking to Sue. What else could it be? “Yeah, what’s that?” I asked, as I sat down across the desk from her.

  “I found out that 47% of males don’t know how to use protection during sex. In fact, this paper said it was such a well-defined group that the researchers gave them their own name.”

  She paused. There was no point delaying the inevitable. “So, what did they call them?”

  “Dads.”

  “Ouch. That’s bad,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Thought you’d like it. What’s on your mind?”

  “I was wondering…make that hoping you or Nicole would have news on the missing files. Can we get her on the phone?”

  Sue put her phone on speaker and dialed. After a moment I heard, “Nicole Veles, Biomedical Engineering Associates.”

  “Nicole, it’s Sue. I’m here with Doc. He’s looking for an update on the search through Worthington’s notes.” She turned to me. “I can summarize my progress in three words – I’ve got nothing. No files, no study-relevant information. Nothing.”

  “What’s in them?” I asked.

  “It’s like Beth said – daily trivia and to-do lists,” Sue replied. “I found receipts for lunch, for a paperback, and for a new pair of socks. I also know that somewhere in his house he did quite a bit of decorating, if you can call it that. He used two different shades of off-white and three shades of gray. Finally, I know that during one stretch, he had fish for lunch 17 straight days.”

  I massaged my temples with my fingertips. “I don’t suppose fish craving’s a left-side function.”

  Sue gave a short, derisive laugh. “I gave up looking for anything on the left hemisphere list a long time ago. He didn’t say anything about becoming a math whiz. Or a science nerd.” She paused a moment, then grinned. “Or more of one, since he was one already.”

  “Nicole? Better luck, I hope.”

  I heard a sigh over the line. “Sorry, Sam. It’s the same here. It’s clear he’s struggling to remember day-to-day events, and names and faces seem to be the worst.”

  “No kidding,” said Sue. “His forgetfulness is only matched by a man’s the morning after.”

  I rolled my eyes, imagining that Nicole was doing the same in her office.

  “I did notice that if he met someone often enough, after a while, he’d remember them,” said Nicole.

  I glanced at Sue, who raised an eyebrow.

  “Do you recall an example?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I just finished one. WHT hired a man to repair a wall that got damaged when some equipment was delivered. Every entry for four or five days sounded like Worthington was meeting this person for the first time. Then, about the sixth day, it was like a threshold had been hit, and Worthington recognized him when he saw him in the hallway.”

  “Ladies, thanks. I’ll pitch in on the reading as soon as I finish my meeting with Ken.”

  “I’m hoping to be done by then,” said Sue. “If it’s not a salmon-colored page or a black, metal box, I skim the one-liners about buying paint and eating fish.”

  Before I could ask, Nicole volunteered, “I should be done later today too.”

  “Sue, Nicole, thanks. I owe you both.”

  “Just doing my job,” said Sue.

  I laughed. “I’m reasonably certain this isn’t in your job description. Seriously, dinner or drinks or something. It’s on me.”

  After getting concurrences from both women and Nicole had hung up, Sue said, “I’m sure you’re looking forward to repaying Nicole more than me.”

  I grinned. “Maybe, but I’ll enjoy whatever we do too. Hey, how about I take you and Al to that Mexican restaurant you like tomorrow night?”

  “Saturday? That’s prime date night. Don’t you want to check with Nicole first?”

  “I did. She’s busy. Still at her aunt’s and they have some family thing this weekend.”

  “Still there?” Sue said, frowning. Then, her expression morphed into a grin. “Her loss is my gain. I accept. But Al didn’t read any of this. Let’s leave him at home, and when we leave, I’ll tell him not to wait up.” Sue wiggled her eyebrows at me in an exaggerated fashion, playing the fiction for all it was worth.

  I chuckled, then left to print my full-of-holes report for Ken.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Come in, Sam. Have a seat,” Ken said, when he saw me peer around the edge of his open door.

  This wasn’t good. I couldn’t remember the last time he had used my given name.

  “Is that your report?”

  “Yeah, it is, but….” He didn’t exactly cut me off, but the way he held out his hand made it clear he wanted it, not an excuse.

  He flipped through the pages quickly – much too quickly to read them. He looked up. “I guess you’ve done what you can when we don’t have anything. Well, when Ruger-Phillips doesn’t. It looks like Biomedical Engineering Associates may be OK.”

  “Yeah, they have the primary document they need,” I replied. “And I think we’ll find our stuff soon.”

  “You’re more optimistic than me…and that’s fine. I only hope it’s not for the wrong reason – like this mission that Dr. Huston and Ms. Scott have you on.”

  “Mission?” I asked, frowning.

  “Going through the
boxes of Worthington’s notes looking for clues.”

  I knew what he meant by ‘clues,’ but I focused on the business reason for our actions instead. “Searching those boxes is the fastest way to get the files we need.”

  Ken shook his head. “I’m not second guessing you about the search. Perhaps that’s the best approach, or maybe you should have let the client do his own house cleaning.”

  I started to object, but he raised a hand. “I happened to be walking by Sue’s desk when she muttered something about Worthington finally remembering to buy a new pair of socks. Socks?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, then looked at me. “She was reviewing what appeared to be a shopping list, with a pad of paper next to it with the words ‘suspicious behavior’ at the top. We’re looking for suspicious behavior these days?”

  “That was my call. I agreed to let the police know if we found anything strange or out of place when we were going through his notes.”

  “The police asked you to do that?”

  “Well, no,” I replied. “Worthington’s wife asked us.”

  “And that’s my point.” Ken looked down at the top of his desk, slowly shaking his head. “You aren’t to be playing detective for those people,” he said as he looked up. “You’re working for the VA and for me. Find the experimental data…or don’t. I don’t care. But don’t be playing cops and robbers.”

  “I understand, Ken, but I don’t think we’ve been wasting project time.” I should have stopped after the first three words.

  “That’s garbage,” said Ken. “Dr. Huston is sucking you into a drama he’s got going in his labs, fueled by Ms. Scott. Don’t misunderstand. I feel very sorry for her…and for him. It’s tragic when anyone as young as Dr. Worthington dies. And I understand that he was pursuing a very promising technology. But you need to get out of this mad scientist, murder mystery Huston and Worthington’s wife are trying to sell and back to the client’s job. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, it is.” This time, I bit my tongue.

  “OK. Now, get out of here and focus on the files we need.”