Mona

by Dan Sehlberg

  His left side hurt so much that he had trouble standing. He fought it, but he sank down into the chair. Role reversal. Now I’m sitting here, and she’s there. Then he caught sight of the knife in her hand. It wasn’t a regular knife; it was more like a box-cutter. He groaned, and grabbed his side. His shirt was warm and wet. She had stabbed him with the knife. How serious was it? She seemed to read his mind.

  ‘I’ve punctured your liver. You’re going to die. Unfortunately, it’s going to hurt. It didn’t have to end up like this, but sometimes one has to improvise. Your liver is releasing large amounts of blood into your abdominal cavity. The liver can’t contract after being stabbed, which makes it all the worse. Plus, your liver is the organ that produces the protein that causes blood to clot. If it’s punctured, well … in short, that’s not so good for you. That wound is not good for me, either, because my orders were to give you a heart attack. It wasn’t supposed to look like murder. That’ll be hard to avoid, now that you have a hole in your liver.’

  The flashes of pain swallowed his thoughts.

  ‘I don’t want to die; I have a family,’ he groaned weakly.

  She stood up.

  ‘I know you have a family. Enjoy the memories you have, and be happy about your gifts from God. Bunyamin and Azra will be okay. If you have been a good Muslim, your soul will be gathered by angels. Isn’t that right? And then, if you just give the correct answers to a few simple questions, you’ll be written into Jannah, into paradise, by Allah himself. Then all you have to do is make yourself at home. It will hurt for a few hours, but good things come to those who wait … I can’t help you anymore. My part in all of this is over.’

  She went to the bathroom, and he heard the sound of running water. The pain caused him to fall forward onto the floor. He lay there, watching a large, dark spot grow quickly on the thick carpet. The material smelled like dust and cleaning products. Had he been a good Muslim? He regretted his pragmatic application of Islam. His thoughts spun. His vision was blurry. He had to find a way to stop the blood. Maybe he still had a chance — a pillow, anything to press against the wound, until he could get medical care. The hotel had medical staff. The fucking hotel had everything. Sarah was his only hope. He tried to speak, but his throat was full of fluid. He gurgled and coughed. Her black heels once again showed up in his field of vision. She pulled him up into a sitting position. He vomited. A brownish-red sludge washed over the floor and the legs of the chair.

  ‘I can tell you a lot of secrets.’ His voice was rough and weak.

  She crouched down beside him, deftly avoiding everything that was leaking from his punctured body.

  ‘You don’t need to exert yourself. We already know everything we need to know. We have other sources. My task here was to stop future problems. You won’t be helping Tehran with any more construction projects. Hopefully, your successor will be more careful.’

  He sobbed.

  ‘The bunker was purely a business deal … and I know … other things. Important things.’

  She looked at her watch.

  ‘What kind of important things?’

  She sounded bored. He feverishly searched through his disintegrating memory. The dinner with Omar Fathy. There had been a friend of Omar’s brother there, someone he hadn’t met before. What was his name again? They’d had a conversation about the bunker project. He had mentioned something else. Something very secret.

  Once again he had warm fluid in his mouth, nose, and throat. She stood up. He could hear her soft steps on the thick carpet and then the sharp tapping of her heels on the hard floor. He whimpered. She didn’t turn around; instead she walked over and closed the balcony door. She was planning to leave him there.

  ‘Arie al-Fattal!’

  He spoke the words with his mouth buried in the dusty carpet. His head was roaring. The blurry shoes stopped halfway to the door. They came back.

  ‘What about him?’

  A glimmer of hope. He looked up once more at the gentle face with the crooked nose.

  ‘Will you help me?’

  She looked at him in silence and considered his question.

  ‘I still have the tablet you were supposed to take. I don’t really want to waste it; but if you give me something valuable, maybe you can have it. It will make your heart stop — no pain at all. Otherwise, you have at least an hour left to live, and that is definitely not something to look forward to. It wouldn’t be possible to save you even if you were on an operating table. The liver is essentially impossible to suture.’

  One tablet. That was all he wanted. To go to sleep. To escape the flames that were burning him up from the inside. She took out her phone and set it to record. Then she threw out her hands like a theatre director. He tried to speak coherently.

  ‘So you know who al-Fattal is. I met him at a dinner. He tried to interest me in financing an attack against Israel.’

  He was interrupted by a coughing fit, and thousands of lights exploded with each cough. The roar in his head increased.

  ‘What kind of attack?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘Some sort of technical attack. A new weapon. A virus.’

  He whispered this last part. His stomach made him twist and turn with cramps, and, as he did, his throat filled with warm, thick liquid. He ended up on his side, panting weakly like a fish out of water. She waited for more, but she could tell by looking at him that he couldn’t continue. She opened the mini-bar beside the bed.

  ‘Apparently the tablet should be dissolved in sugary liquid. To work faster.’

  She searched through the drinks.

  ‘I assume a Coke is okay? It’s cold.’

  He followed her with his eyes. She opened the red can. She held up a little white pill the size of an aspirin. Then she gently shook the can so the tablet would dissolve. He was silent, but his body was wound as tightly as a spring. She helped him drink. He swallowed blood, bile, and Coke. She carefully rested his head on the carpet and stood up.

  ‘There, Mohammad. Now this rough evening will soon be over. Isn’t it ironic that the national drink of America is what ended up saving you?’

  She set the empty can on the counter with a bang. Then she walked to the door without turning around. The Arab magnate lay still on the floor, like an artificial island in the middle of a large, dark red sea, or a fallen miniature version of Burj al-Arab, with lowered sails. His body was no longer tense. It had only taken a minute for his heart to stop beating.

  Stockholm, Sweden

  There was still about half an hour left. He dozed off as he sat there waiting. The printouts slid from the folder and out onto the grey stone floor of the conference room, where they made a colourful pattern. He let them lie there and tried to find a more comfortable position in the rigid office chair. The most beautiful sounds in the world ran through his soul.

  The door opened, revealing a young engineering student with unruly black hair and a face full of freckles. He said something. Eric reluctantly left Tosca, but only partway, leaving one of the iPod’s earbuds in place.

  ‘Do you want a cancer Coke or a real Coke?’

  Eric rolled his eyes.

  ‘If you mean Diet, then yes, please. And that cancer talk is all crap. As far as I know, no one has died from drinking Coca-Cola.’

  The student pretended not to notice the printouts all over the floor.

  ‘Okay, Professor. I’ll put it by the lectern.’

  Eric nodded. Then he leaned back.

  ‘With ice and lemon, please.’

  He put his earbud back in, and the aria went back to stereo.

  He thought about his upcoming lecture. The department office had informed him that a hundred people had registered. Today’s speech was a basic review of his research, and as such was well-charted waters. He knew how to avoid the dangerous rocks.

>   Tosca had arrived at the prison and was singing to her doomed artist. ‘Amor che seppe a te vita serbare’ — ‘Our love has saved your life.’

  Eric left thoughts of his lecture behind and turned to last night’s encounter. There were deep scratches under his white shirt. They had made love. When Hanna, hot and trembling, mumbled ‘no’ and tried to push him away, he had resisted and kept going. She had sensed that he was on his way and tried to defend herself. This was their agreement. But he had been drugged by her scent, intoxicated by her sweaty neck. He couldn’t, didn’t want to, obey. When it was too late, she had held him close to her, receiving him. Later, as he rested with his head buried in her hair, panting, she had cried. It was just a quiet sniffling at first, and then sounded like pure despair.

  ‘You bastard. You goddamn fucking pig.’

  She had clawed him.

  The freckled student popped up in the doorway. Eric threw a glance at the clock and nodded. He turned off the music in the middle of the final duet, stood up, and followed the unruly hair for the short walk over to room F2. The first thing he saw as he stepped onto the stage by the lectern was that someone — presumably Freckles — had stuck the logo of the Swedish Cancer Society onto his glass of Diet Coke. School humour.

  The buzz in the auditorium quieted. He cleared his throat and let his eyes wander through the audience. He didn’t recognise anyone, but he hadn’t had much contact with students during the past year.

  ‘Good afternoon. My name is Eric Söderqvist, and seventeen years ago I was a student in the four-year civil engineering program, with a concentration in data systems. Since then, I’ve continued to focus on scientific computing. Five years ago, I got my doctorate in BCI, Brain Computer Interface — that is, the interaction between computers and the brain. For just over a year, I’ve been in charge of a research project we call Mind Surf. It’s an interdisciplinary project that fuses cutting-edge neuro-research with our most advanced IT. We are collaborating with the Karolinska Institute and Kyoto University, and my team has a number of patent applications in the field. Hopefully, you’ll all be as sold on the project as I am by the time my forty-five minutes are up.’

  The auditorium was silent. Eric picked up the wireless-presentation remote and called up his first image.

  ‘The brain contains over one hundred billion nerve cells. We can’t even count the number of synapses, or contact points, where nerve impulses are transferred from one nerve cell to another. These synapses, along with the nerve fibres, form a network with enormous capacity. Dreams, memories, feelings, movement, and impressions are all processed in constant, ongoing syntheses. Despite the fact that the brain is one of the greatest research areas of our time, we still know very little about our biological supercomputer.’

  A click and another image.

  ‘Today we live ever-longer and more healthy lives, thanks in large part to our pioneering advances in both medicine and technology. We have more potent drugs. We have advanced equipment like pacemakers, prostheses, and a number of more-or-less complex aids for the handicapped. During the last decade we have also become better at transplants. We have started to see the possibilities awaiting us in genetic research and stem-cell cultures. But even with all of these advances, there has still been no change for the millions of people who suffer from severe brain injuries and diseases.’

  The images depicted famous faces with famous illnesses.

  ‘In the US alone there are more than five million people with permanent brain injuries, two million who are paralysed, one million with Parkinson’s, and one million who are blind. There are twenty million deaf people. Beyond that, there are stroke patients and people with other related problems such as depression. Many of these illnesses and injuries stem from the brain’s inability to interpret stimuli and to execute muscle and nerve commands. This is manifested in blindness, an inability to communicate, or partial or complete paralysis.’

  Eric took a sip of soda and winked at the freckled student, who was in the first row.

  ‘The processor in a computer is in many ways reminiscent of the human brain. They both operate on binary systems, and communicate via impulses. The similarities make it possible to combine these systems. In the convergence between computer and human, we find solutions to a number of the aforementioned problems. This is my calling. I work to create thought-guided computer systems. And computer-guided thought systems.’

  He let the words hang in the air for a moment before he called up a picture of brain waves from an EEG recording.

  ‘BCI programs interpret neural activity and translate it into digital commands. Electrodes register thoughts that then — via the computer — control mechanical prostheses or digital communication systems, for example. In this way, we can restore function to patients who suffer from impaired motor activity due to stroke, spinal cord injuries, MS, or ALS. Those who are paralysed can control various types of aids, or move with the help of prostheses. The possibilities are endless.’

  Eric started a film clip.

  ‘What you see here is a monkey who has learned to guide a robotic arm in order to receive food. The monkey controls the arm via a joystick. The monkey also has a BCI implant in her brain, and this interprets the electro-physical signals that are created each time she moves the joystick. Now, here, the researchers are disconnecting the joystick. You can see, despite this, that the robot arm is still retrieving food for the monkey. How is this possible?’

  The auditorium was silent.

  ‘Well, the monkey doesn’t know that the joystick is disconnected, so she continues to guide it with her thoughts. The BCI system reads these thoughts and converts them into digital commands that correspond to those of the joystick. The monkey continues to receive food, but now with only the help of her thoughts.’

  A murmur went through the audience.

  ‘This is an early version of BCI. Today we have come much further. Now we can translate both computer commands into thoughts, and thoughts into computer commands. We can play music for a deaf person, and show a movie to a blind person. BCI will provide the severely handicapped with a totally new opportunity for dignity and participation.’

  Eric stepped partway into the beam from the projector, and pictures floated over his face like henna tattoos.

  ‘Of course, there are also a number of other areas of application: video games, for example. And even the American military is investing billions of dollars into BCI research. Imagine being able to use thoughts to guide a weapons system.’

  He took another sip of soda and looked at the clock. Ten minutes left. He had to speed along.

  ‘We most often measure signals using EEG, outside the head, and ECoG, just under the skull. We also register field potentials from the parenchyma and firing neurons, so-called AP firing.’

  Eric called up the logo of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

  ‘So what are we doing specifically, here in Sweden? We’re trying to combine the latest research from neuro-medicine with the most cutting-edge IT. Previously, there have been issues with the interface — the contact — between computer and human. The most effective BCI systems are based on subdural implants. This means that the sensors must be placed within the skull, which requires surgical intervention. That involves a number of risks; for example, the body might reject the foreign object, or there might be infection. The systems that have previously been used externally have registered very weak alpha and beta waves, and have therefore been limited to simple functions. However, we have developed a completely new type of gel for the electrodes.’

  An image depicted a fluorescent purple blob of gel.

  ‘We have been performing research in conjunction with Kyoto University in order to develop this completely unique substance. It’s a gel based on nanotechnology. It is made up of very small conductive particles that penetrate — are absorbed — through the skul
l. Each particle retains contact with the next. The absorption can be compared to the way a nicotine patch works, but in this case, as I said, it has conductive capacity. Thus direct contact with the brain is established. Look at it as a power cord that goes through the skin. Another part of our research, which is almost as revolutionary as the gel, is the sensor helmet itself. Sure, it looks like a bathing cap, but it is considerably more sophisticated. The helmet is made up of fifty electrodes, which cover the head in a wave pattern. The tips of the electrodes penetrate nearly two millimetres into the skin.’ Eric noticed that several people in the audience had grimaced, so he hastened to add, ‘The gel contains a local anaesthetic that somewhat lessens the uncomfortable sensation of the fifty pins. The sensors’ penetration and the absorption of the gel allows us very strong contact with the brain without surgery. We are the only ones in the world who have come up with such a solution, and we have applied for a patent.’

  He couldn’t hold back his pride. Another image.

  ‘In addition, with the help of specially directed electrodes and our nanogel, we have found a method of making contact with the second cranial nerve — better known as the optic nerve. By linking us to the optic chiasm, the point behind the eyes at which the optic nerves cross, we can send three-dimensional images straight into the consciousness. Our vision for this system is to give those who are completely paralysed, and maybe even the blind, a better means of interacting with their surroundings. Finally, we have spent many thousands of hours developing a control program that interprets the collective signals of the brain. The first cutting-edge program, Mind Surf, allows us to surf a three-dimensional internet. An internet that only exists in the mind, but which is simultaneously more colourful and real than anything else. We will be able to control this three-dimensional world with our thoughts, and it’s not even going to require any special training to do so. Our goal is for it to be possible to navigate Mind Surf based on pure intuition. Anyone want to sign up to try?’