by Morgan Bell
“What?”
“We shut down the corridor south from Pontiac to Troy. They flew from Bloomfield Hills to Downtown. There were no KVBs during that time. Everywhere else the KVBs are still at the same numbers and popping up in the same locations,” he said, tapping on the screen. “That means they are either using signaling stations, or a piece of tech that is sending the KVB messages. But the KVBs aren’t viral. The Detroit ramp up was caused by the group. They have to be using some sort of tech to send the message that sets off the KVBs.”
Fenwick went back through the municipal grid and checked to see what frequencies were in use just before the transport was blown up north of 8 mile. “There was a signal. Then a trace sent when you and Baxter were near the intersection. It was right after the ground level surveillance swept through the e-cars.”
“Can you back trace it?”
“Yes. It goes from a nearby relay station up to Bloomfield Hills and from there back to the intersection to…Marshal,” Fenwick told him.
“So, not just a mole,” Blaise said.
∞
“Here, try this,” Drake said, throwing a small cube to Jamie.
“What is it?” Jamie asked.
“Just feed it through the entrainment unit and see what happens.”
Jamie set the cube on the data array and activated the entrainment device.
“I do not understand why people aren’t responding to my messages. I’m sending them from a very loving place and that means speaking hard truths because that is something only a true friend and loving family member can do,” the 37 year old KV messaged.
“Peaks are dropping off! The 19-20 hz audio transmission is shortening and the message is in complete words and has some punctuation,” Jamie said in amazement.
“Here,” Drake said, taking a small rectangle from his pack. “Try looping that in as well.”
Jamie took the rectangle and set it next to the cube on the array and directed that files from it be added to the current entrainment routine. The KV twitched and dropped the tech she was using. Her hands clutched at the air. She made a horrible screeching noise like a banshee and then collapsed.
“The 1b receptors in the orbito-frontal cortex have shut down,” Jamie said cautiously. “Brainstem shows no activity…all pathways are down.”
There was a long silence and Jamie set a timer. A minute passed. Then five, and finally ten minutes, before Jamie spoke. “No rebound…no restart. I think we’ve found a shut down.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Drake said.
“What was that?” Jamie asked. “What was on the cube?”
“Environmental sounds: waves, thunderstorms, native tribes playing flutes in Peru. That sort of thing. We used to use that for interrogating hardened domestic terrorists. We would loop those over and over again to soften them up.”
“That might explain why the messages became more coherent,” Ganos suggested.
Drake shrugged. “I just know that five hours of that turned most people’s brains to gelatin.”
“What’s on the data card?” Jamie asked, looking to see if there were any rebound signals showing up in the KV’s brain.
“That is strictly black ops tech. We absolutely didn’t use it in the Crimea to interrogate high value targets and gain classified information,” Drake smiled.
Jamie gave him a puzzled look and Agent Ganos looked shocked. “You had that with you?”
“Never know when it will come in handy,” Drake said.
Rosen got up from the chair in which he’d been snoozing, went to the tech array and picked up the rectangular data card. “You’re telling me this is an honest to God LBPD?”
Drake nodded.
“I know guys who’d give their left nut to have access to this. Hell, I’m one of them,” Rosen said, turning the data card end over end.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Drake warned.
Rosen looked at him and flipped the card so that it landed back next to the array. “You gonna tell Doc here how many international conventions that thing violates?” Rosen asked.
“We’re using it on KVs. It doesn’t apply,” Drake said.
“Yeah? And how are you going to make sure that some poor schlub doesn’t get hit with it? You know what that does to people,” Rosen fumed.
“Wait, what is this LBPD?” Jamie asked picking it up and holding it out to Drake.
“Back twenty years ago there was an agreement, an international agreement on forms of torture you couldn’t use. Things deemed so evil, so heinous, that civilized and uncivilized society said they couldn’t be used. Thrash metal, Def Leppard, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Justin Bieber; pretty much all the favorite CIA, FBI and special ops top 20 songs were taken off the list. Then holiday music and pretty much all show tunes as well. The repetition of exposure was shown to cause permanent brain damage and internal organ hemorrhage. You might survive exposure to that stuff, but you would never be entirely human again,” Drake said.
“Like the KV?” Jamie asked.
Drake went over the inert 37 year old KV and checked her pulse. “Worse than a KV. Enough of you would survive to know that you weren’t you.”
“Are you saying that card has all of that on there? Manilow, Bieber, Diamond, show tunes and holiday songs all in one place?” Jamie asked in disbelief.
“Do I look stupid? Anyone caught with that is subject to immediate and aggressive corrective action. I wouldn’t even risk carrying an un-autotuned Jessica Simpson recording with me because of what would happen to me,” Drake said.
“Then what is it?” Jamie asked.
“Something worse. Not specifically prohibited, yet, but definitely in violation if anyone could figure it out.”
“When they took our toys away – or at least the ones we admitted to having – we had to look for alternative means,” Drake said, sitting down next to one of the other KVs who was sending a hate text to her mother. “We had a serious hard ass we were trying to break, central to setting up terrorist cells around the EU and North America. Without Manilow, Bieber and Diamond in the lineup and with holiday music and show tunes off limits, we were forced to improvise. We started off with William Shatner’s recording of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Mr. Tambourine Man.”
“You used Shatner’s Transformed Man album?” Ganos asked.
Drake tilted his head and shrugged. “It didn’t touch him. The guy had been through training camps in London and New York. They’d dragged him through every dive pub and crap night club where a syphilitic teenager could be found to mount a stage with a guitar. The frequencies to which he was hardened were amazing. Even if we had Manilow and Bieber I doubt we could have made a dent.”
“Phew whee,” Rosen said.
“Exactly,” Drake agreed. “That was why we changed tack. We used looped episodes of Cop Rock and Barney to break him down.”
“My god!” Jamie exclaimed.
“Exactly, but those only softened him up a little. We were pulling out our hair trying to think of something. Then someone recalled a story that their great grandmother had told about these horrifying things that existed back in the late 20th and early 21st century. We had all thought they were urban myths, like female orgasms and tasteful corduroy pants. But one of our researchers found out that they did exist and were actually legal at one time. She collected as many as she could find in the archives and we tried them. We mixed and matched until we found the ones that worked. That is how we discover the LBPD.”
“But what is it?” Jamie asked.
“It’s too brutal to even contemplate,” Ganos shuddered.
“Illegal to even consider,” Rosen added.
“Pledge drives,” Drake said. “It was where broadcasters and programmers claiming that they wouldn’t accept commercial sponsorship would instead get commercial sponsorship for their shows, government underwriting and beg for money from viewers. That is where we found the deadliest known interrogation material ever made to break the human spiri
t: Leo Buscaglia Pledge Drives.”
Drake stroked the hair of the young woman who was messaging her mother that everything that was wrong with her life was her mother’s fault. “I’ve never seen anyone break so completely. This was a terrorist who had killed his own family rather than have them fall into our hands. After fifteen minutes of Leo Buscaglia on a Pledge Drive, he had given us the names and addresses of all the cells in his terrorist networks and provided us with all of the financial channels funding their network if we agreed to put the money to work in our community to support public broadcast.”
“Whoa,” Rosen said. “That is seriously screwed up.”
Drake shook his head and stood up. “That wasn’t the worst of it. He formed a drum circle a few minutes after giving us the information and never regained consciousness.”
“Damn,” Jamie said.
“Damn indeed,” Drake agreed. “Dr. Baxter, we have three solutions: the president throws the tech kill switch, or we throw the LBPD broadcast; in either case we will maim, disable or destroy millions of citizens; or…you come up with something better. The first two solutions aren’t acceptable. But we are running out of time, so if you don’t give us another solution they will become inevitable.”
Jamie went to the tech array and returned the LBPD to its previous position. Without a word he went to the KV who was messaging her mother. He slid the entrainment device into place, and gave her a quarter of a second exposure. Like the other KV, she dropped her tech, clawed at the air, screeched and was gone.
“Leave me,” Jamie said. “I’ll need to work with the LBPD by myself.”
Drake put a hand on Jamie’s arm. “Dr. Baxter, you might be impervious to the KV but don’t think that makes you invincible. LBPD destroyed one of our toughest agents. Now she is the head of the congressional budget office’s department of panglossian forecasts.”
Jamie hesitated. “She’s the one who says Congress and the president are nearing a resolution of the budget impasse?”
“Twice a week, and she believes it every time she says it,” Drake said.
Jamie shuddered. “I have no choice. I’m going to stay here and work with the remaining subjects and isolate out the elements of the LBPD that kill the KVs when amplified by Peruvian flute music.”
“I’ll stay with you, Doc,” Rosen offered.
“No. I have to do this alone.”
∞
Outside the medical bay the team found Fenwick and Blaise talking to the HMDP sergeant. “We’ve got rooms to bunk in just down the road from here. Homeland has a standing reservation for six rooms. They’re yours if you want them,” Wolinski said.
“We’re not putting anyone out?” Blaise asked.
“Nope, and you have unlimited access to the hotel bar,” the sergeant smiled.
“Thanks. You got a transport we can use?”
“I thought you would be driving your cars,” Wolinski said.
“Nah. Too conspicuous,” Blaise told him.
“I’ve got two transports on the third floor parking bay.”
“Great. Much obliged,” Fenwick said.
“One thing,” Wolinski began.
“What’s that?”
“Would you mind if…” Wolinski trailed off.
“Drive it home. Just be careful.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Why not?
“There’s an access code: ZZA2251,” Wolinksi said. “It will unlock all transmissions and give you the upgrade on the standard dinner.”
“ZZA2251,” Blaise repeated back. “Thanks.”
“What’s going on?” Agent Ganos asked.
“Just making arrangements for quarters,” Blaise said. “Where’s Doc?”
“He’s staying in the med bay tonight. He thinks he is onto something that will disable the KVs, but he said he needs to work on it alone,” Drake told him.
“Rosen?” Blaise asked.
“I offered to stay, but like Drake said, Baxter says he has to go it alone,” Rosen explained.
“Give me a second,” Blaise said, and knocked on the med bay door.
“What do you want?” Jamie yelled.
“Doc, it’s Jericho. Can I come in?” Blaise asked.
“What…hold on…just a sec,” Jamie called out. “Okay, you can come in.”
Blaise opened the door and found the Jamie holding a small panel that he had turned off. “Doc, you need to get some sleep.”
Jamie shook his head. “I finally had a breakthrough. Ganos and Drake helped me figure it out. Now I’ve got to test it.”
“Look, Doc, I get it. You are on to something and you want to stay on the trail. But if you don’t rest you won’t be any good to us.”
“If I can crack this tonight, you won’t need to worry about me one way or another because you will have the tech necessary to shut down the whole KV outbreak and the KVBs,” Jamie smiled.
“Doc, I’ve got hot showers, clean beds, hot meals and hotel porn for you, all compliments of Homeland. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Blaise smiled.
Jamie hesitated. “No. I’ve got to stay here and work on this.”
“Ok. I’ll snag you something from the continental breakfast. But if you change your mind or have an early eureka and want to get some sleep, you let one of Wolinski’s guys know and they’ll run you over to the hotel.”
“If I need to, I’ll do that,” Jamie agreed, and ushered Blaise on out of the med bay.
“Just tell them to drop you off at the corner of Corporate and Crooks. That’s where the hotel is,” Blaise said, as Jamie shut the door behind him
CHAPTER 18
DR. BAXTER, SUBJECT TEST NOTES CLASSIFIED
“The KV appears to not only destroy higher brain function. It seems to alter the plasticity of the brain in a manner that causes a fixed set of reflexive responses that no longer require the full recruitment of the regions of the brain normally associated with conscious function. The activity we are seeing is not the normally regional functions of the brain associated with life. Even among most pathologies in which the brain demonstrates abhorrent behavior, there are those functions that are identifiable as life. The nearest I can find to a comparison is the ictal period associated with a seizure. The brain, once infected with the KV, becomes fixed in a manner where an obsessive recurrent behavior persists long after death and manifests itself as the outward sign of life,” Jamie recorded into the data panel.
“I have identified those regions of the brain that propagate the event. We have demonstrated on successive tests the ability to temporarily inhibit the neurological pattern. We have, with the help of specific tech, been able to terminate the pattern and achieve a complete extinction of neurological events in KV subjects without administering gross force and direct destruction of the compromised organs and structures.”
“That said, the technology necessary would damage, if not kill, uninfected individuals. It is now 04:11 and I have, without the entrainment device, permanently disabled two more KV individuals using the LBPB and Peruvian flute music as an audio video broadcast.” Jamie walked around the side of the bed of one KV who he had exposed to this. “As you can see, outward signs of KV behavior have ceased. Inane, hateful, repetitive messaging has stopped. Calculated insults sent incoherently in the late hours or when other sane and living people would be asleep or otherwise engaging in productive behavior is gone, as are all the animating forces of life itself.”
Jamie opened the eyelids of the extinct KV. “Tissue decay, delayed by persistent activity and cellular messages that interfered with normal putrefaction of inert tissues, have accelerated and are reaching those levels that are normal for the interval since the initial cessation of life. There is something, some aspect of the KV, that causes the individual to be dead but to not release life itself. An unfinished rage and unresolved issue that is neurologically seared as a pathway into the central nervous system. Without the entrainment system, subjects require a full fifteen second exposure
to the LBPD Peruvian flutes combination as a broadcast. Agent Drake was right about my not being invincible. While I can be in the presence of the KV without injury, I sustained two seconds of the LBPD Peruvian flute broadcast and I have experienced noticeable deficits. I can no longer add or subtract figures exceeding two digits and I no longer know what the phrase ‘two digits’ means. But a scan by the med bay panel has informed me of this.”
“I…I have determined that I will use an attenuated version of the LBPD on the next two subjects. I’ve found a broadcast of John Gray lecturing on ‘Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus.’ I believe it will have what I call the Buscaglia effect, and cause final brain death and extinction of all neurological function in the KV, whilst being only mildly damaging to the uninfected.
∞
“05:37. I’ve used the JG Peruvian pipes mixture as a broadcast. It did extinguish two more KVs. It required a 30 second exposure for each, and only causes a discrete brain hemorrhage in a healthy homeland officer who I got to participate in this experiment.”
Chad Pollick sat drooling, strapped to the stick station. “Warrantless searches are unconstitutional…. No knock entry is for war zones in foreign countries not policing our communities…. Fake 911 calls to gain entry into a residence or building are unethical and illegal…corporate prisons create perverse incentives for the state to criminalize its citizens for profit…the militarization of police is the death of a democratic republic.”
“I have concerns,” Jamie said, looking at Chad, “that, however discrete the damage this transmission causes in otherwise healthy individuals, it could result in the destruction of the state and our governmental institutions. As you can see, sadly, Officer Pollick is no longer fit to be a Homeland officer.”
∞
“I have developed what I will call my unified pledge break theory as to why these work and what the commonality of these transmissions is,” Jamie said, staring with bloodshot eyes into the data panel. “As you can see, there is a low steady pitched frequency throughout the transmission. I have come to believe that what is said and how it is modulated impacts the 1b receptors in the orbito-frontal cortex and produces a crescendo effect, terminating the propagation of the KV wave pattern and the resident precipitation of those waves from the infected portion of the deceased brain. As a control, I’m keeping officer Pollick present for the next test.”
