Atcode

by David Wake

  “I don’t see.”

  “What he means is that consciousness,” Entwhistle said, “your sense of identity, is just the chairman of the committee of your brain. And the iBrow device simply stores the minutes of the meeting.”

  Mantle seized upon it: “Yes! But only the action points, the decisions, and with brows… the consciousness simply assumes the sent folder is the same thing. That’s the summary of the minutes.”

  “So, if I understand it,” Entwhistle continued, “if you put thoughts into the sent folder, then the brain backtracks. It works out how it must have arrived at that thought and assumes there was the genuine intellectual process. If not, then it makes one up.”

  “Yes!”

  “So,” Braddon said, trying to follow this, conscious of the ache in his head, “they’ve somehow put thoughts into the sent folder and they’ve become my genuine thoughts… as if they came from inside?”

  “The brain is a marvellous organ, quite capable of the most absurd points of view,” said Mantle, turning away.

  Entwhistle suddenly stood up and waved.

  Michael had arrived.

  Entwhistle pointed, directing him to hurry inside.

  The youth jogged to the airlock and entered. The machinery hissed, the outer door closing. Michael rolled up his sleeve and shoved his arm into the slot with practised ease.

  “Oh shit,” Braddon said.

  “What is it?” Entwhistle said, glancing at the computer screen to jump ahead in Braddon’s reasoning.

  “We’ve had an injection to give us amnesia. So we sit here until we forget, then what? Go outside?”

  “He’s right,” said Mantle. “You’d reconnect to the network and those thoughts would come back. You become a killer again. You best give me the gun.”

  “I can fight it.”

  Mantle had his hand out: “I doubt that.”

  Braddon was not going to hand over the firearm. Perhaps he could just shoot him now, kill Mantle and get it over with… he shook his head. God, he needed a nacaffidol. “I’m not going to kill anyone,” Braddon said.

  “I sure Emile will be pleased.”

  Braddon looked upwards and saw the copper wire of this trap. “What’s this drug again?”

  “The forgetful juice?” Entwhistle said. “Lethe.”

  “Lethe, how long do we have?”

  “As long as we want, so long as we take another shot when the computer says, otherwise…”

  “Otherwise?”

  “Countermeasures… gas.”

  “Oh great,” Braddon said. This wasn’t a safe place, simply a ‘time out’. “We won’t remember any of this conversation and when I walk outside, those thoughts will reach me again.”

  The others said nothing.

  “How long?”

  Mantle was shaking his head slowly.

  “How long?” Braddon insisted. “How long is one jab?”

  “An hour, maybe more as you won’t have developed a tolerance.”

  Braddon glanced at his right hand imagining that the semi–automatic was there rather than in his pocket. He could disable the weapon. That wouldn’t work, he’d just find another way: throttle Mantle with his bare hands, for example. Should he give it to Mantle?

  He reached for the gun.

  Mantle stepped back, sudden emoticons of fear leaking out.

  No!

  Mantle had no scruples: he’d shoot Braddon – self–defence. All those thoughts about killing Mantle, stored in Braddon’s brow’s memory would be admissible in court. There might be some question over why they weren’t transmitted, but Mantle would get away with it. Unless Braddon killed Mantle first, kill Mantle, yes: whoever did it first had the best chance of survival. Kill or be killed.

  But wasn’t it Braddon’s job to lay down his life to protect the public?

  Could he disable the brow?

  Braddon touched his forehead feeling the familiar square shape.

  He could rip it out, except that it was likely to kill him: cerebral shock, and if that didn’t get him, then blood loss and infection where the brow filaments broke inside his brain matter.

  He might well be able to stagger out, unaffected by the… mind control, but without the brow, he’d be useless. He wouldn’t be able to think for an ambulance. Mantle could do that. But Braddon would have been lobotomised, incapable of doing anything in the world, a pet for Mantle’s Special Services, an ‘Oliver’.

  The door hissed and Michael came in.

  “Michael?” Entwhistle said.

  “Jesus!” the youth exclaimed. “Emile!”

  “He’s dead. Michael, we need you to focus.”

  Michael simply stared at the corpse.

  “Michael!”

  “Yes, Mister Entwhistle, yes?”

  “Focus.”

  “Yes.”

  “The Detective Sergeant has had his iBrow device reprogrammed,” Entwhistle explained as if to a child, his voice calm and reasonable, unlike Braddon and Mantle’s jittery emoticons. “He’s getting thoughts to… kill Mister Mantle. We don’t want that… Michael! Do we?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Do we?”

  “No.”

  “Can you alter his iBrow device to change the ID or something?”

  Michael looked at Braddon, his concentration on the Detective Sergeant’s forehead.

  “No, it’s hard–coded…”

  “Well, that’s that then,” Mantle said.

  “Let me check,” Michael said. He took over the seat Entwhistle had been in and typed on the computer keyboard. “Hmm, you’ve already downloaded his cache. There are odd sequences coming into the sent box with an auto–repeat and–”

  “We know all that,” Mantle snapped.

  “Mister Mantle,” Entwhistle said. The unbrow seemed the calmest of all of them, but who knew? “Michael, go on.”

  “It’s taking a hashtag and decoding a message,” Michael explained, “but there’s no app present to do that. This suggests there’s something else doing the decoding.”

  “Can you stop it?”

  “No, because there’s nothing but the iBrow device, just the… brain!” Michael swivelled on the chair to stare at Braddon open mouthed. “The code goes into his organic brain and the decoded version goes into his sent folder as if it was an original thought… clever.”

  “Michael–”

  “Oh, and it’s an emergency tag, so it’ll override the safeties and the next thought will be transmitted. That way they can monitor how it’s working. Very clever.”

  “Michael! Is there a way around it?”

  “And it’s set to loop when the iBrow identifies it as an error and deletes it.”

  “Michael!”

  “What?”

  “Can you override it?”

  “Not a chance,” Michael replied. “I could change it on a local repeater, I suppose, like the one here. You know, replace the outbox message with another one.”

  “Show me,” Braddon said.

  Michael typed on the computer. “This box, see? You just type the input… what was it?”

  “Kill Mantle.”

  “Right,” said Michael. He filled in the first box. “And the replacement goes here. If you put the first thought in your outbox, then it gets replaced. It’ll repeat as the system tries to remove the error until it gets a halt command.”

  Michael got up and Braddon sat down instead.

  A cursor flashed ready in an entry box on the screen. He could just type in here and reprogram himself.

  To do what?

  Not to kill Mantle, obviously.

  It was Steiger who’d got him into this.

  Steiger who’d slept with him and yet used him.

  He’d like to get his hands on her again and not to roll about together like thoughtless animals.

  So he typed.

  It was hard, and he wasn’t sure whether it was ‘i’ before ‘e’ or not. It wasn’t. Something like a thought checker app had correcte
d his spelling. ‘Kill Mantle’ would become ‘Kill Steiger’ – serve the cow right.

  “It won’t help,” said Michael, “except in here, where he can’t get the thought anyway. Out there, you’ll just get the coded hashtag.”

  “Can you do something about that?” Entwhistle asked.

  “No way, I’d have to reprogram his brain… no way.”

  “What about masking the hashtag, changing his ID… or something?”

  “It’s just not possible, except… no.”

  “Except?” Entwhistle asked gently.

  “I could mask it with another ID.”

  “Do we have the tools to do that here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s this?” Braddon asked. He clicked ‘save’ and the rectangle on the screen disappeared.

  “Well,” Michael said, “we can replace his iBrow.”

  “What! No way!”

  They were lunatics. Such an operation was impossible, even by a specialist surgical unit: the filaments grew inside the cerebellum.

  “It is,” Michael said, and then he warmed to his subject. “We put an iBrow over the top of DS Braddon’s. He’d register as that brow on the network.”

  “Where would we get a new brow and we’d have to register it?” Mantle said. “We can’t even order one over the Thinkersphere from inside the Cage.”

  “What about Emile’s?”

  They all glanced at the corpse.

  “He’s perfect.” Michael continued. “He’s chosen as he has a low profile, a sub… what is it?”

  “Sub–shepherd penetration in the Thinkersphere,” Mantle said.

  “What’s that in English?” Braddon asked.

  “Practically no–one follows him, so I hired him as my spokesperson to act for me.”

  “So what about Emile?” Michael insisted.

  “He’s dead,” said Mantle, leaking emoticons of irritation.

  “He has… had an active brow,” Michael insisted, “and, providing he died in the Cage, the message about his death won’t have been sent. So, we can piggyback his brow onto the Detective’s and–”

  Mantle jumped up: “Oh! Brilliant!”

  “What’s brilliant?” Braddon asked.

  “You can’t function out there with your brow,” Mantle explained, “but if we put Emile’s between your transmitter, then you will effectively identify as Emile Larson to the network and Braddon, your ID, will be masked.”

  “A sort of… disguise.”

  “Better than a disguise,” Michael said, “no cyborg– Sorry. No brow user will be able to tell the difference.”

  “They’ll see me,” Braddon said. “I don’t look anything like Larson. We’re different colours, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Doesn’t make any difference,” Entwhistle said, “most brow users rely on the recognition protocol.”

  Braddon knew that was true.

  “Michael can do it,” Mantle said, “he’s got the fine motor skills and doesn’t mind the… you know.”

  “You know?” Braddon asked.

  “Mess.”

  That did not sound good. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s an operation. We remove Emile Larson’s iBrow and connect it to yours.”

  “Connect how?”

  “With three wires,” Michael explained. “Two connectors, it’s easy–”

  “No, no, no!”

  “It’s just a small insertion, no worse than a paper cut, and some soldering.”

  “Soldering! With hot metal in my brain?”

  “It’s nowhere near your brain and it won’t hurt.”

  Braddon’s emoticons made his position very clear, but only Mantle flinched. “Have you done this before?”

  “I’ve rewired brows.”

  “In situ?”

  “Obviously not, but it’s straightforward,” Michael said. “It won’t affect the filaments. It’s just a standard patch across the exterior of the brow. It’s electronics not the cerebranetics.”

  “On the plus side,” Entwhistle added, “Emile won’t feel a thing.”

  Braddon anti–lolled: “That’s not funny.”

  “Michael can do it,” Mantle said.

  “It’s not your brain he’s messing with. Why are you so sure he can?”

  “Because Michael lost his iBrow device when he tried to upgrade it,” Mantle continued. “He tried to pimp it and he fried his frontal connections.”

  “Shit!”

  “So he can rewire yours.”

  “Fuck no!”

  “Look… Michael explain.”

  “He can explain all you like,” Braddon said. “The answer is still ‘no’.”

  “Braddon,” Mantle said, “we’ve thirty minutes, maybe less, do you have a better idea?”

  Braddon looked about the Cage, the plush chairs, the office desks, the quaint computer and the three other occupants: Mantle, richest man alive and about to be murdered by Braddon himself; Entwhistle, an educated unbrow, and Michael, a zombie child who apparently knew soldering, surgery and pimping brows.

  But there was only one choice, so Braddon made it.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Good man,” Mantle said. “And I can write some cards. Get this Steiger before she gets me. Let me use the computer.”

  Entwhistle stepped aside. “Check ‘Steiger’ in Braddon’s Thinkerfeed. I think you’ll find that fruitful.”

  Michael stepped over to Braddon and prodded the bigger man’s forehead. “Prominent, not too much growth, it’s possible. It’ll reboot when connected… and when we break the connection again.”

  “Break the connection?” Braddon asked, realising there was more.

  “You don’t want this permanently, do you?”

  “No.”

  Michael repeated the procedure on Larson’s body, performing the same examination and rubbing his finger along the square of the man’s iBrow.

  “Just cut around it,” he said, “say a centimetre from the edge and then prise it off on the battery side. You don’t want to short out the circuitry.”

  “You do it,” said Entwhistle.

  “Got to keep my hands clean.”

  “I’ll do it,” Braddon said.

  Entwhistle passed him a penknife. “It won’t need sterilising.”

  “It will for me,” Braddon replied.

  “There’s vodka in the drinks cabinet,” Mantle said. He didn’t look up, his fingers danced across the keyboard.

  Entwhistle fetched a three–quarter full bottle.

  Braddon hesitated with the blade hovering over Larson’s forehead, then cut. The first incision bled a thick trickle of blood that pooled in the man’s eye socket and then flowed away like tears. He got the blade – “Left side,” Michael said – under the battery and yanked, but it stuck fast.

  “Put some effort into it,” Michael said. “The flesh will create a vacuum at first.”

  “I’ll give you… effort.”

  The brow came upwards with a loud slurping noise, but then caught.

  “Now cut the filaments.”

  Braddon looked underneath the raised brow, it was a bloody mess and fibres stretched down into the man’s head. He knew that these went through holes created in the skull and so grew inwards, connecting to the neurones of the brain as they, in turn, grew forward to encompass the filaments. Except in cases like Michael, when scarring made it impossible.

  Braddon eased the knife in and sawed back and forth. It was like cutting treacle.

  Finally, it came away.

  Michael passed over a handful of tissues and Braddon used these to absorb all the blood. The square of skin flopped away.

  “Thanks,” said Michael.

  He went over to the workbench, turned on a powerful light and clipped on a set of eyepieces.

  “What will this do, exactly?”

  “I’m concentrating.”

  “It’s this Steiger, all right,” said Mantle. “She was here before the bomb went off.”
<
br />   “Steiger?” said Braddon. “I was with her.”

  “Not all the time,” Mantle replied, “and a Noodle search shows some suspicious alibis for the time of Taylor’s death and… Inspector Wainwright’s. Interesting alibi, Detective Sergeant.”

  Braddon ignored him.

  “Ignore me all you want,” Mantle said. “But are your loyalties conflicted?”

  “They are not,” Braddon said. “Is your detective work sound? How can having an alibi prove she did it?”

  “Because an unbrow has to make a deliberate effort to appear by name in people’s Thinkerfeeds. Brows don’t recognize them.”

  Braddon pondered this: “She’s secret service.”

  “How do you know?”

  “My boss, Chief Superintendent Turner, said so.”

  “How did she know?”

  “Well, Steiger told her.”

  “Did you check?”

  “Of course…” but Braddon realised the painful truth. “She’s an unbrow, so there’d be no thought trail to follow.”

  “So you took her word for it?”

  “What other choice did we have?”

  “I know how to counter this,” said Mantle. He went across to the desk and seemed to enter some sort of trance state, while he scribbled on some cards with a pen.

  A pen, Braddon thought. It buffered.

  “It helps him think,” said Entwhistle, reading Braddon’s thoughts off the screen.

  “Think?”

  The trillionnaire had switched to typing into an old keyboard. It printed some cards. Mantle checked them and dropped a few into a paper shredder.

  “What are you doing?” Braddon asked.

  “Your cards,” Mantle said. “There are things you need to remember and tasks to perform without warning anyone. These instructions will enable you to carry those out without premeditation. You’ll be unpredictable.”

  “He’s programming you,” Entwhistle explained. “Trust him. Michael, how long?”

  Michael replied, “Just shorting the five–link with the trans–”

  “In English.”

  “That is English,” Michael said. “Done! Now to connect this iBrow device to the Detective’s. I just need to connect the inputs and outputs. You’ll only get what Emile was following, your Thinkerfeed will just get stored until your ID pings with the network.”

  “This is reversible?” Braddon asked.