He closed his eyes and began to imagine himself in twelve weeks. Would this place seem like home? Would he fit in with the intimidating folks who walk these halls? Better yet, would he be able to rise above them? Would he get rich?
Above all, could he win back Jordan? If not, could he move past her?
With that thought he drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 9
The first few days of training were incredibly dull, and went by entirely too slowly. Horchoff spent most of the time in the classroom explaining to Daniel the intricacies of his brain upgrades and the difference between how his brain now functioned to how it used to.
Daniel found it very difficult to stay focused as Horchoff lectured for hours on end on the biology of the human brain. The doctor insisted that Daniel’s understanding of the subject was key to him being able to “reach a higher function,” as he had so elegantly phrased it. Therefore Daniel tried very hard to absorb as much of the information as possible.
He understood the basics – The brain controls everything function of the body, which he already knew. Some of these functions are voluntary, and some are involuntary. Voluntary movements are those controlled through conscious decision, such as movement of limbs, speaking, etc.
Then there are the involuntary functions. These consist of immune response, the beating of your heart, and a lot of other constantly occurring internal functions that we take for granted in our everyday lives.
Horchoff explained that conscious thought, which is used to initiate involuntary movements, is for the most part contained to the frontal lobe, or forward part of the brain, whereas involuntary movements are the result of the hindbrain.
“As far as we know, most humans cannot maintain control over what happens in the rear of the brain,” Horchoff explained. “But thanks to me, you no longer have that restriction.”
By Horchoff “installing” (a term Daniel didn’t much appreciate as it made him feel like a machine) his homegrown neural pathways into Daniels brain, Daniel was now able to use his conscious thoughts to communicate, and in turn command, the involuntary functions controlled by sections of his brain that conscious thought had previously been unable to reach. Or at least that was the theory.
“What about emotion?” Daniel found himself inadvertently blurting out during Horchoff’s lesson.
Horchoff bit his bottom lip and leaned forward on the table in front of him, his long silver hair hanging over his ears and down to his chin. He looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a day or two, grey whiskers covering his face.
He stood silent for several seconds, the hum of the florescent lights filling the void.
The room on the upper level that had been designated Daniel’s classroom was, like most rooms in the Elite complex, incredibly simple. The faded blue, rough-textured carpet of the room appeared to be at least twenty years old, and not very clean. Three of the walls were made of basic, white drywall, and the third was a giant window that looked out over the fitness area. Horchoff always kept the shades drawn, as if being restricted to the complex hadn’t been enough to make Daniel feel like a caged animal.
The ceiling was a basic, off-white drop ceiling, with several fluorescent lights scattered throughout.
In what had been designated as the front of the room was a pull-down projector screen, which Horchoff used to display the PowerPoint presentations which Daniel assumed the doctor had probably begun putting together long before Blank had ever found Daniel.
In front of the screen was a wooden folding table, which Horchoff used to place his overflowing binder on, stuffed with materials on the brain which were intended for Daniel to study from. He never did.
Across from Horchoff’s table was another folding table, identical in size and design. This is where Daniel sat during the class period. One thing Daniel did have to give Richfield props on was the comfort level of the office chair he sat in for 8 hours a day. It was the perfect balance of soft and firm, and reclined at the perfect angle. It was incredible. Daniel was pretty sure that when he first sat in the chair he had felt his ass quite literally smile. He assumed that the chair had been made by some magic elves that the CIA had hidden away at their headquarters in Langley.
After what felt like a day-and-a-half, Horchoff finally answered his question.
“That’s one of those unknowns that we will have to figure out as we go,” he explained. “Emotional response is tricky, because the cause of what we consider ‘feelings’ such as happiness and anger, do have physiological aspects to them. They are chemical reactions after all. However, some would argue that these are triggered by conscious thought, and so if we can’t prevent those conscious thoughts from occurring, how can we stop the chemical reaction from occurring?”
Daniel nodded his head, more in a desire to move on than in understanding, though he did understand where Horchoff was coming from. It seemed as though it were not the first time Horchoff had contemplated the subject.
“The answer I would like to give you is ‘Yes.’ I believe you can,” Horchoff added.
Daniel wished he hadn’t asked the question, or more wished the thought hadn’t occurred to him. He knew why it had. He wanted to know if he could block out his feelings for Jordan. That shouldn’t have been a concern at the moment, and Daniel knew that. He had more important things to focus on than dealing with his feelings for a woman – Things that would help to keep him alive in the future. Besides, he didn’t want to block what he felt for Jordan, he wanted her to reciprocate those feelings toward him.
Although…if that were impossible, it might be useful to remove them all together.
After the first few days of lectures, Daniel was confident that he had been able to retain just enough information to be able to do the things Horchoff, and ultimately Richfield, expected of him. Or at least he hoped so.
It wasn’t until the fourth day of class that Horchoff decided it was time to take all the theories and knowledge he had imparted on Daniel and put them to the test. This is when things got interesting.
It was the first time Daniel had walked into the classroom and Horchoff wasn’t already there waiting for him. For a second Daniel wondered if he had walked into the wrong room. Once he was sure that he hadn’t, he flipped the lights on and gently slid into the cloud posing as his chair.
He had come dangerously close to drifting back to sleep when Horchoff abruptly trounced into the room and closed the door behind him.
“On the floor,” Horchoff said, pointing at the floor space in between the two tables.
Daniel stared at him and blinked a few times, allowing his mind to catch up. Then, without speaking, he slowly stood up and made his way around the table. He dropped himself down onto the floor, grimacing at the sudden discomfort the hard floor provided his rear.
Horchoff dropped his binder onto his table, then sat down on the floor across from Daniel. He held a small, oblong device in one hand, and in the other was what looked like a plastic alligator clip with padding around the inside of it. The two objects were connected by a curly white cord.
Daniel glanced from one hand, and then to the other, then looked up at Horchoff with a slightly confused expression.
“It’s time,” Horchoff spoke.
Daniel didn’t need to ask what it was time for, he already knew. He felt a sudden jolt of adrenaline, eliminating any drowsiness he may have felt previously.
“Give me your index finger,” Horchoff said, pointing at Daniels left hand with the alligator clip.
Daniel obliged with no questions. Whatever this test was, he couldn’t wait to try out his new talent.
Daniel held out his left index finger and extended it in Horchoff’s direction. Horchoff proceed to place the clip around it.
Horchoff then crossed his legs, sat up straight placing his hands on his knees, taking a deep breath.
Not quite sure why, Daniel mirrored the motion.
“Are we going to meditate?” Daniel asked, wondering why they had assumed
such a position.
“In a sense,” Horchoff answered, caught a little off-guard by the question. “We’re going to stop your heart.”
Daniel shook his head at the statement, as if he might interpret Horchoff’s statement differently after doing so. “Do what?”
“Stop your heart,” Horchoff repeated, very matter-of-fact. “Or at least slow it down. The contracting and expanding of your heart is an involuntary action – you’re going to take control of it.”
Daniel was a split second away from accepting this response, when he was struck by another inquiry.
“Can’t people already do that? Like Ninja’s and stuff? Or people who meditate.”
Horchoff rolled his eyes as if annoyed by the question. “Certain individuals have learned to control their heart rate, yes. But they do so by concentrating on their breathing, a function that can be controlled by conscious thought, which then in turn affects their heart rate. I don’t want you to worry about your breathing, I just want you to tell your heart to stop beating.”
Daniel pondered this for a moment, then nodded in understanding. Horchoff took another deep breath.
Then another thought struck Daniel.
“Then why are we sitting like we’re meditating?” He asked.
Horchoff opened his mouth to speak, and then paused, pondering the question. “It just seemed to make sense,” he answered candidly.
“But if I’m not supposed to worry about breathing or anything like that, why would I need to position myself as if I were?” Daniel reasoned. “I just need to be able to concentrate. I could do that from my chair.”
He couldn’t prevent himself from smirking, the irony of which was not beyond him. He couldn’t help but smile as he imagined the warm hug his Elfish chair would give his behind.
A few moments later Daniel found himself in upright ecstasy as he sat in his chair, Horchoff having pulled his chair up to the other side of the table. The pulse monitor was once again attached to Daniel’s finger, and Horchoff switched on the readout monitor with his right thumb.
After a few seconds the monitor beeped.
“87 beats per minute,” Horchoff said. “Now I would tell you to simply decrease that, but that wouldn’t prove total control of your heart beat. That would be…meditation.” Daniel noticed a slight smirk now forming on Hochoff’s face. It may have been the first time Daniel had seen him smile.
The good doctor continued, “I want you to first stop your heart, and then once it’s stopped I want you to command each individual contraction and expansion of the muscle. Once the heart monitor reads zero, I want you to tap your finger on the table each time you tell your heart to contract and expand, and I’ll count the number of taps you do in a minute, and we’ll see if that coincides with what the monitor says.”
Daniel nodded, now feeling a little nervous. Not so much at the idea of stopping his heart, but at the prospect of failing the test. What if he couldn’t do it? It would be the first sign that all of this will have been for nothing.
He put that thought aside and closed his eyes.
Horchoff began coaching. “Now the first thing I want you to do is think about your heart. Think of it as a muscle – a muscle that is constantly contracting and expanding, pumping the blood through your body. I want you to pay attention to every beat, recognizing it, and trying to find where it comes from.”
Daniel took a breath and began to focus on his heart, trying not to worry about his breathing, but on the function of the muscle itself.
“Now use your conscious mind to search the back of your brain and find where the command is being given. It will be buried deep, in an almost ancient section of the brain.”
Daniel opened his eyes and shot Horchoff an irritated look.
“What am I, looking for a fucking pyramid?” He asked mockingly.
Horchoff held his left hand up and closed his eyes in an apologetic manner.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he said. “I got caught up in the moment. I apologize.”
Daniel closed his eyes and began again. He paid attention to every beat of his heart, or rather every contraction of the muscle in his chest which circulated the blood through his veins.
“Now, find that place in the brain that is telling your heart to contract. Be aware of the neural pathways that now give your conscious mind access to parts of the brain it was previously unable to explore. Activate those pathways and search for the command that keeps your heart beating,” Horchoff instructed.
His language was beginning to make Daniel feel like a computer again. Then again, as Horchoff had explained the first day of class, the human brain was for all intents and purposes an extremely intricate computer which controlled the advanced machinery that was the human body.
Daniel tried to find the pathways Horchoff spoke of, and had spoken of hundreds of thousands of times since he and Daniel first met, but he didn’t know how. Nothing seemed any different. He didn’t feel like anything was different.
Daniel opened his eyes and tried to focus deeper as he stared at the grain on the wooden table before him.
“You have to believe that they’re there, Daniel,” Horchoff urged. “If your conscious mind doesn’t believe it can achieve this, it never will.”
Daniel squinted and started over, feeling for his heartbeat. He visualized the muscle, expanding and contracting. He felt it pull the blood in through one ventricle and out through another.
Then he felt something. Not so much felt it as sensed it. It was very difficult to explain as he had never experienced anything like it before. He searched his mind to try and determine where the strange phenomenon had come from. He tried to command his conscious mind to use the new pathways to search for it, but he wasn’t quite sure how. How could he tell his thoughts to do something? The whole process was incredibly confusing.
Horchoff sat silently, glancing back and forth between the heart monitor and Daniel, as though he could sense that he was getting closer.
Daniel began concentrating on the action of his heart again, and once again the sensation struck him for a brief second. He physically flinched as though trying to trap it in a mental net. It was like a fleeting thought, coming to him and then disappearing just as fast as it had come.
And then it hit him.
A thought! That’s exactly what it was like. It was like a thought, only one that he hadn’t chosen to think.
He began to search his mind for the thought that told his heart to keep beating. He concentrated hard on the action of his body’s second most vital organ, and searched for the thoughts that controlled it. He tried using his conscious mind to scour the rest of his brain for thoughts it was not influencing.
Then he had it.
There it was, buried deep inside of him. He had no clue of the geographic location in the brain it was coming from, but it didn’t matter. The command had now been granted access into the conscious part of his mind, or vice-versa. Either way he could…hear it.
Expand, contract…expand, contract...the thought wasn’t those exact words being spoken in his mind, but his consciousness was somehow able to interpret what they meant, and he just somehow…knew.
“I found it!” He blurted out. He almost panicked as he didn’t expect to be able to speak while maintaining his grip on the part of his brain that was in command of his heart.
Horchoff nearly jumped out of his chair with excitement. Daniel had just confirmed that he had finally accomplished everything he had dedicated his life to achieving. He could barely contain himself enough to continue the testing.
He had intended to coach Daniel further from this point, but could not seem to form words through the excitement. Instead he curled his hand into a fist and placed it between his teeth, continuing to monitor Daniel’s heart rate.
Daniel didn’t need any more coaching, as he had learned enough from the Doctor over the past three days that he was capable of continuing from here.
He focused in on the “thought�
� that was commanding his heart to beat. He tried to sync his conscious thoughts with the command, repeating in his head, “expand, contract…expand, contract.” Then he tried to merge his conscious thoughts and the command into one, until his conscious thoughts no longer sounded like words in his mind, but rather he sensed them as he did the commanding of his heart.
He then focused in on the command, and told his brain to stop “thinking” it – to stop sending the signal to his heart. He could no longer sense the command. His conscious mind was still operational however, as he sat there wondering whether or not he had succeeded in stopping his heartbeat.
Before he could put his mind in a position to determine whether or not his heart had stopped, he heard a squeal come from Horchoff as a cold, round object press against his chest – a stethoscope.
“You did it!” Horchoff explained.
Daniel impressed himself by not getting excited, but instead staying focused and keeping control of the seemingly foreign part of his brain.
Suddenly, he started to feel his brain start to fatigue, and thought that maybe controlling that area of his brain had caused him figuratively – or literally depending on how you looked at it – blow a circuit.
Then Horchoff quickly put those worries to bed.
“Now your brain can’t go without oxygenated blood for very much longer, and I’m not sure whether it will resume normal function after you black out, so you may want to start making your heart beat now on your command. I’ll time one minute and count the number of times you tap the table. I’ll also keep my stethoscope on your chest to see if your taps line up with the beating.”
Of course! Daniel thought to himself. My brain is losing oxygen.
Then, just as he was beginning to calm down, he did a mental double-take and repeated the thought.
My brain is losing oxygen!
Quickly he focused back in on where he had melded his conscious mind with his unconscious mind and repeated the command he had sensed before shutting it off.
Elite Page 15
