Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02

by Day of the Cheetah (v1. 1)

  Carmichael paused to adjust his oscilloscope. “Well, a few years ago we built an EEG that could read the spirit tree. You could lift a finger or hand and this EEG could tell a researcher that you lifted a finger. And the opposite was true, too—when you generated a thought command to lift your hand, that impulse could be detected and read—in effect, we could read your mind.

  “Of course, the military got their mitts on the system right away. The new-style EEG, nicknamed Spirit Tree—hey, I’m famous—was the ultimate lie detector. But there was much more potential in Spirit Tree than use as a glorified polygraph. We already knew the general path of nerves and which areas of the brain corresponded to certain thoughts or activities— that all came about during Nazi Germany’s infamous lab experiments on human guinea pigs, when they would surgically remove parts of a prisoner’s brain and see what the victim could no longer do. The new idea was, if we could now read the information flowing through the system, was there a way we could interject outside or foreign stimuli into the nervous system? Instead of receptors in, say, the fingers generating the initial sensory impulse, could we send information from a computer into the system and read how the brain reacted to it? And could the opposite be true—could we think about, say, moving a finger, and have a computer read that nervous instruction and execute the command electronically?”

  The more James heard, the more excited he became, though now it was an intellectual response and his signs stayed relaxed. A computer issuing instructions to a human via his own nervous system ... a computer reading the human nervous system ... For a while he thought his time might better be spent making drawings or photographs of the F-15 Advanced Tactical Fighter named Cheetah. But now ... well, the Academy hadn’t imagined anything like this when they sent him to America. Of course nobody could have . . .

  “Got all that?” Carmichael asked.

  “I think so ... You’re going to try to read my mind with this . . . whatever it is . . .”

  “In a sense, yes.”

  “But how strong are those electrochemical discharges across the synapse? Don’t you have to clip some electrodes onto my skull?”

  “In the past that’s how EEGs were done. Every human body has a basic electrical potential, an electrical aura, so to speak, and that potential is affected by the central nervous system. Simple electrodes could read the tiny impulses generated by the brain and nervous system. But those electrodes couldn’t measure anything except the change in electrical potential ...”

  “Like the telegraph clicks ...”

  “Exactly. But now we have two new technologies that have improved our ability to read those electrical impulses—very high-speed integrated circuits and NRTS, near-room-temperature superconductors.

  “Your helmet and that large device on your spine are huge superconducting antennae. They’re so powerful they not only can measure your nervous activity, they can read it, analyze it and map its direction as the impulses move around your peripheral nervous system. And as they do, the computer issues instructions to the other large device you’re wearing—that metallic flight suit. Actually, the suit is an integrated circuit that records the route each and every nervous impulse takes and studies it. After repetitions of the route the artificial-intelligence computer actually learns the route and proper timing and intervals between a certain set of impulses from certain areas of the central nervous system.”

  This project did sound remarkable, but it also appeared to involve a long period of passive training. Maraklov preferred action. Could he sustain the process . . . ? “You’re going to map out every muscle twitch, every movement, every breath I take . . . ?”

  “To the contrary,” Carmichael said. “We’d be overloaded if we tried to record every muscle twitch, just as your question implies—so the idea is, we don’t want you to twitch any muscles. We don’t want mere muscular activity to show up. We don’t need it—once we map out your peripheral nervous activity, we’ll know what impulses are necessary to move things like muscles.

  “So we need you totally relaxed, limp, deeper than relaxed— we need you as detached as you can be from your physical body. We practiced biofeedback techniques before to get you to what we call, for lack of a better term, alpha state—it simply means the propagation of alpha brain waves and the suppression of beta waves, the latter activity indicating conscious brain activity. But alpha state has many levels—nine known ones, to be exact. You’ve reached perhaps the second or third level, where you can totally relax both smooth and ridged muscle and even exert control over certain autonomous functions such as heart rate, respiration and blood pressure. That’s fine—but we need more.”

  Carmichael’s voice became even deeper, even more steady. There was no hint of tension, no emotional cues, no inflection. Somehow he had even managed to cut out most of the background noise in the laboratory—or was that part of the hypnotic state the subject knew he was slipping into?

  “There’s a level of activity called theta-alpha,” the voice continued, so melodic and penetrating that it seemed to bypass his eardrums and enter directly into his brain . . . “Theta-alpha. It’s a stage where the central nervous system in effect cuts out the peripheral nervous system. In higher life forms it’s a defense mechanism, a way to protect the central nervous system from sensory overload.

  “Without any peripheral functions to control, the brain expands its powers. Areas of the brain that normally go unused are suddenly put into service to control autonomous functions. The average person uses only thirty percent of his available brain capacity, but under theta-alpha the other seventy percent is suddenly put on line. That new seventy percent has the memory and computational power of all the computers in this building, packed into a ten-pound package that needs no power, no cooling air, no bench or field maintenance. And, like a computer built by humans, it’s programmable and erasable, with its own built-in operating system.”

  James was finding it progressively harder to concentrate. When he tried to speak he couldn’t make his jaw work. It felt as if he was asleep, but in that weird half-in, half-out state of sleep where you could hear and feel everything around you but were still deeply resting. His body felt very warm, but not sweaty or cocooned any more. The oxygen being fed into the face mask was cool and soothing as it streamed into his lungs. It was as if his body were somewhere else, as if he was detached . . .

  Suddenly, he felt his whole body burst into flame. Every pore, every cell, every molecule of his body spit red-hot lava. He jerked out of his semi-sleep state and screamed.

  “Easy, Ken, easy,” Carmichael said. Pure oxygen flooded his face mask. The visors on his helmet opened, and Carmichael and a medical technician peered inside to check his bulging eyes.

  “What . . . what was that?”

  “It worked, ” Carmichael said. He nodded to the med tech, and they both disappeared out of view. Ken tried to move his head but found it still securely fastened in place.

  “Get me out of here—”

  “No, Ken, relax,” Carmichael was saying. The room noise seemed louder than ever. Ken rolled his eyes, trying to blot out the hammering in his head. “Everything’s fine. Relax, relax ...”

  “I felt like . . . like I was—”

  “Shocked. Electrocuted,” Carmichael finished for him. “You did it, Ken.”

  “Did what, dammit?”

  “You entered theta-alpha. The final stage of alpha state. You were so relaxed, relaxed in such a deep neurological sense, that your mind opened up to its maximum capacity.”

  “So what was that shock—electrocution, you said . . . ?” “ANTARES. The system detects when you enter theta-alpha and begins the process of integration. The shock you felt was the activation of the ANTARES system—it was the first time, Ken, the very first time, so far as we know, that a computer and the human mind have been linked, even if it was only for a split second. You’ve made some history, my friend. December third, in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-four, at seven- thirty-eight A.M.
, a human mind and a computer were linked— not merely in contact, but linked—for the first time.”

  “Forget history, Carmichael. I asked you what that shock was.”

  “Yes, well, to facilitate the tracing of your neural impulses, we created a slight electrical field of our own through your suit. We charged the suit with a tiny electrical—”

  “Tiny? You call that tiny? I felt like I was frying!”

  “Milliamperes, I assure you,” Carmichael replied jovially. “About the same as a nine-volt toy battery. It does no permanent damage that we can detect—”

  “That’s real reassuring, Doc.”

  “You’re experiencing the same irritation that anyone feels when violently awakened from REM sleep,” Carmichael said. “Try to relax. We’d like to try for another interface.”

  “So you can shock me like some chimpanzee?” There was a limit.

  “Ken, we’re on the threshold.” Carmichael had turned on the microphone again and had closed the visors. “We’ve proven that our system works, that our equipment can respond to a specific and up to now unexplored neurological state. If we can complete the interface we may actually be able to establish communications between a machine and the human mind. I don’t mean to sound overly melodramatic, but this is at least comparable as a scientific breakthrough to the discovery of the semiconductor. It’s important that we try again. But this time you must try to ignore the electrical charge when it happens.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  “There’s no training manual for this . . . you must maintain theta-alpha through the interface process. I’m really not sure how to tell you to do that. Think of something else, try to shut out the pain. After a while the system will help you, but you must be able to endure the first wave of it until the system can learn how to help.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “Drugs would interfere with the neurological impulses in your system. Besides, this program is based on creating an aircraft that responds to thought commands. We can’t very well go around drugging all our pilots before sending them into combat.”

  The full realization of what was happening finally hit him. “You really intend to put this system on an aircraft. You say you can control an aircraft just by thinking?”

  “Exactly. We already use sophisticated computers to fly our jets. But with ANTARES, we’ve developed the most powerful computer of all—the human brain. It’s a thousand times more powerful, a hundred times faster, and a million times more reliable than any computer ever conceived or conceivable.

  “You’ve flown Colonel McLanahan’s F-15 ATF—imagine putting all this on a plane like Cheetah. Or a plane more sophisticated than Cheetah—you’ve seen the plans for the new fighter they’re developing, the X-34. Imagine the speed and power of your mind going into the X-34. It would be all but invincible, more powerful than a squadron of F-15S. It would rewrite most everything we know about fighter combat.” Carmichael paused. “And you would be the first pilot.” Maraklov was stunned. This was miles beyond anything he’d hoped or bargained for. Carmichael was serious. They actually were going to move ahead with plans to put all this on an airplane.

  “But how can all this gear go into an aircraft?”

  “Ken, this is a laboratory. We do everything on huge scales because we have the room to spread out. But in the real world we’d miniaturize all this. With new microchips and superconducting technology, most of the computers in this lab can be miniaturized to the size of a steamer trunk. In three years that trunk-sized computer could be the size of a toaster. By the turn of the century it could be down to the size of a walnut.”

  He relaxed and smiled for the first time since entering what he had once thought of as Carmichael’s chamber of horrors. It sounded far-fetched, but they could really be on the verge of a massive technological breakthrough. If they were, then Ken

  James, alias Andrei Maraklov, a newly promoted major of infantry in the KGB, was to be the principal, the key actor in a remarkable scientific discovery.

  “All right,” he said. “Fire it up again.”

  Carmichael signaled to his technicians.

  “But make sure you spell the name right in the history books. It’s—”

  “I know,” Carmichael said. “J-A-M-E-S.”

  No, he said to himself, beginning his deep breathing exercises, starting from his toes and consciously ordering every muscle to relax. Spell it M-A-R-A-K-L-O-V.

  The Kremlin, Moscow, USSR

  Thursday, 6 December 1994, 1451 EET (0551 EST)

  “In summary, then, General Secretary,” General Boris Cher- kov, Chief of Staff of the military forces of the Soviet Union concluded, “we still command a substantial lead in both conventional and nuclear forces in Europe and Asia, and we should be able to maintain that superiority through the rest of this century. I am ready to take questions.”

  No one in the Kollegiya raised any; few ever did during these briefings. The men and women who made up the leadership of the Soviet military, intelligence and state bureaucracy sat mute, nodding to Cherkov as if congratulating him on his presentation—the same one he had given during the past three years, and very similar to the one that the General Secretary had heard since assuming the office. Now he turned to Vladimir Kalinin, chief of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezo- pasnosti, the KGB. “Do you have a comment?”

  “Just this. How is it possible that we are so superior? With respect, sir, I question the conclusions made here this afternoon. Since the late eighties and in this year of 1994 as well, the Americans have begun a steady increase in levels of conventional forces all over the world, including western Europe. We know they have a space-based strategic defense system in place that is more sophisticated than our ground-based one. Intermediate-range nuclear forces have been eliminated, our strategic nuclear forces have just been cut in half, and biological weapons have been eliminated. We have been forced to draw down the size of all our forces to help relieve our budget problems and promote perestroika. How can we be maintaining such a large advantage over the United States and the NATO forces—?”

  “Because of our continuing five-to-one numerical advantage and our increasing technological achievements,” Chief-of-Staff Cherkov broke in. “For the first time we have an aircraft carrier force that rivals the Americans’—”

  “We have three carriers. The Americans have seventeen. Even the British have more than we do.”

  “We have an unrivaled worldwide cargo-transport capability. In each and every area we—”

  “If we commandeer every civilian-passenger jet in Aeroflot,” KGB chief Kalinin interrupted, “not counting civil transports, the Americans still have more airlift capacity. We can juggle numbers, but the fact is that we have lost the advantage. The Americans have fielded two new types of fighters in Europe in the past ten years; we have fielded one. The Americans have launched two new aircraft carriers in the past ten years and equipped each one with new F-31 fighters. We still have one carrier of equivalent size in sea-trials, with fifteen- year-old fighters on board. In every area except armor and total manpower we have either lost our advantage or suffer a real lessening of whatever advantage we retain.”

  “Times have changed,” Minister of Defense Andrei Tovorin said. “Our security is no longer based exclusively on military strength. We have treaties and agreements with many nations. We have mutual verifiable cuts in strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, beginning with the INF treaty . . .”

  “But we do not agree to roll over and accept domination by the West,” Kalinin said. “Sir, you will be on American television in one hour, smiling at their cameras, saying how delighted you are at the progress that has been made since you signed the INF Treaty seven years ago. But, sir, the peace and security of our nation still depends on the strong arms and backs of our people, rather than on pieces of paper. Those treaties will be the first things to be set on fire in a major conflict—”

  “Are you saying that this nation is i
n danger because we have agreed to reduce the number of nuclear weapons pointed at us?” the General Secretary asked. “Are you saying that we are in greater danger of destruction as a nation now than ten years ago?”

  “I believe we were more secure ten years ago, yes,” Kalinin said. “Then I knew that we had the military capability and the national resolve to defend ourselves against any attack. Now, I am not so sure. For the first time in my career I wonder whether we could resist an invasion of western Europe or hold off a NATO invasion of western Russia. I question the security of our cities and military bases. And yet I see American stores and American hotels being built in Moscow. Where is all this taking us?”

  “Into the future,” General Cherkov said. “The truth is we are a richer, more secure nation than ever. We also are a member of the world community, no longer the ugly Russian bear.”

  Kalinin said nothing. The General Secretary, probably the most popular Soviet leader in history, was a formidable enough opponent in the government. But along with Cherkov, the military veteran and hero of Afghanistan and Africa, the opposition was all but overwhelming.

  “This meeting is adjourned,” the General Secretary said, and accepted the handshakes and good luck wishes from the Kollegiya members. Kalinin stayed behind after the rest of the members, except Cherkhov, had left.

  “I apologize for spoiling the mood of the meeting, sir, but I feel I have a duty to express my opinion—”

  “You are correct,” the General Secretary said. “I encourage such discussions; you know that.”

  “Yes, sir.” The General Secretary was getting ready to leave for the new Kremlin press office for his interview. “Sir ... I need your authorization for additional manpower on an ongoing project. I need ten more men for five years overseas.”