Van Hutten sighed and then nodded. “Okay,” he said in surrender. “Let’s do this thing. Since it’s clear I’m getting a dose of this no matter what I say or do, I might as well take it, um . . . voluntarily. I do have to admit to being intrigued. And if you are a group of dangerous lunatics, you have to be the most reluctant and respectful group of dangerous lunatics I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks,” said Desh with a wry smile. “I think.”
Desh and Connelly remained in the conference room while Kira and Griffin led their visitor to a spacious room nearby, completely transparent, with a single steel chair bolted to the ground in front of a mouse and a laser generated virtual keyboard. Four computer monitors were hung just outside the room, but all were easily visible from the chair through the thick Plexiglas walls.
“This is our enhancement room,” explained Kira. “Once you’re locked in it’s escape proof. Even for someone as brilliant as you’re about to become.”
Kira waited while van Hutten surveyed the room.
“The keyboard and mouse are connected to a supercomputer outside of the room,” she continued. “Which is connected to the Internet. But only in such a way that you can access the web for informational purposes. An even more powerful supercomputer monitors your activities, and if it detects any attempt to hack into a site, or affect outside computers in any way—unless these activities are preapproved—it will block them. You’d be smart enough to get around any firewall built by a normal programmer, but Matt put this in place while his IQ was amped.”
Kira paused for breath. “When you make breakthroughs, you should enter them into the computer as fast as you can. The good news is that you’ll be able to type at many times your normal speed with perfect accuracy.”
Kira was working on a brain/computer interface, and after a few more sessions with a gellcap she was confident she could come up with a system that could send human thoughts directly to a computer, eliminating the need for typing and facilitating the transfer of gellcap induced breakthroughs a hundred fold.
“We’ll be monitoring you,” she told him, “but we won’t try to communicate. For your first time, we want you to be able to soar without having to divert even a fraction of your attention to converse with dullards like us.”
“Very considerate of you,” said van Hutten drily.
“Are you ready?” asked Griffin.
Van Hutten nodded.
Kira handed him a gellcap and a bottle of water, and after taking a deep breath, the Stanford physicist downed the pill without ceremony.
Kira recovered the bottle and she and her colleagues retreated to the thick door, which they would lock behind them tighter than a vault.
“It will take a few minutes for the effect to kick in,” said Kira. “But when it does. . . Well, let’s just say that you’ll know it right away.”
7
Jake weighed possibilities from within the cocoon of the helicopter as it darted northward. The cleanest and most obvious choice, he knew, would be to breach the facility with overwhelming numbers and take them out at point blank range, bin Laden style. It was the surest, most direct route.
But it was far riskier in this case than it would have been if this were any other group. If one of them could elude his men long enough for a gellcap to take effect, the odds could well turn in their favor. Their minds would then work too quickly—their reaction times would be too fast. He had seen footage of this in action, and it was truly impressive.
There was far too much at stake for him to take any risk at all. He could leave nothing to chance. He lifted the right side of the heavy black headphones he was wearing just long enough to slide an earpiece into his right ear, connected by a thin cord to his cell phone. A small microphone attached to the cord hung near his mouth.
“Captain Ruiz,” he said into the mike, “what have they been doing in there?”
“It’s impossible to know for sure just from heat signatures, but they’re mostly seated. Over several hours they’ve gotten up to move around, separated for brief periods, and fidgeted. In my experience this looks like a very long meeting, with occasional bathroom and drink breaks.”
Jake nodded. “Are they together now?”
“They are, sir.”
Desperate times called for desperate measures, thought Jake. This was why his group existed in the first place. Sure, he would get second guessed by those judging his actions. The threat wasn’t a nice tidy nuke wrapped up in a bow. Unlike a nuke, it could be argued that the threat presented by Miller and crew was overblown. If he wasn’t steeped in knowledge of their activities and their potential for destruction, he might think so himself. But there was no turning back. He knew what had to be done.
“Okay then, Captain,” he said. “Here’s the plan. I’m going to scramble a bomber to fly overhead at an undetectable altitude and drop a five hundred pound JDAM down their throats.” This would vaporize every living thing inside the building, right down to the cockroaches.
“A JDAM, sir?” said the captain in disbelief.
Jake couldn’t blame him for reacting this way. It didn’t get more unlawful than dropping a smart bomb on a civilian building sitting on U.S. soil. But the situation was perfect for it. Their target was a building not too close to any others. And there was little traffic in the neighborhood.
“You heard me, Captain,” responded Jake. “We’ll set it so it doesn’t explode until it’s entered the building. Miller and Desh won’t have any warning, and there won’t be any chance it will be seen by anyone in the vicinity.”
This would reduce the building to rubble with such accuracy that there should be no collateral damage—not unless someone was within fifty yards of the building. But even so, he wanted to be absolutely certain. “Have some of your team set up unmanned roadblocks at major points of ingress to the target. Make sure no friendlies get inside your current perimeter. I’ll want you patched through to the bomber pilot so you can give him the all clear when the time comes.”
“Roger that. How will you explain the explosion, sir?”
“Gas leak? Grease fire? I don’t know. We have some very creative people who can handle that end. I’m confident we can pull this off.”
“Sir, are you certain all of this is necessary? Even if they’re all better than we are, we have superior numbers and tactical position. We can capture them or take them out without the need of a JDAM. I’m sure of it.”
A scene from a movie materialized in Jake’s head. It involved several policemen breaching a building to apprehend a lone woman. The police were certain they had the situation well in hand. I think we can handle one little girl the lieutenant in charge had said. Jake put on the deadpan voice of one of the characters in the film, an agent named Smith, and whispered his memorable reply: “No, Lieutenant—your men are already dead.”
A confused voice came through Jake’s earpiece. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but I didn’t quite make that out.”
Jake cleared his throat. “I said, proceed as ordered, Captain. Proceed as ordered.”
8
Van Hutten sat in the room’s only chair and closed his eyes, waiting for . . . he had no idea. The pill could have been nothing more than a placebo, but he suspected it was either a strong hallucinogen or worse. It could well be lethal.
There was nothing he could do about it now, in any case, regardless of its effect. Whatever was inside that gellcap was coursing through his bloodstream, and no power of will or sleight of hand could remove it now.
He turned his thoughts to the group he had just left. They seemed genuine and caring people. Not that a psychotic who had been told by a humming bird to kill his wife for the good of mankind couldn’t be genuine and caring as well.
One thing was certain, though: Kira Miller was a force of nature. She had a potent combination of physical and intellectual appeal that he had never seen matched. A persuasiveness, a charisma, and a winning personality that were off the charts. If he were a younger man he could se
e himself falling in love with that one in a hurry.
His mind exploded.
A hundred billion neurons rewired themselves in a chain reaction that was almost instantaneous.
He gasped.
His thoughts had been traveling at pedestrian speeds, but they had suddenly been punched into warp drive—and then some. His mind experienced the equivalent of a starfield rushing toward it; a starfield that elongated and blurred as his mind made the impossible leap into hyperspace.
Everything they had told him was true! Everything.
He diverted a tiny portion of his mind to ponder the implications of this while the rest explored its newfound power.
Somehow he knew that only 1.37 seconds had elapsed since the effect had hit him—exactly 1.37 seconds. He wasn’t sure how, but his mind was now as accurate as a stopwatch.
An hour—a period of time that once seemed stingy—suddenly seemed generous beyond measure.
He turned his attention to problems in theoretical physics that had proven to be insurmountable and epiphanies presented themselves almost as quickly as he could focus on them.
His fingers began flying over the keyboard, faster than he had thought they were capable of moving.
He hadn’t wanted the effect brought on by the mysterious gellcap to begin. Now he wished fervently that it would never end.
***
The Stanford physicist shoved yet another glazed devil’s food cake donut into his mouth and washed it down with his second sixteen-ounce bottle of apple juice.
“That was unbelievable! Extraordinary,” he said to Kira and Griffin for the third time, not realizing he had settled into a verbal feedback loop.
“Even if I had believed you completely, nothing could have prepared me for that! I could have never come close to even imagining it.”
“Sorry we had to force it on you,” said Desh with a sly smile, just having entered the room with Connelly.
“No you’re not,” said van Hutten happily as Desh took a seat. “And I’m not either. Thank you. I couldn’t be more grateful. Maybe that penicillin analogy wasn’t so bad after all. Although penicillin is like an incantation from a medicine man compared to that gellcap of yours, Kira.”
“Make some astonishing breakthroughs in our work, did we?” said Griffin.
“Absolutely,” replied van Hutten, as this part of the experience came rushing back to him. “I had a perfect memory of everything I’ve ever seen, heard, or read; and every thought I’ve ever had. And I could access all of this instantly. Incredible. I contemplated problems I’ve spent my entire career trying to solve. I just had to focus on one for a few seconds and an answer revealed itself like . . .” He paused, searching for the right metaphor. “Like an exhibitionist in a peep show,” he finished
“Wow,” said Griffin. “Well said. Linking the powers of an amplified intellect to live pornography is truly inspired.”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me rephrase that?”
“Why would you want to?” said Griffin.
Van Hutten smiled and turned to Kira. “Okay, then. Consider me a true believer. Can you bring me fully up to speed?”
A delighted smile lit up her face. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
“You and David are in love, aren’t you?” he said out of the blue.
“One of the things you picked up during your hour?” responded Kira in amusement.
He nodded. “You just seemed like close colleagues to me. But to my improved mind, you both might as well have been holding billboards advertising the fact that you’re madly in love.”
“An unexpected bonus to heightened intelligence,” explained Kira. “Body language and other subtle clues to human behavior become so clear you can almost read minds.”
“I assume you also discovered your ability to direct every cell and enzyme in your body?” said Matt Griffin. “And to change your vital signs at will?”
The physicist grinned. “Oh yeah,” he replied giddily. “That too. All in all, it was the ultimate ride.”
The group spent the next hour sharing their history with van Hutten. They covered Kira’s early days after her first batch of gellcaps were stolen. How she was framed for a bioterror plot and hunted by the government. How David Desh was recruited to find her, and how lurking in the shadows, orchestrating it all, was her brother Alan, whom she had thought was dead.
They explained how the therapy altered personality in a dangerous way—creating megalomania at best and sociopathy at worst.
“Did you notice this kind of change in your personality?” asked Desh.
“Not really. I was having too much fun solving problems.”
Desh nodded. “These effects start mild for most, but seem to build,” he explained.
“And you’ve been vetted far more than you know,” said Griffin. He grinned and added, “or as David might say in that more direct vernacular of his favored by the military, we screened the living crap out of you.”
“You’ll be happy to know you’re at the very top of the scale when it comes to ethics,” said Kira, “as well as the innate stability of your mind and personality.”
“How do you screen for something like that?”
“In ways that only someone using Kira’s therapy could devise,” replied Desh, clearly not wanting to sidetrack the conversation with any details. “Given the stability of your personality and the fact that, as Kira once put it, the first time you’re enhanced you feel like Alice in Wonderland, it isn’t all that surprising that this effect didn’t hit you yet.”
“Just for the record,” said Griffin. “I never went through the Alice stage. The treatment seems to have hit me the most negatively of anyone. Along with everything else, I become the most outwardly arrogant.”
“The team has come up with a more technical term to describe good old lovable Matt when he’s enhanced,” said Desh with a broad smile. “He’s what we call a total asshole.”
Van Hutten laughed, now completely at ease.
“Okay, okay,” said Griffin. “I’ll admit it. I turn into an asshole. But a prodigiously productive asshole,” he added proudly—the word prodigious long since having become an inside joke among the group.
“That’s the only kind of asshole we allow,” said Desh.
Kira didn’t want to spoil the mood, but there was still a lot of ground to cover. “Colonel, do you want to walk Anton through the logistics of the operation,” she said.
“Colonel?” repeated van Hutten.
Connelly nodded. “In a past life.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Connelly, taking the small remote from Kira. “So given our history, and some troubling events that occurred early this year that we’ll brief you on later,” he began, “our security is tighter than ever. The building you’re in is our headquarters, so to speak. The four of us are the leadership. Not because we’re more intelligent or capable than any other recruit—well, other than Kira here, of course—but because we were the founders. Grandfathered in.”
For many months Kira had objected to the steady stream of flattery from the rest of the core council, which she considered greatly exaggerated, but had finally given up. Desh had explained that anyone who created a tool that led to breakthrough after breakthrough, and that was certain to alter the course of human history as profoundly as fire or the wheel, deserved to be put on a pedestal.
“The think tank and this building are fronts, of course,” continued Connelly. “It’s not a place of business—basically it’s our home. It has bedrooms, kitchens, etc. Maybe a better way to think of it is an apartment complex. We’re not zoned for it, but then again . . .” Connelly shrugged. “That’s the least of our worries.”
Connelly pressed the remote and an image of a long corridor came up on the monitor, about as wide as a two-lane highway, its concrete floors and walls painted white. “At the far south end of this building is a corridor—a concrete tunnel�
��about twenty feet below ground level and eighty yards in length. It leads to a hundred-thousand-square-foot warehouse.”
An aerial image of a windowless warehouse, which looked to be abandoned, flashed up on the monitor. Connelly explained that it had been sealed up tight and the only entrance was now through the corridor linking it with the headquarters building they were in. They had purchased the warehouse first and then built the headquarters and tunnel, using a number of different groups of contractors and carefully disguising, erasing, or confusing all records of the work.
Connelly then showed images of a row of standard golf carts in the tunnel that were used to cross back and forth between buildings.
Images of the inside of the warehouse came next. Each photo showed different views of a number of state-of-the art labs. The first to be shown was the biotech lab, within which Kira produced additional gellcaps and her longevity therapy. Then additional labs were shown in quick succession; high-energy physics, chemistry, electronics, optics, and others. Each was pristine, and no expense had been spared on equipment.
“Hopefully, we’ll have time to take you over there and give you a tour before you leave,” said Kira. “Showing you photos is a bit, well . . . lame, but we still have a lot to cover. Besides, being enhanced is physically taxing, so we’ll let you relax and eat donuts for a while longer.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” said van Hutten, realizing that he hadn’t yet consumed the last of the dozen dense black donuts and reaching for it as though he hadn’t eaten in a day. “Impressive set-up,” he added.
Only the core council knew that there was a second facility, nearly identical, in Kentucky, also connected by tunnel to a distant warehouse filled with labs, and also housing a room in which Kira’s therapy could be given securely.
The group recruited from across the country and the world, although they had focused primarily on the U.S. to begin with for logistical reasons. All recruits were signed up as consultants, which gave them an excuse to visit their respective facilities frequently, although they kept as low a profile as they possibly could about this.
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