Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (10 page)

 
          
“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 in 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.”

 
          
The
General Secretary straightened papers in his briefcase. “Overseas?”

 
          
“The
United
States
. Deep cover operation on an American military-research base.”

 
          
The
General Secretary paused, glanced at Cherkhov, then shook his head. “It sounds
like a major escalation.
Ten
people
on one base?”

 
          
Kalinin
tried to control his irritation. The
General Secretary, it seemed, had already decided in the negative but wanted to
pump his KGB chief for information before saying no. “In one city, actually,”
Kalinin
pushed on. “Perhaps two or three on the
base itself, one or two on a separate research center nearby.”

 
          
“This
perhaps refers to Dreamland?” General Cherkov asked. “More activity there?”

 
          
“It
is Dreamland,”
Kalinin
admitted. The old man was well- informed. The crafty Chief-of-StafFs
small but highly efficient cadre of internal investigators were still very much
hard at work spying on the KGB for the General Secretary. “We have received
information on a new American project that I believe should be of great
interest to us.”

 
          
“Obviously,”
the General Secretary deadpanned. “Ten new operatives in one area at one time
is a lot. Is there a danger of discovery?”

 
          
“There
is always that chance, sir. But this project is so important I feel the
additional manpower is absolutely vital.”

 
          
“Wasn’t
your young pilot assigned to Dreamland?” Cherkov asked. “The deep-cover agent
that you managed to help transfer from their Strategic Air Command?”

 
          
“Major
Andrei Maraklov, yes. And he is the one who has reported on a new American
project that I must track very closely.”

 
          
“And
this project?”

 
          
Kalinin
hesitated—he didn’t expect to be grilled
like this. As reported to him so far, the new project was so unusual that he
didn’t fully understand it; it was going to be very difficult explaining it to
the General Secretary. This was another change from practices of ten years
ago—back then, the government was so large and, more to the point, so
bureaucratically compartmentalized that sending ten or even fifty new agents to
the United States was relatively easy. Now all personnel movement, even covert
or so-called diplomatic transfers, were approved in advance.

 
          
“I’m
talking about a project begun by the same research center we obtained the short
takeoff and landing data from,”
Kalinin
said. “Maraklov has been assigned to a
project studying . . . thought-controlled fighter aircraft—”

 
          
"Thought
-controlled aircraft?” The
General Secretary quickly looked down at the small stack of papers on his desk—
apparently stifling his skepticism.

 
          
“Maraklov
reports they’ve had
significant
success with this project,”
Kalinin
said, stiffening. “I feel it is very important . .

 
          
The
General Secretary shook his head. “I am sorry, but ten men for such a project
is too much. I can authorize two in the
Los Angeles
consulate, and this must be coordinated
with the foreign minister.”

 
          
“But,
sir, I was going to use two men as handlers for Maraklov. The handlers are very
important. Maraklov’s movements are carefully monitored and more than one
contact is essential. If I only have two new men and use them as handlers I
will not have any for inside duties at the research center. I—”

 
          
“I
have another meeting, Kalinin,” the General Secretary said, snapping shut his
briefcase. “I am scheduled to be in
Los Angeles
in one month. It will not look well if a
large-scale deep-cover ring is discovered. I can’t risk that. Two men only,
Kalinin. If more information on this project comes in, I may reconsider. Now I
must go.”

 
          
As
the General Secretary moved around his desk to leave,
Kalinin
quickly stepped toward him, not blocking
his way but obviously wanting to hold his attention a moment longer. “Sir, I
assure you, this is
most
urgent.”

 
          
The
General Secretary looked directly at his KGB chief. He was shorter than
Kalinin
by several centimeters and at least twenty
years older;
Kalinin
had a full head of dark brown hair, the General Secretary was bald
except for graying temples. The older man was solidly built and only recently
giving way to fat;
Kalinin
was lean, as athletic as a career bureaucrat from
Leningrad
could manage.

 
          
Yet
as they stood face-to-face, the General Secretary exuded a power that was
considerably more than physical. He had a presence, an aura, an intensity that
had all but mesmerized heads of government around the world. His eyes were
especially effective in seizing and transfixing.