JUSTICE REBORN (A Charlie Taylor Novel Book 1) (14 page)

It ends with Monk: he picks me off the
ground, wipes my face and leads back to his office.

“Charlie that should have happened two
years ago. You had to let go sometime.” He doesn’t say anymore and hands me
some brandy. I’m completed wasted. I drain the brandy and stare at him, my best
friend. I know it’s an exaggeration to say I went through a catharsis but
certainly I’m not the same guy who walked into the Abbey a couple of hours ago.

 “OK, let me hear it.”

The Monk smiles, not smug, just a grateful
look on his face, and then he tells me how we are to save Ronald Bowen.
Compassion rules my friend’s life.

Jesus Christ, will I ever learn?  

The arrival of the weekend was of no
consequence to the two women.

At one end of the room, Dr.  Kate slumped
at the laboratory counter, struggling to maintain her focus, the workload,
pressure, and late hours taking its toll. Her mind skipped from one vignette to
the next; her mental drifting stopped at her one illicit love affair. It
happened years ago when they both attended a Friday night campus beer-fest.
Before the fest ended they left the building together, both well beyond their
usual alcohol intake. When they found themselves alone in a friend’s apartment,
primal lust destroyed any inhibitions. From there on it was a rocket launch,
with each secret meeting escalating in passion and intensity. They became
reckless, and a mutual friend warned them rumors had started.

Once warned, each recognized the decision
point. Fiercely ambitious, logical, and conservative by nature, knowing the
impact a divorce would have on their careers, they walked away from the
relationship. There was no looking back, no unwanted calls, no gut wrenching
reconciliation attempts, all public contacts conducted with professional
decorum.

In her corner of the Combination Room, Emma
continued to return to one question: why hadn’t the duplicates surfaced during
the original work? Hours and hours of basic research by some of the top minds
in the world developed the techniques and confirmed the safety of the
interrogation.

She studied all the research documentation,
the published work, and even news articles; at the time, the original researchers
became media stars and the press coverage had been extensive. An explosion of
information existed, thousands of words, except for three: duplicate memory
streams–– absent from every source.

She had narrowed her focus to one man: Dr.
Joe Wilson, a brilliant scientist, was a critical player at the beginning of
the project and then disappeared from the scene. Emma met and talked to Dr.
Wilson, years ago at some forgotten conference. This was the man she phoned and
used his answering service to leave a desperate appeal for assistance.

Why hadn’t he answered? Why not at least
acknowledge her call?  Joe was one of the pioneers in the field. An exceptional
scientist but a maverick, with a reputation for candid apolitical comments. The
Wilson-Armstrong debates became acrimonious, no holds barred yelling matches,
both unyielding egos.

Was he out of date? He had been the oldest
in the group and left the research program some time ago. Was he current? On
the other hand, the gossip in the scientific community was: Dr. Wilson harbored
many secrets and declared his willingness to share if it shafted Dr. Max.

A skeptical Emma resisted the idea Dr. Max
was culpable. It was unthinkable a scientist of Dr. Armstrong’s caliber would
risk his reputation and suppress information of this nature. Although many
labeled Max a womanizer, he was one of the top scientists in the world. He
would not allow a process to proceed with this type of flaw.

 She couldn’t turn to Dr. Max Armstrong
because Kate said other developments put Dr. Max temporarily out of the loop.
The Wilson option seemed an extreme long shot, and she felt embarrassed to
discuss it with Kate. But, if she couldn’t turn to the Nobel Peace Prize winner
or his immediate staff, this resulted: an old timer who may or may not have
been there when duplicate memory streams appeared.

The Combination Room felt like a sterile
operating room with banks of equipment the only company for two desperate
women. Their working partnership had begun years before S3 became part of the justice
system. As a team, they had tackled and solved many problems; they rarely
wasted time with mundane preliminaries. When the duplicate issue erupted, they
both understood it would be their most significant challenge, the enigma of the
decade.

In the past, when dealing with supervisors,
Emma found herself to be a rather diffident participant; this all changed with
Dr. Kate where her real intrepid character was allowed to surface and flourish.
She understood Emma, trusted her, and recognized her ingenious nature.

 “Kate, I now have all the multiple
recordings; I think I know what took them so long to get the material to us.
I’m afraid I made some enemies at White Rock, and this delay was payback. I’m
sorry. I could cry.

Regardless I have been crawling through the
details of one case, frame by frame. The problem is the amount time it takes to
review and analyze. It’ll take hours to ensure there are no significant
differences in the duplicate streams.  I’ve almost finished one case and the
multiples appear to be duplicates and not a different version of the event, but
there are subtle differences which give rise to some doubt. Did I miss
something?  I’m still not sure. At this rate, it’ll take days to assess all the
White Rock records.”

 “Well Emma, I have some good news. I
reviewed the problem with the head of Information Technology and discovered
they have an old program, apparently part of the original memory research
project, for analyzing memory streams.

 Over the past few years, various summer
students had been given the task of upgrading the software; numerous research
grants funded the work. Bottom line: in about one hour we’ll receive a
technical team from the IT department. These two analysts are familiar with the
software and are prepared to view our complete White Rock inventory; and, they
believe they can complete a review by the end of the day.

They think it’ll only take about 30 minutes
to make some modifications which allow multiple streams to be compared against
one standard. So we’ll use the first retrieval and compare all others against
it.

Apparently, the differences in colors,
shading and so forth will not be a problem for the software. They can isolate
which streams are true duplicates and which ones are not. If this works out, we
may have all the answers by the end of the day. But I confess, I’m afraid of
what we are going to find.”

“This is the best news we’ve had in days.
At this point I don’t care what the result is; I just want answers. In my
frustration, I began pursuing a different line. Do you remember Dr. Joe Wilson
one of the original researchers? Yes? You do? Good. He’s retired and living
miles from here, but I found him and left him a long message about our
problems.

 I thought if anyone knew about these kinds
of issues, it had to be Joe. Many felt his contributions were second only to
Dr. Max’s, but Joe couldn’t stop criticizing the financial sponsors and
irritated the wrong people. I know it’s going back rather far, but I’m told
he’s the guy who knows the details. The problem is: he has not responded, but
I’m hoping he’ll call us this morning.”

“Sure I know him, and I agree we might have
to go that far back to solve this issue. Joe always was a bit of a radical and
did manage to get himself forced into an early retirement. But let’s not waste
time speculating. While we wait for his call, tell me about the duplicates that
you have reviewed.”

“It appears your theory is correct. I’ve
examined a dozen duplicate streams. Some contain a crime scene, but there are a
variety of events: the birth of a baby, scoring the winning touchdown, a brutal
dog attack on a young boy; all are emotional events in someone’s life. The
innocent prisoners have about three times the quantity of duplicates.  I don’t
understand why. But this issue is confusing the scanners and Watchers and
pushed us over the 45 minutes for many cases.”

“Emma, my theory is: as a prisoner
convicted of a crime you did not commit, your life tends to be very emotional,
and this poignant state spawns these duplicates. Possibly, you continue to
remember and replay events. Maybe it’s those events which mean the most to you,
whether they are failures, or a success, or just a happy afternoon. In any
case, these multiples are there and part of our job. I don’t know, maybe the
multiplication allows the events to surface faster.

This is just useless speculation, another
research paper. Right now we have to figure out how to deal with them. Emma,
why don’t you start organizing all the recordings for the IT analysts who will
be here shortly? I have to one more loose end to track down. Thanks.”

It was an abrupt ending to the exchange,
but Kate was not in the mood for an extended dialogue. Kate had always been an
honor student and had a Ph.D. in biochemistry and a medical degree. Prior to
joining the Board, she was the lead scientist on numerous research projects at
the University Medical Center.

Although intelligent, her success benefited
from hours of grinding work, and her last degree, acquired while married, had
been particularly difficult. Possibly this accounted for her less than
sympathetic demeanor with colleagues or students who she perceived were not
committed.

She was now back in regular contact with
Stephen but knew any reconnection was out of the question. His marriage
appeared stable, and she knew he took his duties too serious to jeopardize his
position for an affair. On the few occasions, they had been alone there was
some careful reminiscing, but he never made a move to touch her or give any
indication that he missed her.

Besides, her daughter, Sonja, depended on
her. For the last few years, Sonja maintained a grueling study pattern to
produce the necessary grades for admission to medical school. Kate’s support
was unlimited, and she did everything possible to assist Sonja with her dream.
Then yesterday, after acceptance into medical school along with a prestigious
scholarship, Sonja’s first move was to call to her father with the good news.
This phone call upset Kate; she couldn’t control her emotions.

Her ex-husband did little to assist Sonja,
had not been around to contribute during the tough economic times, and yet
Sonja turned to him immediately with the good news. It appeared Kate’s extra
efforts and dedication were taken for granted, and father came across as the
good guy who provided the positive feedback.

An extraneous sound disrupted Kate’s
thoughts. The soft ringing filled the room and Emma answered her cell.

 “Hello Dr. Joe.  I’m sorry to pull you
away from your golf game……………. yes  I know you’re not always on the links………..may
I put you on the big screen and make this a conference call with Dr.
Kate?................... just give me about 30 seconds.” Within a few seconds,
the wall screen was filled with Joe’s face and upper body. He looked trim, fit,
tanned, and presented a big smile.

 “Hi Kate, I won’t waste words. You two are
into something, and you’re lucky to have found me. I’ve been on a remote beach
with no connections to the rest of the world. It was great. I just got back
this morning and reviewed my message service.

And Emma I apologize for the delay; you
must have been worried.  I think I know what some of the problems are.   I’ll
provide background which may explain what is going on and why it has been
difficult to find out about the early days of the project and the reticence of
people. All the research was viewed and, probably still is, as pure academic
research emanating from a university campus. In reality, private industry
controlled and financed the work.

 As the research progressed the potential
for truckloads of money became apparent. A pharmaceutical company wanted
control of all of the drugs; next, there was hardware, circuit design, and
software to be patented and controlled. To be part of the research team, all of
us signed secrecy and working agreements with monster financial penalties for
those with loose lips. This is still in effect and does cover pensions and any
other future cash flow you may have been promised. Control was absolute with
Dr. Max editing all research papers or presentations.”

“Joe we wouldn’t think of telling on you,
so please open all the doors, and let us know what was going on in those early
years.”

“Ladies, I do trust you both. As you know,
the first probes were only able to retrieve and play audio pockets from the
brain. It was a massive step to get a decent picture to accompany the sound.
First, we were only able to retrieve low-grade images; the quality was so poor
you couldn’t be sure what was surfacing.

Dr. Max was a fucking bear, and I mean a
fucking bear. He would not accept anything but complete success; he was
convinced this would work. He literally lived in the lab and personally
harassed anyone who wasn’t getting the results he wanted. Naturally, we solved
all the issues associated with getting a clear screen image; memory mapping and
developing searching strategy became the next hurdles. Did a chronological
pattern to a memory schema exist? And where to begin a scan and how to move the
probe?

 Dr. Max decided to use the Binary Search
as the basis for starting each scan, but each individual scanner still decides
where to move the probe as he visualizes a schema. Emma, you know even today,
it really depends on a good scanner to get a feeling for the pattern, much like
geologist has a vision of the underlying folds and layers under the earth’s
crust.

Oh sorry, I’m off the central issue and
getting carried away. At that time, the probe was controlled and physically
moved by hand. And yes, we started to see the same event appear on the screen
more than once. After some fierce discussion, the conclusion was the technician
was not able to hold or control the probe properly. You know, the technician’s
hand only had to slip fractions of a millimeter, and you would be back in the
same region, retrieving the same memory stream.”