NLI-10 (12 page)

'What is this?'
she asked him.

'Tactile Networking.'
he said. '
Something they had buried deep in the code, I guess they're going to activate it with the sonics at some point, but I skipped ahead on the reading.'

'Why are you doing this?'
she asked.
'Why now? We should be looking after Rob!'

'Because the Network can't be trusted.'

'What are you talking about?'
she asked.
'It's only the seven of us, I can feel there's only seven of us... well... six of us right now... Rob's not responding, it's like he's blocked from the server, what do they call it, a four-oh-four error?'

'Why do you think that is?'
asked Micah.

'I don't know... Maybe it's a bad reaction to the firmware update?'

'I don't think it was just the firmware.'
he said, proceeding to replay the events before Rob's seizure in a projection around the two of them, shifting viewpoint, getting in close to Rob to see his reactions.

'Two 'o' clock!'

'It's coming for your legs!'
Micah and Sarah watched as Rob turned to see the drone coming towards him, jumping over it, clambering for the rope. The projection paused.

'See.' said Micah. 'Everything's fine there.'

He resumed the memory.

'Do like Alex told me! Grab the rope with your feet and swat the fuckers!'
Rob's grasp on the rope faltered and he began to fall. Micah put the memory on pause again.

'That! Do you see that? Liam's voice in his head makes him start to fuck up, sends signals to the wrong part of his brain, makes his hands lose grip.

'What are you saying?'
asked Sarah.
'That he's
allergic
to Liam?'
Micah spun the projection on to where Rob was at the top of the tower.

'Are you sure?'
asked Liam.
The couple watched closely as Rob's fingers seized and gave up trying to hold on. He started to fall. Micah paused it before his head hit the first scaffolding bar.

'I'm saying Liam isn't right. He isn't part of the group.'

'What do you mean? He's been with us since the beginning!'
Sarah said, taking over projection duties and bringing up the first memory she had of seeing him, stepping out of the car on the first day.
'See, he's right there!'

'Is he?'
asked Micah, shifting around the projection, coming close to Liam.

'What are you trying to prove? That he looks as good close up as far away?'

'Walk around him.'
said Micah, holding an arm out, gesturing for her to proceed ahead of him.
She stepped through the three-dimensional memory, and whilst everything else moved, Liam was a two-dimensional representation, like the cardboard cut-outs they had thrown beanbags at.

'What the fuck is going on?'
she asked.

'Pull up another memory of him.'
he said, and she did so. They were at dinner in the restaurant, Whark looking at Liam with disdain.

'I don't remember her looking like she disliked him so much.'
she said, walking around Liam's two dimensional cut-out sitting in her memory.
'It feels like he's her favourite... but she looks so angry.'

'What do you want to bet he's like that in every memory you have of him?'
Sarah didn't want to bet.

'What does this mean?
' she asked.

'He's not really our friend.'
Micah replied. '
We haven't even known him a day!'

'How is that possible?'
she asked, '
This isn't possible, there's not some grand conspiracy to put a fake person in our heads...'

'That's the firmware talking.'
said Micah.
'He's only been with us since the update.'

'What are you talking about?'
said Sarah, pulling up the memory of the group walking in to the room, seeing seven chairs and each of them taking a seat in the row.

'Check out my memory...' he said
, showing her his version of events. Six of them walking in, six chairs in the room.

'What have you done, edited your memory? Is that the next-next lesson?'
she spat, exasperated.

'This is what
actually
happened.'
he replied.
'Without the edit.'

'I don't believe this for a second, I'm going to tell Whark, something must be wrong with your programming...'
Sarah dissipated the projection and walked towards Whark to speak to her. The scene was still frozen.

'
I
made the connection with you.'
said Micah
'
I'm
in control of when it ends.'
Sarah turned to him and glared.

'Well fucking end it then!'

'Not yet. Let me show you what really happened yesterday.'
He pulled the memory back up and made Sarah watch as six of them entered the room and sat on the six chairs. The room noise trickling off, the memories of Leah returning to each of them, along with the realisation that the tones in the walls were manipulating their minds. Holo-Sarah shared her memory of connecting through the NeuralNet before the sonics started pounding through the speakers in the walls. He shared his point of view at that moment, as he disabled his hearing before the tones could take effect, mimicking the symptoms of the others as they fell to the floor, grabbing his head, feigning agony over his body, whilst the others had their memories rewritten to remove Leah and replace her with Liam over the entire month.

Sarah watched as Micah feigned unconsciousness whilst the orderlies entered the room, picked each of them up and put them back in the chairs, bringing in and drilling a seventh chair into its place in the floor. They then held the door open for Liam and avoided eye contact, reverential, like they feared him. He lay back in the leather chair, sinking in comfortably and closed his eyes, waiting for his new friends to wake up.

'None of that happened.'
said Sarah, conflicted by the perversion of Micah's memory. She knew she had to tell Whark, have him fixed, but there was something stopping her, a feeling deep down that she couldn't describe.

'Sarah, up until now you trusted me, right?'
said Micah, looking at her dead in the eyes.

'I don't know...'

'You shared your memory of connecting with the NeuralNet –'

'I don't remember any of that!'

'Well it happened.'
He replayed the memory she shared with him, projecting it around the two of them, giving her back the experience she showed him, reminding her what it was like to see with a thousand electronic eyes.

'That was your memory.'
he said.
'I wasn't in the room, so how could I have your memory?'

'I don't know, maybe making up memories is Wednesday's session. You're a smart guy, you can probably work out how to scam the system.'

You know it's true. You know you trust me.'
he said, taking her by the hand. Projection of him touching projection of her. Eyes locked in their imaginations whilst the world around them sat still.

'So trust me when I say this is for your own good...'
He took his other hand and held it against her forehead.

Sarah felt a static shock that set her mind on fire. The tactile connection within tactile connection was boiling the brain in her skull. She screamed as the memories of Liam reverted back to those of Leah, the inconsistencies fixed and replaced by Micah's memories. She saw the last month play out in front of her, knowing that each and every situation was a complete memory, repaired with his help. Her screams continued as he delved deeper, took out the programming of the firmware update, removed the controls that were keeping her mood stable, her desire for revolt quashed. Micah gave her back the parts of her personality that were deactivated by the re-education room's sonics.

He let go of her projected head and gave her a moment to recover.

'Do you remember?'
he asked.
She looked at him through bloodshot eyes, wiping away tears that only existed within the connection.

'I remember everything,'
she said.
'And I have to share something with you.'
Taking a leap of faith after being saved by a man she barely knew, Sarah showed him the memories of her parents' death, the discovery of their hidden cache of information about APEX, her infiltration into the experiment so she could try and find data that could take the company down. Micah took in all the memories and smiled at her.

'We can do this.
' he said. '
But we can't do it alone, and we can't do it with Liam watching over our shoulder.'

'So what should do about him?' she asked.

'First we need to know that Rob's ok...'
he said, pulling all the projections back, returning to the frozen scene of Rob surrounded by the others, Whark still footsteps away from the group.

'Are you ready?'  he asked.

She nodded. He pulled his hand away from the small of her back, severing the connection.

“What the fuck happened here?” Whark shouted, the anger rippling towards the group with every
click-clack
of her heels.

“He fell. Had a seizure and fell.” said Farah.

“How's his head? Is he bleeding?” Whark asked.

“A bit.” said the nurse. “Miss Zare was straight on it, putting pressure on the wound as soon as the seizure stopped.”

“Good work, Miss Zare.” Whark said, to a polite but distracted smile from Farah.
The orderlies bumbled over with a gurney and picked Rob up, hoisting him clumsily onto the stretcher and wheeling him back into the facility.

“I imagine the rest of you aren't in the mood to carry on, are you...” Whark said, with an annoyed sigh. “Take the rest of the day off. When the doctor has news about Mr. McGovern I'll be sure to pass it along.”
She followed the orderlies path back to the entrance, leaving the nurse to take the group inside. Worries and concerns were shared across the Network chatter, all calmed and diffused swiftly by Liam's influence and the re-education. Sarah and Micah sat separate from the group in the rec room, pretending to read whilst they conversed over a VPN he set up.

'We've got to get into the NeuralNet, see what they're doing to him.'
said
Micah
.

'How? There's no electrodes on us, no terminal here...' said Sarah.

'There's got to be another way.'
he replied
'We need to understand how your tactile connection worked in the memory room.'
He pulled up the projection and they looked closely at Sarah's experience in the chair, listened as the thoughts ran through her mind.
If the computer could connect to her then she could connect to it
. He studied the wires trailing back to the terminal, the cameras observing from the corner of the room. Playing forwards, he watched as her consciousness infiltrated the NeuralNet and took up residency in its pathways. Her projected self navigating corridors of digital light, turned the ephemeral notion of a machine's circuitry into a manifestation she could comprehend. Playback paused as she saw through a thousand eyes. He sunk deeper in to the memory, felt what she felt, stretched out mental fingers to explore what she had only glimpsed in her brief access, reaching out across the systems in that moment to see how far the connection reached. He ended the projection and turned to her.

'It's all connected.'
he said. '
The cameras, the door locks, the terminals, all of it. And we have Superuser access.'

'Superuser?'

'Like an Admin, but better. It's root control over every system. I bet we could even dig deep into the global settings of the facility's NeuralNet and revoke the staff's privileges if we wanted.'

'So, we can connect through, what, the door lock?'
she asked.

'If it's tied into the wider system, yeah.'

'So what are we waiting for?'
she asked, getting up and walking towards the toilet.

'Where are you going?
' he asked, glancing up ever so briefly as she walked away. Not following, so as to appear engaged in his book should the others, and Liam in particular, be watching.

'Can we share a tactile connection over the VPN?'
she asked, as she approached the door.

'Probably?
' he said. '
I'd have to dig into the permissions...'

'Work fast.'
she said, grabbing the handle of the door, drawing on the memory of her accidental connection with the NeuralNet, automating the thought process to engage with the Network.
Micah rushed through menus, altering settings and permissions, and finished just in time to join Sarah as the connection was made. Their mind's eyes were shrouded in darkness.