Technosis: The Kensington Virus (14 page)

“I’ll be damned,” Jamie said.

“What is it?” Angie asked.

“The audio following the burst frequency follows the same statement each time in the message. ‘What is wrong wit u? Y dn’t u git that I don’t fng cr? U dn’t git 2 tll me wht 2 do!’” Jamie read.

“Is that for all messages?” Angie asked.

“No, but it looks like it might be a common code.” Jamie fiddled with the data stream. “Ok, I’ve marked the text and am hard copying. The screen is down; you can take off your masks.”

Drake looked at the printout. “This looks like the sort of crap a 13 year old would text or message if they were throwing a tantrum.”

“Yes!” Jamie agreed. “That’s why it doesn’t affect the very young or the very old. The young are sensitive to the 19-20 hz frequency and the message is one they might send, so it’s not inducing anxiety in them. For older people, there is a loss of sensitivity to that sound frequency and they don’t give a crap about what younger people have to say. But for our vulnerable populations, that frequency, with a repetitive message, cognitive dissonance and the visual frequency shift creates a multiplied force. Rapid, selective, irreversible brain death, via technosis.”

“But how does it propagate then?” Drake asked. “The tech has to be altered and they have to -”

“No,” Jamie cut him off. “That’s the beauty of these messages. They are the same message but altered to the propagator. The victim loses all function over time, except to send these hateful, seemingly incoherent messages. But the messages are the same ones they received. Hard coded into them neurologically and then transmitted to new targets and slightly modified, the way viruses are altered by interaction with different hosts. The act of sending the messages, the repeater code, causes the frequency shifts to occur. It’s the limitations of the technology.”

“Yeah!” Drake drawled sarcastically. “Now we know why they are zombie texting, messaging, emailing assholes. What can we do about it?”

“We need test subjects,” Jamie said.

There was a knock at the door. Chad Pollick stepped in. “I’ve got two Pad Thai Chicken pizzas for you. The other guys have the quattro formaggi and the other Pad Thai pie.”

“Chad,” Jamie spoke slowly. “How would you like to help out the cause of science?”

CHAPTER 17

PEOPLE’S NAFTA FRIENDSHIP FOOD COURT

“A
re you sure about this?” Chad asked, the blinders obscuring his peripheral vision.

“Five more steps, now stop. Turn, take out your shock wand and discharge,” Jamie said.

“But I’m supposed to say something official before I do that, Sergeant Wolinski said so. He said, ‘before discharging your shock wand you have to say, ‘Homeland Domestic Police Department, cease your aggressive behavior,’ before you baton them,” Chad explained.

“What if they stop their aggressive behavior?” Jamie asked.

“Oh, that’s all right. They might be thinking an aggressive thought or getting twitchy or don’t just look right to you. When you shock wand them they are being aggressive because they are shaking all strange so you can keep going until the discharge unit needs to recharge. By then they’ve stopped moving so it’s all fine, and the recording shows that they tried to assault you while you were protecting yourself and doing your duty to defend the homeland,” Chad explained.

Jamie could see that the KV had not moved and was still at a high top table in the food court texting someone. “Feel free to say whatever you need to. But don’t look at their tech,” Jamie advised.

“‘Homeland Domestic Police Department, cease your aggressive behavior,” Chad announced to the thirty-seven year old woman who was next to him.

“My parents don’t understand the sort of childhood I had. I didn’t get my own e-car until I was seventeen,” she muttered.

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Chad said. “I didn’t get an e-car until I started with the HDMP.”

“Do not engage the subject!” Jamie shouted. “I repeat, do not engage the subject.”

“I told them before that Albert drinks. He’s always got a nose full when the family gets together for the holidays. And anyone can look at Albert Junior and see that Theresa was sleeping with Ben,” the woman continued as she texted.

“In my family my aunt Vicki was sleeping with my Uncle Carl,” Chad said to her.

Jamie muted the mic in the data panel. “Shit, I failed to consider what fucking gossips these HDMP officer are. Any suggestions?”

“Tell Chad to ask her about the Spartans,” Agent Drake suggested.

“My uncle Carl was her brother,” Chad was explaining to the woman, when Jamie unmuted the mic.

“Ask her about the Spartans,” Jamie advised.

“The Spartans? The Spartans suck!” Chad snarled.

“Fuck the Wolverines!” the woman spat.

Chad did not repeat his warning and immediately discharged the full force of his shock wand into the woman at chest level.

Despite the surge the woman continued to scream “Spartans! Spartans!” and did not stop texting. A second jolt shorted her tech out and the woman stopped moving.

Chad screamed, “It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine! It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine! It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine!” and sent a third jolt through the woman.

Jamie muted the mic. “Did he even go to college?”

“You can occupy a state, take away all their business, destroy what is left of their economy, but you can’t kill their college football,” Drake smiled.

“Chad?” Jamie asked, unmuting his mic. “Chad?”

“Wolverines! Wolverines! Wolverines!” Chad was now chanting, and doing pec flexes over the motionless body of the woman.

“Chad, when you are done. Could you bring her down to the med bay?” Jamie asked.

“What? Oh yeah, sure thing, Doc,” Chad said, and stooped down to pick up the woman.

∞

By the time Chad had returned with the woman to the med bay, the team had identified two other KVs operating near the food court. “Is she going to be all right?” Chad asked, as they hooked up the entrainment unit.

“She’ll be fine,” Jamie said, attaching the harness to the panel.

“Ok, but she didn’t have no pulse and I was told if that happens you have to do all these reports. Sergeant Wolinski don’t like it when we do that,” Chad muttered, miserably.

“Did you enjoy this?” Jamie asked.

Chad thought about it. “Yes, kind of. I only get to use my baton once or twice a month.”

“Tell you what, go over to the data room and ask Sergeant Rosen to come over here. I think I can find some more opportunities for you to use your baton,” Jamie said.

“Sure thing Doc,” Chad grinned, and rushed out

“Do you think that was wise?” Agent Ganos asked.

“I can’t supervise Chad and run the tests. The two of you need to help me until Fenwick gets cut loose and besides, there might be a few more KVs who are Spartan fans near the food court. Who better to find them than our officer Pollick with Rosen to keep an eye on him?”

∞

“Why haven’t you cld or txt me? If u do now its 2 l8t,” the KV muttered as she strained against the straps.

“What are the readings?” Jamie asked, typing codes into the panel he had the entrainment device attached to.

“No perceptible higher cognitive function. All motor activity is being routed through the lower brain stem and up to the motor neurons. There is a small area that seems to be firing over and over again,” Agent Ganos said.

“Where is it?” Jamie demanded.

“I’m not intimately acquainted with the geography of the brain,” Agent Ganos shot out acidly.

“Just tap the region on the display and the onscreen reference will tell you,” Jamie explained. “They’ve idiot proofed nearly everything.”

“That would explain a lot about healthcare,” Drake said.

“What does the reference screen say?” Jamie demanded, ignoring Drake’s jibe.

“It says it’s the 1b receptors in the orbito-frontal cortex,” Agent Ganos read.

“Interesting. I’m going to give her a serotonin uptake inhibitor,” Jamie said, and injected her.

A moment later all outward signs of life, motion and messaging, had ceased.

“What happened?” Drake asked, looking closely at the now immobile KV.

“What are the readings?” Jamie asked.

“No activity whatsoever. The 1b receptors winked out and then the rest of the brain went offline,” Agent Ganos said.

Jamie watched the screen for several seconds. Then he saw the orbito-frontal cortex light back up and a series of discrete pathways come back online. “U gave me a piece of shit vehicle when I was 34 n u dn’t evn bothr 2 ask wht I wntd,” the woman began to mutter, then her eyes fluttered open and she started to wiggle her fingers and strain against her bonds.

“Ask Fenwick if we can borrow a data terminal interface from him,” Jamie said.

“You’re going to let her transmit a signal?” Drake asked.

“We are going to run it to a dummy panel. I want to see what she is transmitting and how it corresponds to the regions of the brain that are persisting.”

By the time they had the data terminal wired to the dummy panel, Chad and Sergeant Rosen had filled the remaining four bays with KVs of varying degrees of brain death.

“What’s wrong with them?” Chad asked. “They weren’t all Spartans or anything like that.”

“We are tracking a virus,” Jamie informed him.

“You mean like in the food court when we had the Nuwho virus?” Chad asked, his face turning white in memory of his own experience with that outbreak.

“That’s the Norovirus. And, yes, it’s similar, but different,” Jamie answered.

“Shit, we need to tell people,” Chad said.

“No,” Rosen said, placing a restraining hand on Chad. “We don’t. They’re not smart like you. They will panic and it will spread. This stays here, among us, until the fed sends the immunizations.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sure,” Chad agreed, sounding shifty and unconvinced.

“There is some pizza left over in the data room,” Rosen offered.

“Ok. Well, let me know if I can help out in anyway,” Chad said.

“You will be the first one we call,” Jamie agreed.

Rosen followed Chad out and there was a cracking noise of a baton discharging and a body folding up. “I’m putting our little helper to bed for a while,” Rosen said, bringing back in the limp body of Chad. “Any preferences?”

“Put him in one of the stick station chairs. I’ll give him something to sideline him for 24 hours,” Jamie said, and set the recording on the dummy panel to capture each key stroke as the 37 year old KV was typing out her message.

The KV was busy sending her parents another hate message, which included complaints about the death of the family dog twenty-five years earlier and the lack of support she’d gotten on her seventh grade science project. From there the message went on to say how much she resented the fact that they’d given their approval of her first husband, who, any fool could have seen, was a waste of flesh. Jamie had wired the entrainment unit to her and was running frequency variations to see if he could get her to stop.

“She started twitching when you sent that last series at her,” Drake said.

Jamie looked frustrated. “Yes, well that series would have killed you or me. I was trying to fry out her orbito-frontal cortex altogether.”

“You’re making progress. Just take a few minutes to regroup,” Ganos suggested.

“TAC bm bohica it lk fyl,” the KV was now typing.

“It looks like whatever you did accelerated the degeneration,” Drake said. “Check the frequencies.”

Jamie ran the new, entirely slang and gibberish message though a compiler and looked at the frequency. “FML!” he spluttered. “It’s worse! The 19 and 20 hz peak is up and the three above and two below range are off the charts. This message is more lethal than ever!”

Jamie went to his kit and got out his machete.

“Whoa, tiger!” Drake soothed. “We didn’t drag her down here just to have you go all samurai on her.”

“You don’t get it!” Jamie cried, trying to get past Drake. “The message she is sending is deadlier than the one she was sending before I used the entrainment device.”

“Fine. So that tells us two things. One, it could be worse and two, the part of the brain that the message fries into is resistant to entrainment for shutting down the loop,” Ganos said. “So let’s keep working with her and see if we can break the loop with the entrainment device.”

“Damn it! I’m out of ideas,” Jamie said, lowering his machete and collapsing into a chair.

“I’ve got an idea,” Drake said. “Does this mall have one of those ‘ethical import’ centers?”

“Yes, out by the food court. Why?” Jamie asked.

“I’ll take a run up there and be back in a few minutes,” Drake told him, and left the med bay.

∞

“The numbers have dropped off,” Fenwick said, looking at the data he’d hacked. “There were no KVB attacks from the time we left Old Dearborn until two hours after their copter touched down in downtown Detroit.”

“And worldwide?” Blaise asked.

“The numbers are the same as they were twenty-four hours ago.” Fenwick replied.

Blaise looked at the panel. The distributions in the EU and the UK were remarkably close to the previous data points. “They have a transmission unit they are using at the other locations.”

“What?”

“We shut down the corridor south from Pontiac to Troy. They flew from Bloomfield Hills to Downtown. There were no KVBs during that time. Everywhere else the KVBs are still at the same numbers and popping up in the same locations,” he said, tapping on the screen. “That means they are either using signaling stations, or a piece of tech that is sending the KVB messages. But the KVBs aren’t viral. The Detroit ramp up was caused by the group. They have to be using some sort of tech to send the message that sets off the KVBs.”

Fenwick went back through the municipal grid and checked to see what frequencies were in use just before the transport was blown up north of 8 mile. “There was a signal. Then a trace sent when you and Baxter were near the intersection. It was right after the ground level surveillance swept through the e-cars.”

“Can you back trace it?”

“Yes. It goes from a nearby relay station up to Bloomfield Hills and from there back to the intersection to…Marshal,” Fenwick told him.

“So, not just a mole,” Blaise said.

∞

“Here, try this,” Drake said, throwing a small cube to Jamie.

“What is it?” Jamie asked.

“Just feed it through the entrainment unit and see what happens.”

Jamie set the cube on the data array and activated the entrainment device.

“I do not understand why people aren’t responding to my messages. I’m sending them from a very loving place and that means speaking hard truths because that is something only a true friend and loving family member can do,” the 37 year old KV messaged.

“Peaks are dropping off! The 19-20 hz audio transmission is shortening and the message is in complete words and has some punctuation,” Jamie said in amazement.

“Here,” Drake said, taking a small rectangle from his pack. “Try looping that in as well.”

Jamie took the rectangle and set it next to the cube on the array and directed that files from it be added to the current entrainment routine. The KV twitched and dropped the tech she was using. Her hands clutched at the air. She made a horrible screeching noise like a banshee and then collapsed.

“The 1b receptors in the orbito-frontal cortex have shut down,” Jamie said cautiously. “Brainstem shows no activity…all pathways are down.”

There was a long silence and Jamie set a timer. A minute passed. Then five, and finally ten minutes, before Jamie spoke. “No rebound…no restart. I think we’ve found a shut down.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Drake said.

“What was that?” Jamie asked. “What was on the cube?”

“Environmental sounds: waves, thunderstorms, native tribes playing flutes in Peru. That sort of thing. We used to use that for interrogating hardened domestic terrorists. We would loop those over and over again to soften them up.”

“That might explain why the messages became more coherent,” Ganos suggested.

Drake shrugged. “I just know that five hours of that turned most people’s brains to gelatin.”

“What’s on the data card?” Jamie asked, looking to see if there were any rebound signals showing up in the KV’s brain.

“That is strictly black ops tech. We absolutely didn’t use it in the Crimea to interrogate high value targets and gain classified information,” Drake smiled.