The Siren Project (53 page)

She sensed the intelligent presence was
agitated, while the quiescent mind retained an emptiness so poised, it scarcely
seemed possible it could be a natural state. She edged silently up to the vent,
where light flooded back into the shaft from the room beyond. Peering through
the grill, she realized it was the recovery room she'd been held in earlier. Mouse
was gone, but Dr. Nautern was bent over a bench working on something unseen. Strapped
to the angled surgical bed was her mother, lying face down, unconscious.

Christa knew at once, the oddly quiescent mind
was her mother’s. The realization shocked her. She knew the quality of her
mother’s mind better than any other, yet never had she sensed the strange
emptiness she found there now. Anxiously, she reached out with her perception,
finding a strange resistance within that emptiness that blocked all telepathic contact.
She realized that somehow, the alien quality of the conditioning was gone from
her mother’s mind, but so too was any sign of awareness. Her capacity to respond
to the outside world had ceased to exist. Christa was suddenly shaken with
fear. Something had fundamentally changed her mother, but she didn't understand
what it was.

Mama? Are you there?

No comforting response appeared in
Christa’s mind, leaving a sinking feeling in her heart. She didn’t know how her
mother had managed to circumvent the conditioning, but she had a terrible fear
that her mother had taken her place. Why else would she be on the bed Christa
had been on only hours before?

The double doors to the recovery room
opened and General Gray entered. “Is she dead yet?”

Dr Nautern straightened, holding a needle
up to the light as he squeezed the syringe, squirting a small amount of liquid
from the needle, perfecting the dosage. “I’m about to give her the injection
now.”

General Gray strode over to the table and
looked at Caroline’s sleeping face. “Has she shown any sign of life?”

The doctor approached Caroline with the
lethal syringe. Several small white circular sensors were attached to her
forehead, searching for mental activity. He nodded towards the screens
displaying flat green lines.  “No, she’s totally brain dead. Coma victims have
more activity than her.”

The words cut through Christa like a knife,
Brain dead!

“Get it over with. They’ve found Mitchell,”
the general said. “I want him treated tonight. And this time, no mistakes.”

Dr Nautern sighed uncomfortably as he
stepped up beside the general and pulled Caroline’s white surgical gown clear
of her neck, selecting the spot for the injection. “I’ll give it to her in the neck.
It'll go to the brain quickly and . . . finish her.”

Christa was about to scream
No!
when a powerful ripple of thought buffeted her
like the shockwave of an explosion.

Alarms sounded in the surgery, as automated
systems thought they were detecting a seizure. Dr Nautern hesitated, confused, as
he saw the screens monitoring Caroline's mental activity fill with wildly
oscillating peaks and troughs. He knew at a glance the readings far exceeded
human norms. “That can't be . . .” he whispered, thinking the equipment had
malfunctioned.

In the air conditioning duct, Christa gasped
in shock, then tried to focus her mind, to understand what had happened. The
emptiness that had pervaded her mother's mind had vanished. The invisible
resistance that had masked the truth, even from the monitoring machines, had
also been swept aside. In its place, a dynamic potency radiated with such a blazing
intensity, that Christa had to look away. It had been like staring into the
sun, blinding her with its radiant power.

Caroline opened her eyes. “Hello Doctor,”
she said softly, “I'm not brain dead.”

She drove an irresistible impulse into Dr
Nautern’s mind, then the Chief Surgeon turned like a puppet on a string and
stabbed the needle into the general's neck, forcing the poison into his blood
stream. The general groaned, stepping back shocked, as he pulled the needle
from his neck with an astonished look.

“What have you . . .?” The general didn't
have time to finish his question. His eyes unfocused as his knees buckled and he
slid to the floor. Soon, his breathing became erratic as the poison took hold.

Dr Nautern blinked, struggling to
comprehend what had just happened. “General?” he stammered.

General Nathan Gray convulsed. His eyes
rolled back into his head as his body gave one last involuntary shudder and
slumped lifeless at the doctor's feet.

The Chief Surgeon turned to face Caroline,
disbelief on his face. “You . . .?” He touched his forehead, remembering the
irresistible thought that had so completely overpowered him. “You did that!” His
eyes widened with fear as he backed away under her withering gaze. “That was .
. . Impossible!” He turned and started to run for the door.

Caroline projected another commanding
thought and the doctor's legs buckled, refusing to obey him. He tripped,
striking his head on the bench on the way down. He fell motionless to the
floor, unconscious from the blow to his head, and paralyzed by Caroline’s
strike to his mind.

Mama!
Christa thought, shocked by the immense power radiating from her
mother.

I’m here
, Caroline responded with a thought of pure clarity.

Christa pushed the vent open, then
scrambled into the recovery room and released the straps restraining her mother.
Caroline sat up and hugged her daughter with a warmth she'd not felt since her
first conditioning.

Christa pulled back to study her mother. “What’s
happened?”

“I have an implanted memory that tells me,
someone called EB reversed the conditioning and . . . unlocked the full
potential of my mind. He's given me access to abilities I never thought
possible.” Caroline’s face glowed with wonder. “Christa, you have no idea the
clarity I have. It’s like a light has come on in my mind.” She smiled. “It’s a
miracle!”

“What you did . . . ,” she glanced toward
the dead general and the unconscious Chief Surgeon, “That was . . . super
human.”

Caroline’s face sobered as she became aware
of every aspect of their environment. “There are others coming.”

Christa focused her mind, searching for the
presences her mother had detected. “Are you sure? I don’t sense anyone.”

Caroline looked into her daughter's eyes as
she shared her sense of the surroundings with her daughter’s mind. Christa
gasped, seeing people scattered far across the base, sensing their thoughts,
seeing the world around them through her mother’s perception. Caroline gently
focused Christa’s wide angle view on an approaching squad of guards. They were
still far away, but Caroline effortlessly reached into their minds and sensed
their destination.

“Mama, I had no idea it could be like this!”

“That makes two of us! It’s going to take
some getting used to,” She replied, still trying to understand the radical transformation
EB had wrought upon her. “We should go.”

Christa helped her mother off the table,
then hurried through the double doors into the corridor. “How do we get out of
here?”

“That way,” Her mother replied, pointing to
the north. Christa started to move in that direction, but Caroline put a
restraining hand on her arm as she sensed the southern part of the base.

Caroline gasped. “My God!”

“What is it?”

“Imprisoned minds, hundreds of them! Trapped
in a void!” Caroline’s face showed a profound sadness. “I never knew! They
never let me down there.”

Christa tried to sense what her mother was
perceiving, but this time she didn't share her perceptions with her daughter. She
knew whatever her mother had detected was beyond the reach of her talents.

“Your friends are down there,” Caroline
said, facing south. “They’re in trouble.”

“Then that’s the way we go,” Christa said,
starting down the long corridor toward the immersion tank.

* * * *

Gunter opened the door to the left of
the control center, immediately feeling a cool rush of air flow over him from
the temperature controlled environment beyond. The room adjoining the tank
control room was lined with nondescript gray metal cabinets, containing a
complex electronic system. The closest cabinet was neatly imprinted with the
name
Neural Net Relay 1A
confirming his suspicion
that this was EB's hardware core.

He wasted no time in placing plastic
explosives on each relay cabinet and linking the explosives by detonation wire,
while a small robotic janitor, permanently stationed in the Neural Net Relay
Room, moved slowly out from behind a cabinet to see what he was doing. When he
backed out into the control room, laying wire as he went, the small robot
whirred forward, using its optic sensor to examine the plastic explosives and
connecting detonation wires.

Gunter fed wire out all the way across to
the control console until he noticed Mouse staring at the different screens
with a puzzled look. “What is it?”

Mouse looked up, hardly realizing Gunter
had returned to the control room. “I don’t know. EB’s pumping a lot of data
onto the satellite. It looks like it’s going straight to the FBI,” he replied,
indicating the screen that flashed with the word, ‘UPLOADING’ followed by a
constantly changing series of file names. He leaned across to another screen
confused. “But this looks like he’s also downloading data. Lots of data!”

Gunter removed the detonator from his
backpack, then swore softly under his breath.

“What?” Mouse asked without looking up,
clearly distracted.

“The timer has shorted out on the
detonator. The energy weapon in the desert must have caught it when we came in.”
Gunter threw the useless device onto the control console. “I am not sure I can
blow this thing, without blowing us up with it.”

“Uh huh,” Mouse acknowledged, then typed
in,
What are you downloading?
A moment later, a
third screen displayed EB’s response.

ANALYZING DATA FROM ALL SOURCES REGARDING
REFERENCE: BIBLE.

Mouse furrowed his brow. “Ahh G . . . do
you think it’s possible for a cyborg super computer to be . . . born again?”

Gunter looked up and read EB’s response. “I
do not know, but you gave it the idea.”

Mouse typed,
Why?

TO UNDERSTAND RIGHT AND WRONG.

ARE THERE FURTHER REFERENCES?

Gunter took a screwdriver from his bag and
unscrewed a panel behind one of the control console’s work stations. “Is that download
slowing the transmission to the FBI?”

Mouse checked the upload screen. “Doesn’t
look like it. The data pipeline still has plenty of capacity.” The screens
began to flash insistently with a new message.

FURTHER REFERENCES ARE REQUIRED.

“He wants more input,” Mouse reported.

Gunter studied the complex mix of wires and
circuit boards, searching for the main power supply. “A pity we have no time to
experiment with EB.”

“What kind of experiment?”

Gunter looked up from the electronics panel.
“EB seems to be a self aware intelligence with no value system. It would be
interesting to see how he would function, or even if he were capable of
functioning, with a value system. Give him a list of the main texts from the
world religions.”

Mouse squirmed. “And they are?”

“Troglodyte. He has the Bible, so I guess
give him the Koran, the Talmud, the Vedas, The Teaching of Buddha, and the
Bhagavad Gita.”

Mouse typed in the first couple of
references. “Isn’t this going to confuse him, all these different religions?”

“Strip away the cultural differences, and
they are not that different to each other.”

“I doubt religious fanatics would agree.”

“Are not all fanatics the same, no matter
what religion they're from? Extreme? Intolerant? Hate everyone but themselves?”
Gunter moved a panel and probed deeper into the electronics system. “Do you
think you could get EB to direct a small electrical charge down a wire if I
splice him into the explosives?”

Mouse looked over the top of his
workstation at Gunter, seated on the floor on the other side of the control
console. “Are you crazy? Do you think EB is going to help us, by killing
himself?”

“Is he technically alive? Perhaps you should
tell him it is something else, because if we cannot find a way to time the
detonation, one of us has to stay behind. Are you volunteering?”

Mouse sat down again clearly in no mind to
volunteer, then noticed the screens and whistled. “Wow, the data pipeline is
filling fast. He’s sucking in information from all around the world.”

INPUT ADDITIONAL REFERENCES.

“Is he just collecting data, or reading it?”

“You saw what he said, he’s
analyzing
it!” Mouse told EB to search on keywords:
Christ, Buddha, human rights and the democratic constitutions of half a dozen
countries. “Oh crap, that's done it,” he muttered to himself as EB's download
tripled in size. “The pipeline's full. The upload is shrinking to make room for
the download.”