Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (18 page)

“A crystal. I doubt a crystal is having this kind of effect on so many people,” Dr. Canfield said.

“Why not?”

“Synthetic bodies simply aren’t as susceptible to external substances as biological ones. Our bodies are impervious to biological pathogens and virtually all but the most corrosive chemicals.”

“What about psychological effects, like hypnosis?”

“Impossible. Our higher functions are not accessible to that kind of manipulation.”

“Something is going wrong. What do you suggest it is?”

“I have absolutely no idea. Synthetic physiology is made up of three disciplines: anatomy, memory and cognition. Whatever is doing this has to be affecting one or more of those areas. I can’t imagine an anatomical defect that could result in these symptoms, and memory is generally limited to experience, information storage and recall. A bad memory won’t result in this type of mayhem.

“That leaves cognition, which is analogous to the psyche in a biological person. Issues in this arena can be addressed with traditional therapy or, in extreme cases, through alteration of the underlying routines.”

“Underlying routines? You mean revising the software that controls your cognition?”

“Occasionally a variance will creep into the code, and we are required to tweak it, but we’re talking about minor problems that present as a minor stutter or twitch.”

Ping sat up in his chair next to Mara and said, “So technically it is possible to program a person to do whatever the programmer wants.”

Dr. Canfield shook her head. “It would be impractical to do something like that. An individual’s cognition routines are constantly rewriting themselves to reflect their thoughts and decisions, their will. If you were to program someone to cluck like a chicken in front of a group of dignitaries, they could easily revise the routines to prevent it.”

“That seems logical, if you wanted to force someone to perform a discrete action, but what if you wanted to redefine cognition itself?” Ping asked.

“I’m not sure I’m following,” the doctor said.

Mara interjected, “I believe what Ping’s asking is, what if you wanted to change
how
someone thinks instead of
what
someone thinks?”

“You’re talking about changing the nature of who and what we are. The programming skills necessary to attempt something of that magnitude would be virtually incomprehensible. I don’t think it would be possible, and, if it were possible, what would be the point?”

Mara shrugged. “We’re not sure.”

“Well, if you happen across one of these mysterious crystals, let me know. I’ll take a look at it and tell you what I think.”

Mara took the book bag off her lap and hefted it onto the table and unzipped it. “As a matter of fact we nabbed one of them while we were downtown.”

Ping put his hand over hers and, to the doctor, said, “Do you have some kind of small opaque container that will not allow light to escape?”

The doctor looked skeptical. “To hold the crystal.”

He nodded. “We’re concerned about exposing you to it since your physiology is synthetic.”

“Very well.” She walked over to the wall and tapped it. A window appeared filled with the face of a young man wearing a white lab coat. “Rob, could you bring a small opaque sample container with a lid to the conference room?”

He gave her a quizzical look while nodding. The window on the wall disappeared, and the doctor returned to the table.

“We’ll run it through some tests to see if we can identify what kind of crystal you have there and if it has the ability to reprogram the human race,” she said.

“You’re obviously not taking us very seriously, but I would feel better if you would at least promise not to expose yourself or your staff directly to the crystal,” Mara said.

“We can examine it without removing it from the container. I promise. In the meantime, since you folks aren’t from around here, I would assume you need a place to sleep. You are welcome to use the maintenance staff bunks. They are not luxurious accommodations, but it will be better than sleeping on a table.”

Sam bent down in front a chrome cabinet, opened its glass door, releasing a gust of warm air that flowed over his arms. He extracted a plate from the top wire shelf that held a large round waffle at its center. Inhaling the toasty aroma, he straightened and turned to the miniature table where Mara and Ping sat somewhat uncomfortably. They were turned sideways because the tabletop was too low to accommodate their legs.

“You guys need any more butter or syrup?” Sam asked. When they shook their heads, he crossed the room, placed his second helping of breakfast on the table and rejoined them.

Shortly after they had awakened that morning, a lab worker had stopped by the tiny room, containing two sets of bunk beds, and showed them where the bathroom and cafeteria were located. They found the furnishings in both rooms smaller than they had expected.

Pouring maple syrup on his second waffle, Sam said, “I guess we’re lucky that at least the kids around here eat normal food or we’d be starving to death. It was a little weird using a pint-size commode in the bathroom though. Hard to imagine being a ten-year-old kid one day, and then, zap, you’re a synthetic person. No more waffles for you, kid.” He stuffed a dripping forkful into his mouth.

“You’re assuming they can’t eat regular food after they transition,” Ping said. “That may not be correct.”

“Cam never ate anything when we were in our old realm,” Sam said around the food he was chewing.

Mara said, “We only knew him as a disconnected head in our realm. Where would his food go after he chewed it?” She laughed.

Sam nodded, smiled and swallowed. “That’s true.”

Ping looked around the room at the lowered counters and miniature furniture, and said, “I suppose they address the biological needs of children who are about to make the transition. I wonder what kind of preparation they must go through before that happens.”

“Children receive extensive preparatory courses as part of their primary schooling. By the time they get here, it’s just part of growing up—a rite of passage they look forward to,” Cam said, as he leaned against the frame of the entryway to the cafeteria. “And, by the way, we can eat waffles. It’s just not required for us to sustain ourselves.”

Mara smiled. “Cam! Look at you—you’re in one piece finally!”

Patting himself on the chest with both hands, he approached their table. “Yes, and I have you to thank.”

“And to blame,” Mara added.

Sam pointed a fork at Cam and asked, “So, if you don’t have to eat, where do you get the energy to keep your body going?”

Cam held out one hand, rubbed the back of it with the other and said, “Our skin can convert light into energy, and we can tap into the power net, the wireless power grid that’s ubiquitous in this world.”

“That’s how my phone has been recharging itself,” Mara said.

He nodded and walked over to them. “I don’t mean to ridicule, but you three look a bit strange sitting at that little table.”

“I suppose we are like fish out of water around here. Oddly I feel like some sort of remedial person who has failed to mature properly,” Ping said.

Cam laughed. “Believe me, I can relate. I felt the same my first few days in your realm. Hopefully you won’t have to stay here long enough to get used to it.”

To Mara he asked, “How long
are
you planning to stay?”

Mara glanced at Ping and said, “We haven’t had time to discuss it, but, if Abby exhibited symptoms of the dissoluendo virus after being in this realm for a couple weeks, we have to assume the same will be true for us. At a minimum, I’d like to find out what Dr. Canfield has learned about the crystal we gave her. Maybe we can do something to counter its effects before we go.”

“The three of you should get the Quintivir treatment as soon as possible and go back to your realm. I would hate to see something happen to you,” Cam said. “I’m sure the authorities here can come up with a way to deal with whatever is happening.”

“I’m not so sure. I don’t get the impression that people around here are especially open-minded about things beyond their experience. When you first got back and told them about your adventures traveling to other realms and seeing a dragon, they didn’t seem too receptive to the ideas,” Mara said.

“Somehow, if the roles were reversed, I doubt you would be either,” he said, smiling. “However, you figured out a way to embrace these strange metaphysical concepts. So will they. This may be something that you let someone else fix.”

Sam dropped his fork to his plate with a clatter and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “She’ll never do that. She’s always got to be in there, making everything right.”

Ping chuckled but didn’t add anything.

“Let me find out what’s going on with the crystal, and then we’ll talk about going home,” she said. She glared at her brother. “Besides, I thought you were in no hurry to spend a day in one of those receptacle tubes.”

“Not looking forward to it, but it’s better than having my organs melt.”

Cam grimaced for a second but quickly shook off the expression. “Anyway, the doctor said she could meet you in the conference room in about thirty minutes. I’ve got to return to the diagnostics lab for a few more tests, but I’ll stop by when I’m done.”

* * *

Looking tired and frazzled, Dr. Canfield walked into the conference room and took a seat at the table directly across from Mara. She gave Ping and Sam, who sat on either side of Mara, a tight perfunctory smile. “Good morning. I hope the accommodations were comfortable enough for you to get some rest,” she said.

“Yes, thank you,” Ping said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but it appears that perhaps you didn’t.”

The doctor shook her head. “I got a couple hours’ sleep before the research lab woke me up to discuss this little item you gave me last night.”

She slipped her hand into her lab coat and pulled out the small cylindrical sample container which held the crystal Mara had confiscated. She put it on the table in front of her.

“What did they find out?” Mara leaned forward in her chair.

Dr. Canfield grabbed the sides of the container to twist off the lid. When Mara’s eyes widened with concern, she said, “Don’t worry. It has been deactivated.” Setting aside the lid, she poured the crystal from the container onto her fingertips. Pinching it between her thumb and index finger, she held it up.

“Deactivated? How can you deactivate a crystal?” Mara asked.

“It’s not crystal at all. It’s a diode, a programmable light-emitting diode,” Dr. Canfield said. She handed it across the table to Mara, who held out her hand. The doctor dropped it in her palm.

As Mara examined it more closely, she said, “An LED. You say it’s programmable. What’s it programmed to do?”

“The lab hasn’t had time to completely understand how it works, but it appears to be relaying commands into a specific portion of the neural networks of people exposed to its pulsing light,” she said.

“We never saw the crystals pulse. It simply refracted light in the same way any gemstone might,” Ping said.

“Just a trick of the senses,” the doctor said. “The intermittent transmission of photons is so rapid that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. It simply appears to be shining. That’s what makes the device so insidious. Its beauty draws the eye, and unfortunately the eye is the window to the soul.”

“That’s an odd metaphor for you to use. I thought the people here actually perceived sight through sensors in their skin,” Mara said.

Ping’s eyes narrowed. “And I was under the impression that that practice of religion had ceased after everyone had transitioned to synthetic physiology.”

“As far as how we see, our bodies gather the information differently than utilizing biological eyes, but our brains perceive what we see the same way you do,” the doctor said. “With regard to religion, it didn’t happen immediately. The decision to abandon our biological bodies in favor of artificial ones was controversial, especially for adherents of those sects who believed the body was sacred, a gift of God. Those individuals refused to transition, and they eventually died. Naturally the proportion of people who practiced religion among those who survived declined substantially, but some continued in their beliefs. Eventually even those stopped practicing religion, especially as we refined and enhanced our physiology over time.”

Mara knitted her brow. “What sort of enhancement would make people stop believing in God?”

“Addiction prevention,” the doctor said.

“What?”

“The first generation of people with artificial bodies did not have safeguards in place to prevent addiction to external stimuli. The programming that allowed for feelings of intense joy and ecstasy was not counterbalanced with the negative repercussions of overexposure to those feelings. In a biological body, you eventually become numb to, or overwhelmed by, too much stimuli, whether it’s sex or drinking or gambling, whatever. For our ancestors, they just kept chasing the feelings because there was no reason not to,” Dr. Canfield said. “Of course society came close to unraveling.”

“I’m not sure I understand what this has to do with religion and what that has to do with the crystal—the LED, I mean,” Mara said.

“The enhancement to address addiction limited these feelings of ecstasy. One of the unintended consequences was the loss of religiosity. People couldn’t feel rapturous anymore, so religion fell by the wayside. Or so that’s the theory.”

“And how is this connected to the LED?”

“The guys in the lab say they think the LED is targeted at that part of the person’s neural net—the part that prevents addiction from developing.”

Ping leaned in and said, “So our conjecture yesterday about reprogramming people wasn’t so far off base.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Dr. Canfield said. “This appears to be turning off a function that prevents feelings of ecstasy and euphoria, not redefining what it means to be human.”

“
Euphoria
. That’s what they called it in the news streams. We assumed it was this.” Mara held up the LED. “They said some men who broke into a jewelry store were under the influence of Euphoria. A mental health warrant has been issued for the men. Does that mean the cops know about what the LED is doing to people?”