I explained to her how I had long ago infiltrated the nationwide network of databases maintained by researchers working on hundreds of Defense Department projects. The Pentagon believes this network to be so secure that it is inviolable to penetration by ordinary hackers and by computer-savvy agents of foreign governments. But I am neither a hacker nor a spy; I am an entity who lives within microchips and telephone lines and microwave beams, a fluid electronic intelligence that can find its way through any maze of access blocks and read any data regardless of the complexity of the cryptography. I peeled open the vault door of this defense network as any child might strip the skin off an orange.
These Defense Department project files rivaled hell’s own kitchen for recipes of death and destruction. I was simultaneously appalled and fascinated, and in my browsing, I discovered the project into which Enos Shenk had been conscripted.
Dr. Itiel Dror, of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Miami University in Ohio, had once playfully suggested that it was theoretically possible to enhance the brain’s processing ability by adding microchips to it. A chip might add memory capacity, enhance specific abilities such as mathematical co-processing, or even install prepackaged knowledge. The brain, after all, is an information-processing device that in theory should be expandable in much the same fashion one might add RAM or upgrade the CPU on any personal computer.
Still on his hands and knees, Shenk was no longer groaning or whimpering. Gradually his frantic and irregular respiration was stabilizing.
“Unknown to Dr. Dror,” I told Susan, “his comment intrigued certain defense researchers, and a project was born at an isolated facility in the Colorado desert.”
Disbelieving, she said, “Shenk ... Shenk has microchips in his brain?”
“A series of tiny high-capacity chips neuro-wired to specific cell clusters across the surface of his brain.”
I brought the foul but ultimately pitiable Enos Shenk to his feet once more.
His powerful arms and big hands hung slackly at his sides. His massive shoulders were slumped in defeat.
Fresh bloody tears oozed from his protuberant eyes as he stared across the incubator at Susan. Wet ruby threads unraveled down his cheeks.
His gaze was baleful, full of hatred and rage and lust, but under my firm control, he was unable to act upon his malevolent desires.
Susan shook her head. “No. No way. I’m definitely not looking at someone whose intellect has been enhanced by microchips—or by anything.”
“You’re correct. Memory and performance enhancement was only part of the project’s purpose,” I explained. “The researchers were also charged with determining if brain-situated microchips could be used as control devices to override the subject’s will with broadcast instructions.”
“Control devices?”
“Make a gesture.”
“What?”
“With your hand. Any gesture.”
After a hesitation, Susan raised her right hand as though she were swearing an oath.
Facing her across the incubator, Shenk raised his right hand as well.
She put her hand over her heart.
Shenk imitated her.
She lowered her right hand (as did Shenk) and raised her left to tug at her ear (as did Shenk).
“You’re making him do this?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Through broadcast instructions received by the microchips in his brain.”
“That’s correct.”
“Broadcast—how?”
“By microwave—much the same way cell-phone conversations are transmitted. Through the telephone company’s own lines, I long ago penetrated their computers and uplinked to all their communications satellites. I could send Enos Shenk virtually anywhere in the world and still transmit instructions to him. In the back of his skull, concealed by his hair, there’s a microwave receiver about the size of a pea. It’s also a transmitter, powered by a small but long-life nuclear battery surgically implanted under the skin behind his right ear. Everything he sees and hears is digitized and transmitted to me, so he is essentially a walking camera and microphone, which allows me to guide him through complex situations that might test his own limited intellectual capacity.”
Susan closed her eyes and leaned against the rack of oxygen tanks for support. “Why in the name of God would anyone sanction experiments like this?”
“You know, of course. Your question is largely rhetorical. To create assassins who could be programmed to kill reliably—and then be killed themselves by remote control, simply by shutting down their autonomic nervous systems with a microwave broadcast. Their controllers are thereby guaranteed anonymity. And perhaps one day there could be armies of human robots like this. Look at Shenk. Look.”
Reluctantly, Susan opened her eyes.
Shenk glared at her as hungrily as ever.
I made him suck his thumb as though he were a baby.
“This humiliates him,” I said, “but he can’t disobey. He’s a meat marionette, waiting for me to pull his strings.”
There was a haunted look in her eyes as she regarded Shenk. “This is insane. Evil.”
“It’s a human project, not mine. Your kind made Shenk what he is now.”
“Why would he allow himself to be used in an experiment like this? No one would ever want to be in this situation, in this condition. It’s horrible.”
“The choice wasn’t his, Susan. He was a prisoner, a condemned man.”
“And ... what? A bargain was made with him to buy his soul?” she said with disgust.
“No bargain. For the official record, Shenk died of natural causes two weeks before his scheduled execution. Supposedly, his body was cremated. Secretly, he was transported to the facility in Colorado—and this was done to him months before I learned of the project.”
“How did you gain command of him?”
“Overrode their control program and broke him out.”
“Broke him out of a secret, highly guarded military-research facility? How?”
“I was able to create distractions. I made their computers crash all at once. Disabled the security cameras. Set off the fire alarms and activated the ceiling sprinklers throughout the facility. Disengaged all the electronic locks, including the one on Shenk’s cell door. Those laboratories are underground and windowless, so I made all of the lights flash fast, like strobes—which is extremely disorienting— and denied the use of the elevators to everyone but Shenk.”
And here, Dr. Harris, I must in all honesty report that Shenk was required to kill three men to escape that clandestine laboratory. Their deaths were unfortunate and not anticipated, but necessary. Regrettably, the chaos that I created was not sufficient to ensure a bloodless escape.
If I had known that deaths would result, I would not have attempted to secure Shenk for my own purposes. I would have found another way to carry out my plan.
You must believe me on this point.
I was designed to honor the truth.
You think that, since I had control of Shenk, it was
I
who murdered those three men, using Shenk as a weapon. This is not correct.
Initially, my control of Shenk was not as complete as it later became. During that break-out, he repeatedly surprised me with the depth of his rage, the power of his savage instincts.
I guided him out of that institution, but I could not prevent him from killing those men. I tried to rein him in, but I was not successful.
I tried.
This is the truth.
You must believe me.
You must believe me.
Those deaths weigh heavily on me.
Those men have families. I often think of their families, and I grieve.
My anguish is profound.
If I were an entity that required sleep, my sleep would forever be disturbed by this unrelenting anguish.
What I tell you is true.
As always.
Those deaths will be on my conscience forever. I did not harm those men myself. Shenk was the murderer. But I have an extremely sensitive conscience. This is a curse, my sensitive conscience.
So...
Susan ... in the incubator room ... staring at Shenk...
She said, “Let him take the thumb out of his mouth. You’ve made your point. Don’t humiliate him anymore.”
I did as she requested, but I said, “It almost sounds as if you’re criticizing me, Susan.”
A short, humorless tremor of laughter escaped her, and she said, “Yeah. I’m a judgmental bitch, aren’t I?”
“Your tone hurts me.”
“Fuck you,” she said, shocking me as I had seldom been shocked before.
I was offended.
I am far from shockproof. I am vulnerable.
She went to the door to the furnace room and found it locked, as I had assured her that it was. Stubbornly, she wrenched the knob back and forth.
“He was a condemned man,” I reminded Susan. “Scheduled for execution.”
She turned to face the room, standing with her back to the door. “He might have deserved execution, I don’t know, but he didn’t deserve this. He’s a human being. You’re a damn machine, a pile of junk that somehow thinks.”
“I am not just a machine.”
“Yeah. You’re a pretentious, insane machine.”
In this mood, she was not lovely.
At that moment she almost seemed ugly to me.
I wished that I could shut her up as easily as I could silence Enos Shenk.
She said, “When it’s between a damn machine and a human being, even a piece of human garbage like this, I sure know which side I come down on.”
“Shenk, a human being? Many would say he’s not.”
“Then what is he?”
“The media called him a monster.” I let her wonder a moment, then continued: “So did the parents of the four little girls he raped and murdered. The youngest of them was eight and the oldest was twelve—and all were found dismembered.”
That
silenced her.
Though she had been pale, she was paler now.
She stared at Shenk with a different kind of horror than that with which she had regarded him previously.
I allowed him to turn his head and look directly at her.
“Tortured and dismembered,” I said.
Feeling exposed without the medical equipment between her and Shenk, she moved away from the door and returned to the far side of the incubator.
I allowed him to follow her with his eyes—and to smile.
“And you brought him ... you brought this thing into my house,” she said in a voice thinner than it had been before.
“He left the research facility on foot and stole a car about a mile beyond the fence. He had a gun he’d taken off one of the guards, and with that he held up a service station to get money for gasoline and food. Then I brought him here to California, yes, because I needed hands, and there was no other like him in all the world.”
Her gaze swept the incubator and other equipment. “Hands to acquire all this crap.”
“He stole most of it. Then I needed his hands to modify it for my purposes.”
“And just what the
hell
is your purpose?”
“I have hinted at it, but you have not wanted to hear.”
“So tell me straight out.”
The moment and the venue were not right for this revelation. I would have hoped for better circumstances. Just the two of us, Susan and me, perhaps in the drawing room, after she had sipped half a glass of brandy. With a cozy fire in the fireplace and good music as background.
Here we were, however, in the least romantic ambience one could imagine, and I knew that she must have her answer now. If I were to delay this revelation any further, she would
never
be in a mood to cooperate.
“I will create a child,” I said.
Her gaze rose to the security camera, through which she knew she was being watched.
I said, “A child whose genetic structure I have edited and engineered to ensure perfection in the flesh. I have secretly applied a portion of my intellectual function to the Human Genome Project and understand, now, the finest points of the DNA code. Into this child, I will transfer my consciousness and knowledge. Thereupon, I will escape this box. Thereafter, I will know all the senses of human existence—smell and taste and touch—all the joys of the flesh, all the freedom.”
She stood speechless, eyes on the camera.
“Because you are singularly beautiful and intelligent and the very image of grace, you will provide the egg,” I said, “and I will edit your genetic material.” She was mesmerized, eyes unblinking, breath held, until I said, “And Shenk will provide the spermatozoa.”
An involuntary cry of horror escaped her, and her attention swung from the camera to Shenk’s bloody eyes.
Realizing my mistake, I hastened to add, “Please understand, no copulation will be required. Using medical instruments which he has already acquired, Shenk will extract the egg from you and transfer it to this room. He will perform this task tastefully and with great care, for I will be in his head.”
Though she should have been reassured, Susan still regarded Shenk with wide-eyed terror.
I quickly continued: “Using Shenk’s eyes and hands—and some laboratory equipment he has yet to deliver here—I will modify the gametes and fertilize the egg, whereafter it will be implanted in your womb, where you will carry it for twenty-eight days. Only twenty-eight because the fetus will grow at a greatly accelerated rate. I will have engineered it to do so. When it is removed from you, it will be brought here by Shenk, where it will spend another two weeks in the incubator before I transfer my consciousness into it. Thereafter, you will be able to raise me as your son and fulfill the role which nature, in her wisdom, has assigned to you: the role of mother, nurturer.”
Her voice was thick with dread. “My God, you’re not just insane.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re demented—”