NLI-10 (9 page)

“Yeah, but that's because they have to stick to roads.” said Micah. “If we go straight through the countryside, I think that's half the distance, maybe less.”

“What are we waiting for?” asked Alex, starting to hike across the hill.

The others followed her up the incline as they started their long, arduous journey back to the facility.

As the hike progressed, Sarah wished she had known what the day would have entailed. If she had, perhaps she could have used her projected mind-map of the facility, stolen the data she needed to implicate the company and found a point to sneak away from the Balderlies watchful eye. Part of her was regretting not being smart enough to do so, but a greater part was nagging her to see the experiment through. It had given her so many gifts, skills that she never imagined having, and perhaps there were more secrets to unlock. Sarah hoped
that
was the reason she was reluctant to leave early, because the only alternative she could conjure was that Whark had instigated some kind of protocol, in the tones or drugs, to keep them placid and content in the facility.

Two and a half hours later, they were coming to another lake and started to edge around it.

“I know this lake.” said Alex.

“We've been here before.” Farah agreed. “It's on the map, do you guys see a map.” They all did, it was tracking their path, with the landforms laid out, the lake ahead of them named Loch Lubnaig.

“How do we know the name of it?” asked Pete.
Micah ran his memories back and found that four hours earlier, when en route in the car, they passed signs to the Loch.

“It's filling in the gaps.” said Micah. “Grabbing all the superfluous information our brains pick up and discard normally. The OS is taking those remnants of memory, those tiny details, like a sign that was completely ignored but seen nonetheless, and making use of it!”

“It's about twenty miles back to the camp.” said Alex, spinning through memories of her own. “By road that is, based on the odometer in the car.”

“But if we cross over that hill...” said Farah, pointing past the Loch. “We're looking at maybe only ten miles.”

“How do you know that?” asked Rob.

“I vaguely looked over a GoogleMap before going to Glasgow a few years ago... I mean, we're forty or so miles up from Glasgow, but I must have seen this area.”

They made it round the Loch and continued their trek onwards, up the hill as suggested. Next they made their way through a deep wood, and crossed country lanes, precariously made their way across a stream, past a farmhouse, and finally the sideways cylinders of the camp's above-ground buildings were visible. As they walked to the gates of the camp, guards wrenched them open, saying nothing as the subjects entered, nodding at the orderlies as they passed by. The nurse came out of the tunnel to the facility as they walked up to the car.

“Well done everyone, you're back in record time! How are you all feeling?”
The group was exhausted, but the nurse assured them they'd be well rewarded. She instructed them to shower and change, “And be sure to drink lots of water!” When they were ready, the evening's activities would begin.

They did as instructed, finding it curious that the nurse referred to the second half of their day as 'activities' rather than 'tests', but nobody dwelled on it. They were all too glad to have a hot shower, washing off the sweat and mud, and having a chance to rehydrate after seven hours of walking. Whark entered the mess hall and congratulated them on their record. She told them that dinner wouldn't be served there. They were going out to celebrate their success.

A seventy minute drive later, they were in the heart of Glasgow. The car left them by Royal Exchange Square and they walked to an exclusive looking restaurant. Whark gave her name to the concierge and he ushered them all to a private area where they were presented with menus and plied with wine.

“Are you sure we should be drinking?” asked Leah. “They say you shouldn't mix medication and alcohol.”

“Oh hush.” said Whark, knocking back a glass of red before continuing. “A drink is exactly what you need.”
Leah took the glass in front of her and started drinking deeply.

They ordered, chatter and laughs whipping back and forth across the table between the subjects. Pete finally had the opportunity and excuse to present a tight five of stand-up, that ran closer to a loose fifteen. As the food began to arrive, anecdotes were being traded, speculation flowing at what they could do if they pooled their payments together, spend the collective eighty-four thousand pounds on racehorses or boats, a helicopter or very small island. Whark observed their discussions, never taking part or showing any emotion other than the occasional cold smile when she felt eyes fall on her. Sarah watched her intently when she didn't think Whark was looking, studying her. There was no reason for her to be taking them out, not unless it was part of another test, or part of her plan to deal with Leah. She felt a shiver down her spine, and wondered if she could or should alert the others, or at the very least tell Leah of her fears. Something was stopping her from acting, the same unknown that was stopping her from enacting her plan and running away.

After dinner, Whark ushered them back to the car and drove the drunken group round to the bottom of Buchanan Street, where they were told to get out. They looked at the River Clyde in view behind the car and Whark alerted their attention to the pedestrianised area ahead, packed full of shoppers, drinkers and restaurant patrons.

“Are you ready for today's final test?” she asked.
They weren't expecting another test, but nodded in acknowledgement. 

“How drunk would you say you are?” she asked. They were all fairly drunk, and didn't have a unit of measurement to put it into words.

“Well, you're going to run through the crowd as fast as you can, all the way to the top of the street, then all the way back down here. If you hit someone, you lose points. Do you understand?”

“When did we start using a points system?” asked Pete, to chuckles from his peers.

“That's not possible.” said Leah. You can't run straight into a big group of people and not hit anyone!”

“Within the mapping and targeting tools you used to find your way back to the facility, you'll find a function we call '
hypersight
', and your bodies can counteract the effects of alcohol if you tell them to. Now run!” she shouted, returning to the confines of the car and slamming the door shut.

The group looked at one another momentarily before following her instructions. At first their footsteps were heavy and waddling, accompanied by wavering shoulders and spinning heads that made them feel like they were on a tilt-a-whirl, but they ran and ran, because that was the task they were set. Clumsily, darting around one another and the hundreds of people ahead of them, trying to neither hit anyone nor fall over in the process of avoiding the pedestrians. One by one, they found the task easier. Farah wiped through apps and options with her hands as she ran, looking to the others as though she was operating invisible marionettes as she sped through the crowd. Sarah found the option for hypersight and activated it. Her vision shifted. Rather than having the singular focus of binocular vision, it was as if her eyes were relinquishing all control of object-specific focus. No longer able to make out individual people, seeing everything all at once. Time appeared to fluctuate, standing still and rushing forwards all at once. She could anticipate the movement of every foot on the street, every turn and stop those around her made, all of them as clear as if each were happening right in front of her. Watching everything and nothing all at once. She couldn't pick her fellow subjects out from the sea of bodies by their faces, but could keep track of them and their positions because because they were the only other people running at full pelt through the crowd. They reached the top of the street, smiling at one another with eyes that acknowledged a smile was perceived, but couldn't discern the details of the face it belonged to, then turned around and ran straight back down the street. 

From the car, Whark watched the runners on a series of video feeds displayed on the smartglass of the car window. She smiled to herself as the subjects pursued one another through the mass of confused people, the feeds switching cameras as the group ran by, accompanied by a constant feed from an A-Eye drone following them from high above. They ducked and weaved, jumped and darted through strangers, enthused by the experience to try and get through tighter gaps, sliding under held hands, jumping over dogs on leashes and babies in strollers. They were all succeeding, all faster and better than the previous generation of NLI subjects. All but the little blonde girl who was holding up the rear, slowing down, clutching her head, then her heart, then her head again, looking up at the sky, her face contorted, agony in her bawling eyes. Whark watched, stony faced, zoomed the camera in to see the girl's pain as a small crowd formed around her. A smile curled up her face, red lipstick against olive skin, small wrinkles forming by her eyes. A genuine smile.

The group came down the street, giggling with schoolgirlish glee as they stopped by the car, trying to catch their breath between laughs, still unable to see one another properly in hypersight. They brought their faces up close to each other, trying to work out who they were from complexion and features.

After the laughter subsidised, Whark opened the door and congratulated them as they returned their vision to singular focus, instructing them to get back in to the car, as a series of tones played on the speakers inside.

“Charles, back to the facility.” she said, adjusting her earplugs and closing the door behind her subjects.
Rob looked around, certain that someone was missing, but the thought drifted out of his mind as the tones continued.

The crowd around Leah parted as a pair of giant bald paramedics came through, pushing a gurney. The two massive men lifted the little blonde girl on to the stretcher. She was no longer screaming. No longer crying. No longer breathing. They wheeled her off the street and into the back of a van. The A-Eyes watched the van drive off, playing the footage back and forth of the girl's run, collapse, and agony, chattering amongst themselves through their NeuralNets before sending the data through to a human operator with a selection of options for a course of action to follow.

The tones reverberated through the night, and continued to stalk the group the next day. From the living quarters to the mess hall, it was the soundtrack to their hangovers, as they sipped coffee in groggy silence at breakfast. The sonics followed them through the hallways to the testing room, where the nurse was waiting to take them through the first task of the day.

“How are you all feeling this morning?” she said, her ability to hear their mumbled responses hindered by earplugs blocking out the tones. She could judge by their faces that they weren't feeling their best.

“Well, how about we get rid of that pesky veisalgia?” she said, to confused expressions. “Your hangovers, let's get those switched off.”

Despite the murmurs from the group being almost inaudible, she could tell confusion was bubbling away. The nurse explained that buried within the menus were the options to turn various cognitive and biological functions on and off. After twenty minutes of struggling to think through the alcohol sludge dulling their concentration, the group all managed to track down the sub-menu. She then instructed them to go through the list of compounds, and reduce the build-up of acetaldehyde, spelling it out for them to make their search easier. Next they decreased NADH levels and increased production of NAD+, as advised. Following that, was a run through the list of immune system components, where they were to lower the level of cytokines temporarily to relieve the headache, exhaustion and nauseous symptoms. After they had all caught up, she took them through the process of redirecting and increasing blood sugar, magnesium, salts and potassium, and decreasing production of hydrochloric acid. Within half an hour of tinkering they were all feeling normal again, and she congratulated them on their success.

Next, they were taken through to another room where three pairs of chairs were laid out opposite one another, a table in-between, with sterile packages laid out. The nurse sat the six subjects down and told them they were to take a needle from one of the sterile packets and prick the finger of their partner, then swap over. They followed her orders, wincing on either side of the table, at both skin being breached, and having to hurt a friend. A single bead of blood formed at the tiny wounds, to which each of the victims held a sterile wipe until the blood stopped.

“We're going to do that again,” said the nurse. “But this time, without the pain.”
Again, her instruction was met with confounded expressions, but once more, she walked them through the menus and showed them where the controls for their pain receptors were. They went through the needle test again, this time the pain receptors in their fingers had been deactivated, central nervous systems reconfigured “to stop the sensation,” as the nurse put it “From extremities integrating with the neuroaxis, passing through the spinal column to the brain.”

After successfully completing the needle test, it was time for lunch back in the mess hall, where they spent most of the hour slapping and kicking one another playfully, deactivating and reactivating the pain, practising what they had learnt that morning. Whilst the others played with pain functions, Micah sat staring into middle-distance, delving into the sub-menus and exploring more of the potential alterations he could make to himself. He found the functions for taste within minutes of experimentation. Soon the risotto he had been served was tasting like steak, then strawberries, eggs then cheese. He shared his findings with the others, and before the lunch break was up, they were all playing around with tastes and smells.

When they returned to the testing room, they shared their discoveries with the nurse, who congratulated them once again, and pressed a button to lower a projector from the ceiling. She proceeded to display horrendous images on the wall, of drowning refugees, starving Africans, dead children riddled with bullet holes, interspersed with photos of animal cruelty and war-torn villages and towns. They were introduced to a list of behavioural traits and went about learning how to deactivate empathy, fear, anger, abhorrence and all the other feelings that they associated with the grotesque imagery of suffering presented to them. When the photos were played through again, they felt nothing, but as soon as the test was over, each quickly turned all the empathetic responses back on. None of them liked feeling completely devoid of emotion.

As the afternoon progressed, the nurse had each subject go to a whiteboard and write down their vices, instructing them to be completely honest. Pete had them in fits of giggles when he took the lead with 'masturbation'. Rob admitted to having a mild addiction to cigarettes despite having not smoked for a month, as did Farah. Alex thought she drank and got high too much, and Micah also wrote down weed. Sarah struggled to come up with a vice, but eventually decided that based on her inability to find or attempt a real job, that she was lazy. Reading the board, the nurse took them back into the menus and taught them how to deal with their impulses. Micah was ahead of the class, and had moved on to the language options, editing the code to pervert his speech patterns so he could only say words backwards.

“How did you do that?” asked Sarah.

“S'ti yllaer ysae” Micah replied, to giggles. “fi uoy og otni eht unem, rednu 'hceeps', taht enituorbus nac eb nettirwer.”

“You know I literally have no idea what you're saying, right?” said Sarah.

“Haey! eno ces...” he looked away from her as he went through the menus, digging deep into the infrastructure of the operating system to find a way of communicating what he was trying to explain.

“Ym doG!” he said.

“What?” Sarah asked.

“Siht si gnizama!”

“Seriously, what?” she said.
Micah looked back over to Sarah, having activated the protocol he found buried in the code.

'Check this shit out.'
he said to Sarah.

The words didn't come from his mouth. She could hear them in her head, as if they were thoughts of her own, but in his voice.

“What the hell?” she said out loud, staring at his goofy expression.

'Pretty cool, huh?'
he replied, as a whisper in the back of her mind.

“What is this?” she asked.

'It's a hidden protocol in the operating system'
Micah said, his thoughts still running through Sarah's brain.
'Network infrastructure, buried crazy-deep. I'll run you through it.'
Micah took her through how he got to the networking options and she activated the protocol.

'How is this possible?'
she asked, her thoughts now in his head.

'No idea, maybe it's something people are capable of with the right psychological or hypnotic manipulation?'
he replied.
'Or maybe it's the drugs, or the room tones, or the surgery. Could be anything.'

'It just doesn't seem real.'
she said.

'Tell me about it.'

“Are you guys having a moment?” Pete asked. “Am I interrupting? You've been staring at each other in silence for the last few minutes...”
Micah passed the instructions on to Pete, then shared them with the rest of the group. Soon they were all talking, yet not a single word was spoken out loud.
             

Whark watched on her monitor at the subjects progress and smiled to herself. Her problem had been removed, and now the group was excelling beyond her wildest expectations. With the potential black spot taken out of the equation, there was no longer a distraction weighing them down. In the long run, it didn't matter that there wasn't a 'normal' brain to compare the results with. Anyone could be dosed with a psychoactive compound before being turned into an NLI asset, and this round of subjects were proving that with the latest version of the memetic software, only a limited amount of hand-holding was necessary before they started investigating the interface and teaching themselves how to use it. Ten years of testing, seventy patients in this facility alone, and it was looking like the NLI project was finally ready for market.