Game changer, p.32
Game Changer, page 32
“Neurons that no longer have to fear being killed by alcohol,” added Quinn wryly.
Rachel smiled and continued. “Notice that they’ve been dyed blue for better clarity.”
She pressed another button on the computer and red circles now appeared around two distinct neuronal structures, which both resembled barren shrubberies.
“These are dendrites,” she said, pointing at the branches of a circled shrub that extended from a main cell body. “They receive impulses.”
She pointed at the other circled shrub, which extended from the end of a long octopus arm. “And these are axon terminals. Which send impulses. But for the sake of our discussion, their identities and roles aren’t important. There won’t be a test.”
She touched her tablet again and the image of one of the circled dendrites exploded in size, while the rest of the image disappeared. “I’ve magnified a dendrite extending from one of the cell bodies. Note that even at this magnification nothing appears amiss. But if I zoom in even farther,” she said, making this happen as she spoke, “you can see a disk clinging to the main branch. Notice that this disk is perfectly circular.”
“I take it that this is a structure that shouldn’t be there,” said Quinn uneasily.
“No it shouldn’t. Extrapolating from our small sample, Karen and I calculated that there are about two hundred billion of these in your brain. And they are perched on every important neuron you have, like small birds clinging to telephone lines. But birds capable of affecting neuronal transmission. We’ve studied several of these at great length under the electron microscope.”
“What are they?” asked Coffey.
Rachel touched her tablet and the image disappeared entirely. “Collectively these particles are called smart dust. They’re designed and deployed using specifications that I came up with,” she said in frustration.
“Think of them as nano-electronic devices, smaller than bacteria,” she continued. “Nanites for short. So small they would make a particle of talcum powder look like Mt. Everest. Yet each has enough intelligence to know where they are within the brain, and also in relation to their brethren. And they can react to external commands—induce the firing of a neuron, block the firing, and so on. Think of each as having an individual IP address.”
“External commands from where?” asked Quinn. “And how?”
“In this case, radio waves. Information sent this way would have to be tightly compressed, but it could all be carried by a radio broadcast of the right length, and with the right supercomputer guiding it, using the right algorithms.”
“If this system is based on your design, does this mean you’ve come up with something similar?” asked Major McLeod.
Rachel frowned. “No. I had the concept, but not the means. The Israelis are at least a generation ahead of us in nano-electronics. They developed this capability for their fly drones, and then Kovonov used it to perfect what I could only dream about. Even with these nanites in hand it would take a team years to reverse engineer the technology, at minimum. Worst case, it might never be possible.”
“How did Kovonov get them into my brain?” asked Quinn.
“A simple injection would do it. Once in the bloodstream they make their way through the blood-brain barrier and take up residence.”
“But wouldn’t Kevin know he had been injected?” protested the major.
“Maybe,” said Rachel. “There are some new techniques becoming available that almost sneak injections through the skin. But even if Kovonov used a painful horse needle, he could have programmed the particles to erase the past few minutes of memory. Imagine Kevin is walking along and some stranger plunges a syringe into his leg. But twenty seconds later he’s forgotten this ever happened. The stranger, the pain, everything. Now billions of nano-particles are swarming in his brain, awaiting instructions.”
Quinn shuddered. “Instructions like, ‘Lay down memories of a murder that never happened?”’
“Yes. But memory erasure or implantation are only one set of possibilities, ” said Rachel. “There are many more, as we’ve discussed. Once these nanites are resident in a brain, Kovonov can make a victim dependent on him. Addicted to almost anything he chooses. Elated or depressed. Calm or filled with rage. Delusional. Paranoid. Terrified. The sky’s the limit.”
“But how can he have such fine control?” asked Coffey.
“Technology can perform miracles,” replied Rachel. “We can sequence billions of bases of DNA in hours, with no mistakes. If I wrote a million-page book, a standard desktop computer could save it to a flash drive in less than a second, and when I called it up again not a single letter on a single page would be out of place or incorrect. I don’t want to get down into the weeds technically, but the radio signals can instruct the smart dust to establish a precise matrix, and to affect precise neurons. Much the same way a copy machine or laser printer sets up an electrostatic matrix before printing.”
There were blank looks all around. Even Karen Black seemed not to know what Rachel was talking about.
“Sorry,” said Rachel. “I forgot not everyone knows how laser printers work. I studied this technology to get ideas for non-invasive Matrix Learning techniques. Just to give a quick overview, the toner you put in your printer is electrically charged powder that contains pigment. The powder is composed of very fine particles. And the industry has found ways to keep shrinking these particles over the years.”
“For better resolution?” asked Karen. “Or better quality?”
“Both,” said Rachel. “Today, toner particles average just under a micron in diameter.”
“And a micron is . . . ?” prompted Coffey.
“A millionth of a meter,” said Rachel. “To put this in perspective, there are over twenty-five thousand microns to an inch. A piece of paper is about a hundred microns thick.”
“I knew it was microscopic,” said Coffey, “but this is helpful. Thanks.”
“So let’s imagine you send a document to your laser printer,” continued Rachel. “A document with a thousand letters typed in a tiny font. So what happens next? Your computer sends detailed instructions to the drum of the printer, basically calling for it to lay down a precise pattern of negative electrical charges, exactly matching every letter in your document.”
She paused to let this sink in. “So your document has now been copied to the drum, only with electric charge rather than ink. But then the drum gets coated with toner. Since the toner is positively charged and the pattern laid down on the drum is negatively charged, the toner clings to this pattern. The toner on the drum is then transferred to a piece of paper rolling through the printer, and is instantly fused to the paper by a pair of heated rollers.” She paused. “Just like that, you have a precise copy of every last letter.”
Quinn looked intrigued. “Sounds deceptively simple. Impressive that anyone could get a system like that to work so perfectly and so quickly.”
“I agree,” said Rachel. “As I mentioned, one of my big ideas, which Kovonov adopted, was to do something similar with neuronal dust. Think of the nanites as neuronal toner. In this case, instead of setting up a complex pattern using electric charge, you’d use something like radio waves. You could lay down precise instructions for billions of particles at once, which could then activate or block individual neurons.”
“So how would you zap a chemistry course into someone’s brain?” said Quinn, and then frowning added, “or a false memory?”
“That’s where the weeds come in,” said Rachel. “The difference between saying, ‘just charge the drum in the exact pattern made by a thousand letters’ and actually pulling it off. But with enough knowledge, enough cleverness, and enough computing power, these nanites make it possible. And with enough sophistication under the hood, the user no longer has to care about how his or her instructions are implemented.”
She paused, searching for a good analogy. “When I type a sentence into the computer it magically appears on my screen. The technology that goes into converting my key strokes to electricity that can alter the polarity of liquid crystals inside my monitor—in just the right way to display what I write—is extraordinarily complex. But once perfected this miracle is taken for granted, never given a second thought—or even a first one.”
“So is the Israeli neurotech—Kovonov’s neurotech—at that level?” asked McLeod.
“It would have to be,” said Rachel. “Otherwise it could never be as effective as it’s been. Implementation would be impossibly unwieldy. I’m sure it’s been perfected to a level where the user simply has to script out the memories to be implanted, and a supercomputer crunches a universe of data and instructs the nanites to lay down these tracks. The computing power to do this didn’t exist in even the best supercomputers until about 2019, and now there are laptops that could do the job. Not in wide use, but they exist. I have one. And you can bet Kovonov has one that is much better even than mine. Because Israel’s Manhattan Project yielded a technology that helped their scientists improve all other technologies.”
“If I have this right,” said McLeod, “Kovonov injects the nanites, enters what he wants done into his laptop, and it calculates the precise instructions necessary to manipulate minds to his specifications.”
“That is my guess, yes,” confirmed Rachel.
“And the radio source?” asked the major.
“He’d just have to tie his computer into a cell phone, possibly one with an internal booster added.”
“And then convert it into a radio transmitter?” said Coffey.
“No conversion needed,” said Rachel. “A cell phone already is one. It’s basically a two-way radio: a receiver and a transmitter. Put it in proximity to the neural dust you want to control, link it to the laptop, and it should transmit radio signals more than strong enough to do the trick, especially with an internal signal booster added. For very simple instructions, you wouldn’t need the laptop. The computing power resident in just the phone would be enough to direct the manipulation all by itself.”
Rachel paused in thought. “Right now I’m guessing extensive manipulation still requires a stationary, plugged-in system. So for Matrix Learning, during which enormous amounts of knowledge are layered into the mind, Kovonov would still need the MRI-like device and electronic implants. But a juiced-up laptop and a phone, or even just a phone by itself, are capable of doing smaller, less complex manipulations.”
“Like the memories implanted in Kevin?” said Coffey.
Rachel nodded. “In the work I’ve been doing over the past eighteen months—largely unpublished,” she added with a scowl, “I’ve made a strong case for using radio waves for this very reason. Cell phones are indispensable, and untold billions of dollars are being spent to improve them every year. I argued that by the time the neural smart dust was perfected—in five or ten years I had thought—cell phones would have enough computing power to implant even the most sophisticated and exhaustive Matrix Learning programs all by themselves.”
“So instead of downloading a movie about World War II onto your phone,” said Quinn, “you could use your phone to download the entire history of this war into your brain?”
Rachel sighed. “Yes. This was the idea.”
There was a long silence in the room as everyone stopped to assimilate all she had told them.
“Absolutely mind-blowing,” said Quinn.
“I’m not even sure that’s a powerful enough word to cover it,” said Coffey. He paused for several seconds in thought and then blew out a long breath. “So what now?”
“I’d like to see if I can learn how to use this system myself,” said Rachel. “At least at a rudimentary level.”
“Didn’t you say that even reverse engineering the nano-electronics would be all but impossible?” said Coffey.
“I did. But that’s not what I meant. I didn’t say learn how to do this, just learn how to use it. I don’t have to know how to construct a computer to be able to use one. Although it isn’t that simple in this case. In this case, the computer is built, but I have to find a way to create a keyboard from scratch. An interface that will allow me to access the guts of what someone else provided.”
“Why do I have a sinking feeling that I’m the computer in this analogy?” said Quinn uneasily.
Rachel laughed. “If you could find others who have these nano-particles implanted in their brain, I’d love to work with them. At the moment, though, you’re the only game in town.”
“Will you need more of my brain cells?” asked Quinn.
“No. I’ll be trying to crack the code Kovonov is using to control the dust. I’ll have to try thousands of different radio frequencies and instruction sets, different algorithms, and all of my intuition. If I can implant a single false memory in your mind, even of a single word—which might take a day, or might take a lifetime—this would begin to open the floodgates. Although at best my abilities to use his tech to manipulate you will pale in comparison to his.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or a good thing,” said Quinn with a shudder. “I’d prefer women to manipulate me the old-fashioned way.”
Rachel laughed. “Then you might be in luck,” she said. “Because there’s no certainty that I can do this.”
Her features hardened. “But it won’t be for lack of trying,” she vowed.
“Even if you succeed,” said Coffey, “I’m not sure how much this will do for our cause.”
“I’m not either,” said Rachel. “But at minimum, it will allow us to detect who has these nanites implanted. Right now they are much too small to be detectible by sensors. And we don’t want to have to forcibly remove neurons from the brains of anyone we suspect and then find the nearest electron microscope. But if I could implant rudimentary memories, I could get victims to reveal themselves.”
The major rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Interesting idea,” he said. “When can you begin?”
“The moment this meeting is over,” said Rachel eagerly.
53
Every major erogenous zone on Carmilla Acosta’s body was on fire.
She hadn’t seen Dmitri Kovonov in two agonizingly long weeks. But this was about to change. He would be here in minutes. For the first time visiting her at her home.
Taking her at her home.
Her husband, Miguel, had left on a business trip two days earlier and wouldn’t return for another week.
She had prepared as usual, spending hours at Victoria’s Secret until she found flimsy yet still flattering lingerie, not a simple task for a world class scientist who spent far too much time at a desk or a lab and not nearly enough time on a stationary bike. After this she had scrubbed her house clean from top to bottom, being sure to hide any photographs in which her husband appeared, whether with her or alone.
She would expunge his image from her home, and days later she would expunge the man himself from her life.
Carmilla and Miguel lived in a small red brick home nestled between a smattering of other residences, twenty miles from Princeton University, mostly surrounded by the farmland that had persisted stubbornly in the area for over a century. Each day on her way to work she passed black-and-white splotched Holstein dairy cattle, along with their more unfortunate relations, the Black Angus variety. This breed would ultimately be required to give more of themselves than simply milk, but farms had recently begun to reduce their numbers as genetic engineers got closer and closer to growing steak in the lab that was indistinguishable from the real thing.
She missed Dmitri so much it hurt, and his line of work meant he was out of touch for long periods, which had become intolerable.
But now that he was returning to her at last, she would never let him go for this long again. She wouldn’t wait another day to start divorce proceedings, to do whatever it took to have Dmitri in her daily life. The divorce was long overdue. She couldn’t take any more of these absences. They affected her, not just psychologically, but physically.
But now that Dmitri was on his way this was shaping up to be one of the best days of her life. Just an hour earlier she had learned that she was clean as a whistle genetically. No ticking time bombs in her DNA.
And she couldn’t imagine Dmitri’s genes could be anything less than perfect, although it didn’t hurt to find out for sure. To be confident that they would live happily into their eighties and nineties and even beyond.
The scientist in her might have known that the romantic phase of love didn’t last more than a few years, but this voice was drowned out by the lovestruck woman inside who refused to even consider the possibility that she and Dmitri wouldn’t be blissfully happy forever. No two people were ever more perfect for each other. True soul mates.
A week earlier she had plucked a hair from her head, affixed it to a piece of Scotch tape, and mailed it to GeneScreen Associates, a company specializing in whole genome sequencing and analysis. And just last night a representative of the company had left a message for her, letting her know the results were ready and giving her a number to call to have them explained by a trained consultant. She had memorized the simple number, 1-800-DNA-TEST, erased the message, and called back just an hour earlier, more nervous than she cared to admit.
But her nerves were unwarranted. The results had been spectacular. The consultant had told her it was rare to see a genome this clear of genes known to be potentially troubling down the road, that Carmilla had truly been blessed genetically.
Everything seemed to be going her way. Maybe after she and Dmitri made love, she should go out and buy a lottery ticket. It was that kind of day.
Just as this thought was crossing her mind there was a knock at the door. She checked to be sure it was Dmitri and then threw it open, wrapping herself around him in greeting. He pushed her away sooner than usual and picked up a brown, soft leather briefcase he had set down, bringing it inside.
Carmilla sensed something wrong in his demeanor but decided she was being overly sensitive. She took him by the hand and led him directly to her bedroom, disappointed that he brought the briefcase along in tow.
