Game changer, p.35
Game Changer, page 35
“Or to blame,” said Carmilla, not sure yet if she meant this or not. “It all depends on your perspective.” She nodded toward Quinn. “So how did you survive? I take it your car replaced mine on the tracks.”
Quinn nodded grimly. “Pretty much. I survived because I was eager to avoid the train. The moment your car was clear of the tracks I dived out of my own. I had so much adrenaline on board I might have been able to fly out. I made it clear in plenty of time,” he added wryly. “You know, with as much as a second, maybe even two, to spare. I only wish someone had caught it on video.”
“We’ll tell you the rest,” said Rachel, “but before we do, we need to know everything about your experiences. First, do you recognize this man?” she asked, manipulating her phone to project a 3-D image at Carmilla’s eye level.
“Dmitri!” she whispered, shrinking back.
Several tears began to slide down her face as though a light switch had been thrown.
Her two visitors exchanged meaningful glances.
“Can you tell me where he is?” said Quinn gently, trying to hide his eagerness.
“He was at my home three or four hours before you rammed me on the tracks. I have no idea where he is now.”
“So you know that his first name is Dmitri,” noted Quinn. “Do you know his last?”
“Carston.”
Quinn nodded. “Interesting,” he said. “His real last name is Kovonov. Dmitri Kovonov.”
“Why would he lie to me about his name?”
“I need you to tell us everything you know about him,” said Quinn, ignoring her question. “And every experience you’ve had with him—or at least think you’ve had.”
“Think I’ve had? What is that supposed to mean?”
Quinn ignored her yet again. “Please. Dr. Acosta. You can’t imagine how important this is. I promise everything will be made clear to you. Very soon. Tell me about him.”
Why not? thought Carmilla. Who cared at this point? She had kept her emotions bottled up for so long, afraid to tell anyone about Dmitri because she was still married, and because she had promised him she wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone.
So she told them. She detailed her entire two-year association with Dmitri. No audience had ever been more attentive, or had hung on her every word more completely. On occasion they exchanged knowing or worried glances, but they didn’t interrupt.
She finished by sharing the brutal manner in which Dmitri had ended things, how he had turned into such a monster that she had become so distraught, so drained of hope, that killing herself had become her only escape, shedding additional tears as she did so.
“Thank you,” said Rachel softly when her story had ended.
Quinn nodded his thanks as well.
“I know that couldn’t have been easy to tell,” said Rachel. She paused for several seconds. “And what I’m about to tell you won’t be easy for you to hear. But you need to know who this Dmitri Kovonov really is, and what he’s been up to.”
For the next thirty minutes, Rachel Howard spun a tale that was beyond belief. A tale of Dmitri being an accomplished neuroscientist who had perfecting Matrix Learning, who had used it on himself and others, and who had then perverted it into a method of tampering with minds by injecting victims with billions of nanites that took up residence within their brains. A tale of a man who had gone insane, and who was now wanted by multiple governments for crimes he had already committed and to prevent those he was certain to commit in the future.
It was utterly preposterous. All of it.
Except that it was also clear that this Rachel was a brilliant scientist. Her answers to Carmilla’s questions displayed a level of expertise that was staggering, that could not be faked, especially since she had considerable knowledge of Carmilla’s own field. They had also allowed her to Google Rachel Howard on a tablet. Sure enough, the image of the woman speaking to her came up on Harvard’s neuroscience faculty page along with articles in scientific journals describing her as likely the most accomplished neuroscientist of the age.
“So do you believe us?” said Rachel when they had finished.
“I’m not sure,” said Carmilla honestly. “I believe that you believe it. But let’s say I do. What then? Are you suggesting that this Dmitri Komo . . .”
“Kovonov.”
“Right. That this Dmitri Kovonov implanted false memories in my mind?”
“I’m not suggesting it,” said Rachel. “I’m stating it as a fact. For all but the last month of the time you think you’ve known him, he was never even in America, let alone Princeton. So all of your memories of him prior to this time must have been implanted, and quite recently.”
Carmilla struggled to grasp what Rachel was saying. How could this be so? Her memories of their meetings were crystal clear. “I’ve loved this man for almost two years,” she said. “Now you’re telling me I never even met him until this month.” She shook her head. “It just can’t be true.”
“I know how you feel,” said Quinn grimly. “I know better than anyone.”
For the next ten minutes he described his own experiences. He told her how Dmitri had programmed his memory so he would be desperate to kill the president. She had gasped when she realized she did recognize his face. He was the Secret Service agent she had seen on TV who had tried to kill Matthew Davinroy and who had later died in an accident in a Cincinnati suburb called Finneytown.
When Quinn had finished describing his ordeal and his own realization that his memories were not his own, Carmilla was too stunned to speak. She broke eye contact and turned toward the IV tubing in thought, as though mesmerized by the steady flow of fluid still entering her arm. Both of her visitors waited patiently for her to come to grips with what had happened to her.
“So what is real?” she said finally. “If he can do this, how can I know anything is real? How can I know I’m actually having this conversation?”
“You can’t, I’m afraid,” said Quinn. “As you probably know, Descartes wrestled with this same problem, before anyone with Kovonov’s capabilities was around. He concluded the only thing one could be certain of was one’s own existence.”
Carmilla nodded, but this was something she hadn’t known. She was well-versed in all aspects of molecular biology but remembered almost nothing from her philosophy class.
“But for the sake of your sanity,” continued Quinn, “I’d encourage you to accept everything you experience or remember as real. All except the memories you have of Kovonov that date back prior to a month or so ago, which we’re certain never happened.”
Carmilla considered this as she gingerly adjusted her position on the hospital bed.
Rachel gazed at her with palpable concern. “You told us you were drawn to Dmitri at first because your husband was unfaithful,” she said softly. “But I suspect this isn’t true. I suspect you just have a memory of catching him with another woman. A false one. Think hard about when this happened. How it happened. Is there texture? Does any of it make sense in a broader framework?”
As Carmilla replayed these events out in her mind and really focused on the logic, it all began to break down. How could she have gone almost two years without ever confronting Miguel? There were other memories she should have had, that should have arisen as she decided what to do about his infidelity. But it was all a house of cards, a western town built on the lot of a Hollywood studio. Seen from the front it fooled the eye beautifully, but peek even a millimeter behind the facade and there was nothing there at all.
She hadn’t been certain this was really possible until this exercise. But now she was a true believer. Poor Miguel. She had treated him so badly recently, and he had never deserved any of it.
Quinn could tell she was now fully on board. “Lack of texture is the key, isn’t it?” he said. “I was certain I had a pregnant wife. Until I realized I didn’t have any memories of the wedding, of the pregnancy—of anything. It’s a jarring realization.”
“Yes it is,” said Carmilla.
“So Kovonov manipulated your wiring so you thought you were in love with him,” said Rachel. “Which means you were in love with him. Unfortunately, you still are. He modified the connections in your brain, your memories, your brain’s reward system. And he probably did actually sleep with you and interact for real during the last month to bolster the artificial implanting.”
As horrified as Carmilla was by this intellectually, the thought of sex with Dmitri began to arouse her against her will.
“I can soften what he did to you with drugs,” continued Rachel, “but I can’t reverse it. The brain is plastic and reshapes itself. So even though the nanites trigger neuronal pathways artificially, once they’ve been triggered they strengthen connections and build new ones. And these can’t be so easily undone, although they will fade through time and inattention. I’m also confident that as I get a better and better handle on the technology I’ll find ways to at least weaken them. Hopefully, knowing these feelings for Kovonov aren’t real can aid you in your recovery, along with copious feel-better drugs. But I really don’t know.”
Carmilla sighed. None of this helped as much as it should. The drugs were a godsend, but the knowledge of the manipulation not as much. She still felt keen loss and despair. The man of her dreams had shaped her unconscious in such a way that it refused to listen to headquarters when it reported her love was a facade.
But she shouldn’t be surprised in the least, she realized suddenly. How many men and women throughout history had known intellectually that the object of their romantic love was wrong for them? But the inner mind could be impervious to reason. It wanted what it wanted, immune to rational thought.
“Once he decided he didn’t need you anymore,” said Rachel, “he must have wanted to see if he could drive you to suicide. There is no reason to end the relationship with such over-the-top cruelty otherwise. He’s a scientist, so it’s no surprise that he wants to test the limits of his new toy.”
“And it worked,” said Carmilla. “I became suicidal just like he wanted. If not for Kevin I’d have succeeded.” Her face twisted in confusion. “But how is it that Kevin was there? How did he know about this? About me?”
“As you know, Kevin has been injected with nanites also,” said Rachel. “So using him as a guinea pig, I’ve been able to decipher how Kovonov is able to do what he does.”
“Most of it is based on her ideas anyway,” pointed out Quinn.
“The important thing,” said Rachel, “is that I was able to figure out how to usurp Kovonov’s nanites to implant simple memories of my own choosing. It’s painstaking, rudimentary, and clumsy, but with enough brute force work and Kevin to guide my efforts, I can manage it. An analogy would be that Kovonov is using an elegant and sophisticated programming language, while I’m entering ones and zeros by hand—with mittens on. And blindfolded. I’m very limited in what I can do, and it takes orders of magnitude longer to accomplish than it would for him.”
“Still quite an accomplishment,” said Carmilla. “Congratulations.” Her eyes narrowed. “But how does this apply to me?”
“As I said earlier,” replied Rachel, “Kovonov programs these nanites using radio signals. I realized I could take advantage of this to reach people he’s manipulating.”
“Her brilliance really knows no bounds,” said Quinn, shaking his head in genuine awe.
“Take advantage how?” asked Carmilla.
“Cell phones work on radio waves. Cell towers are powerful radio broadcasters. I wondered if I could press them into service to send out the instructions for a simple memory implantation. See if I could get his victims to contact me.”
Using cell towers for this task was quite inspired, but Carmilla still wasn’t sure where this was going.
“Unfortunately, because my ability to use Kovonov’s system is still so clumsy,” continued Rachel in obvious frustration, “I need to broadcast for an extended period. We could blanket the entire country with a signal and find anyone in America that Kovonov has manipulated, but that would require taking down the nation’s entire cell network for about an hour. Well, not taking it down, just borrowing it for our purposes. But the effect to cell phone owners would be the same. No service. Despite our military and government connections, and the critical nature of what we’re doing, we weren’t able to get permission for this.”
“Not surprising,” said Carmilla.
Rachel frowned. “It’s maddening, but there isn’t anything we can do about it. Those with the keys to the system won’t allow hundreds of millions of cell phones to be simultaneously turned into paperweights, even if only temporarily. Not under any circumstances. We were able to get permission—barely—to do this quadrant by quadrant. Disruptive for an hour to cell phone users within the quadrant, but the overwhelming majority of the nation’s system would still be effective.”
“How long will it take to sweep across the entire nation?” asked Carmilla.
“At the rate we’re going, almost three weeks. And that’s if our permission isn’t revoked, which could happen at any time. Let me tell you, it’s taken some high-up, shadowy, powerful players in Black Ops calling in favors to even make this happen.”
“We started with the Eastern Seaboard,” explained Quinn. “We hit your neck of the woods yesterday morning.”
Carmilla shook her head. “I don’t mean to seem slow, but I’m still not quite getting your strategy. What memory did you try to implant?” she said.
“Not try to implant,” said Quinn with a smile. “Succeed in implanting. You’re living proof—and I stress the word living, since you wouldn’t be if it had failed. The program Rachel devised and sent out causes anyone hosting nanites to remember having sent a DNA sample to a company called GeneScreen Associates for a full genome sequencing and analysis.”
Carmilla gasped. “Of course,” she said, her eyes now as wide as half dollars. “That is brilliant. And it worked like magic. I remembered sending in a sample. And you implanted a memory of a phone message stating that the results were in and that I needed to call an 800 number to get my results. This was crystal clear. I knew something was a little off about this. Sending out for a genome analysis wasn’t something I would ever do. I was puzzled by it. But since I remembered already having done it, I chalked it up to the effect that Dmitri was having on me.”
“That’s the beauty of this ruse,” said Rachel. “The conscious mind is expert at fooling itself. No matter how strange an action seems, if you have a firm memory of having taken it, your mind will invent a reason for why you did.”
Carmilla nodded. “In retrospect it is remarkable that I didn’t question it more than I did.”
“We asked the Prep H guys to man the 800 number 24/7 in case anyone called,” said Rachel. “And gave them precise instructions what to say if someone did.”
“Prep H guys?”
Rachel smiled. “Long story. Our security team. Anyway, I can’t tell you how amazing it was when they told us you had called. Even though I had tested it on Kevin, who now also falsely remembers sending his DNA out for analysis, you were the ultimate confirmation that we were on the right track.”
“But why be so indirect? Why didn’t you implant memories directly into Dmitri’s mind instead of mine?”
“Couldn’t,” replied Rachel. “Only works on those with nanites in their brains, and he doesn’t have any. He has electronic implants, and his neurons can only be manipulated if he’s plugged in, so to speak, to an expensive MRI-like device. This system is much more of a hassle, but it’s far more powerful. In hours, or even minutes, it can download a field of knowledge into his mind that otherwise would have taken him many years to learn on his own.”
Carmilla considered this for a moment. “I see,” she said. “So you were just hoping that someone close to him did have these nanites onboard.”
Rachel nodded.
“And when I called with my name, the man who answered asked for my address to verify that I was really me, since genome information is private.”
“Exactly,” said Quinn. “But it wouldn’t have mattered, even if you didn’t give an address. Calls to that 800 number are tracked using the most sophisticated methods known to the military. Even if you had a phone that couldn’t be tracked, this wouldn’t be true anymore once you actively connected to this number. At that point, the system is able to trace back your location instantly. Unless you’re ultra advanced and run the line through decoy systems and dummy routers.”
“The moment you got off the phone,” added Rachel, “Kevin and two members of our security team took a helicopter to Princeton, where they had cars waiting for them. The idea was to stake you out. Learn if you were working with Kovonov. Ideally, we were hoping you could lead us to him.”
“We had one member of our team stake out your lab,” said Kevin, “and two of us were on your house. When you left, I followed, and my colleague stayed behind to keep watch on your home.”
“But why did you go on this mission in the first place?” said Carmilla. “Weren’t you Rachel’s only guinea pig? And wasn’t this potentially dangerous if I did lead you to, um . . . Kovonov?”
Rachel grinned, immensely pleased by this question. “Exactly!” she said. “Spoken like a true scientist and a rational, thinking human being. I had no idea Kevin planned to be in on this.”
She turned to Quinn. “That was so reckless—and stupid!” she added, unable to help herself, but Carmilla could tell she had enormous affection for the man and this was out of concern rather than malice. “How could you not realize that you’re indispensable? Or did you think indispensable and expendable were the same thing?”
“We’ve been over this already,” said Quinn. “You’re right. It won’t happen again.”
“Well, at least now you have another subject,” offered Carmilla.
“Thank you,” said Rachel. “This will be helpful. But it only means that both of you are indispensable.”
“To get back to what I was saying,” said Quinn, “I followed you, hoping you were driving to meet with Kovonov. I hung back so you wouldn’t notice you had a tail. When I realized what you were doing I barely had time to ram you off the tracks.”
