I thought of my father. If you wanted to use the feedback mechanism to control human will, you would need a very detailed model of human value judgments in order to accurately predict how such control would function.
“Dr. Nuada Kirie wouldn’t be part of the project team, would he?”
“He is, that is, he was in the beginning. He is no longer with the consortium.”
“Was Dr. Kirie using this midbrain feedback web model for any other research?”
“Well…some of our researchers do take part in side projects, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t know about any of that.”
“How does knowing that the feedback web follows a hyperbolic curve change your view of human will compared to previous models?” I asked out of plain curiosity.
Étaín put a hand to her chin in thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose the revelation that human will is actually more of a battle royal between multiple desire agents within the brain has allowed us to prove that animals too possess a will.”
“In other words, animals aren’t just acting by their genetic programming or instinct?”
“Your language reveals a bias. What we call our ‘will’ or ‘soul’ is really just a collision between multiple genetically programmed elements. There is a test using pigeons where one button releases ten beans when it’s pressed and thirty beans when it’s pressed after waiting a certain amount of time. It turns out that there are pigeons who choose to wait for the thirty beans. Pigeons have the same range of choice allowed them by will under our model. In other words, the model allows us not only to understand human will but the very nature of consciousness, and put that knowledge to better use.”
“Such as?”
“Such as…pain,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“First, you have to understand the true nature of what I have been referring to as feedback. Any psychological effect that grabs the attention of the consciousness and leaves a strong impression is feedback. This is true under Yelensky’s model as well. The feedback need not be a reward or even anything beneficial.”
“All right. And?”
“The pain we feel the moment we prick our finger with a needle is nothing more than another agent trying to leave an impression and get selected. The hyperbolic time axis in this case is very short, making it easier for the pain to be chosen.”
I frowned. How could pain be chosen? “But you can’t accept or deny pain,” I said.
“Actually, you can. Surely you have heard stories of people who are so focused on some activity that they only realize their finger or arm has been cut off some seconds after the fact. This is because the pain competed with, yet failed to overcome, the hold that activity had on their consciousness.”
“I see.”
“That is why we understand pain to be a subjective experience. For a physical sensation, it is highly dependent on environmental factors to determine whether or not it is selected and to what degree. That is why there is no absolute scale to measure pain.”
“So all of the sensations that make up our reality are these agents who have been selected for advancement to the upper levels of the brain?”
“That’s one way to put it, yes. Even sight, sound, smell, and taste must be selected before they are permitted into the consciousness,” Étaín said. “Of course, these basic stimuli have steep hyperbolas, making it easy for them to make the final cut, so they are rarely entirely ignored.”
“Which means that, in a sense, your research isn’t just about our consciousness, but about how our very reality is constructed.”
Étaín raised an eyebrow and looked at me as though I had said something peculiar. “But reality and consciousness are the same thing, Inspector Kirie.”
“Are they?”
“The reality we can accept is limited to our consciousness, after all.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Gabrielle Étaín stood and extended her hand. “I hope I have answered all of your questions to your satisfaction, Inspector Kirie. Now, if you don’t mind, I should get back to my work.”
I thanked her and shook her hand, saying that I might be back again. Just then, I became suddenly curious as to how this woman had taken the news of the declaration. I wondered what decision she would make.
I loved asking the uncomfortable questions.
“By the way, I was wondering whether you heard the declaration.”
“I did.”
“What did you think?”
It wasn’t a fair question. But I was hoping that its very vagueness might catch her by surprise and reveal something. Her response was disappointing.
“It’s quite horrible.”
I pressed the attack. “Don’t you think the technology you’re researching here treads similar ground to the mind-control suicides they threatened?”
Étaín’s finger went to her chin again. “I’d have to agree. But we are not criminals. We cannot control another’s will nor show them a different reality.”
“Have plans to do anything before the deadline?”
Uncomfortable question number two.
Étaín furrowed her brow at my lack of tact. “I will do nothing. It’s clear they’re just trying to scare us.”
“But they might actually have the technology to make people kill themselves. You saw what that newscaster did.”
“And I trust the various admedistration members will show us their public resolve. Our society will bow to no one.”
It was a pitch-perfect response. Perhaps too perfect.
Étaín showed me to the door in silence. As I walked through, a final question occurred to me. The drama of the moment was a bit forced, but sometimes that could be quite effective.
“One last thing, you don’t happen to know of any organization called the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group, do you?”
There was a brief moment of silence before Étaín’s calm reply.
“Never heard of them.”
✦ ✦ ✦
04
The media was showing video of armed troops stationed in every major city in the world.
Streets lined with pink trees.
Pink paint to camouflage the rough edges of the city for its citizens.
Pink firearms.
Pink grenades.
Pink gas masks.
I had no doubt that the tear gas would be pink too.
The admedistrations had demanded every region in the world declare a state of emergency.
✦ ✦ ✦
<list:item>
<i: New York>
<i: Paris>
<i: Geneva>
<i: Tokyo>
</list>
✦ ✦ ✦
Police and Geneva Convention forces stood at every corner.
Their orders were to watch for killers and potential suicides. The killers would probably be wearing pink. Of course, since the police officers and soldiers on patrol were all subject to the same one-man-one-kill declaration, who could trust them? Everyone was suspect, and armed people even more so.
From the moment of the declaration, the world had been walking backward through history. People saw the Maelstrom in every shadow.
The central district of Baghdad was completely abandoned. Everyone was huddled in their homes as if they could avoid having to make a decision. But the declaration had made its effectiveness clear, and everyone belonging to an admedistration who had WatchMe installed was at risk.
It was hard when you were forced to make a very personal decision in a society that stressed following advice and cooperative consensus.
✦ ✦ ✦
<list:item>
<i: Should I kill someone to live?>
<i: Should I kill no one and die?>
<i: Should I choose not to believe what I saw with my own eyes?>
</list>
✦ ✦ ✦
I had no doubt that the tech-heads were busily combing the admedistration servers, looking for holes in security. Holes in the WatchMe servers responsible for monitoring the medicules in several billion people’s bodies.
For my part, I had just used my privileges as a Helix agent to slip some eavesdropping medicules into Gabrielle Étaín when I shook her hand. The medicules went in through the skin, finding their way through her body, until they activated the eavesdropping circuit in her HeadPhone. Though there hadn’t been a single thing wrong with Étaín’s performance to make me suspect her, she was the only lead I had.
A call came in from business-card man as I drove down the deserted road.
“Did you meet with Gabrielle Étaín?” Vashlov asked. He sounded pleased with himself.
“Word travels fast.”
“The SEC Neuromedical Research Consortium is just one public front of the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group. Étaín is one of them, Inspector Kirie.”
“And you know this how?”
“We followed the money. I realize that’s a bit beyond the capabilities of a Helix agent.”
“Then why not bug Gabrielle Étaín instead of me?”
“Oh, we are. With little result. She knows she’s being watched.”
“Then why didn’t you stop me from going to see her? If I’d known she was involved—”
“Because we were hoping for a chemical reaction.”
✦ ✦ ✦
<discomfort>
That was troubling. So the man from Interpol had used me, letting me meet with Étaín in hopes that the specter of an official agency investigation would elicit a reaction from the Next-Gen group. They had reached a dead end with their informants and surveillance, so they put their money on my being just the element of surprise they needed to tip the scales.
“Well, don’t I feel stupid.”
“You understand how critical the situation is. They might take defensive action. Take care of yourself.”
“Oh, I always do. There’s no shortage of terrorists who would like a Helix agent as a feather in their cap.”
</discomfort>