A confused voice came through Jake’s earpiece. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but I didn’t quite make that out.”
Jake cleared his throat. “I said, proceed as ordered, Captain. Proceed as ordered.”
8
Van Hutten sat in the room’s only chair and closed his eyes, waiting for . . . he had no idea. The pill could have been nothing more than a placebo, but he suspected it was either a strong hallucinogen or worse. It could well be lethal.
There was nothing he could do about it now, in any case, regardless of its effect. Whatever was inside that gellcap was coursing through his bloodstream, and no power of will or sleight of hand could remove it now.
He turned his thoughts to the group he had just left. They seemed genuine and caring people. Not that a psychotic who had been told by a humming bird to kill his wife for the good of mankind couldn’t be genuine and caring as well.
One thing was certain, though: Kira Miller was a force of nature. She had a potent combination of physical and intellectual appeal that he had never seen matched. A persuasiveness, a charisma, and a winning personality that were off the charts. If he were a younger man he could see himself falling in love with that one in a hurry.
His mind exploded.
A hundred billion neurons rewired themselves in a chain reaction that was almost instantaneous.
He gasped.
His thoughts had been traveling at pedestrian speeds, but they had suddenly been punched into warp drive—and then some. His mind experienced the equivalent of a starfield rushing toward it; a starfield that elongated and blurred as his mind made the impossible leap into hyperspace.
Everything they had told him was true! Everything.
He diverted a tiny portion of his mind to ponder the implications of this while the rest explored its newfound power.
Somehow he knew that only 1.37 seconds had elapsed since the effect had hit him—exactly 1.37 seconds. He wasn’t sure how, but his mind was now as accurate as a stopwatch.
An hour—a period of time that once seemed stingy—suddenly seemed generous beyond measure.
He turned his attention to problems in theoretical physics that had proven to be insurmountable and epiphanies presented themselves almost as quickly as he could focus on them.
His fingers began flying over the keyboard, faster than he had thought they were capable of moving.
He hadn’t wanted the effect brought on by the mysterious gellcap to begin. Now he wished fervently that it would never end.
***
The Stanford physicist shoved yet another glazed devil’s food cake donut into his mouth and washed it down with his second sixteen-ounce bottle of apple juice.
“That was unbelievable! Extraordinary,” he said to Kira and Griffin for the third time, not realizing he had settled into a verbal feedback loop.
“Even if I had believed you completely, nothing could have prepared me for that! I could have never come close to even imagining it.”
“Sorry we had to force it on you,” said Desh with a sly smile, just having entered the room with Connelly.
“No you’re not,” said van Hutten happily as Desh took a seat. “And I’m not either. Thank you. I couldn’t be more grateful. Maybe that penicillin analogy wasn’t so bad after all. Although penicillin is like an incantation from a medicine man compared to that gellcap of yours, Kira.”
“Make some astonishing breakthroughs in our work, did we?” said Griffin.
“Absolutely,” replied van Hutten, as this part of the experience came rushing back to him. “I had a perfect memory of everything I’ve ever seen, heard, or read; and every thought I’ve ever had. And I could access all of this instantly. Incredible. I contemplated problems I’ve spent my entire career trying to solve. I just had to focus on one for a few seconds and an answer revealed itself like . . .” He paused, searching for the right metaphor. “Like an exhibitionist in a peep show,” he finished
“Wow,” said Griffin. “Well said. Linking the powers of an amplified intellect to live pornography is truly inspired.”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me rephrase that?”
“Why would you want to?” said Griffin.
Van Hutten smiled and turned to Kira. “Okay, then. Consider me a true believer. Can you bring me fully up to speed?”
A delighted smile lit up her face. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
“You and David are in love, aren’t you?” he said out of the blue.
“One of the things you picked up during your hour?” responded Kira in amusement.
He nodded. “You just seemed like close colleagues to me. But to my improved mind, you both might as well have been holding billboards advertising the fact that you’re madly in love.”
“An unexpected bonus to heightened intelligence,” explained Kira. “Body language and other subtle clues to human behavior become so clear you can almost read minds.”
“I assume you also discovered your ability to direct every cell and enzyme in your body?” said Matt Griffin. “And to change your vital signs at will?”
The physicist grinned. “Oh yeah,” he replied giddily. “That too. All in all, it was the ultimate ride.”
The group spent the next hour sharing their history with van Hutten. They covered Kira’s early days after her first batch of gellcaps were stolen. How she was framed for a bioterror plot and hunted by the government. How David Desh was recruited to find her, and how lurking in the shadows, orchestrating it all, was her brother Alan, whom she had thought was dead.
They explained how the therapy altered personality in a dangerous way—creating megalomania at best and sociopathy at worst.
“Did you notice this kind of change in your personality?” asked Desh.
“Not really. I was having too much fun solving problems.”
Desh nodded. “These effects start mild for most, but seem to build,” he explained.
“And you’ve been vetted far more than you know,” said Griffin. He grinned and added, “or as David might say in that more direct vernacular of his favored by the military, we screened the living crap out of you.”
“You’ll be happy to know you’re at the very top of the scale when it comes to ethics,” said Kira, “as well as the innate stability of your mind and personality.”
“How do you screen for something like that?”
“In ways that only someone using Kira’s therapy could devise,” replied Desh, clearly not wanting to sidetrack the conversation with any details. “Given the stability of your personality and the fact that, as Kira once put it, the first time you’re enhanced you feel like Alice in Wonderland, it isn’t all that surprising that this effect didn’t hit you yet.”
“Just for the record,” said Griffin. “I never went through the Alice stage. The treatment seems to have hit me the most negatively of anyone. Along with everything else, I become the most outwardly arrogant.”
“The team has come up with a more technical term to describe good old lovable Matt when he’s enhanced,” said Desh with a broad smile. “He’s what we call a total asshole.”
Van Hutten laughed, now completely at ease.