“Ah, of course, because you were also planning to wipe all my memories of this conversation, weren’t you?”
“Obviously. You’ll be in no state to sanction further payments. You won’t know anything about them.”
“Then I’ll give you half the money now and place half in an account in your name but which you can’t access for twenty-four hours. That will give you time to restore me.”
The woman studied him for a moment, looking for the flaws in the plan. He just had to hope she didn’t know everything ShivaTech’s systems coulddo. Finally she nodded. She’d might not get all the money, but she’d decided even half a billion would be enough. As Ronan had calculated she would,
“Very well,” she said. “But not in my name. Use Arvan J. Stanton, understand?”
“As you like. I’ll have to jump to London to arrange everything.”
“You remember your non-existent friend’s old contact number?”
“For some reason, yes, I do. Very clearly.”
“That’s the account number for the first half of the payment. Make sure the new account is in his name, too, and we’ll see it. And remember: in three hours time you won’t recognize your own face in a mirror. So don’t fuck up.”
She smiled and stood up. She lifted her scarf over her head to cover her features. “Oh, and be careful in the jump network, Ronan Mistry. There are some bad people out there.”
She turned and strode away. He soon lost her in the teeming crowds.
***
Doctor Kay Alvarez was engrossed in an analysis of the fractal equations from her latest tests when her boss staggered in. She hadn’t seen Ronan for nearly a year; these days the owner of ShivaTech didn’t travel so much. Her delight at the sight of her old friend was immediately tempered when she saw the state of him. He was clearly struggling to stay upright.
“Ronan? What has happened? You look terrible. Shall I get a doctor?”
“You area doctor, Kay. That’s why I’ve come to see you.” For a moment she caught a flash of her old friend’s humour. Then he sank into a chair and held his head in his hands.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” said Kay. “You know very well I’m not the right sort of doctor.”
“Actually,” said Ronan, “you are exactly the right sort. I need you to scan my brain and look for
… anomalies.”
“What do you mean anomalies?”
He appeared to be having trouble getting the words out. He was clearly in great pain.
“Please,” he said. “There isn’t much time. I need you to do this now.”
With anyone else she would have insisted on the hospital. But, as she’d come to learn over the years, Ronan generally knew best. “OK. Come with me.”
Ten minutes later she had the live feed of his brain imaging in front of her. She sifted her way through the 3D map, looking for these mysterious anomalies. What was he expecting her to find? A tumour? A clot? A bleed?
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nothing. No damage at all. Wait. What the hell? Thatdoesn’t look right.”
“What do you see?”
“These neuron patterns here in the hindbrain look almost … random.” She turned to Ronan. “Is this what you mean? This corruption?”
“Is it spreading?”
She turned back and zoomed in. It took only a few moments to see it. She watched as more and more of the connections between the neurons realigned themselves. They switched from normal, organic arrangements into broken, disjointed fragments.
“It is,” she said. “Advancing rapidly. Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on here,
Ronan? Frankly, it’s incredible you’re even walking and talking.”
Ronan nodded but didn’t reply.
“Ronan? What has happened? What is this?”
With great effort, as if having to drag up ancient memories, he began to tell her the day’s
events.
When he’d finished she was silent for a moment. If she hadn’t seen his scan she wouldn’t have believed it. “Ronan,” she said finally, “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. This is an incredible opportunity.”
“What?”
“Whoever these people are, however they’ve done this, we need this technology. They’re years ahead of us.”
“It must be experimental,” said Kay. “For all we know it only works one in a hundred times. One in a thousand. You’re incredibly lucky just to be here.”
“Yes, but think what we could do if we had this capability. If we could reliably edit people’s images. We could cure diseases, do anything. We have to pursue this.”
“Always the idealist, Ronan. You can’t go ahead with this; you’re going to get yourself killed. Somehow we have to stop the encryption of your neural matrix. Restore you somehow.”
He shook his head. “The thing is, I’ve already instructed the bank to transfer the money.”
“What?” she said again. She was beginning to doubt his sanity now. Was this the corruption in his brain speaking? “Ronan, this is madness.”
“No, Kay. Listen to me. Listen while I can still think straight. OK, perhaps they’ll talk their half billion and run. And then I am in serious trouble. But there’s a chance they’ll do what they said: intervene again to fix me so they can get the rest of their money, yes?”
“There’s a chance,” she said. “There’s also a chance they’ll zap your brain completely to cover their tracks.”
“No. It will look too obvious. They’re clever. Who knows how often they’ve done this? We need to stop them. You need to stop them.”
“Me?”
“You’ll know where I am in the jump network. You can track me among all the billions of images?”
She shrugged.
“Sure, that we can do.”
“And when they intervene-if they do-you’ll be able to see it, yes? They must be using a hacked jump node. You’ll be able to get a physical address. We’ll be able to get to them.”
She studied him for a moment. He was serious. He really meant to do this. “Ronan,” she said, “this is a whole series of ifsand slim chances. It’s not going to actually work.”