“They’re breathing that blue stuff?” Trilly asked in astonishment.
Hammond nodded. “It’s similar to what some extreme-deep-sea divers use to get the exact right mixture of gases to handle the depth. It’s difficult to take at first, but you get used to it.”
“Breathing a liquid?” Trilly asked.
“You don’t even notice after you go over,” Hammond said.
“Yeah, right,” someone muttered from the back of the team.
“The autonomic nervous system?” Captain Anderson asked.
“All right,” Hammond said. “Listen up. Now is when we move you from what you learned in Trojan Warrior to Psychic Warrior. Where you learn what you need in order to be able to go in there.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the tanks. “We call these isolation tanks. The embryonic fluid not only cools your body, but suspends you so that you have no sense of physical contact with the outside world, not even gravity.”
Dalton could read the mood of the team. Hammond had not led into this well at all. He stepped up next to her.
“Remember how you all felt in airborne school at Fort Benning,” Dalton said, “the night before your first jump?”
Hammond turned in surprise at his interruption.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I was scared,” Dalton continued. “Not so much of jumping, but because I had never done it before. It was a new experience and everyone gets a little nervous before trying something new.” Dalton turned sideways so that he was half facing the team and half facing the tanks. “But as you can see, it works. Just like you knew at Benning that all those people before had jumped and been all right. That doesn’t mean it’s perfectly safe,” Dalton added. “But the more you learn about it, the safer it will be for you.” Dalton turned back to Hammond. “Sorry, Doctor. Go ahead.”
“Let me explain why these isolation tanks are important,” Hammond said, walking between the team and the tubes. “Your brain works on several levels. What we want to do with the machines is allow you to remove all other inputs and distractions to your brain and allow you to concentrate on the virtual plane.”
“I don’t call breathing a distraction,” Staff Sergeant Stith remarked.
Hammond ignored the comment. “There will be two major aspects to your training here. In the mornings, we will work on adapting you to the equipment. In the afternoons, we will work on adapting you to your own bodies and minds.
“Come with me.” Hammond guided the team out of the main chamber into a classroom. She waited until they had all found seats. There was a large table in the front of the room, crowded with various machines.
She picked up a helmet, the twin of the one on the bodies in the isolation tanks. It was solid black and large, about twice the size of a football helmet on the outside.
“This is the key.” Hammond turned it so that they could see inside. She shone a light into it. There was a thick lining that she ran her finger across. “This is the thermocouple and cryoprobe projection assistance device, or TACPAD for short. This is the breakthrough that has changed everything and makes the Psychic Warrior concept possible.
“We will be fitting each of you shortly for your own TACPAD. What the TACPAD and the isolation tank allow us to do is— ” Hammond paused, looking at the eight men in camouflage fatigues. She sat on the edge of the desk. “All right, let me try to explain this as best I can.
“What we tried to do in Trojan Warrior was focus your brain. To bring out capabilities that each of you has but that have remained dormant. But it goes beyond the training you received there. I know you may not believe it, but trust me when I tell you there is a residual telepathic capability in every person.
“Many, many thousands of years ago the first human beings did not have a verbal language. We were just a step, a slight step, up from being monkeys. But there was a big difference: our brain. It was larger and more complex than that of any other species on the face of the planet. At some point, the human brain made a fantastic leap. We became telepathic.”
Dalton raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never heard of this.”
“Most people haven’t,” Hammond said. “But if you went to a university and talked to a physiology professor, he or she would tell you that this was indeed likely but it was still only an unproven theory. But we aren’t in a university here, and I’m telling you the breakthroughs we have made prove to me that this theory is valid.
“This telepathy was not as big of a deal as you might think. It wasn’t like these early people could ‘talk’ to each other with their minds. The reason they couldn’t was they couldn’t talk verbally— they had no language— so the telepathic communication was emotional. If someone saw a large tiger approaching the group, that person could use their mind to warn the others by sending their fear into the others’ minds. There are even some examples of this ‘pack mentality’ in the animal world today.”
“What happened to this ability?” Captain Anderson asked.
“It’s still there in some people but regressed,” Hammond said. “Once we developed a verbal language, it wasn’t as important. The person who saw the tiger could yell ‘Tiger!’ which was just as quick and more effective in that it specifically identified the threat. Since this was a better mode of communication, evolution took over and the verbal mode of communication became dominant.
“So as humans used the verbal language more and more, the telepathic capability waned and became residual. It’s not entirely gone. All of you have had moments when you sensed things despite the fact that there were no specific normal sensory inputs that gave you that information. A sixth sense.”
Hammond stood up. “Especially you men. Each of you has an even stronger residual mental capability than the norm. Significantly stronger. That’s why you were chosen for Trojan Warrior three years ago.
“First, each of you is left-handed or ambidextrous. The brain consists of two hemispheres.” Hammond pointed at her neck. “At the base of our brain, our nervous system does a switch. So the right side of your brain is responsible for the left side of your body and vice versa. Thus a left-handed person is right hemisphere dominant.
“Both sides of your brain are pretty much the same. That makes for redundancy. There have been clinical examples of people who have suffered tremendous damage to one hemisphere, or had extensive surgery, who were still able to rehabilitate to almost a normal level of functioning.”
Dalton thought about Marie, lying in her hospital bed. Whatever damage the aneurysm had done, perhaps there was hope that she would recover. Hope. Dalton knew what a two-edged sword that was from bitter personal experience. He forced himself to accept reality: Even if by some miracle she did regain consciousness, the ALS would be that much worse, the disease still progressing even as she lay in the coma. And he knew Dr. Kairns had leveled with him— Marie was never going to wake up.
Hammond walked to the front of the room and pulled a chart down. It was a top view of a brain. She pointed to the right side. “But there is something very interesting that doctors have always wondered about right here. The speech center on the right side appears to not work. All our speech comes from the left side. But the same parts are present on the right. Why?” She didn’t wait for an answer and tapped the chart. “This is where the residual telepathic ability resides. This is where we focus our efforts to get you into the virtual plane.”
Hammond went back to the desk and picked up the TACPAD. “This machine amplifies the parts of your brain that can allow you to get to and operate on the virtual plane. We’ve used the TACPAD successfully for two years.
“What the TACPAD does in conjunction with the isolation chamber is the following— ” She grabbed a marker and begin writing on the board.