“All right, we’ll move on to that now then. I’m reasonably certain that when you return to Earth, and perhaps even before then, you will be requested to attend an interview. Take a look at your Devscreen.”
On the Devscreen I could see myself as I exited my Env in Woodlands. The perspective of the images changed as different Devs played their role in tracking my progress from my Env, through the market where I had bought the beach clothes, and then all the way to the main Lev port at Changi. There I was with the violinist, with me sitting at the table. It seemed that the Dev capturing my image must have been somewhere behind my right shoulder and high up, because it suddenly zoomed in on the table.
“That zoom in on the Devscreen set in the table was me,” said Gabriel. “I manipulated the Dev because I wanted to be sure that you got the message I was sending. I couldn’t send anything to your Devstick or the Dev in your Env — it would have been picked up too easily, so I hacked the suggestion feed into the Dev at your table in the cafe when I saw you take a seat. It was a risk, but I overlaid the suggestion to you on top of the regular feed. As far as anyone looking at that Dev would have seen it was just the regular feed. But just in case someone did find it, we had to make it look like a suggestion. I had a back-up plan in case you did go to that resort in Tha Sala but that would have been much riskier for me. Everything else though is picked up from normal observation Devs and CCTV cameras that are around New Singapore.
“The Nineveh itself is a construct. It didn’t really exist. However as far as UNPOL will be able to tell, it is real and has existed for over four years. We’ve put the design drawing permits into the local building commission’s files and anyone actually physically visiting it will find a third rate VacEnv with appropriately hot bubbling water. All of that took weeks to set up, just on the off-chance that someone else zoomed the Dev at the same time I sent the suggestion your way.”
“How many of you? I mean, how many Doves are there?”
“Well, as with the Hawks, the Doves are a loose coalition of like-minded people, so exact numbers are hard to put together, and of course, like them, we operate in cells so that if some of us are caught then the others have a chance to escape. In my immediate cell we are one hundred and twenty people, but as for how many of us there are, the number may well be over several million, all of whom are working actively to keep our universe a safe and free place to be.
“Again we have no central command structure, but we do share information through channels that we have set up and so we stay informed between the cells. We know that there are many more Doves than Hawks, especially if we count inactive participation and those possessing a fundamental belief in our ideals. In fact, the majority of the population can be considered Doves, however getting those people to understand what is information, and what is misinformation, is problematic to say the least. The problem is in the demographics. Typically, Hawks are by nature people with greater spheres of influence than your average Dove.”
“You said when I get back, or possibly before, I will be interviewed. I agree, so how are we going to get around that? Especially if Cochran gets into the act, which I am sure she will.”
“I’m going to hypnotize you and wipe everything to do with me and our conversation from your hippocampus, along with the one we had in the White Room and this one. The hippocampus is kind of like the index card holder of the brain. It knows where all the memories are stored in your brain. Your mind is a vast universe and we only use about eight percent of its available capacity. That percentage varies from person to person, but it’s roughly eight percent. I plan to hide these events in less than point zero zero zero one percent of the remaining ninety-two percent that you don’t use. Cochran will not think to look there. Most telepaths wouldn’t, simply because it’s just white noise, but over the years I’ve learned to use that white noise quite efficiently.”
“If they’re hidden away in some white noise part of my mind, how am I going to remember any of this?”
“I’m going to create a trigger event. It will bring the memories back, but it will do it at a steady, even pace — a bit like receiving data over a datafeed, one block of information at a time. That way, you won’t suddenly throw up as the reality hits you.”
“O… K.” I didn’t sound too convinced and my drawn out response was enough to cause Gabriel to let loose with one of his belly laughs again, slapping his thigh.
“It isn’t as bad as it sounds. When the trigger event occurs, the memories will start to come back. At the beginning you’ll think that you’re remembering a dream, but over the course of a couple of hours, the details of the dream will be filled in with ever-increasing clarity. Your mind will return again and again to the little reservoir of information that I’ll plant, and the signals, traveling from the outback of your brain, will come in ever-larger memory chunks. Finally, you will reach the moment where this description will be relayed to you word for word, complete with the images of me and this room. I did it to you the first time we spoke using our minds. Do you recall a feeling that you were struggling to remember what we had voiced, but you clearly remembered what I had said to you through thought?”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“I had to be sure that you would recognize the sign when you saw it, so I had to make sure you would remember every single word we thought together. I also put a little extra thought in there about how to deal with Cochran. That was to protect you. Do you remember thinking in the restroom, coming up with that plan, just before the interview with Cochran and your uncle? I inserted that idea telepathically about how you’d say how much you admired and wanted to be like Sir Thomas. Yes, that was me as well. And the same method will suffice for the interview you get when you return, with a twist. It dovetails nicely, forgive the pun, with our plans to install you into Sir Thomas’s sphere of influence.”
“I can see that.”
“The worst probe that I have to prepare you for is the one that you will go through when you are considered as a candidate for entry into the Hawks. That will be far more dangerous and will be far more intense. In that interview, you might also call it a mind-scrape, they will go after the whole of your brain, and they will probe into all those little dark wells that the results of our existence give depth to.”
“What is the trigger event?”
Gabriel smiled, and clasping his hands together across his stomach, lowered his chin to his chest and said, “If I tell you that now we may set up a recursive loop. I’ll do it when you’re in the hypnotic state.”
“What’s a recursive loop?” I asked with a slight frown.
“It’s where the eight percent travels to the point zero zero zero one place, finds the moment that I tell you the trigger event and then follows your time from that point on until the trigger event and then loops back to the beginning. If you create that loop, anyone looking inside your brain telepathically can retrace to where it is and release all the hidden memory. I’m also going to put all of the information we’ve gathered on your Devstick. It’s a risk but less of a risk than me trying to send it to you later. I’ll give you a code to enter in your Devstick, and a reminder to make sure you’re offline when you enter the code.”
“Oh, right, good. Well please keep the trigger event to yourself then,” I said with a smile, and was rewarded with another of his belly laughs, this time slapping both hands on his knees and standing up. He walked over to the wall and sat down on the sleeper that was set against it.
Gabriel took out his Devstick and thumbing it said with a glance at me, “We have forty-five minutes before I have to start your hypnosis. I think we’ve given you enough information for you to work on after you get the trigger event. Is there anything that you would like to ask me?”