“Yes. The brain, amazing as it is, forms neural pathways organically, so they can be inefficient. Think of it like defragmenting your hard drive. You can fit a lot more in there if you reorder a bit.”
“How do you know it’s keeping the same functionality?”
He laughed. “You were always the cautious one. I guess I don’t know, when it comes down to it, but that’s why I’m studying myself so carefully. You’ll notice that I haven’t published my findings yet. I’m not going to claim success until I’m pretty sure it’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“Except yourself.”
“Except myself. But that’s a risk I’m allowed to take. And so far it’s nothing short of miraculous. I can hold reams of complex data in my head, even graph it without a computer. I just think about it, and I can see it in my mind. Connections just come to me. I’m having eureka moments twice a day. Yes, the long-term effects are unknown. There’s going to be a firestorm of controversy once I publish—calls for government regulations, studies galore, and more controversy on the internet than for child vaccinations. But it works, Neil.”
Despite my misgivings, I found myself catching his excitement. He certainly knew a lot more about the subject than I did, and if he thought it was safe… though, how could he know? It wasn’t like anyone had studied this before. I didn’t want my brother to be another footnote in the history of ill-advised self-experimentation.
“What about Maisie?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them.
His face fell. “What about her? She died of the initial infection. Drowned, essentially, in the blood and fluids caused by her body’s immune response.” His voice was neutral, but the rigidness in his jaw told me he was angry.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just meant, if you want other people to benefit from this parasite—”
“There are risks. I admit that. But they can be minimized. Instead of inhaling spores, a cultivated form could be injected or taken orally. Perhaps along with a dose of antifungals to slow the initial growth.”
“Does this have anything to do with Neuritol?” I asked.
He frowned. “You mean that smart drug your friend’s granddaughter overdosed on?”
I nodded.
“That’s interesting,” he said. “I don’t know much about it. Does it have a fungal component?”
I made a mental note to find out. “And what about all these indigenous Einsteins popping up out of the rainforest?”
Paul stood up from the computer chair and stretched. “Hard to say. It seems unlikely that Maisie and I would be the only people in all of Brazil to be infected. On the other hand, there’s no mention of such a case anywhere in the literature. So either it’s very rare, and we happened to stumble on it, or it’s a very new strain, in which case we could see a lot more cases.”
“Thanks for showing me all this,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you? I’m trusting you with this. Not a word to anyone until I publish.”
I held two fingers up, scout’s honor. “I won’t tell anyone. But there are a few people I want you to tell.”
“I’m not going to report myself to any ethics board, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Not at all. I want to introduce you to my friends at the NSA.”
CHAPTER 14
“This is so awesome,” Paul said.
He sat next to me in the car as we waited our turn to pass through the security gate at Fort Meade. Like Katherine Wyatt, he was gaining entrance as a consultant, escort-only, with a single-day badge. It normally took weeks to process something like that for someone not already in the system, but Melody had ways of making things happen fast.
Watching Paul’s amazement, I marveled at how normal the attack dogs, razor wire, and heavily armed guards now seemed to me, after such a short time. It gave me a surge of pride to be showing it all to Paul as an insider.
“Doesn’t it make you nervous?” he asked. “I keep expecting them to peg me as an imposter and drag me out of the car.”
“You get used to it,” I said.
We parked and went through the metal detectors, where Paul took it all in with the same serious expression as the MPs with guns. On the far side, he accepted his red-striped badge as if it were a Medal of Honor. As I now knew, the badges were electronically tracked in the building, registering silent alarms if any badge entered an area for which it was not cleared, or if an escort-only badge was not in close proximity to a valid permanent badge. Which meant that my little exploit in Agent Benjamin Harrison’s introductory class had been doomed from the moment I walked the wrong way down the hall. I’d been lucky not to end up in jail.
I escorted him down to our basement room and into our little conference room, where Melody, Shaunessy, Andrew, and several other members of the team sat waiting. Flashing red lights indicated to anyone entering the room that an uncleared contractor was present, which meant that all classified documents had to be locked away, all classified computers powered off, and all classified discussions held in another room. It was the same arrangement used when specialized outside contractors were needed to repair large-scale plumbing leaks or install new elevators. I made the introductions and gave Paul the floor.
A set of charts with his images had already been processed through security and loaded onto the unclassified computer system. He used them to explain to the team what he had explained to me already. Everyone there had signed non-disclosure agreements at Paul’s insistence, legal documents that would prevent them from sharing or benefitting financially from what he told them.
“What does this have to do with all the Colombian guerrilla activity?” Andrew said. “Do we think their members—”
Melody stood up before he could finish. “Thank you, Dr. Johns, for providing this information. Does anyone have any questions about the science involved?”
Andrew stopped talking, reddening slightly. Paul was visibly disappointed that he wasn’t going to be privy to any NSA shop talk, but he smiled and looked around expectantly.
“How does the infection spread?” Shaunessy asked.
“Spore inhalation,” Paul said. “The mature fungus in the wild produces spores, which the wind blows through the air. If you inhale a spore, it can take root in the lining of your lungs and grow.”
“Can it be passed from person to person?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. There’s no indication that the fungus will sporulate inside a human host. The mycelial strands are haploid, which means they have only one copy of each chromosome. They can’t reproduce unless they encounter another, sexually compatible mycelium of the same species. My guess is that reproduction takes place only in the rainforest, where such encounters are common.”
“Why does it increase intelligence?”
“It’s a classic symbiotic relationship. The more intelligent the affected animal, the better its survival rate. The more value the fungus brings to the animal, the more the animal will protect or even cultivate the fungus. Each benefits the other.”
When the questions were exhausted, Melody thanked him again for his time and looked at me.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll give you a peek at the server room before I escort you out.”
“What, no secrets?” he whispered as we left the conference room. The red lights were still flashing like silent sirens.
“Did you expect any?”
“I thought somebody might let something slip. You know, like who really assassinated Kennedy or where the alien technology is kept.”
I shrugged. “No such luck. One more treat before you go, though.” I waved my badge over the keypad and then pressed the correct sequence of numbers. The electromagnetic bolt clanked free, and I pushed open the door.