In any other situation Bianca would have dismissed the idea as a hoax, but a private jet trip to the States was an awful long way to go for a prank. ‘How does it work?’
‘To put it simply, the device records a subject’s brain impulses three-dimensionally in real time using an advanced array of electrodes’ — a click of the remote, and the black box gave way to a graphic of a head wearing a cap dotted with circular objects — ‘which it then processes and sends to a receiver.’ Click, and another head appeared, animated arrows running from the first to the second.
‘Wait, wait,’ said Bianca. ‘So you’re claiming that reading a person’s memories and transferring them into somebody else’s mind is as simple as copying a file from one computer to another?’
‘I’m not claiming that at all,’ Kiddrick replied. ‘It’s far from simple. I’m just saying that for ease of explanation.’
‘Well, I do have a PhD in neurochemistry, so I know a little about how the brain works. You don’t have to give me the Sesame Street version.’
Kiddrick frowned. ‘If you insist.’ He clicked repeatedly on the remote. Slides flashed by, stopping on one showing a series of images taken by a CT scanner: ‘slices’ of a brain’s activity.
It was instantly obvious to Bianca that the brain in question belonged to no ordinary patient. ‘Has something been implanted?’ Fine white lines ran through the tissue, a tiny sphere at the end of each.
‘Yes — they act as amplifiers, taking the signals from the agent’s own electrode array via induction and redistributing them throughout the synaptic pathways. Essentially, they’re recreating the engrams of the subject’s brain by overlaying them on to the equivalent areas of our agent’s.’
That raised many questions in Bianca’s mind, but she asked the biggest one first. ‘But isn’t that just a fancier form of electroshock therapy? It’s more targeted, yes, but the end result will be the same — it’ll scramble the synapses, not neatly plop new memories into them. And what about the memories that are already there?’
‘That’s where Dr Albion’s work comes in,’ said Morgan.
Bianca looked questioningly at Kiddrick. ‘Yes, yes, Roger played a role,’ he said, as if the admission were being wrung from him in court.
‘A role?’ she said. ‘You make it sound as though he was just your lab assistant or something.’
‘Roger is the Persona Project’s other senior scientific adviser,’ Tony clarified. ‘They worked together to make it possible.’
‘The drugs Roger developed were important, yes, but the concept behind PERSONA and all the basic research required to make it a reality were mine,’ said Kiddrick sniffily. ‘But in answer to your question, the drugs in essence wipe the targeted synapses’ — a sweeping motion with one hand to illustrate — ‘and make them ready to receive the new data.’
Bianca was horrified. ‘You’re wiping people’s memories?’
‘It’s more like temporarily suppressing them. As you know, the brain doesn’t work like a computer by storing one byte of information in a single place — it’s more of a distributed network. Memories are reassembled through protein synthesis in a particular group of neurons when the brain specifically calls for them, but until then they’re kept in the cloud, you might say. One of Roger’s drugs, Neutharsine, modifies the recall process — basically tricking the brain into accepting the imprinted memories as its own. But the effect wears off quickly.’
‘How quickly?’
‘The longest we’ve ever seen an imprinted persona last is just over twenty-four hours. And sleep seems to act as a natural reset button before then. Once the agent goes to sleep, everything that’s been imprinted is washed away.’
The list of answers Bianca wanted — factual as well as ethical — kept growing. ‘You said that’s one of Roger’s drugs. What do the others do?’
‘The primary one, Hyperthymexine, is used on the subject. It’s a recall enhancer, putting the protein synthesis process into overdrive. A brainstorm, we call it; the subject remembers everything they’ve ever experienced, all at once. The electrical signals this produces are picked up by the PERSONA device and transmitted via the electrode net to our agent.’
‘That sounds incredibly dangerous. Wouldn’t triggering that much synaptic activity at once carry risks? Overheating and tissue damage, or blood pressure issues, potential haemorrhage—’
‘Nothing so far that we’ve seen,’ Kiddrick interrupted.
‘And what about mental side effects? It sounds like you’ve got the perfect recipe for a psychotic break.’
The scientist was growing increasingly irritated at being challenged. ‘Obviously we’ve thought of that,’ he snapped. ‘We use another drug called Mnemexal, a variant of the protein inhibitor we use to prepare the agent for the process, to completely erase the subject’s short-term memory. It’s no different from dentists using midazolam to repress a patient’s memory of a procedure,’ he added, seeing that Bianca was about to raise another objection. ‘If they can’t remember the pain, then effectively it never happened.’
‘That’s one interpretation,’ she said, voice cutting.
‘It’s an interpretation that fits the facts. The point is, PERSONA works. We can put one person’s memories — more than that, their entire personality — into the mind of another. Our agent can literally become anyone, know everything they know, use every skill they possess.’
‘Reveal all of their secrets,’ Tony added. ‘That’s what the Persona Project is ultimately about. It’s an intelligence-gathering tool that we can use to protect the lives of American citizens — that we are using. The mission Roger was on when he was shot gave us inside information on al-Qaeda that would have been impossible to obtain by any other means.’
The truth was dawning for Bianca, and she didn’t like it. ‘When you say “subjects”, I take it they’re not exactly volunteers.’
‘You heard what the Admiral said,’ Morgan replied. ‘We will use whatever means necessary to protect this country and its allies.’
‘And it’s not as if we’re torturing them,’ said Kiddrick, his tone almost mocking. ‘Would you prefer that? Once we’ve transferred their persona into our agent, we wipe their short-term memory and put them back where we found them. They don’t even know anything’s happened to them.’
Bianca matched his derision. ‘Until you send a drone to blow up their house.’
‘But this way, we know for certain that we’ve got the right house,’ countered Morgan. ‘There’s no guesswork, no interpretation of scraps of information from multiple sources. What we have is direct from the source, and one hundred per cent accurate.’
‘As accurate as human memory gets, you mean. And you’d be surprised just how shaky that can be.’ She remembered another question of her own. ‘This agent you keep talking about — I take it he’s the one with the implanted electrodes.’
‘He is.’ Morgan stood. ‘And now, you’re going to meet him.’
Chapter 11
Who Is Adam Gray?
Despite still being livid about her treatment by Harper, and appalled by Kiddrick’s ethics, Bianca couldn’t help but be impressed by the large room to which Morgan took her. Now this was worthy of Bond or Bauer! The moodily lit chamber brought to mind NASA’s mission control, banks of workstations facing a wall of large screens.