Chapter 25

[Reality Check - Saturday, Feb. 13 2010, 1122 hours, Kay's Office] 

Thallin was still on his knees when he felt a hand gently push his chin up. He looked and saw Kay staring at him. "You're telling me the truth?" she asked him. Thallin nodded and Kay gave him a smile. "Alright, Thallin," she said. "It's yours." 

Unbelieving, Thallin took the proferred bag. Looking back at Kay, he noticed she had her hand out to help him up. A moment's hesitation, needed to get a hold on his reflexes, and he took her hand and stumbled to his feet. "You don't know how much this means to me, Kay," he told her, sniffing. 

"Oh, I think I do," she replied, limping to the other side of her desk, still favouring her sore ankle. "How much time will it take you to prepare the parts so it'll be convincing enough to Dr. Lang?" 

Thallin briefly looked into the middle-distance as his eyes lost focus. <Only one bag... I'll have to fake some of the components... Partial assembly... make the others look like they were assembled...> He wiped is eyes with sleeve. "Oh, about 5 hours I'd think." 

Kay looked at him. "Five hours?" she looked at her watch before continuing. "You don't have much time, then." 

Thallin blinked and checked his own watch. "You're right. I'd better get moving." Reaching for the door, his action was stopped by Kay's voice. 

"Thallin? You need the other bag, don't you?" 

Thallin froze for a second, debating whether the bag of components was worth the hassles Kay would put him through as payment. With a mental sigh, he turned back to face Kay, expecting the worse. 

Kay stood her ground and looked at him cooly. "You need your components and I have more questions. I have your bag and you have my answers. You don't have much time and I know how much this means to you." 

Kay and Thallin looked at each other for a moment. Thallin's throat felt dry and he swallowed to wet it. It didn't work. Behind her desk, Kay opened one of her drawers and withdraw the other sack from it. She placed it on the desk and returned her gaze to Thallin. The hard edge in them almost made Thallin winced. "You owe me big time. Get going." 

[Reality Check - Saturday, Feb. 13 2010, 1141 hours, Black Pegasus] 

Thallin stumbled towards his office and slumped into a chair, tossing both bags of components onto his electronics bench. <How do I manage to get myself into these messes?> A brief look into Izabelle's room on the way in had told Thallin that Izabelle had not been home in the last few hours. <I wonder where she's gone to...> 

With a sigh, Thallin got up from his seat, called up some ersatz coffee, and turned towards his work-bench, a look of concentration upon his face. 

[Reality Check - Saturday, Feb. 13 2010, 1632 hours, Lang's Office] 

Lang looked at the pile of components in front of him and frowned. "Sit down," he said, pointing to one of the chairs in front of his desk. "I just want to run a few tests. You did bring the blueprints as I asked?" 

Thallin felt sweat-beads on the back of his neck. <Tests? He didn't say anything about tests.> "Of course, Doctor Lang." Concentrating to keep his hands from shaking, Thallin placed the blueprints next to the shattered AI-casing. "Will this take long?" he asked nervously. 

"As long as it takes," was the reply. "As long as it takes." Lang opened the set of blueprints and studied it for a moment. "What the-!" He flipped over a few pages and snorted. "Of all the hair-brained schemes!" Lang threw the pages down onto the desk and pointed at them. "Where did you get these blueprints?" has asked. 

"I... I found them in a disused data-warehouse," answered Thallin. "Is there a problem?" 

"Did you actually read all of them?" 

<What is going on here?> "No. The blueprints seemed to indicate two independent units, only one of which was the AI required for the control of the plane. I had intended to return to the second unit and start on it as soon as I had time, but circumstances..." 

"Do you know what that second unit is?" 

"No Doctor. As I said, I never got that far. I assume it interracts with the primary unit, as the AI designs had some sort of communications gear built-in." 

Lang threw the diagrams at Thallin. "Well have a look at it now. Both units. Well, come on!" he urged when Thallin still hadn't moved. 

Grabbing the blueprints, Thallin started to decypher the first set of plans. "What we have here is a design for a sophisticated AI unit with real-world connections for manipulation of physical objects. Input into the AI is two-folds; there is the normal phisical inputs - audio, visual, tactile, and so on - and there is a radio gear which is an integral part of the neural net." He paused, tracing a few circuits with a finger. "The radio gear itself is a multi-part affair, with a normal electromagnetic tranceiver as well as what looks like a specialised Electro-Encephalogram device. I never did find out what that part was for." 

"I will tell you in a minute," interrupted Lang. "Did you follow the plans exactly? Even the part about tuning the EEG device?" 

"Yes. I was not certain what it was for, so I figured it was best not to tamper with it." 

Lang pointed toward the second set of diagrams. "And what do you make of these?" 

"I don't know." answer Thallin thruthfully. "The first stage looks a lot like the transceiver gear in the AI's Neural Net, but I have no idea what the rest of the device is for." 

Lang pointed at the page. "Read the installation instructions." 

Thallin did so and jumped out of his seat. "IN MY HEAD?!" 

"What you are holding," explained Lang, "is a set of blueprints for a cerebro-cortical implant which is capable of reading the subject's brain-activity and transmiting it - a kind of thought-reader if you will." 

"But... but, how?" 

"Oh, it's very simple. The device 'polls' the brain and transmits the information to the receiver. In simple terms, it would have allowed you to pilot the plane simply by thinking about it." 

"Doctor - thought control is of the realms of science-fiction. The delay factor alone..." 

"...is negligible. Have a look at the diagrams. If all you want is to do simple course corrections, or even a radar-sweep, then the delay from conscious thoughts is irrelevant - you have plenty of time. The device also has two other modes. In the second mode, any movements made by the pilot are mimicked by the Battloid." 

"And in the third mode?" asked Thallin 

"Your brain activity is suppressed. The impulses from your brain to your body are filtered out. Physical-movement impulses are transfered to the Battloid and not to your body. Involuntary responses, such as heart-beat and breathing are maintained by the module." 

Thallin sat there, stunned by what he had been told. "How-" he squeeked, then cleared his throat. "How do you know all that?" 

Lang sighed. "This design is a variation on one I saw inside the SDF-1's main computer after it crashed. I erased the design specs my self after copying over what I thought we would need from them." 

"You erased them?" asked Thallin increduously. "Why? That control system would give our pilots the edge they need - we're getting creamed out there." 

"Think, Thallin. Don't you think I realise full well how badly we are doing?" Lang reached over and tapped the blueprints. "But it is a small step that devides control-by-thoughts and thought-control." Lang sat back in his chair and looked at a picture of Earth taken from Lunar orbit. "I would rather bear the consequences of not having that device, rather than handing over a method of total population control to those fools at UEG headquarters." 

"Don't you believe they'd do what is right?" 

Lang snorted. "I may be a scientist, Thallin, but I also studied human history. No scientific discovery was ever made that was not soon turned to the purpose of war... or of dictatorship. No, this discovery will remain undiscovered." Lang grabbed a lighter from one of his drawers, bunched up the blueprints in his hands and applied a flame to them. He watched impassively as the blueprints burned. When the last of the paper had turned to ashes, he brushed them onto a folder and dumped them into the oubliettes and into the recycling system. The pile of electronic components soon followed. "It's a good thing you disassembled that AI," remarked Lang. 

"Sorry?" asked Thallin. "What do you mean?" 

"I mean that the AI's EEG was tuned to your frequency, correct?" 

"Correct," answered Thallin. 

"But you hadn't built - or installed - the second unit?" 

"Right." Thallin paused, not seeing where this was leading to, "So?" 

"So the AI would have been receiving your thoughts as a jumbled mess," explained Lang. "And not just thoughts, but emotions as well. Especially emotions, since they require less interpretation." Lang turned to face Thallin. "That AI would have responded strongly to your emotions and to how you felt about things. It would have behaved rather unbalanced in times when you felt stressed." 

Flashes of memories burned their way through Thallin's mind - Izabelle over-reaction to Thallin's attraction to Kay; Tamara Sam'di's death after a period of extreme stress; the way Thallin felt this morning in Kay's office. 

Thallin's train of thought screeched to a halt. Kay's office. Thallin played back the incident in his mind, the shame he felt at having been out-manouvered, the pain as he thought Kay was about to destroy the components he needed to save Izabelle. And throughout this entire ordeal, Izabelle had been sensing his emotions. 

<oooh, boy!> 

Forward to Chapter 26.
Back to Chapter 24. 

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