NLI-10 Read online

  The gears continued to turn, the sensation in the back of their brains increasing. Tingling turning to light thumping, a heartbeat in their heads, the time blinking into the box in the top right of the grid.

  “Did I do that?” they all asked, simultaneously. The thumping in their heads subsiding, gears returning to a slumber. The time continued to tick forward to ten fourteen of its own accord.

  “That wasn't so difficult, was it?” said Whark, pleased with herself.

  “What is this?” asked Farah.

  “Some kind of memetic operating system, right?” said Micah.

  Whark didn't say a word.

  “The tones have been installing it in our subconscious, the flashes building the user interface, the sessions this week optimizing it for our brains, uncompressing the data, propagating the OS with peripheral apps, like the clock. We haven't seen the time or date for weeks and as soon as we have the time presented to us, in a lizard-brain state, it activated the app and...” the time ticked over to ten fifteen “... it's keeping track of the time.”

  “Well said, Mr Gorely.” said Whark. In his soliloquy, she had stepped over to the light switch and started bringing up the lights slowly.

  The group were expecting the grid to fade as the room became illuminated, but it stayed in their vision, the time continuing to tick away.

  “Look around.” said Whark. “Look at your fellow subjects.”

  They followed her instructions, and as Sarah looked at Alex to her right, dots appeared on Alex's face, tracking her features, a pop-up appearing in her vision giving her name, age, race, occupation, and personal notes she had subconsciously made. Alex was staring right back at her having the same experience. They all were.

  “This is insane.” said Micah, turning from Farah to Rob.

  Sarah looked back over to Leah, FacialRecog bringing up the same headings they had for Alex, but with information missing. Whark could tell from Sarah's expression that she was missing data

  “Missing information can be filled in with supposition, or asking your fellow subjects to fill in the blanks.” she said.

  Sarah looked at Leah, and decided to start off light, filling in the occupation heading.

  “Do you have a job?” she asked.

  Leah shook her head. Sarah felt the tingling in the back of her mind as the operating system updated the information, the occupation category filled itself in with 'unemployed'.

  “Why are you here?” she asked Leah. “You've never talked about why... you know, how you're a devout Catholic and yet you're in a medical trial... isn't that against the rules?”

  Leah didn't respond. Her body was becoming overwhelmed with emotion, and before Sarah could leave her seat to comfort her, tears were already flowing. The others stopped firing questions back and forth to join Leah in her chair, attempting to help stop her tears.

  “My father...” she snivelled. “He has a genetic disorder... but the only doctor that will treat him is in America, and... it's so expensive... this was the only way I could get the money...”

  The group put arms around her, stroked her hair, told her she had nothing to cry about, and that she was doing a good thing. Rob told her God would understand, that she was willing to sacrifice herself for the good of her father. She took solace in that, and hugged him, whilst everyone else tried to ignore that their profile for Leah was updating with all the information she had just given them.

  Whark watched the display of emotions and was unphased, waiting for a suitable amount of time to pass before ordering the group back in their seats to continue the day's work.

  The rest of the morning was spent testing out the basic apps built into the OS. Next they were given a series of ten objects to remember. They were shown them for ten seconds and made to write down a list, which most of the group were accurate at recalling. The objects were brought back with a further five, then another ten, then twenty, at which point all of them were forgetting even the first ones.

  “In the grid you'll see a menu for peripheral apps. Amongst them is a 'notes' option.” said Whark, waiting a moment for them all to find it before bringing the thirty items out again.

  The group looked at the objects and the note-taking app filled with words as they thought about them. She had the objects taken away, and waited a minute before instructing the group to write them down, this time they were all correct.

  “Well done.” said Whark. “That's enough for today, let's get you all some well-earned rest.”

  She left the room before the group could respond, the Balderlies waiting at the door to march them through to the mess hall for lunch, before taking them back to the living quarters.

  As they lay in bed, the lights dimming around them, each of them had yet more questions burning in the back of their minds.

  “What do you think the applications of this are?” Rob asked.

  “Think about what Hololens and Magic Leap are used for, then take away the need for hardware...” said Micah.

  “Games, recreation, medical, therapeutic, military, the list goes on... said Alex, half-asleep.

  None of them liked that 'military' sat amongst her suggestions, but all of them were too exhausted to say so. The conversation died, and they all passed out. The operating system's user interface still hung in their mind's eye, even in sleep. Infiltrating their dreams, analysing data as their conscious minds lay fallow, filling with more content as the room tones hummed and whirred through the night.

  7

  APEX PROJECT AP_NLI-10

  Marion Whark Daily Report #21

  Subjects continue to act and respond favourably as the functions of the OS are explored and tested.

  Closed tests will be carried out for the forthcoming week, with a live fire scheduled for day 28.

  Bearing in mind that we are already beyond observed breaking points of the early trials, I am confident that the staggered installation of the NeuroLoader Infrastructure has contributed to the patients' continuing stable mental health. That said, we are monitoring subjects closely in case of outliers, but all parameters appear to be within acceptable levels at time of reporting.

  Side effects continue to be minimal to none. After the findings of the 09 trial, addition of peripheral applications are being staggered, as was installation, uploaded as subjects sleep to remain dormant until activated by key phrases in testing sessions. Based on observations thusfar at Cultybraggan and the other facilities, this is proving to be the most stable installation method we have attempted.

  Marion Whark sent off the report to her superiors and sat back in her chair, spinning it around to look at the skyline. The sun was low on the horizon, steadily crawling upwards for the day ahead, which she would spend as every day this week, with the subjects. She hated having to babysit them through the steps of the incredibly simple activation and testing of peripheral apps, but didn't trust that her nurses or doctors would be watching the subjects close enough. In the previous trials they had lost resources, subjects and personnel (in order of importance) due to previous mentors not paying enough attention to the subjects, and she wasn't going to let this experiment go the way of the others. This had been her life for the last ten years. Ten years of fighting to convince her superiors that the NLI project had merit, that it was worth the investment and time, the cover-ups and hush money. Ten years of fighting to prove that both she and the project had value.

  Whark got up from her chair and looked over the digital London skyline before her. This would once again be her view when she returned in nine weeks with documentation, and perhaps a subject in tow. She wondered who it might be. The girl who's parents she killed, the tranny whose operations and treatment she green-lit, the cousin of the little Muslim boys she wouldn't let leave Tehran, the former born-again she found in a flop house, the apparently reformed hacker she bailed out, the Chinaman she had blacklisted from comedy clubs, or the little Christian girl whose father she'd ordered injected with a toxin that was retarding his DNA. All of them w
ere playthings, toys she had been arranging and manipulating to get them desperate enough to join the trial, each with the right genetic and psychological profiles to reap the best results from the final experiment. She was done with random subjects, prison volunteers, the mentally ill or the homeless. This was her grand finale, and she had cast it perfectly.

  Whark waited for her subjects to finish their breakfast and had the orderlies bring them to the black room, where she ran them through the object and facial recognition tests again. She needed to be certain the apps were still functioning before moving on to the new additions.

  “Now we're moving on to image recall.” she said, enunciating her words clearly, the keyphrase unlocking the app and booting it up in the back of her subjects' brains. She watched intently at their reactions, looking for involuntary movements, twitches or glitches, but there were none.

  “This test is similar to note-taking, but rather than fill a mental document with words, I want you to take a snapshot with your minds.

  They looked at her with confusion. She took out a book, opened to a page at random and turned it to face them all for a few seconds before closing it.

  “Read it to me.” she said.

  There were shrugs and apologies from her playthings. She was not amused.

  “You saw the page?” she asked.

  They nodded.

  “Then play back the memory.”

  All seven of them stared into middle distance and tried to remember it. She could see they were struggling, and reluctantly took them through the process step by step.

  “See it in your mind's eye.” she said. “The image recall function will take that image and present it to you within the interface.”

  They continued to stare, trying to recreate the image. Whark stifled a scoff and eye roll at how stupid they all looked, staring at the walls ahead of them as they tried to activate the app.

  “I think I've got it!” said Micah.

  “Me too.” said Alex.

  The success of two of their number seemed to make it easier for the others, and soon they all managed to pluck the image from their short term memories.

  “Read the page.” said Whark.

  “It's too far away!” said Leah.

  “Don't be obstinate.” Whark snapped. “The human eye captures images at five hundred and seventy six megapixels, whereas the average camera only has a hundred. Scale up the image, zoom in, whatever you want to call it. You all have twenty-twenty vision, you saw the book, so you can read it.”

  She tried to calm herself down, knowing that she was not using the right tone to get good results. She wanted another coffee, and for the first time in five months, a cigarette.

  “The champagne. Entre Nous, that champagne of theirs wasn't worth a damn last night.” read Sarah, from the image hovering in front of her eyes.

  “I've never cared for champagne anyway. Let me tell you, Kittredge, it's very important to know about wines.” continued Rob.

  “For instance when you'll take a client out to dinner and will want to be sure of the proper thing to order.” said Alex

  “Now I'll tell you a professional secret.” said Farah.

  “Take quail, for instance. Now most people would order Burgundy with it.” said Micah

  “What do you do? You call for Clos Bougeot 1904, see?” said Pete

  “What are you reading?” asked Leah. “I can't get it to work!”

  She was visibly upset again. Rob got up and went over to comfort her.

  “It's The fucking Fountainhead.” said Rob, reading the title from the top of his scaled view of the recalled book.

  “Fuck The Fountainhead.” said Alex. “Objectivist bullshit.”

  “I can't see it!” said Leah. “Why can't I see it?”

  “Calm down.” Rob told her. “Just breath and relax. Try and think about Miss Whark showing us the book. It was only for a second, but think about it, and hold that image in your mind, this thing they installed will do the rest.”

  “It's not working!” she said, her eyes ruddy.

  “Take a deep breath, don't overthink it, just let it happen.”

  “It's me, isn't it!” she cried. “It's because... It's because I'm not like you, I'm not a drug addict or a ladyboy, I'm not special, I'm not meant to be here!”

  He held her whilst the others watched on, trying not to take offence at her comments.

  Whark also watched the crying girl and pursed her lips. She wasn't expecting this round of subjects to fail at accessing the most basic of apps, let alone having unwarranted emotional outbursts. She would have to report this. It would be a black mark on an otherwise perfect trial, even if it was with the neurotypical baseline subject that was expected to fail. Then again, other than the A-Eyes, she was the only official in the room. The Eyes' recordings could be amended, and perhaps something could happen to the girl that might take precedence over an outburst in a simple test. She mulled on this as she watched the scene play out, building a scenario in which she could make her problem go away.

  “That's all for today.” she said. “Go get lunch, rest up, tomorrow we've got a big day.”

  Whark retired to her office to think her plan through. She pulled up the NeuralNet feeds on her terminal and watched Leah's freak-out before deleting the footage and amending the timestamps of the session. She had already reported that the live fire test would take place in eight days, and bringing it forward might draw suspicion, but she could rearrange the forthcoming weeks worth of training, manipulate the regime to have time to put Leah on a path that would seal her fate. Keep her from besmirching the trial's spotless run thusfar.

  After the sun set on London, Whark retired to her bedroom, flock wallpaper on the walls, four-poster bed at the centre, and a roaring fire in a nook she had installed, with ventilation constructed especially for her proclivity to sleep by real flames rather than in a climate-controlled room. She lay on her Egyptian cotton bedspread and smiled to herself, only a few days of agonizing sessions to get through until this burden was shed and they could launch into phase three with all cylinders firing.

  The next day the lights slowly faded up in the living quarters and Whark watched as the subjects rose from their beds, showered and ate breakfast. She instructed the nurse to tell them that they would be having individual sessions all day, and had the orderlies take them through to the rec room until it was time for them to head to the testing room.

  The nurse took Leah through for the first session of the day. The diminutive blonde followed her in to the room, looking pale and nervous. Whark was waiting for them, welcomed her in with a forced smile and had Leah sit in a chair in darkness, illuminated only by monitors lining the walls. The nurse placed electrodes on her head, over her heart, along her arms and legs. Whark excused the nurse for the first session, insisting on being hands-on for the test. She instructed Leah to sit back and relax whilst she faced the screens and surreptitiously inserted earplugs. When they were in place, she looked down to her watch, touching the screen to activate subtle tones in the the room that made Leah's eyelids grow heavy. In under a minute, she had passed out. Whark swept through the options on her watch screen and switched the selection of tones, a digital groan roaring to life. After the noise hit a crescendo, she set off a third series of digital screams. In her slumber, Leah started to breath heavily as a new program was installed through the sonics.

  Two hours later, Whark was waking Leah, sending her back with the orderlies. She excused herself and allowed the nurse to carry on the tests for the rest of the day. Returning to her office, Whark monitored the A-Eye feeds, as Leah was taken back to the rec room and proceeded to isolate herself with her bible in the corner, shrugging off any attempts by the others to converse. The programming was working just as she expected. Whark flipped the feed back to the testing room to watch Sarah's session, intrigued at how her favourite subject was going to react to the trial ahead.

  The nurse sat Sarah down in the chair, attaching electrodes whi
lst telling her to relax.

  “Those aren't the same electrodes as last time, are they?” asked Sarah, her image recall comparing the electrodes used in previous tests (oval and blue) to the ones currently being attached (white and round).

  “No they're not.” said the nurse, surprised.

  “What do they do that's different?” said Sarah.

  “These connect your vitals and experiences to the NeuralNet, so we have full records of the test.” said the nurse.

  “What is the test?” asked Sarah.

  “Oh it's very easy, you're just going think about your memories, from this very conversation back through to your earliest childhood experience. You're going to hold each one for a few moments and associate some keywords with it, then go to the next one.”

  “Like tagging a YouTube video?” said Sarah.

  “Exactly. It's training your memory to do it by itself. So next time you see, for example, a cat, you can add it to the memory bank of cats or recall all the other cats you've seen in your life to compare it to.”

  “Right...” said Sarah, unsure how useful it would be to be able to have instant recall of cats, and put the example down to the nurse oversharing how she would use image recall.

  The nurse pressed a button on her watch and a low hum of tones played through the walls.

  “We're all set here!” said the nurse. “Why don't you think about the memory of this conversation and attach some tags.”

  Sarah thought about the conversation as instructed. Playing it back was easier than it had been recalling the image of the book the previous day. In addition to having the memory playing out in her mind's eye, she saw a box waiting to be filled with keywords. Thinking for a moment, in an instant the box was filled with the words 'pointless conversation, bad analogy, nurse, experiment, medical trial, cat lady'.

  The nurse huffed. Sarah looked back from middle-distance to see her staring at the monitor, the tags coming up on the screen.