Analog SFF, March 2012 (16 page)

"Certainly,” I said. “It's as plain as Andrew Jackson's face on Mount Rushmore."

"Right. Then you'll do something about it?"

"I'll talk to him."

Clarissa eyed me. Her expression suggested that she thought I might be a little too soft for this job. I left her in the hallway, frowning and shaking her head.

What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. Catchy, but that old saying didn't apply when you've got the government to back up any web of lies you care to tell. I say it, and the government makes it true. Or makes it seem to be true. Sounds kind of nice, doesn't it? It's not. I wanted to be one of those people whose truths weren't quite so elastic.

But you can get awfully used to the government's magical transformation of lies into truths. Clarissa, for example.

I'd have to be careful. She wasn't who she said she was, which meant either she was an enemy or a colleague. Colleague, I figured, but I couldn't be sure because the government guarded their agent listing with ultra secrecy.

But most bad guys take the time to bone up on whatever their cover story indicates they're supposed to know. Government personnel, on the other hand, sometimes got into bad habits, and in this case, Clarissa made a mistake—no matter how handily the government can manipulate data, it can't change the faces on Mount Rushmore. A person claiming to be from Rapid City should know who's on Mount Rushmore and who isn't.

I found Poe in the basement. Surrounded by a retinue of technicians and other scientists, Poe scrolled through a chart that displayed a squiggly line. It looked like one of those brain-wave EEG patterns. Every so often he drew a circle with a red pen.

The crowd parted and I stepped through. I watched over his shoulder for a minute. From the murmuring of the onlookers, I gathered that this data somehow involved the missing hibernators at or around the time they disappeared, although the director had told me none of the data had been recorded. I asked Poe about the chart.

"It's not a medical chart,” said Poe. “It's a printout from a sensor embedded in the equipment that monitors the hibernators. The sensor is supposed to keep track of how well the device is functioning, but I've adapted the data to suit another purpose."

"And interpreted it,” said someone skeptically.

"Indeed,” said Poe, without looking up. “It suggests these beings aren't human."

The youngsters stared at him in awe. More of the older scientists folded their arms across their chests and eyed him warily.

Most people believed the hibernators had been at least slightly genetically altered, but I wasn't sure what Poe was talking about. “You mean they came from space? And holed up in the South Dakota Badlands?"

"The bodies didn't come from space,” said Poe, circling another section of the waveform and then scrolling down to another section of the chart. “The beings that currently inhabit them, however, apparently did come from space."

Eyes that had been looking at Poe warily began to roll.

After circling one more pattern, Poe set the chart aside and looked at me. I kept my expression neutral.

"I think this chart,” he told me, “may be a magnetic artifact. A side effect, if you will, of the passage of a remarkable life form and its incorporation into these bodies."

"Two of them,” I ventured. “Which is why they awoke."

"Exactly."

"And what are these hypothetical life forms? Some kind of radiation?"

A fleeting expression of respect came over Poe's face. “Maybe, maybe not. But it's a good analogy. It's the same sort of analogy I would use."

I glanced around the room. The six remaining hibernators rested in their cocoons, appearing lifeless except for the tell-tale LEDs that announced their torpid vital signs. The young scientists and technicians had moved closer to Poe Weffle, afraid of missing a single word of what he said. The older ones had distanced themselves, as if worried that Poe's heresies were contagious.

"Think of an atom,” said Poe. “It's a collection of particles—electrons, protons, and neutrons. It's a system. Atoms emit radiation when orbiting electrons shift from higher to lower energy levels, and absorb radiation in the opposite case. Why not consider a system of interacting cells such as neurons capable of the same feat?"

I tried to follow his thinking. “You're saying something flew into their brains?"

"Essentially. I think it's a kind of cognitive energy. It fits into a puzzle I've been studying and thinking about for some time. The law of energy conservation is well established in physics. Add up all of the energies before and after an event and they have to be equal. If they aren't equal, it means there's a hidden source of energy we didn't know about. Now consider the conscious aspects of the human brain. Consciousness hasn't been a part of physics equations even though according to certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, it seems to play an important role; the act of observation—the making of a measurement—shifts the probabilities of the wave function. Collapses the probabilities down to one, as physicists sometimes say. It seems to me that if you include consciousness into equations, the energies don't balance."

"How much energy can a brain generate?"

"It depends on how you look at it, and that's the problem that interests me. In terms of electrical energy, the output of the brain is miniscule—a few watts. A very dim light bulb. But that doesn't make much sense if you consider how the brain gives humans the capability to create technology and industry that can move mountains. A person has a brilliant idea, and suddenly a problem is solved; a mountain can be moved, a barrier overcome. The idea creates or saves an enormous amount of time and energy. Yet it was born out of a watt or two. The equation doesn't balance."

The young scientists appeared to be fascinated. Poe mesmerized me a little bit too. “So you're saying there's some kind of energy, this cognitive energy, which balances the equation."

Poe nodded. “It's like a potential energy that can be transformed into other forms of energy—solving problems, moving mountains, and so forth. It exists as part of the human nervous system. Maybe other complex nervous systems as well. And if it exists . . ."

We leaned closer.

Poe finished gathering his thoughts. “If it exists, I believe it could be transformed into all kinds of different forms. Radiation, for instance. More precisely, some kind of analogue to electromagnetic radiation. I don't have any proof that such radiation is real, but just because we've never detected it doesn't disqualify it. We didn't know that light is just a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum until Maxwell proposed his theory and Hertz confirmed it in the late nineteenth century."

Someone in the back of the room let out a snort. “Now he thinks he's James Clerk Maxwell."

A remark born of jealousy. I waited for more constructive skepticism. It wasn't long in coming.

"How did the radiation leave a pattern on that chart?” asked someone.

"I don't think it was the radiation as such, I think the pattern came from the absorption of the radiation-like energy into the two hibernator brains. I'm guessing that the absorption and admission of this energy involves a molecular rearrangement of some sort. Pure speculation on my part, but it seems a likely possibility. If the absorption and animation, if you will, rearranged some of the molecules or molecular structures in the brain, it's conceivable that the process slightly altered the brain's magnetic properties. That's often the case when electrically active components change shape or configuration. So I examined the cocoons of the two missing hibernators. Although the output of the monitors weren't continuously recorded, I discovered a sensor that records some of the cocoon's internal voltages."

"That's the chart you were looking at?” I asked.

Poe nodded. “The changing magnetic fields associated—hypothetically associated, I should say—with the absorption could have induced some stray voltages in the machine, which would have resulted in fluctuations in the chart. A short time before the escape of the two hibernators was noticed, the cocoon voltages displayed a remarkable series of oscillations. I theorize that they're side effects of the absorption."

A skeptic's voice rose above the murmur that Poe's statement created. “If what you're saying is true, then neuroscientists have misunderstood the brain for a long time. Neuroscientists believe consciousness is the result of certain electrochemical activities and patterns in the brain. Not some kind of molecular rearrangement."

"I'm not equating molecular arrangement with consciousness. I'm merely suggesting that it's part of the process—which, by the way, remains shrouded in mystery. Electrochemical activity is critical in the generation of conscious thoughts, but it might not be solely responsible for it. Specific configuration of the brain's structure may also be necessary. And when the molecules change configuration or geometry, cognitive energy may be emitted or absorbed."

The skeptics began to lose patience. “And how does this cognitive energy propagate? Perhaps you'd like to resurrect the old idea of a luminiferous ether. Except instead of light, it carries thoughts. Maybe a cogniferous ether."

A few derisive snorts came from the back of the room.

Poe didn't get angry. “Catchy term—mind if I use it?"

I marveled at Poe's serenity in the face of aggressive, even taunting critics. Like Clarissa, he didn't fit into the mold either.

As I stared at him, Poe suddenly looked at me. “And that's my theory, Mr. Mathers, as to how those two hibernators woke up and sneaked out of here, perhaps taking the guard and orderly to help cover their tracks, without your omnipresent sensors detecting any sort of intrusion."

I spent the rest of the day sifting through tons of data at the mobile command post in the supersonic transport, sitting in a secure area at the airfield. At first I limited the search area to a radius of fifty miles centering on the hospital and did a random spot check. Which turned up nothing.

Poe's theory bothered me. What if those things—the hibernators—had some kind of strange intelligence inside them?

Bizarre, puzzling, almost unbelievable. Cognitive energy? Intelligent radiation? Sounded like bafflegab to me. But Poe seemed to believe it. If true, it was a security agent's nightmare, one of the worst possible scenarios. You didn't have a good chance of success when chasing someone, or something, whose behavioral tendencies were complete mysteries.

I expanded the search to include some of the largest Midwestern cities. A possible target turned up in Chicago—a series of broad-spectrum cams picked up the face of a man early this morning that might be the male hibernator. Image analysis algorithms gave a seventy percent probability of a match. The analysis programs returned a similar probability for the images of a woman taken by a river cam in St. Louis. I called the boss, who issued an emergency alert in those cities. Agents would flood the streets, and the surveillance team would scrutinize every byte of data.

In the evening I received a priority-coded message from the laboratory back at Bethesda, Maryland. I'd insisted on taking DNA samples of every person who had handled the hibernators or visited the basement, including the researchers and physicians—no exceptions. Call it paranoia if you must, but I didn't want to take any chances. Bethesda checked to see if any of the DNA sequences contained the same genetic alterations as the hibernators. If two hibernators could wake up and walk around as if they belonged here, why not others? But the report came back negative—no matches.

But a nagging feeling continued to gnaw at me. Who or what were these hibernators? Where did they come from? From space, as Poe Weffle believed? Were the bodies convenient receptacles for this hypothetical cognitive energy? But why would it—they?—come here? And had they come before? The empty spaces in the cave suggested they had.

Whoever or whatever these things turned out to be, this might not have been their first visit. It had been planned and set up nicely—bodies squirreled away in a desolate area, waiting for something. This kind of situation may have occurred repeatedly.

The thought sent a shiver down my spine. How many of those things were loose? And what were they doing?

And how deeply had they penetrated the government?

Who could tell how highly, if at all, they'd infiltrated the decision-making processes in this country, and other countries? I didn't even know who my boss was.

One look at the hospital cafeteria's offerings sent me scrambling back to the diner across the street. But my appetite had abandoned me anyway.

About eight o'clock I found myself outside the small office that the hospital had provided Poe Weffle. He sat behind his desk, poring over some data. Glancing up, he saw me loitering at the door. “Any news?” he asked.

I shook my head. I wasn't ready to trust Poe yet, so I didn't mention the possible sightings in Chicago and St. Louis.

"I perceive,” said Poe, “my theory troubles you.” He waved his hand, inviting me into his office. I sat down in a rickety chair beside the desk. “If it's any consolation, most of the scientific community entertain serious doubts, to put it mildly."

"These aliens—they're parasites?"

"Hypothetical aliens. And I'm not sure how I'd classify them. But if they're real, they would seem to require a corporeal habitat every once in a while. Parasites, however, may or may not be the right description."

"Even if your theories are wrong, we know they can hibernate."

"The bodies, you mean. The bodies could be human, perhaps cloned and modified—"

"I don't think so. If they were cloned, the originals would be in the databases."

Poe leaned back in his chair. “I guess you're right. I hadn't thought of that."

"Can they . . .” I found it difficult to put my question into words. Poe waited patiently. “Can they infect humans? I mean, unmodified humans?"

Poe shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. And once again, the term you use is value-laden. I'm not sure ‘infection’ is a good description. And, may I remind you once again, all of this is hypothetical. I've outlined a scenario, my hypothesis, which is only supported by my interpretation of a lot of squiggly lines on a voltage chart in the two cocoons."