Devil's Plaything (20 page)

G
.I. Chuck snakes past a drag queen on stilts, a three-headed dog, and a throng of not-costumed but drunken revelers, albeit polite ones. Noe Valley is the upscale, label-conscious neighborhood adjacent to the Castro, where the revelers generally are more unruly, and less dressed.

I'd like at this moment to cultivate Grandma's two skills: the ability to stay calm and, if necessary, do karate. Screw Pauline's admonitions that I'm melodramatic. I'm feeling entitled.

When we're four blocks off the main drag, Chuck takes a sharp right, and disappears from view. I pick up speed. Moments later, I'm at the spot where Chuck disappeared from view. It's the entrance to an alley, more like a narrow one-way street that bisects a handful of million-dollar attached row-houses. Light from the back door of one flat that is halfway down the block provides me meager vision. I can make out the trash and recycling bins parked neatly behind each residence, but no Chuck.

Maybe he made it to the other side of the alley/street. I start hustling to follow his tracks. I make it two steps when I'm pulled violently backwards.

My mask is knocked off, and I feel something soft but tight around my neck.

“I didn't spend a lifetime in the military without learning how to tell when I'm being followed by a gorilla,” my attacker says in my ear. Chuck.

He loosens his grip on what I'm guessing is his scarf, now around my neck, not his.

“Mr. Idle, whom do you work for?”

“Medblog. Eventually, you,” I manage to squeak out.

“No one else?”

“I do some other freelance work.”

This conversation is ridiculous.

“Why are you following me? I agreed to meet you,” he says.

“My grandmother's been taken.”

“What?” Alarm.

“Let go of my neck.”

He doesn't. “What did you say about your grandmother?”

“Someone took her. Knocked me out and kidnapped her. Does it seem all that unlikely, given how easily you subdued me with cashmere?”

He pulls the scarf away. I crane my neck to look at him.

“I think they'd teach journalists better surveillance techniques.”

“Look, I don't trust anyone at this point. No offense. On the bright side, you got the better of me.”

“You look green,” he says.

I turn my head to the side and throw up. It's the result of being drugged on an empty stomach, and then having my body jolted by whiplash.

“Jesus, Idle.”

Bent at the waist, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. I take a deep breath and taste the flavor of soured milk. I turn my head and spit. I stand upright, and get a shot of light-headedness.

“I need your help finding my grandmother,” I say. “But, frankly, your story doesn't add up. I think you're involved with Biogen, and Adrianna. And . . .” I pause.

“What?” he says.

“You're not injured.”

“What?”

“You supposedly were shot outside my house. Now you're evading and flattening me like an Olympic sprinter and wrestler.”

“Flesh wound.”

I shake my head. I reach into my pocket for the bullets I found on the ground outside my apartment. I pull a couple out and show him.

“How do I know you didn't just drop these on the ground?”

He raises his eyebrows; is that really what I think?

“Looks like an automatic. May I have it traced?”

I hand one to him and shrug. I've got another. He takes it.

“Your grandmother's been taken? Where? How?” He seems empathic, concerned.

“Why do you care?”

“I worry about my employees and their families.”

Absurd.

“Chuck, may I tell you about the secret document?”

“You found a secret document?”

“I've written one.”

I commence my bluff.

“It's a preliminary account of what's going on with the Human Memory Crusade, and Biogen, and military investors—specifically, you.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“I've included the part about Dr. Pete Laramer, and Biogen's proposed merger with a Swiss biotech company. Sounding more familiar?”

“You're cute when you're making things up.”

Still glib, but I have his attention.

“My thesis goes like this: A group of scientists and doctors backed by the government is studying the impact of computer use on memory.”

As I air my theories, I realize they feel like non-fiction.

“The bad guys are using the Human Memory Crusade as a front—tinkering with memories under the auspices of recording them.”

I pause and reflect on what I've gleaned about Adrianna. She seems like a decent person, and she reached out to me for help. I recall that Dr. Laramer studied deep brain-scanning technology, earned a patent for looking at memory centers. Where does he fit in? If at all?

“Nat?”

I continue, more pieces falling into place. “They didn't start as bad guys. Not all of them. There were good intentions to study the impact of heavy computer use on memory loss. But something went wrong. Or someone inside the camp discovered how to use the technology to a different and devious end. To tinker with memories, override them, or erase them. When Adrianna found out, she tried to figure out what was going on, or to tell someone—me. Biogen freaked out because it couldn't have its reputation smeared before the big merger goes through.”

I'm making all kinds of leaps, but they feel right.

“Sounds thin. Erasing memories? How?”

“Cortisol.” I recall that Adrianna studied the impact of cortisol on the brain. “It's a stress hormone. It's really quite a wonderful thing that kicks in to help us through intense physical and emotional experiences. You've heard the stories of when a dad lifts a car off the ground to save his trapped child, right? That's cortisol. Good stuff, except that like any powerful drug, it has some downsides.”

I pause because I'm going from educated guessing to pure guesswork. What I'm thinking is that one downside of cortisol may be that it might kill memory cells. But how exactly? And how did the cortisol get into the brain of the test subjects? Was it injected at the laboratory sites, like the fake dental office?

Another possibility hits me—a shocking one.

“The computer,” I say. “The butterflies. You've figured out a way to stimulate chemical releases through computer interaction. Fascinating technology developed by and for the military industrial complex.”

He shakes his head, the meaning of this gesture unclear to me.

“You've put this all in a secret document?”

I stare Chuck in his eyes. They betray the deliberately vague emotion of a hostile witness trying not to appear too unfriendly.

“E-mailed to a couple of friends, and asked them not to open unless something happens to me.”

“The old don't-open-the-envelope-unless-I-disappear trick, but updated for the Internet era. Nicely done.”

I nod.

Chuck is quiet for several seconds.

“Up until you said ‘cortisol,' I thought you were bluffing,” he finally says.

“My grandmother learned something about the project, right? She's carrying critical information. So you've taken her. Where is she?”

“Let's get out of this alley.”

“Tell me where she is, or the world gets a big dose of my fancy journalism.”

“Slow down, Woodward. I need to find your grandmother as much as you do.”

“Why?”

He pauses.

“Why, Chuck? Who has her?”

“Lane is ground zero.”

H
e takes two steps away from me.

“Of what?” I nearly shout. I take two quick steps, catch him and reach for his arm and pull him around. “Does this have to do with her past?”

He shakes me off and starts walking away.

“Wildfire?” I say. “Is ground zero the same as wildfire?”

There's a hitch in his step but he doesn't turn around. Without looking back, he says, “There's something I need to show you. Someone you need to meet.”

We walk three blocks in silence and he ascends the stairs of a boxy three-story home with an over-sized front window. He looks both ways and speaks quietly.

“Get in here if you want to see what happens when science goes wrong.”

I'm met by a hippopotamus.

In Chuck's foyer hangs a giant stuffed hippo head with a toothy overbite, mounted on a leather backing. Chuck walks directly through the entrance and into a doorway on the left. I follow. From upstairs, I hear a voice: “Mr. Chuck?”

He presses an intercom on the wall, and says: “I'll be up shortly. Please keep Victor entertained.”

We stand in a living room decorated in Hunter Chic. Mounted on the wall are a stuffed cheetah, a black bear, and something from the antelope/elk family. The rest of the room is modern—stylized metal coffee table, sharp-cornered couch, and, of course, a flat-panel TV big enough to watch from space.

“Is my grandmother safe?”

“I assume so.”

“Why?”

“I need more information,” he says. “What happened to her? Where? When?”

“You really don't know.”

He purses his lips, looks me in the eye, and then glances away. He doesn't know.

When I first met G.I. Chuck, he'd had a sty beneath his eye. Now it's inflamed with a hordeolum, a white pimple that means his infection is intensifying but, I have to wonder, if that's a by-product of stress taxing his immune system.

“Chuck, you're getting no information out of me. None. Not until you explain what's going on. You can shoot me and stuff me but no matter what you do, information is now going in a single direction in this conversation.”

“Sit,” he says. “I'll be right back.”

“Who took my grandmother?”

“Let me get some things to show you.”

Damn it. What choice do I have?

Chuck walks out.

I see a stainless steel refrigerator built into a cabinet beneath the cheetah. “Can I grab a water?”

“Help yourself,” I hear from the other room.

I open the fridge and take a bottle of water. But I'm looking for something else—I'm not exactly sure what until I see it sitting beneath the fridge: the steel glint of a wine opener. The proverbial sharp object. I slip it into my pocket.

Chuck returns, holding a sleek, maroon-colored Dell laptop in his left hand and a small projector in his right. He opens the computer and plugs the projector into it. Onto the wall, he projects an image of a title page of a presentation. The title reads: “Human Memory Crusade.”

“Listen first, then I'll show you the slide deck.”

I can't believe it. In this region and era, even the dark conspiracies have a PowerPoint presentation.

“You're theories are half right,” he begins. “You've missed the main point: We started trying to
enhance
memory.”

He explains that Biogen and Dr. Laramer teamed up to determine whether there might be a way to enhance memory capacity through heavy computer use. For Laramer, this was a cool science project; for Biogen, an opportunity to cater to 70 million baby boomers and their parents losing memories—or terrified they will.

“Great market, right? This country is
obsessed
with memory.”

He points out we are maniacal recorders of our own lives—photos, blogs, diaries, YouTube videos, and on and on. Memories have become a perverse way of immortalizing ourselves by looking backwards.

I have to concede this to him, but it still doesn't all fit so neatly. “Where does the military come in?”

“I can't talk about it.”

“Tell that to the papers after I broadcast it across the blogosphere.”

“Hear me out.”

“Khe Sahn,” I say, a seeming non sequitur.

I remember that I'd seen an ornery short man leave the dental offices wearing a Vietnam vet's insignia. It strikes me that the military's interest involves modifying memories of military personnel. I tell this to Chuck.

“You're dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder,” I venture.

“Hear me out.”

He hits a button on his computer and the presentation brings up its first slide. It's an elderly man, with thin white hair and stooped shoulders, playing on a computer. G.I. Chuck hits the button again, magnifying the image of the computer screen the old man is looking at. In the middle of the screen is a query: Tell me about your experiences in high school.

That's not the interesting part.

What's odd are the numerous images and statements surrounding the prompt. At the top is a ticker of information, like a news crawl on CNN. It reads: “PLAY GAMES ANYTIME YOU WANT,” and “THANKS FOR BEING PART OF THE CRUSADE.” On the right is an airplane trailing a banner that says: “Nice Chevrolet!” Filling out the screen are a half dozen multi-colored butterflies. It's chaos—digital overload.

It helps explains Grandma's transcripts.

“Heavy sensory input,” I say. “Big deal. We get it all the time.”

“The conventional wisdom is that we enhance our mental capacities through regular use,” he says. “That our brain is a veritable muscle that we can build through exercise.”

“That was the hope of ADAM.”

“Of what?”

“Biogen's software: Advanced Development and Memory.”

“Right. Nicely synthesized.”

I can't tell if he's patronizing me.

He explains that for years, Biogen—along with every other biotech company—has been working on anti-dementia drugs. They've got an interesting traditional drug in the pipeline. They believed they could increase the drug's effectiveness by stimulating the brain through computer use. If they could prove that theory, it would be an incredible scientific breakthrough, to say nothing of a multibillion-dollar entrepreneurial one.

It's a powerful thought, but not at all inconsistent with a host of recent neurological developments.

I recently blogged about researchers at Stanford using real-time MRIs to develop new ways to treat chronic pain. In the studies, patients experiencing pain were shown images of their brains with the regions of the brain lit up that were affected—activated by heavy blood flow—during the pain episode. The researchers sought to coax patients to meditate, breathe, and use other tactics to diminish the size of the affected area.

Separately, I've written about research into the effects of compulsive computer use on the brain almost since my first postings. The research shows, at the least, that the heavy and regular stimulation generates neuro-chemicals linked to addiction. And, more broadly, researchers have discovered in the last few years that the brain is much more plastic than we ever previously thought.

So why not study what happens to the brain's memory center during computer use? Why not try to stimulate neuro-chemicals that facilitate memory retention? After all, memory is an essential part of the human experience
and
the thing we are losing at an alarming rate.

Although I'm not buying the whole story, big parts make sense.

“What went wrong?” I ask.

Chuck brings up the next slide. It's an image of the brain. Two small, banana-shaped regions in the center of the brain are highlighted, drawn out of proportion with the others. These are the hippocampi.

“The research team noticed that some Human Memory Crusade users were experiencing accelerated memory loss,” he says.

He hits the button again, revealing an image of a collection of cells. Above the image is a caption: Magnification, 75,000:1.

“I'm over my head here,” Chuck says. “In lay terms, these are memory cells.”

“And they were dying,” I interrupt.

“Cortisol,” he says.

“Of course.” Even though I'd guessed this earlier, I'm hit hard by the revelation.

The hyper-stimulation released cortisol.

“So the brain wasn't strengthened but weakened,” I say.

He nods. “You understand how this works?”

“Maybe.”

“Explain it to me. I've heard it a dozen times, and I never can quite grasp the science.”

“What happens to you when you multitask?”

“I get a lot of shit done.”

“But at a cost.” I stand, start to pace, and think aloud.

“When you've got a ton of information flowing—when you're trying to juggle e-mail, browsing, phone calls, whatever—you're putting yourself in a highly stressful situation. Your brain is fighting to keep up.”

“How stressful can e-mail be?”

“Don't think of it like that. Think of the computer as a virtual environment—our twenty-first-century jungle. We spend all day interacting with it. If we were in an actual jungle, it would be highly stressful if we had to face challenges from lots of different directions—lions on one side, alligators on another, hot sun, battles for food, whatever.”

“So?”

“In that environment, our adrenal glands produce brain cortisol, a lot of it. It's a stress hormone. It helps us focus intensely for a short period so we can survive.”

“Okay, I get that analogy.”

I'm sure he's patronizing me. But I continue hypothesizing.

“The problem is that cortisol kills memory cells.”

“Bingo.” He looks impressed.

I don't know enough about the neuroscience to know if this is a big deal, though I sense from the violence and secrecy involved here that Biogen and Laramer have discovered something radical.

“Say something,” Chuck says.

“You're killing my grandmother's brain.”

He looks away.

“It's worse than you think.”