Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Utopia Experiment (A Covert-One novel) Read online

  “But it doesn’t just work on people,” Dresner said, walking back to the podium and looking down at the headset he’d discarded earlier. It had the same warm green glow as Bob Stamen.

  “So why does LayerCake like this headset? I just said you shouldn’t trust the Internet, right?” The icon expanded and a list of hyperlinks appeared: “reviews,” “value,” “details,” and “where to buy.” The “reviews” link expanded and a list of sites including Amazon, ConsumerSearch, and CNET came up. The stars were gone, though, and their ratings were displayed through the glow around their logos.

  “You’ll notice that some of the colors are more transparent than others. That tells you how much data LayerCake has and how authoritative it thinks it is. For instance, it’s going to feel pretty good about Consumer Reports no matter what. But with Amazon, it’s going to take into account the number of reviews and weigh each one based on feedback.”

  It was a concept with incredible potential. Smith wondered if one day he’d be able to glance at patients and determine how they were doing just by the color of their aura—confident that LayerCake was taking into account everything from the blood workup entered seconds before by a basement lab tech to a related illness that occurred twenty years before.

  Dresner put down the headset and strode back to center stage with a hundred sets of eyes locked on him. “Obviously, there’s too much to fully explain here today, so the user manual for both the hardware and the software we’ve developed will be released on our website after the conference. In the meantime, let me open it up to a few questions.”

  Smith threw his hand in the air, as did every other person in the convention center.

  Dresner pointed to a man at the back and a microphone was passed down to him. On screen, a name popped into existence over his head, but it was a neutral color. Dresner had turned off the judgment system, probably to save people the embarrassment of pulsing blood red.

  “You used the term ‘user manual.’ When will you have the approvals you need to release this product to the public?”

  “I don’t need any approvals, Jeff. The system runs off existing wireless and cellular data networks. The tooth mike is a removable piece of electronics installed by a licensed dentist and the skull implants fall under the existing approvals for our hearing system. The only difference is that instead of two pickups seven millimeters across, you’ll have six about half that size. But to answer your question, the Merge will be on sale next week.”

  Another furious round of texting ensued and the icon for DI’s stock price deepened further in color. Smith used everyone’s temporary distraction to put his hand up again. He was just a bit slower than a woman in the front row, though.

  “Do you have to have the implants for the Merge to work?”

  “Absolutely not. We have headsets with built-in electrodes, which we’ll include with every unit, but I’ll warn you that they look a little strange and both the audio and visual resolution is degraded. Also, it obviously isn’t very practical for using with the sleep function.”

  Hands went up again and Dresner pointed.

  “Sleep function?”

  “Did I forget to talk about that?” A sly smile spread across his face. “I think some of you are probably aware of the partnership DI has with the sleep research center at Stanford. And with the success we’ve had in creating a non-pharmaceutical sleep aid that works by manipulating brain waves. Up until now, the machine needed to deliver the therapy’s been about the size of a small car, which has left us in a position where we can only provide inpatient care to people with severe disorders. What we needed was a more practical hardware platform and it turns out that the Merge is perfect. I’m sixty-seven years old and I can tell you that I now sleep like I did when I was twelve.”

  Again, Smith took advantage of the other audience members’ obsession with instant communication, and this time it worked. He stood as his distracted seatmates passed the microphone across.

  LayerCake immediately tagged him with his name and rank, as well as designating him a medical doctor. For a man who went out of his way to avoid the spotlight, it was a bit disturbing. On the other hand, he was grateful as hell that the judgment system was turned off. That would definitely cross the line into too much information.

  “You seem to be able to mentally manipulate the interface’s icons. Could this be used to control artificial limbs? And—kind of unrelated—could the Merge be used to cure blindness?”

  “Excellent questions!” Dresner said, sounding genuinely excited that someone was interested in aspects of his invention that didn’t relate to the billions of dollars it would inevitably rake in. “The short answer on eyesight is yes, absolutely. Assuming normal brain function, two small cameras built into a pair of glasses can transmit excellent binocular vision. Of course, we’ll be providing those units free of charge to people in need. With regard to the icons and prosthetics: It’s something we’re working on. Output has proved to be a tougher problem than input, unfortunately. Control of the icons is still fairly rudimentary—opening, closing, scrolling, and simple selection. So this is going to be something that happens, but on a five- or ten-year horizon.”

  Hands shot up again, but he waved them off. “Look over the manual and if anything is unclear let us know so we can fix it. Or better yet, buy a Merge next week and try it for yourself.”

  7

  Khost Province

  Afghanistan

  YOU! I KNEW IT.”

  Randi flashed her most innocent smile as Dr. Peter Mailen squinted menacingly at her.

  He’d just celebrated his fiftieth birthday but still looked pretty good, with thick, sandy hair and a mustache that he thought made him look like Magnum PI. That probably also explained the Hawaiian shirt peeking from beneath a canvas apron that had faded to the same color gray as the tile walls, but lacked the scattered bullet holes.

  “Took you long enough,” Randi said. “Did they row you over in a dinghy?”

  She skirted past a wall of plastic covering a hole made by a mortar round the week before. The goal was to keep the impromptu morgue cool, but it wasn’t working quite well enough to beat back the creeping stench of decay.

  “The cargo hold of a plane. Nothing like spending endless hours bouncing around with nothing but ten thousand bottles of water to keep you company.”

  She shook her head sympathetically and wandered up to a gurney containing a body covered with a bloodstained sheet. “I specifically told them first class.”

  “I’m a doctor, Randi. I work with live people.” He pointed to the tag wrapped around a toe that was starting to darken from the bacteria working on it. “And while I want to be clear that I’m not an expert in this particular area, the guy on this table doesn’t seem to qualify.”

  “Come on, Pete. You’re a genius and I trust you to be discreet. That’s why you’re here.”

  His expression softened perceptibly. Mailen had always been a sucker for flattery and beautiful blondes—weaknesses Randi had no qualms about exploiting. Besides, it was true. He really was a genius. The fact that he hated doing something he was so good at was just a nasty twist of fate. And not her problem.

  “Tell me what you found out and I promise you more legroom on the way home.”

  “And a stewardess?”

  “Long legs and pouty lips.”

  Other than a suspicious frown, he didn’t move—obviously wanting to display a respectable amount of defiance before caving. She’d flashed another sparkling smile and waited for him to decide when honor had been served. It was the least she could do after dragging him from his cushy gig in DC to a crumbling morgue in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan.

  They stared at each other for longer than she would have predicted, but he eventually let out an exasperated breath and whipped back the sheet. The chest cavity of the headless body had been opened up and Randi crinkled her nose as the smell intensified.

  “I can’t believe you flew me out here for this,
Randi. Did they tell you we took fire on the way?”

  The story she’d gotten from the pilot was that they’d seen a rocket contrail a good thirty miles away, but she still managed to conjure an expression dripping with empathy.

  “I could have been killed,” he mumbled to himself as he scanned a pad full of his own illegible handwriting. “Saw my life pass right before my eyes…”

  “The body, Pete?” she prompted.

  “Well, if you look very closely you’ll see that his head is missing and there’s a bullet in his chest.”

  “Everyone’s a comedian. Which killed him?”

  “The bullet. He was dead when he was decapitated.”

  “Toxicology?”

  “Spotless. Not so much as an aspirin.”

  “You’re sure,” she said, still bothered by the strange behavior she’d reconstructed from the battlefield. Killing field, really.

  “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t sure. And why are you so interested in this guy, anyway? It’s not like the Afghans have never decapitated anyone before.”

  “Sure, they’ll occasionally hack off a head or three. But this was different. It was every man in the village. And it looks like they didn’t try to defend themselves. Not at all.”

  His irritated expression faded a bit as he pondered that scenario. “How many?”

  “Seventy give or take.”

  “Did you bring me one?”

  “A head? No. It looks like they carted them away.”

  “So this wasn’t some kind of ceremonial mass execution. They actually wanted the heads.”

  “Seems like it, but I don’t know why. Maybe they’re working on a jihadist promotional video. But something about this feels wrong to me.”

  “Well, it was obviously incredibly important to them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because they planned ahead. The spine was sawed through first before they finished the job with a serrated knife. And heads aren’t light. Seventy of them would be upward of six hundred pounds.”

  “How long to saw off a head? Hanging around after doing something like this would be risky.”

  “Hard to say exactly.”

  “Is there a body around here that no one’s using? And a saw?”

  “No, Randi. Besides, we’re not talking very long. This wasn’t a handsaw. The chipping suggests a powered circular saw.”

  Randi looked down at the mutilated body and tried to work through what she was being told. “Look, I’m pretty sure I know who’s responsible for this—there’s a neighboring Taliban village that the people of Sarabat have been going at it with probably since before Jesus. But it’s hard to imagine them stopping by the local Sears and buying a battery-powered saw. Last I heard, they didn’t even have the electricity to charge it.”

  “Who knows why people do the things they do,” Mailen said with a shrug. “It’s a crazy world.”

  “That’s not helpful. Why this? And why now? After a couple thousand years of back-and-forth, the Taliban just roll in with no special weapons and kill everyone without taking a single casualty?”

  “Who cares? Pretty soon Afghanistan’s just going to be a bad memory and a few yellowing pages in a history book.”

  “I need to know, Pete.”

  “That’s easy to say. But how exactly are you going to find out?”

  “I figure I’ll go ask them.”

  “Them? You mean the Taliban? I’m not sure they’ll be all that happy to see you.”

  “Maybe not. But this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.”

  Mailen threw the sheet back over the body and began pulling off his apron. “As your doctor, I’d advise you to buy one of those Dresner units instead. I hear they make you sleep like a baby.”

  8

  Prince George’s County, Maryland

  USA

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL JON SMITH pressed the accelerator to the floor, but didn’t get much of a reaction from his ’68 Triumph. He’d given a lot of time and love to its restoration, but his mechanical skills had never quite lived up to his enthusiasm. The passenger door still had an annoying tendency to fly open when he turned left and the hesitation in the motor seemed to be getting worse now that fall temperatures were descending on the area. Time to swallow a little pride, step away from the tools, and take it to a shop.

  He eased back on the gas and slowed to fifty, catching an occasional glimpse of the mist-covered Anacostia River through the trees. To anyone else, that image, the empty road, and the cool air flowing through the window would have been calming. For him, though, it was a drive that usually led to getting shot, stabbed, or thrown off something disconcertingly tall.

  He flipped on the radio and used a worn knob to move through the stations. The news was typically depressing and he scanned past it, settling on a morning DJ until the show devolved into something about a juggling stripper. A few more turns took him to NPR and he was surprised to hear a familiar voice emanating from the static-ridden speakers.

  “I’m telling you that it’s going to be completely transformational. Normally I don’t like to make predictions but there you go.”

  It was his new friend from Vegas. Janine Redford.

  “So when you say transformational,” the interviewer said, not bothering to hide his skepticism. “Are we talking automobile transformational or just iPod transformational.”

  “We’re talking about fire and agriculture transformational.”

  The interviewer let out a more energetic laugh than was normal for public radio. “When you decide to predict, you really go all-in, don’t you, Janine? The Merge just came out. How much time could you possibly have on it?”

  In fact, it had been available for just over twenty-six hours. Stores had popped into existence in the world’s major cities the week after Dresner’s presentation—assembled virtually overnight in spaces rented months before under oppressive secrecy. Smith had driven by the glass-and-neon Merge shop in DC the day before with the idea of stopping in, but the plan had turned out to be a bit naive. The line of potential customers was already wrapped around the block when he got there.

  “I got it at a tech industry preview yesterday and have been using it pretty much constantly since then. In fact, I’m using it now.”

  “You’re using it right now?” There was a moment of dead air. “For all of you listening, let me just say that Janine is not wearing a headset.”

  Smith grinned and turned onto an inconspicuous road that wound down toward the river. It seemed that it hadn’t taken Janine long to overcome her youthful cynicism.

  “I have to admit that I was resistant at first and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little peer pressure involved, but I’m an early adopter at heart.”

  “And I have to admit that they’re totally invisible. I can’t see them at all.”

  “The studs? Honestly, the whole thing is kind of a non-event. They clamp your head into this machine, put some headphones on you so you can’t hear the drill, and then it’s over.”

  “No anesthesia?”

  “It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a couple of cocktails first, but you don’t need anything more than that. The whole thing’s over in less than three seconds—too fast for you to feel it when it’s actually happening. A few hours later it starts to ache a bit but the thing’s so amazing, I keep forgetting to take my ibuprofen.”

  “Did you try the headset before you did it? Are the studs worth it?”

  “The headset experience is a little hazy and who wants to walk around with that thing on their head all day? The resolution with the studs is incredible. I now have twenty/fifteen vision without the contacts I’ve been wearing since junior high, and the audio quality is almost a religious experience.”

  “So you hear through it? You have a mike on you somewhere like the hearing aid?”

  “No, I still hear through my ears, unfortunately. But I downloaded my entire music library to it and the clarity is li
ke nothing you’ve ever heard before.”

  “Do you have the tooth mike, too?”

  “No, I’m using the miniature under-the-collar mike. But I’ve got a call in to my dentist.”

  “So what I’m hearing from you is that Dresner’s delivered.”

  “If you tried to take it away from me, I’d beat you to death with a wrench.”

  “I’ll take that as a warning. What about LayerCake?”

  Smith eased to a stop in front of a flimsy-looking gate that was actually capable of stopping a fully loaded semi truck driving forty miles an hour. He leaned in close to the windshield and tilted his chin up, letting multiple hidden cameras get a good look.

  “I’m still wrapping my mind around that—too much time playing Vampire Armageddon. The basic apps—things like weather and phone and GPS—seem pretty much flawless and the color-coding is incredibly intuitive. My hair dryer burned out yesterday and I was as the store staring at a huge shelf of them when I realized I could just use the Merge. I turned on LayerCake and a couple of seconds later picked the one with the darkest green glow.”

  “But what about the evaluation of people that everyone’s talking about?”

  “I’m reserving judgment at this point, but I have to admit that I think it’s going to work better than the press is giving it credit for. It’s been pretty accurate when I’ve looked at people I know well and I have to assume that it’s just as good for people I don’t know. And it’s only going to get better as it collects more data and collates user feedback,” Janine said.

  The gate swung back and Smith pulled into what the sign said was the Anacostia Seagoing Yacht Club. The pleasantly winding asphalt and carefully landscaped berms reinforced that particular piece of fiction, but in fact had been designed to make a straight-on attack impossible. Smith winced as the Triumph scraped over a speed bump and then turned to parallel a dock full of boats that completed the illusion that this was just an extremely exclusive playground for wealthy yacht owners.