‘Jesus,’ Lopez uttered. ‘That’s creepy.’
Ethan looked at the screens that were black, the ones with the strange lights leaping about across them.
‘They’re sleeping,’ he realized.
‘The observers see their dreams here too sometimes,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘The lens of the human eyeball sees the world inverted, so it requires the brain to flip the image into something we can understand. When the subjects are dreaming, their brain automatically presents the images to them right — side up — so we then have to flip the dream images manually here on the screens to override the programming and make sense of what we’re seeing.’
Ethan moved closer to a railing and leaned against it as he overlooked the operatives and the big screens before him. He could see the people talking on the screens but there was little sound.
‘So they can see but not hear?’ he asked Jarvis.
‘The information from the subjects is visual only,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘The lip reading skills of operatives assigned to this program and a small sonic implant ensure that some audio makes it through, enough to get a reasonable picture of what’s being discussed. Phone records from PRISM often complete the picture.’
‘How do they know the difference between what the subject’s thinking or dreaming and what they’re actually seeing?’ Lopez asked.
‘Different brainwaves,’ Jarvis explained, ‘the signals travel to different parts of the brain depending on if they’re purely visual or the product of our imagination. Experiments at the University of California, Berkeley, were able to produce images of scenes and events when the subjects were asked to recall those scenes and events, without ever having had a picture presented to them. So they’d be asked to think of something obvious, like the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge. Observers monitoring the subject’s brain waves in another room were easily able to distinguish the images and identify them. The feeds here in The Identity Mine are filtered to remove any thought signals, but they could also be altered to produce only images of the subject’s thoughts.’
Ethan stared at Jarvis. ‘Thought crimes?’
‘Wouldn’t be admissible as evidence,’ Jarvis reminded him. ‘We’re not in Minority Report territory yet.’
‘You’re not damned far from it,’ Lopez retorted. ‘How the hell did these subjects of yours end up being able to be watched like this? And what’s the link with China?’
‘The four NSA operatives who went missing from Kowloon, on route to a symposium on neurotechnology,’ Jarvis replied. ‘They were carrying copies of that early data taken from the Japanese labs who developed this technology, ten years before the first images of thoughts were successfully screened, which included their own detailed analysis and projected ideas for radically improving the technology. It’s now believed that the Chinese grabbed them, obtained the technology and then used the abducted computer scientists to make their own improvements.’
Ethan thought for a moment.
‘So you think that the implant we found inside Major General Thompson’s brain was fitted with this kind of technology?’
‘Pretty much,’ Jarvis replied. ‘That’s why the people who had control of Thompson didn’t have to be right on the scene when they initiated their attack. They could see what he could see, in real — time.’
‘Wouldn’t that have taken a lot of processing power?’ Lopez asked.
‘Yes,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘that’s why they needed a vehicle like their van, to contain a computer to decode the data and a monitor to watch the scene unfolding. But the implanted device need only be small and requires only enough power to transmit the data to the processing point.’
‘So the Chinese got hold of this technology,’ Ethan surmised, ‘and then they went one step further and added the ability to control the subject as well.’
‘That’s what we think happened,’ Jarvis agreed. ‘One of the NSA operatives’ remains washed up outside of Hong Kong a day ago. These guys were elite hackers, real computer geniuses. China would not have wanted to kill them without first extracting every last ounce of use from them. Who knows what they could have achieved in the last decade?’
‘Hacking human brains,’ Lopez murmured. ‘And these guys you’re watching here, they have implants too?’
‘Very small ones,’ Jarvis replied. ‘NSA agents maintained a permanent watch and when the subjects went for normal procedures at dentists or hospitals that required sedation at any time, they were able to use that time to insert small implants that wired into the frontal lobes to intercept and transmit data as it passed through the optical nerves and on to the visual cortex, building a complete visual picture of the subject’s field of view.’
‘They attached something to the optical nerve?’ Lopez mumbled in horror.
‘Apparently it’s quite easy,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Surgeons can pop the eyeball out of its socket and insert a small transmitter, then reposition the eyeball with the subject being completely unaffected. As long as they’re sedated, of course.’
‘And this occurs without their knowledge,’ Ethan figured.
‘What they don’t know will hurt them,’ Jarvis smiled in response. ‘Obviously we can’t risk apprehending these individuals directly, but using this technology means that we never have to get too close to them and they never actually realize they’re under surveillance.’
Lopez peered at one of the screens, which appeared to show a man brushing his teeth in front of a mirror. To her amazement, the man’s fuzzy visage on the screen closely matched his image in a photograph beneath the same screen.
‘So, how does this connect with Abrahem?’ she asked.
Ethan figured he had the answer.
‘Abrahem must have done some kind of deal with the Chinese,’ he surmised. ‘The Chinese would not have wanted to dirty their hands in Iraq for fear of causing an international incident, so they would have instead hired Iraqis or suitably corrupt Americans to implant devices into senior American personnel for the purpose of spying.’
‘First the surgeon, Muller,’ Jarvis confirmed. ‘He’s already confessed to being paid tremendous sums of money by the Chinese to insert mind — hacking devices into soldiers like General Thompson and others, although he swears he had no idea that this would be the outcome. He believed that the devices were some kind of high — tech trackers or bugs.’
‘So, China would have needed somebody to carry these devices into Iraq for them,’ Lopez realized. ‘That way, they could gain field access to senior military figures working in the country.’
‘They used the hospitals,’ Jarvis replied, ‘and targeted injured soldiers or personnel being treated for minor ailments and such like. As far as Muller can recall, he hid the insertion of the devices while performing sinus drains under local anesthetic. The small size and design of the devices caused minimal discomfort for the wearer, but he has told us that they also caused nosebleeds from time to time.’
‘The list of possible carriers could run into the hundreds,’ Ethan said, ‘and many of them may be civilians now, scattered across the globe.’