She looked over at Agent Michaelis; he’d known Danbury, too. He was shaking his head slowly back and forth as if he couldn’t believe the news.
President Jerrison was lying flat on his back, tubes going into his arm from drip bags, a small oxygen feed tucked into his nostrils. “Danbury,” Jerrison said. “I don’t think I knew him.”
“You wouldn’t normally have run into him, sir,” Susan said. “He was one of the sharpshooters deployed on the roof of the White House.”
“The bomb,” Jerrison said.
Susan nodded. “Yes, it seems likely he was the one who planted it. He’d have had easy access to the White House roof—although how he got a large metallic device through security to get up there, I don’t know.” She listened to her earpiece again, then: “Anyway, they’re sending investigators to his house; see what they can find.”
They were all silent for a time, until Agent Michaelis spoke. “This is crazy.”
Susan thought he was referring to Danbury. “Yeah. You think you know a guy…”
“Not that,” said Michaelis, “although that’s crazy, too. I mean this memory stuff.”
“Are you experiencing any outside memories?” Susan asked.
“Me?” said Michaelis. “No.”
“Professor Singh’s memories are coming more easily for me all the time,” Susan said. “His phone number, his employment history. I even think, if I thought about it hard enough, that I could speak a little Punjabi—not to mention some bad Canadian French.” She paused. “Why would the president and I have been affected and not you? We were all pretty close together. You were just outside the O.R., right?”
“Yeah,” said Michaelis.
“Did you leave that area at any point?”
“No. Well, no, except to go the washroom. In fact, that’s where I was when the lights went out.”
“And you stayed there through the blackout?”
“Sure. It didn’t last long.”
“No, it didn’t,” said Susan. “I’m no scientist, but—”
“The blackout?” said the president.
“Um, yes, sir. There was an EMP when the bomb went off at the White House—same as what happened in Chicago and Philadelphia.” She turned to Michaelis. “How far was the washroom from the O.R.?”
“Halfway down the corridor. Maybe fifty feet.”
“Did anybody take your place outside the operating-room door?”
“No. I signaled Dougherty, who was on my right, and Rosenbaum, on my left, that I was going off station for a moment; they had line of sight to each other, so…”
Susan nodded, then: “Singh’s lab was more or less above the operating room. So the effect probably was limited in radius—and you’d stepped outside it at the crucial moment.”
Singh came into the room, accompanied, coincidentally, by Agent Dougherty, whom Michaelis had just mentioned.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Susan said to Singh. “I can even access your most recent memories, including new ones since the power surge.”
“Really?” said Singh.
“Yes. I know all about what just went down between you and Private Adams.”
“Fascinating,” Singh said. “That means it wasn’t a dumping of memories—you didn’t just get a copy of my memories transferred to you when the power surge hit; you’re still somehow connected to me on an ongoing basis.” He frowned, clearly thinking about this.
“Anyway, it’s interesting what Private Adams said to you just now,” Susan said. She gestured to indicate it was all right for Singh to move closer to the president.
“Thank you,” Singh said, coming further into the room. “Mr. President, those gentlemen you recall playing basketball with: you said one of them was named Lamarr. Please think about him, and see if you can conjure up anything else about him.”
Seth’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Um. Sure, Lamarr. Lamarr…um…” The president seemed to hesitate, then: “Lamarr Brown.”
“And his skin color?”
He took a moment to breathe, then. “He’s…oh, well, um, okay. Yes, he’s black. I’ve got a mental picture of him now, kind of. Black…short hair…gold earring…a scar above his right eye.”
“His right eye?”
“Sorry, my right; his left.”
“Private Adams described the same man, and added another detail. Something about Lamarr’s smile.”
The president frowned, concentrating. “Big gap between his two front teeth.” He paused. “But…but I don’t…I’ve never met…”
“No, you haven’t. And you don’t play basketball, either.” Singh tried to inject a little levity. “It’s not actually true that white men can’t jump, but you, a particular white man, can’t, because of your foot injury, isn’t that right?”
“Right.”
“And when you first recalled these men, you saw them as white,” said Singh. “Now you see them as black.”
“Um, yes.”
“My patient upstairs, as you’ve doubtless guessed, is African-American. And, unlike you, he knows all three of the gentlemen—who also are African-American.”
Seth said nothing.
Singh went on. “With due respect, Mr. President, let us not dance around the issue. If I ask you to picture a man—any man, an average man—you picture a white face, no doubt. It might interest you to know that a goodly number of African-Americans, not to mention Sikhs like myself, picture white faces, too: many of us are acutely aware that we are a minority in our neighborhoods and workplaces. Your default person is white, but my patient on the floor above grew up in South Central Los Angeles, an almost exclusively black community, and his default person is black.”
“So?” said the president, sounding, Susan thought, perhaps slightly uncomfortable.
“The point,” said Singh, “is that in storing memories of people, we store only how they differ from our default. You said one of the men was fat—and my patient described him the same way. But then you volunteered that the other two were thin, which might mean scrawny, which is why I asked you to clarify. If these people were notably thin, that detail might have been stored: scrawny is noteworthy; normal is not. Likewise, for my patient, his friends’ skin color was not noteworthy. And when you are reading his memories, all you have access to is what he’s actually stored: distinctive features, such as the gap between Lamarr’s teeth, or the scar above his eye, interesting items of clothing, and so on. And out of those paltry cues, your mind confabulated the rest of the image.”
“Confabulated?”
“Sorry, Mr. President. It means to fill in a gap in memory with a fabrication that the brain believes is true. See, people think that human memory is like computer memory: that somewhere in your head is a hard drive, or video recorder, or something, with a flawless, highly detailed record of everything you’ve seen and done. But that’s just not true. Rather, your brain stores a few details that will allow it to build a memory up when you try to recall it.”
“Okay,” Susan said, looking at Singh. “And you’re linked to this Lucius Jono fellow, right—and he might be the one linked to the president?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your most recent memory of him?”
“It’s hard to say,” said Singh. “No, wait—wait. He is—or quite recently was—down in the cafeteria, eating…um, a bacon cheeseburger and onion rings.” He paused. “So that’s what bacon tastes like! Anyway, it’s got to be a recent memory; he’s talking about the destruction of the White House and the electromagnetic pulse.”
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m going to go speak to him. If we’re lucky, the circle only contains five people.”