He wasn’t a monster; none of those who had put Counterpunch together were. They were just people—husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters—who had had enough. Even before today’s terrorist attack, they’d had enough.
He remembered a joke that had gone around the Internet in the fall of 2001: “What’s the difference between Osama bin Laden and Santa Claus?” And the answer, which had seemed so funny back then when people had been forwarding the joke endlessly: “Come Christmas, Santa Claus will still be here.”
But bin Laden had survived an entire decade. Indeed, as today’s events had proved, it was easier to put a bullet in the president of the United States than it was to take out a religious zealot, especially when he had powerful allies.
Seth had taught history for twenty years. The US had had a chance—a brief window—during which it could have pre-emptively struck the Soviet Union, wiping it from the map. The governments of the day—JFK’s regime, and then Johnson’s—hadn’t had the balls. And so the US had instead endured decades of living in fear of the Soviets’ attacking first, and had spent trillions—trillions!—stockpiling weapons.
And it was the same damn thing again.
San Francisco.
Philadelphia.
Chicago.
And now Washington.
A whole nation—a whole planet—living in fear.
He watched the smoke rise and swirl.
Chapter 18
Susan finished another interview, speaking with Dora Hennessey, the woman who’d come here to give her father a kidney. Sue took a bathroom break, then stopped by Singh’s lab, which is where he was conducting his interviews. A squat white man was leaving just as Susan arrived. “Any thoughts about how to sever the links?” she asked Singh.
“I don’t even know what caused them,” the Canadian replied. “I mean, memory is chemical. It’s based on molecules squirting across the synaptic cleft from one neuron to the next. How a memory could leap many meters is beyond me.” He shook his head. “That’s why most people with scientific training think claims of telepathy must be junk: there’s nothing your brain puts out that can be read at a distance.”
“What about brain waves?” asked Susan, sitting on the experimental chair next to the articulated stand holding up the geodesic sphere.
“There aren’t any brain waves in the sense you’re thinking,” Singh said. “The brain doesn’t radiate electromagnetic signals the way, say, a Wi-Fi source or radio broadcaster does. And, even if it did, the signals would be weak, and get weaker, as all signals do, over distance—usually according to the inverse-square law. By the time a signal has traveled three times as far away, it’s only got one-ninth the power. Before you knew it, any signal would be lost in the background noise of all the other signals.”
“Then what are EEGs recording, if not brain waves?”
“Well, they are recording brain waves—but, like I said, the name gives the wrong idea. See, the brain contains billions of neurons. When one neuron gets a signal from a neighbor, it can respond by releasing ions—which are charged atoms, right?”
Susan nodded.
Singh went on. “Ions with like charges repel each other, and when a bunch of neighboring neurons release a bunch of similarly charged ions, they all push each other away, creating a physical wave—an undulation—in the material of the brain, which has the consistency of pudding. EEGs measure those actual waves bumping against the skull.”
“Oh.”
“So, you see, there’s no way to read brain waves across a large spatial gap.”
“Your mother’s name is Gurneet and your father’s is Manveer.”
Singh tipped his head in a small sign of concession. “I admit I have no explanation for your knowing that.”
“So, I’m what, six feet from you?”
“About two meters, yes.”
“And this square-inverse law you mentioned—”
“Inverse-square.”
“If I went to the far end of the building, the signal should drop off to almost nothing, right?”
“The building is—I don’t know—a hundred meters on its longest side perhaps. So, yes, if we were as far apart as we could get in this building, the signal strength would be one over one hundred squared, or one one-ten-thousandth as strong, assuming there is a signal, and assuming it is broadcast in all directions.”
“What if it isn’t? What if the linkage is just that—a link, like, you know, a line drawn between you and me?”
Singh stood up and spun in a circle. “And did the link maintain itself during that? What mechanism would there be to keep a beam focused from my head to yours, or from yours to Private Adams’s? It’s inconceivable.”
“All right. Still, let’s test it. I’m going to go as far from you as I can without leaving the building, and we’ll see if the signal, um…attenuates? Is that the right word?”
“Yes.”
Susan left the lab and headed down the long corridor, passing patients on gurneys, doctors, nurses, and other people—several of whom tried to question her about how much longer the lockdown was going to last. She made it to the far end of the building as quickly as she could—and then, for good measure, she entered the stairwell and headed up to the sixth floor, which was the highest level.
She found a janitor there in a blue uniform, pushing a mop. “You!” Susan said, pointing at him. “Name a topic.”
“Excuse me?”
“A topic—something, anything—to think about.”
“Ma’am?”
“Oh, come on, man! It’s not that hard a question. Any topic.”
“Umm, like, um, baseball, do you mean?”
“Baseball! Fine. Thank you!” And then she turned her back on the no-doubt-bewildered man, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the first time she’d ever seen a baseball game live, and…
And a memory of her father taking her to Dodger Stadium came to her. She’d spilled her Pepsi all over him, and he’d laughed it off and squirted water at her. She shook her head, clearing her own memory, and tried to summon another, and—
And she was watching the Toronto Blue Jays play, and from a private box, something she herself had never done.
More details: others in the booth. Sikhs, remembered not because they were Sikhs but because the colors of their individual turbans had been noted; Sue had previously had no idea that such choices were individual fashion statements. A party, a celebration of…of…
Ah, yes. Of Ranjip’s brother’s eighteenth birthday, which—yes—had actually been the day before, but there’d been no game that day. A wonderful memory, a happy memory—and no sense at all that it was more difficult to access or recall than Singh’s memories had been when they’d been much closer together. She didn’t have to strain, didn’t have to cock an ear as if listening to something faint, didn’t have to do anything differently. It just came to her when she thought about it, as easily as when she’d been right next to Singh.
She headed along the sixth-floor corridor until she got to the stairwell near the elevator station, then went down to three.
Professor Singh was still in his lab. “The first baseball game you saw live was in Toronto, wasn’t it?” asked Susan. “For your brother’s eighteenth birthday? Your dad rented a private box at the SkyDome.”
Singh nodded. “Although they don’t call it that anymore. It’s the Rogers Centre now.”