Cliff took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you were in high school and I gave a lecture on operant conditioning to your social studies class? Pavlov and his dog and all that?”
Eric nodded. “Ring the bell when you bring the dog dinner, and he salivates. Pretty soon all you have to do is ring the bell to make him salivate.”
“Right. That’s conditioning in its simplest form. Well, I won’t bore you with all the technical details, but this Major, whoever he is, has developed the ultimate conditioning device. Compared to this, Pavlov is a piece of academic trivia. These guys are light years ahead of him.”
Eric shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
Cliff took a deep breath. “Early in this century, brain research was crude and very experimental. But then with the development of space-age technology—computers, electronic probes with tips a thousand times smaller than a needle’s, electronic devices that measure the tiniest impulses from the brain—our knowledge was catapulted forward. In the fifties, they proved that all emotions—joy, anger, fear, ecstasy—all emotions begin as electrical impulses in the brain. They trigger physiological reactions such as rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and so on, but to begin with, they are only electrical impulses in the hypothalamus.”
Eric nodded, beginning to understand. “And you said it was the hypothalamus where this implantation is put.”
“Yes. In addition to the hypothalamus being the seat of emotions, scientists found a thin stream of cells in that part of the brain, the source of all sensations of pain. They also found that if you stimulate those pain cells with an electrical impulse—a few hundred thousandths of a volt—it will ‘tell’ the body it is experiencing pain—even though there is no outside pain.”
He stopped again, raising his hands for emphasis. “Do you understand that, Eric? Pain may be artificially induced by electrically stimulating the brain. However, it is not artificial pain. It’s as real, as trauma producing, as terrible as a blow to the body or a bad burn.”
He stood up, moved to the washbasin, filled Eric’s cup, and drained it swiftly. “Next came the development of what is called a stimoceiver.”
“A what?”
“A stimoceiver, from the words stimulus and receiver. It’s a tiny miniaturized radio receiver with microelectrodes attached to it that can read, or better receive, the impulses of the brain. An electrical impulse can also be sent down those electrodes to stimulate certain areas of the brain. Thus it both stimulates and receives, and thus its name—stimoceiver.”
Eric stopped his pacing. “And that’s what they mean by implantation?”
Cliff hesitated, then took a quick breath and sat down again. “Yes. The concept is brilliantly—no, hellishly simple. What they’ve done is to combine a stimoceiver with a miniature computer, or better, a computer chip. The electrodes are planted in the hypothalamus, and impulses, thousands of them every minute, are sent to the miniature computer, which sorts through them all. When a pattern associated with unacceptable behavior shows up—guilt, violence, anger, dishonesty, hatred—the computer reacts by sending a mild electrical charge down another electrode into the pain center.”
His eyes were like dark pools in a muddy river as he turned and stared at Eric. “The result? A fiendishly effective teaching device. The perfect conditioning machine. You either salivate properly or you get burned. One step out of line and whammo!”
“Faster, Becky!” Lori shouted joyfully. “Let’s go faster.” She pushed up hard on the teeter-totter and shot up to the apex of the board’s path.
But as Becky came down to the bottom, she spied the nearby jungle gym. “Oh, that looks fun!” In one swing of her short little legs, she was off the teeter-totter and darting away. Lori plummeted like a boulder dropped over a precipice. The teeter-totter slammed to the ground with a bone-jarring thud, bouncing her off and sending her sprawling on her face into the sand.
For one or two seconds she was too startled to react; then tears of pain sprang to her eyes, and she burst out crying.
Madeline was off the bench and to her side in a moment, the other woman close behind. “What happened?” she said as she helped Lori up and put her arm around her.
“Becky made me fall!” She rubbed at her backside.
As her mother soothed her, Lori looked up and saw that the other children had gathered around her, wide-eyed and curious. One of the boys shook his head in disgust. “Girls!” he muttered. With an effort Lori bit back the tears, deeply shamed to be viewed with such contempt. Then she spied Becky, approaching slowly, head ducked in shame.
“Becky, you dummy!” she cried angrily. “Why did you—”
A sharp cry cut off her words, and she doubled over as though hit in the stomach with a huge fist. She stumbled forward, pulling out of her mother’s grasp, and fell to her face. One long, agonizing scream rent the air as she rolled back and forth, clutching at her stomach.
Chapter 9
“Is there any way to take it out?” Eric asked, a sense of horror crawling in his stomach.
The grizzled head shook once. “No. Technically, putting the chip in is a very difficult operation, because even though pinpoint precision is impossible, the electrodes still have to be placed with great accuracy. But physiologically, it’s a relatively minor operation. And getting the chip out is a snap. Just cut the surface of the skin and pull it out, electrodes and all.”
“But you said there was no way to—”
Cliff slowly lifted his left arm. “See this?”
“The wrist computer?”
“Yes. Have you tried to remove it?”
“Oh, yes.”
Cliff pointed to the spot where the band joined the watch itself. “In addition to being waterproof and shockproof, the band is connected to the face with pressure-sensitive relays, so you can’t take it off. A good, hard pull triggers what they so elegantly call the ‘punishment mode.’ Also, I don’t understand how yet, but the implantation and the wrist computer are somehow linked together with the main computers in Central Control. If you try and remove either one, it automatically triggers the maximum punishment response in the other. Either way it’s lethal.”
“There’s got to be some way to get this thing out.”
“Did you hear me, Eric? I said lethal. That means it kills you.”
“There’s got to be some way,” he said stubbornly.
Cliff leaped up. “Will you listen to me? You aren’t up against a bunch of amateur toy designers, Eric. They haven’t built an empire of two hundred thousand people by overlooking the obvious. It’s programmed to kill anyone who tries. They aren’t doing this for fun.”
He stopped, the pain suddenly twisting his features, and his voice fell to a whisper. “Eric, I haven’t just been sitting around these last few days. I have asked everyone. There is no way out of this thing. None!” He sat down heavily on the cot. “None, Eric. Welcome to Utopia.”
Eric’s jaw was rigid, and his eyes had narrowed to tiny pinpoints. “I can’t accept that. There must be—”
“Eric Lloyd!”
The blaring speaker caused them both to jump, and Eric spun around to the mirror. Cliff’s reappearance from the dead, and then the horror of his revelations, had totally driven Nicole Lambert and the mirror from Eric’s mind.
“Mr. Lloyd, we would like to talk to you and Dr. Cameron. We’re coming in.” As Nicole stepped through the door ahead of the Major, she watched Eric’s eyes closely, anxious to read his reactions. They flicked once to her, then to the Major. They were a hunter’s eyes, scanning quickly, missing nothing. Nicole was fascinated. The gray depths betrayed absolutely no expression as they probed. If the Major was bothered, he gave no sign, just waited patiently, as if amused.
Finally the eyes turned back to her. She caught what she thought was a flash of anger as he noted her orange and blue uniform, but it was gone so quickly that she couldn’t be sure. When the gaze returned to lock into her own, a faint smile of derision toyed at the corners of
Eric’s lips, and she knew that he had deduced who she was.
The Major stepped forward and thrust out his hand toward the older man. “Dr. Cameron? How do you do. My name is Major Denison.”
The doctor’s eyes widened slightly as he accepted the proffered hand. “Dr. Major Denison? Curtis Major Denison?”
Eric’s head jerked around to stare at Cliff, but he was no more surprised than Nicole or the Major. “Yes. Do we know each other?”
“No, I just know of you. What neurosurgeon hasn’t heard of the pioneering brain research of Curtis Major Denison and the U.S. Air Force Cybernetics Team?”
“Well, thank you,” the Major said, obviously pleased. “For you to remember that, after eighteen years, I take as a special compliment.”
“When the others kept referring to ‘the Major,’ I assumed it was a title, a military rank.”
The Major smiled, revealing even white teeth. “I don’t know exactly how that came about. It just kind of happened over the years. Now everyone calls me ‘the Major.’” He chuckled. “I’ve never had the heart to tell them, but actually I was a brigadier general in the Air Force.”
Nicole’s expression caused him to laugh. “See, even my staff doesn’t realize they’ve demoted me.”
He turned slightly and again put out his hand. “You’re Eric Lloyd. I’m very pleased to meet you.” He held his hand in midair for a moment, then shrugged, unperturbed by the other’s implacable gaze. “Dr. Cameron knows me by reputation,” he said easily, “and I knew of your father in the same way, Eric. Though I realize it’s little consolation to you now, I deeply regret that he was killed. I admired his courage and integrity very much.”
Nicole expected that to trigger an outburst, but Eric just watched, his face an unreadable mask.
The Major turned and took Nicole by the arm. “May I present Nicole Lambert, one of our staff officers in the Monitoring Control Center.”
Dr. Cameron merely nodded, but Eric spoke for the first time. “We’ve met,” he said dryly.
Nicole nodded, holding his gaze until he looked away.
“Sit down,” the Major invited, motioning the two men to the cot. Not waiting for them to obey, he stepped over and picked up the wooden stool, flicked off a minute speck of dust, then sat it down for Nicole, placing it where she would be facing both men. As he straightened, he saw that neither of them had moved.
“Dr. Cameron, just before Nicole and I entered, you and Eric were speculating on his present condition, I believe.”
The doctor nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“I can understand your suspicions and your reluctance to trust me, or anyone else in Shalev, for that matter, but I assure you, our only desire is to get Eric out of detention as soon as possible. Now, if you’d sit down, both of you, we’ll not prolong this any longer than necessary.”
Dr. Cameron complied, followed a moment later by Eric. As he sat on the cot, the doctor’s eyes never left the Major’s face. “So,” he finally said, half to himself, “Dr. Curtis M. Denison. That explains a great deal. I heard you’d gone into top-secret brain research. Rumors kept cropping up, but…” He let the words trail off.
“Yes,” the Major responded, leaning easily against the wall. “Actually I proposed a project for the military and was given control of it. We called it ‘Benevolent Pacification.’ Our basic task was to explore ways of taking a hostile civilian population conquered in war and render them harmless and obedient without resorting to violence, threat, incarceration, or military occupation.”
“Benevolent pacification?” Eric said bitterly. “Is that what our village got? You make it sound so beautiful.”
“No,” the Major responded, “that’s what we called our research for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was crude and ill-conceived. I’m not really very proud of those years, as a matter of fact. However, it did provide the foundation for what was to come.”
“Obviously,” Eric said. “And what does your Bureau of Beautiful Names call what you have done here? ‘Brain Bending for Fun and Profit?’ Or how about ‘Self-Discipline Made Easy’?”
Nicole glanced at the Major, remembering how Eric’s rapiertongued comments could raise his ire, but if the Major had heard, he gave no sign. He was looking at Dr. Cameron and ignored Eric completely.
“Like Colonel Karl Lloyd, I sensed that the world’s insanity was plunging us toward the brink of annihilation. And like Eric’s father, I started to prepare.” He paused for a moment, his eyes wide and thoughtful behind his glasses. “However, instead of retiring from the military, I used the tremendous resources at our disposal. It was so closely related to the Benevolent Pacification program that, in those last hectic couple of years, no one took any real notice of our change in direction. We had tens of millions of dollars at our disposal.”
He smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger, absently, as he thought back. “We chose this site very carefully. We figured Kalispell would not attract any direct strikes, which it didn’t. It has the natural resources we needed to survive afterwards—a relatively mild climate for as far north as we are, rich farmland, unlimited water and timber, a major hydroelectric plant nearby—it was the ideal location. We spent millions purchasing equipment—not just the supplies we needed to survive, but manufacturing tools, whole factories, and laboratories. And more importantly, we identified and gathered experts from a dozen fields we considered would be critical after the war was over. It took more than two years of intensive and extensive preparations, and we still weren’t ready when it came.”
“How did you escape the war?” Dr. Cameron was obviously interested in what the Major was saying, in spite of his outward coolness.
“We convinced the Pentagon we were setting up a model community in which to fully test our program. We stockpiled enough food and supplies to last a year, and then, like your group, rode it out. Once it was over, we began collecting survivors.”
The Major straightened, throwing off the somberness of the memories. “But the second way in which I differed from Eric’s father is that I wanted to do more than survive the war. I wanted civilization to survive—with the assurance that such a war would never happen again.”
He stretched out both hands in front of him, as though offering Cliff Cameron the concept in visible, tangible form for him to examine. “A moment ago, you and Eric spoke of Utopia. The ideal society. Civilization perfected. Do you know the one thing that has always stopped us from achieving that dream?”
“I’m at a total loss.”
The Major obviously missed Cliff’s faintly laconic sarcasm, for he nearly shouted the answer in his excitement. “People!”
“People,” the doctor repeated like a dutiful student.
“Yes, people. Even the most brilliant of plans, the most carefully structured organization can be totally destroyed by one unpredictable, wild-eyed rebel, or brought into the dust by the groveling, self-centered mindlessness of the very people who would most benefit from it. Many have tried to overcome the incredible inertia of the human factor and failed. They have tried everything—religion, coercion, government regulation, laws, philosophy, bribery, terror.” He punched out each word like a small explosion. “And all of them failed.”
It was obvious from the expression on his face that the Major was not completely heartbroken at the dismal record. “And do you know why they failed? Do you know why?”
Dr. Cameron’s slow, soft tone was like a dash of cold water in the face of that mesmerizing voice. “Let me guess. Because they couldn’t get at the mind?”
“Exactly!” the Major exulted. “Exactly right, Dr. Cameron! Even the most fiendish, diabolical torture cannot change the way a man thinks. Oh, it will bring him into line temporarily, but once the threat is removed, he will revert back to old patterns immediately.”
Eric had obviously taken a cue from the older man’s example. When he spoke, his voice was soft but musing. “So instead of fiendish, diabolical torture, you use gentle, sophistic
ated electronic massage.” His eyes came up and met Nicole’s. “And get lovely young ladies to push the buttons to make it all seem very elegant.”
Nicole flushed and fought the impulse to look away, to escape his gaze, but she couldn’t hold her eyes up to that brutal, probing stare.
“Sneer if you wish, my insolent young friend,” the Major snapped, for the first time stung by Eric’s response. “You were brought up in a tiny village isolated from the world. You’ve never seen the results of man’s uncontrolled nature. Rape, child molestation, terrorism, war, mass murder, genocide—ah, yes, Eric, you little know the effects of man’s uncontrolled nature. And nothing in history—not religion, not government, not torture, not executions—nothing has ever cured man’s animal tendencies. But we have! For the first time in history, we have taught man to suppress the evil in him and let only the good surface.”
“Through implantation?” Dr. Cameron asked scornfully, his eyes full of contempt. Then even as she watched, Nicole saw the first flickers of pain tug at the corners of his mouth. She looked down quickly, as he visibly struggled with his emotions.
“Yes, through implantation,” the Major said, his voice lowering again as he watched the doctor’s reaction with an understanding nod. “At this very moment you’re seeing it work. By punishing these negative tendencies in their earliest stages—with a very mild punishment, I might add—we teach an individual to give way only to his best impulses. We don’t change him by force, only teach the better part of his nature to surface.”
“It’s obvious,” Cameron said, wiping at the sweat on his forehead, “that your definition of force is very different from mine.”
But it was like putting out one’s hand to stop an avalanche. The Major rolled on without any detectable deflection from his course. He turned to Nicole, his eyes shining with excitement. “Just ask Miss Lambert. She’s spent nearly all her life in Shalev. Is it so monstrous, Nicole?”
“Monstrous?” she responded, meeting and holding Eric’s disdainful glare. “What is monstrous to me is what people tolerated before Termination. When I read what it was like then, or see the old movies, I find it difficult to comprehend that people could say that was an acceptable way to live.”