Brain Training

He was woken later in the day by another medical worker who went through a long list of questions and forms. Dek got the distinct impression they didn’t believe he had all his wits anymore. With experimental chips implanted in his brain who knows where, the chances of him coming through the procedure a sane person seemed pretty remote. But the experts knew what they were doing and so far Dek felt more or less himself. He did spent a long time trying to explain his dream to the medic, who seemed to think it was very important. Dek had never put much stock into dreams and thought the whole thing was probably not worth the confusing explanations.

He was moved to a more comfortable room for the night, though they insisted on monitoring his vital functions through the night. He saw Copper again after dinner and they talked for a few hours, Copper making all kinds of witty jokes about the chips and the plating. Copper hadn’t gotten wrist blades like his older brother. Since he was still growing, the doctors had decided against it for the time being. He had, however, been prescribed a mission drug called Hyperflex which would increase his concentration and muscle reaction time.

“Fastest reflexes on the planet,” Copper told Dek, finished relating the experience of driving his new wheels under the influence. “I can drive and grapple with cobras at the same time.”

“I’ll remember that the next time someone’s looking for chauffeur/snake wrangler,” Dek answered.

Dek didn’t sleep well that night, waking early, the wall clock telling him it was 4 AM. Not that it mattered what time you got up during winters in the Northern Territories. It was always dark outside. He sat up, shivering with the cold, and pulled away the machines monitoring him. Curling up he tried to contact Jasper. He wondered what time it was in Hong Kong.

“Jasper,” he said in his mind. No response. Well, he thought wryly, if he woke Jasper it wasn’t like he could beat him up for it or anything. “Jasper. Hey. Teach me how to use this thing.”

“You seem to be doing just fine,” came the answer.

Dek shifted. “So I did wake you up. Does that mean you’re back on base?”

“It means I finished the Dipper Mission an hour ago and am exhausted. Being a Sensor sounds cool till you realize how much it sucks.”

“Your choice,” Dek answered.

Jasper ignored him. “K, you say you’re ready, here’s your first lesson: Don’t use my name on your transmissions. We’re communicating by satellite. I don’t care if you’re a secret agent, a cell phone user, or a fat guy watching the Superbowl. They all use the same satellites. Transmissions garble Missions, as they used to tell us in training.”

“What should I call you?” Dek asked, inspecting a fingernail. He felt like he was talking on the phone to someone.

“My code name is T4. Your brother is S25, you’re S24. You can set your brainwaves to interpret those numbers same as our names.”

“How do I do that?” Dek asked.

“You know you have the two chips: the I-chip is imbedded in the prefrontal quartex; the T-chip for translating languages is tied to your hippocampus toward the center of your cerebrum. Your T-chip is a simple data cell, filled with 90% of the information is will eventually provide. It will automatically download the rest from your I-chip. You don’t need to do anything to access the translator, it just puts what you need to know into your memory and you will automatically ‘know’ what is being said. Speaking and writing are trickier though and take practice to coordinate the appropriate muscles.”

“You’re I-chip, now that more complicated. It transmits short wave signals to a cell transistor in your chest plate, giving you a connection to other I-chip users as well as the Cy database. Just so you know, if you do something Cy really doesn’t like, they can disconnect you from the network and program a virus to block you from the satellites. We call that being deactivated. Bam. Normal schmoe again. You won’t believe how fast you get attached to the chip. Like losing your eyesight suddenly.”

“You’ve been deactivated before,” Dek understood.

“Yes. Numerous times. For my own protection.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll get to that in a second. Now to use your chip you have to learn how to ‘flex’ your neurons. It is hard to describe. You want to think of something and then make it happen. You’ll know when you get it.”

Dek thought of the car he’d seen earlier that day. Copper’s car. Jealous as he was, he rather wanted to see it again. He thought of it and tried to make it appear but all he sensed was the quiet hospital room around him. He stared at an empty IV rack in the corner across from him.

“Look at your hand,” Jasper told him. “Tell it with your mind, hard as you can to lift into the air. Will it to move. If you’re doing as I say, your arm shouldn’t be moving. You can’t make it move just be telling it to move. You have to flex your brain and make it move. It’s a different part of the brain that tells it to move. Same with the I-chip. Once you know how to flex, you’ll start to automatically synchronize them with your thoughts. You already did it to contact me.”

Dek tried to remember the feeling of talking to Jasper through the chip. Like talking on the phone. He thought of the car again and suddenly it appeared in his mind’s eye. He laughed aloud. “Yes!”

“Got it!” he announced to Jasper. He heard Jasper chuckle sleepily.

“At least you didn’t download naked women like most of the guys I’ve trained before. Tends to be the first thing that comes to mind. Car’s a close second.”

Dek felt his smile fade. “Did I transmit it to you?” How much of his own thoughts had he already transmitted? His face felt hot just thinking about it.

“Relax,” Jasper answered cooly. “Since you woke up you’ve kept your conversation with me separate. When I pulled you out of your dream, though, you were transmitting an open connection. I blocked the other I-chips so you had a little privacy. Seeing your thoughts helped me figure out you thought it was a dream. You had the doctors pissing in their pants.”

This was news to Dek.

“You’re heart slowed to a stop,” Jasper told him. “For some reason this seems to happen to people right before they come out of the ether. Not always, but often enough, they routinely ask me to be there to call people back. Something to do with scrambled neural signals, we think, but in your case it was a semi-conscious decision to follow the cold. You were choosing to follow death.”

Cold as he was in the chilly room, Dek felt himself shiver from fear. He wrapped the thick blanket tighter about him and rested his cheek against his knee. I don’t have the answer for you, he thought to himself, not knowing what to say.

“Dek,” Jasper told him. “It’s only fair for me to tell you that I can hear that.”

Dek only closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he said wearily.

“That’s not what I mean,” Jasper said hesitantly. Dek listened. Jasper gave a halfhearted, ironic laugh. He seemed very tired. “I’ve gone over a thousand different ways to explain this to your brother and you, and when it comes down to it, all I can be is blunt.”

“I can read your mind, Dek,” Jasper said. “Through your I-chip.” He hesitated, giving Dek a chance to digest it. “I am one of four agents code-named the ‘Trumpets’. T4 is my codename. About the same time you and Copper were enrolling, I was graduating as a Sensor with the other three, who took an extra year, but didn’t train as Sensors. There were seven graduates, but the four of us agreed to try an experiment with a third chip called the C-chip. It was the third version of chip since they started with the T chip less than a decade ago. They improved off the functional capacities of the T-chip to create the I-chip. Instead of just carrying and manipulating data within the mind, it was an input/output device. It could change over time as different information was entered. That’s why it is so carefully monitored and policed by Cy. They need to keep the chips working properly, so they keep a lot of satellite static from accidentally storing itself in your brain.”

“The C-chip was the next step. A chip that could control the I-chip. It was experimental for other reasons though. They wanted to create a chip to give to a new kind of agent, the Trumpet agent. Someone who could read other agents’ I-chips and control them. Police for the police, so to speak.”

“Problem with that is the close proximity of the chips and your brain. In order for your I-chip to work, it has to read the surrounding signal patterns and predict what you’re going to do. Your chip is a two way circuit for impulse patterns. My C-chip can tap into your I-chip and know what you’re going to do a nanosecond before you do it. In other words, simultaneously.”

“You can read my mind.” Dek said. He knew something like this would happen. He should have broken his wrist harder.

“Reading I-chips is one thing, but remember the transistor cells. A C-chip can read and also conduct signals. So I could either, in that nanosecond of precognition, block your neurons from firing so that you’re paralyzed until I let you go, or take the next step and, through your chip redirect your action. You meant to shake someone’s hand but I make you slap their face.”

Dek didn’t think it was very funny.

“So you can control my brother and me, congratulations. I look forward to a life of slavery. It was on my wish list for Christmas this year.”

“Dek, I’m not sick. I’ve been around enough agents and on enough missions to knock that out of me. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case for the other three Trumpets.”

“So you’re the good guy,” Dek said skeptically. “Cy trusts you.”

“No. I told you I’ve been deactivated repeatedly.”

“You said it was for your own protection! Couldn’t you, or the others, just override the signal? Jump start yourself off someone else’s chip, perhaps?”

“Not if you’re fully deactivated, I have been any number of times. If they cut you off, you’re as normal as the nerd behind the photo counter at Walmart. We can’t read normal citizens’ minds. We can only manipulate other computer chips. To some extent we can control computers and cell phones, but the Trumpets stopped caring about that a while ago. All they care about now is controlling other agents.”

“How are there any agents, then?” Dek asked. It sounded like he should have been completely brainwashed by now.”

“Because they’re deactivated. They can’t used the satellites directly. They can use active agents until they are deactivated. Once the agent is deactivated, the Trumpets simply add them to their standing army of highly trained, enhanced agents. They aren’t as organized as Cy, nor as big, but they are on their way to becoming the most powerful crime force out there. Agents didn’t used to be trained to fight other agents. Now its policy.”

Dek was tired again. Tired and worried. Becoming an agent suddenly had a whole new twist to it.

“Why give us chips at all?” he asked. “I mean, maybe just a T-chip or something.”

“The I-chip has increased the power behind Cy exponentially,” Jasper answered, sounding as tired as Dek felt. “Its benefits outweigh the risks and consequences combined. Just know, if you get caught by a Trumpet you’ll be instantly deactivated.”

Dek peaked out the small window by his head at the darkness outside. “I still don’t understand, though. Aren’t you just building their army by giving agents chips?”

“Copper and you weren’t my top choice of Specials,” Jasper stated rather harshly. “I wanted two of the other Sensors, ones who have had experience on missions. Ones I know I can trust.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Dek answered, almost as bitterly. “Why did you decide to pick on us?”

“Because Copper is 15 and because you followed Death.”

“What?” Dek’s back went stiff as a rod. He longed to see Jasper’s face. Was he joking? The intensity of the thought triggered his chip and Jasper’s file suddenly popped up in his mind. There was no picture, but Dek scanned over the statistics and saw that Jasper was telling the truth. Any file on ‘Trumpet’ he tried to open was blocked with a message telling him ‘restricted’.

“The Trumpets know what to look for in agents. Copper is young enough, they won’t be looking for him. Hopefully they won’t realize he’s activated until he gets in close enough to deactivate their C-chips.”

“But you’re chip is active,” Dek pointed out, reading down a list of previous missions Jasper had participated in.

“At the moment anyway. It is the best way for Cy to keep tabs on the Trumpets’ movements. Without an active I-chip connection, the Trumpets can’t control anything over long distances. At close range, your toast. If a Trumpet ambushes a Mission, its bad for everyone.”

“Is that what you need us for? Bait? Lure them in with my active chip, have Copper duck in and hit them with the brain tazer?”

“More or less,” Jasper said and Dek heard the smile in the words. He was a little distracted, though, as he had found the part of Jasper’s profile regarding his personal information.

“Jasper,” he uttered in disbelief. “Your profile says you’re 16. Aren’t they missing a few zeros or something?”

Jasper actually laughed. “No, that’s right. I started training when I was 12.”

“That’s sick,” Dek heard himself saying. He was reading the rest of the profile. Jasper’s parents had founded Cy after Jasper’s younger brother was kidnapped and murdered. When Jasper was 12 they were killed on a mission. Jasper hadn’t chosen him and Copper because of special abilities. He’d chosen them because they understood.

“What did you mean, you chose me because I followed Death?” Dek asked hesitantly. Did he really want to know?

“Someone’s gotta be able to go in and stop you next time,” Jasper said casually. He sounded weary. “So, unless you have any other questions, I’m going back to sleep.”

“I guess I never thanked you for that,” Dek answered, turning and looking at the door to the hall. Death wasn’t chasing him tonight.

“We’re a team. Oh, and if you contact someone while they’re asleep it always wakes them up. Screws up their nice, even sleeping patterns. No one likes that."

“I understand. Guess we’re square now.”

“Don’t worry too much about the Trumpets,” Jasper told him. “After the doctors tell me you’re sane and let me stop monitoring your vital functions, I promise not to read your mind without asking.”

Dek curled up on the bed. He’d finally found a nest of warmth in the center of the bed, the thick blanket kept the cold out. “Thanks.”

“Sweet dreams,” Jasper sent and Dek’s mind was suddenly invaded by an image of the slickest motorbike he’d ever seen. “You can play with your new teddy bear tomorrow,” Jasper added. “You’ve earned it.”