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“Multiple surgeries on multiple patients suggests a testing protocol,” Dr. Pascal replied. “We can do an MRI to be certain, but I have to assume they’re testing some type of brain implant.”
“Brain implants?”
Dr. Pascal nodded. “That’s another technology that’s come a long way. Believe it or not, there are dozens of companies working to develop functional cognitive electronic implants. Tests are underway all over the globe. Some want to use implants to control epilepsy and stopseizures; others want to use the technology to heal traumatic brain injury or fight drug-resistant depression. Others want to enhance human thinking. I heard one pitch that suggested it would be the next wave in entertainment, suggesting people will be able to download information directly to their brains, making it possible to watch a movie solely in their own mind.”
“How far along is all this?” Joe asked.
“It’s an industry in its infancy,” Dr. Pascal said. “But we’ve already seen functionally mute individuals being given the ability to have conversations as an implant turns thoughts into words from a speaker. We’ve seen paralyzed individuals stand up and even take a short step. Most of the projections I’ve heard are from industry people who expect that progress to accelerate exponentially, similar to the way computer chips increase their power by a hundred thousand percent every decade, all while getting significantly smaller and cheaper. If that’s true, some of these grand plans might not be too far off.”
“Clearly we’re nowhere near that,” the captain suggested, sounding more hopeful than confident.
“We’renot,” Dr. Pascal clarified. “But who knows what the surgeons working on Five and his brothers have accomplished. If you’d asked me yesterday if a human could be grown in a lab, I’d have laughed the idea off and suggested you ask me again in twenty years. Now I’m faced with the reality that not only has someone done it, but they’ve been doing it for some time, creating perhaps hundreds of clones this way. If whoever’s behind Five’s creation and existence can make that kind of progress in one field, we shouldn’t assume they haven’t been just as successful in another.”
Kurt saw the connection. “One thing leads to the other. With an endless supply of clones who no one cares about, you can do an endless number of brain-altering experiments, and your progress outstrips anything that might be possible in the ethical parts of the world.We look at Five and see someone who’s been treated awfully. Whoever made him sees him as a guinea pig, a means to an end. A way to conduct these experiments without anyone watching or regulating the process.”
“But why would anyone want to do that?” Joe asked. “What’s the benefit?”
“Money,” the captain suggested. “Assuming there’s some product to be developed from this.”
“Possibly,” Dr. Pascal said. “But the cost of developing even one new medical technology is astronomical, let alone two. I can’t imagine the funds that have been used to push these two technologies forward so quickly. And even if someone developed a marketable product from all of this, if the truth ever came out, they’d end up charged with mass murder. That’s a pretty bad risk-reward equation.”
“Unless they could convince a jury that these clones don’t qualify as full humans,” the captain said.
“You only have to talk to this kid for a minute and you’d lose that argument,” Joe said.
The silence returned. Kurt used it to clear his mind. Separating the emotion from the facts, he tried to look beyond the barbaric cruelty of what was happening for any shred of logic. Aside from the truly insane, most criminals had a rational purpose, but in this case he couldn’t see one.
“Continuing to guess will just take us down a rabbit hole,” he said. “And possibly blind us to the truth. We need more information. We need cold, hard facts. The only way to get them is to go directly to the source.”
“What source?” Dr. Pascal asked.
Kurt motioned toward Five. “The island where Five and his brothers were born and raised and where these experiments are being done.”
Joe liked that idea. He was ready for a fight. But there was an obvious problem. While making their way out of India, they’d asked Five about the island in every way they could imagine, but he had no real information to offer. He didn’t know the name of the place or anything about directions or maps or hemispheres. When asked to describe the angle of the sun, he pointed up at the sky.
Five and his brothers had spent their whole lives on the island, unaware that anything else even existed beyond its shoreline. Upon leaving, they had no way to get back. That made it difficult for Kurt and Joe to find it.
“We could backtrack the beacon,” Joe said, “but that only goes so far. Sounds like they didn’t turn it on for two or three days.”
“If we analyze the wind, weather, and currents in that area, we should be able to roll their starting point back to a reasonable spot.”
Joe understood the theory, but having searched for a number of lost ships and downed aircraft in his life, he knew the wind and currents were hard to model with accuracy. “That’s going to require a lot of information we don’t have and a substantial amount of computing power. We’d probably have to have Max and Hiram to help us.”
Dr. Pascal had an objection. “You said it was dangerous to contact NUMA. You said you thought they’d been hacked.”
Kurt nodded. Therein lay the dilemma. Standard forms of communication were unlikely to be secure. But they would be hard-pressed to do the work on theAkeso.He racked his brain for a solution. “I’ve got an idea,” he said finally. “I just hope Rudi’s hungry.”
Chapter 28
NUMA Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Rudi Gunn leaned back in his office chair listening to Gamay Trout report on her findings in the Indian Ocean. Listening, because despite the high-definition screen linked directly to NUMA’s satellite network, the feed from theIsabellawas glitchy and continued to freeze up, which he found distracting at best and unwatchable at worst.
“Should have sent one of our ships down there,” he said under his breath.
“What was that?” Gamay asked.