The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Seventeen ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

Eric thanked the military for their courtesy and assistance during the crisis. Commander Harris had made him watch the brief port footage four times as if he had personally brain wiped the boy. Eric was noting the heavy backpacks nearly every operative was carrying and how the perimeter had been effectively cleansed before the arrival of DireSec. Who could sacrifice six floaters with impunity and knew enough to do so over deep water? He had no doubt the devices would have included special explosives such that the remaining pieces would be tiny. Another failure. No boy, no weapon, no magnifying devices. His fury was poorly hidden.

The military had allowed Tule Soc to land three of their floaters on the base making it relatively easy to leave. Arjun maintain a flat affect, responding only when directly questioned. Once they were airborne and the ship’s privacy devices fully deployed, Eric isolated Arjun.

“They clearly think it was the boy on that mini but we have no way of determining the blue weapon is gone.”

“Will the Ministry allow us to go after them?” Arjun asked, nodding his concurrence. He was seething. The Ba’Neesh had walked through that port footage looking like human females. Even worse, there were fourteen females in that footage. What a bonanza it would have been to take out the ship or ships carrying them. As it was, they had nothing.

“This event has stirred up the Ministry. Many are making sounds that it is time to go after them again. We have improved weapons and we know where their big facilities are located. I received a call to return to headquarters at once. It could go either way. You and I could be docked into lower paygrades, or we could receive the ticket for upgrading to a war strategy. It is clear the Directorate is less well controlled and new weapons are being designed. We have the documentation on that windstorm followed by another electrical wave and that final weapon, light used as a carrier wave, that hasn’t been used before. All of these can be used to justify cleaning them out. Beyond that, the footage of the blue weapon is devastating. I think our better position is to acknowledge the wipe of the boy but continuing uncertainty about the nature of the blue weapon. It is as hard to prove existence as non-existence, at least in the short term.”

“Agreed.” Arjun nodded and again noticed that he still felt itchy around Eric. What was it that continued to bother him? A few clarifying words in a stressful situation? That shouldn’t be enough to undercut their teamwork. He acknowledged that his animosity toward the non-humans had deepened. Was his judgment flawed? He decided to watch the footage of the graveyard sequence again, in privacy.

“We agree DireSec departed the port via a submarine?” Eric asked.

“Most likely.” Arjun nodded. “They have several that we know of which means they likely have others we know nothing about. We have a small team heading in to do some exo diving near the port to confirm the capability of housing a submarine under the port for discrete periods of time. We should hear back on that within twenty-four hours or so.”

“Paranoid group.” Eric said, relaxing in a chair. He would be glad to be away from this place and back to the nation of his birth. “We should have such defenses in place as well. They need to up our budget and manpower both. How are we expected to fight an enemy that outstrips us in critical ways?” It was an old argument, but maybe, this time, the Ministry would see the benefits of competing more directly. They couldn’t allow DireSec to gain enough new weapons to make them untouchable. The risk was that at some point the Directorate would attempt to gain access to the Tule Soc Ba’Neesh and Soek populations and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Who controlled the Ba’Neesh would likely control the planet in the near future and Tule Soc intended to be that entity.

“If they are heading toward Citadel and if their submarine is a super-cavitation-type, they could arrive before we land in Germany.” Arjun sighed. He hated being in the chase position even though a lot of his job centered on gathering intel and predicting likely movements of the enemy. Knowing where DireSec would be for any period of time meant nothing if that intel wasn’t acted upon in a timely way.

They had attacked the Citadel before, with catastrophic losses, before his time. They wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Nothing that had happened at that tunnel could have been predicted. It simply proved how dangerous things were becoming. This escalation would certainly make the Directorate even more vigilant. At least, they now had another military wanting the Ba’Neesh killed off. Enough allies and Tule Soc could overwhelm the Citadel by force. He wanted to be the one leading that assault so he was in full agreement with Eric, now was the time to push the Ministry into action.

Jeffrey stared down at the boy laying so still under the med canopy. He was almost ridiculously average. They had stripped him as soon as he hit the table, except for the bone on a string, none of them dared to even move that item. Jeffrey had the holofield centering its attention on the boy’s brain. All was quiet, too quiet. The boy was so heavily sedated that his brain activity was nearly flat. Jeffrey could see the molcom in an expanded view. Clearly it had been installed when the boy was under the age of two, as prescribed. The molcom was designed to grow into the brainstem, become integrated into the nerves such that it couldn’t be removed. This one had done its job correctly.

Brad had powered his exo in its chair configuration into the medical suite. He was studying the device design. With his life on the line, as well as the lives of people he cared about the design plans had mysteriously been released to his computing system.

“You have any brilliant ideas yet?” Jeffrey asked Brad. In the adjacent bed Elias was curled up and Rojer was standing rigid at Mick’s side. The two Soek disturbed Jeffrey, their behaviors strongly abnormal. Mael had told him they were under compulsion but Jeffrey kept thinking it was more than Speech affection. Not only had he not heard anyone using Speech, he had no evidence of the presence of the manifesting Neeshatari. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“I have some ideas. Can’t say they are brilliant though.” Brad answered. He found Mick’s heavily bruised face oddly interesting. He looked asleep, innocent, but his rather filthy mouth rang in Brad’s memory in vivid detail. This was a vibrant person.

“Give.” Jeffrey demanded.

“Well, it is like a conventional computing system in basic operational ways except that it primarily filters and samples. All of the experiential and thinking experiences of the individual flow through the device on the way to their normal places in the brain and body of a person. Memory is really like musical compositions, when certain neurons fire in a specific order they form a tagged memory sequence that causes a cascade in the brain that the person experiences as a real memory. It isn’t really a cohesive memory, it is the experience of a memory.

It is really small energy and chemicals firing that individually hold fragments. When the combination is triggered the brain rebuilds what it thinks happened in that sequence. So, the quality and number of firing neurons equates to the quality and detail of the end memory. A memory practiced often will take on the ‘brain story’ that is practiced. By this I mean that it isn’t like a movie, you don’t recall seamless flow. In fact, your real memory fragments can be altered by new information brought in later from new sources. This can be incorporated into what the individual believes is true memory.”

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“Doctoring. We do memory editing frequently with operatives to remove troubling sequences and insert less troubling information.” Jeffrey admitted.

“Right. Well, with Mick here the molcom sent a message into the brain to purge unneeded memory fragments only the setting was adjusted to ALL. This means that the molcom sent a message to all of the storage areas inside Mick’s brain to destroy the memory fragments using an amygdala coding that exists in the brain to prevent a person from the intensity of memories they aren’t capable of dealing with. This is what the molcom was designed to use. It is elegant in its simplicity. It is actually much harder to edit memory sequences than to wipe them entirely.”

“Yes.” Jeffrey agreed. “We have to have the person do a debriefing recall of the mission so we can record the sequences of neurological firing in order to program the correct sequences to delete and reframe. Usually we include suggestive memory stimulants and various spliced footage of the event to reframe the event in the direction most useful to DireSec.”

“So,” Brad continued. “The problem is we don’t have a copy of Mick’s lifelong memory sequences to reinsert?”

“Right.” Jeffrey nodded. “The molcom doesn’t get everything. I can pull up fragments as the neurological storage also lodges in body tissues and muscles that don’t receive the molcom delete message as they are in another more protected system. Things like body memory. You can forget you were a ballerina but if you put on toe shoes you will know how to dance. That kind of memory.”

“With a computing system,” Brad said, “It isn’t like memory is deleted. What really happens is that it falls below the threshold of easy retrieval, it appears to vanish. It also allows the same storage area to be written over. The brain is likely similarly efficient. I know I lose a lot of low relevancy data. It isn’t totally gone, but it is very difficult to access easily.”

“So, you think it is still there but hidden?” Jeffrey asked. “The neurological field sensor isn’t picking up the language of firing combinations. With a rewrite, I can see the fragments.”

“How did you beat it?” Brad asked Jeffrey. They both looked at Rojer, who was actively listening. All Order-born Soek were vitally interested in what the Order or Directorate could do to their brains.

“Well, I knew the molcom was inoperable.” Jeffrey admitted. “I knew it was designed to interpret any attack to say melt it with chemicals as a violation of safety causing it to immediately shut itself off and issue an alert to authority. This didn’t solve the Mastery requirement to cause it to cease functioning entirely, without offering an alert, such that a brain wipe or limiting could be possible. You know they don’t let us have the blueprints on the molcom to figure out a solution and that every area of Mastery might have a different solution.”

Brad nodded. “Mind had to do with math.” He acknowledged.

Jeffrey turned to look at Rojer. “They tried to fix your obsessive reactions through manipulating your molcom, didn’t they Rojer?”

Rojer looked from Brad to Jeffrey. This was his private business. He hated that everyone knew of his disability.

“They tried.” He managed at last. Both of these Masters outranked him and likely always would. That they were talking about forbidden knowledge likely meant he would undergo adjustment sooner rather than later and he hated having his brain tampered with. He could always tell things were wrong and there was so much wrong inside his head he didn’t need more added to it.

“Right. I read your files.” Jeffrey nodded. “My point is that the brain adapts to the presence of the molcom over the long term so solving the riddle of shutting it down permanently is a bit like letting go of a part of yourself you don’t really know is not natural. My solution had to do with encapsulating my molcom as an intruder. Since I run Vrill within the body during diagnosis of illness, injury and disease, this is like finding a leaking poison pill within the bowel and having to prevent it from leaking long enough to pass the pill in the stool. That is one of our tests in our Poisons Healing Class.” He said, “I only had to have my stomach pumped twice when I failed to get it right.”

“So, you could do healing work so that Mick would encapsulate his own molcom meaning it couldn’t operate again?” Brad asked.

“Oh yes.” Jeffrey nodded. “I can silence the molcom, I simply don’t know where to get a copy of his brain to re-feed in to make Mick, Mick.”

“How about we try to access what’s hidden and see what we can recover. Let’s assume Mick wants to be Mick so his body will try to help us. The trick here is we don’t want to put new information into his existing storage areas as it will tend to overwrite what he needs to be himself.”

“How do we do that?” Rojer asked.

“Well,” Jeffrey stared down at the boy. “Let’s set up a neurological capture device and coat him in sensory film. That way, whenever we stimulate him the brain will or should produce what is stored. We won’t know what it is as any sequence only plays correctly in its host brain, but we can get an idea of the content by using volunteers to receive the signals and tell us what they think they experience.”

“Sounds pretty dodgy to me.” Rojer said. “You don’t expect me to rent my brain out for this kid, do you? I have enough problems in there without random shit.”

Jeffrey was adjusting the holofield to the correct settings. “For the moment, Rojer, I don’t need to rent your brain. But, I make no long term promises. My skills are better than those medics back in DireSec when you were young. Might do you some good at this point.”

“The film?” Brad asked.

“Oh, we do that old school. There is a vat on the morgue side. We immerse him into it with straws out his nostrils. It’s rather creepy but effective. The three of us should be able to handle Mick, he’s not that big.”

“I can exo.” Brad offered.

“Right.” Jeffrey nodded with true enthusiasm. “I keep forgetting you are Super Soek.” He grinned at Brad. “How about you carry him in there naked, I will fill the vat and find some straws. Come on Rojer, you can guard in there too just don’t get in the way. He will be able to breathe okay. Once we lift him out the skin air-dries to a silver color in about sixty seconds, probably as long as it takes to move him back to this bed. Everyone ready?”

It actually took longer than that. Jeffrey had to program the bed to sensor mode which produced hundreds of transparent pillars for Mick to rest on, that way the holofield could see all sides of him at the same time.

Brad thought the kid looked pretty cool in silver even though his hair got all clumpy and likely would wash out weird. Rojer was grossed out, particularly by the bed of transparent nails. Jeffrey had to reassure him that Mick wouldn’t be uncomfortable. Brad had to explain about weight distribution until Rojer simply glowered with annoyance. He hated math. He knew Brad knew that too and was likely tormenting him on purpose. Still with the now silver Mick laying there motionless, there were no signs of distress.

“What now?” Rojer asked. He was hoping Elias would waken early and he could leave during this medical stuff. He also didn’t like it that the bone was still there, not silvered. Brad had carefully used one of his exo hands to lift the string so the bone wouldn’t touch the film. Now that the skin was dry, the bone was carefully positioned next to Mick’s neck, dangling so it touched nothing but the string holding it.

All of them knew that bone connected to Kiena. No one wanted to talk about her directly but all of them felt some or a lot of fear about her. Rojer mostly felt confused. He didn’t understand why Mick now felt like his father. He knew Mick wasn’t his father but the compulsion that he knew was his paranoid obsession had him tethered to this kid. It was very annoying. He considered asking Jeffrey for some calming meds except he was on guard duty so that desire didn’t match up with his duty. He glowered, looking for a target to vent on and hating that venting meanness was what he wanted. It was easier before he understood what was wrong with him, back then he could just be mean and like it, now he had a whole cluster of wretched considerations to contend with like embarrassment, shame and guilt. Why wouldn’t the world just let him be mean? He cringed.

(Are you ready to reach the Citadel yet? I hope so. I love the Citadel for…reasons. Enjoy!)