“You faked the demonstration, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Right you are. Perfecting something like that in the proper time frame would take your skills, combined with heightened intellect. My representative saw to it that the prisoners were infected with the genuine Ebola virus before they got the fake, supposedly genetically engineered, cold virus and were forced to eat bacon. Since the real Ebola is highly infectious through contact with blood, he made sure no one got too close while the prisoners were, ah . . . expiring. When the audience left, to make sure the infection was contained, he torched the bodies.” Sam smiled cruelly. “Reminds me of your brother,” he added coldly.
34
Desh had fought terrorism for many years and had a wealth of knowledge imbedded in his mind. He focused on anti-terror strategy for thirty seconds and had insight after insight. Patterns of sleeper cell organization flashed into his head that US forces had completely missed. There was a better way to find them. It was so obvious. There was a better way to deploy Special Forces teams. There was a better way to arm them.
He was a kid in a candy shop. Wherever he turned his intellect, provided he had a solid knowledge base in the area, and sometimes even if he didn’t, breakthrough ideas presented themselves. Desh was able to monitor and analyze the conversation between Sam and Kira with just a small fraction of his attention, and on multiple levels at once. While calm on the outside, Sam was enjoying himself so much he was almost giddy, especially when he was able to taunt Kira about the murder of her brother. And while her pretend stoicism might have fooled other men, Sam knew with certainty, just the way a dog could smell fear, that his barbs were boring into quivering, exposed nerves just as surely as if he were wielding a dentist’s drill.
As Desh continued exploring his newfound faculties, he realized with a start that his autonomic nervous system was now under his complete control. It would work as usual, unsupervised, until he decided to assume command.
His resting heart rate was about fifty beats per minute. He lowered it to forty. Then thirty-five. Then back to fifty. He adjusted his body temperature down to ninety-seven and then quickly brought it back to normal. He ordered his circulation to abandon his extremities and concentrate at his core, something the body did naturally in extreme cold to conserve body temperature. His circulation dutifully complied, the blood altering its usual path. He ordered it back to normal and blood immediately rushed back into his extremities. He accomplished all of these feats without any idea how he was doing so.
Desh pondered existence for several minutes. He could use a far more extended analysis, even enhanced, but it was immediately clear that Kira had been right. There was no God or afterlife. He had been a fool. Without emotional baggage, and able to draw on his memory of everything he had ever read or heard, this was crystal clear. Like love, religion was a useful delusion—an opiate of the masses sort of thing. He still harbored some slight interest and affection for Homo sapiens, but could see how this interest could quickly wane. The power of thought he now possessed was intoxicating. How had Kira managed to resist it for so long? To ignore the will to power that was the obligation of every living being? And Kira had achieved a higher level of optimization even than this. Incredible!
Desh had been so quiet that Sam had almost forgotten he was there. His eyes remained locked onto those of Kira Miller. “I hatched the sterilization plan using only one of your pills,” he boasted, “right after you escaped Lusetti. I began to frame you for the E. coli plot immediately, and I added evidence that it was real—because I was making it real—as I went along. At least real as far as the terrorists were concerned.”
“I hate to break it to you,” spat Kira condescendingly, “but this plan of yours won’t get you what you want. Were you not paying attention the last time you tried to get the secret to longevity? I was desperate to save my brother’s life, remember. But I couldn’t unlock the memory of the flash drive's location. It wasn't that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. Is this ringing a bell? The enhanced me set things up to make sure nothing, or no one, could ever force the secret from me. Not by threatening me, my brother, or the entire universe for that matter. Shoot me full of truth drugs again and I’ll tell you the same thing: bigger threats and greater duress just make the information more impossible to access.”