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  "That must be the source of the steam," I observed. "You heat water for power and vent it through the howler geyser. The cave vents act as steam suppressers, masking your output from the outside."

  "Bingo," Jefferson said, looking closer at my face. "You look a bit peaked, son. Let's find some coffee and sit down a spell. We need to talk. The psyche boys say that the more we can prod your memory, the faster it'll recover."

  We entered a small cafeteria, empty at the moment. Jefferson and I took a table. Dan said he'd get us coffee.

  "Black for Ned and me," Dan said. "You still like yours with creamer, Eddie?"

  "Yeah, no sugar," I replied automatically. Joe Smith liked his coffee black.

  "Well, now," Jefferson said after we'd all had a chance to sip our java. "Let me shoot this shell straight out of the cannon. Dr. Jones, you are a unique individual. Probably the most special mind that old Mama Nature has yet offered the human race."

  "Humph," I said. "Not from where I sit."

  "You always were a recalcitrant bastard. Give the cynicism a rest, son. Just listen a spell, okay?"

  I nodded warily and picked up my coffee with both hands. It might not have been the mark of genius, but it gave me something to do and the warmth of the coffee was comforting.

  "Back about 1985," Jefferson began, "you were a 15-year-old whelp with a major ax to grind. You didn't grow up in Lebanon, but in Los Angeles, California. You were an orphan. We figure your parents abandoned you about the time you were 11. You lived by your own wits and somehow had sense enough to learn to read a little and stay out of any gangs. You were a loner then, as you are now. We didn't have to fake that part with the MI machine. Hard to do, actually. It's a core of your personality. Core stuff is stubborn. Anyway, at some point you got arrested for felony theft."

  "I tried to hold up a bank," I interrupted. "I got over $70,000 dollars but had the rotten luck to run into an off-duty cop on my way out the door."

  "Ah," Dan said slowly, "memories seep under the door."

  "That little incident landed you in court," Jefferson said. "Lucky for you, you got a sympathetic judge. It was your first offense of any kind. She dickered with the D.A. and cut a deal. If you agreed to be tested and get through high school, she'd keep you out of the slammer."

  "I don't remember any of this," I said, frustration lacing my words.

  Jefferson held up his hand, "Patience, patience. Don't fight it, son. Let it come in its own time. That's how these things work. You taught us that."

  "I taught you?"

  Jefferson looked at Dan. "You didn't tell him yet?"

  Dan shook his head.

  "What?" I asked.

  "The MI machine we used on you. It was your invention. Oh, there had been crude devices before it, but you were the one to finally turn it into something more than straw inside a scarecrow. The full name of the MI machine is the Jones Mnemonic Implant Device. J-MID for short. Or just MI."

  I looked helplessly at Dan. It didn't ring a bell. He shrugged.

  "Well, once they got you into the school system, they ran you through the I.Q. and other appraisal tests and, lord above, guess what they found? That's right. You were one smart son of a bitch. You were the brightest fellow they'd ever tested in California. Not just of your age group. Ever. Of any age group. Then some bureaucrat started comparing records and found out that no one in the whole friggin' country had ever tested as high on the I.Q. scale as you did. Oh, there were plenty of people with more knowledge in their heads. Yours was filled with trivia and about as organized as a couple of cats in a water barrel."

  "Sorry," I said. "That's all a fog upstairs."

  "Uh-huh. Normal. When it finally comes, get ready for a tsunami. It tends to flood in all at once. You proved it with some formula you called 'synthetic fractal consciousness.' Not my field. I take the lab boys' word for it."

  Jefferson swigged down about half his coffee, grunted, and continued, "In those days, as now, Uncle Sam's service boys had ways of spotting anyone whose I.Q. topped 140. That's technically the demarcation point of genius. Well, your name got flagged in neon lights and fireworks. Through various and devious means, the Army snapped you up for the good of the country."

  "Sounds like conscription to me," I shot back. "I don't believe in it. It's immoral."

  "Maybe so, but your choices were thinner than Saran wrap at that point, son. Besides, at every step of the way, we gave you an option out. You just don't remember it yet. You will, though. And you'll see that I was telling you the truth."

  "Or it'll be just another elaborate false memory. How will I know the difference?"

  "Dr. Jones," Jefferson said, leaning forward on his elbows, "the MI has its limitations. It has a nature as does any other machine. It is constrained by that nature. We can only get so elaborate with it or the whole thing falls apart. That's why we had to create a false personality for you. It's why we had to keep it fairly dull and simple. Now, you can believe that or not. But once your brain kicks back into the stratosphere, you won't question what I'm saying now. You'll see it in an instant."

  "So you say."

  "Feet dug in as deep as ever," he said to Dan. Dan smiled slightly.

  "After your tests were over, we got you into a special Army academy," Jefferson went on. "This was a pretty top-notch place. Actually, the Army created it just for you. We had to. We'd never had an asset like you."

  "Asset? Your regarded me as anasset ?"

  Jefferson nodded. "Absolutely. A hell of a monster one, too. You were something completely new. Your capacity for abstraction, your intuitive leaps, your creativity-they were boundless. And fast? God, you were a fast S.O.B.! You see, using DNA forensics we discovered a mighty interesting thing. You were the bastard son of an unusualfamily . As a matter of fact, you have a half brother in the Space Command. His name is Kevin Jones. What makes this guy special - what makes his whole family unusual - is a thing called The Slowdown. Tell him about it, Dan."

  Dan looked at his hands and said, "It's an inborn trait which allows these folks - the men, anyway, because it doesn't appear to show up in the women - it allows them to suddenly go into a kind of physical hyperdrive. To them, everything else slows down to a fraction of normal speed. In fact, of course, they are just moving very, very fast. Trouble is, they don't have control over it. It only kicks in when they are in mortal danger. Using this skill, your half brother actually saved President Washington's life at a banquet after the Engels Extension conflict."

  "Well," I said, hearing my voice cut deep with sarcasm, "I've noticed about as much speed in my physical skills as a slug on snow. Maybe you have the wrong guy."

  Jefferson snorted and Dan shook his head.

  "We don't have the wrong guy, Eddie," Dan said. "You know enough to understand that these DNA matches today are next to foolproof. The odds of us being wrong are astronomical."

  Jefferson finished off his coffee and handed his cup to Dan. "Get me another, if you will. All this yakkin' is parching me."

  Dan got us fresh coffee and Jefferson continued the story.

  "We absolutely, positively, overnight deliverydon't have the wrong guy," he said. "It's just that your talent didn't show up the same way the other Jones' did. Yours showed up entirely in the mental arena. You were born with a kind of intellectual Slowdown. Best of all, you can turn it on and off at will. Always could. We figure that it's how you survived without so much as a scratch all those years alone on the streets. You simply ran brain-circles around all your opposition."

  "But of course the Army couldn't use an undisciplined delinquent," Dan chimed in. "You had a super brain, but you had only rudimentary organizational skills."

  "It's often said by those who hate the services that military intelligence is an oxymoron. Hell, even a lot of non-intel service guys say it! But it's not true. The Army - and the other services, too - have more than their share of bright guys. More geniuses than you might imagine. And there are a hell of a lot of them working in the
field of conceptual enhancement, dedicated to discovering how men think, what works best, and how to teach it. We threw every expert we had at you an you absorbed their knowledge like a black hole sucking up light. We could barely believe it.

  "You see," he said, giving me a wide-eyed look, almost of awe, "you were, and are, so far above a normal genius that you make him downright retarded."

  "Actually," Dan said, "the tests show that you make a normal genius appear to be the equivalent of very intelligent dog."

  I stared at both of them in astonishment.

  "We believe," General Jefferson said slowly, "that the Lord is trying something new with you."

  "If there is a god."

  "Maybe, maybe not. I don't profess to be a theology expert. And this isn't the place to argue the subject. But this we know, Dr. Jones: there's never been anything like you on the planet. To our knowledge."

  "It's worse than that, Eddie," Dan added, "or better. Depends on your perspective, I guess. The studies that the psyche boys have done - and they are all geniuses - suggest something even more profound."

  "I'm about profounded out," I said, feeling suddenly embarrassed by all this outlandish attention. I was either hearing the wildest story of my life, or I was already in a padded room somewhere hallucinating continuously.

  "I imagine so," Dan replied. "But what the studies indicate is that you are the first of your line."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "Let me put it in Biblical terms," Jefferson said. "Eddie, you are the Adam of the next stage of human evolution. That makes you more than a national asset. It makes you an asset of mankind."

  At that point, I fainted.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 13

  When I awoke the next morning, Dan was again beside me.

  "Hi," he said. "Lois says you keeled over yesterday from lack of food. We got you up and completely forget to give you breakfast. Didn't let you drink any water, either. Plus, the coffee probably dehydrated you further. Sorry."

  "I feel okay now," I said, getting up and getting dressed. "By the way, I'm nobody's asset."

  "What?"

  "Before I fainted yesterday, that Jefferson character said I was an asset of mankind. That sounds suspiciously like I'm a slave."

  "Oh, I don't think he meant it that way," Dan said.

  I raised an eyebrow as I slipped on my shoes. "You don't, eh? Well, I have a somewhat different impression of the good general. I think he intends to keep me under lock and key and never let me go."

  "He let you run loose for several years."

  "Yeah, well, that was when he thought I was sweet, dumb, and happy. By the way, why did you guys turn that MI on me in the first place?"

  "Two reasons," Dan said, almost sheepishly. "You knew too much and you were going rogue on us."

  "Going rogue?"

  "You were threatening to violate your clearances. You disagreed with some of our projects and intended to go to the press. It was either the MI or permanent incarceration. You should thank Jefferson, Eddie. He gave you a second chance. He figured that after you came out of the MI's effects, you might straighten out. Will you?"

  "Depends," I said. "Depends on how effectively you convince me I should. Let me ask you this. There must have been something paramount, some project that my so-called roguishness threatened more than others. What was it?"

  From the open doorway, General Jefferson said, "The AM guns."

  "The what?"

  "Remember the antimatter guns that the Russians used on us in the Third World War?"

  "Whoa, hold on!" I said. "From what I read in the media, it was the Russians who invented those things. Not us."

  "No, you invented them," Dan said flatly. "Way back in 1990, when you were only 20. But then during the big Energy Department espionage scandal in the Clinton years, some idiot let the data loose to the Rooskies. We were cooperating with Energy at the time, but they were in charge of overall security. Their security was pathetic, of course, and we suspected it, but politics prevented us from doing much about it. We didn't discover the theft until years later, after the war was over. Some lower DoE official tipped us and the whole thing busted wide open. We'd built only a couple of tabletop prototypes of the antimatter gun. We intended to save the concept for future use. We had plenty of other stuff coming on line. We just didn't figure we'd need the AM stuff for awhile. No one in the services dreamt that we'd face the exact weapon wielded by the Russians."

  "Know your enemy and use secret agents to good avail," I believe some Chinese strategist once said, I interjected.

  Dan and Jefferson both nodded.

  "Well, you have to remember the context, Dr. Jones," Jefferson said. "After Yeltsin's demise and the Chaos Years, after Russia went Soviet again, it was almost impossible to run decent intelligence over there. It just got by us."

  "Where did I come in?"

  "Uh, well," Dan said, "you thought we should have fielded the antimatter weapon right away. You thought we were irresponsible not to. You anticipated the Russian theft and the subsequent attack. We didn't believe you. Wecouldn't believe you."

  Dan glanced at Jefferson, as though seeking permission. Dan looked back at me.

  "You see, Eddie, you'd designed a forecasting program. You'd derived it from some customer order-flow software used in the shipping industry to predict inventory requirements, then you combined it with several arcane elements of gaming theory snipped out of the entertainment biz, and then-"

  "Okay, okay," I said impatiently. These guys seemed to takeforever to say anything. I felt like they were on downers while I was on speed. "I woofed and wowed and forecast a war, then got pissed when you wouldn't believe me. How did that justify your mashing my brains with the MI machine?"

  "Son, you threatened to go public with your views. It would have blown our strategy."

  "Eddie, there's something else we haven't told you about this high-track brain you've got."

  "Which is?"

  "It's unstable. Or at least used to be. You go along fine for awhile, then suddenly your emotions go into warp drive and your get paranoid. In the years before we put you through the MI, we had to physically subdue and sedate you quite a number of times. Back then, your outbursts were limited to mild violence. Throwing plates; pushing people around a little; breaking chairs. Considering all you were producing, inventing, and improving, we could put up with that now and then. But when you threatened to break your clearances, well, we couldn't allow it."

  "Hmmm," I said. I forced myself to grin wryly. "Sounds like I was an asshole."

  "You were," Jefferson said. "And then some."

  "Can I get some breakfast?" I asked.

  Over breakfast, wolfing down eggs, bacon, ham, orange juice, and English muffins slathered in blackberry jam, I pointed a fork at General Jefferson and asked, "What I still don't get is the time frame on all of this. According to my internal clock, I lost track of Dan in these caves something like 30 years ago. But you hinted yesterday that I'd only been under the MI's influence for a few years."

  "Truthfully, son, it's only been two years. And Dan lied to you. You two never explored these caves together. You never lost track of each other. All phonied up. Part of the deal. It's how the MI works."

  "But I remember-"

  "Falsely," Dan said.

  "What about the ring? How did I know the path through the caves in order to get here a couple days ago?"

  "Oh, that's the easiest answer of all. Those things never happened," Jefferson said. "You've never left this complex. You've been here throughout the entire MI treatment. Oh, the caves are real. You can see we're in 'em. But what youthink you remember was merely an elaborately detailed memory constructed with the aid of a man walking the route with a high-rez mini-camera. The MI incorporates digital interfacing with the human brain. You'll remember soon enough. You should. You created that process, too. Or at least the critical parts of it. Any good Hollywood story editor could have come up with the false memories of yo
ur getting lost in the caves, losing Dan, living in an alternate reality, and the whole ball of string. As a matter of fact, two of the people who create the MI memories used to work in Hollywood as screenwriters. Amazing what those ratty little frackers can come up with, isn't it?"

  "But why such an elaborate thing? Why not just something simple?"

  "A precaution," Dan said. "In one of your fits, you showed extraordinary adeptness at escape. We barely stopped you. We knew it could happen again. If it did, we figured that the more ridiculous the story, the more science-fantasy we threw in to your pseudo-life, the less likely anyone would listen to you. You'd be just another nutcase wandering the world, yelping for attention. That way, if you tried blabbing secrets in violation of your clearances, you'd be taken no more seriously than the latest UFO abduction fruitcake. By the way, wedid work together. We were friends, even though we didn't grow up together. Heck, we're not even related. That was all MI bull, too."

  Dan looked ashamed. I think he was. I think he had a conscience.

  I downed the last of my bacon and settled back with a cup of coffee.

  "You called the MI stuff a treatment. Is it supposed to cure my emotional instability? What's the catch? Something's off here?"

  The two generals looked uncomfortable.

  "The catch, if you insist on calling it that," Jefferson said, "is that about half the time the process doesn't work."

  "And if not?"

  "You'll eventually revert to the implanted personality of Joe Smith."

  "There is no Joe Smith. He's a construct."

  "Yes," said Dan.

  "Sooooo," I said, fleshing out he implications, "that means I'll be delusional. Permanently. I'll be living in cuckoo land."

  "Essentially, yes," Jefferson said stiffly. "But we'll provide for you. We're not heartless. Think of it as living in a perfect virtual reality, but not knowing it's virtual. You'll forget all this and we'll keep you alive with the best of medical care and nutrition. You'll be reasonably happy."

  "A hunk of flesh, fed food and fantasy, until it dies."