Duggan stared at the document in his hands in utter amazement. Then he shoved the redacted report into the shredder and took a Maalox. He had never had an internal memo censored before, and he’d never heard of it happening to anyone else either. Gupta wouldn’t return his calls or e-mails, which only intensified his anger and disappointment. Was the pressure on NCSD coming from inside or outside or both? He was going to find out even if it cost him his job. He had every intention of walking down the hall to Gupta’s office for a showdown, but when he opened his door, JT was blocking the threshold, looking sympathetic and gently pushing him back inside. “Easy, easy, I know how you feel, but don’t ever do anything while you’re still mad,” he told Duggan. “C’mon, buddy, you know better than that.”
“They censored my report, JT”
“I know, but what makes you so sure it was Gupta?”
“Then who?”
“I’ve been getting some vibrations,” JT told him. “Give me a chance to find out what’s shaking. Meanwhile, keep your head down and don’t do anything rash.”
For the next couple of days, Duggan pretended to stay busy, tracking routine cases and pitching in on investigations when asked, wondering when the ax would fall.
Then the word came that Gupta had agreed to grant him an audience. Duggan braced himself for the worst and walked down the hall, past the cubicles and meeting rooms, to the corner office. Gupta was waiting, his desk scrupulously cleared of clutter.
“Jake, have a seat. I want to apologize.”
“For what, sir?”
“Your memo, the edited version that was sent back to you, was a mistake. I’ll take responsibility for that. You did good work, Jake. There are some patterns and issues you raised that merit our attention, especially the possibility of interagency manipulation. That’s serious stuff. And I promise to look into it.”
“But you want me to back off,” Duggan said.
“I want you to wait.”
“Wait for what, sir?”
Gupta grimaced. “Just give me some time, Jake. These are serious allegations that raise sensitive questions. We’re on tricky terrain here. We’ve got to proceed carefully.”
“And what about me? Am I expected to forget what I know?”
“I expect you to be patient. Take some vacation. We’ll talk again when you get back. I promise.”
“Is that all?” Duggan asked.
“Yes, Jake. That’s all.”
There was no sign of JT, so Duggan decided to call it a day and sweat out his frustration at the gym. The brisk walk cleared his head, and he was looking forward to a rigorous workout when he opened the combination lock and reached for his sneakers. The Post-it was stuck to the inside of his locker. It said that a ticket to see the Washington Capitals at the Verizon Center for that night’s game was waiting for him at will call. Duggan peeled off the sticky square, which was the same lime green as the one that had been left for him on Westlake’s laptop in Kandahar. He was pretty sure the Post-it would be free of fingerprints, as would his ticket. Duggan pulled on jeans and took a cab to the stadium, fully aware that whoever left the ticket probably had zero interest in hockey.
The arena was noisy and crowded, and his seat was good—third row of section 111, right behind the penalty box. Spectators were already lambasting their favorite players, and Duggan did his best to look involved in the brutal ballet. His understanding of hockey was limited to knowing that it was dominated by Canadians and brawny brawlers with incomplete sets of teeth.
The seats to Duggan’s left were occupied by an older man and a boy who appeared to be his grandson. The seat to his right was empty, and it stayed that way until the end of the first period. The score was still zero to zero when the spot was claimed by a man casually dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, carrying a beer and a box of popcorn. Duggan regarded his companion askance. Middle-aged. Nondescript. Could be anybody. Especially since he was wearing a red-and-blue Capitals Warface hockey mask, just like the ones for sale in the fan merchandise store.
“Hey, buddy, did I miss much?” the stranger said to Duggan.
“Hockey mask. I have to remember that one.”
“Team spirit is an undervalued virtue,” the man said, his voice muffled by the mask and the noise of the game. “It’s getting too risky to have a conversation like this online.”
“Works for me, as long as you’re not here to talk about hockey.”
“I know about your memo,” the man said, “and I know why you’re being told to stand down. Interested?”
“Is hockey a contact sport?”
The puck was slapped toward their section before being intercepted at the last second, sending it ricocheting against the Plexiglas barrier, which afforded them an excellent view of the ensuing shove-fest. They waited for the commotion to settle.
“You were right about the DOD trying to cover something up, and you were also right about Westlake being in a covert program involving mind control.”
Duggan nodded. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
The man paused to sip his beer and clap for a visitors’ goal. “What do you know about microwave experiments by the US government?”
“I know that that there was a horse race between us and the Soviets during the fifties and sixties,” Duggan said. “I know that offensive uses of microwave beams were tested by the United States on its own personnel until the shit hit the fan in the seventies, when the whole shebang went underground. I’m guessing that whatever Westlake was exposed to is just the latest iteration of something that isn’t supposed to exist.”
The visitors charged and nearly scored again with a zinger right up the middle. “C’mon, you pathetic losers!” the man shouted. “Get it together!” He gulped his beer and belched. Without turning his head, he said, “It’s kinda funny, don’t you think?”
“What’s funny?”
“Well, everybody’s all upset about the government wanting a back door to your smartphone, and meanwhile it’s busy building a back door to your brain.”
“Keep your day job,” Duggan said.
“Tough crowd tonight,” the man said, clearing his throat. “The program is called zeph.r, and it was being tested to increase the learning curve and effectiveness of drone operators, or at least that was the idea. At some point along the way, as you have already deduced, the experiment went awry. Something about increasing the bandwidth, but it’s all too technical for me. Anyway, after the massacre, as you know, the DOD did their best to build a cover story. But one of the scientists who worked on the project underwent a change of heart, you could say. His name is Kenneth Ulrich, and he went AWOL with a copy of the zeph.r code. DOD thinks we’re holding him hostage to keep them off balance and take back some of their jurisdictional turf.”
“Are you?”
They were interrupted by the older man getting up to take his grandson to the bathroom. When the kid saw the man’s mask, he said, “Cool! Grandpa, can I get one, please?” The grandfather gave Duggan’s companion a sour look.
Hockey Mask waited for them to leave before continuing. “The answer, unfortunately, is no,” he admitted. “At first, we thought he might have been a mole for the Chinese or the Russians, but now we believe that he’s still in the United States.”
“Doing what?”
“That is exactly what we’d like to know. But there’s reason to believe that he has turned against his previous employer.”
“You think he’s a domestic threat?”
“Westlake and Ulrich were close.”
“How close?”
The man shrugged. “Who am I to judge? But Ulrich’s former colleagues say that he blames the air force for Westlake’s death and for publically lying about the actual causes, depicting a patriot as a nutcase. Ulrich thinks the military behaved less than honorably and should be held accountable.”
“How does he intend to do that?”
For the first time, the man in the hockey mask turned to face Duggan. “We were hoping you could help us find out.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
The kid was back, wearing an identical fan hockey mask and carrying a souvenir stick. “I’ve got a mask and a stick, so I can beat you up,” the boy said. The man playfully put up his dukes, and the kid pretended to bonk him on the head with his stick. Everybody chuckled and retook their seats.
Hockey Mask spoke again. “Let’s just say that there are two different camps on whether your investigation is a constructive development. As your boss knows, some of those people might go to considerable trouble to keep you from digging any deeper.”
“Well, at least I know you’re not DOD,” Duggan said. The man said nothing and sipped his beer. A player caromed into the Plexiglas with a loud thump, followed by a referee’s whistle. “But you still haven’t given me a reason to help you.”
“Do the words Meta Militia ring a bell?”
Duggan shook his head.
“The term popped up in a few of the e-mails Ulrich received before he flew the coop. It could be significant, or maybe not.”
“That’s not much of a lead,” Duggan said. “And how do I know it’s not just another red herring?”
Duggan thought he heard a sigh from behind the hockey mask. “Look, I’m not going to ask you to trust me, but protecting the United States from a domestic cyber-attack is the one thing we all agree on. The fact is, if there’s a rogue DOD scientist with a grudge running off his leash with a dangerous technology in his possession, we all want him stopped. And if he’s in this country and using the Internet to transfer or transmit the zeph.r code, then the responsibility lands squarely on the NCSD’s turf. Am I right?”
“I follow your logic.”
“That’s all anyone could reasonably ask,” the man said. “I’m only here to tell you that there’s more support for what you’re doing than you might think. Thanks for your time. Now I think I’ll go get myself another beer.”
Duggan stayed for the rest of the game knowing that the man in the hockey mask wouldn’t be coming back. In the last five minutes of the period, he watched men in padded uniforms rush the goalie box and pile on top of each other like seals. Then a Capitals player faked left and right before bouncing the puck off an opponent’s stick to set up a teammate who slammed home the winning shot. The maneuver was proof that under certain circumstances, even an enemy can help you achieve your goal. Duggan decided that maybe hockey wasn’t such a dumb sport after all.
Cara Park was at her desk having her usual working lunch of quinoa, roasted soy, and lemongrass tea when her office phone rang. It was Rosalyn Cooper from the CDC, calling to ask if she knew anything about the strange outbreak of mass hysteria and fainting reported at a recent techno rave in Las Vegas.
“I hate to sound old-fashioned, Rosalyn, but I don’t know anything about techno or raves.”
“I’m sure you don’t, Cara, and I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but you’re the only person I know who might be able to help me,” Cooper insisted. “Local hospitals are required to issue reports of injuries that affect more than a few people, and normally this kind of thing would be of more interest to the DEA than the CDC. But this case is different. What got my attention is that the victims’ symptoms are nothing like the usual alcohol or ecstasy overdoses. I mean, some of them match—the euphoria and sexual permissiveness. But it’s not just the symptoms that have me worried.”
Cara put her lunch aside and reached for a pen and scratch pad. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“At this particular event, at least five thousand people experienced similar symptoms at pretty much the same place and time—simultaneous dementia, plus blackouts and memory loss, and the effects lasted, in some cases, for several days. Strange, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Cara agreed. “And it sounds like you’ve ruled out controlled substances.”
“I’m double-checking with the DEA, but it doesn’t match the profile of any drug I’ve ever heard of. And how could so many people ingest it at the same time? Unless it was in a vapor or gas form.”
Cara’s eyebrows arched as she scribbled on the pad. “Or an airborne pathogen of some kind?”
“That’s the concern.”
While Cooper was talking, Cara started a search for reports on the ARK “Rave Zombie Riot,” as one journalist had dubbed it. “There’s definitely something strange about it,” Cara said. “But what kind of virus could induce symptoms like that across such a large group so fast?”
“Well,” Cooper replied, “that’s why I’m calling. There was something about the descriptions of the people that made me think of you. I just sent you some links. Take a look and tell me what you think.”
Cara said she would and then hung up.
She found plenty of news reports, most of them with sensational headlines like “Techno Beat Bacchanalia” and “Randy Rampage at ARK.” But none of them could explain the phenomenon of thousands of ravers apparently convulsing in unison, although one state senator proclaimed it “proof that our permissive society is poisoning its youth and sowing the seeds of its own destruction.” Even the police were flummoxed. The only article containing any useful information was by a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun, who had interviewed Monica Blair, an ER nurse at Desert Springs Medical Center. Blair had treated dozens of those who arrived at the hospital in various stages of disorientation or physical distress. “It was spooky,” she recounted, “I’ve seen plenty of kids on ecstasy, but this was something else. The symptoms were more like brain damage or high fever, conscious but unresponsive, lots of moaning, blinking, and twitching. But within twenty-four hours, most of them seemed fine, so we let them go home. There’s either a new drug out there or some kind of weird flu. Either way, it’s bad news.”
“Knock, knock,” Eric said. Cara beckoned him inside, but her eyes stayed on the screen. “I’ve got the visuals of the bee colony migration patterns,” he said, spreading a sheaf of maps across her desk. “There’s some pretty interesting stuff here. The migration isn’t linear. Look!” He pointed to a web of lines emanating from different hubs.
Cara stared at the printouts. “They’re asymmetrical.”
“Right? I noticed that too,” Eric said. “But, no, I mean, look at these vectors. It’s incredible. The scout bees are communicating with each other miles away from the hives. See?” Eric used his finger to trace a pair of hubs with several intersecting spokes. “There’s no way to explain this from a biochemical standpoint.”
“Terrestrial magnetic navigation?”
“But then how do the scouts know about each other? There’s no way these convergence patterns can be random. There’s something else telling them where to go. But what and why?”
“I don’t know, Eric. But this is good work.”
“Thanks. I’ll rerun the data to make sure, but I’m guessing Rosalyn will be interested in whatever’s going on here.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Cara agreed. “I just spoke to her, actually.”
“Really? What about?”
“She thinks that there might be some kind of viral outbreak in Nevada. Apparently, a bunch of kids went berserk at a rave in Las Vegas last weekend.”
“You mean ARK?”
“Yes, have you heard about it?”
“I was there.”
“You were at the zombie rave riot?”
“What?” Eric was flabbergasted. “Wow, Dr. Park. Honestly, it was just a music festival.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Say something about what?” Eric’s face reddened. “I saw some police and ambulances at the end of the night, not a big deal. I mean, the authorities are always trying to close these things down. And I wasn’t high on ecstasy, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Cara shook her head. “Forgive me, Eric. That’s not what I meant. Naturally, what you do on your own time is none of my business. I’m just trying to understand what happened. The reports from the hospital are really weird—something about collective brain damage, mass psychosis. Did you or your friends see anything like that?”
“Actually, we were stuck on the Ferris wheel,” Eric said glumly. “By the time we got down, it was all pretty much over.”
Cara couldn’t decide if she should be sympathetic or relieved. “Rosalyn is worried that we might be seeing the start of some kind of pandemic. Apparently thousands of people were infected at exactly the same time.”
“Whoa, infected? By what? Mushrooms and ecstasy can make people freak out but thousands of people at the same time? No way.”
“Rosalyn thinks it might be a new virus.”
“Jeez,” Eric said. “A rave germ? The buzz online is that it was the best EDM festival ever—great music and light show, everybody grooving together, letting loose. I mean, that’s why people go to these things.”
“What about the …” Cara caught herself, realizing that a question about rampant sex at the ARK festival was inappropriate for a slew of reasons. “Never mind. Rosalyn is doing an analysis of the medical reports. Maybe we’ll find a pattern.”
“Sounds good,” Eric said. He paused at the door. “Listen, I’m heading downtown to meet some friends for pizza. You’re more than welcome to join us.”
“I’ve still got work to do. But thanks for the invite.”
“No prob,” Eric said. “I’ll update the hive migration data in the morning. Do you need me for anything else?”
“No, I’m going to stay and finish up. Good night, Eric.”
“Just text me if you change your mind.”
“I will. Thank you.”
When Eric was gone, Cara clicked on the links that Cooper had sent. The first video showed scads of smiling kids playing Frisbee and cavorting under the blazing sun. The second video was taken after dark. Cara was astonished by the scale and intensity of what she saw: tens of thousands of people jammed together, dancing in lockstep and waving their arms in tandem, absorbed and transported by the mutual surrender to sensory overload. And the music. She’d heard techno before, but this was different—industrial beats and flashing lights but also layers of something else, a guttural drone, like Tibetan monks chanting. Could it be coming from the crowd? In the midst of it all, numerous couples were writhing and twining like salacious serpents, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. Letting loose, as Eric would say.
Watching the video made Cara feel like an over-the-hill voyeur. The mating rituals of the young had apparently changed since her own college days, when the drug of choice was marijuana, a substance known for its ability to magnify the social distance between inebriated individuals. What she was looking at was the opposite of alienation; it was social communion of a degree to which she had no reference, except maybe the congregational bees and ants that she considered her extended family. Not that she looked down on pot or other countercultural pastimes. Carter, a musician, sculptor, and her last real love, had been a connoisseur of THC, with a whole shelf of hydroponic buds in jars meticulously labeled with fanciful names like Purple Horizon and Big Bang. The lovers would take long walks in Golden Gate Park, stumbling onto a saxophonist playing Coltrane in the arboreal maze, planning backpacking trips to Bali and Patagonia, reading each other’s horoscopes and auras. As a kind of den mother to Carter and his beat poet pals, she would help them sew blinking lights on their outfits and make sure he was stocked up on psilocybin brownies and avocado veggie wraps for their annual pilgrimage to Burning Man.
The libertarian bond they shared seemed natural and honest to Cara, and their countercultural community flourished until a trip to the Yucatan to celebrate a galactic alignment at the pyramids of Chichen Itza. As drummers and fire dancers paid homage to the Mayan God Kukulkan, they watched the winter solstice coincide with the moment that Earth, Jupiter, and the sun made a straight line to the center of the Milky Way, a cosmological event that wouldn’t occur again for thousands of years. It was there, at a place and time that many believed marked the return of the rain god, that Carter kneeled and presented her with a silver ring forged by a local shaman. “In La’ Kesh,” he said to her as conch shells bellowed the beginning of a new Age of Aquarius. “It’s Mayan for ’You are another me, and I am another you.’ I want to be reborn with you and have kids together so our love and blood will mix and last forever.”
Cara tried to give him the answer he expected, but the words wouldn’t come, and she watched helplessly as the light in his eyes drained away. It was not the old world but their relationship that ended that day. Being centered, Cara realized, was not the same thing as being grounded, or ready to be buried in diapers and nannies and non-toxic toys, or becoming another’s significant other without understanding one’s own inner self. The idea of putting her career on indefinite hold and settling down, even temporarily, to take on the responsibility of raising a family with an income-averse free spirit triggered a sudden attack of claustrophobia. Before long, Cara had moved back into her own apartment, and their agreement to take a breather elongated into a permanent separation.
Since then, she had limited her relationships to no-strings affairs that left her free to concentrate on her work while steadfastly shunning online dating sites. She was repelled by the notion of putting herself on display, of tagging her photos, and/or listing her interests and hobbies and favorite authors for all the world to devour. The modern compulsion to publicly expose every detail of your life struck Cara as indecent, a kind of digital exhibitionism. Willfully uploading personal pictures, experiences, and thoughts for free, Cara felt, cheapened the intrinsic value of one’s existence, like seeing your mother’s wedding ring in a pawn shop window.
Cara replayed the ARK video. When did summer music festivals become uninhibited orgies of hyper-sensory connection? So many people packed into a single place, rubbing up against each other, breathing the same air. It wouldn’t take much for a virus to replicate exponentially through such a dense population, spreading quickly to other cities, states, and continents. Cara switched off her computer, locked the doors, and headed for the BART station, feeling hopelessly unhip and wondering for the first time if it was her destiny to live the rest of her life studying creatures that would never know the excruciating freedom of being alone.
Duggan didn’t wait for an invitation from Gupta before storming into his office the next morning, but the person behind his boss’s desk was a stranger, a woman immaculately coiffed and clearly in charge. Duggan recognized the other person in the room as Jordan Sharpe. JT was there too, barely concealing an I-told-you-so smirk.
“Hello, Jake,” the woman said. “I’m Jessica Koepp. I’ll be your primary supervisor until further notice.”
Koepp extended her hand, and Duggan took it. It was a firm, confident shake.
“Where’s Gupta?”
“Mr. Gupta has been reassigned,” Koepp said without elaboration. “I believe you’ve already met Agent Sharpe from NSA. And of course Agent Nutley.”
“JT and I go back to cyber boot camp.”
“Yes, I know,” Koepp said. She was dressed in a tailored gray suit and shiny black pumps. The pearls around her neck were discreetly expensive. She motioned to Sharpe to close the door.
“Jake, let me start by apologizing for the misunderstanding between you and your former supervisor. Sometimes things happen that require action outside the normal channels. This is one of those times.”
“So now we’re flying under the radar.”
Koepp smiled kindly. “For now, yes. As you already know, the integrity of two or possibly three agencies has probably been compromised. And until this all gets sorted out, it’s best to be conservative about who else is privy to the details of our investigation.”
“You mean the Westlake case?”
“Yes,” Koepp confirmed. “A research scientist at DOD who was working with Airman Westlake has gone missing with some sensitive technology.”
“His name is Kenneth Ulrich,” Duggan interrupted. “A DOD researcher who was working with an experimental software called zeph.r.”
JT shot Duggan a look that said touché.
Koepp and Sharpe exchanged a glance.
“That’s correct,” Sharpe said. “We know that Ulrich is off the reservation but still have no idea if he acted solo, or whether he’s remained in touch with any confederates at DOD. The zeph.r project was funded and operated outside federal guidelines, which makes it a black box with powerful sponsors inside the DOD, sponsors who would probably like this whole problem to quietly go away.”
“What you mean is that we’re basically in a sack race with the DOD to find Ulrich, and until he’s brought in and debriefed, it’s going to be hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
Koepp nodded appreciatively. “Gupta did say you were a man who doesn’t mince words.”
“I’ve already been contacted by an anonymous source who knew about Ulrich and zeph.r,” Duggan said. He watched Koepp for a reaction, but she remained impassive. “So I’m guessing none of this is going to stay secret for very long.”
“Which only adds another layer of urgency to your assignment,” Koepp agreed. “Operation Zeph.r was designed to embed messages and behavioral direction in human brains to boost concentration and efficiency. Apparently, one of the experiments included embedding a subcutaneous receiver chip into the test subject’s head …”
“To boost the signal’s bandwidth. And Donald Westlake was the lucky GI who got to test DOD’s new toy.”
“Yes. The chip increased the intensity of messages, which, in theory at least, could be transmitted via visual and aural signals hidden in music, pictures, and other sensory stimuli.”
“Who’s running the program now?”
“No one,” Sharpe said. “Officially, anyway. Zeph.r was dismantled by DOD a year ago after early tests showed that the effects of the software were too erratic and unpredictable to be useful as a military weapon enhancement.”
“But somebody didn’t get the memo.”
“Or maybe that person wrote it,” Koepp said. “For all we know, Ulrich might not be the only entity with a disruptive interest in zeph.r.”
“You mean China, Russia, the North Koreans,” Duggan said.
“Or somebody closer,” Sharpe said. “You would know better than us who might be willing to aid and abet a computer scientist determined to expose secret government mind control research.”
“It’s a pretty long list,” Duggan said, “not even counting international interests. Can you get me a summary of attempted hacks into DOD research facilities during the past year?”
Sharpe nodded.
“One more thing, Jake,” Koepp said. “You’ve developed a reputation as something of a loose cannon, an operative who doesn’t respect interagency protocol. There have been complaints from certain quarters, a concern that you knowingly overstep organizational bounds.”
Here it comes, Duggan thought.
“You want me to stop,” he said.
“No, I want you to keep it up. Just make sure the three of us know what you’re doing so we can watch your back.”
JT spoke for the first time. “Jake, we’re confident that NCSD will soon be given the authority and resources to address this threat at the proper level,” he said. “Meanwhile, you’re stuck with us.”
Duggan paused to consider his options. Koepp didn’t seem like the type to take the helm of a sinking ship, but if NCSD took the fall in an interagency power struggle, his head would be first on the chopping block. On the other hand, JT’s survival skills were matchless and his comment was as close to an endorsement as he would ever get. Duggan looked at Sharpe.
“Can you get me a universal term search on the NSA global database?”
“I’ll do it,” JT volunteered. “I can get somebody to discreetly run a wordcluster analysis for Ulrich, Kandahar, DARPA,mind control, and all the usual hacktivist groups. Anything else?”
“Get me everything you can find on the Meta Militia.”
“What’s that?”
“Every revolutionary needs followers to help him fight for the cause,” Duggan said. “And I think Ulrich might have found his army.”