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Esther Boccara came from a long line of problem-solving women. She had turned that gift to software and nanocoding, but earlier generations had found their own ways to make use of it. And while Esther’s cultural traditions might not exactly include the idea, she always thought of her maternal grandmother as the “wise woman” of her clan.
That wisdom encompassed, but ran deeper than, the family’s practical genius. If the family had an old story worth remembering, Grandma would remember it. If some bewildering mystery arose, she would have a useful insight to help solve it. And the one time Esther had desperately wanted a love potion, Grandma had invited the boy over and fed him her special Purim cookies. The boy had followed her around like a puppy for the next six months, until Esther thoroughly regretted having wanted his attention.
But Grandma had probably known that would happen.
So now, with the disturbing rumors about the new project team, a team to which—if it existed—she might be assigned, Esther came for a visit. She brought one of Grandma’s latest favorite treats, stuffed prunes wrapped in fake bacon, from a deli closer to Esther’s apartment than Grandma’s; and once they were ensconced in the sunny breakfast nook, she asked her wise woman, “What would it take for people to change their minds about something important overnight?”
Grandma popped another prune in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and smiled like a saint on a shiny day in heaven. “Thank you, child. Now, let’s see. Funny, but I can actually tell you about the time I changed my mind just about that quick. Do you remember the day we old folks call 9-11?”
Esther did. Her parents and grandparents might not agree on everything, but they all insisted she learn as much about the society around her as she possibly could. She could play around with software and write games as much as she chose, but not until she finished her history and sociology homework.
“I was a grown woman by then, and living with your grandpa. I grew up when all the young folks thought it was clever to think the worst of our country. I didn’t go as far down that road as some, but you would never have seen me salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance or anything of that kind.
“And then came 9-11.
“We lived in New York, where the terrorists were most successful. The world seemed to come to a stop: subways shut down, businesses shut down, schools shut down. The New York Stock Exchange, where people traded shares in all the big corporations—it shut down too.
“Not until six days later, on September 17th, did the Exchange reopen. And I can tell you, I would never in a million years have expected to get choked up about a bunch of rich people, as I saw it then, getting to throw around their money. But I did. I actually cried.
“And even before that happened, from the very day the towers fell, I felt a whole lot different about the flag, and the national anthem, and the idea of being patriotic.
“If you’d yanked me out of my life on September 10th and plunked me down a week later where I could see myself, I would have thought I’d been brainwashed.” Grandma cackled and reached for another stuffed date. “Or maybe replaced by one of the pod people.”
Esther recalled another bit of family lore, the subject of much head-shaking among some members of the family. “Didn’t you change your mind about some other things? Politics?”
“Sure did. About nuclear power, and guns, for example. My folks blamed it all on your grandpa—but I didn’t just agree with everything he said, whatever they thought.”
Esther opened the bag of chocolate rice cakes she had brought for her own snack and poured both of them some more iced tea. “But for all those changes, you knew they’d happened, and you more or less knew why.”
“That’s right. But you know, there’s probably always been ways of changing folks’ minds for them. I just mentioned the idea of ‘brainwashing.’ That’s an old word, and it doesn’t mean any fancy tech for messing with actual brains.”
“Then how does it work? Is it something like hypnosis?” Esther, whom neither magicians nor dentists had ever been able to hypnotize, had always wondered if the hypnotic state even existed.
“Sorry, love. I never dug into it enough to know how it was done. But I think it worked on weak and wounded people—whether the brainwashers found them that way, or made them that way.”
Esther shuddered.
“Fetch me my tablet, and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”
Esther hid a smile. Grandma liked to affect the frailty and limited mobility of a far older woman, or perhaps of her own grandmothers. Maybe it was her way of going along with the “wise woman” persona. Esther brought the tablet from the kitchen counter a few steps away and plunked it on the table. Grandma picked it up.
“Now you’ve got me curious about the how. . . . Says here that they used a combination of isolation, total control, exhaustion, uncertainty, and physical and emotional torture. Hmmm. I don’t think you need all those methods every time, not from what I remember.” She tapped away for a moment, then turned the tablet to show what looked like prisoners at some sort of trial. “Communists used to brainwash other communists into confessing all manner of things whenever they had a falling out. I’d bet they went the torture route. But look here.” A group of young people in long loose dresses and pigtails sat in a circle around a stout well-dressed man with oily hair. “Fellows like this one managed to recruit young people, idealistic types searching for meaning in their lives, by posing as holy men. They’d turn the kids into beggars, pestering strangers for money or handing them flowers and then asking for donations, so they could support the leader in luxury. The kids would give up their families and everything else in their lives to do it.”
Esther peered at the photo. “They certainly don’t look tortured. They look happy, or maybe stoned.”
“Yes’m. Throw in religion, and you don’t need the harsher methods. And cutting the youngsters off from their families, that’s where isolation and control came in.”
Esther focused on one girl with a particularly beatific smile, holding hands with a fairly good-looking (if scruffy) young man next to her. “But where do you draw the line? If we could talk to that girl right now, she’d say she was happy, doing what she wanted and being where she belonged.”
“It did get complicated, as I recall. Sometimes the families got so worried they’d hire folks who called themselves ‘deprogrammers.’” Grandma called up another photo. “I think this is from a movie, but it’d be something like.” She slid the tablet over to Esther. The scene showed a burly man hauling a girl, a girl much like the one in the other photo, into a van. “They’d essentially kidnap the kid and take them somewhere, like a cabin in the mountains, away from other people, except sometimes a mother or sister or such. Then they’d try to break the leader’s hold on ‘em.” Grandma looked thoughtful. “In fact, what the deprogrammers did looks a lot like brainwashing in reverse. Isolation, control . . . And if the kids were too upset to eat or sleep, you’d get the exhaustion, too.”
Esther shook her head, her stomach too uneasy for even another rice cake. “What a mess.”
Grandma, unruffled, took the last stuffed date. “People are, dear. It’s best not to draw lines around them, unless you can erase the lines once you know them better.” She wiped her fingers and tapped the tablet. “But I don’t mean to say you shouldn’t ask questions if people seem to change all of a sudden. Especially if some of the signs are there, the isolation and whatnot.”
Later, in her bedroom, Esther pulled the quilt closer around her shoulders and sipped the hot tea. When her stomach felt better, she would try some hot tomato soup, or maybe a casserole. Comfort food.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the stored. They were, in a way, more isolated than human beings had ever been. But was it isolation, if they didn’t feel alone?
And would a brainwasher need isolation or exhaustion or torture, given sufficient control?
* * * * *
Max answered the call with an anticipatory smile, then did a double-take. “Your hair’s black!”
Thea looked smug. “Yup. We just got appearance tweaks. They’re still pretty buggy, but I managed to get a decent black on the second try. I remembered that you liked the look, that time I experimented.”
So he had, though it had not, in the end, been worth the hassle. Thea had to shave her head to get rid of the dye, and while she’d looked pretty cool that way, sort of a foxy alien vibe, he’d missed being able to bury his hands in her hair. Now, of course . . .
That train of thought led to a familiar and desolate place; he forced it away. “Would you widen the view? I want to see more of you.”
Thea smiled and obliged; and obliged further, whether or not she realized it, by changing the subject. “I’ve been doing more 3D drawing lately—since I don’t have a beach worth calling a beach, let alone sand I could sculpt with. Want to see what I made?”
“Absolutely!” Maybe he could work something she’d done into his next tattoo design—for her, if that could be managed now, or for both of them, even.
Thea switched Max’s view to show only her own screen. Max yipped in protest. “Hey, I still want to see you! Can’t you do a split view?”
Thea reappeared, grinning. “Sure, lover.” Then her upper body occupied only the left half of his screen, with a 3D image on the right. He had thought she might choose the sort of subject she would have used for sand art; and it could be, he supposed, but she had never before chosen the sea itself. The arch of the wave rose tall, its depths glowing green, foam curling at the top. Looking at it, he could almost hear seagulls call, and breakers dragging pebbles along wet sand, and the distant yells of children playing. Thea rarely went so literal. She must be missing the ocean even more than he had known.
Max swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s gorgeous, babe.”
She read his mind, as usual. “They’re not all like that. Some of them are more my usual style. Let me pull those up.”
He watched her on the left of his screen, wishing the lighting in her usual “room” were warmer, that it would light up her hair the way sunlight would. But at least he could see her. He must never come to take that for granted.
But something was off, different—more than usually different. Was it the lighting, still? Or something else?
Thea had put up the next image while Max’s mind wandered: a thick, somehow muscular serpentine shape atop a rugged mount, intricate patterns suggesting snake skin. Max bent forward to admire it. “Cool!”
“Thank you, kind sir.” She bowed and smirked. “Here comes another.”
Her clothes? No, she wore a familiar outfit.
Then he realized. Since she had switched over to the wider view, showing more of herself, he hadn’t seen her twitch.
The tic did come and go. Sometimes she went a lot longer without it showing up . . . But not usually, unless she was sculpting or surfing or playing an instrument. Had he seen her tic at all, in her new life?
He kept watching, furtively, as Thea showed him two more images. But of course she noticed his distraction. “Don’t you like them? It’s okay to tell me. More than okay.” She had her almost-stern face on, though he thought he saw some hurt behind it. “You’d better!”
Now he’d done it. “No, baby! They’re terrific! I was just wondering about something.”
“So! Spit it out.”
“Have you noticed, since you . . . got there, whether you’ve been ticcing? Because I haven’t seen it, at least not lately.”
“Huh.” Thea sat back in the chair, not bothering to complain about it as she sometimes did. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think I have.” She paused, waiting. “And usually, once I start thinking about my tic, I start ticcing. Not happening.” She beamed; then stopped when she saw his very different expression. “What is it?”
Max took a deep breath and blew it out. “It’s nothing. I’m being silly. It’s just—I love you, every which way, just the way you are.”
“You mean just the way I was.” She glared at him with her head lowered in a familiar, though rare, about-to-charge posture. “Does it matter that I never liked that tic? Don’t I get to change, even if I think it’s for the better?”
“Uh . . . They didn’t ask you, did they? They didn’t know you’d be glad to get rid of it. They just assumed.”
To his relief, the gleam of battle faded from her face, replaced by a look of concentration. “All right, that’s a point worth thinking about. . . . Though it’s not as if they had much of a chance to ask me about it, not unless they noticed the tic when I came in for my baseline reading. And even then, the tech who handled the reading probably had nothing to do with the programming end of things.” She gazed at Max, intent, serious. “If you notice anything else that’s different, tell me. Because yeah, I’d like to be consulted. But if they change something, don’t assume I’ll want to change it back.”
Another day, another call.
“I wrote something for you.”
Max beamed in delight. “What sort of something?”
“It’s on the flute. I’d love it if you’d sing a harmony. All right?”
“Of course I will!” And if he missed the days when he would do his harmonizing lying in her lap, gazing up at her as she played, he would just have to push that aside. Again. “Ready when you are.”
But when she started to play, the haunting minor tune put such a lump in his throat that his first notes were hardly even notes. She stopped. “Are you all right?”
“Just give me a minute.” He fumbled for the glass of water he’d left nearby and drank half of it. “Okay. Sorry. Would you mind starting over?”
She answered by playing the first notes again; and this time, he was able to fill his mind with the music, and make it theirs.
When the last notes echoed and faded away, he cleared his throat. “Thank you! My turn next. Tomorrow, okay?”
She took a moment to respond. “Absolutely. But now . . . Would you just talk about something? Anything?”
The sadness in the music had been no accident. Max cast about for a cheery subject, or at least a neutral one. A flier for the upcoming election caught his eye. “So you can vote. And here I thought I was going to have to do the voting for both of us.”
“That’d be two more of us than usual.” Thea’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. Neither of them had ever paid much mind to politics, except for a few issues that touched their lives in obvious ways.
Max searched his mail. “I got some sort of message about the ballot issues coming up. Let me see whether I deleted it already. No, here it is. Did you get one?”
“If I did, I probably deleted it—but I think I remember something about enlarging the public easement to and from the beach, though.”
“You would remember that one! I can guess what you—Wait a minute, I’m getting another call.”
* * * * *
Thea scrolled through her notes while waiting for Max. He was back in moments, his voice louder and higher with excitement. “We got that soundtrack!—the one where the director found us from the sand art promo. He loved the scene we scored on spec. We’re in!” He stopped short, and when he spoke again, his voice shook just a little. “We’ve still got it, babe.”
Once again, as so often, Thea ached to put her arms around him. “Of course we do! I can call in when you and he watch the film and get into the details. Why don’t you let me know ahead of time if you have thoughts about where you want to steer him on style and instruments. And I’ll speed up my work on generating different instruments. It’ll be fine.”
Max hesitated. “He wants me to meet some of the other people working on the movie, informally, over dinner. I’m supposed to head out soon.”
Thea shoved down the surprisingly sharp pang of envy and managed a smile. “Off you go, then! Charm their socks off. And tell me what they feed you—I bet it’s something fancy. Maybe squid eggs. Do squid lay eggs?”
Max laughed the big laugh she loved. “Squid eggs or nothing! I’ll make ‘em write it into the contract. I’ll call you as soon as I’m through, okay? Love you, Thea! Later!”
Thea hung up, smiling more easily. Max sounded almost like himself again . . . and it felt good to be talking about work. To hell with politics.
* * * * *
The leader of the newly constituted technical team appeared rather suddenly behind the junior tech’s shoulder, as was her wont. “I understand you have a test subject in mind.”
The junior tech no longer jumped or flinched at these sudden appearances. “That’s right. I suggest one of our newer arrivals, so the patterns will be up to date. Thea Lee. She’s very bright, which may be a factor—and we should also test some of our, um, less conspicuously intelligent clients, but we may as well start with Ms. Lee. We cleaned up her motor tics, so we already know we can tinker with her code and get the expected result, at least in some respects. And there’s a ballot initiative coming up in her former area of residence. She was a sand artist and avid surfer, so we can be reasonably confident of how she would have voted without application of our technique. . . .”
* * * * *
“We had some excitement yesterday.” Max hadn’t been sure whether to tell Thea about it, but Thea always knew when he didn’t tell her something. Their now-limited means of communication hadn’t changed that, and he was glad.
Thea looked up from her knitting. Yarn was apparently one of the items that existed in satisfactory form in Thea’s new world, so naturally she had taught herself to knit. (Thea’s hypothesis: one of the programmers liked to knit.) When he didn’t immediately say more, she thrust her chin at him and commanded, “Spill!”
“We had a little fire in the building.”
Thea set her knitting down in her lap and leaned forward. “How little? Where? Is everyone all right?”
“The laundry room is pretty much a loss, and you can smell smoke everywhere. But everyone’s okay.”
Thea frowned. “Doesn’t that old lady with the rare neurological problem live next to the laundry room? And she’s almost always home.”
“Yeah. About that. When I smelled the smoke, I went out to look and saw a whole lot of it coming out of the laundry room. So I knocked on her door, and she buzzed me in after a while. And then I carried her out to the yard while the firefighters took care of things.”
Thea looked like she was holding her breath. Then she relaxed and shook her head. “I don’t know whether to be proud first or scared first. I’ll go with proud, since you’re okay. My husband the hero!”
Max laughed. “Not hardly. But I’m glad I was home. And that I’ve been working out. She was kind of heavy.”
Thea had her far-off gaze. He waited for her to come back and tell him whatever she’d been pondering. Pretty soon she looked at him again, as serious as he had ever seen her. “If something had gone wrong—or if something else happens, some accident or other—what would you want to do? Want done? I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but you have the same discount I used, if you want it. And that life insurance your dad bought you years ago? You could apply it to the fees, I hear.”
Shit.
Deflect. “What would you want me to do?”
Thea rolled her eyes. “Now that is a really dumb question. Of course, for my sake, I’d want you here. You’re not dumb; you’re stalling. What would you want?”
The word “here” stuck with him. “Thea . . . do you know, when two people are both, um, there, stored . . . can they be together? Share space? Touch each other?”
Thea’s eyes went wide, and her jaw dropped just a little. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. And I guess I haven’t found out by trying to shake hands or pat anyone on the back. That would make one hell of a difference, wouldn’t it? I’m going to find out. If anyone knows, I’ll make them tell me. Or I’ll just find a good excuse to touch someone.” She paused, obviously pondering. “We have the sense of touch, so I don’t know why it wouldn’t work when people touch each other. But it would matter, a lot, just how well it worked. Would it be as good as breathing and the sensation of movement? Or as mediocre as the food?”
“Great questions—of course. . . . We can talk about it once you find out more. Okay?” Time to change the subject, to something a lot less important. “Say, you never did tell me how you voted. You did vote, didn’t you?”
Thea chuckled. “Yeah. They lobbied us hard to vote. I guess they wanted to use the numbers in their sales pitches. I almost dug my heels in—metaphorically speaking—but I decided to go along. . . . I voted against the sales tax hike. If someone wants a bigger convention center, they can find a way to make it pay for itself.”
“Same here.” Max made a check mark in the air as if keeping score. “What about that beach access business?”
“Well, like you said, you know how I feel about that. I’d like—I’d have liked to live on the beach myself someday, when we could afford it. If people care enough about living on the beach to pay those real estate prices, they shouldn’t have to have people traipsing through their front yards at all hours. It’s not as if there aren’t other paths.”
Max made another, bigger check mark. “Yup, that’s what I thought.”
* * * * *
The junior tech stood before his boss’s desk and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “You might not want to send my report to anyone just yet.”
“So you said in your message. Just in time, I might add, or you’d be in somewhat more trouble. What’s the problem?”
“Well, we’ve been doing some monitoring of our test subject. And it appears we may have jumped to conclusions about her preexisting views.”
The team leader listened to the junior tech’s rather stilted recital of the mix-up, suppressing her irritation. She should have kept the fellow on a shorter leash, given his inexperience: the snafu was as much her fault as his.
When he had finished, she allowed herself to lift an eyebrow at him and shooed him out the door. “Send me a write-up.”
The team leader studied the junior tech’s report, thoughtfully tapping her stylus against her lower lip. He had done more than summarize: he had also stated, with reasonable clarity, the decision to be made next.
The threshold question at this stage is whether to run a second test employing the same test subject, either alone or as part of a larger group, despite the miscalculation that prevented clear assessment of earlier results.
Advantages include the ready availability of the parameters already measured, as well as most advantages previously noted.
Disadvantages include the variables introduced by modifying the relevant programs twice in succession, and doing so within this short a time frame.
Including this subject in a larger group would reduce the danger of drawing erroneous conclusions, but would also render such inclusion less significant overall.
The tech had, with understandable prudence, declined to make any recommendation. Nor would any suggestion he made have mattered a great deal. She was team leader. It was her call.
