Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island (29 page)

He tried
dream visualizer Rossini
. Many of the same references but nothing with Rossini's name on it. Okay, so Larry knew how to stay under Internet radar.

Noel got up from the table and made himself a new vodka-tonic. He sipped. He paced. He stood still. He listened. No sound, nothing at all. He'd not realized till then how quiet it could be in the woods on an island. Silence from Kyra's room. He paced some more, had a notion and returned to the Internet. He typed
thought visualizer
. Wow! 14,300,000 results. A growth industry.

He scanned the results on the first page. Oh dear. “Visualization: the road to health.” “Think into yourself.” “Your thoughts belong to you.” “Positive thinking will drive away your cancer.” “Thinking yourself to wellness.” Unhelpful, at least relating to what he was looking for. He added the keywords
electronic imaging
and reduced his results by 90 percent. Still a lot of health and wellness stuff, as well as blogs proclaiming miracles and failures, but he found several more directly in line with what he'd hoped for. After half an hour of scanning the articles and other entries, he printed several that came from sources he felt he could trust.

From the
International Herald Tribune
, March 3, 2009, an article titled “Watch what you think.” It seemed that neuroscientists were “cataloguing brain patterns to match up with actual words, sentences and intentions.” A lot of this work was being done at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. A researcher claimed that “every thought is associated with a pattern of brain activity.” A team was setting up “a database of brain patterns we all share.” As remarkable, “Brain specialists have identified areas in the brain where certain concepts are stored.”

Noel sat back. Heady stuff, scientists sneaking around in someone's brain. Might be justified if that someone gave permission for it to happen to him. But if one were forced to undergo that kind of probing, what happens to the ethics of it all? The final privacy is inside one's head. Now it seemed that
they
could just look inside the brain and export one's secret thinking.

Was this part of Larry Rossini's intention, but dealing with dreams rather than thoughts? How far apart
are
dreams and thoughts? And what was he planning on doing with his project? Suddenly the ransom for Susanna's kidnapping made a great deal more sense.

He read on. The science of brain reading was still in its infancy, still fairly crude. But some impressive results had been achieved—one recent basic experiment claimed 78 percent accuracy. At Carnegie Mellon, thought reading was the combined project of the psychology and computer science departments.

A kind of expertise different from Larry Rossini's. Nothing implanted or injected into the body. Reading only what was there, brain electricity. The body giving itself away without external enhancement. If Noel had understood Larry correctly, all parts of the body contributed to forming his images.

More articles. From the National Science Foundation, a press release dated May 30, 2008, and published in the journal
Science
: “A Computer That Can ‘Read' Your Mind.” Another Carnegie Mellon team “had shown that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can detect and locate brain activity when a person thinks about a specific word.” And further, they had developed an even more complex model “that can predict brain activation patterns associated with concrete nouns, or things that we experience through our senses, even if the computer did not already have the fMRI data for that specific noun.” In other words, a computer that could teach itself new variants and complexities based on whatever information it had been fed earlier. A computer that evolved its own bodies of knowledge. Remarkable. Scary.

A huge leap from the kinds of scientific subject matter Noel had been taught while he was at university.

He got up from his computer with a strong need to empty his bladder. No wonder, he thought, as he noted his glass stood empty. A bathroom call, and a refill. He wasn't at all tired, so maybe he'd increase the vodka content. He grabbed his glass, couple of ice cubes, and poured more vodka. Half full. He made a tactical decision and put the can of tonic water back in the fridge. It'd be flat tomorrow, but what the hell. His half-empty glass suddenly seemed an insult. He filled it to three-quarters. Added an ice cube. Now it looked respectable. Wished he had an olive. He took a long sip. Good stuff.

He checked the time—nearly eleven. Should get some sleep. But this material was too fascinating. Back at the table he read an article from England, the
Guardian
, also May 30, 2008: “Scientists move a step closer to mind reading.” It covered much the same ground as the previous two. What impressed Noel as much about the articles as the information they presented was their sources—no fringe papers or tabloids these.

So this would be the league Larry Rossini played in. Or perhaps an even more major one. Was he going to make his work public soon? And his methods? Because clearly those algorithms that had to accompany the nanomolecules in order to bring about the desired visualizations were the hidden part of the process. No wonder he'd kept those from the kidnappers—even at the possible cost of serious harm to Susanna. Instantly Noel realized he had to see Larry's project in action. He sat back in the chair—not very comfortable—and wondered what it would feel like to have his dreams observed. He sipped. He closed his eyes to stir up any images that might be hiding behind his eyelids. He saw only a play of shapes, colors. Gray-greens, dark reds, occasional shoots of light yellow. Would the Dream Visualizer transfer images like that onto the screen? Course not. Larry's work was way more sophisticated. Way more . . . 

He realized he'd started to nod off. He forced his eyelids open. He checked the clock on his computer. 11:44. Nearly time for bed. But there stood that inviting glass of vodka. He smiled, picked it up and sipped. First-rate. More articles to be read. He clicked the fifth one, about increases in the blood flow to the brain when activity takes place in a variety of areas. Some questions being asked: Will the notion of certain foods that create brain activity be found in the parts of the brain that deal with taste? Or with chewing? Or smell? Or . . . 

Peter Langley hadn't returned home directly after driving Jeremiah and Marianne to the ferry. He missed the boy, and even the few minutes with Marianne had been pleasant. No thoughts about getting back together with her, but he understand once again why they'd been so close for such a long time. No, this evening Peter just wanted company, someone easy to talk to. Oh sure, more if possible, but he'd settle for the simple presence of other people, a casual companion over just one drink. He assumed the usual places would still be open—it was summer, after all.

Thor's was the closest. One Scotch and soda and he'd head home. He had a nearly full bottle of Scotch at his condo, soda water too, and that drink would cost him a tenth of what he'd have to pay at Thor's. But Thor's drink was only a prop, his ticket into the place. He parked, got out and walked in. A low buzz of some sixties rock and a louder drone of voices. Thor behind the bar, working late. He didn't recognize anyone else—mostly students, he figured, but a half a dozen older men too. No women over thirty, he guessed. Three bar stools stood empty. He sat on the middle one, would see what happened. He exchanged a few empty words with Thor and ordered his drink. “Make it a double, Thor, thanks.” He turned to look at the crowd. The young on the make. Too late in the evening for the older crowd—except for two of the men, he guessed in their forties, hitting on a couple of pretty young things. He turned back to the bar just as Thor brought him a glass with Scotch. An honest double. Also a bowl containing half a dozen ice cubes and a can of club soda. “Thanks.”

“Run a tab?”

“No—well, okay.” He dropped two ice cubes into the Scotch and poured the glass full of soda. He watched the brown liquid go tan in the froth. He raised it to his mouth and felt the light Scotch spritz tickle his nose. He sipped.

“Hello, Professor Langley.”

He turned. Jordan Beck. “Oh, hi.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

Peter gestured. “Grab a stool.”

“Thanks. How you doing?”

“I'm fine. And you? What're you up to?”

“Just finished my waiter schtick at the Wild Pacific.”

“From one food and drink establishment to another, is it?”

Jordan grinned. “Busman's holiday.” He looked into Peter's eyes. “I wanted to thank you for introducing me to your friend Noel.” He emphasized the name. “He was really helpful.”

“Glad it worked for you.” And for me too, Peter thought. No confirmation of plagiarism. Innocent till proven guilty. He was glad he had hired a private investigator. And that the investigator had turned out to be Noel. It might just as easily have been Kyra. Which at an earlier moment might have interested him.

“Gave me his card and said I could contact him any time I wanted, if I had any more questions.”

Peter nodded. Time to talk to Jordan about his thesis? Better to do it in his office. Or maybe play detective for a couple of minutes? “So, Jordan, I've just finished reading your thesis.”

Jordan's smile dropped and a wary hope came over his face. “Yeah? What'd you think?”

“It's very good. A fine piece of writing. You'll get highest honors.”

Pleasure lit Jordan's face. As if he'd given five-year-old Jeremiah his heart's desire. “Hey, great, thank you. Thank you! I sure enjoyed writing it. And rewriting it.” A grown-up self-deprecating chuckle.

“I did have a question. Maybe it goes to your own questions, the ones you wanted to speak with—Noel about. The journalism/fiction difference.”

“What do you mean?”

Have to phrase this as carefully as possible. “The difference in your styles between the earlier essays and the novella, it's huge.”

“Yeah, sure, one's fiction and you can let yourself go more in fiction, and the essays are way more controlled—”

“I thought I detected something else.” Peter took a sip of Scotch. Jordan now looked uncomfortable. Careful, pushing too hard? “Like a drink? I'll buy. For writing such a good novella. Scotch and soda?”

“Oh. Yeah. That'd be great.” Peter signaled Thor, pointing at his own drink and then at Jordan. Thor nodded.

“So. How did you do it, letting yourself go in the novella?”

Now Jordan's grin looked a bit forced. “Well, first, with the essays, it's like you told us; the idea behind the thing is where the imagination comes into play. Once you've imagined the shape of the essay, you need to control the language to write it. So that your reader will understand.”

Not quite the tactic Peter had taught, but close enough. “And then with the novella?” Thor brought Jordan's Scotch, soda and some ice. Peter said, “Yes, on my tab.” He pointed to his own half-empty soda. “We're fine for soda.”

“With the novella, something else you mentioned. More than once. Try it if you're brave enough, you said.”

Was Jordan blushing? “Did I say something like that?”

“Yes sir, you did. It's about leaving ourselves open for critique. The critique of our peers. And listening to it. Hard.”

“And you did this.”

“I did. I wrote the first draft of the story, and I liked it enough to show it to a friend. And she liked it a lot and made suggestions. And I rewrote and sent that to her, and she made more suggestions. Over the few months, we did that maybe three, four times. And whenever she asked me why I had written something in one way and not another, or if I wasn't consistent and she'd ask me why not, well, I had to figure it out and rewrite.” He took a sip of Scotch. “And you know, each time I think it came out better. She didn't do that for the essays; I wrote those before I met her. So there was a little of her in the novella and that's maybe why it sounded different.”

“Intriguing,” said Peter to Jordan, and to himself, Langley, you're an ass. Jordan follows your taught writing methods right through, and you suspect him of plagiarism. “Thanks for letting me know that sometimes what I teach works out.”

“Hey, Professor Langley, I learned so much from you. And I'm really glad.”

“Well, that pleases me.” He raised his Scotch glass, and clinked Jordan's, who raised his and clinked back.

They talked another five minutes about the other class Jordan had taken with Langley. In a moment of silence, Jordan said, “May I ask you something, sir?”

“Only if you stop calling me sir. You're about to get your MFA, and I don't need an honorific. My name's Peter.” He reached out his hand. “Jordan.”

“Okay, uh, Peter.”

Peter smiled slightly. For most of the students, the first time with the first name was difficult. By the next week it came more easily.