The Lucifer Code (5 page)

'May I see where you had the surgery?'

'Sure.' Amber brushed back the left side of her hair.

Fleming got up and moved towards her. As he bent down to her he noticed her perfume: subtle yet heady, like a rare tropical flower. He studied the neat silver scar that ran from her upper hairline and bisected her temple before running into the hair above the nape of her neck. She had no ear but the scarring was so slight that it looked more like an omission than a disfigurement.

He returned to his seat and looked again at the image on his computer screen. 'Let's talk about your migraines,' he said. 'According to your records they started eight or nine months ago and you'd never had headaches like them before that. Not even as a child.'

'That's correct.'

'You have them about ten times a month.'

'On average.'

'How long does an attack last?'

'Depends. If I don't take an analgesic immediately it kicks in, the pain can last as long as an hour. But it's the aftermath that cripples me. I'm so drained I can't function properly for hours.'

'What are you taking?'

'Tylenol Blue. They don't stop the pain but they dull it.'

He nodded. 'Can you describe the pain?'

She shrugged. 'It's like a red-hot needle plunging into my brain, injecting small explosive charges. Lights and stars flash before my eyes and I get nauseous. Sometimes, like today, I collapse.'

Fleming grimaced. 'Sounds fun.' He paused and looked back at the image on his screen. 'The pain's always in the same place?'

'Yeah.'

'Where? Can you point at the exact location?'

'There's still a dull throb here,' she said, raising her left hand to indicate the area. 'This is the exact spot.'

Fleming nodded and again checked the image on the screen. She was pointing into space a few inches from her left temple.

'Pretty weird, huh?' she said, looking self-conscious. She picked up the water-glass.

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Unusual, yes, but not inexplicable.'

The picture on the screen from Amber Grant's medical file showed an X-ray of two children facing in the opposite direction to each other. Their skulls were fused together, left temple to left temple, a contoured ridge of bone connecting them. But what made these Siamese twins even rarer was that they were fused not only at the skull but also at the brain. A significant section of their temporal lobe tissue overlapped, and yet, according to the records, both girls had had distinct personalities, exhibiting individual character traits.

Amber Grant placed the glass on the desk, and Fleming noticed how slow and deliberate her movements were. When she sat still she inclined her head slightly to the left, as if listening over her shoulder.

Her file had provided the details of her life: Amber and her twin Ariel had been born thirty-seven years ago to a poor Brazilian girl who couldn't afford to support normal twins, let alone Siamese. They had been dumped in a rundown hospital in Sao Paulo but, thanks to the intervention of a Jesuit priest, were adopted by a childless Catholic couple in the States.

For the first eight years of their lives they lived happily with their adoptive parents in California. They used to be called the dancing twins because they moved and walked together as if they were waltzing. Ariel was always the strong one, the leader, while Amber was quieter. Then complications arose with Amber's kidneys. The twins shared their blood supply and for a time Ariel's kidneys functioned for both of them. Then it became evident that her heart was subsidizing Amber's and would soon give out under the extra demands placed upon it. If they weren't separated, and Amber's condition treated, not only would she die but she would kill her sister.

There was an additional complication: although they were two separate personalities they shared a key section of brain tissue. There was a remote chance that both girls would survive with their minds intact, but the odds weren't good. However, their parents had little choice but to approve the operation. Within two months of the surgery Amber's heart and kidneys had stabilized and she was given a clean bill of health. But Ariel died on the operating table.

Fleming didn't need Amber's medical notes to tell him she would always harbour guilt for the loss of her sister - who was amputated because Amber was killing her. Presumably this was why she had never had corrective surgery to construct a left ear and further diminish the scarring. According to her medical notes one psychologist had asked her about this. Amber Grant had replied, 'Why should I want plastic surgery? She was the best part of me.'

Fleming looked at Amber and saw her studying him, her eyes challenging. 'So,' she said, 'any immediate thoughts?'

He turned the computer screen round so that Amber could see the familiar X-ray image of her skull fused with her sister's. Pointing to an area of Ariel's temporal lobe, he said, 'The location of your pain is here, exactly where your sister's brain used to meet the section you once shared. At one level it's quite straightforward, and I'm sure other specialists you've seen have told you about it. You have classic phantom pain. It isn't unusual. There's a young man, Paul, in the ward down the corridor who's been suffering pain in his severed arm for the last four years. We've managed to stop it now, using the NeuroTranslator, but it was very real to him. When a part of the body is lost during a traumatic accident the victim may continue to experience acute pain in the missing body part. Often the pain reflects the way the limb was damaged, as if the last distress signal sent to the brain is the one it remembers.'

Amber nodded. 'But I didn't lose a limb.'

'No, that's what makes your case so unusual. You lost a person.' He paused, as he tried to put into words what he was thinking. 'What makes you unique, Amber, is that you possess part of the living brain of a dead person.'

She frowned, transfixed by the image of her twin on the screen. 'I realize that. But what does it mean?' Then she paled. Are you saying I'm feeling Ariel's pain? Could she still somehow-

She looked so horrified that Fleming reached across and touched her shoulder. 'No. I can assure you that this is your pain. As with Paul's arm, your brain is simply making a link to missing tissue that for some reason it thinks is still there. Ariel is no longer in pain. She's gone.' He tried to make light of it. 'Come on, Amber, you're a scientist.

'I'm a particle physicist, Miles,' she countered, 'and what the quantum world's taught me is that you can't be sure of anything.' Her eyes narrowed, and he knew that she was tired of being patronized by so-called 'experts'. All my life I've tried to make sense of what happened to my sister. I've studied philosophy, physics and even theology, and so far all I've learnt is that we don't know much.' She gave a tight smile and leant back in her chair. 'The point I'm making, Miles, is that I'm not in the business of allowing anybody to assure me of anything.'

Fleming raised both hands in surrender. He didn't understand how life worked either. But one thing he knew was that when it was over it was over. There was no point wasting any mental energy worrying about the afterlife because there wasn't one. Thank God. Amber, I'm not foolish enough to debate the vagaries of quantum physics with you but I do know about the human brain. It can do many strange things and make you believe anything's real, whether it's a pain in a missing part of your body, or the existence of a divine being. Having spent my entire career studying it, I'm convinced that everything we experience in this world can be explained by the electrical and chemical activity in that walnut-shaped organ in our skull. Love, religious belief, our sense of self, all come from our physical brain. Our consciousness, our mind, isn't some abstract thing, it's born of the totality of the physical brain, and once the physical is gone the mind's gone too. You're still here, Amber, but Ariel's gone into oblivion. You might be in pain because your brain can still deliver signals to your physical being, but your twin's no longer suffering. She can't because she no longer exists. That's not quantum theory. It's physical fact.'

Amber smiled and her tone softened, more teasing than confrontational. 'Since you're talking about the oblivion of death I've got to tell you I'm a Catholic'

Fleming laughed. 'There aren't many of you left. I thought most Catholics had defected to the Church of the Soul Truth.'

Her smile broadened. 'I'm not real devout, but you know how it is? When your godfather's a Jesuit priest who saved your life and you're adopted by a couple of Catholics, it instils certain loyalties in you.'

'I suppose so,' Fleming said. 'Anyway, you now know that I'm an atheist with outdated Newtonian certainties, and I know you're a Catholic with quantum tendencies. What we don't yet know is exactly why you're having these migraines or how we can stop them. Your brain has to give us the answer to these questions.' He stood and moved to the door, gesturing for her to follow him into the Think Tank. 'Now might be a good time to introduce you to the NeuroTranslator.'

'This is the examination room,' Fleming said, 'but everyone here calls it the Think Tank.'

With its lofty ceiling and picture rails, the room seemed antithetical to the extensive state-of-the-art equipment, the battery of oxygen cylinders, medical monitors and other apparatus. On a table on the far side of the room, another translucent cube sat on a thick black base; it contained a pulsing sphere of light the size of a soccer ball. A blue electrode skullcap and a wireless keypad lay next to it; a large plasma screen hung on the wall above it.

'This is where you'll sleep tonight.' 'No bed? So this is a no-frills place, right?' 'Your bed will be wheeled in from one of the ward cubicles. Many of our patients are immobile so it's easier to move them. The intensive-care equipment around the bed bay is for emergencies. Some of our research patients are critically ill, so we don't like to take chances. Anyway, you'll have Brian watching over you.' 'Brian?'

Fleming shrugged. 'It's a stupid name that stuck. In the early days a technical assistant wrote a memo referring to the NeuroTranslator as a brain machine. Anyway, there was a typo and now all the nurses and doctors call it Brian. Stupid, but it stops us getting too pompous.' He walked over and patted the mannequin. 'This is called Brian too. We use it to train amputees and paraplegics how to think commands.' He paused. 'How much do you know about the NeuroTranslator? It's based on the Lucifer, so you probably know quite a lot about the underlying technology'

She walked over and touched the translucent cube, studying the pulsing glowing sphere inside. 'I assume the optical processor provides the power and speed to translate neural signals.'

'Absolutely. In the base there's also a neural signal amplifier and an optical-analogue converter to enable a subject's brainwaves to communicate directly with the computer.' He picked up the blue skullcap. 'We call this a Thinking Cap. Each node of the interlocking net design carries an electrode to monitor the brain's electrical activity through the skull. All communication from headpiece to computer is wireless. The NeuroTranslator's basically an advanced biofeedback unit, similar to the early Biomuse systems developed by Lusted and Knapp in the early nineties to help paraplegics and amputees.'

Amber nodded. She had read about the Biomuse devices. They were primarily designed to detect and amplify the electrical impulses from residual muscle tissue, and the impulses generated by eye movement. 'But the NeuroTranslator's far more advanced, I guess. For a start, it doesn't use EMG or EOG signals.'

'You're right. It uses EEG signals. About six years ago I was convinced that we could gain far greater control of computers if we exploited the considerably more complex electrical signals present in the human brain. The simple ambition was to harness thought itself.'

Amber smiled at 'simple'. At its most basic level, human brain activity - thought - was made up of electricity racing from the various neural junctions in the brain. As far back as 1929 the German psychiatrist Hans Berger coined the term electroencephalogram, or EEG, to describe recordings of voltage fluctuations of the brain that could be detected using electrodes attached to the scalp.

Over the decades many continuous EEG signals had been identified: alpha waves could be brought on by actions as simple as closing the eyes; beta waves were associated with an alert state of mind; theta waves arose from emotional stress; delta waves occurred during deep sleep; and mu waves were associated with the motor cortex - they diminished with movement or the intention to move.

Fleming patted the sphere. 'Thanks to your Lucifer optical computer, we were able to identify and analyse all the standard brainwaves and find some new ones to build a detailed map of the brain in action. By amplifying and deciphering these wavelengths, especially the way they worked together to form patterns, we learnt to interpret the electrical impulses.'

Amber was beginning to understand why Bradley Soames had been impressed with Fleming's invention. 'I assume it can learn.'

'Absolutely. In the same way as tuning into radio waves, the NeuroTranslator's neural net seeks out complex patterns of brain activity and correlates them with manifest commands and intentions. Brian comes as close as any entity in history to understanding and expressing a human's thoughts, and mapping their mind.'

'Is Brian conscious?'

Fleming laughed. 'No. Brian uses fuzzy logic and is brilliant at probing our brain and investigating how we think, but it has no will and can't think for itself in the self-aware way we associate with consciousness. If you imagine independent thought as a ball game, then Brian is a brilliant spectator, analyst, commentator and scorekeeper, but it can't play the game itself. The NeuroTranslator primarily analyses and interprets brainwaves, allowing us to boost those that are helpful - for example, the walk-signals needed for an implant in a paralysed or prosthetic limb - and suppress those that aren't, such as pain-signals to an amputated leg.'