Chapter 5
Martha entered the engine room and spotted the damaged area immediately. The damage was extensive. Repairing it was not impossible, but it would take at least 30 hours of solid labor. She would be adrift for almost two days with only the company of herself, her implanted memories, and a corpse. Not an experience she was looking forward to. She still had weapons on line, so she could at least defend herself if necessary.
Opening the panel caused her stomach to knot. The circuitry was a mess. The ruptured plasma conduit had sprayed a small transformer and shorted out hundreds of microcircuits in the process. Nanites were starting to make repairs but this kind of complicated work would take them weeks without her help.
Picking up a microwelder and a magnification visor, Martha started sorting through the damaged circuitry, planning to repair the more crucial circuits.
“A ship is approaching,” the computer announced after Martha had been working for a few hours. She had come to the conclusion the repairs might take a full week, even with the combined efforts of herself and the nanites. A week was simply too long, but she seemed to have no other options. Both the pilot’s thoughts and the thoughts of the killer spoke of discipline and patience. Two virtues she was running short on. Martha was certain she couldn’t last another week with the memory implants. The notice of an approaching ship gave her a new wave of hope. If she could gain control of the other ship, she would be back in business.
Going to a nearby vidscreen she spotted a ship in the distance. It appeared to be passing by, paying no attention to her. It was a midsized yacht, sleek with a powerful engine. The kind of vessel owned by the very rich. Martha hesitated to send out a signal, unsure of what kind of security such a ship might have, but her implanted memories seemed to give her a push. She sent the distress call.
The response to her call was immediate. The yacht changed course and hailed her.
The face of a healthy, middle-aged woman with short blue and green hair came on the vidscreen. “Stellar cruiser ‘White Hawk’ responding to distress signal. Captain Jackson speaking. Can we be of assistance?”
“Yes,” Martha stated. “My ship was attacked by pirates. We managed to escape, but the ship was badly damaged and I’m the only survivor. Oxygen is running low. Can you take me aboard?”
“That’s an affirmative.”
“Thank you.” Martha said, letting the genuine relief she felt be expressed in her voice. “Line up your entry port with this ship’s and I’ll extend the passageway to you.”
“Understood. I’ll stabilize beside you and begin lining up our ports.”
Kill them. Kill all of them, the strange voice in her head echoed.
Captain Jackson checked her readings on the other ship. Only one life form registered. There were defin-itely signs of a battle and a high percentage of oxygen surrounded the other ship. The woman’s story seemed to fit the circumstances.
Still, the Captain hesitated. She was responsible for the safety of her passengers, a group of young women. One of the girls was the daughter of her employer, and the others were the daughter’s friends. They were on a one week excursion to Valencia, a human colony resort and vacation center. The whole trip centered around the purchase of the White Hawk and was part of breaking it in. This was the ship’s maiden voyage.
It was an unwritten policy to offer assistance to ships in trouble. Captain Jackson had been helped on three separate occasions. One of those offers of assistance had saved her life. She, too, had been running out of oxygen.
Now, it was time to return the favor. The captain double checked her readings and used long range scanners to search for other ships. Finding none she began to position the White Hawk.
“Our ships are aligned. Awaiting magnetic seal of extended passageway.”
While waiting for the other ship to line itself up, Martha had sensed the killer’s ‘personality’, for lack of a better word. The killer’s personality had begun to predict the behavior of Captain Jackson by cross-referencing with the pilot’s memories. Much of this process was done on subtle levels of thought, rather than the more obvious verbalization thinking process. Martha found she understood the delay between Captain Jackson’s agreement to help, and the White Hawk’s actual movement. Drawing on the pilot’s donated memories, she knew they were scanning for other ships waiting to attack, and to see if the damage matched with her story.
Martha experienced mixed feelings. She felt fear with the realization the killer’s personality had enough control to cross-reference the pilot’s memories, but also a sense of pleasure and self-confidence from being able to predict someone else’s behavior so easily. The combination left her anxious.
Martha knew she was the only life form aboard.Even a simple visual scan would show the pickup had been in a recent battle. There should be no reason for the other ship to doubt her story.
Once on board, she would have to take over the White Hawk. The pilot and crew would have to be killed, a foreign thought stated. No, Martha thought, There’s been enough killing. With all my strength and speed I should be able to take control without killing anyone.
The message came through over the intercom speakers, “Our ships are aligned. Awaiting magnetic seal of extended passageway.”
After setting the appropriate controls, Martha took a pistol-sized lasgun with her to the loading port. When the light flashed green, signifying an air tight seal had been established and pressurized, she opened her side of the passageway and floated across, hiding the lasgun behind her. There was a small change in air pressure as the other ship’s entry port opened and, without hesitation, Martha shot the darkened figure standing on the other side.
Martha didn’t know what had happened. She hadn’t planned to kill anyone. Just the opposite, she had wanted to take prisoners. What is happening to me? she thought.
As she stepped aboard the White Hawk, she immediately spotted a group of young women standing off to one side, eyes wide with horror and surprise. She realized she had to get control of herself quickly. Pointing the lasgun at them she decided to use them as slave labor for transporting the corbinite from the pickup to this ship.
“You!” Martha said, pointing the lasgun at the youngest girl. “Get over here!”
The girl moved away from the group and closer to Martha, who grabbed her and put the lasgun to her head. The girl could feel the warm barrel of the lasgun pressing against the side of her head. Fear knotted in her stomach.
“Now this is what’s going to happen,” Martha said slowly and clearly. “I’m going to turn the gravity wells down to ten percent on both ships and you girls are going to carry all the corbinite in the cargo bay back here and pile it neatly against the wall over there. Any screwups or escape attempts and I’ll kill your young friend here. Understood?”
The girls nodded, their eyes wide and frightened. Martha counted four of them, five with the young girl she was holding hostage. It was difficult to estimate the ages of people these days, but the girls appeared to be fifteen or sixteen years old with the exception of the one she was holding. She seemed to be about nine or ten. If they were standard Terran genetic stock, and there had been no slow down of their biological time clocks she could expect them to act as inexperienced teenage girls should. Passively. She didn’t want any excuse to kill the girls and hoped they behaved.
The transfer of corbinite went smoothly, save for the clumsiness of the girls because they weren’t used to moving in low gravity. It was a little over an hour before the last bar was in place.
Martha was starting to have problems controlling her thoughts. She was afraid she soon wouldn’t be able to control her actions and wondered if she had already lost control. She hadn’t meant to shoot the woman standing in the doorway. It had just happened.
She was currently having trouble controlling the hand holding the lasgun. It kept drifting up and pointing toward the young girl’s head and her finger would begin to tighten on the trigger. She knew, on some deep level, a force inside her wanted to kill the girl she was holding hostage. She felt as though she were being torn apart inside. She was very confused. She feared she was losing control of herself to the implanted memories.
The young girl looked a little like her niece, Janice, with the same brown hair and big dark eyes. To maintain control she kept telling herself this was Janice and she couldn’t shoot her own niece. Martha remembered the gift Janice had gotten for her on Martha’s last birthday. Janice was a sweet girl and Martha’s love for her was immense. Martha stayed focused on the affection she felt for her niece. This seemed to work. Her arm stayed relaxed and the lasgun stayed pointed at the floor.
After the girls had finished, she locked all of them in one of the cabins and warned them not to try escaping. She dragged Captain Jackson’s body to the extended passageway and floated it into the pickup. She didn’t want anymore dead bodies lying around. It unnerved her, and this seemed to give the memory implants more freedom. Before leaving, she remembered to clear the computer of its flight plan. Returning to the White Hawk, she went directly to the control room.
She didn’t know the access code for controlling the pickup remotely from another ship’s console, so she decided to tear away from it, knowing the extended passageway would simply shear off, as it was designed to do. She laid in the new course heading, admiring the control panel and the design of this ship’s systems (all the while knowing the admiration stemmed from memories not her own), and set the antigravity thrusters for maximum acceleration. She wanted to get back to the station as quickly as possible and have these memories removed. She was certain they were going to drive her insane if they weren’t removed soon. Insanity is freedom from guilt and responsibility, a stray thought flashed through her mind, frightening her even more.
I just have to make it back, she thought to herself. I can hold on until I make it back. Then I can have these memories removed and collect my reward.
She felt as though she were holding a mental door shut against a sea of memories threatening to overwhelm her. And then, as she finished the new course changes, a sudden wave of deja vu washed over her.
Martha hesitated to bring the thrusters on line. She felt disoriented and was losing her grasp of reality. She wasn’t sure where she was or who she was. She had been here before and yet she hadn’t. The mental door swept open in spite of her efforts. She pulled down the thruster control as a last effort before being overwhelmed. Her sense of identity, of who she was, seemed insignificant compared to the memories she was drifting through, floating in a world of experiences not her own.
The memories were flashes of sensations, images, and sounds. She remembered pain and guilt over receiving gifts. Hurting small animals and enjoying their pain as they writhed and tried to escape. The total control he/she felt as he plotted and carried out various crimes, some for profit, some to prove his superiority. There were people being killed. There were people being hurt. The feelings being felt during the crimes were always ones of superiority. The same feelings she had while stealing the corbinite and killing the guards.
Martha felt stunned and shocked as a memory of looking in a mirror flashed through her mind. The face looking back at her was familiar. It was the face of a well-known criminal and terrorist named Raymond Ginyit. So this was the criminal mind Liechter had used as a donor for her memory implant.
He had no feelings of guilt. He did have feelings of fear. Fear of being caught. Fear of not being good enough in the eyes of others. Fear of not being able to control his desire to cause pain. Fear his sometimes overwhelming desire to inflict pain might cause him to slip up and allow his own capture.
There was also anger. A deep seated anger. An anger which seemed to have been there forever. All of the memories seemed to be drenched in anger. There seemed to be no happy memories.
All normal experiences, experiences which should have produced some sense of happiness, were twisted through a perception process turning all the people in his life into enemies inferior to himself.
Within the collage of images and sensations, Martha held onto the thought she had used recently to help her maintain control of herself: The love she felt for her niece. As her psyche drowned in a flood of psychopathic memories not her own, she clung to this one memory, hoping it would keep her sane and bring her back from the nightmare that had become her mind.
The flood subsided and she was herself once again, sitting alone at the control panel of a stolen space yacht, with five young women held captive, and three tons of corbinite to be delivered to her new employers.
She thought about what Liechter had told her as she began her training and recovery. He had gone into more specific detail about the changes made to her. Martha remembered the fear welling up as he spoke of symptoms she could expect.
“You need to understand your strengths and limitations.”
“Will you be able to return me to normal after I complete the mission?” Martha had asked.
“Yes, but that’s not what we’re talking about right now. Stay focused or you’ll be punished,” the doctor had responded.
Martha had experienced the punishment collar before and she immediately became compliant. The pain the doctor could inflict through the collar on her neck was intense. It had caused her to pass out after moments of extreme agony the last time Liechter had become frustrated with her.
“Now, we have modified your bone and muscle structure, making them almost twice as dense as they were before. This will make you almost twice as strong as you were and much faster. We’ve had to increase the speed of your metabolism to support the new changes in your body. I didn’t have much to do with the changes in your body structure, so I can’t speak too authoritatively on the subject.
“I’m the one responsible for implanting new memories in your brain. While you were unconscious I implanted two additional sets of memories from two separate donors. It was quite an accomplishment,” the doctor had bragged.
Martha had looked into her own mind and found memories which were not her own. There were experiences she knew she had never lived through. The memories only frightened her more and she veered away from them, trying to stay focused in the present, desperately trying not to panic. There was a constant nagging awareness of them, calling distantly for her attention, waiting to be called to the surface and relived. She felt a kind of perverse curiosity, a desire to go searching for their darkest secrets, which she would have given into, if not for her nearly overwhelming fear.
“Now, there are certain precautions you’ll need to take. You should avoid using the memories casually. We implanted them because you’ll need them, but the more you use them the less control you’ll have over them.”
“What do you mean?” Martha asked.
“We have a mission for you to accomplish. To ensure the success of the mission we had to make certain changes. One of the changes was to increase your range of experience in certain areas. You need to be able to pilot a ship and deal with any emergencies that might arise, so I’ve installed the memories of an excellent pilot. You will have to plan and carry out a theft, and it is probable you’ll have to kill one or two people. For these situations I have implanted memories from one of our greatest criminal minds.”
Martha was stunned. She felt trapped, and she was certain her life was in danger. “You said I shouldn’t use the memories. The more I used them the less control I would have over them. What will happen if I use the memories too often?”
“There won’t be any long-term damage,” the doctor said almost kindly. “Don’t worry about it. But overuse of the memories can cause a kind of cascade effect which can leave you confused and disoriented. I call it bleedover. If you’re not careful the memories could take control of your actions for short periods of time. When you return, we’ll remove the memory implants and you’ll be fine. Until you return, however, use the memories only when necessary. The more you use them the more they will surface without any concentration. You may experience some confusion in your thinking. If you hear thoughts in your mind that don’t seem to be yours, remember they are simply the habitual thoughts of the memory donor. They are not your thoughts. You are in charge.”
Martha paused, sitting in the pilot’s seat of the control room. She checked the controls and scanners to make sure nothing was amiss, and then told herself, “You are in charge.” She continued to recall what Dr. Liechter had told her while she was in his care.
“You can remove the memories?” Martha blurted, the answer to her question being the most important information in her life at the time.
“Yes. Of course. I’ll simply reverse the process of installing the implants.”
“What will you do? How is it done?”
Dr. Liechter smiled and warmed to one of his favorite topics. “I’m glad you asked. I have developed a technique which allows me to transfer a person’s memories to a holographic memory crystal. It involves stimulating a person’s brain to relive all their life experiences. I used near-death experiences as the basis for my work in stimulating their memories. By recording the neural activity in eight sections of the brain as it is reliving its life experiences I can translate and record the information. Once it’s in a hard crystal format I can transfer those experiences to another individual’s brain. Certain drugs and electromagnetic stimulants are used to maximize the effect and increase the processing speed. I’ve been working on the technique for years and am very pleased with the success I’ve had.”
“But how will you remove the memories?”
“Ah, well, in your case I have recorded the implants only in your short-term memory. I have it set up so, with certain drugs and hypnotic suggestions, I can have the memories wiped from your brain completely. But only I can do it. Remember. I have also implanted two additional hypnotic suggestions. The first and most important is you complete your mission. This is your highest priority. The second is if any effort is made to erase or record the new memories, you will feel a great deal of pain. Pain so intense you will decide you can’t live with it. If you move your tongue around you will find a small lump in it.” Liechter paused, then continued, “When you decide it is time to commit suicide bite down hard on that lump. It will release a poison. But you already know that, I’m sure.”
After the doctor had said it, she did know it. The knowledge must have been included during the hypnosis. “Yes, I do,” she responded meekly.
“And what is your mission?” Liechter asked.
“To steal three tons of corbinite from Corbin III.”
“Exactly!” said Liechter.
“And when I’ve accomplished the mission you’ll remove the memories?”
“Yes. And we’ll pay you a hefty reward as well. When you return with the corbinite you will be paid one hundred thousand credits and be given new identification papers.”
“Can you give me my life back?” she asked.
“No, but we can pay you enough money so you can start a new one. A better one.”
Martha had thought about it. The only person she would really miss was her niece. And she was sure her niece would grow up just fine without Aunt Martha in her life. She decided to go along with the plan.
Refocusing on the present, Martha felt in control of herself again, but was aware of emotional changes from the implanted memories flooding her consciousness. She had given a lot of thought to what Liechter had said. She had to trust he could remove the memories. What choice did she have. But she knew the memories were influencing her. Every experience with the implants changed her slightly. And Martha was certain with every experience, the memory used transferred to her long-term memory and became a permanent part of her.
She felt certain the doctor would not be able to remove her own experiences. She would carry parts of these implanted memories with her for the rest of her life. She was angry with Dr. Liechter. She wanted to punish him. To inflict pain on him. Actually, she wanted to kill him.
Frightened by the thought, Martha focused on the present and realized how hungry she was. A powerful appetite was one of the symptoms of her increased metabolism. She would think about killing him later. Right now it was time to find something to eat.
Before leaving the control room she noted where the ship had been heading prior to her course changes. Well, the girls won’t be making it to Valencia. A little real life experience will be good for them. Builds character.
She was unsure of the thought’s source.