Hello, true believers! Here's Chapter 9. The bad news is, no Pope here, and no Pope in the next few chapters until after the action goes down. It just didn't work out, mea culpa. On the upside, this chapter's commentary is our first in-depth look at one of the bionic systems implanted in Jaime - the bionic eye. Read all about how it works its magic after this chapter. And if you have a account, why not post a review? Don't give me that "Man, you crazy" look. I watch the traffic counter. I can see you read this.
Yes, you, Adrien!
...come to think of it, that wasn't funny even when Yahtzee did it. So, er, just enjoy the show, guys!
---
Becca leaned back into the couch and looked up from her netbook. The TV showed infomercials, and to her surprise she found she had muted the device – not that she could have told the difference without the small symbol in the lower left corner of the screen. The clock on top of it displayed a time just past 11 PM.
Looking at the time brought the effort she'd spent on tracing a little nugget of information into sharp relief. Jonas Bledsoe, she had found out, was either too new or too small-time to be interviewed or featured by any legitimate business or tech magazines. That much, Becca found unsurprising - after all, if he was somebody, she would have heard of him, right? All the net dredged up (besides some guy on the south coast of Australia selling herbal supplements) were small features in equally small industry publications, a better vanity press for venture capital firms with more money than credibility. Jonas Bledsoe, dauntless innovator in robotics! The next big thing! Invest now! Yeah, right, she thought.
One of the links led to an interview with the man; Becca clicked it with the joyless dedication of a cynical wedding photographer. Two pages of self-aggrandizement and softball questions leapt at her. Just for fun, she decided to scan it, see if she could divine something about Jaime's boss from his jabber. Next to a big, obviously staged picture of a going-on-60 man smiling and gesticulating, as if in mid-answer, her eyes stopped on a paragraph.
"- you begin to realize that people want to do their thing, not your thing. Nobody wants to do your thing, except you. The best you can do is convince other people that helping you will help them. Money, mindshare, a line on their resume, everybody wants something. And I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, I want something when I talk to you! *laughs* I want something from you. You want something from me. Everyone wants something. Understand that, work with it, and you'll go far."
She had read that before. Not this interview, Becca was sure, and a look at her browser history backed that up. Not in this interview, but somewhere else. With her already twigged suspicion circuit working itself to a higher voltage, she copied the whole paragraph, opened a new browser tab and fed it through Google. A-ha, she thought to herself as she waited for the results, this will...
The results came up.
...do nothing?
The search results showed the interview she'd looked at, blog posts quoting from it, and a veritable load of unrelated content. Had she seen it quoted? No, she hadn't, at least not that she could remember, but those words...the knot in her stomach wouldn't disappear, especially not after she realized it was there. The wrongness was blindingly obvious, yet utterly impenetrable. The rationalization machine in her head was rattling off lots of good to great explanations to no avail. Something, somewhere in her head, had pronounced Jonas Bledsoe to be too good to be true, and it would not rest until it had proof.
So Becca Sommers needed more information.
---
Dr. William Anthros lay on the grass of the Mayor's lawn, propped up against the fence, and desperately tried not to close his eyes.
The suit's computer still beeped incessantly, warning of the low pressure in his secondary escape bottle. As far as he could still think, none of his options looked appealing. He had only minutes of clean air left, was unsure whether he still had the gross motor skills to replace the air hose on his mask with a filter cartridge - and if he screwed up, the safety valve would let nothing through, at all -, and just ripping the mask off and enjoying Paradise air? Will idly wondered whether free-breathing Ruth Truewell wasn't lying behind the next corner, already choked to death on what might well turn out to be the deadliest airborne agent yet devised by man. Cheery thoughts, all.
But Will's secret weapon was about to fire again: a logical plan had been assembled in the backwaters of his brain, and after sufficient time to incubate, it broke through the surface of his mind fully formed. Radio Fleming on the remaining internal air supply with all details, then take off the mask before losing consciousness. That way, even if the air was deadly, he'd have gotten the word out, and not risked sudden death too early. From his addled perspective, the plan was positively brilliant - even more so as his brain glossed over the fact that this was pretty much exactly what Truewell had told him to do before leaving.
He switched his radio to the first frequency and held the transmit button.
"Sawdust 6, this is Eagle 1, please come in, over."
A moment of silence was all it took for Will to imagine a wide variety of disasters befalling the camp. Had the wind turned? He imagined a cloud of death sneaking westward, overwhelming Captain Fleming's post within minutes. Or the explosion...Will had no experience with the practical application of explosives, and between distance and exhaustion, gauging its effect solely from the visible fireball wasn't going to lead to a conservative estimate.
"Eagle 1," came the infinitely reassuring voice of Corporal Finster. "I'll get Actual for you. Stay on the frequency this time, out."
"Heh," Will mumbled to himself, "dude knows me already."
"This is Sawdust 6 Actual," Captain Fleming said emphatically. "I want a goddamn sitrep, Eagle 1!"
"Over," Will said with a chuckle, then hit the transmit button anyway. "Eagle 1 sitrep follows: One survivor encountered, Madison Peters, whereabouts...no idea. On-site evidence corroborates organophosphate agent of unknown type, aerosol dispersal method. Current air seems to be...harmless, or with delayed effect. Eagle 2 is getting our car, got no comms with her. And I'm running out of air, so now's the time for questions. Eagle 1...over."
"Say again after Eagle 2, over."
"I said, we were both alive five minutes ago, until Eagle 2 almost died, and I saved her, and now she's off and I don't know if she's dead, but I'll be dead in a minute unless there's been a fucking miracle, a view I happen to be coming around to, so who knows," Will babbled. "Does that...that answer your question, Sawdust 6?" After a moment, he added. "Actual. Over."
If Will had been in a better frame of mind, we might have heard the sound of gnashing teeth even before Fleming started his verbal reply.
"Eagle 1, you must evacuate the hot zone now. My camp is swarming with CBIRF and they're begging me to go in. I need to know, Eagle 1, is level B safe? Over."
"Level B..." Will said to the nice-looking fencepost about two yards from his left hand. In his defense, that post was really, really nice.
"Eagle 1, come in! Is Level B safe?"
Will pushed the transmit button one last time. "Level B is...sealed environment suits with autonomous air supply..." He took one last, deep breath. "Level B is safe. Eagle 1 out."
And then he pulled the mask off. The fresh air felt like being forced into a tub full of ice water for a few seconds, coolness carrying his sweat away for a terrifying moment before he dared to take a breath. It was a breath deep and satisfying enough that it was fit to be the finale, had it come to that - but after a few more experimental cycles of inhaling and exhaling the nitrogen-oxygen mix provided free of charge, he felt steadily better, with none of the alarming syndromes a lethal dose of nerve agent should have produced.
"This doesn't make sense," Will said. His next action was to reach into the folds of his pockets and retrieve the labeled plastic container from one. Another tablet, hard to swallow in his dried mouth, but eventually it went down. Will took more breaths and waited. His right hand hovered dramatically next to an autoinjector. And that was how Ruth Truewell found him, in the throes of a newly resplendent supply of mental energy and with a laser-like focus on the instrument of chemical counter-warfare in his hand. The car came to a stop in the gravel, and Truewell jumped out, leaving the engine running.
"Anthros! What are you doing?" she asked forcefully. "I suppose you were getting bored not phoning home. I did that, by the way. Berkut knows what's up, so I can evacuate you." She stepped in front of him. "Are you listening to me? Get in the car! I'll get you out, just like you wanted, and then -"
"It has occurred to me," Will interrupted, "that neither of us should return here."
"What are you talking about? You were wrong. You're even breathing the air. I'm alive, you're alive, Madison Peters is probably scared to death somewhere out there. Aren't you worried about her?"
"Do you taste garlic, too?"
That was not on the proscribed list of responses Truewell had expected to her words; taken aback, it took her a second to find her voice again.
"Actually," she said, "I do," and just like that, it seemed like her apprehension regarding Will disappeared into a cloud of smoke, like a cheap psychological parlor trick. "What is it?"
"Dimethyl sulfoxide," Will replied, and slowly rose from his sitting position. "Very good solvent; goes through many protective measures. Exposure frequently generates a garlic- or onion-like taste in human subjects."
"So...the agent?"
"Maybe a part of it," Will said, and as he reached a fully-upright status, he easily slipped into his gesturing lecture mode. "It might be a binary poison. DMSO, and something else...reacting together in the victims to release an extremely potent organophosphate compound. Mind you," he added, "it would be a very counter-intuitive bit of engineering, probably far beyond the difficulty of manufacturing even the best currently known chemical warfare agents. But I see no other reason for the sulfoxide to be in the air here. In any event, neither of us is dead, so I think that the other half of the agent is missing, for whatever reason. However, anything in this town - structures in particular - might still contain air where that half is present. If we breathe that, it would react with the DMSO in our bodies into its deadly form. Matter of fact, we may already have a sub-lethal exposure - you've breathed the air longer, but you also had the pralidoxime from the autoinjector in your system. But there's no reason we couldn't be adding to our exposure with every second in here, even if we stay away from likely hotspots. And I couldn't even venture to guess how fast such a reaction would proceed in human blood, so -"
"So we're still in danger," Truewell said.
"We need to get to a hospital, and fast," Will said.
---
What Jaime actually did in the archive room was to look up Earlmayer on the computer, read the case notes, then fish out the matching paper files and scan them. It wasn't the most interesting thing to do, sure, but it did pass the time. There was an idea in the back of her mind that kept bubbling up, to check if there were any files about her parents stored down there, but Jaime fought it down twice.
What's bothering you? Nathan said, after a few blessed minutes of silence.
"Hm?" Jaime replied instinctively.
You're an open book to me, Sommers, he said, well, I guess more of a leaflet.
"Ah," Jaime chuckled, "insulting my depth - and a literary theme, too?"
Yeah, I'm dialing it in, soon I'll have custom-tailored one-liners so devastating, they will completely...devastate you. But, anyway, back to my impeccable observational skills. I'm seeing some spikes here, you're thinking naughty thoughts.
"Ambrose!"
Oh, no, not the 'FCC complaint' naughty, though if you do have those feel free to cut me in - Jaime rolled her eyes - no, I mean, you're worked up over something you know is wrong.
"I did mention my complaints about this whole operation, didn't I?"
Yep, different spikes still.
"How many different possible spikes are there?"
Sommers, your telemetry is, like - complicated.
"I love it when you're technical."
You want to do something. You know it'd be bad. What is it?
"Oh, fine, whatever. I thought I'd check if there are files on my parents. I'm fairly sure they were here for a few of the bigger protests back in the 70s. But then I thought, searching the computer would leave a trail, so I decided against it."
Be still my heart! Nathan joked. So you do have a brain.
"Well, if you're in control of the network -"
I am and I know what you're thinking, but the archive system doesn't seem to be on the main network. Stone age tech. Also, on the off-chance that somebody actually audits this thing in the near future and checks the access logs, they'd see me looking for Sommers files on the night you were here. So, no can do. Sorry.
That last word sounded oddly genuine.
"Worth a shot," Jaime said. "Alright, I'll buzz out and grab some food."
Cafeteria's on fourth, closed now but I'd bet they have some vending machines nearby. Try to grab some, uh, some vitamin B12. There's a lot of that in...liver. Ugh. Fat lot of good that piece of intel is, huh? I really don't like liver, I don't think anyone should eat it, ever, and, I mean, how would you - Oh my God. Oh shit. Now I'm thinking about liver from vending machines.
Jaime smiled at that. "I don't think they'll have that here."
No, not here! Our vending machines are boring. But liver? You know, they probably have that in Japan, little vacuum-sealed packages of sliced liver. Whale liver, even. With a cartoon whale on the package, looking all happy and spraying a geometrically perfect fountain of sparkling rainbow water from his blowhole. He's fucking ecstatic that you're eating stale, overpriced parts of him. Everything comes from vending machines in Japan. Well, except dignity. They don't have the right mascot for it yet.
---
Standing in the elevator with Agent Finlayson was, as regards entertainment value, of the same mind-dulling quality as the first ride, its lack of mental stimulation seemingly independent from a) the number of rides and b) the direction of travel. (Of course, a more scientifically-minded field operative than Jaime might have insisted on a larger sample size.) Finlayson wasn't helping.
"So, did you find what you need?" he said. It wasn't just the phrase, or the delivery - everything down to his facial expression was the very model of unoriginality. Jaime got the impression that Finlayson was quite good at chaperoning visitors. He had the 'lulling them into compliance' part down pat.
"I did," Jaime said, "but it'll take a while to sift through it all. I just thought I could use a coffee, you know?"
"Sure."
Throughout the ride, the voice in her head continued to supply suggestions for various lethal and less-lethal takedowns of Finlayson. Jaime tried very hard not to make any moves that could set any of those in motion. And in this state of stillness, they made it all the way to the fourth floor of the building without incident. The doors dinged open with practiced cheerlessness, and Jaime stepped out into the gray hallway wasteland.
Woah, Nathan said, network signal is way strong up here.
"Getting sick of the murderthoughts," Jaime whispered, "fix the hair-trigger."
"Hm?" Finlayson inquired, stepping past her and stopping in his path. "Did you say something?"
I can get on that, but I need you to take some readings for me.
"I said," Jaime lied, "I said I should fix my hair."
Finlayson broke eye contact, as if that announcement had suddenly made looking directly at Jaime an act of shocking indecency.
"You know, what with the economy class bun I'm wearing," she added.
"I really didn't notice."
"I had a minute to repair most of the damage at the airport," Jaime said, "but it could be better." She blinked. "You don't have to be too nice about it. I know I look like crap."
"Uh, if you..." Finlayson stammered. "The restrooms are over there, if you wanna freshen up. I'll wait outside."
"Thanks. You could get some work done, you know."
"No, I really can't," he said, regaining some measure of certainty. "I can't let you walk around unaccompanied. I'm sure you guys at the DoD handle things the same way."
"...yes," Jaime replied. "Yes, we do. I'm sorry, I'm still getting used to this visitor thing."
"Ah, it's nothing, really. Take your time."
The restroom, then. Jaime's bionic eye detected a dullness to two of the three mirrors that told of long years of civil service; the one closest to the entrance seemed newer, if equally ugly. The ceramic sinks, the wall tiles and the hard plastic counters tying both together were all in slightly different shades of eggshell white; a color Jaime attributed to people who believed beige to be risqué. To her lack of surprise, it was empty.
"I'm alone," Jaime said. "What was that about the signal?"
The WiFi signal, Nathan explained, it's extremely strong.
"Maybe they have better coverage here," Jaime said.
Uh-huh. Or maybe something is very wrong here. I've got a quick experiment for you. Raise your arm and wave it around.
"And that will accomplish..."
Secondary directional antenna, gets me a fix on the signal source, Nathan said. Come on, Sommers. Do it. Do some science for me.
"Fine."
Jaime raised her right arm and after a quick admonishment that the signal source would probably be mounted near the ceiling, she kept it slightly raised. Several inappropriate history jokes suggested themselves.
"Ave, Caesar," was the one she settled on. "Morituri te salutant."
I don't know what you just said, but it's apparently distracting you from waving your hand, Nathan said. Okay, move a little, then do it again. Should be good enough to triangulate.
---
When Jaime left the restroom, Finlayson was waiting for her, leaning against a nearby glass partition and looking at nothing in particular. When he saw her, he smiled politely but looked apologetic.
"Well, what do you think?" Jaime offered, pointing to her slightly redone hair.
"Looks good," he said, unable to actually tell any difference. "Listen, I'm really sorry, but somebody called my office phone and for some reason hung up before it could go to my cell. I need to check my phone and make sure it wasn't urgent."
"Oh. In your office?"
"Yes. I'm..." he began, looking unsure. "I can't let you in there. But the cafeteria is around the corner. You go get yourself a coffee, I'll meet you back here."
"Well, sure. I really don't want to keep you from your work."
"Don't worry too much about it," Finlayson said. "Everything's locked down anyway, you can't get lost. See you in five, okay?"
"Alright!" she said with a shrug, watching as he hurried away.
And there's your distraction, Nathan said. I gave him a call from the DoD central switchboard, it should take a while to sort out. Worst case, his call comes out here and I get to pretend to be your boss for a bit.
"I see," Jaime said. "You copied his access card into my arm, didn't you."
Hey, I don't make the security holes, I just exploit them. Turn to your left, the signal source is somewhere down the hall.
"What am I looking for?" Jaime asked. The fear of being discovered was back with a vengeance, but to her distaste she found herself acting with little hesitation anyway.
Wireless access point. After a pause, Nathan added Small gray electronic doodad, about the size of a...small purse. Should be mounted to a wall just below the ceiling.
"A purse?" Jaime asked, swiping her arm past a sensor pad next to a heavy glass door, which opened with a small green light and an even smaller beep. "Is that honestly the best size comparison you could come up with?"
You know, on second thought, it's about as big as a paperback...
"...let's go with purse."
What followed was the most nerve-wracking game of hot and cold Jaime had ever participated in, although Nathan's readings grew more accurate as she homed in on the signal source. Her path stopped outside wooden double doors, the hallmark of a larger room behind them. She was already working on explaining this to Finlayson, but so far the best she could come up with was to just run and jump through the next window - which, despite her survivability of such a stunt, still reeked of desperation.
Kindly raise your arm...yes, it's still getting stronger, Nathan said. Must be mounted above the other side of the door.
Jaime swiped in once more, and a quick look upward located the perpetrator.
"So, uh, what exactly is the problem here?" she asked. "Is it defective, did somebody have too much to drink when they installed it, or is it Cylon espionage gear?"
The transmission power on it is cranked way too high, Nathan said. It could blanket most of this floor easily, and none of the other access points in the building are set like this, from what I can tell. I really only see one explanation here.
Jaime turned around. The big doors had led into a conference room, the kind with a large, round table in the middle and an old, too expensive flatscreen mounted on one of its walls. The large venetian blinds half-concealed a windowfront that opened to an amazingly restrictive view of San Francisco's city center. The room had been pilfered of its relatively unused chairs a long time ago, and a glance at the thermostat at the wall revealed it to be switched off. Jaime ignored that, but stepped closer to the windows. The darkness outside was behind glass and blinds, and so less than amenable to her eyes, but the right gears in her head turned nevertheless.
"The signal's powerful enough to spread beyond the building," she said. "In a room close to the edge of the building that hardly ever gets used. That has got to be deliberate."
Bingo, Nathan replied. Bet you ten dollars you can pick up the network with a cantenna from across the street.
Footsteps behind her. Her body reacted.
Jaime felt her weight shifting backwards, as if she were to let herself fall, and then she dashed backwards into someone, slamming him against the wall behind her. His arms passed by her torso, his right hand holding a gun; Jaime's bionic hand snapped closed around his wrist, and she pulled it downwards, while her left arm flew backwards over her shoulder, driving her elbow into his face. With a spin, she seperated from the wall and dragged her dance partner with her, pulling her over her hip and off his feet. He sprawled onto the floor before her. Her hand easily twisted his arm and crushed his wrist, while her weaker left arm easily wrestled the gun away. She let go and dashed back again while the pistol transferred to her bionic hand. Within half a second, the man was on the ground, screaming in pain and disarmed, while she had his own gun aimed at him.
Jaime hadn't had enough time to process the situation. She recognized Finlayson before she even had the chance to wish that it wouldn't be him.
"No!" she shouted, trying hard to keep from doing anything more to hurt the agent. With a supreme effort, she forced her voice down to a growl. "I fucking told you to fix that!"
What the hell just happened? Nathan shouted back.
Jaime glanced at the gun in her hand. Fabrique Nationale Five-Seven, Caliber 5.7x28mm, 4.8 inches Okay okay okay. The voice in her head was more intense, harder to shut out, and Jaime would have raised her left hand to her temples if her body had let her. All she could do was wince, and be told about the weapon's sound suppressor.
Wait. Suppressor?
"Finlayson!" she snarled. "He had a silenced gun!"
Shit! Where the hell do those rogue FBI guys come from?
"Guys? I break the wrist of a man who -" Jaime spared a glance at Finlayson, who'd retreated into a fetal position, clutching his demolished right arm - "who's trying to kill me for no good fucking reason, and you use a fucking plural! You knew about this!"
I swear to you, I had no idea -
"Don't lie to me," Jaime shouted, "don't you fucking dare lie to me!"
---
Nathan put the headset on mute and banged his hands onto his desk. He wasn't there to babysit Jaime Sommers. He was there for technical operational support. This - whatever this was turning out to be - wasn't in the job description.
The system worked its magic. It had entered combat mode, and it was very important that Jaime's emotions would not get the better of her, make her act in an irrational, unpredictable way. The spikes on Jaime's telemetry receded quickly, hot emotions checked and redirected with a heady combination of artificial neurotransmitters and minute electrical currents applied to the right regions of her brain. It made Nathan wonder how he could possibly calm down anywhere near as fast and keep helping Jaime out of this frankly horrible mess of a situation, but it also posed two more troubling questions: one, how would she have reacted without the psychological stabilization, and two, what if he'd been there in the room with her?
It was, perhaps, the first time that Nathan Ambrose was absolutely terrified of Jaime Sommers.
---
Jaime's anger wavered. It wasn't very strong to begin with, and it quickly crumbled under the assault of a tide of good feelings that washed through Jaime's body. For an instant, it felt like floating in tropical water, only the sound of waves splashing into distant shores in her ears. Her hand stayed on target, her heart beat, her breath was calm. The lights were on, but the owner had, just for a second, stepped out for smokes.
Everything is under control, the voice in her head insisted with a disarming conviction. You did just fine. Nothing is threatening you. You made the right choice.
"Ambrose?" Jaime said, and repeated. Finlayson wasn't innocent. There had been no indications that he would try to harm her, no opportunity to avoid this confrontation. And she hadn't hurt him too badly, anyway. After that moment of happiness, she was back where she'd left off - but coming into it gradually, it didn't seem so bad any more. Things were rapidly moving back into a frame where they made sense, where actions were reasonable and the consequences were bearable. Reality stopped trying to hurt her.
"Ambrose, please come in."
I'm here, Sommers, he finally said, sounding drained. We need to figure out your next move.
"Everything is under control," she replied. "But I'll need backup."
You got it. You'll have a whole strike team backing you up in ten minutes. Just stay cool, alright?
"Everything is under control," Jaime repeated.
Her eyes hovered over Finlayson like the sword of Damocles, and when he finally managed to fight through the pain and look up, his voice had somehow absorbed both his own pain and the shivering that was absent from Jaime's hand.
"There's still a chance," he croaked, "you can still be reasonable."
"Who do you work for?" Jaime asked, calmly keeping his gun aimed at his head.
"They will destroy everything here to get you."
"Who do you work for?"
Finlayson's face contorted from a new rush of pain, then he fell limp and stopped speaking. The voice let Jaime lower the gun, told her that he had stopped breathing, told her to check on him.
"Ambrose," she said, "I need instructions for emergency medical aid."
What? Shit, what happened?
She bowed down over Finlayson and untangled his limbs, spreading him onto the floor. Her right hand reached for his neck, and she placed her fingers on his carotid artery. There was no resistance from inside, no movement.
"Finlayson lost consciousness, no pulse, no blood pressure, breathing has stopped."
Leave him.
"Screw you," Jaime said, her voice still cool. "He's a human being and he has information. I'll give CPR until the medics are here."
She ripped open his shirt and positioned herself next to him.
That won't help, Nathan insisted. No consciousness and no BP means massive hypovolemic shock, and unless you see a big puddle of blood, that's all internal bleeding. I picked up a radio signal before you said he went out, so if I had to guess, I'd say he just got his aorta unzipped by remote command.
Jaime sat next to Finlayson's body, feeling slightly dizzy. "Look, if I was talking to Will, I'd buy this. But how, exactly, do you know this?"
Remember the killswitch? Nathan asked, a hint of regret in his tone.
"...what?"
Yeah, this is what we ultimately didn't go with. But we looked into it. Even if you were in the middle of a hospital, there's not much you could do. He's dead.
"...he's dead," Jaime repeated. "Someone pushed a button and he died."
Yes, Nathan said. Yes, that's all there is to it. I couldn't have created that, I couldn't have helped with it. It was just too...look, Sommers, I - oh thank you holy mother of Jesus!
Miss Sommers, Jonas Bledsoe said. It's time that I brought you up to speed on our current operation.
"Operation, huh," Jaime said tauntingly. "The last time we spoke, it was still a situation, Mr. Bledsoe."
I didn't want to involve you in this. But we're low on options at the moment. The facts are these: there was an attack with an as-of-yet unidentified chemical agent on a small town in Idaho. Anthros and Truewell are there to investigate, but we have received a threat that another attack will be launched on a major city unless we hand you over before Midnight.
"What? Me, specifically? Who are these guys?"
Their knowledge of our operations is uncomfortably precise, yes, and we're fumbling around in the dark. This attack on you has convinced me of two things: Their 'major city' is none other than San Francisco, and they are very likely to succeed. At this stage, our only chance is to determine likely dispersal points for the attack, find their actual location and assault it. We have no heavy equipment, no additional personnel beyond the strike team that's already inbound, and no official cooperation with any other agency. And I can't afford to keep you benched for this. You're the only shot we have, Miss Sommers.
Jaime looked at the dead Finlayson, then the gun in hand, then at the night outside the windows. She whispered the only thing that could possibly sum up what she felt.
"...fuck."
Tech Commentary: Bionic Eyes
Let's talk about Jaime's and Sara's artificial eyes for a bit. To explain the basic functionality, we'll start from the very back and work ourselves to the front.
Analogous to the biological retina, the back of the bionic eye is covered in an active pixel sensor array, which is a quite modern semi-conductor-based light sensor. With its high native resolution, the array is capable of producing images that are much more detailed than a normal human eye could perceive. However, if the array stood by itself, it would only generate a grayscale image. Why? Because light sensors react to a (relatively) wide spectrum of incoming light. The human eye has specialized sensory cells that are tuned to specific wavelengths of light, but light sensors need additional filter hardware to deal with this problem. In general, what you end up with is a very fine mesh of color filters that make sure each individual sensor in an array only gets light of a specific wavelength. In digital cameras, a combination of individual sensors covering all color types (typically three colors) may be referred to as one pixel. Additionally, cameras include an infrared filter to block near-infrared light - if you've handled a digital camcorder, you may have seen that it has a "nightvision" mode, which simply moves that infrared filter out of the optics arrangement to let in more light.
However, the bionic eye does not have fixed filters of this kind. Instead, multiple layers of adjustable optical material are positioned in front of the raw sensor array. Each layer can be dynamically configured to change its optical properties to only let a narrow wavelength of light pass through, and to do so in a (relatively) freely choosable pattern. In normal vision mode, those filters essentially replicate the properties of the color filters found in modern digital cameras, but with the large frequency response of the active pixel sensor array and the adjustable filters, a lot of interesting tricks are possible, among them two separate types of "night vision". We'll cover that later.
In front of the filters comes the meat of the bionic eye, the optical medium. This is a thick, transparent liquid that reacts to small electrical potential differences by changing its optical properties. Through very small, embedded electrodes, the optical medium can be manipulated to bend incoming light like a system of lenses. Aside from taking care of focusing the eye at what its user wants to look at, this system also allows for a zoom of up to 4x. (A digital zoom of up to 20x is available on top of this, at the cost of progressively worse image resolution.)
At the front of the eye sits the "iris", which is chiefly made of two layers: another light filter and a small display. The light filter here is not there to shut out wavelengths or block patterns - it works as a shutter with adjustable opacity of its window. The shutter function is analogous to that of a camera or the human eye, determining the aperture of the optical system and thereby affecting issues such as how much light can enter the eye and how much depth of field is available, i.e. how large of a distance differential the eye can "focus" on. The adjustable opacity works to reduce glare and light-flooding issues, essentially equipping the user with adjustable sunglasses for their bionic eyes. The sensitivity of the APS array is such that a relatively large opacity has to be constantly used in daylight situations, which necessitated careful engineering of the tinting matrix to ensure that it dampens all wavelengths in a predictable way to prevent color aberrations between different lighting situation. At its most extreme, the iris can become completely opaque - this is used to protect the optics behind it from damaging levels of direct light. In recognition of the origin of this feature from Cold War-era specifications (for, at that time, still completely theoretical technology), this is referred to as "anti-flash", as it was intended to protect against the immense light exposure of looking in the direction of a nuclear explosion without further protective eyewear. (The concern for protecting an augment's bionic vision even during a nuclear exchange can today, perhaps, be dismissed as "overly optimistic".) Still, the feature proves its worth when it comes to shielding the optical system inside from intense laser light, either from outside sources or the onboard laser system.
The iris display is aimed outwards and chiefly responsible for disguising the true nature of the bionic eye. It generates a detailed image of a biological iris to make the eye look "normal". Interestingly enough, the display can be easily altered to display any given iris pattern, to quickly change eye color or even imitate a specific person's look. The display covering the center "pinhole" has to be as transparent as possible in its inactivated state and is of lower capability than the outer ring, but can be called upon to project a retinal pattern that can fool most automated sensors - again, this does not have to be the user's natural pattern, and so this feature can be very useful for supplying falsified biometric data. As a final point of interest, the outer ring display can, in theory, be used to display pretty much anything that will fit on it, so it is possible to imitate unnatural eye colors, show images or even display short messages.
The outermost layer of the bionic eye is the hard shell that protects every exposed piece of its surface. It is made of sapphire glass, a very hard and scratch-resistant material of superior optical quality, grown as a single artificial crystal under strict clean-room procedures over a time span of weeks. What makes this cover really special is that it is strategically doped with Titanium atoms to provide a very compact laser emitter arrangement. The main laser, however, is not integrated into the eye due to space and heat dissipation issues. Instead, a waveguide channel is built into the eye crystal that can be aligned with its counterpart in the artificial orbital mount of the bionic eye when it is aimed straight ahead. To use the laser, the eye remains locked in this position and enters anti-flash mode to protect the delicate optics inside from the intense light being channeled through the outer surface. The actual laser "engine" is situated in the subject's chest and connected to the eye via a flexible optical fiber that is run through the spinal column up into the head. The sapphire crystal merely redirects, focuses and finally releases the pre-generated laser beam (also boosted from its journey through the fiber's length by careful optical engineering). The laser in Jaime's bionic eye is rated for up to 150 milliwatts of output - this is enough for signaling, rangefinding and target designation purposes, but obviously far short of what is needed for long-range operations or even destructive purposes. (However, it is powerful enough to be of potential use in temporarily blinding targets at short range, though obviously this should be done only as last resort to avoid exposing people to progressive damage to their retina.)
As for the promised "night vision" modes, the bionic eye offers two. The first utilizes a starlight scope approach: by simply disabling color filtering, widening the iris and reducing the tint to minimum, much more of the available light can be processed into an image. Although this would, in theory, produce a grayscale image (akin to natural human night vision, albeit much more sensitive), projections showed that the resulting visual was somewhat confusingly close to the other night vision mode. As a response, the image is post-processed for clarity and tinted green. This produces an image resembling the more well-known "night vision" images generated by image amplification tubes, whose rather bulky and energy-intensive process eludes efficient miniaturization at this time. Projections show, however, that this not only makes the vision mode distinctive, but also makes its function instinctively clear - a rather extravagant bit of user interface design. The second mode reconfigures the filters to pass short-wave infrared light at the extreme of the active pixel sensor's array sensitivity. While this does not take full advantage of the arrays' power and only superficially resembles proper "heat vision", short-wave infrared easily passes through many atmospheric condition such as fog or haze, allowing the user to see clearly through weather that can make other vision devices all but useless.
So, with all this in a device smaller than a golf ball...do you have trouble believing that it's one of the most expensive single bionic components? (And we'll not even consider the armored orbital mount, partial skull replacement, laser installation and eye-brain-interface troubles that came with it when Jaime got her bionic eye. Maybe another time, though!)