Peripheral Visions: Con-Scripted

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Con-Scripted

Professor Leo McCullen knew from the expressions on their faces that the FBI agents who showed up at his office had something important to discuss. The fact that they wouldn't say what it was, insisting that the details remain a mystery until they got to the agency's headquarters, deepened that impression.

Still, what they finally showed him shocked Leo to his core.

The drive from the university to the fortified federal building that now housed the FBI took about 42 minutes. The car's self-driving AI, coordinating with the other vehicles on the road and automatically being granted deference by the traffic system, sped smoothly to its destination. Entering the federal building's garage – once an imposing door rolled up and an automated security check was completed – the car parked itself and the three men walked across what felt llike an acre of concrete to a bank of elevators.

Leo entertained the idea that the headquarters of the FBI would be replete with labs where bustling criminologists worked surveillance equipment or tested pieces of physical evidence. The reality – what he saw of it, anyway – was far more boring. There was an open space where desks were clustered, some with more than one computer in use, and a warren of briefing rooms and private offices. The place might have been the executive nexus of a bank or an insurance company. The people at the desks and in the offices wore common grays; none of them were wearing body armor or sporting visible weapons.

Then again, why would they, working as they did in a veritable fortress?

The taller of the two agents, Sam Dorey, gestured at the chair and the long table the dominated the conference room to which the agents escorted Leo. "Please," he said.

Several other men, and two women, entered the conference room even as Leo was getting himself situated.

Leo watched as the newcomers spread out around the table and took what he assumed were their customary places. One of them handed a portfolio to Dorey in passing, and Dorey stood near Leo's chair with an anxious air. Dorey's partner, Matt Mayhew, sat a few chairs away and, along with everyone else, looked over at Leo.

Leo held his tongue, waiting for Dorey to initiate things.

Finally, he did. Placing the portfolio on the table and taking his seat, Dorey glanced around the table, nodded to a few of his colleagues, and then turned to Leo. "Over the past ten days, there have been five assassination attempts against senators, judges, and representatives."

Leo had heard nothing about attacks on judges or lawmakers. He frowned at Dorey.

"We've kept it quiet for now," Dorey told him. "The fact that Congress is not in session at the moment has helped us keep a lid on things, but – "

"Wait," Leo said. "I read about Congressman Levney having a stroke. Was that the real story? Or is that what you told the media to 'keep a lid on it'?"

Dorey looked at the table, his mouth turning down at one corner.

"Sorry I interrupted," Leo said. "Just trying to get a feeling for the temperature here."

"Pretty goddamned hot," one of the women said. Looking over at her, Leo realized she was Sen. Audrey Malcolm. She was one of the old guard, a power broker who had ridden out the latest political upheavals and governmental purges. She was a high-ranking member of the chamber who headed up an intelligence oversight panel.

"Obviously, this is a matter of national security," Dorey said, looking at Leo again. "So we need your utmost discretion."

"You'll have it," Leo told him.

Dorey glanced at his partner, who nodded slightly. Leo wondered if Mayhew, who had hardly said a word, was in fact the one the one directing the FBI's investigation. He had a watchful air, as though he were perpetually assembling clues.

Dorey hesitated. "One thing I should mention: None of the attempts were successful. All the victims are in serious condition, but all of them are expected to survive. The thing is, all of them suffered similar injuries – though inflicted by different suspects and by different means."

"A homeless former Army sniper shot Supreme Court Justice Andrew McGill in the head," Sen. Malcolm broke in. She seemed angry. Leo recalled that she had championed Justice McGill's confirmation hearings a year and a half earlier. "I'd like to know where he got the weapon." She looked pointed at Dorey.

"Another homeless man, a drug addict, attacked Sen. Lucille Onokofa with a knife," Dorey said, after gracing the senator with a placating smile that revealed nothing. "He thrust the knife into her skull." He turned to the senator, still with the bland smile. "We're tracing the origins of the weapon, but we think it came from an Army surplus shop. Maybe stolen, maybe given him in payment for some under-the-table work."

"Wherever he got the knife, he knew how to use it – again, with surgical precision," the senator said, addressing Leo but still glaring at Dorey..

"Except he was no surgeon," Dorey said. "He had been in and out of prison ever since he aged out of the foster care system, and even before that he spent a fair amount of time in juvie."

"Two others were found after what looked like accidental falls," the senator said. "One of them, my dear colleague Sen. Ben Fales, at home. The other, federal judge Andrea Kramer, in her office. But these were no innocent falls. They were bludgeoned. They both suffered brain bleeds. We have a suspect in custody for Kramer – a custodian. We have no idea who might have attacked Ben in his own bathroom."

"So, wait," Leo said, growing increasingly puzzled. "You're saying that all these high-profile people suffered similar injuries. But you don't think it's coincidental?"

"Like I said – surgical precision," the senator told him, now glaring at Leo as though he were a suspect himself. "Both the planning, in terms of gaining access and then managing escapes, and the physical violence of the attacks."

"The injuries seemed to be calculated," Dorey said. "All to the same area of the brain, and all serious enough to require sophisticated medical intervention... but not to kill."

"That's bizarre, but I don't understand why I'm here," Leo said. To himself, he wondered what Dorey meant by "sophisticated medical intervention."

Dorey chose this moment to open the portfolio. Pulling out a sheaf of papers, he said, "There's another commonality. Before and after each of the incidents we've mentioned, letters were sent to several major newspapers, as well as to the FBI and various local police and sheriff's departments. They each specified the victim by name. And they each..." Dorey paused, then shook his head. "Well, after a brief introduction, they were written in some sort of code."

"We think it's similar to certain serial killers using ciphers, taunting the authorities, seeking to engender panic in the public at large, and making a game of their crimes," Mayhew said, finally speaking up. "We think the person or people behind the attacks might have given an explanation or even said who they are in the coded portions of the letters."

Leo nodded. Now he understood. He'd worked with the FBI on similar cases, cracking codes and ciphers and even unraveling one threat against a state governor that had been written in an ancient alphabet, but that had turned out to be nothing more complicated than a simple substitution code.

The moment Dorey handed him the sheaf of paper, though, Leo knew this was no substitution code. It was something much more complex than that.

It was also absolutely impossible.

"You know what this is?" Mayhew asked as Leo stared at the pages in shock. Everyone at the table was watching his attentively, but there was a close, scrutinizing quality to the way Mayhew was watching him.

"I... yes," Leo said. "Yes, I do. I can read it easily."

"How's that?" Mayhew started to say, but the senator cut him off.

"What does it say?" Malcolm demanded.

Leo shuffled through the pages, scanning the strange characters that covered them. The writing was neat and fluid, and had a natural, rather than forced, look, as though this cryptic alphabet was second nature to the author. The writing possessed the same sort of unconscious expressiveness as a handwritten note in English might; the penmanship had a certain flair.

In other words, the author had not labored to write these words. He or she had been fluent in this manner of writing – another argument against it being simply a system of substitution. But that made sense; Leo already knew this was a language, not a code.

"Well?" Malcolm pressed, as Leo finished making his way through the sheaf and returned to the first page once again.

Leo shrugged, perplexed. "Each of these notes says more or less the same thing: This is only one attack out of a series. 'This is the first,' 'This is the second,' 'Be sure you are ready for more,' and so forth. And they all have some variation of, 'Can you stop me?' or 'Do you give up yet?' Except for this last one..." Leo pulled out the final sheet of paper and scanned at it anew, as though to be certain. He looked up and met the senator's eyes. "This one says 'You'll never see the pattern. You'll never know the reason why.' And then it says..."

"Yes?" Mayhew asked. His tone was cold, and Leo felt that somehow he knew what else the cipher said.

Leo looked at Mayhew and held his gaze. "It addresses me directly. By name."

There was a soft commotion around the table.

"What do you mean?" the senator demanded.

Still looking at Mayhew, whose hard features seemed to have taken on a look of satisfaction, Leo answered, "I'll quote what's written here: 'Leo McCullen, have they come for your help? Leo, do they know what you do not understand?' "

"What the hell does that mean?" Dorey asked.

Leo shook his head. "Whoever wrote this is right: I don't understand it. But this is not a cipher. It's a language – it's an artificial language."

There was another soft commotion as people around the table shifted or turned to give one another quizzical looks.

"Like Klingon?" asked one of the men.

"Yeah, actually," Leo told him. "It's the work of what's known as a conlanger – someone who has, for whatever reason, constructed their own language."

"For what reason?" Sen. Malcolm asked. "Terrorism?"

"Not typically, no, and certainly not in this case," Leo said.

"How are you so certain?" Mayhew asked, his tone of voice telling Leo that yes, somehow, he knew.

Leo looked back at Mayhew, his anger and resentment at the agent's implicit accusation growing. "Because," he said clearly, "thirty years ago, at the age of fourteen, I invented this language myself." He looked around the table; some of the faces staring back at him were confused, some shocked, and some suspicious. "But not for any criminal or political reason. I was fascinated with language, just like I was fascinated with codes and different methods of organizing communication."

"What does that mean?" Sen. Malcolm asked.

"I mean, I studied sign language and Morse code and semaphore, all for the same reason: I'm interested in how language organizes concepts and puts them across. That same organizing principle is at work in different sorts of codes as well as languages. It's even present in music, in mathematics... in visual media like painting, at least in some schools of thought..."

"You think so?" Mayhew asked, sounding skeptical.

"I wrote my thesis on this very subject," Leo shot back at him.

Mayhew's nasty grin made Leo regret revealing his irritation with the man.

"But here's the thing that's confusing me: No one else knows this language," Leo said, looking around the table again. "I worked on it for three or four years, and even kept a journal in it, but then I went on to other things."

"But you can still read it," Dorey said.

"Oh, yes, for sure. I still think in Sjolj sometimes. I still dream in it."

"So, you became fluent in your own artificial language?" the man who'd asked about Klingon asked. He seemed genuinely interested.

"Well... yeah," Leo replied.

"And no one else might have learned it?" Sen. Malcolm asked. "Maybe read your journals?"

"I guess it's possible, but those journals are still in my dad's garage somewhere, unless he threw them away. But even if someone else got hold of my old journals, why would they take the trouble to learn some kid's constructed language?" Leo shrugged. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Neither does that note addressing you personally," Mayhew said. "Which makes me wonder what role you might be playing in these attacks."

Leo shook his head, then offered the sheaf back to Dorey.

"Not yet," Dorey told him. "We need you to transcribe all of those."

"Translate," Leo corrected him. "Like I say, this isn't a code or a cipher. This is a full-fledged language. I can have these notes translated for you in twenty minutes – it's just a matter of writing them out. I knew exactly what they say."

"If, that is, you're telling us the truth," Mayhew said.

Leo glanced back at him. "Why would I lie?"

Mayhew shrugged and said nothing, but his dark, burning eyes seemed to say it all.

***

True to his word, Leo had the pages translated in less than half an hour. Sen. Malcom insisted that he use a QSlate rather than writing it out by hand. When he was finished, she took the QStale back. Leo wondered what she was going to do with it; share it with the FBI? Hoard it for herself or for the intelligence committee she chaired?

The FBI didn't need her to share the slate or its contents; they had seemingly decided to keep Leo in their custody. Agent Dorey put the original papers back into the folder and Agent Mayhew instructed Leo to accompany him.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Visiting the sick," Mayhew said curtly.

He wasn't kidding. Their first stop was March Federal Hospital, another fortress-like building that had an extra-secure wing where government and military officials received treatment. Most of the assassination attempt victims had been brought here.

In the event, they only visited one of the injured officials. Judge Kramer lay in her bed looking as though she were close to death; her skin was pale and yellowish, and her mouth was slack.

Mayhew stood looking down at her. Leo glanced at him and then studied her in turn. What could be accomplished by this bedside visit? He'd assumed they were going to interview her, but clearly she was in no condition to take questions.

"This is what some sick fuck did to an old woman," Mayhew said tightly. "Some sick liberal fuck, I'm sure."

Leo sighed.

"Or are you a liberal lover?" Mayhew asked, turning a threatening stare on him.

Leo wasn't impressed. He was sure Mayhew could beat him to a pulp if he so chose, and he was certain that the FBI agent was armed and could simply gun him down. But Mayhew also had the air of someone who followed the rules – followed them precisely, even if he might be acting according to an ideological or personal agenda. He knew the sort; he'd dealt with them often in his academic career.

"Whether I'm a liberal or not has nothing to do with the substance of this situation," Leo told him.

"What would you know about the 'substance of the situation?' " Mayhew asked, accusation ringing in his voice.

"You know, of course, that these 'assassination attempts' weren't intended to kill anyone," Leo told him. "Surgical precision? Since when does an assassin... or a conspiracy of assassins... need to follow some sort of anatomical chart?" He gestured at the judge, whose cranium was obscured by wrappings of gauze. "If the attacker wanted her dead, she'd be dead. He wouldn't have staged an accident and left her breathing."

Mayhew nodded. "That's what we're thinking. But do you have any bright ideas about why she would have been attacked? Or why any of the others would have been targeted?"

Leo shook his head and shrugged.

"You have no inkling as to what the attackers wanted to accomplish?"

"That's obvious," Leo said. "They wanted to cause brain injuries. Maybe in order to leave their victims with some sort of diminished capacity – as a punishment."

"For what?"

Leo shrugged again. "Don't you have profilers to tell you these things?"

"Come on, give me your liberal bias," Mayhew said. Then, as though correcting a slip of the tongue: "I mean, your perspective."

Leo half turned and face Mayhew straight on. "Agent Mayhew," he said firmly, "if by 'liberal' you mean I believe in the dignity worth of all people, then I'm guilty as charged. I believe people are all alike, and no matter what faith or sexuality they might be, they respond in similar ways to the pressures and challenges they're faced with. Feed someone the proper diet... opportunity, respect, good education... and they'll grow up to be healthy. Deprive them, and that will affect how they develop and who they become."

"So, if society creates its own monsters, then it's society's fault when the monsters do evil things like..." Mayhew nodded at the judge's bed again. "...this?"

"Each person has to answer for tier own sins," Leo said. "I was lucky to come from a family with connections, so I wasn't denied a good education or taken from my family and put into religious foster training just because I was a gay kid."

Mayhew smirked at him. "You say that out loud?"

"I've had a luxury of not having to hide it," Leo told him. "I don't flaunt it, but I don't lie about it either."

For the first time, Mayhew offered him half a smile. Leo wondered if he'd just passed some sort of test, but he wasn't sure what the point of it had been.

He didn't have long to reflect on the thought; a doctor entered the room a slate in his hand. "Agent Mayhew," the doctor said.

"Doctor Krimmins," Mayhew nodded. "This is Professor Leo McCullen from Harensbreth University."

Dr. Krimmins looked at Leo over small, half-moon shaped eyeglasses. His eyes were bright blue but bloodshot. Leo could only imagine what sort of pressure he was under if he was the physician in charge of the judge's care. "Didn't that used to be Stanford?" he asked.

"Yes," the doctor said, sounding as though he'd have liked to say more.

Like, Leo imagined, "Before the government dismantled the public education system, handed all the funding over to neovangelicals, and then shut down or took over most of the colleges and universities in the country."

In the name of "educational integrity," Leo added to himself. Also known as "clearing out the woke."

"Dr. Krimmins is supervising the treatment of all of the victims," Agent Mayhew said.

"I see," Leo said, thinking again that it was no wonder the doctor looked so haggard.

"Professor McCullen agrees that the victims probably weren't intended to die," Mayhew told the doctor. "We're wondering what sort of long-term impact their injuries will have."

"None, I hope," Dr. Krimmins said.

"How's that?" Leo asked.

The doctor looked at him again over the half-moon glasses. "I'm using a new approach to treat them. We've developed next-generation medical nanocules that can help patients with traumatic brain injuries recover virtually all of their mental and physical capabilities."

"So, if someone got shot or stabbed in the head, or if they suffer a brain bleed, you could restore their cerebral functionality?"

"Yes," the doctor said with complete conviction. "The only thing we cannot do is recover lost memories. If someone comes in with organic causes for amnesia, for example, we cannot restore the memories they have lost. But we can re-educate people relatively quickly and easily. We can restore a person's cognitive abilities. And, with continued development of this technology, we will be able to synthesize lost memories and re-implant them."

"Or record life experiences as a backup and then reinstall those memories," Agent Mayhew said.

The doctor nodded. "That's down the road a ways, but yes, we think it's possible."

"How?" Leo asked.

"It's simple in principle," the doctor told him. "One day, probably not too far in the future, people will be able to make full-sense recordings of their daily lives."

"Or of the extraordinary things they do in the line of duty. An agent could record his or her entire investigative process and then back up those memories so that if they were killed before completing the investigation – or before testifying in court – their memories could simply be played back and everything they knew and understood could be known and understood by others, also," Mayhew put in.

"Or, in the medical applications we're discussing, stroke victims, car crash victims, even people who get hurt doing foolish things like extreme sports could restore their memories and knowledge," the doctor countered a little forcefully.

Leo smiled. Clearly, he wasn't the only one Mayhew rubbed the wrong way.

"It would be like backing up a computer," Leo commented. He saw the therapeutic value of the technology, but he also saw potential for terrifying abuse by law enforcement. Or corporate spies, he thought, casting his mind to the ways in which the tech could be used to pirate ideas and expertise. Uneasily, he wondered how his own academic rivals might make invasive, brutal use of such technology.

"It all starts with this," Dr. Krimmins said, fussing with the slate. No – not the slate; a thin black carrycase of some kind that he had been holding along with the slate. Dr. Krimmins tucked the slate under one arm and carefully opened the carrycase. He withdrew a high-tech looking hypodermic with the most vicious needle Leo had ever seen. The hypo had a tough, industrial-grade look to it, but it also had spots where a glass vial could be seen and, within the vial, a blue liquid.

"In here is everything the judge needs in order to reclaim her life," the doctor said. "Without this, she might or might not recover; even if she did, she would have problems thinking, speaking, and caring for herself. But once these nanocules are in her cortex, they will literally rebuild synaptic connections and glial support structures that will revitalize her brain."

Leo glanced at Mayhew, who was, as usual, scrutinizing him too closely for comfort.

"It's a miracle of science," Leo said. He was being half sarcastic, but also half sincere; the whole thing sounded like a Frankenstein's monster just waiting to be unleashed, but he also appreciated how valuable the technology would be to patients suffering from catastrophic brain injuries.

"You are welcome to stay and witness the procedure," Dr. Krimmins said.

"You're going to treat her right here and now? Just you? With that needle?" Leo asked.

Dr. Krimmins nodded. "That's all that's needed. This isn't brain surgery... by comparison to this avenue of treatment, brain surgery is absolutely barbaric and should never be done again."

"Thanks for the offer, doctor, but we'll be going now," Mayhew said.

***

In Mayhew's government-issued car – which, Leo noted, Mayhew drove manually, switching off the self-driving function – Leo kept his peace. The agent seemed to be waiting for him to ask a question or make a comment, but he had no wish to play into the agent's mind games.

Finally, Mayhew broke the silence.

"Dr. Krimmins told us more about the treatment when Agent Dorey and I interviewed him earlier," he said. "And I started thinking: If they can rebuild damaged brains, then maybe that was exactly what the attackers wanted."

"What do you mean?" Leo asked. "Some ambitious neuroscientist or pharma executive wanted a bunch of test cases? High profile ones that would get guaranteed publicity for the new nanomites or whatever they're called?"

"That's something Dorey and I discussed. But I had the thought that maybe the idea..." Mayhew gave Leo a sidelong glance. "...wasn't just for there to be a chance for some sort of proof of principle. Maybe the idea was to create a situation in which an experimental treatment would be rushed into use because of who the victims were. And also, because the government doesn't like looking weak or ineffectual, especially when it comes to terrorists."

"Terrorists?"

"What would you call a coordinated attack on a diverse group of officials?"

"I'd call it good reason to question the suspects who attacked them. Maybe look very closely at their affiliations, histories, and online activity."

"We've done all that, and you know what we found? A nice juicy nothing burger."

Leo smiled despite himself. It had been a long time since he'd heard that expression.

"The suspects we have in custody are nobodies. Histories of petty crime, dead-end jobs... at the very worst, dabbling in right-wing militias, but nothing very serious. More like dress-up. Weekend battle play. Maybe a street protest, back a few years ago when the militias started going to small towns and stirring up trouble just to show off their long guns and body armor."

"So, no terrorist network after all," Leo said.

"Which is why I'm going to bring one of the assailants in to the good doctor and ask him to do a scan on the guy."

"A scan?"

"A scan, a test... whatever he'd have to do to see if he can detect any of those hi-tech nanocules his spinal fluid, or his blood, or his cerebral cortex."

"Why would he?" Leo asked, confused. "Why would anyone dose some low-life nobody with presumably expensive, hard to get leading-edge medical tech?"

"To give them the know-how to do crimes like this and then erase that know-how... and any memory of having perpetrated the attacks."

Leo scoffed. "That makes no sense, agent. That's third-rate conspiracy stuff. That's... like... Marjorie Taylor-Greene level."

"Who?"

Leo shook his head. "Nobody. A case history in how fringe nonsense becomes mainstream hysteria. She was a lawmaker for a time, but now only academics remember her." Partly because the sociology papers on Trumpism have all been redacted and banned by the current government, he added mentally.

"Well, professor, the thing is, it would be the perfect way of accomplishing certain goals, wouldn't it?" Mayhew looked at Leo sidelong once again.

Leo had had enough. "Agent, I can promise you I am not part of some terrorist cell. I'm not working with villains who use high-tech nano-medicine. I'm not involved with some shady underworld, and I'm not some Q-Anon villain."

"What?"

"Never mind," Leo said, "Something else nobody remembers. The point is, I have no idea what's going on, but you keep looking me like I'm in on it."

"In on what?" Mayhew gave Leo the side-eye once again.

"In on whatever far-fetched theory you're invented and convinced yourself of."

Mayhew reached into his jacket pocket with one hand, the other hand still gripping the steering wheel. He produced a cylindrical object that looked like a cross between brass knuckles and a taser. "That's too bad," he said. "I was hoping you'd have more for me."

"What is that?" Leo asked.

Mayhew's answer was to point the device at him and spray him in the face with a pungent cloud of mist. Before Leo could protest – or even fling an angry insult – the world around him faded out.

***

The next thing he knew, Leo was waking up on a couch. He was cold, and the air smelled of mildew.

"What the fuck?" he muttered.

"Good morning," Mayhew's voice greeted him.

Leo sat up angrily and looked around. He wasn't groggy; he remembered everything that had happened, including Mayhew dosing him with some sort of knockout gas.

"Where are we?" he asked, looking around.

Mayhew sat at a desk that seemed to be situated in the middle of a garage. At least, that's what Leo took the dark, cavernous space around them to be. Mayhew's face was illuminated by the blue light of a laptop screen.

Glancing at Leo, Mayhew made a cartwheeling gesture with one hand, indicating the hard-to-see environs of the space. "We're here," he said. "Not fancy, but suitably under the radar."

"If this some sort of safe house?"

Maybe laughed. "That's exactly what it is," he said.

"Really?" Leo got to his feet and looked around. He still couldn't make anything out.

"It's an old warehouse," Mayhew said. "Feel free to explore."

"Can I feel free to summon a ride share and go the fuck home?" Leo felt his pocket for his phone, but his phone was missing.

"I'm afraid you're still on the job."

"What job?"

"Consulting with the FBI," Mayhew said. He peered at the laptop screen intently. "On a very sensitive investigation," he added.

"And what can the FBI possibly want to know from me at this point?" Leo knew he sounded angry and sarcastic. In the back of his mind he questioned the wisdom of provoking the FBI agent – after all, Mayhew clearly had no compunction about kidnapping him; who knew what else he might decide to do? – but he also figured he had nothing to lose. Whatever was to happen, would happen at this point. He felt powerless to do anything about it except show his defiance.

"Here's what I want to know," Mayhew said, not rising to the challenge. "What was it like, constructing your own language?"

"What?" Were they back to this? "I told you, I'm totally mystified as to how the attackers would have known about, or been fluent in, sjolj."

"What's that name you keep saying for the language?"

"Sjolj. It just means 'language.' The way different languages use words that mean 'the people' to describe the speakers of those languages."

"Okay," Mayhew said, dragging the word out as if bored. "But how did you come up with words for sjolj" He must have had an ear for languages; he said the word perfectly.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No. Honestly, I have no idea. Words would just... come to me."

"How?"

"I'd start thinking about meanings and words would pop up in my mind. Not just single words, but whole constellations of words."

"For instance?"

"Well, thinking about time, I'd suddenly just know the word for 'day,' and then that would spark some kind of instant understanding of what the words must be for 'week,' 'month,' 'year,' and so on. And also, words to describe time in the abstract: 'Past,' 'future.' And also..." Leo shook his head. Would someone with no linguistics training understand any of what he was trying to say.

"Yes?"

"The whole exercise gave me insights into the nature of language. How there are seeds of words that take on different forms, but you can still recognize those seeds. Like the word 'recognize' itself... it's related to 'cognition,' 'knowledge,' 'cogent.' To 'know something again.' That's what it was like... I'd start drawing diagrams of how words were related, and it was like I was digging something up, brushing aside the dirt to reveal something that had been buried in my mind. There it was, already complete, waiting for me to find it."

"How Platonic," Mayhew grunted.

Leo knew at once that he was referring to the ancient Greek philosopher, and to his theory that everything human beings know is embedded in them already, only waiting for a wise teacher to guide students through a process of discovery. He felt a surge of surprise that the agent – whom he'd taken for a brawling know-nothing – would possess such an educated world view.

Leo was about to ask Mayhew where he'd gone to college when the sound of a door opening across the vast structure came to their ears. The door had a rusty, scraping sound to it.

"Hi ya, partner," Mayhew called loudly.

"You guys secure?" Dorey's voice answered.

"Jesus Christ, I thought the FBI was better funded than this," Leo said, wondering if the building they were in was decrepit as well as ill-lit.

Approaching footfalls heralded Dorey as he made his way to them. Finally, he seemed to materialize out of the darkness. "Professor," he greeted Leo. Then he looked at Mayhew. "Is he...?"

"I had to give him a nap," Mayhew said. "He hasn't been briefed yet."

"Briefed? On what?" Over the last few hours Leo had felt apprehensive, puzzled, shocked, mystified, and annoyed. For the first time, a cold trickle of fear made it way down his spine and his stomach had a queasy turning-to-water feeling. He wondered again if he was about to be murdered, and this time the notion seemed much more possible – and much more terrifying.

Dorey started laughing. "Look at his face!" he said. "What have you told him?"

"Nothing," Mayhew replied. "I've been trying to figure out how much he knows. Or suspects."

"Or remembers," Dorey said.

"Remembers?" Leo looked from agent to the other. "About what?"

"About how to store memories in linked systems of molecule-sized processors," Mayhew told him. "About how to implant those memories into organic brains."

"What?"

"The thing is," Dorey told him, "if you can implant memories, you can implant whole personae, Whole... let's call them 'mind bases' for lack of a better word."

"Like a database," Mayhew said. "Except for people. The sum total of your knowledge, memories, experiences, attitudes."

"Loyalties," Dorey said.

"Look, I already told you, I have nothing to do with any terrorists or any political groups at all," Leo said.

"But we do," Dorey said.

"And so do you," Mayhew added. "You just don't' know it yet."

"We thought those handwritten pages would prompt your memory," Dorey said.

"You mean the notes written in sjolj? My artificial language? What should I remember about that?"

"That it isn't an artificial language," Mayhew told him. "And you didn't invent it. You remembered it... just like you were describing to me just now."

"But that's... there's no way that's true," Leo protested.

"But that's all you remembered," Dorsey said, as if Leo hadn't spoken. "Which is not unusual. Incomplete implantation... we knew that it would happen."

"A lot," Mayhew said. "But complete implantation would succeed here and there. Rarely, but not so rare as to be insignificant."

"Three percent, six percent," Dorey said. "Enough. Especially over time... and we've been here for eighty-four years now. Long enough to spread disinformation, plant seeds of doubt, learn how to manipulate these people. A gullible species, these humans. Easy to herd."

"You're aliens?" Something else that seemed patently impossible; but here they were. Maybe, Leo thought, the two FBI agents were insane? Sharing some sort of delusion? Folie a deux?

"Aliens? Of course not," Dorey scoffed. "Not in body, anyway."

"But in mind? Of course!" Mayhew said. "You don't think it's very practical to send warships and living organisms across interstellar distances, do you? Not to mention the problem of trying to integrate living beings that evolved elsewhere into a local ecosystem. Not when we can send fleets of probes into the universe."

"Probes loaded with our memories. Our cultural imperatives. Even our native language, all coded into protein molecules," Dorey put in.

"Human bodies, human minds, even human personalities... but the wisdom of our own species integrated into all of that," Mayhew added. "The perfect means of spreading our identity into the cosmos."

"So much safer and more effective than generation ships, or trying to crack the whole faster-than-light problem," Dorey said. "If it takes a probe thirty thousand years to reach a suitable planet... so what? The tech is durable. The medium is stable."

"There's no better way to colonize," Mayhew said. "Or, if need be, to conquer."

"Though you people are far too confused to have to conquer," Dorey said with a laugh. "You've already proven yourselves happy to submit to us."

"And," Mayhew said, "thanks to your medical infrastructure, your leaders will be easy to convert. That's the next part of the plan."

This really was nuts. What if it was true? Even if it wasn't, Leo feared that the agents' explanation boded ill for him. "What... what do you want with me?" he asked.

The two agents now stood side by side in front of him, grinning. "What do you think?" Dorey asked.

"I..."

Memories blossomed in Leo's mind then: Memories from more than thirty years ago. He was fourteen. It was 2050. He was walking through a summer twilight. There was something... a dark shape; a nimble black object darting through the trees overhead, visible against the still-bright evening sky. A bat? No, he thought, a drone. One of the neighborhood kids was playing with a drone.

But then the drone dropped down to eye level in front of fourteen-year-old Leo, and he realized it lacked rotors. How was it floating?

The drone sprayed him with...

With a pungent mist, Leo recalled, suddenly jolted back to the present.

Like the mist Mayhew had sprayed him with.

And now new memories blossomed – impossible recollections of a distant world, aeons ago... a world with a giant orange sun hanging in a green sky... a world of dim light and deep shadows, of green seas that tasted of exotic minerals...

Not exotic, Leo thought. Familiar. The taste of the sea was the taste of home. Not dissimilar to how the oceans of Earth tasted, but different enough to give him a pang of homesickness.

"Ah, he's remembering now," Mayhew said.

"About time," Dorey said. Then: "You really saw no sign that he was recalling anything?"

"No. That's why I had to dose him. I used the mix of sleeping spray and the more advanced nanos we reserve for the elite corps."

"Ah," Dorey said, leaning forward to peer at Leo with the same careful scrutiny Mayhew had subject him to earlier. "No wonder he's looking so pale. Quite a shock to the system..." Dorsey peered into Leo's eyes; Leo, unable to move, literally frozen in place as memories... as whole schemas of memory and understanding... washed over him. "He's fine," Dorey pronounced, straightening up and giving Leo a friendly grin. "He's going to be all right."

"Yes, he is." Mayhew smiled at Leo in turn. "You with us?"

"I..." Leo's head swam. Everything seemed confused and out of focus. Then his mind cleared.

This was a world in trouble. This was a race on the verge of extinguishing itself. The probes had found this world in bad shape, but it wasn't too late to salvage the planet and make it useful for the indigenous humans and the cognitively enhanced humans as well.

Really, it was a beautiful plan that the probes' AI had mapped out; a plan that served both races well. The probes' colonization plans would give the aliens... or the essence of the aliens... a new home world and solve humanity's problems at the same time. And it was all so easy, so very easy. Ever since the first probes had arrived in 2012, the neo-mentates – the reformatted humans, their personalities and terrestrial knowledge overlaid with alien memories and ancient knowledge – had been working slowly, steadily. The process had taken more than six decades. Then again, when it took thirty thousand years to cross space and arrive here from the home system, what was a century, more or less?

And now, after so much careful dismantling of the previous human societies and so much careful guidance of conflicts, ideologies, and political tribalism in order to assemble more orderly governments and social structures, the people of Earth were ready for the last phase: The direct installation of alien memories and directives into the upper echelons of those carefully engineered governments. It had been a methodical, bottom-up, process, designed to appeal to a species that hated elites, rebelled against regimented directives, and yet yearned for a strong hand. What did they call it here? Grassroots. That was it. Start small, start quietly, and then work your way up... spreading insane lies and wild stories, obscuring devastating truths with carefully-wrought fictions that gullible humans swallowed like sugar candy.

Then, what had been swallowed by the body politics sprouted throughout the entire system: Governance, religion, economics, social structures, every collective entity was reformatted as surely as the neo-mentates' individual minds had been.

All so precise. All so deliberate. All so clean and clever.

All so successful.

Leo smiled. "You have something for me?" He held out a hand.

Mayhew held up a weapon. It resembled the spray device he'd used earlier, though it was bulkier. "You know who to target?"

"Department heads. Prominent academics. Nobel prize winners. Innovators. I can start in my own department and make sure that the science, poly-sci, and economics guys are next."

"No need for knives or guns this time," Mayhew said as Leo took the weapon. "This MASER is pretty primitive, but it will get the job done quickly, thoroughly..."

"Quietly," Dorey said.

"And with greater precision than those other, cruder methods."

"And best of all, this method of destroying brain tissue will work well with the nanocules they've developed," Dorey said.

"Developed with our help," Mayhew pointed out.

"Hand in glove. Surgery and treatment."

"Human and alien," Mayhew said.

Leo laughed. "Past and future."

"Leaders," Mayhew chucked, "and led."

Moment later, the laptop shut down, the warehouse darkened, the three made their way outside and to the waiting cars.

The three headed out into the night – back toward the city, and toward the final completion of the plan.

Next week a spaceship comes into view: A cargo hauler plying its trade route between he stars. But is the two-man crew past its prime? Is this a one-way journey into existential despair? Or could a trick of navigation open up whole new universes of possibility?