Brain Trust by Jonathan St. Ives

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Well, since my story is apparently not as original as I might have thought (There's nothing new under the sun, eh?) and since it does deviate from the movie in many significant ways such as being set in the future as well as the present, I decided to post it here and see what you think.

Brain Trust

By

Jonathan St. Ives



Like all great breakthroughs, Dr. Royce Jennings discovered his by accident. Dr. Jennings was an extremely tall, lanky man with a thick tousle of jet-black hair. A long crooked nose sat astride a face that was a craggy, pockmarked jumble of angles leading to a strong prominent chin. This combination of features would have made him look menacing and intimidating, if it were not for the sad, empathetic look coming from the dark, piercing eyes that seemed to almost disappear into the caves under his bushy black brows.

His personality matched his looks for he was a quiet man of deep emotion and thoughtful ways. He spoke to his classes in a slow, measured tone that none the less conveyed great understanding and intelligence. He always had time for any student with a problem and displayed infinite patience with them, taking as much time as needed for each student despite any other obligations he might have. It was a standing joke around the University that all he needed to play Abraham Lincoln in a play was a beard.

He and his team of genetic biologists had been working on finding cures or treatments for Alzheimer’s, specifically the link between the CHRM2 gene, the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and their effect on performance I.Q. It was not a gene that specifically granted intelligence, but it had been found to increase a person’s ability to organize things logically. His team had found that people with positive variations of the gene increased their visual-motor coordination, spatial perception, logical reasoning, and abstract problem solving skills significantly. Better yet, the effects were cumulative. The more positive variations the gene had, the higher the person’s performance I.Q.

Dr. Jennings and his team had recently linked together with a team that was working on using gene-specific tailored viruses to rewrite targeted sections of a subject’s DNA. The work was progressing nicely and he had high hopes for the process, but was a bit chagrined at the level of security that joining the other team had brought to the project. He understood it perfectly, since the virus technology was not only very dangerous to work with, especially in the crowded urban area surrounding the University, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

He was over 40 years old and he understood only too well that success on his project was certain tenure and retirement, while failure meant that he would rejoin the ranks of unemployed college professors. If he had any doubts, his department head had made it all very clear in their last meeting.

That is most likely why, with that thought still ringing in his mind, he circumvented security by using an old, forgotten sub-basement door, going through a maintenance hatch in the air handling systems and entered his lab on a Saturday morning to try a completely new procedure he had thought of the night before.

“If the effects are cumulative,” he had reasoned, “why not design a virus to look for intelligence markers in every gene in the genome? Any genes not having to do with intelligence will not be affected, and I know that the effects of the virus are harmless on humans from our other studies.”

It took him all of the day until late at night to synthesize the virus. Being a scientist, he naturally decided to try it on an experimental animal first. He got a white rat from its cage and injected the virus, made a few notes, then left for the night. The next morning, he again bypassed security and returned to the lab.

He checked the vital signs of the rat and ran a few standard tests. The rat did show an increase in general intelligence, but nothing that he had not seen before with the previous tests on CHRM2. He returned it to its cage and recorded his results. His heart sank as he thought, “So much for my big breakthrough.” But, being a thorough man, he went over to the primate cage and began to prepare a Rhesus monkey for the virus.

As he stood there with his hands in the glove box, inside a pressurized, sealed airlock with every state-of-the-art detection device known to mankind, he assumed that he was safe. That was his first mistake.

His second mistake was forgetting that the University security agency had recently hired a young, over eager new guard for the lab. Just as he poised the needle over the monkey’s vein, he was startled as the lab door opened. The nervous twitch of guilt in his hand betrayed him and before he could stop it, the needle plunged through the glove into the fleshy part of his hand. With gasp he pulled it out quickly and for a second, he was relieved to find that he had not pushed the plunger in.

His relief was short lived, however, as he remembered that even a microscopic amount of the mixture was loaded with enough self-replicating viruses to completely saturate his system. With the puncture of the glove, sirens began to wail and there was the hiss of closing seals on the outer doors. Flashing red emergency lights lit up the room.

“Hey! What are you doing there? Stay where you are!” The young security guard drew his gun and ran to the airlock hatch. He pointed his gun at Dr. Jennings and demanded, “Turn around slowly!” His flushed and worried expression gave way to one of consternation as the doctor turned slowly around.

“Dr. Jennings!” he said is a surprised voice, “What are you doing here on the weekend? You know no one is allowed in here without previous approval!”

Royce felt a slight hope rise as he lied, “I forgot something I needed for my report. I had to come and get it.”

For a second the guard almost bought it, but then he suddenly realized, “Wait a minute! How did you get in through the cameras and sensors without me seeing you? I’m going to have to report this, doctor.”

The next day his department head was adamant. “I’m sorry Royce, you have a long-standing record of accomplishment with us and I like you, I really do. But the directives from the government are written in stone. They’re really twitchy when it comes to genetic research. You know that. You attended the same briefings I did and you signed the same forms. I have to let you go.”

He paused to clean his glasses, and then continued on, “I’m going to do everything I can for you. Here’s a letter of recommendation and I’ll put in a call to Los Alamos for you. I have a friend there that owes me a favor. I have to tell you though; the Feds are none too happy with you. The entire lab has to be sterilized which will seriously eat into our operating budget for the year and they told me they are blackballing you from working on any government project for life. They’re afraid of their own shadow these days. Oh, and I had to appoint Mike to replace you as leader of the team. He thinks you should be tested, just in case that virus effects you differently than it did the rat and the monkey”

Royce smiled slightly, thanked him and left. His whole career was blown away in a heartbeat because of ridiculous regulations and bureaucracy. He went back to his home, settled into the one comfortable chair he owned and took stock of his situation.

“I’m 45, I’ve never had a job outside of education and research. No decent lab will take me now that I’ve been officially blacklisted as a security risk by the government, I’m too old to begin again as a first year professor, and too tired and overqualified to teach high school. My life is over.” He open a bottle of beer, drank a deep drink, then leaned back in the chair without noticing the small tear that ran down his cheek. He never knew that he had already made a third mistake.

When he had entered the lab that night, he didn’t know that he had contracted an ordinary flu virus from one of his students. The virus had been in the process of attacking his cells when it had met with the synthesized virus and the neurotransmitters.

The resulting combination caused a cascade in his DNA. It was a simple and elegant mutation, but one that Mother Nature would never have picked in billions of years of selective evolution.

The next morning, Dr. Jennings woke up slowly. He was a little groggy and seriously dehydrated. He thought, “I should get up and get around.” But then he suddenly realized that he had no particular reason to get up at all. As he sat there, he felt his mind begin to race. He felt strangely alert and alive. He got up and stretched. He could feel every single nerve, joint and muscle in his body separately.

He opened his eyes and almost staggered backwards into the chair with shock. He could see everything. “Has my eyesight improved?” he thought to himself. He could see with a clarity he had never experienced before. He stared at a rose in a vase near his window. The sun was shining through the petals. “I can count the veins in each petal,” he realized with amazement. He squinted and leaned closer, looking at the sun refracting through the water in the vase. “I’m seeing all the colors, not just the normal spectrum, but all the wavelengths!” In his mind, he could see the gaps in the spectrum from the elements specific to his sun.

Ideas began to come into his brain from nowhere. He could understand the atomic structure of the glass and the chemical make-up of the rose itself. He could perceive the process of photosynthesis actually going on in front of his eyes. “I’m smarter,” he thought, “a lot smarter. The virus must have worked better than I thought.”

He walked outside. A small stream was running through the woods in back of his house. As he stood stock-still and listened, he heard what he thought was music. “It’s the individual vibrations of the water traveling over the rocks. I can sense everything and all it’s order and ramifications.

He looked down to see a small rock at his feet. He understood the atomic forces that held it together and perceived them as a series of colors. He could even see the force lines of gravity that held the rock to the Earth. He held out his hand and the rock jumped to his palm. He accepted this as a normal thing and unimportant in his new awareness.

As he stared at it, he could see each individual atom and the more he thought the more he understood. In his mind, he could trace the atom’s journey down the ages from the interior of the star, where it had been formed, to the volcano it had been thrown from when the Earth was young, to the glacier that had rounded it, and the stream that had brought it to his feet.

With a start he realized, “I have it all. I can solve all the problems of mankind. No more war, poverty, or disease. This is the beginning of the Golden Age of Man. All I have to do is…”

Then suddenly, as the vista of the future and all that he must do swam into crystal clarity, he sat down heavily on the ground. “Oh no,” he said to himself softly. Then he sighed heavily and bowed his head.

The next day history recorded that Royce Jefferson went to the firm of Larson, Rockwell, and Howell and bought a portfolio of $20,000 worth of stocks. It was an eclectic mixture that the brokers tried hard to dissuade him from buying, but he had the money and in the end they were all too happy to take it.

One week later, he was back to buy more stock. This time he had a thousand times the resources. Within five months, he owned the firm. Thereafter, he began to acquire other businesses at a staggering rate. Within two years he was a legend on Wall Street and the mere mention of his name was enough to insure a businesses’ success.

He owned steel mills, microchip companies, airlines, and aerospace industries. People were amazed by his business sense. Anything he touched seemed to prosper until he was privately referred to as “King Midas” by some of his partners and “Mr. Potter” by his rivals.

A year after that he left control of his corporations to his captains and began to delve into politics. He was a natural. His soft-spoken manner and incredible insight into world situations and problems quickly brought him to the forefront of the world stage. He negotiated peace treaties. He rebuilt whole countries with his massive resources. He revolutionized already technological countries with fantastic inventions from his research facilities and quickly distributed them to the masses before his enemies had a chance to stop him.

Eventually, he set his sights on the Presidency and won in a landslide of goodwill. As he sat quietly in the Oval Office, he reflected on the past six years. As he sat there, his Vice President and the Chief of the General Staff came in. They waited expectantly for him to speak. They knew by now that when ever he called someone to his office, it was better just to wait than to try to anticipate the incredible things he might say.

“Gentlemen, we now control the most powerful nation on the planet. But that is not enough. For what I have in mind, we must control it all.”

The next day began the era known as the Great Change. It began with the Presidential State-of-the-Union address that night.

“My fellow Americans, for the last six years, I have been engaged upon a great crusade. It has so far been a crusade of science and it has been a complete success. However, now I must begin the next phase of my presidency and I will need everyone in the country to help me.” At this point, he turned to a General waiting by the wings and made a signal. The General disappeared behind the curtains.

That was the last thing that anyone in the outside world saw. All communication with the United States was cut off. There were no radio transmissions, no television signals, and no satellite transmissions. Even the undersea cables became ominously quiet.

Most of the world quietly pondered the mystery and went back to their work in the factories or fields. Some people actually cheered the sudden disappearance of what was once the most powerful outside influence in their country.

But there was panic in many places. The stock markets of the world reeled in the absence of the world’s largest consumer. Entrepreneurs scrambled to take advantage and fill the gaps in services and materials left by the truant superpower. For a while, there was rioting and chaos, particularly in the American embassies around the world as American citizens suddenly realized they were cut off from their homeland. But things quickly settled back into a new pattern.

The major countries of the world, especially the former allies of the U.S., sent ships, planes and submarines to investigate the mysterious loss of signals from the U.S. What they found was even more mysterious. The United States had surrounded itself with a force screen. The screen was jet black, enclosed the entire North American continent, and reached straight up all the way to space as far as anyone could tell.

The submarines found that the shield even reached to the bottom of the seabed and efforts to dig under the barrier in Central America proved fruitless. Whatever the Americans were up to inside their protective shell, one thing was certain, no one would know until they decided to come out again.

Ten years passed, then without warning came the invasion. Whole armies suddenly appeared in every country of the world. The soldiers were completely covered by the same force shield that had protected the continent. They looked like jet-black manikins and showed just as little emotion as they swiftly seized control of important infrastructure and government buildings. When fortifications stopped them, they materialized behind the fortifications or inside heavily defended buildings.

No amount of resistance seemed to have any effect on them. Bullets bounced off harmlessly. They strode without wavering through barrages and minefields. Even atomic weapons had no effect on the advancing armies. Desperate generals sacrificed thousands of soldiers in fruitless attacks, but the black soldiers either smashed the assault, or more frequently, ignored it altogether. Within a week, the entire planet was under their control. What happen next was even more mystifying.

There were no demands, no assassinations, no gathering of spoils, in fact nothing that was anything like any other invasion since the dawn of mankind. The soldiers efficiently controlled and ran the critical systems of the country, keeping the power and water flowing, and leaving other less critical systems like communications completely alone. They began to improve the facilities they controlled. They distributed food and supplies to starving countries and built factories in wealthier ones.

With a unified control system, problems that had plagued mankind for generations began to disappear. Surpluses of food in one part of the planet were immediately shipped to countries struggling with starvation. Third world countries were developed at an astronomical rate, with hospitals, schools, and businesses springing up literally overnight. New technology appeared too. A small unit that looked something like a bowling ball that glowed blue put out electricity without seeming to have any power source. It was impossible to disassemble, but that did not matter to the masses that used them for everything from heating homes to powering cars.

Over the next few decades, the quality of life on the planet gradually increased until there was very little poverty or want left. War had been erased since any kind of rebellion was instantly squashed by overwhelming force. Soon open warfare was abandoned in favor of guerilla war. But what kind of success is it when you bomb a truck convoy, but only succeed in destroying your own road without killing any of the enemy? Eventually, even that kind of resistance was given up.

The natural reaction to any kind of conqueror is, of course, hatred. Now there was a common planet-wide enemy for every conquered people to hate. So naturally, the Americans were reviled by every man, woman, and child on the planet. This did not seem to have any effect on the Americans; however, they continued their slow progress in changing the planet unabated. Roads were built, dams, constructed. If a dam was blown up, another took its place. The Americans had access to unlimited power and with that, whole mountains could be moved, deserts irrigated, and seas drained.

Even as most of the world began to enjoy the amazing bounty of the changed planet, there were still those that plotted, schemed, and chaffed at what they saw as slavery to the Americans.

In the year, 2437, three centuries later, a small group of scientists gathered together in an underground, shielded bunker at a small farm in the country near where Paris had been before it was turned into a spaceport.

The leader, a short, black-haired, florid-faced man named Julien Laurent addressed the small group. He was nervous and he talked in a soft, intense voice while glancing around the room as if he was afraid that EGG soldiers would teleport into the room at any moment, which in fact had occurred before in their previous base.

“We now have the answer we have been looking for the last seventy years. Our friends in Germany have cracked the secret of the force screen. A concentrated electron beam at this frequency will open a gateway in the field and allow us to enter the NorthAm continent. Then we will infiltrate the EarthGov buildings and use our fusion pocketbombs to destroy the Protector.”

Julien continued, “Without his leadership, the EarthGov forces will fall and we will regain our freedom and the freedom of all the peoples of the Earth. Bring in the commando team.”

A small group of ten men ushered in through an underground passageway. They were grim-faced and serious. Julien addressed the leader of the group, a broad-shouldered hulking giant of a man.

His name was Ricardo Muet and he looked every bit the part of commando and warrior with a square-jawed, badly scarred face and deep-set eyes that peered out from beneath bushy, Neanderthal brows, but it was a mistake to underestimate him. Like every adult citizen of the planet, he had the equivalent of 25 years of higher education, and a genetically enhanced IQ that would stagger a man of the previous centuries.

“Ricardo, do you have everything you need? Are all the plans finalized?”

“Yes,” the giant replied in a deep, thrumming voice. “The pocketbombs are my own design and are foolproof, they will destroy the Protector no matter how shielded he is. The wavelength of radiation that they will give out will penetrate his shields, even if they protect him from the blast and heat. We have the plans of his command headquarters in New Washington from the psychics at Esspainia and our own self-cloaks will disguise our approach and shield us from his sensors. We will end this dictatorship that has been a plague on the planet for three centuries and restore self-determination to all mankind.”

“Then Godspeed and good luck, we await your success.” With that the two groups switched on the stealth shields that would obscure them from heat sensitive orbital cameras and side-looking radar sweeps. Then each walked away across the fields in different directions without looking back. They each knew that failure meant that they would all be rounded up and sent to NorthAm. No one knew what happened to those who were taken there, but none had ever returned.

Ricardo and his team boarded a robotic ore-freighter in the nearby harbor while it was offline and being loaded, then settled in below the ore, hollowing out a room that would be their home for the two-week voyage to NorthAm. The ore was magnetic and would confuse orbital scans and searches by the Protector’s guardian ships. They had plenty of free power for heat and light, but they dared not use it too much, since even the slightest leak in their cocoon would alert the ever-watching robotic ship’s pilot.

Weeks later, as the ship approached the barrier; they quietly slipped over the side of the ship and into the icy water and inflated their rafts. They opened a small suitcase and set up a complicated device that shot a green beam of light into the barrier. After a few seconds, a small hole appeared and began to widen.

Ricardo, spoke quietly and calmly to his team as he floated next to the beam raft, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness, “It will be dark when we reach land so stay close. We are only about twenty kilos from the Protector’s castle in New Washington, so we can reach it before sunrise. We’ll enter from the old supply tunnel that opens ten miles behind the facility on the backside of the mountain.”

They marched through the night, finally arriving at a small, overgrown and unused tunnel entrance on an isolated side of a mountain. From the other side, a colored blue and green glow showed where the magnificent capital city of the Protector stood, it’s tentacles enmeshed in the affairs of every human on the planet.

Squatting in a bush and checking his hand scanner for detectors, Ricardo told his men, “Look sharp, the scanner says it’s clear and the tunnel looks undisturbed, but the Protector is close and his powers are legendary. Follow me.” Guns were useless thanks to the shields of the EGG soldiers, but Ricardo gripped the small hand-sized fusion bomb in his pocket, in case of emergency, he was prepared to detonate it in a second.

The tunnel stretched for miles, sloping gradually downwards. It was pitch black in the tunnel and the lightsticks his men had only illuminated a small area ahead. Their stealth shields kept them from seeing each other as well adding to the pervasive feeling of isolation. The feeling of closeness and danger was oppressive. Finally, they came to the end of the tunnel. A small airtight door was set into the rock wall.

Ricardo examined it. “There doesn’t seem to be an alarm, that’s odd. Maybe they’ve grown complacent during the centuries of security.” He turned the wheel and the door swung open. Inside the room was warm and well lit. In the middle of a white, empty room an old man sat waiting. He was dressed in a single simple white garment and wore an expression of tired patience.

“Good evening, gentlemen. I’ve been expecting you for quite some time.” He stated matter-of-factly, spreading his arms and standing up in welcome. As he stood up, the stealth shields protecting the men vanished without a sound.

Ricardo and his men let out startled gasps. There could be no mistaking that face. It was a face they had seen many times since their childhood, the face that addressed the entire planet once a year. A face the stared out from a hundred walls and a thousand statues. It was the face of the Protector.

The Protector continued speaking. “I’ve known you were coming for months now, even before you were picked for this team. I have many agents and what they could not tell me I could divine for myself.”

Ricardo reached slowly into his pocket and palmed the pocketbomb. The protector spoke as he did, “I’m terribly sorry, but your nuclear devices will not operate here. This facility has a damping field over it.”

Ricardo felt his senses reeling, and then a burst of anger shot through him. If this was the end, then so be it, at least he could take the protector with him. He pressed the detonation stud on the side of the bomb. Nothing happened. With a dejected expression, he dropped his hands to his sides. He was beaten. He realized that he had never really had a chance. He looked around at the rest of the team, but they were as dumbfounded as he was. He looked back at the softly smiling face and asked, “What now?” It was all he could think of to say.

The Protector smiled gently and said, “Please don’t take it so hard. You may think you have failed in your mission, but you have accomplished more than you can know. I have something to show you, please follow me.” With that he turned and led the way to the back wall where a door slid open noiselessly. Beyond it a small silver car sat floating slightly above steel rails next to a platform in a brightly lit sub station.

The protector gestured for them to enter and they took their seats in the very finely appointed car.

“If you would be so kind as to board, gentlemen, we’ll be on our way.” The car smoothly accelerated until the lights in the tunnel were blending together almost continuously. Ricardo estimated their speed to be above two hundred miles per hour. Almost as soon as they reached maximum speed, the shuttle began to slow down until it docked gracefully at the other end.

This time the protector did not speak, but merely gestured for them to follow him and proceeded up a set of spiral stairs set into a wall. They looked at each other for a second, and then with a shrug, followed him up the stairs. They climbed for quite a while, passing exits to other levels many times, until Ricardo had lost count.

Finally they arrived at a curtained door. The Protector turned and smiled widely, with a hint of emotion for the first time.

“Beyond lies what you came here for, freedom and self-determination. All you have to do is step through.” He bowed slightly and held out his hand to the curtains.

Ricardo stepped forward and opened the curtains. The door opened onto a balcony. The blazing sun blinded him momentarily and he blinked in the bright light trying to adjust his eyes. When he opened them again, he was amazed to see an ocean of people below him. They seemed to stretch on for miles. “There must be hundreds of thousands here,” he thought astounded. Then the protector came onto the balcony and addressed the crowd.

“For over three centuries we have worked and hoped for this moment. It has finally come. Our plans are complete. You have done well, and your striving and sacrifice have paid off. Mankind has reached the level of technology and intellectual maturity where it can finally be given the ultimate gift, full sentience. As I promised to your great grandparents, grandparents, and parents, I will now bestow upon mankind the formula that unlocks complete control of the brain. A new day dawns now for all of humanity. The Universe, and all that is in it, is yours.”

At this a great cheer went up from the multitude and many in the crowd collapsed to the ground with tears streaming from their eyes.

Ricardo and his men were overwhelmed. “What is going on?” he asked.

The Protector turned to them and spoke as a man for whom a great burden had been lifted.

“My name is Dr. Royce Jennings. Three hundred years ago, I invented, by accident, a way to unlock the true potential of the human brain. Instead of the paltry twenty percent that men normally use, I opened the door to the entire one hundred percent. On that day many things that had been closed became clear to me. The most important one was this: I could not share my discovery with anyone at that time. Mankind was not ready for total power, for intellectual ability does not imply moral maturity. A small child may operate a powerful weapon, but he does not have the emotional maturity to understand its consequences.”

“That’s when I realized that I must shepherd humanity until they reached that plateau. I also realized I had to accelerate the pace since, although my new knowledge could give me an extended lifespan, I still could not achieve immortality. Since I did not have the time I needed, the only recourse was to achieve my goals forcibly. Hence my takeover of the American government as the “Protector.” After I surrounded America with my shield, I set about recruiting its entire population to my goal. Once they understood the stakes we were playing for, they helped whole-heartedly and became my army for the pacification of the planet.”

“While I ruled the planet, I secretly and openly began to change mankind through my schools, forced genetics, and programs to become ready for the terrible burden complete sentience.”

Here, he paused and smiled again, as if remembering the long struggle.

“The signal we were looking for was twofold. First, another group would have to divine the secret of the force screen. That would show that technological progress had reached a level that would be sufficient to allow humankind to utilize their new powers. Secondly, a group had to come forward with the courage and strength of purpose to challenge the feared and invincible world government. That would show that the needed level of intellectual maturity and spirit to handle the terrible burden of supreme intelligence without destroying mankind had been reached. You, gentlemen, are that group.”

Ricardo and the others stared openly at him and at each other, trying to absorb his words. A new dawn? Supreme intelligence?

At last Ricardo spoke, “What does all this mean, Doctor?

The doctor chuckled softly to himself, “It means that you are now the new leaders of humanity. I will leave you with the formula. You will distribute it to the world and oversee the beginning of the New Age of Man. I have united the world. You will enlighten it. There is no limit to what you can accomplish now.”

Royce Jennings turned and walked back to the curtains. “It also means that I am retired. Good day gentlemen.” and disappeared.





copyright 2007 All rights reserved.