Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,106

free to take the path of reason, enlightenment, and peace.

Dresner shut down the Afghan video and brought up a set of graphs depicting Merge adoption. Ninety thousand new units were being sold every day and, because of his targeted marketing strategies, a large percentage of those sales were to people LayerCake deemed dangerous to society.

He refocused on a small icon in his peripheral vision. The gray-and-black human outline appeared only on his unit and had been inspired by the images of civilians vaporized in Hiroshima. A reminder of the seriousness of his undertaking.

It accessed a simple subsystem that he’d built into every unit disguised as battery management hardware and unused upgrade paths. The Merge didn’t have enough power to directly harm anyone, even if fully discharged over a short period of time. What it could do, though, was create a feedback loop in the area of the brain that controlled heart function. He’d learned early in development that if he mimicked the signal the heart sent to the brain to indicate that it was beating, the brain would stop sending the commands for it to continue doing so. With less power than it took to run a simple gaming app, the user’s heart would simply stop.

A phone icon began to pulse at the edge of his vision and Dresner’s brow furrowed. It was a private number only a select few had and unscheduled calls never came in on it. Perhaps it was Craig Bailer’s wife taking him up on his offer to help?

He activated it but discovered that it wasn’t a grieving widow looking for closure. It was the director of the North Korean facility.

“Hello?” he said hesitantly.

“Dr. Dresner. This is Dr. Nang. We are dismantling the facility per your instructions. Do you have concerns?”

“Should I? Why are you calling me about this?”

“Dr. Eichmann and his two assistants are due to arrive in a few hours for their review of our progress. We never talked about that kind of oversight and I can assure you that it isn’t necessary. We’re attending to this in the same way we’ve attended to all your requests over the years.”

Dresner felt his breath catch in his chest. Two assistants?

“Do you want me to give them access to Division D? In the past, Dr. Eichmann—”

“No!” Dresner said immediately, trying to work through what he was hearing. The only plausible explanation was that Smith and Russell had discovered the connection between himself and Eichmann and had somehow coerced the man into talking. How much did they know? What had they discovered?

He took a deep breath that shook audibly as it escaped from his lungs. He needed to calm down and think. Eichmann knew about the long-term studies and about Afghanistan, but little more. It was likely the limits of his knowledge about the North Korean facility that had prompted the two Americans to investigate further. But why just the two of them? Were the other intelligence agencies working through other channels? No. He’d have heard if they were. Was it possible that they were acting on their own?

“I’ll call you with further instructions,” Dresner said, severing the connection and immediately dialing James Whitfield. For the first time, there was no answer.

He dialed again, anger quickly turning to fury. Whitfield always picked up by the second ring. The only explanation was that he was avoiding the call, unwilling to admit to another failure. The graphs still hovered in front of him. Only three and a quarter million people were online—a fraction of what he had planned. Projections suggested nearly full adoption by the malignant elements in the political, financial, and military complex within two years. In order to change the world on the fundamental level necessary to allow it to survive, he needed time. The blow he was going to strike against those people had to be fatal.

He dialed again and this time Whitfield answered.

“Yes.”

“Gerd Eichmann is on his way to the Korean facility with what he says are two assistants.”

“Why is this important to me?”

“Because I authorized none of this. Could these two assistants be Smith and Russell? Is it possible that they’re still alive?”

There was a long pause before Whitfield answered. “I sent three Merge-equipped special ops people—an overwhelming force. We’re not sure what happened yet, but it appears that Smith managed to get hold of one of the men’s units and use it against them.”

Dresner wiped at the sweat starting on his upper lip while he considered what he was being told. Smith had