The Persona Protocol - By Andy McDermott Page 0,34
guessing you’re not in the mood for a detailed lecture.’
‘You guessed right,’ she replied, scathing.
A slide appeared on the screen, the logo of the Special Technology Section – an elaborate circular seal with a circle of stars enclosing circuit patterns forming a stylised American eagle – overlaid with text. THE PERSONA PROJECT: A PRESENTATION BY DR NATHANIEL KIDDRICK, JR. Kiddrick’s name, she noticed even in her angry state, was larger than the other words.
‘Persona, in this instance,’ Kiddrick began, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice before a captive audience, ‘has a triple meaning. It’s the code name for this STS project, of course, but the obvious meaning also applies – the persona of a human being. Their character, personality, memories, all the things that make them an individual—’
‘Dr Kiddrick,’ Morgan cut in. ‘I think Dr Childs is well aware of that definition of the word.’
Kiddrick’s already wide eyes bugged even further to deliver an irate glare, but he composed himself, skipping forward in some mental script. ‘The third definition, though, is an acronym. PERSONA – Portable Electroencephalographic Recording and Stimulation of Neural Activity.’ He clicked the remote, the text on the screen replaced by an illustration of a piece of technology resembling a laptop. ‘This is the PERSONA device. It is, in essence, a memory recorder. Designed by myself,’ he added with pride.
In any other situation Bianca would have dismissed the idea as a hoax, but a private jet trip to the States was an awful long way to go for a prank. ‘How does it work?’
‘To put it simply, the device records a subject’s brain impulses three-dimensionally in real time using an advanced array of electrodes’ – a click of the remote, and the black box gave way to a graphic of a head wearing a cap dotted with circular objects – ‘which it then processes and sends to a receiver.’ Click, and another head appeared, animated arrows running from the first to the second.
‘Wait, wait,’ said Bianca. ‘So you’re claiming that reading a person’s memories and transferring them into somebody else’s mind is as simple as copying a file from one computer to another?’
‘I’m not claiming that at all,’ Kiddrick replied. ‘It’s far from simple. I’m just saying that for ease of explanation.’
‘Well, I do have a PhD in neurochemistry, so I know a little about how the brain works. You don’t have to give me the Sesame Street version.’
Kiddrick frowned. ‘If you insist.’ He clicked repeatedly on the remote. Slides flashed by, stopping on one showing a series of images taken by a CT scanner: ‘slices’ of a brain’s activity.
It was instantly obvious to Bianca that the brain in question belonged to no ordinary patient. ‘Has something been implanted?’ Fine white lines ran through the tissue, a tiny sphere at the end of each.
‘Yes – they act as amplifiers, taking the signals from the agent’s own electrode array via induction and redistributing them throughout the synaptic pathways. Essentially, they’re recreating the engrams of the subject’s brain by overlaying them on to the equivalent areas of our agent’s.’
That raised many questions in Bianca’s mind, but she asked the biggest one first. ‘But isn’t that just a fancier form of electroshock therapy? It’s more targeted, yes, but the end result will be the same – it’ll scramble the synapses, not neatly plop new memories into them. And what about the memories that are already there?’
‘That’s where Dr Albion’s work comes in,’ said Morgan.
Bianca looked questioningly at Kiddrick. ‘Yes, yes, Roger played a role,’ he said, as if the admission were being wrung from him in court.
‘A role?’ she said. ‘You make it sound as though he was just your lab assistant or something.’
‘Roger is the Persona Project’s other senior scientific adviser,’ Tony clarified. ‘They worked together to make it possible.’
‘The drugs Roger developed were important, yes, but the concept behind PERSONA and all the basic research required to make it a reality were mine,’ said Kiddrick sniffily. ‘But in answer to your question, the drugs in essence wipe the targeted synapses’ – a sweeping motion with one hand to illustrate – ‘and make them ready to receive the new data.’
Bianca was horrified. ‘You’re wiping people’s memories?’
‘It’s more like temporarily suppressing them. As you know, the brain doesn’t work like a computer by storing one byte of information in a single place – it’s more of a distributed network. Memories are reassembled through protein synthesis in a particular group of neurons when the brain specifically calls for them,