Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 by Penny Publications Read Free Book Online Page A

foes. Neither would they break people on the rack of sleep deprivation, confusion, threats, and physical abuse. No, this process slipped beneath a subject's problematic motives, established sympathy, and redirected the will based on an enlightened view of the world and the common good.
    That was the theory.
    And you had to know yourself, what you held true as well as what seized you with terror. You had to embrace your past—not only memories, but those forgotten events and people who had shaped you nonetheless, recollected in your muscles and your ethics, your way of smiling, walking. You were what came before. Every prior moment went into this one. What was this moment?
    Jimmy silenced himself and opened the pores of his sensations. Once you established the fullness of context, you could slice away at what you did not need. He shut his eyes. First to be eliminated from his awareness: the room in which he sat— chairs, table, machines—and Methusaleh's cell—bed, toilet. The lit space around the prisoner darkened, not as if the lights were dimming, but as if nearer walls were being set in place. The passageway. Everything inessential eradicated. To move along the passageway, to cross the brief yet impossible distance, Jimmy required key words, ideas, insights; whatever he knew about a subject advanced the two of them toward each other. Where they would meet in the middle was where Jimmy, who had built the space, could speak to the subject's deepest self.
    There sat an image of the prisoner, an image built not only of Jimmy's perceptions but, if he had done his work well, of the other person's own sense of self. In that way, the other was drawn forward, sharing space with the conception Jimmy had built. Jimmy could linger with that other, listen to the mutterings of another self. If the process worked, these stages moved more quickly with each iteration, and the other person, unconscious yet aware, could more readily slip into that virtual homunculus.
    Jimmy peered down a black corridor, the prisoner faintly visible at the other end. Jimmy maintained the distance, studying the figure, keeping it steady and coherent.
    He drifted forward along the passageway; he compelled the prisoner to move forward as well—all he wanted was to see some potential for movement on this initial attempt. He employed his keywords like charms.
In control. You're always in control. No one tells you when to speak. Powerful. You can make people do what you wish. The strength of your arms and the strength of your intellect motivate people. You toss your enemies away. Hidden. In the tower room. In the Arctic ice. No one knows who you truly are.
    Jimmy went through the monologue again, as he'd rehearsed, summoning the old man forward, open to response.
    Nothing. The passageway smelled ancient, disused. He opened his eyes, and the details of the world returned, so sudden in their actuality.
    He was drenched, and he stank. He chugged down water.
    The image of the prisoner at the tunnel's end didn't leave him. He turned from the viewscreen and saw him still, upright and steady on the chair, hands at the chair's edge. Was the man not as relaxed as he appeared?
    Jimmy approached the viewscreen and saw what he hadn't seen before.
    Five of the BrightLine employees sat in the weapons room, heavy black uniform shirts and protective vests off, all wearing the same gray tank tops, breaking down weapons. "Mr. Quarles," Jimmy began.
    The other men gave Quarles a look; he licked his lips. "Just Quarles."
    "Quarles. Would you take a look at something with me?"
    "Need some other men, LT?" asked Covey, turning from a locker.
    "I just need Quarles." Quarles stood. "It's about the screen." Covey gave Quarles the nod.
    Jimmy had left in place the viewscreen's image: looking down from a ceiling corner, focused on the bed, skewed forty-five degrees from true.
    "I take it that's not what you wanted," Quarles said.
    "I took a stab."
    Quarles tapped the center of the screen