Brain Jack by Brian Falkner Read Free Book Online Page A

their own partition on one of the White House central server’s disks and were using that for their meetings. On the drive was just a single file. An executable. A program. That would be the online-forum software, he guessed.
    His watch said it was 8:15. Too early. Not that he minded being early, but there might be risks in logging on too soon. The longer he was logged in, the greater the chance of being caught.
    He alt-tabbed to bring the Neuro-Sensor software to the front again, but even as he did so, he realized something strange. For the last twenty minutes, he had been crawling around inside the computer network of the White House. He had activated programs, spun data-webs, even written short bursts of code.
    But he hadn’t touched the mouse or the keyboard at all.
    Ursula had a whole bunch of other exercises to improve his skills, but he was getting impatient, so he bypassed them and loaded the next module.
    “Neuro-visualization,” Ursula told him smoothly. “The neuro-sensors in your headset are also transmitters. They not only pick up signals from your brain, but they also can feed sounds and images into your brain by stimulating brain waves in your visual and auditory cortices.”
    “Cool,” Sam said, nervously flicking a glance at his watch. It was 8:16. Only a minute had passed.
    “Close your eyes,” Ursula said. “I am going to send an image to you now. Nothing fancy, just a red triangle. Relax and allow your brain to receive and interpret the image. If you open your eyes, the feed will automatically shut off. This is a safety mechanism to ensure you do not overload the visual receptors in your brain with information from two different sources.”
    Sam closed his eyes.
    “Visual feed starting now,” Ursula said.
    A blurry red dot appeared behind Sam’s eyes.
    “It had better get better than this,” he muttered.
    “You should now be seeing a fuzzy red shape,” Ursula said. “Focus on it; try and draw it toward you.”
    Sam focused, imagining himself speeding toward the red nothingness. It began to grow in size.
    After a moment, it filled almost half of his vision, and although still out of focus, it was clearly a large red triangle.
    “Concentrate on the triangle; try and bring it sharply into focus. As it changes, I want you to press the Plus and Minus keys on your keyboard. If it gets clearer, press Plus. If it becomes less distinct, then press Minus. When it is perfectly sharp, press the space bar.”
    Sam waited until the edges were sharp and clear, then pressed the space bar.
    “Okay,” she said. “Now for color. I am going to show you a series of color images. When you see the one that has a red dot at the top, a blue dot at the left, and a green dot on the right, then press the space bar.”
    It was the first image.
    “Good. Now I am going to send you a color image. If you can identify the image, then type the name on the screen,” she said, and added, “with your mind, of course.”
    Sam opened his eyes for a moment to check his watch (8:53 p.m.), and when he shut them, a huge, clear image of the famous da Vinci painting Mona Lisa was hanging right in front of him, occupying all of his vision. It was bigger and clearer than he could have ever dreamed possible, and he realized that the image was being beamed directly into his visual cortex.
    Mona Lisa , he thought, and the words appeared over the top of the picture. The bemused smile on the face in the painting broke into a grin, and Mona Lisa said, with Ursula’s voice, “Congratulations. You are correct. You are now ready to use your neuro-connector to view and operate your computer. Have fun!”
    The painting disappeared, replaced by his normal Windows background and icons. He opened a few programs and closed them again just to prove he could do it. He opened a word processor and typed a few sentences with his mind. He ran an MP3 file and was astounded to hear the music inside his head. He tried the same with a video and was