John Scalzi: The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads

“Turn someone into a methodical murderer?” Lowen asked again, incredulously.

“-and two, there are lots of our products out there that will eat your brain if you overuse them, and if they eat your brain, then you’ll start doing uncharacteristic things. Like becoming a methodical murderer, maybe.”

“A reasonable hypothesis,” Lowen said. “But hypothetically this person was not regularly taking either legal or illegal pharmaceuticals. Next.”

“All right,” Berger said, and gave the appearance of thinking quickly. “A tumor.”

“A tumor,” Lowen said.

“Sure, a tumor,” Berger said. “A brain tumor starts growing, hypothetically, and starts pressing on a part of the brain that processes things like knowing what is socially appropriate behavior. As the thing grows, our boring person starts putting her mind to murder.”

“Interesting,” Lowen said. She sipped her drink again.

“I’ve read stories about such things, and not only because my company sells a pharmaceutical treatment for cutting off the blood supply to tumorous masses in the body,” Berger said.

“It’s good to read for recreation,” Lowen said.

“I think so, too,” Berger said.

“And as superficially appealing as that suggestion is, this hypothetical person received a clean bill of health before her last assignment,” Lowen said. “It was hypothetically a job that required extensive amounts of travel, so a thorough physical examination was part of the job protocol.”

“This hypothetical person is getting very specific,” Berger said.

“I don’t make up the rules,” Lowen said.

“Yes, you do,” Berger said. “That’s why it’s a hypothetical.”

“One more chance, Mr. Berger, comma, John,” Lowen said. “So make it good.”

“Wow, on the spot,” Berger said. “Okay. Remote control.”

“What?” Lowen said. “Seriously, now.”

“Hear me out,” Berger said. “If you wanted to do someone in, and have no one know, and completely cover your tracks, how would you do it? You would have someone that no one would ever expect do it. But how do you get them to do it? Skilled assassins may be good at looking like normal people, but the best assassins would be people who are normal people. So you find a normal person. And you put a remote control in their brain.”

“You’ve been reading a few too many science fiction thrillers,” Lowen said.

“Not a remote control that gives you gross control over a body, with everything herky jerky,” Berger said. “No, what you want is something that will lay across the frontal lobes and then subtly and slowly, over the course of time, bend someone towards doing the unspeakable. Do it so the person doesn’t even notice their own personality changing, or questions the necessity to kill someone. They just go ahead and plan it and do it, like they’re filing taxes or making a report.”

“I think people would notice a remote control in someone’s head, though,” Lowen said. “Not to mention the hypothetical person would remember someone opening up their skull to get inside of it.”

“Well, if you were the sort of people who would make this sort of remote control, you wouldn’t make it easy to find,” Berger said. “And you wouldn’t make it obvious when it was inserted. You’d find some way to slip it into their body when they weren’t expecting it.” He pointed at Lowen’s drink. “Nanobots in your drink, maybe. You’d only need a few and then you could program those few to replicate inside the body until you had enough. The only problem you might have is if the body starts trying to fight off the ’bots and then the person gets sick. That would present as, say, a meningitis of some sort.”

Lowen stopped sipping her drink and looked at Berger. “What did you just say?” she said.

“Meningitis,” Berger said. “It’s when there’s a swelling of the brain-”

“I know what meningitis is,” Lowen said.

“So it looks like meningitis,” Berger said. “At least until the people who have inserted the ’bots tweak the ’bots so that they don’t cause an immune response. And then after that, they stay in the brain, mostly passive and mostly undetectable, until they’re turned on and they perform their slow counterprogramming.”

Berger took another sip from his drink. “After that, it’s just a matter of timing,” he said. “You get the person with the remote control in the right places, let them use their own brains to take advantage of situations, and slip them just enough instruction and motivation that they do what you want them to, more or less when you want them to do it, and they think it’s their own idea. Their own quiet, secret idea that they feel no need to tell anyone else about. If they succeed, then the remote control shuts down and gets excreted out of the body over a few days and no one is the wiser, least of all the person who’s been remote controlled.”

“And if they fail?” Lowen asked, almost whispering.

“Then the person who’s being remote controlled finds a way to get rid of themself, so no one can find out about the remote control in their brain. Not that they know that’s why they’re doing it, of course. That’s the point of the remote control. Either way, you’ll never know that the remote control existed. You have no way of knowing. In fact, the only way you would ever know is if, say, someone who knows about these things tells you about them, perhaps because he’s sick of this sort of shit and doesn’t care about the consequences anymore.”

Berger slugged back the remainder of his Cuba libre and set it down on the bar.

“Hypothetically,” he said.

“Who are you?” Lowen said again.

“I told you, I’m a pharmaceutical salesman,” Berger said. He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet and grabbed a couple of bills. “I’m a pharmaceutical salesman who was looking for some interesting conversation. I’ve had that, and I’ve had my drink, and now, I’m going to go home. That’s not what I suggest you do, however, Dr. Lowen. At least not tonight.” He dropped the bills onto the bar. “There, that should cover us both.” He held out his hand again. “Good night, Danielle,” he said.

Lowen shook his hand, dumbly, and then watched him walk out of the restaurant.

The bartender came over, took the bills and reached for Berger’s glass. “No,” Lowen said, forcefully. The bartender looked at her strangely. “Sorry,” Lowen said. “Just…don’t touch that glass, okay? In fact, I want to buy the glass from you. Ring it up for me. And bring me some coffee, please. Black.”

The bartender rolled her eyes at Lowen but went away to ring up the glass. Lowen pulled it closer to her by dragging it by the cocktail napkin underneath and then pulled out her PDA. She called James Prescott.

“Hi, Jim,” she said. “Don’t tell Dad, but I think I just got put in a hell of a lot of trouble. I need you to come get me. You might bring the FBI with you. Tell them to bring an evidence kit. Hurry, please. I don’t want to be out in the open any longer than I have to be.”

“You have an interesting relationship with trouble recently,” Prescott told her some time later, when they were both safely ensconced at Foggy Bottom, in Prescott’s office.

“You don’t think I like this, do you?” Lowen said. She sank lower into Prescott’s couch.

“I don’t think ‘like’ has anything to do with it,” Prescott said. “It doesn’t change the relevance of my statement, though.”

“You understand why I got paranoid, right?” Lowen said to Prescott.

“You mean, random man comes in, tells you a story that, as ridiculous as it is, perfectly explains the problem of Luiza Carvalho murdering Liu Cong, pays for your drink and then tells you not to go home?” Prescott said. “No, I have no idea why you feel paranoid in the slightest.”