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abandon professional speculation and actually see the trauma in the minds of their patients, as if it
were a movie, to witness firsthand the core of the patient’s
illness in living color, and therefore treat the patient
accordingly. Of course the possibilities didn’t end there.
Witnesses afraid to talk, or abuse cases with repressed
memories…all of it could be found in the suconscious and projected
for observation and study. We could, in essence, see reflections
gleaned from the subject’s life. Better yet, a dying man could
project images of his killer and we could save them. Better than
any mugshot. It stands to turn the justice system as we know it on
its ear.”
    Wade felt the
restraints biting into his wrists. There was a way out of these
zip-ties. Someone had told him how to do it once upon a time, but
the method eluded him now.
    “But like any
great discovery, “nanoreality” had its problems, and some pretty
significant ones at that. Once access was gained, we found it
difficult to isolate the memories we wanted. The mind doesn’t have
an index, you see. It’s like a library full of books with no
titles. We ended up selecting them at random.” He shook his head.
“Which had unfortunate consequences for some of the subjects,
otherwise good people who had seen terrible things and had managed
to forget them. Essentially we made them relive those nightmares,
and of course, when memories are recreated in front of you, they
cease to be memories anymore. They become the present, the now. So
those who had witnessed or endured tragedies were forced to witness
them again. And once the present became the past again, the memory
was duplicated, intensifying the level of emotional turmoil. It
proved counterproductive, exacerbating the very symptoms were were
trying to cure.”
    Wade smiled.
“So you fucked them up even more, in other words.”
    “Yes,” Cochran
conceded. “And I’ll spare you the speech about every great advance
needing sacrifice. It was my fault. We weren’t ready.”
    “But now you
are?”
    Cochran sat
back again and appraised Wade for a long moment. Then he offered
him a tight smile. “Yes. Many lives have been lost trying to
perfect this thing. The initial project was deemed a failure and
shut down until I decided to fund a new version of it. As you might
imagine, the old concerns were revived right along with it, but I
had done my homework this time. We had planned to go public until
someone in my staff leaked word of the project to the press. It was
not received well. They accused us of trying to steal the last of
mankind’s secrets, invading the only place left the government
hadn’t already probed. During this wave of negativity, the
government men showed up, stirred from their nest by the media and
on the warpath. After an admittedly impressive demonstration, I was
able to keep them from shutting us down, but only if I agreed to
sign the whole thing over to them when complete, with my role
reduced to advisor.”
    “That had to
suck,” Wade said, grinning.
    “Not nearly as
much as I thought. You see, the advances we made in that three year
period were phenomenal. We broke barriers we never imagined we’d
break, and extended the realm of possibility almost infinitely.
There is very little we can’t do with this technology, but of
course claims are nothing without proof.” He smiled and joined his
hands. “Which is where you come in.”
    Wade nodded his
understanding. “I’m the guinea pig.”
    “Yes.”
     

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    Wade was sweating again, but this time
he was glad of it. Enough lubrication and he stood a better chance
of slipping free of his restraints. Not a much better chance, but
anything was better than nothing. And if he got free, the first
order of business would be to strangle the boring old bastard with
his own tie. He could think about what to do with the cops
upstairs—assuming they were still there—later.
    “So what’s next?” he