There were millions of results.
Outside the wind shrieked; the windows shook in their frames. Around him, teenage boys hunched over their screens like monks over altars, mutely tapping at keyboards and waving their finger-cats, their earbugs buzzing as audibly as fluorescent lights.
A fly landed on Drew's screen; he shooed it away.
He read.
He read that extreme low frequency waves (ELF) oscillating close to the natural frequency of the electrical impulses in the brain could and would interfere with the brain's electromagnetic field; that this could be accomplished at long range; that these technologies were capable of reverse biofeedback and entrainment of the brain waves by precisely timing EM-field fluctuations; that ELFs could cause a complete, controlled psychosis, that is, audio and/or visual hallucinations, and impair or control the thoughts and dream states of any human being; that this could be accomplished at long range.
He read that ELFs could travel far without loss of amplitude and had strong effects on biological systems; that they could penetrate Faraday cages easily, but not atomic bunkers.
He read that you could buy clothing online—including baseball caps, scarves, and thermal underwear—specifically designed to block most "biologically active" electromagnetic frequencies.
He read that, years ago, one of the government's research laboratories had submitted a patent for a device that claimed to use microwaves to transmit words directly into a person's head.
He read that, at the current state of technology, it was ridiculous to believe that complex thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, or even voices could be projected; that, at present, only coarse EM signals, capable of disrupting a person's normal biorhythms, making them ill or confused, were being beamed into unwitting victims' heads.
He read that, on the contrary, the latest technological developments made it possible to not only custom-tailor any individual's conscious experience, but also to read anyone's thoughts from as far away as the opposite side of the planet; that an individual's most private thoughts could easily be decoded by computer because most thoughts oscillated at "5,000 Kbits per second."
He read that electromagnetic transmission was not the danger at all, but nanotechnology; that a device the size of a dust-mite could latch onto any single nerve ending and, by utilizing the known resonant frequency of the human skull, create any complex wave-pattern in the victim's brain.
He read that the earbug worked on this principle.
He read that there were support groups for self-described victims of hi-tech psychotronic torture.
He read that, despite their astounding similarities, the claims of electronically targeted individuals all around the planet were, of course, being dismissed as the symptoms of mass schizophrenia.
He read: "There can be no doubt that thousands of people worldwide are indeed victims of technology that hasn't yet been admitted to the public. The only question is: Who is using it?"
He read; but nothing that he read was any help. It was likely that many of these people were indeed victims of surveillance, harassment, and possibly remote electronic manipulation; but they were ultimately like himself, or Miranda: poor ignorant suckers trying to make sense of what they were going through. They all cited the same old facts, the same condescendingly open-minded mainstream articles, the same handful of old declassified military memoranda, and they all made the same extrapolations, drew the same conclusions. Of course, most of them didn't even do that much, but merely stated categorically the truth as they saw it, and pointed the finger at whatever government agency or corporate enterprise they felt was responsible.
And invariably they did this in bad, broken English riddled with misspellings, grammatical errors, and logical flaws. How could you trust such people? How could you believe anything they said—even if you knew it was true?
It was obvious that they needed a spokesman.
And then he read something different. He read that there were fundamental, irreconcilable flaws in the present conception of electromagnetism. He read that for over a hundred years these flaws had blinded scientists, experimenting with magnetic waves and electric waves, to the existence of time waves, or "transverse transduction" waves.
He read that time itself was only dense or "implicate" electromagnetic energy, and that mind was only dense or "implicate" time waves. Mind, or consciousness, was nothing but a wave's awareness, or sampling, of its own pattern or information.
He read that these facts had only been first discovered some ten or fifteen years ago, and that orthodox Western science, in its crude infancy, had yet to officially recognize their import. He read that by overlapping or interfering two implicate time waves, ordinary EM energy could be made to rise directly out of the local space-time potential of the interference zone—like bubbles surfacing out of an invisible ocean.
This could be done from any distance, for time waves did not disintegrate or attenuate like ordinary EM waves; and the resultant pattern of the interference zone could be as simple or complex as desired.
He did not understand even a fraction of what he read, but the diagrams, technical jargon, and the author's proselytizing arrogance inspired confidence. Here at last was something he could print; here at last was someone he could quote: a man who knew something, a man to whose expertise Drew could defer. He did not need to read the author's bio to see that here, at last, was a man he could trust:
President and Chief Executive Officer, CSKY, Inc. Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired). Professor, Mathematics, Georgia State College (Auxiliary Campus) (Retired). PhD. Electronic Engineering, North Louisiana University; MSc Scalar Mathematics, New Hampshire Institute of Technology; BSc Information Theory, Georgia State College (Auxiliary Campus). Graduate of Biological Weaponry Staff Officers Course, U.S. Army (equivalent to MSc in Aerospace Engineering).
Alasdair Taft (a pseudonym) is perhaps the world's leading authority on implicate-EM theory and one of the most vocal critics of clandestine U.S.-government-sponsored research into the feasibility of implicate-EM weaponry. In his capacity as President and CEO of CSKY, he is intimately involved with the development and implementation of alternative energy devices and implicate-EM system prototypes.
He is president of the American Association of Independent Scientists (AAIS), a distinguished member of the New Hampshire Academy of Applied Sciences, Emeritus member of the American Association of Physics Teachers, Honorary Professor and Visiting Lecturer at the Topeka Institute of Defense Systems, and has served on the Board of Directors of numerous associations and corporations.
Thirteen years ago, while working as part of the research and development team of a large electronic gaming corporation (V-Tone, predecessor of iLoom), he discovered the existence of time waves, and established the foundations of what was to become the implicate theory of electromagnetism. For his discoveries, he was fired and discredited. There is no knowing how far his radical innovations have since been secretly promulgated within or without the electronic gaming industry, nor to what nefarious uses they have been applied by unscrupulous experimenters spurred on solely by the motive of profit.
There was a picture of Taft, too. He looked about sixty. Grey hair. Obviously intelligent. He wore glasses. And he had a beard. A man you could trust.
Drew did a search on V-TONE. According to iLoom, which subsequently acquired it: "One of the foremost trail-blazing pioneers of electronic gaming systems, V-Tone had their fingers in countless pies long before the competition even knew they were out of the oven: remote identity kits, multiplayer genii, HASBAC, full-body cloaks, ambiphasic environments, portable skillsets, and even VR interface modules."
VR. Virtual reality?
CSKY. Sea-sky? Sky-ocean?
Taft. TFT?
tft explained it to me once but the waves bend.
With each connection that he made, he felt a musical chord ringing deep within him.
iLoom. iLoom?
He pulled the phonetically decoded message out of his pocket again. TH iLOOM R GANiNG POWR.
Jesus. It wasn't Illum, or the Illuminati, after all. It was iLoom.
He withdrew the aluminum foil from his pocket and took a discreet sniff of the powder.
"iLoom," he read, "is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in New York City, and one of the world's largest technology conglomerates (with revenue last year exceeding US$88.5 billion). iLoom is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, communications, video game systems, and information technology products for both the consumer and professional markets."
Thousands of people worldwide were victims of technology that hadn't yet been admitted to the public. The only question was: Who was using it?
Now he knew.
A feeling of tremendous enlightenment washed through him; his insides were scoured with pure light; the nerve-endings in his feet and fingers tingled wildly, as if to release the excess energy.
But almost instantly this feeling curdled. He sensed that his excitement was laughable; indeed, he sensed that someone or something was laughing at him. This was too good to be true; the intensity of his emotions proved it. He was being led to these conclusions; the information had been laid out for him like cheese in a trap. He looked over his shoulder, suddenly certain of being watched. The students around him sat slumped over their HDR screens; their uninterest in him was exaggerated and false. Any of them, possibly all of them, were secretly observing him.
Not that that was necessary. They could be watching him remotely.
Hurry.
Only one question remained: Why? Why was iLoom bombing unwitting citizens with their insanity software? To test it out. But why? So they could sell it. To whom? To the government; to another government; to the Chinese; to the neo-fascists; to anyone who had enemies who needed to be discredited or nullified; to anyone who wanted to gain power over the minds of men. In short, to anyone.
What did Taft have to say?
According to him, it was the German government who had gone furthest with his, Taft's, discoveries; it was the German government who were conspiring to use implicate-EM technology to "re-engineer the collective unconscious," or "hack the human species consciousness," and turn the human race into a "slave race," "hive species," or "a sort of ant society."
The Germans?
He again had the feeling that he was being laughed at.
But perhaps that stuff about the Germans was only a bit of noise. Probably no one person could really be expected to see the whole picture clearly.
He stared dully at the HDR screen till his vision started to wobble; the pixels broke into information-rich patterns, like the jewellike patterns on the backs of his hands. He shook his head and blinked hard.
No, something was moving. The cursor was slowly drifting across the screen. Slowly, but with purpose. With intelligence.
His hand was still. And moreover, he'd taken the cat-ring off his finger a long time ago; it lay on the desk beside him.
Someone was controlling this HDR remotely. Someone had hacked in.
His stomach dropped. Suddenly he was aware of muttering and chattering, just below the threshold of audibility, in the far distance—kilometers away. But when he turned his head sharply the muttering voices turned with him, as if attached to him by long, rigid filaments, as if his consciousness were a vast ghost-mind overlaying or underlying the physical universe, a vast incorporeal globe to the crust of which these tiny chattering entities clung. He thought he would scream.
They were catching up. Homing in. Digging down.
Go. Keep moving.