18th February
13:00 GMT +8
Dr Chen can't help but look a little nervous as he reads the summary on the current conditions of the surviving induced-telepathy volunteers.
H
m.
…
Yeah.
Even with all of the medical information that I've taken from the Institute, re-engineering the human brain to support telepathy is
hard. Brains that don't start out as telepathic just… I'm not going to say
can't handle the input, but they don't cope
well.
Which raises an interesting question about delayed-manifestation telepathy. There's a sort of assumption in the community that if someone 'gets' telepathy late in life, then it's just like any other random metahuman trait. Except we've tried forcing it and it hasn't worked. So… Does that mean that it was always there at a low level? Or that the metahuman 'activation' causes all of the other changes which need to occur in the brain to support the new sense to develop at the same time?
Of course, the chance of me finding someone who went through that change with the before and after brain scans I'd need…
I nod solemnly. "Alright, thank you. It's disappointing, but hardly unexpected." Despite what Lonnie was intimating to me, this isn't the Mao era. The people sitting around the meeting room table
aren't worried that I'm about to have them sent to spend the rest of their natural lives… Growing rice or milking cows, or whatever it was the Party used to do to intellectuals with insufficient revolutionary zeal. "Send me a message directly if any of them start becoming coherent."
He nods, and returns to his seat.
This is exactly why I'm trying to add tetrachromacy to the next wave of volunteers.
There are humans with it, and merely adding a colour should be
far simpler than adding something exotic. Then I can monitor how their brains adapt and try and work out how to build from that. Sure, unlike naturally occurring instances I'm mostly inducing it in
men, but I'm working with the materials I have.
The
other strand of research is some sort of forced regeneration of neural matter. While that
should allow the brain to adapt to the new node more easily, the side effects to partially unmapping a human consciousness… Not great.
Though the prison authorities did agree to an early release, so… Yay?
"Alright, next-." Zhifu strides into the room, glancing briefly over the other researchers before gazing pointedly at me. "General. What can I do for you?"
"I need to speak with you alone."
I nod. "Understood." I smile at my team.
The team, really; they're very definitely in the employ of the Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs rather than me personally, but I'm the lead of the project. Heck, I'm the reason why there
is a project. They do a lot of the legwork while frantically trying to work out how to replicate what I'm doing with human technology. "Ladies and gentlemen, please take a short break. I'll come and find you when I need you."
Nods, muttered mentions of tea and other office chatter accompany some of China's greatest biology researchers as they file out, leaving myself and my silver-skinned friend alone in the meeting room. He doesn't have a lot of the tells normal humans have; I still haven't found a way to
perfectly replicate human body language and facial expression with his durlan-altered body. But he doesn't
look annoyed.
"So… What can I do for you?"
"We were able to capture a durlan infiltrator."
I blink in surprise. "Alive?"
"No, but in a human-seeming form."
I nod. "I'm guessing that you want to see if my rings and Mother Box can get you any data that your own scanners can't?"
"That was the eventual decision, yes, but there was some… Debate."
Certainly surprised it took
this long for someone in party HQ to notice me.
"If I'm causing you trouble, I can clear out my desk..?"
"No, that is not necessary. It is simply that the Chairman Jiang had an… Encounter with members of the politburo who are sceptical of the benefits of our working relationship. Hearing the list of things which you have informed us you will
not help us achieve was unedifying."
"I'm happy to explain my reservations directly, if that would take some of the heat off the Chairman?"
"That would merely undermine him." He takes a seat a short distance down the table from me. "Would you like to hear the list?"
"Hit me."
"The oolitic kidneys which you are providing to the American military."
"Those are made by Doctor von Schadel. My only input was the name." Which Games Workshop are now suing over. "He's very good at what he does."
"You did not assist him in making contact with the American government?"
"No, I
did, but he was already in contact with the Department of Energy. And anyway, his contract was designed with wiggle-room. Once the things actually
work-" And they
appear to, if the subjects don't mind the side effects. "-then anyone working for Luthor's fleet can have them implanted."
"But not the People's Army."
"I asked, but it was a red line for General Lane. He wouldn't even agree to allow von Schadel to supply America's allies in NATO." I frown. "I thought that Jiang was on board with the whole space fleet thing?"
"The Chairman
is. The politburo were distressed to learn that no sooner had China reached a position where we had sufficient metahuman strength to be independent of the Justice League of America, than America started to build a space fleet."
"Hey, no." I shake my head. "Lex is explicitly
not building ships for the US military, or any part of the American government. It's a strictly private endeavour, for the same reasons that I'm not turning everyone in the Red Army into supersoldiers."
"And the American military is not benefiting in any way?"
"Only the same way you are. Or.. you
can be by letting LexPower compete in the Chinese energy market. Is
that still happening?"
"It…
Should. It may be that something more is happening behind the scenes."
Darn it.
"Or it may be posturing. They may be reacting against what you said about your relationship with China during your most recent interview."
I
grunt. "Or what they thought it sounded like I said. I thought I was avoiding saying anything particularly controversial."
"You described our human rights record as 'less than stellar'."
"Seriously? Look, I haven't made any secret of the fact that I think your metahuman control policy is out of date. That sort of obsession with total control made
sense coming out of the civil war, and while the Communist Party was establishing control. It doesn't make sense
now."
"That is one area where you and I disagree."
"No, you just hold them in contempt for their lack of loyalty. I hold
plenty of people in contempt without feeling that it's necessary to imprison them." I shake my head. "What I said was the bare minimum that wouldn't make me look ridiculous to American viewers. You don't have data control over the whole planet."
"You may be interested in the planet as a whole, but the Chinese government is first responsible for China."
"Which is
fine. Except that if the durlans set up outside of China no one else is looking for them because the politburo decided that it was a purely internal matter. Or when the Sheeda invasion fleet arrives and the Red Army can't coordinate with your neighbours to effectively fight them off, or if you haven't shared anti-mind control techniques and the fairy bastards cause a human-on-human war at the same time. The things I'm helping with aren't purely national issues."
I lean back.
"What's it going to take?"
"You have sponsored a school teaching American federal agents magic."
"How to recognise magic. It's pretty basic at the moment."
"You are aware that our attempts to develop an independent magic tradition have been met with only limited success." I nod. "We would be interested in affiliating with the school in San Francisco, in an attempt to improve our research."
…
Life takes with one hand, then gives it all back with interest with the other.
"I'll.. have to talk to the Head Mistress, but I suspect that we can come to terms."