Caldwell staggered into the room with Ms. Seven Levin following close behind. Turbulence. She pressed a hidden button somewhere below the handle of her red leather attaché case and the four sides collapsed to reveal a traption with several sensors and those tiny devices that sat literally millimeters from your retina. They not so much as projected images, as directly stimulated your optierves. There was also a device that looks like an old lady』s shower cap but it was hooked up to a thin fiber optic cable that disappeared into one side of the traption. There was something that looked like an optical disc that she loaded into the traption and it started whirring and spinning. Caldwell didn』t like the look of any of this.
「What the hell is that?」 he asked nervously, beads of sweat rolling down the side of his fad disappearing into his shirt collar.
「It』s the bits of your memory bank that yoing to need for this mission. I』d say that disc holds the triggers to about twenty-five pert of your memory, specific parts of your memory.」 Close up, Caldwell noticed a hard tough edge to Seven』s attractive face. It was something in those eyes, as though some cold and calculating arctic predator atiently biding its time behind the vacuous blue of her irises.
「So what exactly am I getting?」 he asked, shuddering at the thought of the raw animal instinct he had glimpsed sitting passively in there, waiting to be awakened.
「Yetting memory of the physical skills you used to have before. If you used to be a champion tennis player, you will be able to tap into that skill set and possibly win again. I say possibly because it will take a while to re-align your body with what your brain says you are capable of. I uand you were a black belt at something and that you had some basic shooting practice at The Seminary. You should be able to get those back with some effort on your part. Of course, you』ll first have to bee physically fit. You look like you haven』t hit the treadmill in a while.」
「Like I afford it. Were you part of the inal procedure?」 Caldwell asked, hoping to persuade her to give him everything back.
「I』m afraid I am not at liberty to ahat question.」 Those cold eyes studying him, vat aionless.
「Please. Humor me.」
「I am not at liberty to ahat question. If you keep insisting I』ve been instructed to halt the procedure aroy this. This is the only disc I have on board,」 she threatened. For a woman with a name like she had, she sure was unflappable.
「OK, but tell me ohing. How does this thing work?」 he asked, ging the subject.
「Pretty simple really. Your brain stores information in little partments. Information oain things tend to be stored in a certain area of the brain but apart from this vague system of ial geography, the way the information is stored is haphazard, relying on memory association to make the es. So you might have a childhood memory of riding your first bike sittio your memory of the square root of sixty four. What they did is they built a map of your memory, segme into core sectors like speech, physical, mental, artistic skills arapolated that over a timeline from when you were in your mother』s womb to approximately six years ago.」
「And you left speed blocked off the rest? Assigning eae a trigger?」
「You learn fast Mr. Caldwell,」 she said smiling. Then the smile vanished as she realized that he had tricked her into firming that she was ihe person who had carried out