Triggers

Ranjip moved to his apparatus, a padded chair and a geodesic sphere two feet in diameter. “Well,” he said, “this equipment can edit memories, but the effective field is normally constrained to the interior of this sphere. According to the diagnostics, what happened, it seems—and this certainly was unanticipated—was that during the electromagnetic pulse, the field expanded while maintaining its spherical shape. It got to be about thirty-two feet in diameter, so presumably everyone in that sphere was affected.”

“That’s a radius of sixteen feet,” Susan said. “Enough to reach up to the fourth floor and down to the second, no?”

“Exactly,” said Singh.

Susan considered. “The president was there.” She pointed down and to her left. “And I was right next door in the observation gallery.” She pointed directly to her left. She turned to Singh. “Are you sure the field didn’t get any bigger than that? And you’re sure no one outside that radius could have been affected?”

“We’re not sure of much,” Singh replied. “But the field size is directly proportional to the power used to generate it, and the equipment recorded the magnitude of the surge in its syslog file. Assuming we’re right, and it’s my equipment that caused all this, then, yes, I’d say the effect was limited to people in that bubble.”

“I can’t keep the hundreds of people in this hospital locked up indefinitely,” said Susan.

“Given the size of the bubble, it shouldn’t be more than one or two dozen who were affected,” replied Singh. “Anyone who was on the lobby level or below, or on five or above, probably isn’t affected. And anyone on two, three, or four who was more than a couple of rooms away from here probably wasn’t, either.”

“Assuming nobody has moved to a different floor,” said Susan.

“Ah, right,” replied Ranjip.

“Still, it does narrow the list of suspects,” Susan said.

“Suspects for what?” Kadeem asked. But then he looked at Susan and nodded. “Ah. For who’s reading the president’s memories. Guess you gotta find that dude soon, huh, Sue?”

Chapter 14

Darryl Hudkins and Mark Griffin sat in the security office at Luther Terry Memorial Hospital, along with Deanna Axen, the hospital’s director of security. They were in front of a bank of twelve flatscreen monitors, arranged in three rows of four. Eleven of the monitors were doing what they normally did: cycling through the endless array of security cameras secreted inside the hospital and on its grounds, including the plaza connecting to the Foggy Bottom metro station on the south side of the triangular building. But the twelfth—the lower-right one—was showing footage from just before and just after the lights went out. Darryl and Dr. Griffin were making a list of who was within the critical radius of Singh’s machine at the key moment, starting with those in the operating room. It was almost impossible for Darryl to distinguish the members of the surgical team; nothing but their eyes were visible. Griffin, who knew them all to one degree or another, fared better, and Darryl wrote down the names:

President Seth Jerrison

Lead surgeon Dr. Eric Redekop

Surgeon Dr. Lucius Jono

Cardiac specialist Dr. David January

Anesthesiologist Dr. Christine Lee

Surgical nurse Ann January

Secret Service agent Darryl Hudkins

Next, they looked at footage from the corridor outside the O.R. The two patients who had been vacated to make room for Jerrison were there, as well as a nurse who had been tending to them. Griffin identified them as:

Intended kidney recipient Josh Latimer

Intended kidney donor Dora Hennessey

Nurse Janis Falconi

Security guard Ivan Tarasov

They then turned their attention to the third floor, starting with the observation gallery above the O.R.:

Hospital CEO Dr. Mark Griffin

Secret Service agent-in-charge Susan Dawson

And next door, in Singh’s lab:

Ranjip Singh, Ph.D.

Private Kadeem Adams

They continued on, identifying others on the third and fourth floors, including some visitors to the hospital. They were aided by the records kept by the security checkpoint in the lobby, where IDs were examined and recorded. It took a while to compare the hundreds of faces that had gone through the various entrances to the faces spotted near Singh’s equipment, but finally they had completed their list of all those who had likely been affected. As it happened, only Susan and Darryl from the Secret Service detail were within the sphere; the rest of the agents on-site had been further north or south in the corridor on two, or down on one, guarding the building’s entrances.