Free Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) by SL Huang Page A

all, as Pilar had said, when it hadn’t worked properly it had caused some…unexpected behavior. I sighed. “As long as it’s working the way it’s intended, it’s not dangerous. All it’s doing is realigning brain frequencies to a more normal level, taking them out of that state. It’s returning people to normal.”
    “What about people who ain’t doing no mob thing? What kind of effects does it have then?”
    “None.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah. It’s mathematically impossible for it to take people out of a normal brain state.”
    “Thought you said we got more than one normal brain state. Like when people sleep or meditate.”
    “It won’t affect those either. It’s, um—” I thought about how to explain. “It’s too far off. Have you ever seen the thing where people break glass with a resonant frequency?”
    “Like opera singers? That happens for real?”
    “Sure,” I said. “But it’s not like any frequency does it. It has to be resonant with the glass. This isn’t quite the same thing, but—mathematically, what they put together, it’s too far off anything else to affect states other than the particular range of waves they wanted it to.”
    “Then what’s the catch?”
    I told him about how they hadn’t been able to figure out a way to blanket a large area evenly. “Basically, they could do it if the experiment subject was one person standing still—they tested it on people playing video games and such, for instance—but in real-world mob scenarios, that’s never going to be the case. It’s always going to be a lot of people over a big area, and they couldn’t get the right combination of frequencies to stay constant enough over a large field.” When people had moved out of the sweet spot and into the places where the frequency bands weren’t correct anymore—that was where any trouble had sparked. “And for what we want, well, we want an even bigger scale. We want a consistent impact and we want it everywhere; we don’t want people to wander in and out of the effects.”
    “We don’t?” said Arthur dryly.
    “For two reasons,” I argued. “This isn’t going to have a large-scale impact if the people who are in vulnerable situations—kids in gang neighborhoods, for instance—” I leaned on that, thinking of Katrina and Justin—“are just going to get indoctrinated once they wander over to the next city block. And second, we want to be able to see if there’s actually a statistically significant effect, and for that we need to test it out over a large area.”
    “So, what, you suggesting all of LA? That’s a hell of a lot of ground to cover.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “It is. But I did a back-of-the-envelope. As long as we can build the things and adjust the calibration the way I need to, setting enough of them will take some time, but it’ll be doable. Especially if Checker and Pilar will help.”
    “And you say the math, it works out.” He spoke like he was feeling through things. Digesting them.
    “Yeah. I’m getting closer and closer. I think I’m going to be able to adjust these things and position them around the city in a way that’ll work. I’ll be able to blanket the whole metropolitan area evenly, more or less—at least, everywhere will be within the frequency band necessary for this.”
    “So a racket like Pourdry’s, or the kids in South LA who get sucked into the life…”
    “I’m going to get Checker to run some simulations, but it should have a nontrivial impact.” My heart beat faster. Was Arthur actually agreeing with me?
    “Right. Okay. Russell, I realize you ain’t asking my permission, but…I worry, you know? About what we ain’t thought of.” He cleared his throat. “But if this got even a chance of helping…you say it only gonna affect people who are caught up already, right? No one else?”
    “No one else.”
    “That be the case, then—I don’t think we got no right not to do it, just ’cause we scared of what might