lucky night. After
Charlie had bent his finger we had to go to the Emergency Ward. When the doctor
was finished, my date only wanted to go home to his own bed.”
“You’re one tough broad. Charlie has to
stop drinking like it’s a contest, and he wants the first prize. It’s been over
two years since the accident. I think he is on the edge of pissing everyone
off. He’s fortunate the Chief likes him.”
“I ran onto the dance floor to get away
from Charlie. Then he came after me and that’s why we were in full view of the
entire Division. God, I could have died. How he was able to grab the finger and
control my giant of a date, I’ll never know.”
“The worst part was when your date started
screaming. I mean here is this big man on his knees……..in the middle of the
dance floor screaming and Charlie, very calm with a stupid grin on his face,
enjoying the show…….it was unbelievable. He is lucky Wes got him out of there
before it escalated.”
Janice was mouthing words of sympathy, but
in reality she had relished the dance floor screaming and Emma’s embarrassment.
She thought Emma received too many kudos; she knew it was childish. But, Kate
and Emma were tight and all of Janice’s efforts appeared to be of secondary
importance. She found it difficult to keep jealousy from disturbing her.
However, today a new car, a confirmed exotic summer vacation trip, and a
manicure with new nails all enhanced her mood. And, it helped that she knew
one of Dr. Kate’s buried secrets.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
The dance, Charlie, my date, the works. Forget it. I have to start collecting
all the results from White Rock. Dr. Kate wants me to isolate the duplicate
memory streams from every interrogation.
We’re to start our analysis with the
convicts who were found to be innocent; we have to assess why the scans took
longer for this group. There appears to be a problem with the technique used
during the S3 interrogation. Dr. Kate did get clearance from the Judge to bring
you into the loop because we may need more manpower. I need you to run the
playback unit while I assess the scenes and take notes.”
“I’m certified for S1 and S2 interrogations
and now have an upgraded clearance, tell me what happened.”
Emma guessed Janice would press for more
information about the White Rock S3 interrogations. Dr. Kate ordered her: use
the term ‘duplicate’ and not ‘multiple’ and do not discuss the possibility
these copies may be different versions of the same event. If Janice persisted,
Kate’s instructions were clear: Emma was to lie: the streams were all
duplicates and the extent of the brain damage had not been confirmed.
“I’m not sure what happened because I
haven’t seen all the results. I’m only familiar with the 12 we interrogated.
The appearance of duplicate copies caused delays and a number of scans took too
long. The duplicates confused the technicians. They spent inordinate amounts of
time trying to clear a duplicate scene so they could get to the next memory
segment. We’re still not sure about the impact on the prisoners who survived.
Each surviving inmate was assessed for brain damage, but the results aren’t
back.
If we can finish in the 45-minute time
frame, there are no problems but as the scan drags on the risks increase and
there is no way of telling what the complications might be. The scanning is
more of an art than a science. We conduct the scanning or probing process as a
Binary Search, like a three-dimensional binary search. Once we’re focused on an
area of the brain, we treated it as if events were stored in a chronological or
sequential fashion. This concept works up to a certain point. With a few days
of experience, you can maintain a good rhythm as you are probing.
But, there are times when you have to
change your perception of the memory scheme. Memory storage appears to be a
continuous stream but then individual cells of unique events