Face, The by Hunt Angela

Author:Hunt, Angela [Hunt, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises
Published: 2012-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Four

Sarah

For the next three days, I don’t see much of my aunt except at meals. She spends most of her time in the conference room, scribbling notes on a legal pad or gathering information from Web pages. Occasionally I glance out the window of the operations center and see her wandering in the graveyard, her arms crossed and her head down, as if she’s deep in thought. Sometimes she sits on the bench and reads, her hand spread protectively over the pages of a book.

At lunch on Tuesday, she tells me she’s spent the morning in Dr. Mewton’s office, ordering things we’ll need for our pre-transplant therapy.

I glance at Judson, whose head is bent over his soup and sandwich. He’s not going to be any help.

“Who says I need therapy?” I ask.

Aunt Renee puts down her spoon. “Anyone who is facing a major life change needs time and tools to make the adjustment. Dr. Mewton agrees that you and I should have a few sessions together.”

It’s all been decided, then. Like Randle Patrick Murphy, I’m to be treated to a mental health checkup whether I want it or not. I can only hope they forgo the lobotomy.

And what things could she be ordering? Cases of stage makeup? Burkas in every color in case the face transplant fails?

I pick up my egg salad sandwich and swallow my dissatisfaction with this latest wrinkle in my routine. Dr. Mewton may be tolerating my aunt’s therapy plans, but I know her well enough to sense the reticence behind her grudging approval.

I’ve also seen what they don’t want me to see—the two of them arguing in Dr. M’s office. Occasionally, when I know they’re together, I hack into the surveillance feed and watch them snipe at each other across the desk. Keeping the volume low so Jud won’t hear, I watch their heads bob back and forth like players in a heated tennis match. It’s almost comical.

When Aunt Renee and Dr. M aren’t arguing, they go about their work and I try to apply myself to the Gutenberg project. Every message from Mr. Traut is more terse than the one before, but my hands are tied when it comes to the testing stage of the program. I don’t have a pool of test subjects at the convent, so I have to rely on data from Langley.

One disturbing fact has come from that data: it’s impossible to distinguish between brain signals produced by actual memories and those produced by imagined memories. Unless a programmer knows exactly what cues to include, the clever criminal who imagines the perfect alibi might convince a brain scanner that he was nowhere near a crime scene.

Meanwhile, Judson has been pulled off Gutenberg and assigned to investigate Hightower’s situation. The officer I once thought infallible is still confined to room 335 and still suffering some sort of mental disconnect. Dr. Mewton even asked Aunt Renee to examine him. She did, and came out of that room saying that she’d never seen anything quite like Hightower’s condition.

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