Analog SFF, March 2012 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines

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Novelette: TRIGGERS: PART II OF IV

by Robert J. Sawyer

What is the ultimate breach of national security?

The story so far:

An al-Qaeda splinter group named al-Sajada has been attacking US monuments with new, highly portable explosives. On a cold November morning, President Seth Jerrison attempts to reassure his distraught nation by giving a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, but a would-be assassin's bullet tears into his back. He's rushed to Luther Terry Memorial Hospital, accompanied by Secret Service agent-in-charge Susan Dawson. There, surgeon Eric Redekop and his team labor to save the president.

In the same hospital, memory researcher Ranjip Singh is using experimental equipment to try to erase the painful memories of a young Iraq War veteran named Kadeem Adams, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

An al-Sajada bomb is discovered on the roof of the White House. Everyone is evacuated, but the bomb goes off. As it does, a power surge goes through Singh's memory-erasing equipment.

Meanwhile, the surgical team is losing President Jerrison. His heart stops, and Jerrison—a closet atheist—undergoes a classic near-death experience, including a life review. But, as he tells hospital CEO Mark Griffin when he's revived, it's not his own life that he saw.

It soon becomes apparent that twenty or so people at the hospital have had their memories linked in a circular chain: person A reads the memories of B, B reads the memories of C, and so on. Susan Dawson can read the memories of Ranjip Singh, and Susan herself is read by Kadeem Adams. Dr. Redekop is reading a much-younger nurse named Jan Falconi and he, in turn, is read by real-estate agent Nikki Van Hausen. President Jerrison can read Kadeem Adams (it was the young vet's life he saw flash by), and someone, as yet unidentified, is reading President Jerrison. Recognizing that this represents an enormous threat to national security, Agent Dawson orders the hospital locked down, and begins a systematic search for whoever is accessing the president's memories.

Unbeknownst to Dawson, the United States is about to embark on a massive clandestine military operation code-named Counterpunch, aimed at the terrorists who have been attacking the US. Secretary of Defense Peter Muilenburg is supervising preparations from the Pentagon.

The man who shot Jerrison is killed trying to escape, and is soon identified. Shockingly, it was Gordon “Gordo” Danbury, a Secret Service agent. The attempt on the president's life was an inside job—and it's anyone's guess how high up the conspiracy goes.

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Chapter 15

Susan enlisted Professor Singh to help her interview the other potentially linked people: he'd speak individually to half of the remaining group, and she'd take the other half. They could have gotten through everyone even more quickly if she had the other Secret Service agents do interviews, too, but she didn't know who among them she could trust. But Singh, who she recalled had enough psychology courses under his belt to know how to effectively question people, had no secrets from her, and she

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