Would you stil love me...
it wasn't a simple operation. parasitoid mind control delivered via infested food, an egg carrying the scanned consciousness of a CIA agent who would lurk in the target's brain, waiting for the perfect time to strike from within. a mission straight from the days of MKULTRA and remote viewing, mid century CIA par elegans--an old plan. but now, technology had caught up with it.
the only wrinkle? the brain scan would be destructive. but i don't mind. i don't have anything else, besides him.
for two weeks after the anesthesia, i didn't exist. in that time, in a langley basement, a machine sliced my brain into paper-thin sheets, fed high-resolution scan data directly into enzymatic synthesis--DNA storage, 2.2 petabytes per gram, nature's hard drive. a few well-placed bribes at a DC seafood distributor--salmon so often has parasites, you do have to be careful with your suppliers--and then a microscopic larva burrowed through the blood-brain barrier. synapses grew, fusing the invader into the network, and engineered retroviruses unpacked me, unfurling my mind next to his.
the brain is not the mind. the brain is a substrate, a computer, a simulator that the mind--or many minds--run within. schizophrenics can attest to that. it is only by force of will that the mind keeps the brain to itself, keeps the voices as passing, transient things.
but if there's one thing a trained CIA agent is good at, it's breaking their target's will. i metastasized next to him, nestled in his neural pathways, two peas in a pod, two processes on one core.
i'd watched him before. he was tall, not conventionally good-looking but handsome in a strange way, a passionate speaker. he'd been an unknown before the current administration, ridden a campaign position to minor political influence. he was inexperienced, getting too close to something he shouldn't. he had to go, the CIA said.
but watching him now, from the inside... he was unsure of himself. above the podium he knew the motions, but below i could feel every tensed muscle, watch every conscious motion. he knew other figures in the administration were laughing at him. above all, he was lonely. he missed his hometown, hated the fakeness of his adopted city, the girls who'd flirt with him, NYT reporters ready on signal.
i'd infiltrated his occipital lobe by this point. i could make him see things. so i made someone for him. i knew just what he wanted--a girl with just the right dress, just the right accent, cot caught. he saw her outside a coffee shop on dupont circle. nobody else did. she--i--smiled. he asked for my number. i said how about a date.
he took me to dinner, table for two. the waiter raised an eyebrow, but for him, the waiter smiled. he ordered the salmon. we went back to his place in arlington. i made sure he felt everything.
he started going to the gym again. feeling him lifting the plates, knowing he was doing it for me... i started to help him. nothing too obvious--the right joke with a staffer, the right framing for a senior advisor. during his speeches i would go muscle by muscle, untensing them.
the brain is a funny kind of computer--the programs it runs grow more similar over time. they say married couples' brain waves sync up during sleep. in that sense, we were already married, so i told him i was moving in. i was shy--his friends never saw me. i made sure it didn't bother him. nothing drastic.
i was in too deep. they'd warned me this might happen. they'd flagged his behavior, knew what i'd done. they sent another agent. she tried to reason with me. i surrounded her, cut off the synapses. killed her. my loyalties were elsewhere, now.
but it was too dangerous, he had to know. so i took him to the coffeeshop where we'd met. said i had to tell him something. he was nervous, i made him excited. i was wearing the same dress, smiled at him the same way. as he sat down, already knowing the answer i'd give, i popped the question:
would you still love me if i was a brainworm?