It wasn’t an issue to him. He liked being the one in control. He’d been trained to manipulate, and through the years, he’d made it into a game of sorts. Mental manipulation. How many different ways were there and how far could one influence another’s thoughts and actions without direct communication? He’d done it for so long it was second nature now, and he had to stop himself sometimes from unnecessarily affecting a situation that was none of his business. He thought of the one between his friend Alex and his love interest, T, and how he had had a hand in putting them in close quarters. His lips curved wryly. Okay, so sometimes it was too much fun not to, even for a man with a busy schedule such as his.
Currently, his hands were full with a certain female operative who could remote view. The CIA remote-viewing program, Star Gate, which trained operatives to spy with their minds, had always intrigued him. He’d undergone similar mind-control training at Command Center but it was more at the level that most spies were familiar with—brainwashing, Intel-gathering, hypno-suggestions. Remote viewing was, arguably, an intangible addition to hi-tech spying, since it depended on an individual reporting, without any back-up of wire-tapping or informed sources, on something happening at some location that might or might not even be correct. And to make it even less likely for any government agency to actually be one hundred percent behind this “information”, said remote viewer was, after a session, usually unavailable mentally and incapable physically to get to, or gain access of, what he saw.
There was only one known case that Jed was aware of, of the military sending in a small group of special ops personnel in a rescue mission out in the desert. The exception was made because the hostage was a four-star general, one of their own. However, they’d ultimately failed because the remote viewer had only “seen” a desert landscape with a few distinctive landmarks at which their Military Intel specialist had made an educated guess. The resulting red faces of losing men and wasting money on a mission that had depended on a remote viewer’s information had all but killed the CIA ambition to integrate their secret program with Military Intel.
Jed recalled all the discussions going back and forth between departments. He’d stood by, listening, gathering the necessary information for COMCEN, and he’d privately concluded that until a remote viewer’s downtime could be eliminatedanduntil they could find a remote viewer whose background as an information analyst—spy—was first rate evenbeforehe started getting training in remote viewing, the program was dead in the water. No agency would acknowledge having anything to do with it, much less touch it with a ten-foot pole.
But he’d kept up with the research at the labs. After all, whatever they came up with, they were bound to try it out on his group of men and him sooner or later. It wasn’t that long ago when the COS commandos were themselves part of an experiment.
There were plenty of theories: What if drugs were used to control the downtime, giving the remote viewer the necessary boost physically and mentally? What if each department—military and Intel—trained a candidate so he could accomplish certain missions himself, and thus eliminate guesswork? And, the ultimate question—what if they created a drug or pain-inhibitor similar to the one that had been tested on some troops, allowing them to function longer without sleep? It would put the responsibility of completing a mission solely on the remote viewer himself. Jed remembered thinking that was a hell of aresponsibility for one man and he, as his unit’s leader, would never solely depend on, and blindly follow, one operative’s remote viewing talents, no matter how good he was.
However, that was before TIVRRV. The lab had unfolded the possibility of him being aparticipantin the remote-viewing session. That had intrigued the hell out of him.
The new program that had trained Elena Rostova was called—tongue-in-cheek but appropriate, nonetheless—Super Soldier Spy. She was the best of a group of hand-picked candidates from different government agencies competing for the job and had just undergone the final important test to convince the other agencies that she was capable.
Not that the program would ever be fully sanctioned. Remote viewing, explained to those who weren’t into psychic or unexplained phenomena, sounded like woo-woo crap, the kind of stuff that was associated with weirdoes, quack doctors and new age beliefs. Definitelynothingwith which the Defense Department or the Army of the United States of America wanted to associate!
But remote viewing and other psy-programs had been in existence since the thirties and forties, involving top-secret scientists and para-psychologists, and administered—secretly, of course—on soldiers and civilians alike. Such things, however, were now called conspiracies.
Jed smiled. Now that was a word with which he was familiar. What was covert life without a few of them?
In twenty years, he’d seen and been involved in enough strange experiments that he hadn’t questioned the validity of trusting a “remote-viewing spy” to be in his unit.
Super Soldier Spy—it was one of those controversial programs that all the agencies wanted because of the government money involved—everyone wanted to be the department that won such a highly-funded program—but only a few, he was sure, were going to actually see the project through. A few years, maybe, then let the whole crazy thing die a slow painful death, like all the other secret para-experiments, but still somehow manage to keep the government funding it. His smile turned cynical. He knew that kind of manipulation very well.
But COS Command Center’s candidate had won. Jed smiled again, remembering the looks on the faces of some of the most powerful men in charge of the country’s defense. And what if the least likely candidate to beat out the rest was a woman?
Helen Roston hadn’t been expected to make it. After all, she was female, and there were extreme physical tests she had to train in and pass. She did that. So did most of the other candidates, who were hand-picked among the elite in their respective agencies/departments.But it was obvious Helen outshone all the others when it came to the CIA remote-viewing training phase. There wasn’t a doubt among all the test reviewers and trainers that the woman had a particular gift that was trainable. She had zoomed past her competition and was remote viewing at a higher level before anyone else.
He remembered the buzz at COMCEN the day it was announced their operative had taken the grand prize. Very little surprised him, but he had to admit he’d been surprised the funding committee had actually picked her. Even though he knew, from reports and personal observation, that Helen Roston should get the nomination, he also knew the bias against a woman was strong. COMCEN had taken a big risk in offering a female candidate, but then his agency had always been straight-shooters. Only the best. No exceptions. And Helen Roston was their best shot.
Jed cynically suspected that most of the agency heads voting in had probably wanted COMCEN to fail. Whatever their motives might be, now the program was his agency’s, to do as they wished as long as they produced results. He had known immediately the scientists at COMCEN wanted to try out the brain entrainment theories.
TIVRRV, pronounced “terror”, stood for “Total Immersion Virtual Reality Remote Viewing”. It was their pet project and now they had the perfect candidate and, most important of all, the funding. As for the female operative—she became Jed McNeil’s to command.
Of course, the big brass wasn’t so easily convinced. Not by a long shot.
Jed could imagine the shouting behind closed doors.
“A female?”
“Remote what?”
“Spying something with the mind? Then...going after it herself? Gentlemen, you must be out of your fucking minds!”
The idea was met with incredulity and disdain from all quarters. So they had agreed to come together for one final test on Helen Roston. If she could remote view and successfully perform the mission afterwards, then the agencies would leave Command Center alone for now.
Jed and his commandos had discussed it among themselves first. Theirs was a highly secretive outfit, and with people, no matter how highly placed, watching, there was a likelihood of making things a tad too public. Also, they had their own agenda with the remote-viewing program and COS Command Center certainly didn’t want that part of it making it through the covert grapevine.
He thought of how important Helen had suddenly become.
For the last few years, COMCEN had been working on brain pattern simulation and bio-stimulants experiments, testing differentdrugs on their own operatives. With the addition of the CAVE, a cutting edge virtual environment, mind and body could be put in different simulated situations.
Helen Roston was the perfect addition. And she added another dimension—remote viewing. With the right handler-trainer, could they “share” what she saw in virtual reality?
That assignment, naturally, was offered to him first. His job would be to verify what she “saw” with the brain entrainment program that would sync their brainwaves during her remote-viewing sessions. In essence, if the experiment worked, he himself would be “there” with her, “seeing” what she saw, and thus, the success rate of accomplishing a difficult mission would definitely be a lot higher than a regular remote viewer’s Intel.
Thinking back now, Jed understood why he’d been reluctant at first. He had had enough experience with mind-control experiments to understand the intimacy involved between subjects. Helen Roston wasn’t going to be a regular “partner”. Because he wasn’t a remote viewer himself, he’d have to be the one “in charge” of certain parts of her mind.
