Page 9 of Dark Shaman: Eternal Hope
Plans always needed to be adjusted.
As his phone buzzed, and the display identified the caller as Losham, Navuh picked up the receiver. "Losham. What have you learned?"
"Good morning, my lord." Losham's voice was smooth, cultured.
Unlike Navuh's other adopted sons who were all military men, Losham was a strategist, a thinker. He managed the Brotherhood's interests in the drug trade and human trafficking, distasteful to him but necessary under the circumstances. The Brotherhood needed sources of income, and the traditional methods of earning it had been scarce as of late.
There was no shortage of conflicts in the world, but they were mostly localized, disorganized, and with no money to spare. The days of well-paid mercenary armies were gone, probably never to return.
"I have done as you have instructed," Losham said. "I've probed the cells of enhanced soldiers to see if they were aware of what transpired on the island, but they seem ignorant of recent events."
Navuh had ordered a communication blackout to test his hypothesis that the enhanced ones were communicating telepathically with each other.
"Or perhaps they're simply hiding their knowledge of it," Navuh said. "During the rebellion, they coordinated perfectly despite not using any communication channels we could detect. Zhao said something about hand signals, but that's nonsense. They couldn't have coordinated their attacks that way."
Losham was quiet for a moment. "Most telepaths can't project or receive thoughts over distances. They have to be close to each other. Perhaps that's the case with the enhanced ones as well. They can't project their thoughts to those who are outside the island."
"That's possible." Navuh leaned back in his chair. "Several of the enhanced soldiers used the term transcendence, implying that they achieved a higher level of cognition. Zhao said that he was altering their brain chemistry, and he might have triggered something he hadn't intended. He broke something in their brains, and the side effect of that malfunction was opening their receiving channel to more information than nature designed."
Once again, Losham took a moment before replying. "Our brains limit what we can perceive, what we can access. It's a survival mechanism. If we were aware of every electromagnetic wave, every quantum fluctuation, and every thought from every person around us, we'd go insane from the overload. We wouldn't be able to function. If that limiting factor is artificially stretched out, all kinds of things can get through that otherwise would have been filtered out."
"Precisely." Navuh swiveled his chair to face the window.
He could always count on Losham for fast thinking that was not confined to or limited by conventions. It was humbling to realize that this adopted son, who a human had fathered, was smarter than Navuh's own progeny.
Lokan and Kalugal were no fools, but they couldn't hold a candle to Losham.
"The enhanced soldiers' consciousness expanded beyond normal limitations," Losham continued. "They might have developed a shared awareness, a collective consciousness of sorts."
"That's what I'm thinking. It's like swimming in a sea of consciousness. Most of us wear consciousness-proof diving suits that keep us separate, and the only way we can communicate with others in the ocean is with the aid of technology. But the enhanced soldiers' suits stopped working properly, and they got immersed in that ocean, no longer separate."
By that logic, Navuh's own compulsion ability was a malfunction. He'd never thought of it that way, but the fact that his father had been a powerful compeller and also insane added credence to the hypothesis.
His entire bloodline carried that seed of insanity along with varying degrees of compulsion ability.
Many cultures revered the insane as touched by gods. Perhaps they were onto something, and madness was just a different way of interfacing with reality.
But this was not the time for philosophy. This was the time for planning.
"The question is if we can replicate the positive effect without the negative side effects." Navuh turned his chair back. "An army of enhanced soldiers that doesn't require communication devices and can be instructed telepathically would be the next step in the evolution of warfare."
"The challenge would be control," Losham cautioned.
"I know. But now that we know what pitfalls to look out for, we can design a better product. Have you been able to locate a replacement for Zhao?"
"I have a few candidates," Losham said. "But none is as brilliant as Zhao, and all will be difficult to extract."
"Then assemble a team. Several brains to replace the one. A biochemist, a neurologist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and any other 'ist' you can think of. This is the future, Losham. I feel it in my gut."
"Yes, my lord. I shall get right on it. Have you given any thought to how the clan found out about our planned operations in Los Angeles? Someone knew where those soldiers were stationed, meaning that someone leaked that information."
"I think they have a seer."
"A seer, my lord?" Losham sounded incredulous. "Seers are never good enough to pinpoint locations. It must have been a leak or a betrayal."
Judging by how vague Elias's predictions were, Losham was right, but then some of them had been eerily accurate.
"Maybe they have someone who can tap into the shared consciousness of the enhanced soldiers," Navuh suggested. "They were in the same city, not on the other side of the world,so that's possible. And if that's true, we shouldn't have any enhanced ones anywhere near the clan."
