PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 241 Blindsight
effects only showed up under cryonic—"
"Forget this," Cunningham blurted. "We can debate the
biochemistry later, if we're still alive."
"What do we debate instead, Robert?" Sarasti said smoothly.
"For starters, the dumbest of these things can look into your head
and see what parts of your visual cortex are lighting up. And if
there's a difference between that and mind-reading, it's not much of
one."
"As long as we stay out of Rorschach—"
"That ship has sailed. You people have already been there.
Repeatedly. Who knows what you already did down there for no
better reason than because Rorschach made you?"
"Wait a second," Bates objected. "None of us were puppets
down there. We hallucinated and we went blind and—and crazy
even, but we were never possessed."
Cunningham looked at her and snorted. "You think you'd be
able to fight the strings? You think you'd even feel them? I could
apply a transcranial magnet to your head right now and you'd raise
your middle finger or wiggle your toes or kick Siri here in the sack
and then swear on your sainted mother's grave that you only did it
because you wanted to. You'd dance like a puppet and all the time
swear you were doing it of your own free will, and that's just me,
that's just some borderline OCD with a couple of magnets and an
MRI helmet." He waved at the vast unknowable void beyond the
bulkhead. Shreds of mangled cigarette floated sideways in front of
him. "Do you want to guess what that can do? For all we know
we've already given them Theseus' technical specs, warned them
about the Icarus array, and then just decided of our own free will to
forget it all."
"We can cause those effects," Sarasti said coolly. "As you say.
Strokes cause them. Tumors. Random accidents."
"Random? Those were experiments, people! That was
vivisection! They let you in so they could take you apart and see
what made you tick and you never even knew it."
"So what?" the vampire snapped invisibly. Something cold and
hungry had edged into his voice. Human topologies shivered
around the table, skittish.