The Lucifer Code by Michael Cordy Page B

not approving.
    'Don't worry. Gave her my blessing. Nice place, too. Just felt ashamed that the Mother Church couldn't look after its own.'
    'Things change.'
    'They sure do,' he said. Anyways, I'm over for a couple days so if you're back on time we can meet up.'
    'I'd like that,' she said. 'I'll call you tomorrow.'
    'Okay my child, take care of yourself.'
    Amber switched off her communicator and placed it on the table beside her bed in the Think Tank. Earlier when she had switched on the device, it had been loaded with concerned messages from well-wishers. The news was out. One of her early-morning swimming buddies, as well as her best friend, Karen, had called. Even Soames had left a brief message to say the presentation had gone well and to call him if there were any developments.
    The one call she had made tonight was to the hospice, confirming that she would be returning as planned. Her mother was in the final stages of terminal cancer and Amber hated leaving her. The thought of returning to Barley Hall, as Fleming had recommended, increased her anxiety. Sitting up in bed, she tried to ignore the video camera staring at her from its mount overhead. She wore the blue latticework Thinking Cap and her scalp tingled where the conductive gel held the electrodes in place.
    The NeuroTranslator at the base of her bed emitted a soft hum as it read the electrical impulses generated by her brain; the lower half of the split-level plasma screen showed a grid with individually coloured pulsing horizontal lines, each representing a wavelength in her brain. Some lines peaked violently while others remained virtually flat. At regular intervals the screen scrolled down to reveal other wavelengths, all recording the pattern of her thoughts. The upper half of the screen displayed the stimuli designed to engage her mental processes. Currently she was studying a spatial puzzle. Three lines were overlaid on a nest of concentric squares, which appeared to recede into the distance, and she had to determine which line was the shortest. Despite a suspicion that it was an optical illusion, and the two obviously shorter lines were identical in length, she selected the one on the right.
    She had been tackling the on-screen puzzles and exercises for over an hour. They were intelligent and well designed, stimulating most of her brain's cognitive processes ranging from verbal reasoning, logic and numerical dexterity to intuitive guesswork. Earlier, she had been given an injection to stimulate her unconscious neural activity during sleep and so give the NeuroTranslator a clearer read when she started what Staff Nurse Pinner called the 'easy mental exercises'. 'That's when you just close your eyes, drop off and let Brian do all the work.'
    Her jet-lag was under control and the puzzles were interesting, but she was finding it hard to concentrate. Her mind kept wandering to her mother and sister. Particularly her sister.
    Talking about her twin with Miles Fleming and seeing the medical pictures of when they had been conjoined had stirred up all her old feelings of guilt, regret and loss. Reaching for the bedside table, she retrieved the worn photograph she always carried with her. It showed Ariel and herself embracing in front of a full-length mirror. Because of the angle from which the picture was taken, both their smiling faces were visible and nothing appeared to connect them except their love for each other.
    She had spent her entire solo life struggling to resolve her guilt and anger about her dead twin. First she had turned to Catholicism, but however kind and patient her godfather had been in explaining the Mother Church's view of the world she found its judgemental dogma unhelpful. Then she had turned to philosophy and physics to try to understand why things were as they were. Eventually she had focused on the mysterious world of quantum physics, studying the almost telepathic relationships that linked the trillion particles of elemental Stardust