NEAL STEPHENSON
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her shoulders from the superconducting quantum-interference devices that serve as radar into her brain. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, she knows, haifa dozen personnel techs are sitting in a control room, looking at a big-screen blow-up of her pupils.
Then she feels a burning prick in her forearm and knows she’s been injected with something. Which means it’s not a normal polygraph exam. Today she’s in for something special. The burning spreads throughout her body, her heart thumps, eyes water. She’s been shot up with caffeine to make her hyper, make her talkative.
So much for getting any work done today. Sometimes these things go for twelve hours.
“What is your name?” a voice says. It’s an unnaturally calm and liquid voice. Computer generated. That way, everything it says to her is impartial, stripped of emotional content, she has no way to pick up any cues as to how the interrogation is going.
The caffeine, and the other things that they inject her with, screw up her sense of time also.
She hates these things, but it happens to everyone from time to time, and when you go to work for the Feds, you sign on the dotted line and give permission for it. In a way, it’s a mark of pride and honor. Everyone who works for the Feds has their heart in it. Because if they didn’t, it would come out plain as day when it is their turn to sit in this chair.
The questions go on and on. Mostly nonsense questions. “Have you ever been to Scotland? Is white bread more expensive than wheat bread?” This is just to get her settled down, get all systems running smoothly. They throw out all the stuff they get from the first hour of the interrogation, because it’s lost in the noise.
She can feel herself relaxing into it. They say that after a few polygraphs, you learn to relax, the whole thing goes quicker. The chair holds her in place, the caffeine keeps her from getting drowsy, the sensory deprivation clears out her mind.
“What is your daughter’s nickname?”
“How do you refer to your daughter?”
“I call her by her nickname. Y.T. She kind of insists on it.”
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