implant delusions. number three on the paranoid top ten list.
that's what they all say, marco. some wicked shit got sprayed on you guys during desert storm. besides all the depleted uranium, i mean .  he stops, unlocks a door, and they go --
 i personally know of a coupla rangers who swear that they see only in tertiary colors now --
-- and can pick up sports talk radio in their cortical block if they get too close to a con-ed transformer.
a dozen years ago, the army did this tiny implantable i.d. thing -- you could imbed it under the skin, then scan it like a bar code for medical emergency information, blood-type, dna. pentagon ordered up half a million, and stuck about five thousand experimentally into high-risk soldiers and infantry. but the scanners proved skittish and field hospitals hated 'em, so the whole deal got eighty-sixed and forgotten.
that you know of, man. that you know of. how'd you find me?
ha ha. marco stares down into a big pit. among the racks of equipment are two primate-sized stainless-steel beds with restraints and i.v. trees waiting.
you seriously believe somebody's messed with your mother board.
fear.
nah, cia cut me loose in '97 during the macedonian debacle. now i got this little grant from wal-mart.
we've all been brainwashed, marco. religion, advertising, television. politics. we accept what's normal because we're told it's normal and we crave normalcy. hell, look at the germans under hitler. disco, in the seventies. and if you're really worried about somebody imbedding electric probes and computer chips in your brain to make you do things -- it's horseshit, man. turns out pavlov had it right from the getgo. dogs and all. a little ect and sleep deprivation will do the trick for a fraction of the price. ask the uzbeks. and you would remember it.
what if all this is the fucking dream and you're still back in kuwait?
i am. you're not helping yourself. reality is consensual, man. you just gotta prove it up. or play it out.
these are not supposed to exist, man. these are only theoretical. -- leaves the statement hanging --
you sure you want to do this man?
-- because i don't.
no. i'll still owe you for getting my sorry ass out of albania.
manchurian global. heard of 'em? private equity fund, specializes in military support services and weapons research .  including a certain army implant project that went belly-up in the early 90s.
the ones they publicized were. but, oh man, there was a parallel project of all kinds of scary implantable shit the clinton watchdogs finally freaked out over, and closed down.
cuz they funded me to make some of their scary shit.
i don't know. i don't want to know. you don't want to know -- shit -- it's out of you, and you're still alive. that's the good news. what are you doing?
eases marco back on the gurney, deftly puts some i.v. taps into his arms. marco's legs hang over the edge.
these are built for monkeys, so bear with me, man.
i'm putting you on a cocktail of methohexitol to take the edge off.
'getting clarity.' or whatever you want to call it -- ect not being the precise science that, say, leeching is. wires snake across the floor to the ect unit.
it's the desperation move, man. but, hey. there is a school of thought, says a victim of induced abreaction -- or ultra-paradoxical brain activity, if you're at all correct about what happened to you -- can have it effectively dispersed by electroshock. unscrambled.
but the legions of naysayers will tell you that if the initial work's done correctly -- if the brain's been not just washed, but dry-cleaned -- takes out a bite-guard and puts it in marco's mouth:
-- fuhgetaboutit. no sale. try to relax, okay? he throws the switch, sending electric current through marco's head -- -- marco's body arches off the table and he goes into seizure --