“This hypothetical person is getting very specific,” Berger said.

“I don’t make up the rules,” Lowen said.

“Yes, you do,” Berger said. “That’s why it’s a hypothetical.”

“One more chance, Mr. Berger, comma, John,” Lowen said. “So make it good.”

“Wow, on the spot,” Berger said. “Okay. Remote control.”

“What?” Lowen said. “Seriously, now.”

“Hear me out,” Berger said. “If you wanted to do someone in, and have no one know, and completely cover your tracks, how would you do it? You would have someone that no one would ever expect do it. But how do you get them to do it? Skilled assassins may be good at looking like normal people, but the best assassins would be people who are normal people. So you find a normal person. And you put a remote control in their brain.”

“You’ve been reading a few too many science fiction thrillers,” Lowen said.

“Not a remote control that gives you gross control over a body, with everything herky jerky,” Berger said. “No, what you want is something that will lay across the frontal lobes and then subtly and slowly, over the course of time, bend someone towards doing the unspeakable. Do it so the person doesn’t even notice their own personality changing, or questions the necessity to kill someone. They just go ahead and plan it and do it, like they’re filing taxes or making a report.”

“I think people would notice a remote control in someone’s head, though,” Lowen said. “Not to mention the hypothetical person would remember someone opening up their skull to get inside of it.”

“Well, if you were the sort of people who would make this sort of remote control, you wouldn’t make it easy to find,” Berger said. “And you wouldn’t make it obvious when it was inserted. You’d find some way to slip it into their body when they weren’t expecting it.” He pointed at Lowen’s drink. “Nanobots in your drink, maybe. You’d only need a few and then you could program those few to replicate inside the body until you had enough. The only problem you might have is if the body starts trying to fight off the ’bots and then the person gets sick. That would present as, say, a meningitis of some sort.”

Lowen stopped sipping her drink and looked at Berger. “What did you just say?” she said.

“Meningitis,” Berger said. “It’s when there’s a swelling of the brain—”

“I know what meningitis is,” Lowen said.

“So it looks like meningitis,” Berger said. “At least until the people who have inserted the ’bots tweak the ’bots so that they don’t cause an immune response. And then after that, they stay in the brain, mostly passive and mostly undetectable, until they’re turned on and they perform their slow counterprogramming.”