Generally speaking, it was impossible to hack into the units and display their input. The software and bandwidth necessary for that kind of upload would be quickly discovered by a media already obsessed with outdated privacy issues. However, the company-issued units didn’t have those constraints, leaving him the ability to provide important players in his world with hardware he could access at the press of a button.

Dresner stood beneath the monitor and watched as Bailer glanced over at David Tresco in the passenger seat and then faced the windshield again to negotiate a treacherous corner. The image seemed hazy and unwieldy, but the use of the monitor had proved necessary when viewing this type of output. Trying to run the images directly into his own visual cortex induced nausea.

He chewed his lower lip thoughtfully. It always came back to vertigo and nausea. The mind had evolved to be very rigid about how it received input. If the information didn’t come from the eyes, nose, ears, skin, or tongue, the brain wanted to reject it. Perhaps more youthful adopters would learn to handle the dissonance. The young mind was incredibly adaptable.

The road on screen straightened and the image moved back to Tresco before the limitations of the cellular network carrying the data caused it to freeze. Dresner moved forward a few steps, examining the man’s horrified expression for a few seconds before the feed started again.

“You used the North Koreans like lab animals?” he said. “Jesus Christ, Craig. How many died? How many were permanently disabled?”

“I don’t know the exact number. It—”

“You don’t know the number? My God, it’s so many you don’t know the number? How could you get involved in something like this? How could Dresner get involved in something like this? He—”

“Why, when, how,” Bailer said, the hidden speakers in the wall picking up the increasing volume of his voice. “It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that it happened and we need to deal with it.”

“I didn’t know anything about it,” Tresco said, trying futilely to calculate a way to save himself. “I wasn’t told.”

The image kept flicking from the increasingly panicked David Tresco to the winding road ahead.

“Whether you or anyone else on the board knew isn’t going to matter, David. If this comes out, no one is going to care about the details of who knew what when. Dresner Industries will collapse, I’ll be tried for crimes against humanity, and you’ll spend the rest of your life either in prison or fighting to stay out of it. The public will demand its pound of flesh. Whether you’re guilty or not won’t make any difference at all.”