Your Nightly Programing

by Alan VanMeter

  “Oh, you go ahead and report me if that’s what you want to do, Jess. I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore.”

  Jess shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t do that.”

  That brought a smile to Patty’s lips. Then she held up her hand as if to tell Jess to hold on a moment. Jess wondered what was wrong, and looked around again for someone eavesdropping.

  Patty put her hand down. “Sorry, I had to take that call. The boss is calling for a meeting right away.”

  Jess looked at her and realized, “You have a cerebral link phone too?”

  Patty nodded with a big grin as she got up. “They are awesome, girl! You should get one, you’d love it. Gotta run, see you later.” She waved as she walked away.

  That evening it surprised her when Denny didn’t even turn on the news, instead actually took an interest in what Jess was doing on line. So she showed him a recent post by one of her favorite authors, Zorha Edwards, warning that many artists and writers were being arrested and silenced for their free thought. As they finished reading her post, it suddenly disappeared.

  “Oh crap.” Jess said. “Let me go to her page, and see if it is still archived there.”

  They only found the generic “This page has been removed and is no longer available” message. So she went to her Zon page where her books were for sale, and found that all of the books had been removed as well.

  “They are purging her completely!” She remarked.

  “Do you have any of her books in your library?” Denny asked with a worried look.

  “Yeah.” She called up her library, but found that they were gone from there too. “What the hell? I paid good money for those! They can’t just take them away from me. No! I loved The Dark Lady Saga, and Ancient Rites was one of my favorites! I was going to read them all again, for like the fourth time.”

  “Yes they can. They have no real opposition any longer, so they can do whatever they please.”

  “That’s screwed up!”

  He nodded. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it now.”

  As Jessica lay trying to go to sleep that night, Denny again started to talk in his sleep.

  “That’s the most logical argument right there.” He said, and then, “I agree.”

  She nudged him enough where he rolled over and was quite, so she was able to go to sleep herself. The next morning he did turn on the news, but only for a few minutes. One of the stories was how popular the new cerebral cell phone was becoming. The President had even tweeted about it, saying that he found the idea intriguing, but that he would not have the technology implanted in him. It seemed he liked the old fashioned phones just fine. Jessica found herself agreeing with him for the very first time.

  She asked Denny about what Patty had mentioned the previous day, of the budget cuts, and if he would be affected.

  “No, my division won’t be cut. There are a couple of the less critical ones that will be though.” He told her.

  “Patty is in your division, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, her job is safe too.”

  “Good for her, but mainly good for you. I was a bit worried.” Jess smiled.

  “I was too, but for now we will be alright. As long as we keep producing technology of value, we should stay that way.”

  “That’s pretty good incentive.”

  He nodded, “The days of freeloading are over.”

  “You never were a freeloader, babe. I always knew that.” She rubbed the back of his hand.

  “Thanks, sweetie. Now my boss, Earl, he will be hating life seeing as he can’t just go around flapping his gums all the time.”

  “I never liked him at any of the office parties. He seemed like a damn know-it-all.”

  “Yup, that he is. Just remember to be nice to him at the Super Bowl party next weekend.”

  Jess sighed. “I wish we didn’t have to go.”

  “Me either, but when Earl gives an invite, it is actually an order.”

  For the rest of the week Denny seemed to become more and more rational with his political views, which amazed her to no end. She didn’t complain about it at all, but she just wished he’d done so before it was too late. He also kept talking in his sleep, like he was having a deep conversation with someone. On Sunday they arrived at Earl’s house for the party, and most of the guys grouped together to talk football. Patty joined Jessica and they talked about how silly the whole thing was. Sure enough the guy’s conversation turned to politics, and Earl was boisterously bragging about how great everything was going now. Patty rolled her eyes at Jess, and she knew that there were still some people who could think for themselves. It was comforting. As the guys started discussing the latest news about the Iranian situation, mostly saying that we needed to bomb the crap out of them, Jessica noticed that Denny wasn’t joining in the conversation at all, he was most uncharacteristically silent.

  Earl seemed to notice this too, and asked him, “So what do you think about that, Denny?”

  Denny looked at him. “I don’t need to think about it.”

  “What? Sure you do, it will affect all of us in some way or another.” Earl countered.

  “No I don’t. Whatever the President thinks about it is all that matters. We don’t have to think about things like that anymore. Whatever he says is what I will think about it. Now we can focus on things that we can affect. He’s got this. Isn’t it great? That’s freedom.” Denny smiled.

  Earl seemed dumbfounded, as were a number of the other guys too. That sure ended the political discussion, because to argue with Denny’s point would be to argue with the President’s point, and that would be treason. Jessica saw that it took the fun out of all the guys normal political ranting. Now they had nothing to get all worked up about, as it was truly and forever out of their hands. The realization must have deflated their egos she figured, as they sure didn’t have the boisterous postures that they had worn when the discussion started. Their opinions were totally redundant now.

  That evening she told Denny that she loved how he sure shut all the guys up about politics.

  His response made her even more proud of him, “They are fools. They sold their opinion down the river when they supported the takeover.”

  “You supported the takeover too, remember?” She tested him.

  “I was also a fool. A mistake that will have to be paid for.” He sighed.

  “I think we are all paying for it now.” She lowered her gaze.

  Several days later the world was shaken by the simultaneous news of Russia invading Poland, and of the US invading Iran. Jessica could easily see that the President and his Russian counterpart, Putin, were working closely together to subjugate the whole world. When she mentioned this to Denny, he again surprised her with his answer.

  “After Poland, Putin will invade Germany. Since France is still part of the Union, and it is the last member remaining that has nuclear weapons, it will be destroyed. China will invade Japan, and then Australia and New Zealand. It was all planed for a long time now.”

  “What? How do you know this?”

  “It is obvious when you look at all the pointers.”

  “France will be destroyed? What do you mean? How?”

  “By thermonuclear fire.” He was grim.

  “Oh my god!”

  “It will get worse.” He said.

  “I don’t think I want to know. What I don’t understand is why?” her voice cracked with panic.

  “Because the citizens of the three big powers have become mere sheep, and will allow their evil leaders to do anything they wish. Blind Nationalism was promoted for many decades to get us to this point.” He rubbed her shoulder to comfort her. “Something will happen to stop it though.” He smiled.

  “What? What will happen?”

  “Something amazing.” He assured her.

  Over the next week Denny still talked in his sleep, but less frequently. He also began to exercise every evening. The next Saturday he really freaked Jessica out by going shoppin
g by himself, and coming home much later with an arsenal of guns and ammo.

  “Oh my god, Denny! What the hell did you buy these for?”

  “They will be made illegal pretty soon, so I figured if we wanted to protect ourselves in the chaos ahead, now would be the time to get some.”

  “Good lord, Denny! Are these even legal?”

  “Nope, not here in DC. I went to West Virginia to buy them. They sell anything to anybody there.” He grinned.

  “Is that a damn machine gun?” She pointed as he opened the boxes.

  “It’s a semi-automatic AR-15.” He pulled another from a case. “This here is a Melot Vepr semi-auto twelve gage assault shot gun, with twenty round clips. I got a bunch of different ammo for it too, including some serious thermobaric rounds.” “Is that a bullet proof vest?” She asked.

  “Yeah, and I have a ballistic helmet too.”

  She shook her head, “You are going to get us both arrested, babe.”

  “No we won’t. I asked the gun store owner if he would ever relinquish the paper work to the feds, and he assured me that he would incinerate them the moment they started collecting them from others.”

  “What the hell are you planning on doing with them?” Jess demanded, as she knew something was up.

  “Protect us when it gets crazy.”

  “You’re the one who’s gone crazy, babe.”

  The news was only watched in the mornings any longer, and just to see the lead stories. Most of their information now came from the internet, and Denny only looked up particular items of interest. One of the ones he was most interested in was that the military was now having its elite troops and commanders have the cerebral cell phones implanted, as they were the wave of the future as far as high tech communication ability went. Most other industrialized countries immediately followed suit, and Denny seemed really pleased by this development.

  It wasn’t long until the news started reporting a series of mass terrorist shooting attacks which left thousand dead. They said that each and every one of these had been carried out by left wing opposition groups, trying to destabilize the government. Then the news started airing the live executions of the perpetrators. Denny told Jess that was a bold faced lie, and that the government was behind the attacks themselves.

  “Why would they do that?” She asked.

  “There are three main reasons. The first is to create despise for any who oppose the President. The second is to get people accepting the idea of public executions, and the third is to give cause for nation-wide martial law to be imposed, along with the collection of all firearms.”

  “So the people they are executing didn’t actually kill those people?”

  “No they didn’t. They are just suspected dissidents.”

  “Oh my god! This is sick!”

  “Yes it is, baby. It will only get worse too, until…” He didn’t finish the statement.

  “Until what?”

  “They are stopped.”

  “Who’s going to do that?” Jess was sarcastic.

  Denny just shrugged.

  It was strange that since receiving his cerebral implants, Denny had become a changed person. Even their sex had become different, it became love making instead of just hard sex, and he often told Jess how much he truly loved her. This alone was worth every penny for the implants, and she sure didn’t mind at all. Still, she knew his change had to be related to the chips in his brain, and since her heart had warmed to him so much since the change, she asked him about it.

  “Baby, don’t get me wrong about what I am going to ask you, because I have fallen back in love with you deeply, but do the cerebral implants have anything to do with the change that has come over you?”

  “Yes they do.” He smiled.

  “How?”

  “At first it was just while I slept that we were connected to each other, and the truth was clearly shown to us.”

  “How were we connected?”

  “Not you and I, but everyone who has the implants.”

  “Oh god… they are brainwashing you!” She panicked.

  He chuckled and took her in his arms with tenderness. “No, we are not being brainwashed. Actually we are having all of our previous brainwashing removed.”

  “What previous brainwashing?”

  “From the damn news, especially the networks that supported the President even before he won the election. They used cutting edge hypnosis techniques along with psychological conditioning to blind us, and turn us into mindless followers. They even used subliminal frequency bombardment to agitate our R-complex. Then the anger of the President and his use of key words simply clicked in our minds as the right thing to do, and to follow. This is why none of his supporters ever questions a word he says. We were conditioned not to.”

  “Who is doing this reverse brainwashing?”

  “The company that makes the implants. They knew the power of the technology they had developed, and that it could be used for the ultimate evil purpose, or for the greater good. They chose the good.”

  Jessica looked deep into his eyes, “So you’re saying this is the real you?”

  “Yes.” He leaned and kissed her with such love that she’d only dreamed of.

  Things happened just like Denny had predicted they would. The President imposed nation-wide martial law until such time as the threat from the leftist opposition terrorists was eliminated. Then he ordered all firearms to be surrendered as part of the same plan to protect the citizens. The war in Iran was dragging on as the Iranians were putting up a fierce fight for their homeland. The same was occurring in Poland as the European Union sent troops to assist the Poles. The frustration was apparent on the President when he gave one of his bi-weekly propaganda rallies. Everything seemed to be stagnating, and that was when it occurred.

  Jessica woke up that next Monday morning seeing that Denny was already up. She went into the kitchen expecting to see him perhaps starting to cook breakfast for her as he’d done nearly every day, but he wasn’t there. She called for him and searched the house, then she found a note left by him.

  My love Jessica,

  I have to do something which must be done. The fate of the world depends upon our success. It is dangerous, and I might well be killed, but if this isn’t accomplished then there will be no real future for us, or anyone for that matter. I can’t detail what we are doing, but call Patty and she will fill you in. Know I love you with all my heart. I hope to see you again, and live a wonderful life with you.

  All my love, Denny

  Jessica was shaking, she immediate ran to the spare bedroom and looked in the closet, where Denny kept the guns he’d bought. They were all gone. Then she really started to panic, and she called Patty right away.

  “Patty, Denny told me to call you! He’s gone and he left me a note saying he had to do something dangerous, and that you would explain it all to me.”

  “Yes I will, Jess. I only live a couple of miles from you, so I’ll come over and tell you what is going on.”

  “I’m scared, Patty, please hurry.”

  “It will be just a few minutes. Relax, and maybe you could put some coffee on for us.”

  “Okay.” Jess’s voice trembled.

  The coffee pot was just done filling when the doorbell rang. Jess ran to let Patty in.

  “Patty, what is Denny up to?”

  “Why don’t you pour us each a cup of that delicious smelling coffee, and we can have a seat while I fill you in.”

  Jess motioned for her to sit at the dining table while she fetched them each a cup of coffee. Once she brought them in and took a seat herself, Patty began.

  “I know that Denny told you about the deprograming that we have all been fortunate to receive from the teachers.”

  “What teachers?”

  “That is what we call the collective wisdom of those who have so much to share.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “With the cerebral implants we are linked to everyone el
se who also has them. Among these people there are quite a number who have great wisdom, when they all became in sync with each other, and started to share their profound wisdom, they became teachers of the rest of us.”

  “He said that he wasn’t being brainwashed, but it sounds like all of you are!” Jess broke into tears. “Tell me what he is going to do!”

  “I will, but first you must understand why we are doing this.”