by Brian Craft
Orion begins to wonder how big this place is and how far inside it he has come. The estimation of the precision and planning is staggering. But the thought of the infinite nature of this space is too much for him right now and it made his head spin again. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the way-finder turned a corner and leads him into a dead-end. He steps through a doorway and enters a round chamber. Around the interior walls are six lightly frosted glass-walled cells all facing the center of the room to surround a central blackened security pillar. The pillar has conspicuously visible cameras watching each cell. Inside each cell, a prisoner/patient stares through a clear break in the frosted glass. All eyes on Orion as he enters.
Plummer nudges Orion forward to where the way-finder has encircled the open door of an empty cell with his name on it. The sight of the cell slams home to Orion that he is imprisoned. He pauses at the open that door, his eyes slowly tracing the edges of the frame until they land at his feet standing at the threshold. He has reached the end of the line. His breathing accelerates as his eyes lock on the cell. Plummer is vigilant, he’s seen this many times.
Orion scans the interior of his new home. The same rounded details of the facility continue into this cell. The only exception is that the interior walls are blackened LCD glass so he can’t see into the adjacent cell. The effect of this dark compartment within this sterile white building is striking. Like a cave, quietly shielding everyone from everyone else.
Plummer gives him a shove, hard enough to get him over the threshold, the door instantly slides up from the floor and seals into a slot in the ceiling.
Orion spins around and presses his hands on the glass. It’s the instinct of a trapped animal testing the exit.
Plummer peers through the clear window. “Lights out in a few minutes. Just relax.” He puts his finger to the glass and states, “Any anxiety, press the green button.”
Orion looks and says, “I don’t see a button.”
“You will,” Plummer replies. Then the glass door shades to black, and darkness descends on Orion. A large, glowing green button appears on the door. The illuminated digital button casts a faint green radiance into the cell, enough to see…and be seen.
Orion stares at the black glass for a long time, then sinks to his knees, eye-to-eye with the green button. It's his only companion in the cell, and in the dark featureless room, it's the only thing that suggests life exists beyond these walls. His head drops as he realizes that in the span of a few days, and one decision, he's gone from the top of society in a privileged position to being locked alone in a black cell, his fate uncertain and his control completely lost. The perception is a little bit false he realizes. He was locked in a system, confined to a routine that leads from Hivemind to the solitary apartment he'd lived in for years. This isn't the same, but the starkness of this current reality brings a lot of thoughts to the surface to buzz around, demanding to be wrestled with.
Surrendering to the inevitable, he flops face down on the small bed. In no time, he’s asleep.
His dreams are anxious and broken, like a running narrative that continues from his waking reality into his sleep. The faces and events of Orion’s past few days are trying to connect themselves like the dots of a picture. Disconnected and seemingly unrelated at first, the dreamy vignettes spin around and around, demanding to force themselves into order until a fuller picture begins to emerge. Aoki, Hive, and even the disturbed citizen Fray; he grabbed that beam like it was a curse and a savior all in one. His face both terrified and oddly hopeful. In the disjointed reality of a dream, Fray’s face transforms into Orion’s and everything changes. Overlooked details gain prominence, the enigmatic Evo, the dark tunnel under his home, and flowers. Reality seems less real and two things stand out over everything else: Iris, her vivid green eyes, and the charged, euphoric feeling she provokes in him, and also Burroughs.
Although the image of Burroughs didn’t enter his dreams, the tension and discomfort of his presence looms over everything like a counterpoint to the clarity of Iris. His presence anxiously teasing like a static charge, as if invisibly needling the air right before a hologram of his face explodes into view.
Orion's eyes snap open. The padded surface beneath him is soaked with sweat. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and realizes that there in front of him, only inches away from his face, a pair of big brown eyes stare back at him through a postcard size window in the black LCD glass.
They belong to a genial-looking black woman, GL, and they're calmly studying Orion. "Quiet sleeper," she states calmly.
Startled, Orion scrambles away and quickly backs into the glass wall. The window disappears. He pauses there in the darkness, the sickly greenish glow barely tinting the room and fading into the deep corner shadows. He sits totally still, straining to see if the eyes might reappear. He leans forward on hands and knees and very slowly inches closer to where the eyes had been, his own stare locked on the spot.
Then the little clear window reappears with the same eyes peering through. He freezes, studying the little window and curious eyes. He realizes that in each of the four corners, she has a fingertip firmly pressed against the glass.
Orion finally ventures, “How are you doing that?”
“Don’t know,” GL casually replies. “Couldn’t before. Now I can.”
“Who are you?” Orion moves within inches of her.
“I’m wondering the same thing,” she says.
“You don’t know who you are?”
“I don’t know who you are,” she answers.
He’s not quite sure how to reply to that. In fact, he’s not sure how to answer that to himself. Considering everything that’s happened, it actually seems like the most important question anyone can ask themselves. When your world is upside down, irony seems to appear in the oddest moments.
“I guess you can say I’m an innocent patient, like you,” he finally answers.
“Innocent?” she asks. Then obviously sweeps her eyes around his cell and then over Orion. “Or connected?”
After considering her definition, he realizes he is going to have to play the game. He inches a little bit closer and replies, “If I was connected, I’d be someplace else.”
“Where?”
“Free.”
She stares directly into his eyes for a long time, on alert for the tiniest waver in his fidelity. “At least I know you’re real,” she states.
“I need to get out of here,” he says, almost more to himself than her.
Her eyes finally look away. “Better luck turning back time.”
Orion breaks away and moves to the door, and GL’s eyes follow him. He considers the green button. Not his only companion anymore, but definitely a contrasting point of view. He considers pressing it.
“Whatever you do, don’t press that,” she whispers. “Unless you want a headache.”
“They told me if—“
"You're not gonna last long like that. Find out what they want, and don't give it to them. Ever. Or you can kiss your free will goodbye," she says, her expression twisting into disgust. Her fingertips disappear and the window disappears with them, only the solid black glass remains.
“Wait!” Orion rushes down to the glass.
The window reappears long enough for GL to add, “You’re no patient. You’re an inmate,” then she drives it home by adding, “first night’s the easiest.” Then the window instantly flips black, and she’s gone.
Orion presses his fingers into the glass where hers were. He lifts them and returns them several times, pinching them together and spreading them out again, hoping that maybe the contact will convince the window to reappear. He has eight million questions, but not a single real answer yet. Exasperated, he exhales and it fogs the glass in front of him.
He slides his finger through the fog to smear a 1. Day one of his imprisonment.
When the fog evaporates, Orion lays back in the dark and closes his eyes. The Center for Mind Mastery: no one has treated him badly yet, but
based on the day’s events, and the promise of more to come, Orion can’t help but suspect just who is doing the mastery. And who, in the end, will be the master of whom.
Only a second later, his eyes pop open to stare into the darkness.
CHAPTER 10
Everything in Mind Mastery is part of the program. Erase time or the need for it, blend space so there’s no real beginning or end, and isolate your thoughts long enough to invite you to let go of reality. Before long, Orion doesn’t even realize that sleepless hours have passed, and he’s been staring at a glowing green digital button, believing he can see between the pixels. The silky-smooth blackness of his cell, combined with the perfect body temperature air containing no smell at all, and only a tiny tint of green is the perfect cocoon for his mind. And he’s swimming in a pattern of no thought at all.
A rush of light floods in from the opening cell door. He’s quickly ushered along the edgeless corridors, turning this way and that, and then into a small technical room. He is nearly into the room before his mind clears enough to realize he isn’t in a dream. In seconds, he’s restrained to the angled poly-plastic table, magnetic cuffs binding him to the surface, and then Nurse Mina walks into the little room.
She fits in with the rest of the techs only by the fact that she wears white coveralls. Except where everyone else wore a uniform, Nurse Mina has turned hers into a statement. They are tight in all the most interesting spots, with arms and legs cut short and tailored. She obviously takes pride in styling her hair into a twist, artfully leaving small pieces dangling by her face like little teases of what might happen if the twist suddenly lets loose. She's beautiful and seemed more than happy that people will notice. No one in the city, especially at a government facility, ever put on this kind of a show. But it isn't a show, it's Mina, and that's what makes it all the odder. It's inviting. Everything about her pushed the edge of what is considered suitable. Toeing the line into being deviant.
The Center is out of line from everything Orion knew, but Mina is an absolute aberration. She doesn't say a word as she enters but shoots him a knowing smile before she starts her work, flipping computer controls and getting a panel of displays to zero in on a program for his examination.
Orion braces himself before asking his next question. “Who are you?” It seems simple enough.
“Nurse Mina.” She smiled. “Quiet, dear, we’ll get started in a minute.” She gently lifts a spherical helmet off its dock near the computer systems. It’s not readily apparent what it’s made of. It seems both metal and glass at the same time. Orion can see that the surface is actually thousands of tiny pieces with hair-thin wires passing between them. On each piece is a tiny metallic dot, and when Mina brings it closer, he can see they look like little satellite dishes, counterparts to larger dishes anchored in the walls and ceiling all throughout the room.
She carefully fits the helmet over his head and secures it. As a final touch, she studies his face inside the open front helmet, then adjusts the whole thing a little bit as if adjusting a painting on a wall for fashion's sake. She gives a sharp nod of satisfaction and then moves to the computer controls.
One tap on her computer touchscreen and a holographic brain model appears over her table, color-coded with the visible spectrum of colors and segmented in regions based on brain function. Nurse Mina smiles pleasantly at the model as she inspects the tiny details as if it’s a finely faceted diamond. Pleased, she retrieves a small digital tablet and rejoins Orion.
Without warning, a laser-focused beam of white light projects from the centermost dish embedded in the ceiling and connects to one of the tiny forehead receiver-dishes on Orion’s new helmet. Before he can wrap his head around it, hundreds of beams project into the helmet, then thousands from every direction to connect helmet to room in a dizzying array of delicate threads of light.
The display enlightens Orion’s expression into curious wonder. Whatever comes next, he has to admit that this looks beautiful.
Matching the thought entering his mind, the holographic brain model begins to sparkle. For a moment, one section sparkles more densely. Mina leans close to his face, the little dangling piece of her hair floats barely out of reach. She seductively blows on his cheek, fluttering the tiny surface hairs. The gentle coolness of her breath prompts goosebumps as he reflexively inhales. One of the little beams from his helmet fluctuates as the sensual breath dances across his skin, and another highlight appears on the brain model.
Nurse Mina, content with the connection, changes tactics and retrieves a small electronic device. The same spot she exhaled across his cheek, she lowers the little device directly above his skin, then a tiny, pointed electric shock arcs and zaps him.
“Ouch!” he cries. And a different beam on his helmet fluctuates from the one before, and again the brain model sparkles. “You’re hurting me.”
“Do you want help or not?” she replies casually. Her expression appears pleasantly indifferent to his pain.
“I’m a Hivemember. Use the Hivebeam to read my brain,” he states, as his wrists test the restraints.
Mina shoots him a look like he just suggested she do something horribly out of fashion and replies, “Childs’s play. This is better. Conscious response to physical spurs. That way, you guide me where I want to go.” She shocks him again.
He winces. “Hey! You’re enjoying this.”
She checks her handheld display. “According to Mind Map, you’re enjoying it, dear.”
“I didn’t agree to this treatment,” he counters.
“I never asked,” a blunt reply. Then she changes tactics again as she pulls a feather from an instrument table. She lightly brushes his hand with it to produce a beam flux and response, and then shocks it without hesitation. The results tally on her display.
“I’ll give you what you want. Just ask me,” he says.
“But if I get it myself, the response is more…true,” she answers.
Orion struggles a little more while scrutinizing the room. “This isn’t legal.”
She pauses, suddenly interested in his question. “Did you say real?”
“Illegal.”
“Hm.” She blows softly across his mouth. The intimately devious action totally freezes him, but the beams wiggle. Then she dutifully shocks his lips, and he purses involuntarily. “You can take that up with Dr. Burroughs,” she says in a playful whisper.
…
Orion is shown through a door that leads ever deeper into the maze that is Mind Mastery. The door closes and a warm buzz engages a magnetic seal that draws it tight and locks it. Colorful, undefined shapes undulate across an otherwise white, domed ceiling like a slow-motion LSD trip. The garage-sized circular room beneath it is translucent milky-white as well, much like the rest of the facility.
He looks at his feet, instantly sensing that the floor surface feels odd. A closer inspection reveals that it’s composed of millions of shallow domes, about as big as the tip of a pencil. Other areas in the room, the domes prove to be the tips of thin plastic rods that extrude upward in groups to form seats and a large central table. Everything is semi-translucent white poly-plastic. This is the Common Area, known to the inmates as pin-dome.
Orion gravitates to the side where the dome curves to meet the floor and sits by himself. He digs his thumbs into his temples, trying to massage some of the burn out of his brain. He notices four other people sharing the pin-dome with him, who are all eyeballing him.
GL approaches him carefully, her eyes glued on what he might do next. Orion heeds her with equal suspicion as she kneels next to him. An instant of quiet apprehension passes between them. The shared sensation, albeit a shade negative, is enough to convince them that they share the same predicament. She reaches toward his head and he recoils a little. Refocusing, he sees her hands are covered in scratches and scars. Persistent though, she holds his hands instead and guides them to the sides of his face and forms a little hood over his eyes.
Within the little square hood,
she stares back at him bug-eyed as if she’s trying to generate a window in his mind. And it suddenly hits him, this is this cellmate from last night. “You!” he gasps. “How’d you do that to the wall last night?”
She eases her hands away and softly replies, “Wish I knew. Head hurt?”
“I want to scratch through my skull and itch my brain,” he replies.
GL considers that idea as if it might be a legitimate plan. “No one’s tried that. Might be crazy enough to get you out.” She reaches to massage his temples and he lets her.
Her touch relaxes him. He tries a couple times to speak, but the words escape him. Her careful treatment of him sets him adrift in thought. “I’m either insane or slipped into another dimension. Floating restraints, disappearing walls. Crazy Nurse Whatever and that helmet.” He scans across the pin-dome room and adds, “Now this.”
“Common area,” she informs him. “Not as innocent as it looks.”
Orion says, “Makes me forget reality.”
She stops massaging his temples so she won't distract him from what she has to say next. "You're gonna see and feel and experience things and you won't know if they're real. You're in a nightmare, a trick. You're a lab rat, inside the mind of a madman." Her eyes widen with every word before she takes a breath to calm herself. "I'm GL. Nice to meet you."
What do you say to that last statement? Orion offers, “Yeah. I’m Orion.”
“I’m not insane,” she tacks on.
“Right, that never crossed my mind,” he replies.
She sits with him, back to the wall. “But even mountains wear away in time,” she says.
Orion asks, “Does whatever their doing here work? When can we leave?”
GL looks completely shocked. “You still don’t get it. The last time you were free, is the last time. Look around, Burroughs is peeling them like grapes.” She motions to the people around the room, including herself. “Even if they escape, they’re not them anymore.”