by Brian Craft
A tall lurpy man, with kind eyes and a slight hunch in his posture, has been pacing and watching Orion since he came in. Seeing that GL is comfortable with Orion encourages the man to finally venture over. “I don’t feel well today, GL. My head hurts again, and my stomach, and I’m dizzy, and—“
“Sit with me, Terrence,” she cuts him off with a mother’s tone.
He sits, careful to put her between Orion and himself. “Everyone’s looking at me. They keep watching, and staring, and—“
She puts a dramatic scowl on her face for Terrence’s benefit and injects, “Anyone stares at you I’ll kill `em.”
Terrence visibly relaxes. “Thanks,” escapes him.
GL points around the room, directing Orion to each of the other inmates. First, a grey-bearded, grey-eyed, older man sitting quietly staring into space, occasionally looking to the colors of the dome, then back into space. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that other people are even there. GL labels him for Orion. "Jax has been here longest." They observe Jax as he calmly reaches, delicately dancing his fingers across the wall of the dome. GL continues, "He used to fight. Doesn't talk anymore. There are others. Other rooms. Who knows how many, but we never really see them."
The other man in the room, middle-aged, sickly pale and brooding, glares at Orion while picking his own skin.
GL calmly says to Orion, “That’s Scryberg. He used to be timid, he’s just angry now.”
“SHUT UP, GL!” screams Scryberg, and he stomps toward Orion. “He’s a sleeper!”
Terrence slinks away to avoid Scryberg’s advance. Orion stands to meet the menacing man who is quickly losing control of himself.
GL tries to throw him back with words. “Back off, Scryberg! He’s not a sleeper. He just got here.”
“You don’t know shit. He could’ve been anywhere,” Scryberg replies. “He could have come from the lower levels. He might be Burroughs himself!”
“You’re talking crazy, Scryberg!” GL scolds.
“What’s with this guy?” Orion asks GL.
“Nothing, he’s scared,” GL replies.
Scryberg bounces back and forth between GL and Orion. “This guy’s a sleeper. And I’m not scared of anything!”
“Then stop being scared of him!” yells GL.
Scryberg has a sudden shift of demeanor, almost a shift in personality as he stops moving only a foot away from Orion’s face. “Why are you looking at me?” he states. The icy tone accompanies a menacing glower.
Orion remembers Fray and how he believed there were whispers in the beam. He knows that his next word will direct the path of this whole thing. But before he can speak, Scryberg dives on him, slamming him against the wall and pinning him with his forearm. The colors in the dome overhead shift darker in reaction to Scryberg's aggression.
“I asked you why you’re looking at my face!” demands Scryberg.
Orion pushes his forearm off enough to speak. “The voices told me to.”
Scryberg’s eyes go wide, and he releases Orion. He backs all the way to the other side of the room and slumps on the floor. Orion drops to his knee, catching his breath and gathering himself.
GL checks that he’s not seriously hurt then says, “Good answer.”
Orion takes a second to recover then stands, rubbing his neck as he studies Scryberg cautiously. Then Orion walks to the door and runs his hand along the nearly invisible seams. It’s totally sealed. He knocks a little, and then tries to slide it open. It’s a useless attempt, but a step in the right direction.
“Worse rooms than this here,” GL says.
“This isn’t right. I’m no threat,” Orion says, reaching for some kind of mental anchor. None of this makes sense but, in truth, it does, and he knows it. Twenty years of conditioned life still holds sway over his thoughts and it blinds him to his new reality. “We are all citizens and we can demand to see the authorities. We can resist.”
“We are resisting,” GL replies. “I am. Even Scryberg in his way. You will, too. But it’ll scratch that rash on your brain until it seems like a wildfire.”
Suddenly, the door slides open and Plummer enters. “Orion, let’s go.”
As Orion begins to move, GL catches him and grabs his hand. She digs her nail in the back of it and scratches it hard.
Orion winces and pulls away.
“That’s real.” She glares in his face while making the statement to drive home the importance of what she just did.
Orion clutches his hand, as the scratch leaks a drop of blood. He scans his fellow inmates before stepping through the door. It instantly seals itself, leaving them behind.
CHAPTER 11
Orion’s throat aches from the confrontation with Scryberg, and before he can really get himself back together, he’s shuffled into another foreign room with the conspicuous label of ‘Exam One.’ Orion’s last examination with Nurse Mina left his brain burning, his mind spinning, and his nerves dancing so much he that almost wishes he could return to the nice quiet dullness of the Hivemind.
Turning the corner to enter Exam One, Orion sees that Burroughs is already waiting. His back turned to Orion, he’s transfixed by a drone’s eye view of the city on a 180-degree, room size video screen, arced in a semi-circle. At the focal point of the arc, an examination chair is anchored to the floor; padded, magnetic cuff restraints, and headrest with helmet presumably wired to the room.
The door shuts behind Orion, locking him in with Burroughs. The doctor doesn’t turn or acknowledge Orion. “What’s going on here, Doctor?” Orion demands.
An uncomfortably long pause echoes in the silence between them. Burroughs remains totally still, his unyielding stare boring into the city as if time has lost all relevance. Finally, he says, “I’m fixing what God could not.”
“By torturing me and throwing me in with a bunch of…” Orion swallows his words, uncertain what to call the people around him.
“Deviants?” Burroughs finishes for him.
“What side of the law are you on?” Orion presses.
"Science must fly above the rules in order to advance them," Burroughs replies. Then he pokes a touchscreen control and images on the screen shift radically. World War 3 rages across the video landscape. He spins to face Orion. "There is a terrific opportunity before us, Orion. Are you ready to become more than you ever dreamed you could be?" Burroughs' eyes narrow on him as he motions to the technology around the room. Dazzling computer programs fill touchscreen displays on a panel close to the wall. "I can give you what you long for, connection to every single life in the city. Maybe the entire world."
Orion shakes it off. “I don’t want that. I want to go back to my life.”
“Oh, please. You don’t want that any more than I do,” Burroughs says, before shifting the video image again. The bombs and slaughter that have been playing change to peace, rebuilding, and prosperity. A clockwork city emerges at fast-forward in front of them. A metropolis culled from the ashes of ruin, illuminating, spreading, and becoming the utopian vision that it is today. “Humanity has engaged in the same war-like struggle since we were scratching on cave walls. I created Hive to advance our race. To prevent us from drifting back into the mindless war and murder for resources that has plagued us since we crawled from the mud.”
Orion’s seems hypnotized by the sight of his own city destroyed and rebuilt before him. The power of this perspective is intoxicating. His hands ball into loose fists as he ventures a tiny step toward it.
Burroughs drifts around the room, seeming to have impressed his own mind with the magnitude of what they’re witnessing. He stops to face Orion. “Societal Services has warped my vision into a clockwork playground only serving to retard thinking,” he adds. “Know the underpinnings?”
The question is handed to Orion with a fuse already smoldering inside it. Combined with the staggering view in front of him, it reminds him he's in a game. He hasn't figured it out yet, but he's learned better than to blurt the first reaction that comes
to his mind. He offers, "Fear."
“Deviance.” Burroughs bats back. “The human animal wants to compete. If we don’t control that urge, we’ll destroy each other over and over and over and over.”
Orion moves close to the exam chair where Burroughs meets him. Burroughs has an intoxicating way about him. He's devious but smart. His calm delivery deflects the fact that he always seems to be working you, looking for an angle to exploit. Orion has to admit, he is curious. Curiosity, in this case, is both a blessing and an opportunity. The question is, who will exploit that opportunity.
Burroughs says, “Your Mind Map session is only the start of Integrated Cognitive-Neuroscience.” He caresses the chair admiringly.
Orion is careful to stay back a step and asks, “A clever term for what?”
“Sensory guidance to predict outcomes in thought processing.” Burroughs smiles, then adds, “Confinement offers you no hope, Orion. Your freedom is through this room. Let me show you something like you’ve never seen it before.”
In the last few days, Orion has been through more than his share of things he has never seen before. But he has to face the fact that the only way free of this situation is through it. They control him, they can do what they want to him, and so he needs to take a chance. He cautiously steps forward to let his fingertips slide across the cool, smooth surface of the chair. He flicks his eyes up to check that Burroughs hasn’t moved a muscle, but he’s watching. With no other choice, Orion slips quietly into the chair.
Instantly, the mag-cuffs pull his wrists and ankles down and bind him, the attached neuro-helmet automatically slants to fits over his head. Thousands of delicate light beams explode in all directions, coupling him to the room. The array is already more spectacular than the Mind Map when one of the beams wavers a little, and then about halfway down it splits. A threadlike ray slowly reaches to connect with the adjacent beam. More beams split, divide, and reach out to others. Connecting rays split to form yet more links. Within seconds they create a glowing neuro-web of light energy much like the web in the Hivemind chamber. Except the web here, above Orion, is infinitely more complex.
Hundreds of video images appear by the dozens across the display wall: People, places, objects, abstracts, dreams, and ideas all from Orion’s life. As more appear, some shuffle position, others grow, and some shrink. A few images begin to oversaturate and intensify, they become more fully realized until they literally float free of the screen into the room. The floaters gain crude dimension, the edges fade to allow the important parts to have priority and become entirely three-dimensional. The combined spectacle is animated into a living dream.
“Wow,” is all Orion can utter.
"Only the beginning," Burroughs whispers. He looks like a kid in a candy store. Eyes wide, he saunters through the amazing carnival of memories and ideas, a god, hovering through a mind. "Your mind, Orion. Its' contained memories. Just pathways and weigh stations in your synapses. An ordered collection of electrical impulses." He adoringly swims his fingers through the delicate glowing neuro-web overhead, careful to avoid contact, but edging temptingly close. "Not a thing, but a perception. You are what you think you are." He turns his attention back to Orion and states, "I'm going to erase the lines and connect the dots to show a whole different picture. Clean you up, better than the day you were born."
“Brainwashing?” Orion struggles a little in the chair, suddenly feeling very exposed.
“I want to evolve your mind. A revolution in evolution,” says Burroughs. He gets very close to Orion’s face. “You’re exactly the one. System integrated since childhood, Hive advanced you to the point of self-animation.”
The room automatically transforms into Orion’s memory of Hivemind and self-animating. The total vision is so lifelike, it’s as if they have leaped back in time to experience in the moment itself.
Burroughs continues, growing more maniacal. “Yes, yes, yes I witnessed that awakening. The paradox is that you viewed a woman expire in the same moment.” Burroughs adjusts a control, and the 3D images fade away.
The only onscreen image that remains, mirrors the present moment in the room, creating a paradox where Orion is staring back at himself in the chair, from the chair. “I’ll go back to Hive. I can make that work,” he tries. He swallows hard as his eyes glass over.
“Yes, but superior. To become the sublime spark igniting change in all mankind,” Burroughs says, almost salivating. “The key.” He prompts the helmet, and one beam fluctuates. A vision of Orion’s mother materializes on screen and steps fully into the room, three-dimensional and holding hands with Orion as a boy.
“Mom?”
“Why would you want to remember the moment you became alone? A destructive society, plagued with illness that took her and left you abandoned to those invisible caretakers,” Burroughs says, gently coaxing. He flicks the beam, and the image flutters, making Orion wince as a pain jabs his brain. “A moment in time that changed your fate. Pathways, weigh stations. Thoughts lead to actions.”
“You have control,” Orion resists. “Take it if you want it.”
“Like mind map, you should choose, be the guide, and the result is truer. More, all-embracing,” Burroughs says. “Share with me the day your mother passed. Go there and see.”
Orion begins to tell a story “I remember some good times…” The images and holograms take over and all traces of the room disappear to be replaced with Orion’s memory of the past, immersing him in the memory residing in his own mind. He’s a boy again, sitting with his mother in a small apartment. There are no slick silvery walls, no food processors and, most importantly, no Hivebeam.
His father enters the front door carrying a plastic box and looking distraught. He tells Orion’s mother that the flu epidemic is spreading and the entire city is quarantined. Orion’s mother looks at him softly, impossible to hide her worry.
His father drags the container over and takes stock of a small food inventory. It’s all he could get, and he’s not sure when he’ll find more so they need to ration it. He’s going back out in the morning to see what else he can find. Orion’s mother objects. He could get sick if he goes, but he has no choice.
The entire scene shifts radically and now the windows of their apartment are covered. On a small video monitor, his mother talks to a government worker, who informs them that Orion’s father has died. He was caught in a civil disturbance at a food drop-off. A small riot broke out and his father tried to stop it. They cannot retrieve the body or see it. It’s to be incinerated immediately due to possible viral contamination. His mother cries and tells Orion that his father won’t be coming back. Orion begins to cry, his 8-year old mind is overwhelmed with uncertainty.
The color of the scene changes to tonal blues and greys, soon losing saturation. It’s Orion’s emotional memory taking over. His mother peeks through the window coverings, her face hopeless and worried. Orion climbs on her lap and holds her, speechless, the only person he has in the world. She rocks him and tells him that he should try with all his might to believe in a miracle.
The last of the color drains from the room, and the shadows thicken around everything. A small team of workers in HAZMAT suits zip his mother into a body bag and drag her away. Orion is screaming as tears explode across his cheeks. One of the HAZMAT workers picks him up and carries him out of the little apartment. He barely resists, the shock of what’s happening stuns him into compliance.
The corridor is strewn with junk and dirt. The epidemic has reached their building, and the HAZMAT teams are hauling bodies out en masse. Soon, Orion, clinging to the HAZMAT worker, loses sight of his mother’s body and, in that moment, she’s gone forever.
A jarring cut in the memory and Orion is riding in a van stuffed with other survivors speeding through the city. The urban surroundings look old, brown, like it has been beaten, pieced together and beaten up again. People wander aimlessly, or dig through junk to find anything of value.
Then, the entire world around you
ng Orion flashes brilliant white…
The Exam One room blazes all white for an instant, and Orion blinks back to reality. A juncture between several beams in the neuro-web above him flash at a pinpoint and then it withers, and then fades. Remaining pathways shift and converge. The image of his mother dissolves and each of the remaining images and holograms shifts subtly in response to her deletion. Each memory dependent on the other, the erasing of one ripples across the relationship to others, changes perception, and changes the person. Each path surrounding the deleted point is a fraction more direct now.
“Tell me about the day your mother died, Orion,” Burroughs asks softly.
Orion thinks hard, a confounded look fills his face and then he says flatly, “I really don’t remember my mother. I only have…” He drifts off, lost in a daze.
Burroughs bends close, examining his subject, and in a cold clinical tone, he says, "Good. Let's continue."
…
Orion lies on the bunk in his cell, obsessively tracing a crease in the mattress fabric. It’s the only defined edge in the entire Center. All the cell walls are crystal clear right now, the dark LCD embedded in the glass is missing. A tech guides GL into her cell, dumps her on the bunk, and shuts the cell door before exiting the group chamber altogether. No need to hang around, the security pillar in the center guards them relentlessly, and what will it matter anyway? They can’t escape, and even if they can, they are buried deep in the Center. Before they got anywhere, they’d be caught and dumped back here for more conditioning.
After the door shuts, and the five inmates are alone. Orion gingerly taps the glass to get GL’s attention.
Her eyes stare distantly. Orion raps a bit harder, and she snaps out of it, “Who are you?” she asks. He shows her the scratch she carved on his hand. A glimmer of understanding enters her eyes. “Yeah. Okay. You’re Orion.” Then she remembers to look at her own hands. She begins tracing the many scratches on their backs, some fresh but many of them scarring over and growing faint. To herself, she states, “My name is GL.” Another deeper scratch scarred over more than once prompts another memory, softening her gaze. “I was a mother.” Then her expression twists into a sneer. “And Burroughs is a son-of-a-bitch. He can’t steal the memory of my son,” she says with a snarl.