Utopian Uprising: Prisoner of the Mind

by Brian Craft

  “Circles and circles and circles,” he speaks to the city. “And we arrive at a new beginning, to know ourselves for the first time.”

  He walks toward his ant colony. Speaking aloud to the office assistant computer, “Call Governor Roman.”

  Burroughs stares into the darkened tunnels and passages of the ant colony. He bends closer, admiring the shiny little ants moving about tirelessly and in unison. He licks his lips like he’d love to eat them. The video call to Roman appears over the desk and reflects in the glass of the ant colony in front of Burroughs.

  “Governor,” Burroughs refuses to turn away from his ants to address Roman.

  “Tell me why I’m funding you, Burroughs,” Roman shouts at him.

  Burroughs traces an ant tunnel deep into the colony until he spots a queen being attended by her drones. "Unless I'm wrong," Burroughs says, grinning to himself because he's never wrong, "you are only a middleman."

  "You son-of-a-bitch. I can pull the plug on you anytime I want," Roman snaps.

  “That’s an example of a useless thought,” he retorts. “I have what they want, and you’re trying hard to seem relevant long enough to put us together. Politics must be so stressful.”

  “There have been more incidents,” Roman continues. His hand unconsciously drifts up to poke at a bruise on his cheek. “My people tell me that this resistance movement is real, and gaining numbers.”

  “Deviants. I would have never guessed they’d be so advantageous,” Burroughs says with a kind of glib relish. He walks to his desk and sits in front of Roman. “Even the upper crust needs a little scary leverage to nudge them off their islands.”

  “So, now you like the dissenters, huh?” Roman presses. “Well, we’re getting tired of waiting for you to do something about them.”

  Burroughs leans forward, grinning at Roman. He waves his hand dismissively at the video projection, and it disappears. The doctor sits quietly in the dark, the orange glow of the collected city lights radiates into the office around him.

  He stands, facing the cityscape, and stretches his arms wide as if embracing the entire world. “One mind.”

  He spins around suddenly and zeroes in on a speck moving across his desk. Burroughs’s reverie is shattered when he discovers a single ant crawling across the surface. He stares in disbelief that the little insect has escaped.

  Burroughs bends close, allowing his huge face to overshadow the tiny bug. His finger extends to allow the ant to climb aboard. Burroughs lifts it close, inspecting its delicate little antenna and fragile segmented body.

  Then he slowly, deliberately crushes the life out of the tiny creature, and flicks it into his mouth.

  CHAPTER 19

  Orion steps out of his cell for the first time in days. Unshielded by his cubicle’s solitude, a tidal wave of foreign memories slams his mind. The overload buckles him for a second before GL can prop him up.

  “Other minds,” he says. “I lost my grip.”

  “Yeah, well, pull it together or they’re gonna think you’re a burnout,” GL replies. “Then we’ll never see you again either.”

  Plummer marches over to investigate. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Are you serious?” GL steps between them. She gets aggressive with Plummer as a distraction. “How about a brain melt day after day? Burroughs will probably erase you soon, too, you enabling piece of shit!”

  Plummer pushes GL out of the chamber, and the others file after her. Jax softly moves next to Orion. The two share a moment of calm connection before following the rest of the team. All except for Iris, who they dragged away about an hour ago.

  Moving into the hallway, Orion grimaces again when memories from other inmate’s fill his own sight. He can see hundreds of people filling the corridor, visions passing through each other as if they are holograms.

  He sees Burroughs's image pass by, then a double pass him again going the other way, and GL when she had more fight in her, Iris pulled from the red room, Mina, techs, and so many inmates. And Plummer, over and over again, even dragging an unconscious vision of Orion into the red room. All of these visions are memories of people and experiences now stored inside Orion's mind. Each from someone who has been through Burroughs's conditioning, walked these corridors, and likely still resides in this prison.

  Orion shudders as a cloud of emotion sinks around him, brought on by the memories he's experiencing. The feelings inject signatures into the visions, making them intimate, and brimming Orion with a sense of familiarity toward them as if he knows each personally.

  He gathers himself and searches for the red way-finder line until he realizes it's passing right through him. It actually helps him anchor his mind and point him to the end of the hall. He despised being forced on a presumed way-finder path before, but now he welcomes it.

  Is his compliance a sign of being conditioned?

  He summons all the clarity he can as he trails after his companions, forcing himself to remember the mechanism of merely swinging each foot in front of the other. Traveling through the dreamy haze and spectral visions, his awareness begins to embrace what he’s experiencing, but then whispering voices begin. They filter into his mind like spirals of breeze swirling around him. They quickly grow louder, drowning his own thoughts telling him to, ‘Step with your right foot’.

  GL grabs his arm and yanks him inside pin-dome. Plummer shuts the door and finally, the visions and voices die down. GL pulls Orion's hands to his temples like she did the first time they met here, and she cups his hands with hers to shield his eyes.

  “Just be right here,” she says to him. “Talk to me.”

  “I can hear voices,” he replies. “And see visions of what people experienced here. Right here, in this room.”

  GL looks around like maybe she’d see something now, too. Jax, Terrence, and Scryberg stand back, watching cautiously.

  “What’s up with him?” Scryberg demands. “Burroughs burn him out?”

  “He got into the exam room,” GL speaks for Orion. “The machine collects memories and Burroughs saves them. Yours too.” She motions at Orion. “He got them all jacked into his head.”

  Terrence slides over by them and sits next to Orion. “What does that mean?”

  “Yeah, what are you saying? This guy has my brain in his?” Scryberg challenges.

  “Not exactly,” Orion answers. “I see parts of your life in my mind. I can feel your fears.”

  “Bullshit,” Scryberg states. “Then what am I afraid of?”

  Orion stares at him, engrossing in the details of his face and body. He allows his mind to relax like he did inside Hivemind. Permitting his awareness to find its own way to Scryberg's memories, like a divining rod locating water.

  He stands, eyes glued to Scryberg, and shuffles slowly over to stand inches from him. “You’re afraid to make a choice,” the words roll softly from Orion as the memory solidifies in his mind. His own body shrinking fearfully as Scryberg’s emotions touch him. “You’d rather disappear than face the guilt of failure again.”

  Scryberg looks unhinged at the statement. His feet shift with nowhere to run. He glances around at the others, his emotions naked for all to see. He braces and says, “If that’s what’s in the machine, how come it’s still in me?”

  “He leaves the fears behind,” Orion replies. “Control.”

  Terrence chimes in, “How do you know that?”

  “He saw inside Burroughs’s mind, too,” GL jumps in.

  “He uses the machine on himself?” Scryberg asks.

  “He’s sick,” Orion offers. “And preparing himself, as well. He wants to construct a perfect world. He wants to condition us into being what he wants, and he wants himself to be perfect, too. To sit above.”

  The exercise with Scryberg has focused Orion’s mind. He walks around the group until he reaches GL. “Burroughs needs us to become gears in his machine. But in doing that, he gave us the means to save ourselves.”

  “Well, I ain’t gonna than
k the bastard,” GL huffs.

  He walks to the central extruded table and sits next to Jax. Orion holds his hand over the table and smiles at the old man. “Our minds have been streamlined, and Icarus did its job. It unlocked things to control us, but it awakened something instead,” he states. “I stopped the machine from taking my mind. Now I’ve leaped even farther than they know, and each of you can follow.”

  “Where?” Terrence asks.

  Orion invites Terrence over and directs him to hold his hand over the pins composing the table. “Feel it,” he tells Terrance. “There’s energy holding it together,” Orion puts his hand on top of Terrence’s, and suddenly his eyes get wide as the sensation hits him. Orion guides their hands to the edge of the table and past it. That’s when one of the pins pulls away as if it’s peeling itself free to follow their hands.

  “I feel it!” Terrence shouts. Unable to hide his excitement.

  “What else?” Orion quizzes him.

  GL gravitates to them, and even Scryberg stands over Jax to see what’s going on.

  Terrence thinks for a long time about what he experienced, then says to Orion, “I felt you, too.”

  Orion looks at each of them in turn, finally landing on Jax. “Jax felt this before. But he did it without experiencing what I did. That means you can, too.” He glances around the group again. “I’m going to show you. We’ll work together. Destroy it and get the hell out of this nightmare.”

  Scryberg, in a much more gentle and unified tone, reminds them, “What about Iris?”

  GL adds, “They’ve been workin’ her over.”

  “We have to get her out before she breaks,” Orion states.

  …

  Iris slouches under the glowing web of synaptic junctions and pathways projecting from her neuro-helmet. Magnetic cuffs anchor her to the exam chair and keep her from sliding off. Nurse Mina gently caresses Iris’s arm, comforting and stimulating her at the same time, drawing Iris into their trust and rewarding her for the surrender.

  The 180-degree video screen in front of them displays a mirror image of what’s happening in the room. Iris is faced with a scene of herself in real time sitting with Mina caressing her arm. Iris sees that she looks worse for wear, exhausted from the constant assault on her mind. She jabs an evil stare at Mina. “Why don’t you get your claws off me, bitch?”

  The neuro-web overhead adjusts to eliminate a highlight that appeared. Burroughs revels as the beams streamline to his conditioning and the mirrored scene in front of them alters. It’s still a vision of the room and Iris in the chair, only now she looks a little healthier and happier, and Mina seems to be a more welcome companion.

  Iris’s face begins to flush as she forces her bloodshot eyes to focus through tears. Emotions bubble up, filling in the blanks of her character and begging her to shake off what’s she’s seeing. She looks away, trusting the invisible untouchable force residing inside her. Now invited, it pushes forward to coax her memory into restoring itself.

  …

  Terrence gently guides Scryberg’s hand along the edge of the table’s pin-rods until they separate from each other. The corner of Scryberg’s mouth lifts into a little smile.

  The door slides open and Iris stumbles through. She hugs the wall as paranoia undermines her tired mind.

  Orion rushes over to her, but stops short when she winces away from him. “Iris, it’s me,” he tells her. Then very slowly, he leans close and touches his forehead to hers.

  Her eyes blink clear, and she throws her arms around him.

  “I’m sorry, but we had to start without you,” Orion says.

  Iris pulls back to look at him. “Start what?”

  “The resistance.” He smiles.

  “Hell, where you think I’ve been?” she jokes as they move over to the table where she can sit with everyone and lean for support.

  On a monitor outside pin-dome, Mina and Plummer view the group inside. Plummer asks, “What are they doing?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mina states, brushing it off. “Let them think they’re in control.” She blows Plummer a kiss, and then she struts down the hall, knowing he’ll watch.

  Iris examines Orion’s eyes for a clue to what happened during their last time together in Exam One.

  “I’m okay,” he says.

  “More than okay,” GL adds.

  “Give us a minute guys,” he asks the group, and they separate. Orion leans close to her. “The accident in the exam room, turned out a little different than an accident.” He finds the cuts on her palms from smashing the control panel and caresses them.

  “I was trying to release you,” she says.

  "Oh, you released me," he replies, and then proceeds to give her the play-by-play of what's been happening. How the memories all downloaded into his mind, how they are whispering to him this very minute, what they've done to him, and how the others are part of it. He slowly brings her around, talking about how his mind holds some of her memories, too. He recalls their meeting on the maglev, the flower, the food center, the run from the police, even her defiant act at the stadium and her own capture…

  “Yeah,” she says like a light bulb turned on in her mind. “I remember that.” She lets her own memories seep back into her mind. “And now?”

  Orion moves her hand to the table. “Can you feel the energy in this?”

  She closes her eyes until the sensation hits her, and a pin moves. Then she holds her hands over his outstretched palms without touching them. “And this.” She smiles.

  “That’s where we begin,” Orion says.

  CHAPTER 20

  The experience of being taken over by Hivemind is unsettling for the first timer, and even though Pace has been around it for a long time, he has never been an actual part of it. Sitting in his office the day after surrendering to the machine, he can’t help but let his mind drift.

  The world below his office window seems different now. He has been completely enamored with the holographic version of the city that he’s been championing, but Burroughs is right that it’s a ‘false reality’. Now everything seems more real. And the real thing is the game of the future, with stakes that are all or nothing.

  “Are you paying attention, Pace?” Burroughs huffs at him via a video monitor.

  Pace snaps out of it and returns his attention to Dr. Burroughs call. “I hear you,” he replies.

  “Stay out of the Hive chairs, they aren’t for tourists,” Burroughs instructs him. He finds out about everything, and Hive is still his creation if not his command. “If you need an escape from your pressures, I’ll book you a session when you come to Mind Mastery.”

  “How certain are you about this next step?” Pace asks, changing the subject. “What I witnessed last time I was there seemed, shaky.”

  “Roman asked that you witness this, so you get the temporary privilege to witness this,” Burroughs retorts. “In one day, everything changes.”

  Burroughs deletes the video call from the hundreds of other images displayed across the 180-degree video screen in Exam One. He’s reclined in the exam chair, playing the voyeur with hundreds of vignettes piped in via the closed-circuit cameras around the city. It’s his favorite pastime…research.

  He crawls out of the chair and addresses the control panel. The ubiquitous brain models appear there in front of him, one each for Orion and his team. Burroughs inspects them as he whispers the word, “Resist,” and identical highlights appear in each model simultaneously. He has succeeded in synchronizing the pathways. But these are only models, and the real thing is yet to come.

  Burroughs engages the controls once more and several on-screen images flip like cards to display new scenes. They are first-person views of people running through the city at night.

  Confident the new images are set, he returns attention to the models and bends low in front of Orion's brain. Glow from the engaged synaptic junctions light Burroughs's face as he leans closer. Then slowly, savoringly, he sinks his face into the gl
owing model until his entire head is submerged inside it.

  …

  Orion rests against the glass cell wall, enjoying the darkened interior and quiet solitude of his controlled mind. With his head leaning back against the glass, it clears a circular window like a halo around him and into GL’s cell. She sits back to back with him, their heads separated by the pane of glass.

  “You’re not sayin’ much,” GL breaks the silence.

  His eyes are closed, and without opening them, he replies, “Just watching the show.”

  “Stop screwing around,” she shouts. “You handling this shit or not? If I’m gettin’ screwed into Icarus again, I wanna know if I’m coming out the other side.”

  “I can’t guarantee that,” he offers, “but—“ He pushes a new concept to the forefront of his mind and…

  GL’s eyes snap open. “Alright, it is a team. The fact that you can do that with my mind—“

  “I know,” he cuts her off. “We have to keep working with the others.”

  Nurse Mina steadies Iris as she shuffles into the cellblock chamber from her latest session with Burroughs. She stares distantly as Mina loads her into the cell and the door slides shut.

  Plummer enters the chamber and releases the door to Orion’s cell. “Come on, Doc wants to see you.”

  Orion steps slowly out of his cell, landing each foot deliberately and holding the doorframe, cautious to prepare for what might be another onslaught of memories and images. The whispers grow a little louder, and he fights back a rising tide of visions. So far so good. Plummer directs him into the hallway.

  Orion’s visions increase as he travels the passage. He’s faring well though, gaining control of his mind and the visions are far less numerous.

  The way-finder turns the corner, and he turns with it. As he walks along the path he sees Fray come toward him and then pass by without noticing. Was that real or a vision? Orion can’t decide. He glances back as Fray is guided, zombie-like to the end of the hall near the elevator where he’s handed off to Sline.