Utopian Uprising: Prisoner of the Mind

by Brian Craft

The image of Orion holds firm on Iris’s video-screen. Her near-lifeless eyes stare back at it, holding her suspended over her inevitable fall into limbo. The final highlight in her neuro-web fluctuates, fades, but persists.

  Mina tries the controls with no success.

  Then Orion’s image grows a little bolder, tiny fractal bits break free of the screen and float into the room. The bits rotate, shuffle and congeal as a hologram begins to form in front of Iris and Mina. The image gains dimension as more fractals merge and it presses deeper into the room.

  Iris's nearly blank expression maintains an unbroken stare into Orion's image, and the highlight in her neuro-web overhead intensifies.

  Mina stands, gawking at Iris and the vision of Orion. She backs away and runs for the door to find Burroughs.

  In Exam One, Orion’s video-screen powers on.

  From the murky white screen, an otherworldly face appears. Faint at first, the image grows and sharpens, gaining color and dimension to reveal the same image Iris projects in the second exam room.

  A pool of light swells from the screen like a liquidy pool of energy filling itself from within, forming a hologram of Orion stepping freely into the room in front of Orion himself. It walks forward reaching out its spectral hand and sinks it into Orion's chest.

  Above him, in the darkness where the neuro-web was before, a pristine pinhole of light appears. It quickly grows more intense, its radiance raining on Orion, melting the shadows and enlightening the contours of his face. The control panel springs to life and speeds through files and folders like it’s operating itself. The light above Orion explodes into millions of tiny stars, and his life and memories and the memories of the thousands of others cascade across the video-screen like an unending avalanche.

  Orion blinks.

  Nurse Mina catches up to Dr. Burroughs. “Something’s happening.”

  Her statement stops Burroughs in his tracks, and the urgency in her voice demands his attention.

  Iris’s head wobbles marginally as her energy wanes. Her chin dips and slowly her face tilts forward. The miraculous hologram in front of her fades away until only a fragment remains before the vision disappears altogether, leaving the room dim and lifeless.

  She’s motionless now. Her expression barren and detached.

  Orion steadies himself by dragging his hand along the wall, glancing over repeatedly, wishing the way-finder were still available to him. Then he spots the only open door in the corridor and he locks onto it.

  Orion enters Iris’s room. He stands by her side and gently caresses her cheek. A light on the control panel pops on as Orion leans close to her. Very gently, his lips contact hers.

  Suddenly controls activate across the board and holograms of Iris’s life stampede through the room. Her body quivers and jerks as energy flows and billows into her until she snaps her eyes open.

  She smiles when she sees Orion. “My hero,” she says, the touch of dry wit in her voice tells him that she’s more than back. She’s herself.

  They step out of exam two together, still weak from their journey through the void. Turning the corner, they spot Burroughs and Mina entering the corridor at the other end.

  Complete and overwhelming shock smacks Burroughs right in the face and freezes him in his tracks.

  “You,” Burroughs says, struggling to push through his dumbstruck amazement.

  Orion and Iris back away, and then whirl around to run the other direction, around the corner and down another passageway.

  Mind Mastery is a maze of rooms and hallways, and within seconds, all of them, the infinitely fused walls, the blended ceiling, the floor, everything, blazes crimson red.

  The entire facility is thrown into security lockdown.

  They are nowhere near an elevator or stairway access. Even if they were they will assuredly be locked too.

  A flurry of techs enter the corridors on the hunt. Plummer leads his own personal campaign to capture the prodigy and maybe save himself by the good graces of Dr. Burroughs.

  Orion pauses their flight as they enter a corridor crossroads. He and Iris assess the four identical passageways, all flashing red, which adds to the sense of it closing in on them. Iris shakes her head, hoping Orion will know which way to go. He drops his head, allowing his brain to absorb the stress within the building and invade his mind. Then he homes in on the floor and at the same time becomes aware of the many vaporous visions of former inmates passing him. He grabs Iris and pulls her deeper into the facility.

  Ducking corners and hiding from alerted staff, he follows the flow of his intuition and the visions showing him the way to the pin-dome.

  Peeking around a corner, Orion sees that no one guards the way in because there is no way out. Pin-dome is the end of the line. Orion hits the control to close the only door and swings Iris through before the entrance seals on them.

  “Are you melting down or something?” Iris yells. “This is a dead-end.”

  “No,” he replies, “it’s our way out.”

  He kneels on the floor where the last of the food scraps mark the center of the room. The same spot where the central table always extrudes from.

  “Trash chute.” He smiles to Iris, knowing the intention will light up in her mind any second.

  “The pins,” she replies, kneeling to face him.

  "It has to lead somewhere." He presses close to her. "Remember when Evo came to get me out of my building? We went from one end of my building complex to the other and escaped." He taps the floor. "Access corridors, building operations. It's still a world full of real stuff that needs to be managed. The kind of dead zone Burroughs won't go."

  “Okay.”

  He flattens his hands against the floor at the epicenter of the room, one hand on top of the other. Iris stacks her hands on his.

  “What now?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Think about a hole.”

  “Hole?” she says, and suddenly the pins recede slightly.

  “Hole,” he repeats, and more pins recede. “Think it!”

  Together they concentrate on the thousands of pin-rods that compose the entire surface of the floor. Beneath this room is some kind of access, as grungy and dirty as it may be, it will be their route to freedom. If they can only open the hole…

  A large circular area around them abruptly sinks and pitches them forward into each other before stopping. The angle and forward pressure force their hands firmly into the pins.

  Burroughs' face appears on the dome above them. His voice booms through the silence when he commands, "Orion. You can't escape me. I control every speck that you see and more. Even the microscopic spaces in between the specks."

  “Don’t listen, Iris. Put your mind around the rods,” Orion urges her.

  “Think about what you’re doing,” the doctor says, trying to slide his intoxicating rhetoric into the room. “You’re throwing away everything.”

  "I believe in you," Iris whispers, quietly enough for only Orion, and the floor suddenly sinks like quicksand. The rods plunge deeper and deeper, forming a funnel with a gaping hole at the bottom. The sudden depression and steep angle tumble Iris forward and she slips. Her hands slid across the slick pins as she careens down, and quickly disappears through the hole.

  Orion keeps pressure on the pins as Iris slides to escape. As soon as she’s out of sight, he inches closer to the opening, careful to keep it engaged long enough for him to jump.

  “You can’t leave this world!” Burroughs rages at them. “I’ll find you!”

  Orion looks to the dome and Burroughs god-like image. He defiantly states. “My will is free.”

  He releases his hands and dives headfirst toward the hole that immediately begins to close. He slides and his head, torso, and half his legs get through before the pins seal the opening and snag his ankles.

  Inside the trash chute, Orion dangles upside-down by his feet, stuck. The converging pins have captured him all the way to his knees. He catches the last sight of
Iris as she skids away. Unable to stop her momentum she disappears into the darkness.

  “Shit!” he curses. “Iris!”

  He tries to bend and contort enough to reach the pins holding his legs. Through the remaining bits of opening, he can hear the door to pin-dome release and slide open, and footsteps coming his way. He braces his hands on the sides of the chute and pulls with all his strength. Some of the looser pins dig into his ankle and blood trickles. The bloody lubrication allows him to budge a little.

  A thud announces that someone above him fell into the funnel. A second later they smash into his exposed feet, forcing him to cry out as the impact dislodges his feet. The release generates instant momentum and sends him flying down the black shaft after Iris.

  He slides chaotically, head first along the dark tube, his hands gripping at anything that might slow his fall or at least gain a little control of the crash that’s sure to come. Tiny edges and seams holding the chute together tear at his hands and elbows and legs.

  After hundreds of feet, passing a junction or two, past the pipe widening and narrowing along the way, Orion launches out of his free-fall and crashes head first among piles of garbage in an enormous thud.

  Trash splashes in all directions around a small circular, steel room charred all black.

  Burroughs rages at the holographic closed-circuit display hovering near his desk. He swings at it repeatedly, only to have his blows pass through the image and hit nothing.

  He engages more closed-circuit monitors to search the facility. As the displays materialize, a blurred face appears on each. Burroughs inspects the hazy images, poking his finger into one as if he might be able to touch it. Then the system replaces the face with images of the red-saturated corridors and rooms inside Mind Mastery. The crimson light transferring from displayed images into his office and surrounding him with the same urgency.

  Inside the charred-black room, Orion is shielded from anyone's sight within the facility. As he rights himself, Iris climbs from a small pile of trash near one of four charred-black holes at the lower corners of the room.

  “You okay,” he asks.

  “I cut my hands pretty bad,” she replies, showing him the blood.

  “Me too,” he says. After helping her to her feet, he peels away to feel his way along the wall, searching for a door.

  Iris sees that the only light is a faint glow coming from a conical fixture raised from the floor with small vents on it. She can feel heat coming through and peeks inside. A few feet deep several pilot lights cast an orange-yellow glow around an ignition chamber, like a kiln, for what she realizes is the incinerator, where they’re trapped.

  "It's an incinerator," she informs him. "Nowhere we want to stay."

  Orion hears her and realizes that his mind is totally quiet. He beats the wall a couple times, testing it and listening to the weight. It's solid. He's insulated where obviously no one ever goes. Darkness, solitude, and privacy will be a luxury in days to come. If those days come.

  He crouches by one of the holes in the corners and peers into the pitch-black. “It must be an exhaust port,” he says. There really is no other explanation, and no other option, because they certainly can’t go back.

  “Easy choice.” Iris crawls fearlessly into the hole. It makes it easy for Orion to follow her in.

  They crawl about one hundred feet through the stale air and soot before Iris spots a sliver of light. It circles the pipe and casts enough glow for Iris to recognize a section seeming to collar the outside of the smaller tube they're in. "This is like a big version of the sprinkler pipes. This should slide back for access."

  They wedge themselves as close as they can to double their effort against the collar. Iris manages to bend her knees enough to anchor her feet against it for extra leverage, and they push. The heating and cooling in the metal pipes as worked the collar tight. They muster as much push as they can until it finally skids back an inch, the metal on metal grating reverberates along the pipe and fresh air rushes in.

  The tiny bit of air and light are unbelievably welcome. They take a beat to enjoy the simple pleasure before moving on.

  Iris is first to move. She works her fingers through the open slot and pulls with everything she has, and it slides back more, sending more loud reverberations down the line. Orion lends a hand and it finally breaks free and slides wide open, exposing them to the outside.

  Panting, Iris jokes, "All I needed is a little fresh air." As soot filters around her and provokes a cough, she tries to waft it away but chooses to just climb free of the fire pipe.

  She squeezes through the opening and wiggles out first, carefully scanning the area before fully exposing herself. Orion follows and they begin to explore for an exit. They are still deep inside the skyscraper, away from Burroughs for the moment, but still not out of trouble. The exhaust pipe continues into the distance and curves around the great structure. It’s joined by other pipes and conduits, the necessities to basic operation of a human-occupied building.

  Even in the lower levels, the structure is immaculate. Dimmer lighting fails to hide the poly-plastic surface materials backed with titanium, aluminum along walls, and copper circuitry threading much of it together into one piece. It must be unbelievably expensive, and a huge drain on resources.

  Running up the walls, thinner threads of a Hivebeam stretch from floor to ceiling and continue on the next level, up and up.

  Hundreds of the little threads spaced about six feet apart, each glowing steadily, providing the same ghostly half-light as Hivemind. The polished plastic surfaces and metal parts glisten Orion passes, making the entire inside of the structure appear as if it’s made of perfect crystal.

  Now that he’s free of the pipe, whispering voices wake in his mind again. Along with visions of people traveling the corridors only to disappear in front small mechanical objects embedded in sections of the wall, between the radiant threads.

  Orion investigates one of them. It’s about the size of his hand. Several mechanical tools are tucked close to its sides and a pilot light slowly pulses. “I think it’s a drone.”

  “Leave it alone,” she replies. “We have to go.”

  He ignores her plea to exit and puts his palm on the flat little drone. A look of disgust curls into his face, and he grabs the little robot-drone and yanks on it. He steps back and kicks the side of the drone.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Iris exclaims. She glances down the empty corridors where the sound of his kick is echoing. “Someone will hear that!”

  He braces himself and kicks it again, and then a third hit dislodges it to flip through the air. It crashes to the floor and slides into the shadows. Orion ignores it, instead, turning his attention to a small open portal now exposed on the wall where the drone had been.

  A red light starts flashing on the wall next to where the drone was, and a pale green light emanates from within the opening. Orion moves over to peer inside.

  It’s a small cell with a person, dazed but alive, and in an insentient state like Hivemind.

  A memory flash sparks in Orion’s mind. It’s the man in the cell with his little daughter near a playground.

  Orion lurches back from the portal. It’s a memory stolen by Burroughs and downloaded into Orion.

  Iris peeks inside as Orion combs the wall for a way to access the cell. She connects the dots to the broken drone lying in the shadows and then with the identical mechanisms lining the corridor. "There are so many."

  "One of the things Burroughs is using people for," Orion replies as he explores the corridor. "These people's minds are part of every operation here. Including those little drones." He walks past five glowing Hivebeam threads and the cells between them and then stops at a separation between cellblocks. The break in the cells extends upward along the massive neo-gothic aluminum supports through all the floors toward the top of the building. Orion steps through and onto a catwalk projecting from the central elevator shaft.

  Gazing upward, he see
s the cavernous interior of the skyscraper, pulsing crimson from the security lockdown lights insistent strobe.

  There, from the lower level, Orion and Iris witness that the building interior is a massive spiral corkscrew, creating floor after floor of cells. Six breaks like the one he walked through designate six cellblocks where the thousands of people are housed after Burroughs experiments. Each an unwilling part of the mechanism for his designs. The same thousands of people who Orion shares duplicate memories with now. And the instant he stepped into the vast chamber, the memories cried out to him.

  “We have free them,” he states.

  Iris spots security guards running around the long circular corridor. They’ll be there in seconds. “First, we have to run,” she implores.

  They can’t go back into the corridor, so they run to the elevator shaft. The lift isn’t there. Orion scans upward along the lengthy shaft then back to the short catwalk where the guards will enter at any moment. “An open shaft is better. Like the exhaust pipe, right? It’ll come out someplace.”

  “I agree. We get in that elevator, he just reels us to the top again,” she says.

  They force the doors open and peer down the empty shaft. One floor below, the building’s hollow structure is anchored on a solid foundational floor. The shaft bores through that into the darkness where it appears to be about four floors to the bottom.

  Iris wastes no time swinging herself into the shaft, catching a rung of the embedded service ladder with her toes. Within seconds she’s descending.

  Orion lingers, staring at the cells where he knows more people are trapped in some kind of hellish limbo. The same hell awaiting everyone in Paragon when Icarus spreads its wings and motivates this building to come fully online.

  He slips into the shaft and follows Iris.

  CHAPTER 25

  Iris steps off the last rung three levels deep in the building foundation and onto the solid surface, where the red light from above is swallowed by thick shadow. A second later, Orion hops down to join her, his attention promptly drawn upward where the clear shaft converges, and Icarus lives.