Utopian Uprising: Prisoner of the Mind

by Brian Craft

  Video monitors all over the street, in windows, on personal devices: all fill with mugshot images of Orion and Iris.

  The word: FUGITIVES appears with them.

  They are discovered.

  A live feed of their location joins the mug shots. Orion quickly spots a security drone overhead has zeroed in on them. Other drones from blocks away in either direction switch routes and converge on their location.

  Burroughs hurries through the halls of Mind Mastery. He swerves through the corridors, careful to keep his distance from any open cellblock chamber, paranoid that they may be able to get him. Every monitor, touchscreen, or LCD glass in the building displays GL’s face. The haunting image driving the doctor’s urge to escape the maze.

  He rushes into the main elevator, pulling on the doors as they close too slowly. In seconds he’s descending.

  He ventures a cautious look through the windows as the lift passes the corkscrew of floors and cells on his way to the sublevels. The interior cavern continues to strobe red. Squinting through the flashes Burroughs realizes each cell window and every monitor in the whole facility displays GL’s eyes staring back at him until the lift disappears into the levels below.

  ‘Doctor Burroughs.’

  Orion and Iris’s escape run is broadcast across the city. The propaganda spin informing everyone that they are dangerous fugitives and need to be caught with utmost urgency.

  No video screen in the city is spared, including the one in front of Evo.

  Huddled in a darkened room with several other companions, the dark and enigmatic Evo is surprisingly shocked to see that Orion and Iris are still alive. The live-feed shows them approaching a maglev stop. He pokes the screen like he knows where they’re going.

  Orion and Iris race up the stairs toward the platform where a maglev transport is arriving. As soon as they hit the platform, Orion realizes that the transport has suddenly sped back up. The authorities have seized control. Their getaway vehicle is quickly accelerating away from them.

  “Go!” Orion urges Iris to the end of the platform.

  They push through the would-be passengers, surprised their transport is leaving without them. Their confusion holds them in place and gives Orion the chance to weave past and get close to the moving train.

  It’s gaining speed as the platform runs out of room, and Orion sprints in front of Iris trying to reach it before its gone. He reaches the door and thrusts his hand outward, fingers wide like he is rallying all the energy around him to project through his fingers, and then the door releases with a pressurized hiss.

  The passengers inside scream, backing away as the door rolls around the top of the car, exposing them.

  Orion leaps from the platform and tumbles onto the floor of the transport. The forward cars of the maglev have already cleared the platform and float over the street below.

  Iris runs as fast as she can. Her foot springs off the last inch of the platform and she leaps with all her strength. She's midair, thirty feet above the concrete below, stretching her arms as far as she possibly can.

  Orion rallies himself off the floor and lunges for the open door, and Iris. As she begins to fall their eyes lock on each other and Orion overextends beyond safety and barely catches her wrist. Her weight and momentum swinging downward haul him forward, his free hand searching blindly for anything to hold on to before he falls with her. As his heels are about to slide over the edge a fellow passenger grabs his wrist.

  Orion’s heels settle to the floor and he teeters as the passenger digs in to pull them back.

  Dangling off the side, Iris clutches Orion’s arm with both hands. People in the street below marvel at her flying under maglev as Orion and the passenger haul her in.

  Once inside she dives in Orion’s arms, scared and on the verge of tears at first, and then she bursts out laughing with a total sense of enlivened relief. Other passengers cheer.

  “I didn’t think I’d be doing that this morning,” she jokes.

  “Me neither.” He kisses her and the next second the monitors in the transport flash their images.

  The loudspeaker crackles: “ALERT! Crime in progress. All passengers stay where you are!”

  People sway forward as the transport suddenly decelerates and begins to descend to street level.

  Orion looks outside the open doorway. Drones parallel the maglev path and police below race to where the train will inevitably stop.

  He scans the transport and passengers, hoping for some kind of answer when his eyes land on the Hivebeam running the length of the car and out along the line in front and behind them. He pokes his head outside again, and far in the distance, he sees the towering skyscraper of Mind Mastery. The little angled tiles reflect the city around it making it almost invisible.

  The transport skims street level as Orion anchors himself under the Hivebeam. His arm up and hand ready to grab it.

  “What are you doing?” she screams at him.

  “Giving us a chance,” he says. Holding his breath, he invites all the millions of voices to flow into his mind. “I see,” he says and then seizes the brilliant white Hivebeam with all his strength.

  A dazzling beam of light instantly coils around his arm and snaps his spine straight, forcing him painfully erect. The energy coil slips past his shoulder and squeezes around his chest. He grits his teeth as his eyes cloud over and begin to gleam from the surging power. The energy is so intense that the bones in his arm radiate through his flesh.

  The entire train shudders and then begins to rise and accelerate away from the street.

  A few police try to catch the transport before it’s out of reach, but their effort is in vain. They fall behind.

  Orion closes his eyes as he surrenders to the flow and the beam lifts him to his toes. All the monitors race through images of the inmates and Burroughs. The maglev lights grow intensely bright, everything shudders again as a ball of effervescent energy begins to gather around Orion’s hand.

  Iris backs away with the rest of the passengers, astonished by what’s happening and unsure if she should intervene. The ball of energy seems to gain its own gravity, pulling more energy toward it. The dazzling little sparks inside the Hivebeam flow into it, intensifying it so much that Iris has to shield her eyes. A radiant halo materializes around it and begins to stretch toward the back of the transport. Then Orion opens his eyes. The ball of energy launches away from his hand and surges down the Hivebeam, back toward Mind Mastery.

  GL’s voice echoes through the huge interior of the skyscraper, into the cells, through the sublevel detention and surrounds the insentient Terrence.

  ‘Clear.’

  Terrence’s eyes snap open with a shock and his body releases to the floor. The door to his cell springs open, and he shakes himself awake.

  The red security strobe ceases. All the cells throughout the facility unlock in unison and slide open, exposing the awakening inmates within.

  The surging pulse Orion pushed down the line intensifies as it rockets along the Hivebeam, races past buildings rattling windows and shorting lights and power along the way. The brilliant surge stretches out as it flies pasts thousands of citizens like a comet. Some freeze in wild amazement, others scream and run.

  The surge draws everyone’s attention toward its destination as it plunges into the base of Mind Mastery and disappears into the power transfer station.

  An enormous thud shakes the ground like an earthquake, knocking some people to the ground.

  Inside the skyscraper, the surge ripples upward through the cavernous superstructure, it divides and races along the glowing threads of each smaller Hivebeam infesting the building. Like a pressure-filled energy overload, all the lights in the facility blaze at maximum intensity and begin to shatter. The brilliance glossing off the glass panels and cell walls zaps the sleep from the awakening prisoners, announcing their freedom.

  Another thud rocks the building and a ball of light hurtles up the central elevator shaft toward Icarus.
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br />   High atop the skyscraper, the energy ball crests the elevator shaft and engulfs the top floor. The entire top of Mind Mastery glows like a massive beacon, brighter than Societal Services, brighter than Hivemind, brighter than anything in the entire city. The orangey sky directly above it brightens into shades of yellow and gold.

  The top row of reflective tiles begin to rattle, one breaks free and tumbles over and over toward the ground, it’s reflective surface catching the light as it falls. Then the top row loses its magnetism and releases too.

  The phenomenon continues downward in a quickening wave as row after row of tiles release and fall until the entire façade loses cohesion and breaks loose. The tiles shower downward, exposing the shiny aluminum superstructure. The internal glow from elevator shaft, Hivebeam, and overloaded lights blaze into the night for all to see.

  The brilliant glow kisses the falling magnetic tiles as they spin and tumble by the thousands toward the ground. Like a shower of sparks announcing the end of the show.

  Then the energy wanes, the glow at the top floor diminishes and it dims. Then suddenly winks out.

  All lights in and around the skyscraper go dark.

  …and without seeing it…Orion knows.

  CHAPTER 27

  From a distance, the rain of glittering magnetic tiles cascading off Mind Mastery is an infuriating sight for Dr. Burroughs as his personal transport carries him away from the chaos. He’s awestruck as he watches his years of work and careful planning now, no doubt, lying in broken piles at the base of his great achievement.

  “No!” The fury finally overwhelms him. “No, no, no, no, no!” His tantrum rages against the padded interior of his private vehicle.

  He can also see the grouping security drones only a few blocks away and the jagged flash of dozens of police lights converging on Orion now. He seethes as he jabs his crooked finger at the newscast video playing on his dashboard. “You did this. But you’ve stopped NOTHING!”

  The vehicle races into the night, and from outside no one can hear Dr. Burroughs’s insane screaming.

  Citizens viewing the news feed witnessed an interruption in the security cams, projected from Orion’s massive effort. For a few moments, all of them viewed memories of horrors inside Burroughs asylum. Most didn’t know what they witnessed, but the wakeup call is true.

  Orion slumps a little as his grip slackens but he refuses to let go of the Hivebeam. Without his control, the authorities will commandeer the transport, and within minutes, they will be captured. Mind Mastery is burned out but the corrupt government is still very much alive.

  He knows they are free, for the moment. But they still need to escape or they’ll face all these horrors again.

  “Let go, Orion!” Iris urges him.

  He’s channeling the power of Hivebeam and Hivemind, allowing it to flow through him, but the stress is draining him. Iris moves close and reaches for him but stops inches away, already able to feel the energy radiating from his body.

  The maglev bullets through the city, aiming for the border where maybe they can escape for good.

  Security drones and police shark the transport on all sides, but Orion is out-pacing them. They’ll have a small window of time after the maglev stops, and he wants to stretch that opening as far as he can.

  A woman cautiously ventures a question, “How is he doing that?” Her curious question directed at Iris because she’s too afraid to ask Orion himself.

  “What just happened?” another passenger interjects.

  “What is he?” A third voices the real point.

  Orion drops to one knee and the beam sags with him. The second he slumps the transport suddenly drops a few feet with him. He forces himself to stand.

  “How far?” he asks Iris.

  Iris looks out the window, straining to see how much farther until they reach the edge of the city. The security drones have been matching pace with them, but as the transport sags lower between the buildings, the drones are forced higher and away. Behind them, the police are snarled in the metropolitan traffic.

  “How much farther can you go?” Iris asks.

  “I’m almost spent,” he replies.

  She can see that his eyes have drained of color, like when he was inside Hivemind. Orion: groomed for Societal Services, trained into Hivemind, anchors city functions in chair #1, and then transformed by twisted experimentation into someone, or something, that can do what he’s doing right now.

  “Let’s go with someone,” he says to Iris. The events that have carried him to this moment play in his mind. The perfection of each of those events linking to the next and driving him through a journey that he would have never imagined. How does something this unusual happen? “There must be a reason for all this.”

  She’s afraid to touch him because he’s still linked to Hivebeam, but she sits close hoping something will give him more strength.

  A huge bang rattles the transport. Pieces of metal and shattered security drone fly past. It impacted the front of the train.

  Another huge bang, and then another. The drones are crashing into the maglev. Each impact rattles the train and pushes it slightly off course and closer to the ground.

  Bam! A huge dent appears along the ceiling above Orion and the passengers scream.

  Iris scoots to the window, she sees hundreds of security drones above them like a dark cloud paralleling the path of the train. One by one launching themselves at the train. BANG! One of them hits the side and the window shatters, spraying broken glass everywhere, embedding pieces in walls and into helpless passengers.

  BANG! Another. BANG! Another dent in the ceiling. BANG! The transport shudders again.

  Ahead on the line, the magnetic poles keeping the maglev afloat between stations buckle and begin to topple over. The drones are smashing into them too. As the maglev reaches those spots, it dips closer to the street with nothing to keep it up.

  BANG! BANG! BANG! Three drones hit the same spot in the ceiling above Orion, the collective effort deforms the metal so much that it shifts Hivebeam downward and throws Orion to the floor.

  As soon as he releases it, the glow of the Hivebeam stream falters. The entire transport falls toward the street.

  The fantastic velocity keeps them airborne between broken magnetic poles long enough to catch the next operational pole, but it’s inevitable, they are going to crash.

  “Everyone brace themselves!” Iris yells.

  Orion can barely raise himself to sit, but the color begins to seep back into his eyes. He watches helplessly as buildings and faces flash by the open door and windows.

  Iris dives on top of him. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

  Orion wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. The wind swirls in around them and all the passengers as everyone braces for impact in this last moment of silent flight.

  Then the maglev hits the ground.

  The second the huge transport impacts the street, an eruption of sparks splashes in all directions. A torrent of scraping and crunching and metal tearing free overwhelms all sounds.

  Passengers scream as the transport pitches to one side.

  Personal vehicles are bashed out of the path of maglev; they careen wildly, smashing into buildings, shattering glass and rupturing brick and wrecking everything. Pedestrians dart out of the way, filling quickly into side streets and buildings.

  The trail of gouged concrete and wreckage along the street stretches a couple hundred yards before the maglev train finally loses momentum and grinds to a halt.

  The passengers’ breathe a collective exhale. Then one amazed man starts to chuckle a little.

  “Holy shit!” The amazed man exclaims as a way to describe the ride of a lifetime.

  “We’re down,” Orion says to Iris.

  The police sirens grow louder as they approach. Orion climbs to his feet and helps Iris.

  A security drone abruptly juts into the open doorway, its camera’s locking on Orion.

  He shoves
the drone back and as it gains control he doesn’t waste a second grabbing Iris and ducking past it to exit the mangled transport. But he’s so drained of energy he only manages a few steps before he has to slow.

  The crash thrust them past the last of the buildings and into open space only a hundred feet from the border of Paragon City.

  Iris looks back along the path of destruction. “There’s no way this isn’t real.”

  Orion walks ahead of her toward the border, holding the arm that grabbed Hivebeam protectively close to his body. Away from the buildings and people, finally in open ground, he turns his senses to himself. He feels the weight of his body moving, the roll of his foot across the ground, and the breeze wafting gently against his skin. The deliberate movement allows him to release his mind, and the whispering voices return but keep a distance like a protective aura. Instead, he feels the entirety of this moment.

  There are no guards at the border because no one ever attempts to cross. No gates needed for people that believe they can’t. In front of Orion, one step away is the unknown and his personal freedom.

  Security drones capture the event, and the entire city watches this unknown man walking toward the border until the feed is cut.

  There’s no way the city planners want anyone witnessing what is about to happen next.

  Iris catches up to Orion as he arrives at the final border. The glowing white Hivebeam is embedded in the ground at his feet. The sparkling strand disappears into the distance in each direction where it encircles the entire city.

  He pauses there, staring at it with Iris at his side. A small crowd of people gathers back by the crash along with the passengers. They are glued to what this mystery man is going to do now.

  He closes his eyes and lifts his face toward the sky. “Can you feel the hearts beating around us?”

  “Yes.”

  He looks her in the eyes. “Wait here.”

  He steps right to the very edge, his toes barely an inch away from Hivebeam. Then he reaches out his foot and advances one small step further. As his foot crosses the seemingly invisible threshold, a foggy, multi-colored light ripples around it. As he presses further the light remains in the same spot, mid-air, engulfing his ankle, then his leg, as if he's passing through a thin waterfall of energy. His body interrupting the flow and parting the thin veil.