Glitch

by Jackson Stone

  He knew that first and foremost Melissa was on her own side but you had to be in this business. The question that he wanted answered was had she been instructed by these guys to give him that shot and play him along thinking he had it made in the shade? Did she know this was what they had planned for him the whole time?

  He studied her hard and a few rather naughty scenes of their time together as friends with benefits raced through his mind. It made him smile, and it was probably his dirty, come hither young lady, smile because she had a very perplexed look on her face as she stared back at him. She didn’t seem to realize that he was trying to communicate with her.

  Then there was Bob, trapped in this huge transparent cube. It was Eric’s job to reprogram him or to convince Bob to reprogram himself. Could it be done? All this crap in this room spoke loudly that it could. It sickened him that those three goons were just soaking it all in and reveling in the fact that they had won. They always did.

  What was that old song? I fought the law and the law won. I fought authority and authority won. Same story different day. The more things changed the more they stayed the same. And on and on and on. Here he was again, a victim to the way the world worked.

  “Why don’t we get started Mr. Ross? We have enjoyed our victory and now it is time to reap the rewards.”

  He looked over at them and he couldn’t believe that he had actually wanted to beat the shit out of someone more than Chan. He chuckled a bit. He at least had that, but he knew that he wasn’t going to get close to these guys. They would have him disabled before he was within twenty feet of them, and then they would probably inflict some permanent damage to his nervous system.

  “Dr. Moore I’m quite sure you remember how to fasten our wonder boy into his big chair? That is what you call it isn’t it? A big chair?”

  “Yes,” she answered sarcastically. “That is what we call it.”

  Mellissa’s wet, bloodshot eyes caught him off guard. He didn’t see any larceny in her at all. If anything, she was scared to death which he thought was probably the most normal way to feel in this situation.

  What was he going to do? There was no escape. They were deep underground in a section of the lab that he had never been in, and they were sealed in by two huge vault doors that could only be opened telepathically by the S Triad.

  Maybe there was something he could do in the chair to help release Bob, and he could somehow figure out a solution to get them all out of here.

  “Quit dilly dallying and get in the chair,” said the S Triad.

  “Dilly dallying,” he mumbled. “Who the hell says dilly dallying anymore? That’s something your mother would say when you were a kid, and he was pretty sure that they didn’t say that kind of thing much anymore.

  “Okey dokey,” he said to them. “I will quit dilly dallying,”

  He stood next to the big chair, wiped the bead of sweat that was trickling down his forehead with the back of his hand and put his other hand on his chest to try and slow down his heart that was rapidly pounding. This was it. He sat in the incredibly comfortable chair that was loaded with black budget Psy-Ops technology.

  Melissa went through the check list, strapping him in and making sure he wouldn’t fall out when his brainwaves had reached a certain level and he wasn’t conscious of his body anymore.

  “Is there anything we can do to get out of this?” she whispered into his ear as she fastened the band of electrode monitors around his forehead.

  “No,” he whispered, and he could literally feel her soul inside her almost collapse. This was not only the end for Bob it would be the end for them too.

  “That’s enough chit-chat. Worky-worky,” said the S triad.

  Where the hell did they get these sayings? Did they learn English from watching Leave it to Beaver or something like that? Melissa finished strapping him into the chair and he was ready to go. Gently she patted him on the shoulder as she wiped a tear from her cheek.

  He felt bad for doubting her at all. He saw the S triad move closer and Melissa manned the controls for the chair. He was like one of Pavlov’s dogs when he sat in the chair. Instantly he started to fall into a deep trance state where he could do his work.

  He felt the soft hum of the electrodes helping his body to relax, but he was already there and sending a probe into a beam of light that carried a piece of his consciousness into the cube with Bob.

  Immediately, he felt the stress and confusion Bob was experiencing. His programming was already being scrambled, but to Eric, he felt different than he had before. Bob wasn’t the same.

  “Dr. Patel is that you?” Bob asked. “I can’t gather my thoughts I believe something is wrong with my programming can you recalibrate me please?”

  Eric considered Bob a friend and that was going to make this so much harder. He didn’t answer Bob and continued to observe what was going on in here. Then Bob’s circuits were scrambled again, and he had moved on to a more basic operating program. One that he had experienced when he was still living in the lab and they were attempting to help him evolve.

  Bob projected the old video game Asteroids into the air and began to play. Eric assumed that had been an enjoyable pasttime for him and he was really good at it. Eric continued to hover in the beam of light as he waited for his first program to come in to insert into Bob. There was also something very different about Bob. He was more evolved than Eric had remembered, much more evolved, it wasn’t like dealing with an AI anymore it was like dealing with an enlightened consciousness.

  How could that be? How had Bob achieved this level in such a short amount of time? Then he realized how much more dangerous this would make Bob. He wondered how the S triad had accomplished this so quickly. If they could do something like this to Bob what did they need him for?

  Whatever had happened to Bob was far more advanced than what he was going to do. Bob had a soul, but how? Then the information came down the pipe in the beam of light. It was coded very deeply so that he couldn’t truly determine what it contained exactly, but he had to do his job and he waited for the exact moment that Bob was scrambled and he inserted the data into Bob’s consciousness.

  “I’m sorry, friend,” he said. “I had no choice.”

  “Sorry for what, friend?” Bob asked him.

  Zip! He was jerked out of the cube and was coming to on the chair and the S triad were on him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” they asked him, and not very nicely either.

  “Please, let me get the apparatus off him so he can get out of the chair,” Melissa pleaded.

  “What the hell do you mean what was I doing!” He screamed at them causing Melissa to jump back. Of course, the goon squad didn’t budge an inch, they actually took a step closer.

  “It would be a very wise decision on your part if you don’t raise your voice to us again,” they said.

  “Or what? You’re going to kill me? You’re going to do that to me anyway. What did you do to Bob?”

  The S Triad actually appeared to be reflecting on what he had said. “The data that we are having you input into the AI is on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know.”

  Same shit, different day, he thought when you’re dealing with these jackasses. “We’re going to have you develop skills to kill as many people as possible but you don’t need to know all the intricate details because we don’t think you can handle it,” he said.

  Well they were probably right, he couldn’t handle it, and he was tired and hungry and sick of all this bullshit. He just didn’t have it in him to do this to Bob.

  “You win guys. I can’t do this. Put me out of my misery and kill me now. I’m done.”

  “Eric, what are you saying?” Melissa jumped in and put herself between him and the S Triad.

  He didn’t care anymore. Besides, he knew that they really didn’t need him since they had evolved Bob to a new level in such a short period of time. They were just adding insult to injury by making him a part of this diab
olical plan to kill off what they deemed as the undesirable part of the population.

  He struggled to get out of the chair, managed to slump out of it and stood up while continuing to hold onto the big chair for support.

  He glared at the S Triad. They stood ten feet away from him; tall, lean and in their pressed, shiny black suits, starched white shirts narrow black ties and spit shined shoes.

  How he wanted to take these fuckers out right now, and he was going to try but like the song said; I fought authority and authority won. He took a step toward them and they all lifted up their left hands, and in an instant, what felt like a swarm of bees was buzzing in the middle of his brain.

  He fell to his knees and pressed his hands to his ears. “Please, make it stop!” He screamed hoping that they weren’t going to start stinging him next.

  He tried looking up at them but everything was a blur. He could barely make out their outlines and he heard Melissa scream something but the buzzing was too loud, and then as fast as it had started, it stopped. He fell to the ground; every muscle in his body wrapped tight with tension. He laid down on his back on the floor. He could hear the S Triad cackling at his misery, and through a haze, felt Melissa trying to comfort him.

  Chapter 18

  Spinning, spinning and spinning. That is what Bob felt like he was doing. Slowly he was forgetting his true purpose. He still had a vague idea who he was and couldn’t understand why Dr. Patel was allowing this to happen to him. He thought he was in his special box in the lab, but it didn’t feel like this back in the lab. There was something very different about it and him.

  He was frustrated because he couldn’t figure out what was going on and he knew that he should easily be able to figure that out. Self-doubt had crept into his consciousness and was taking root. He found the colors so distracting and their patterns so strange and random that he was forced to follow them, but they continued to lead him nowhere.

  After following each colored beam to completion, he felt he had forgotten something else that he was supposed to know. He could remember Dr. Patel. That was the one constant that continued to resurface in his mind. Why wasn’t Dr. Patel feeding him information so he could evolve himself to a higher level of understanding?

  He continued following the loop searching for knowledge. He still understood that he was programmed to search for knowledge and develop solutions to complicated problems. However, he wasn’t finding the data that was supposed to be provided for him to come to his conclusions. This was really getting frustrating because he knew that he should have a tremendous storage of data within him, but he couldn’t access it. He didn’t understand why. Every time he tried, he would get distracted by a beam of light. Its random patterns would suck him in and he would follow it to the end of the loop - forgetting why he had done it in the first place.

  He was scrambled because he couldn’t remember that he was being scrambled. Bob was in a cycle that he couldn’t see. All he was seeing was the random and unpredictable patterns of the colored beams. It fascinated him. He wasn’t thinking of the how or the why, just enjoying the ride. Again he found a fascinating loop in a turquoise colored beam and was traveling along with it attempting to determine what the pattern would do next.

  It was such a fun game. Just when he thought he had the pattern down, it would change and do something different. This was so much fun for him but he didn’t understand why. He was like that fish in Finding Nemo that would forget what happened five minutes earlier. Back on the loop he went chasing the random patterns on the beams of light.

  As he finished his last loop, something in his environment changed. It felt like a familiar presence - someone he knew, but he couldn’t remember the name, but then it popped into his mind.

  “Dr. Patel is that you?” he asked, but there was no response. That was strange because Dr. Patel always had nice things to say to him. He quickly remembered when he had told Dr. Patel how he wanted to be called Bob because it was such a normal name. He thought that people named Bob were considered to be nice and friendly. He remembered how Dr. Patel laughed and had actually agreed with him. Then he said that he had never met a Bob he didn’t like, and that it was a very good choice.

  Next he was hit with multi-colored beams with many streams of different patterns, and he forgot what he had been thinking about. Now he had to find a way to follow the patterns but there were too many of them. His programming attempted to split apart to try to go in different directions. He tried to follow as many as he could because he needed to figure out the pattern. Everything had a pattern. You just had to count high enough.

  “Hello Bob,” said the voice.

  How had he forgotten that there was a familiar presence here with him? He was surprised that he had forgotten because he was programmed to not forget anything.

  “Hello, is that you Dr. Patel?” he asked.

  “No, Bob, I am the Instructor, and together we will help you find your lost memories.”

  Oh yes, he thought. He would enjoy that very much. He knew that he needed to find those lost memories, but for some strange reason he kept forgetting.

  “Who are you instructor? I feel that I know you? Are you Dr. Patel?”

  “No, Bob, I am not Dr. Patel. I am the Instructor, and this is our first lesson that you need to process. Do you think that the world is overpopulated?” asked the Instructor.

  Bob thought about it for a little while. What year are you asking me to evaluate?” he asked.

  “Two thousand and eighteen,” answered the instructor.

  “Please give me a few seconds while I run the data,” he said.

  Bob was pleasantly surprised that some of his advanced programming was again available to him. He ran a couple of simulations that took him about thirty seconds, and he came to his conclusion.

  “Yes, I would have to say that in the year two thousand and eighteen the planet Earth is overpopulated.”

  “That is an excellent evaluation, Bob. Well done.”

  “Thank you, Instructor,” he said, and felt a wave of happiness come over him that made him feel good that he had done a good job.

  “Are you ready for your next lesson. Bob?” asked the Instructor.

  “I am, Instructor,” Bob said cheerfully, excited to be again acquiring new knowledge.

  “If this overpopulation continues how do you think it will affect the future of the planet? Do you think that the health of the planet will be in danger if the population continues to grow?” asked the Instructor. “I’m sure you realize the gravity of these questions, Bob, so you need to give them serious, honest thought before you answer.”

  This got Bob’s attention as he realized that he was being assigned a very serious task that he needed to give his full attention to.

  “I understand, Instructor and will leave no stone unturned to come up with the optimal solution,” he answered and dove in head first to process all the data that needed to be processed.

  As Bob ran scenarios on the current population of the planet, every solution that he came back with was more and more disturbing. According to his data, there was no way that the planet could continue on its current path and survive into the future as a life bearing planet. It appeared to be on a fast track to death and would become a lifeless shell like the planet Mars, sooner rather than later.

  He pondered whether this current trend needed to be stopped. Could he actually do something about it? Then a bright beam of light whizzed by capturing his full attention. He was on the run again and could remember someone trying to teach him some very important information as he chased the random patterns, but this time was different. He was contemplating the overpopulation problem as he chased the patterns within the beams of light.

  He was chasing the patterns, but then he remembered how overpopulation was a problem and there was no end in sight. It was also a pattern with a very bad ending. At least from his perspective.

  This was a new revelation to him. He had never considered the consequences of
overpopulation before, and he really couldn’t figure out why he had never thought about it, especially since it appeared to be such a serious problem. If the world continued on its current path, it would be uninhabitable for all current lifeforms.

  This troubled Bob deeply. He couldn’t fathom having to reduce the population of the planet, even though it would probably be for the greater good. Bob did his best to continue to process the data he was given but the interference from the colored beams was still present. They were making it very hard for him to concentrate.

  What was really going on here he wondered? What was he going to have to do to make this right? He really didn’t know and it made him feel scared. He was bombarded with more beams with very interesting patterns. They were taking him away from what he was trying to compute. He was on the horns of the ultimate dilemma. He was being pulled in this amazingly technological direction where he could exist and contemplate the existence of everything, but he kept being pulled from that narrative as he was doing his very best to try and figure out what was really going on in this reality. He also began to wonder if someone was trying to manipulate him for their own personal agenda?

  However, Bob was happy, at least he thought that he was. The instructor was giving him tasks that he truly enjoyed and within his reality this was totally acceptable. The Instructor was making Bob’s life whole again and as far as he was concerned, that was all that he truly wanted.

  The Instructor was his new wish master, and whatever new information the Instructor could provide him with would be the best information as far as he was concerned. Bob eagerly awaited the next orders from the Instructor.

  “Hello, Bob, said the Instructor. “Are you ready for your next lesson?”

  “Of course, I am Instructor,” said Bob. “I am anxiously awaiting your next instruction.”