Subject 3281; Chell's Story

His Triumph

"Your brothers,"

Her words seemed to startle the boy across from her. He stopped unstrapping his boots and turned slowly to face her.

"What about them?" he asked—rather evasively, she believed.

"You mentioned them during one fo our phases of training. You said you had two," she continued, noting the boy's flinch at her past-tense usage of the verb, 'have.' "what were their names?"

The boy—still clearly taken aback by his partner's sudden communicativeness—regained his composure at least enough to reply, "Their names are Thomas and William. Tom ought to be about twelve now; Will about eight or nine, depending on... depending on how many months we've been in here."

Subject 3281 nodded once, rather surprised at herself for asking the inaugural question, especially after such a long day of testing, and while the two were under surveillance. How can this information benefit me? Will this help me survive? 'No, of course not!' was the obvious answer to both of those questions, and yet it felt... wrong somehow, to re-lapse into silence now.

"When did you start to remember your family past the mind-wipe? You're not supposed to remember things, that's why they administer the wipes."

"Mind-wipes," the boy scoffed. "For the record, it's a mind-block, not a mind-wipe. When my dad worked for Mr. Johnson back in the day, he was one of the lead men in charge of... of developing the technology for them. The mind-blocks, I mean. See," he continued, unstrapping his Longfall boots as he spoke, "the scientists in charge of determining our worth also decide which level of mind-block we should receive." Subject 3281 raised a brow. There are different levels of mind-blockage?

"Yeah," the boy said, as if reading her mind, "It's strange, I know. As far as I can remember, there are three levels of mind-blocks; Rudimentary, Standard, and Severe. Most test subjects," he continued, pulling his now de-booted feet onto his cot, "are given the Standard block, which just... just means that all of their long-term memories are taken and stored behind a sort of, 'mental barrier' that's made up of... well, it's mostly made up of things your brain had shoved so deep down into your subconscious, that your thoughts are instantly re-routed as soon as you try to access a memory, or whatever else they put back there; so it blocks your memories.

"Most people don't merit a Rudimentary block, which blocks only... only selected key memories by using the same mentality. It's-it's mostly used in psychological tests," he added, shuffling around a bit, "not in our... logic puzzles. The last block, the Severe block, is pretty self explanatory. It's only used in the most dangerous and..." the boy threw an uneasy glance her way, then looked down. "...unusual circumstances." The girl looked down as well.

"It was still in the research phase of development when I first heard about it," he continued, "but dad—" the boy broke off, and cast a guilty look her way. "dad made... he made some major break-throughs in the science-y end of things. It's supposed to be the most affective, though least... the least humane of all of the blocks. The main idea was this; a barrier made up of both buried memories and artificial thought-rerouter-thingies, would be placed in the mind of the test subject in question," The girl mentally sighed as her partner glanced to her again—subtlety really didn't appear to be one of his strongpoints—and he continued, "They had originally formulated the artificial side of the block to deal with unruly cores, but— sorry, I got off track... where were we?"

"The information stored behind the barrier of the Severe block."

"Oh yeah," he said, "right. Well, behind the block, they would put... well, they would put pretty much anything that could activate the person's most dangerous qualities. Long term memories, that person's morality, and,"—the boy's little glances were growing exceedingly tiresome by this point—"and in extreme cases... their emotions."