The Monitor

The Monitor, Part 5

The Block door was secured when I approached. The BOSAM agents there faced me, their weapons pointed at my chest.

"Stand down and surrender your weapon!" barked one as their pulse weapons activated. The blue glow from the end of their rifles stared at me like the eyes of a predator.

I eyed them for a moment, then muttered, "Tyrannis." At once, the rifles deactivated and the suits for the two agents lurched forward. I heard their groans over my comm, but their suits were frozen shut, stuck to the ground and motionless.

I tapped the entry code on the gate and passed through. Unlike before, with the angry mob that assaulted the gate from the other side, there was one figure there. He was clad in a dark cloak, mousy brown hair strewn about his head. He looked up to me as I neared. A man, his face dirty, but it showed lines. He looked a bit older than me, but I wasn't sure quite how much.

"Damon?" I asked.

He nodded. Something about his face struck me as familiar, but I wasn't sure why. "Thank you for coming, Sia. I know this wasn't easy for you."

I stopped a few feet from him. "It wasn't easy seeing my husband taken away, and if he was that excited about you, I want to know why and how I can get him back."

He steepled his hands and paced in thought. "Of course. I'm sorry for that. I was close to a breakthrough, and I hoped incarceration could be avoided."

"Breakthrough on what?" I asked, my eyes narrowed.

He stopped and chuckled. "Haven't you ever wondered what BOSAM is up to, why the secrecy, the need to segregate us so much?"

I shouldered my weapon. "The Experiment, right?"

He pointed to my helmet. "Might want to get rid of that. The hack doesn't disable the two way transmissions."

I laid my helmet on the ground. The air smelled burnt, full of decay, disease, even death. "OK, yeah I'm wondering how BOSAM plans to prevent unnecessary violence-"

"-with the program when they don't mind slaughtering whoever dares not go along." He smirked. "See, it's touching how you accepted it. How any of you allowed removal of a few extra freedoms in the name of safety."

I clenched my fists. "I thought it was helping. But-"

"-But what?" He got closer. "They took your husband, right?"

I stared at him. He paced about me as if he were conducting a BOSAM inspection of my suit. "Someone you cared for was marked as a Rager, and you want to know why?" His lips curved in a half smile, and he ran his hands through his hair. "What if I told you that tracking Ragers wasn't the purpose of the program?"

I tensed up. "Oh?"

With that, he grabbed my helmet and turned it over a few times. "See, the two way communication in these helmets, they provide a link between you and BOSAM central. Like the chips in your neck do. But the chips aren't just created to send data. They're also created to receive."

"Receive what?"

"Suggestions, requests, orders, whatever." He waved his hands around. "But anything received is adhered to. No reservations, doubts, or hesitation."

He explained how the chips were an initial prototype program, intended for militarized use. The chips ordered soldiers in the field so they acted without hesitation, they controlled thought, and they minimized any chance a military advantage would be lost.

"The first phase of the prototype was to monitor one of the most common and deadliest emotions, rage. The idea being a test case to prove the chips can indeed transmit as expected. Once that was completed, a range of further testing would take place, using the suggestions via the chips on some subjects to test their receptiveness." Damon folded his arms and faced me.

"How do you know this, and why should I trust you?" I looked around at the crumbling shanty buildings nearby.

He grasped my chin until our eyes met. "Because I was an architect of the program. There was a time when I believed every one of BOSAM's promises like you and the rest did. When I thought that maybe they held the key to stop the Ragers and restore some order. But I learned the truth of the real application of their system. So, I resisted. And they banished me, along with whoever I could convince to see through their lies."

"What about the Ragers who were transported away?"

"The best I can tell from my spies is they're in holding at present. The Experiment was geared to check those most susceptible to control and how the chips can be tailored to get the best response."

"And the Rage Events before BOSAM?" I asked. "You can't pin that on the Experiment."

Damon shrugged. "We're built to want more. To need more. And when we feel like we've been denied it long enough, some people take action. And when that happens, and those people get noticed, others join in."

"So they used what was already happening to justify this other layer of control?"

He waved his hands about. "They've got strings over you all. And anyone who doesn't play along is sent here to waste away. Once they have New Damai under control, you watch, the Magno-Barrier will be expanded, and this little Experiment will one day become a national government."

He strode around a bit, his hands folded. I'd never seen Damon in person before now, and while what he said about the control BOSAM exerted over us made a lot of sense, he still had the look of a man desperate for power.

"So what are you suggesting we do about it?"

"I've got more hacks into BOSAM. That little skirmish a few weeks ago was my system test. I had to get BOSAM as close as possible first to make sure everything was functional. Now, if you can deliver me into the Central Network Grid, I can deactivate the Monitor chips and get the message out to everyone."

"But where do we go? We've got to breach the Magno-Barrier surrounding this whole place, and that won't be easy."

Damon smirked. "It might be, if we can get our hands on some of the chemicals from one of their fusion plants."

I thought of George and whatever was being done to him at that moment. "If my husband George were here, we could maybe get some of his chemicals from his plant to be used."

"Did you say 'George'?" His face showed a different look, his confident glance giving way to one of concern.

"Yes, why?"

"I may have an idea. Listen up."