Today is a busy day. Good. I like busy.
Busy keeps all the dark things away from me, stuck on some little island in a far corner of my mind.
I'm organizing about six briefings right now, two considering our next supply run in which we cannot go back to moonBase 051, our best supplier, and one about the brain surgery all newbies have to undergo to remove the brainwasher.
And to think, I've even heard some kids complain about getting this highly organized, well planned out surgery, just because we have older med equipment.
"Ugh! I can't get a read, everything's too sensitive... are you sure it's even something in the brain?"
"Alexx, if it's not coming form the brain then where is it coming from? "I ask, careful not to move my mouth too much. The brain scan machiene beeps at me angrily, once, twice, as if willing me to understand it's mechanics and fix it. I don't. Thirteen is too young to know this stuff.
I look down at my hands. My fingertips are normal, not the glowing bright white they were before--
"What the--"
"I pracitcally jump away from the machiene and over to where Alexx stands. He stares at a moniter, unsure.
"What!?"
"Do you see that?" He asks. I peer at the screen, squinting until a bright white intricate form takes shape, squashed right in the middle of the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes. Speech, memory and emotion.
As the blur takes more of a form, I begin to recognise it. I've seen this before.
It's a tracking chip.
"Fuck it," I breathe out. "I've led them straight to us. All dear father needs now is my code-- all tracking chips have one, and..."
"Stop it. He's searching for one code in the midst of millions."
"It's been three years-- wait, how do you...?"
"I took a brain scan of myself a few weeks ago. And when I saw that, I asked a few others to volunteer." He sounds vaugley guilty. Good. He should be. He kept something that could have killed us all from me.
"We need to kill these things ASAP."
"Agreed. They can find one code, one is all it takes..." He pauses, hesitating. If looks could kill, he'd be dead.
"I'm really sorry, Yuli. I hadn't realized what I was looking at-- if I had, I would've done--"
"Stop. You don't get to apologise. Apologies don't make things better, they don't fix broken things, they don't undo mistakes or clean up messes. You get to fix this."
And of course, as all timing would have it, the world becomes blurry around the edges. "What the--" I start, then fall to the ground writhing.
My head, my head, my head, my head...
People blur in and out of my vision. "They've activated her tracker!" Someone screams. I hear a familiar voice shouting at people, yelling at them to get me in a shuttle, make them think we're passing over the planet instead of ccamped out on it.
"We don't have any numbing agents--"
"--strap her down!"
"--kill her--"
I scream, and scream and scream and scream until I think no more noise can come out. My throaght burns.
My head, my head, my head...
YOU ARE READING
Mindless
Science FictionThe human race has been reprogrammed. Humans are efficient, accurate, hardworking, and of one mind, There are no disputes, no diseases, nothing abnormal. But abnormalities are what give people the ability to think for themselves, and without it, hum...
