Because We Had Us

Chapter 9. Selfish Love

Barnett

     I risked so much inviting Jocelyn into my bunk, but I had to know her. She had a mysterious but also completely predictable essence to her that drove me crazy. Her long dark hair and short strong but strong figure drew me towards her every time, but her looks weren't what enchanted me the most. I watched her from the shadows day by day as she risked everything for the people she loved. She had the biggest heart I had ever seen in a human, and it was as if every thought she had could be read from her facial expressions. She was an accidental open book, though she seemed to be an introvert.

     Every inch of my body down to my core hurt when I had to take away her memory of me, but I I couldn't risk putting her in danger for my own selfish desires. Luckily she loved the tea I gave her, but little did she know it held a memory erasing agent in it. I was given an excess amount of the herb incase I encountered run ins with any of the subjects. My job was to stay hidden and administer the different elements and obstacles during the experiment. The wind tunnels, the holograms, the goose chases, and every other messed up thing was my job.

     At first I constantly felt guilty about my every forced action, but after a while I learned how to shut it all off, that was until I met her. Something about Jo caused all my once trapped emotions to pour out of the flood gates and feel again. The first time I ever saw her she was standing on a couch and calming the chaos of fighting holograms, which she thought were people at the time. She didn't know that her and her friends were the only real people from training that left the ground. I was taken away by her strength, her courage, and her resolute drive she had. After all I was Barnett Nelson, and the men in my family always had quite impossible tales of love, as I had been told.

     Ever since that moment I watched her, I learned her patterns and motives. I knew she could be the survivor, but I also knew her love for her friends and sister would hold her back. I knew what I was supposed to do next. I had to isolate them, I had to try to tear them apart, or make them go stir crazy together, so she could live but I couldn't help but feel torn. How was I supposed to take the best thing about her, what made her so mesmerizing away from her?

     Despite my feelings I knew I had to follow through with the plan. I was born the year of the very first experiment in 1998, also known as the first bird flu outbreak. My parents were apart of the experiment and neither survived, so at not even a year old I was placed into the foster system. As I got older I grew more curious about my parents death, and everyone always told me their cause of death was the flu, which I believed for a while. Finally at age 17 I learned the truth when doctor miller showed up on the doorstep of the boys home and told me he would give me a place to live if I worked for him. I eagerly accepted the deal, despite what happened to my parents. The only thing holding me back from leaving was Corin.

     We were roommates, best friends, and practically brothers. I promised to him that I would always look out for him, so when I left I made Dr. Miller promise me that when Corin came of age he would offer him the same deal he did me. I waited and waited for him to show up before we left earth, but he never did show. It wasn't until my conversation with Jo that I realized Dr. Miller didn't hold up his end of the deal. I knew she was with a boy when I checked the glass bridge cameras yesterday, that is why I sent the holograms after all, call it jealousy but I didn't know that boy was Corin.

     When I found out it was him I became furious with that man who I once looked up to. He didn't grant Corin his freedom; he practically handed him his death sentence. I was also furious about the fact that Corin and I were falling in love with the same girl, only he had the advantage of talking to her, making her laugh, and I didn't. I could only watch her from behind a screen. I got to watch the boy who I considered to be my brother, my best friend, steal the girl.

     I could tear them apart, it was part of the experiment after all, but how was I supposed to do that to Jocelyn? Was I just supposed to hold onto our one memory of us together, that only I knew forever? A part of me wished I wouldn't have wiped her memory of me and placed her back next to Ruth for her friends to find her. A very selfish part of me wanted her all to myself.

     This desperate feeling inside of me was very foreign. Growing up in a boys home I rarely saw girls, besides when I was at school. I'll never forget my last year of high school. I was in eleventh grade when I decided to ask the most popular girl in school Luci Rodgers, who I had been crushing on for years, to the prom. She was gorgeous, with long blonde hair and brown eyes, but I on the other hand was an orphan with all off brand clothes. Instantly I was rejected and heart broken, so when the ambassadors training required me to shut out all feelings I gave in easily, not knowing I would ruin my life at only seventeen before it even started.

     My life was stolen right from our under my young, innocent self. My training was brutal, seemed endless, and what most people now would see as emotional abuse. First we were forced to give away any personal or sentimental items we had, which for me wasn't many. Then we were taken into special isolation rooms, with only our perpetual thoughts and a snooty shrink who was paid to emotionally torture us. She would say things to me like, "It must be hard being an orphan with no loved ones or role models," and, "If I were you I would hate them for leaving me." This monstrous lady was an oxymoron to all therapists, whose job was to help people, for she led me into a deep dark black whole of depression. 

     It wasn't long before I channeled my depression into rage. The rest of the ambassadors and I would fight each other every day before lunch, just to blow off steam. I won my fair share of fights, but those were the days I was especially angry; Angry at my parents for leaving me, angry at the ambassadors group for stripping me of life, and angry at myself for letting them. But everyday I had to get up and face them, face myself, and watch the other ambassadors in training go through the same pain I did. This shared trauma we experienced brought us closer, made us bond, that is until our trainers took that too from us.

     I was all alone, enraged, and full of shame for becoming the monster I was, but I wouldn't let myself feel these feelings. Instead I learned to turn my feelings into drive and ambition. It wasn't for a good cause, though I believed it was at the time. All that ambition I had was for the destruction of myself. I got tired of fighting the ambassadors way so I gave into it. Everyday I worked with my trainers to strip away everything I once loved about myself, everything that made me who I was.

     How was it fair that I sat by and watched the five do the same thing? I couldn't could I? How would I be able to ever face myself again if I turned them into monsters like me? I was on the brink of a breakthrough from my existential crisis when on the monitor I watched as Corin comforted the girl I loved. He placed his hand on her shoulder begging her to rest from her never ending game of sleuth she was playing. Jealously rose in me once again like a wave crashing down on the shore. My wave of jealously slammed against the land, as the monster inside of me showed himself.

     Conflicted and against my better judgement I checked the camera's once again to find Jo solving the puzzle I placed before them. "Of course she was the one to figure it out," I whispered to myself smiling ear to ear. Though I loved Corin, in that moment memorized by Jocelyn, I gave into my selfish desires and initiated stage 2 of the experiment: isolation madness. Fires of fury were started from my flicker of love.