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See AllCh.06 - Contrary Impressions in Impressive Tech
by
FeverDreamer
· 26 Feb 2025
Discovering a new and more effective means of conveying knowledge represented a great opportunity but also a risk. It wasn't that I didn't know what Fiona would do once she learned how to use the technology: I knew exactly what she wanted.
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Ch. 05 - Vivid Impressions in Impressive Tech
by
FeverDreamer
· 23 Feb 2025
My attempts to further develop the technology hit a dead end.Meanwhile, Fiona starts having her own ideas as she learns about its current capabilities.
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Growing Pains, Healing Wounds in Growing Pains, Healing Wounds
Absence Makes The Heart Grow Reckless in Absence Makes The Heart Grow Reckless
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A group of friends spend an evening alone in a haunted house with all sorts of tricks hidden in every corner. Chaos ensues.
Jenny has invited her group of friends to a haunted house. Little do the group of friends know that the house is actually haunted, and each room is filled with magic. As they all run in and find their own entertainment, what awaits them?
CHARACTERS
Mark - this is you, the player. Average height, average build, with short brown hair. Best friends with Steve, and you have a massive crush on Fiona. It isn't exactly a secret, but everyone pretends not to notice anyway.
Steve - your best friend. Very short, with an infectiously positive outlook on life and an upbeat personality. He can befriend basically anyone.
Fiona - your crush, she is a beautiful redhead with long and wavy hair. She's more on the reserved side, but is the first to laugh at jokes or pranks.
Jenny - she's a bit of a nerd, but with a great sense of humor. She's a bit shorter than Jenny, with curly brown hair and glasses. She's usually the one to organize these weird events.
Harry - tall, a bit of a loner, but trustworthy and a good friend. He has a shock of messy medium length brown hair. Can be quite pessimistic but doesn't actually complain much.
Claire - short, blonde, sexy - she's always dressed to impress. Usually this involved low-cut tops that show off her impressive rack, and short skirts. Funnily enough, she doesn't care much for heels, preferring sneakers. She also has a crush on Steve and isn't particularly shy about it.
Andrew - tall, but not as tall as Harry. He's the stereotypical pretty-boy, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and a chiseled face. Good-natured but can come off as a bit uptight.
Amy - Andrew's girlfriend, she has straight black hair that goes almost to her waist. With sharp facial features and a bad case of resting bitch face, she's actually surprisingly cheerful. Loves black and white colors and dresses in them whenever she can.
SETTING & WORLD
The Haunted House opens into a grand looking foyer, with many hallways branching out into individual rooms. Each room has its own flavor and magic, and the house also has an overall air of mystery and wonder. Sometimes it feels like the house has a mind of its own...
Jenny has invited her group of friends to a haunted house. Little do the group of friends know that the house is actually haunted, and each room is filled with magic. As they all run in and find their own entertainment, what awaits them?
CHARACTERS
Mark - this is you, the player. Average height, average build, with short brown hair. Best friends with Steve, and you have a massive crush on Fiona. It isn't exactly a secret, but everyone pretends not to notice anyway.
Steve - your best friend. Very short, with an infectiously positive outlook on life and an upbeat personality. He can befriend basically anyone.
Fiona - your crush, she is a beautiful redhead with long and wavy hair. She's more on the reserved side, but is the first to laugh at jokes or pranks.
Jenny - she's a bit of a nerd, but with a great sense of humor. She's a bit shorter than Jenny, with curly brown hair and glasses. She's usually the one to organize these weird events.
Harry - tall, a bit of a loner, but trustworthy and a good friend. He has a shock of messy medium length brown hair. Can be quite pessimistic but doesn't actually complain much.
Claire - short, blonde, sexy - she's always dressed to impress. Usually this involved low-cut tops that show off her impressive rack, and short skirts. Funnily enough, she doesn't care much for heels, preferring sneakers. She also has a crush on Steve and isn't particularly shy about it.
Andrew - tall, but not as tall as Harry. He's the stereotypical pretty-boy, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and a chiseled face. Good-natured but can come off as a bit uptight.
Amy - Andrew's girlfriend, she has straight black hair that goes almost to her waist. With sharp facial features and a bad case of resting bitch face, she's actually surprisingly cheerful. Loves black and white colors and dresses in them whenever she can.
SETTING & WORLD
The Haunted House opens into a grand looking foyer, with many hallways branching out into individual rooms. Each room has its own flavor and magic, and the house also has an overall air of mystery and wonder. Sometimes it feels like the house has a mind of its own...
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A nerdy female scientist has created a technology to help her and her friends with the perfect Halloween costume, someone else’s body.
Amy has created a possession technology and invited two of her friends over to demonstrate it for them before they head to the Halloween party. The technology is a microchips and high tech pairs of glasses, each of a different color. When a microchip is attached to someone their body is available to possess, that’s where the glasses come in. The glasses transfer the mind of the wearer into the body of anyone wearing a microchip. Amy has invited two of her friends over to show them the technology before the head to the biggest Halloween party and town and find sexy women to possess as their Halloween costume. But before they head out Amy must show them how the microchip and glasses work. She invites her sister in and demonstrates by placing a microchip on her sister and then possessing her sister’s body by putting on one of the pairs of glasses.
CHARACTERS
You - you (the POV) do not exist in the story, you are just a narrator who chooses the actions of the story
Amy - a shy nerdy dark haired girl with a boyish figure.
Katie - Amy’s nerdy blonde haired friend
Penelope - Amy‘s nerdy ginger friend
Tricia - Amy’s beautiful sister
SETTING & WORLD
In Amy’s lab at her parent’s house to start before moving to the Halloween party at the local convention center.
Amy has created a possession technology and invited two of her friends over to demonstrate it for them before they head to the Halloween party. The technology is a microchips and high tech pairs of glasses, each of a different color. When a microchip is attached to someone their body is available to possess, that’s where the glasses come in. The glasses transfer the mind of the wearer into the body of anyone wearing a microchip. Amy has invited two of her friends over to show them the technology before the head to the biggest Halloween party and town and find sexy women to possess as their Halloween costume. But before they head out Amy must show them how the microchip and glasses work. She invites her sister in and demonstrates by placing a microchip on her sister and then possessing her sister’s body by putting on one of the pairs of glasses.
CHARACTERS
You - you (the POV) do not exist in the story, you are just a narrator who chooses the actions of the story
Amy - a shy nerdy dark haired girl with a boyish figure.
Katie - Amy’s nerdy blonde haired friend
Penelope - Amy‘s nerdy ginger friend
Tricia - Amy’s beautiful sister
SETTING & WORLD
In Amy’s lab at her parent’s house to start before moving to the Halloween party at the local convention center.
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A female scientist creates latex catsuits that allow someone to possess the wearer.
Amy is a scientist who has created five latex catsuits that allow the wearer to be possessed by someone else. The catsuits are enhanced with nanotechnology that allows someone to use a special set of high tech glasses to possess the body of the person wearing the catsuit. Each set of glasses connects to a specific catsuit and Amy has made the catsuits different colors to coordinate which glasses go with which catsuit. The glasses also glow with the same color as the catsuit to easily identify. Amy has invited Tracy and 4 of Tracy’s friends over to show off her new invention. She has also invited Tracy to try on the catsuit without telling her what it does.
CHARACTERS
Amy: An average looking 25 year old female nerd
Tracy: Amy’s sister. A beautiful blonde goddess with a fit body and DD boobs.
Jenna: Tracy’s sexy dark haired friend with a body like Tracy
Kara: Tracy’s sexy brunette friend with a body like Tracy
Penelope: Tracy’s sexy red haired friend with a body like Tracy
Lisa: Tracy’s sexy blonde friend with a body like Tracy
SETTING & WORLD
This is set in Amy’s lab to start out which is in her parent’s house.
Amy is a scientist who has created five latex catsuits that allow the wearer to be possessed by someone else. The catsuits are enhanced with nanotechnology that allows someone to use a special set of high tech glasses to possess the body of the person wearing the catsuit. Each set of glasses connects to a specific catsuit and Amy has made the catsuits different colors to coordinate which glasses go with which catsuit. The glasses also glow with the same color as the catsuit to easily identify. Amy has invited Tracy and 4 of Tracy’s friends over to show off her new invention. She has also invited Tracy to try on the catsuit without telling her what it does.
CHARACTERS
Amy: An average looking 25 year old female nerd
Tracy: Amy’s sister. A beautiful blonde goddess with a fit body and DD boobs.
Jenna: Tracy’s sexy dark haired friend with a body like Tracy
Kara: Tracy’s sexy brunette friend with a body like Tracy
Penelope: Tracy’s sexy red haired friend with a body like Tracy
Lisa: Tracy’s sexy blonde friend with a body like Tracy
SETTING & WORLD
This is set in Amy’s lab to start out which is in her parent’s house.
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You and your girlfriend, Judy, have found a pair of socks at a garage sale which have the power to transform you into anyone you want. You just have to put their shoes on while wearing the socks. But beware, just taking the socks off doesn't revert the transformation, so you better not lose them...
CHARACTERS
-MARK (You): A normal, average person. The only thing setting you apart from the masses is your fit physique, built over years of playing college football, but even that is slowly disappearing because of the sedentary lifestyle induced by your office job.
-JUDY: Your girlfriend and the love of your life. Like you, she is the personification of an average young woman. Not too tall nor too short, not too fat nor too slender. There is nothing outstanding about her, she is just...Judy. And you love her for it.
-HELEN: Your next door neighbor and one of the person you despise the most, Helen is middle-age widow living off of her late husband inheritance. Her face is nothing incredible, but her body...ohh her body is to die for. She is tall and curvy in all the right places, with two big 'assets' still perky despite her age and an even better rear. If only it wasn't all ruined by her bitchy personality...
-MIA: The bubbly secretary working at your office. Mia is a blonde, curvy young woman in her twenties working at your office as a secretary. She is a bit of an airhead, but her beauty and her sweet personality make it impossible to get angry at her. You suspect she has a bit of a crush on you, for some reason, but you don't give it much though since your already happily engaged.
JOHN: One of your coworkers. He is a pretty good man, but is a bit of a pervert. He has a crush on Mia.
MICHAEL: Your boss. He is a middle-age black man with an imposing figure. He is gruff, dominating and doesn't accept no for an answer. To be honest, he scares you a little.
SETTING & WORLD
The garage sale, your house and neighborhood, your office, and a nearby mall.
CHARACTERS
-MARK (You): A normal, average person. The only thing setting you apart from the masses is your fit physique, built over years of playing college football, but even that is slowly disappearing because of the sedentary lifestyle induced by your office job.
-JUDY: Your girlfriend and the love of your life. Like you, she is the personification of an average young woman. Not too tall nor too short, not too fat nor too slender. There is nothing outstanding about her, she is just...Judy. And you love her for it.
-HELEN: Your next door neighbor and one of the person you despise the most, Helen is middle-age widow living off of her late husband inheritance. Her face is nothing incredible, but her body...ohh her body is to die for. She is tall and curvy in all the right places, with two big 'assets' still perky despite her age and an even better rear. If only it wasn't all ruined by her bitchy personality...
-MIA: The bubbly secretary working at your office. Mia is a blonde, curvy young woman in her twenties working at your office as a secretary. She is a bit of an airhead, but her beauty and her sweet personality make it impossible to get angry at her. You suspect she has a bit of a crush on you, for some reason, but you don't give it much though since your already happily engaged.
JOHN: One of your coworkers. He is a pretty good man, but is a bit of a pervert. He has a crush on Mia.
MICHAEL: Your boss. He is a middle-age black man with an imposing figure. He is gruff, dominating and doesn't accept no for an answer. To be honest, he scares you a little.
SETTING & WORLD
The garage sale, your house and neighborhood, your office, and a nearby mall.
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You found a possession scroll and tell about your sisters and your twin brother. However you got careless and it falls to the wrong hands to someone you don't want.
CHARACTERS
- HEATHER (YOU) = A normal teenage school girl who is known by everyone in the school. Not popular but you're well known.
- TIM = Your twin brother. Same age as you but he's a bit taller.
- HOLLY = Your oldest sister. Same at your school but she's a senior and prettier than you.
- AUBREY = The third sister in your family. For some reason she's a bit taller than you but not taller than Tim. She also in your school. She's more to hangout with popular so she exposed her skin a lot like midriff and armpits.
- JENNY = The fourth sister in your family. Don't really like noise and being disturbed. Just enter your school in early month.
- SARAH = The fifth sister in your family. How many sisters do you have now? She's only one year different than Jenny so she almost also enter the school. She will enter soon.
- JIMMY = Tim's best friend. A pervert friend to be exact. But he always help Tim out no matter where he is. He also the one who get Tim in pervert stuff. Jimmy is hardcore but Tim not so much, only specific time.
- CODY = Tim's second best friend. Actually Jimmy's friend but he is more hanging out with both of them so they get closer. How Jimmy and Cody best friends? They both are perverts. Loving to sneak in and spy girl taking showers.
- ALLISON = Tim's girlfriend. Loyal and cheer him up always. He attracted to her because of her personality.
- SARAH = Kinda Tim's girlfriend. But he doesn't admit it. She gets along with Allison but when spend with Tim they kinda argue.
- GREG = Tim's Bully. Always pick on Tim when he's alone. Tim even fight him and sometimes win. Greg keep bullying him because one time where he was embarrassed by Tim with Jimmy and Cody even Tim is not the cause of the prank. Sometimes he can bully him because of his protective sisters.
- BILLY = Total pervert in the school. Always getting scold and detention because of groping girls from behind and casually enter girl's bathroom and took pictures to sell. He's interested in Tim's family because of how lucky he is to have five sexy sisters.
- AARON = Tim's childhood friend. Always back Tim up when he's in trouble. Usually spend with him when he's not with pervert friends. That's why his sisters and family love him.
- ROB = Homeless man and pervert. Doesn't have anything to do but eyeing girls everyday. He's not homeless actually, people only thought. He actually lives well in his house alone. He pretend to be homeless so he can spy on girls public without anyone knowing him. Sometimes he got pranked by people but he don't mind because someday he can use it as excuses to prank them back. But when it comes to pervert stuff he's number one. He do anything to get it.
SETTING & WORLD
At garage sale
CHARACTERS
- HEATHER (YOU) = A normal teenage school girl who is known by everyone in the school. Not popular but you're well known.
- TIM = Your twin brother. Same age as you but he's a bit taller.
- HOLLY = Your oldest sister. Same at your school but she's a senior and prettier than you.
- AUBREY = The third sister in your family. For some reason she's a bit taller than you but not taller than Tim. She also in your school. She's more to hangout with popular so she exposed her skin a lot like midriff and armpits.
- JENNY = The fourth sister in your family. Don't really like noise and being disturbed. Just enter your school in early month.
- SARAH = The fifth sister in your family. How many sisters do you have now? She's only one year different than Jenny so she almost also enter the school. She will enter soon.
- JIMMY = Tim's best friend. A pervert friend to be exact. But he always help Tim out no matter where he is. He also the one who get Tim in pervert stuff. Jimmy is hardcore but Tim not so much, only specific time.
- CODY = Tim's second best friend. Actually Jimmy's friend but he is more hanging out with both of them so they get closer. How Jimmy and Cody best friends? They both are perverts. Loving to sneak in and spy girl taking showers.
- ALLISON = Tim's girlfriend. Loyal and cheer him up always. He attracted to her because of her personality.
- SARAH = Kinda Tim's girlfriend. But he doesn't admit it. She gets along with Allison but when spend with Tim they kinda argue.
- GREG = Tim's Bully. Always pick on Tim when he's alone. Tim even fight him and sometimes win. Greg keep bullying him because one time where he was embarrassed by Tim with Jimmy and Cody even Tim is not the cause of the prank. Sometimes he can bully him because of his protective sisters.
- BILLY = Total pervert in the school. Always getting scold and detention because of groping girls from behind and casually enter girl's bathroom and took pictures to sell. He's interested in Tim's family because of how lucky he is to have five sexy sisters.
- AARON = Tim's childhood friend. Always back Tim up when he's in trouble. Usually spend with him when he's not with pervert friends. That's why his sisters and family love him.
- ROB = Homeless man and pervert. Doesn't have anything to do but eyeing girls everyday. He's not homeless actually, people only thought. He actually lives well in his house alone. He pretend to be homeless so he can spy on girls public without anyone knowing him. Sometimes he got pranked by people but he don't mind because someday he can use it as excuses to prank them back. But when it comes to pervert stuff he's number one. He do anything to get it.
SETTING & WORLD
At garage sale
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I try not to think of myself as the bad guy. Yes, I found myself involved in the development of mind-control technology, but I did my best to protect the world from the worst of it. After that, things just kind of happened on their own.At least, that's what I try to tell myself.
In hindsight, I don’t see how things could have turned out any other way. I’m not saying that as an excuse for any of the things I did or as if it makes them any less bad, but having taken the first step, things just kind of kept happening.
It started at work. I won’t say where.
We were testing methods of remote information transmission that didn’t rely on explicit outputs or inputs. Basically communication that bypassed the barriers outlined in models like Berlo’s SMCR: Instead of relying on language to convey meaning, our aim was to find a way to convey meaning itself directly from one mind to at least one other.
Again, with the benefit of hindsight, the implications were obvious, but we weren’t concerned with whether we should, we just wanted to see if we could. Classic hubris of the scientifically minded.
And it turns out we can. Or more specifically, I can. I’ve made sure all traces of the research material has been scrubbed from any database; every hard drive degaussed, every memory stick smashed into tiny pieces, every document shredded and the whole lot set on fire just to be safe. The technology is too dangerous to risk falling into the wrong hands.
Yes, like mine. It turns out my hands are also the wrong hands, but I didn’t know it at the time. I thought if I just kept the research to myself and studied it in secret, I could find a way to use it to make the world a better place. I guess I can still do that. Maybe it will make up for the bad that I’ve done, which on reflection isn’t even that bad.
Sure, I accidentally corrupted the free will of a fellow human being and inadvertently turned them into my loyal assistant and sex slave, but they’re happy. I know they’re happy, because in a lot of ways, they’re also me.
That helps, right?
* * *
Everyone was very excited. It was something worth being excited about. Transmission was old tech and measuring changes in brain waves was old tech, but reliably translating knowledge as it was being recalled into data, then being able to implant that data into another mind was a big fucking deal.
Other departments in other labs were specialising in mechanical transmission - robotics and cybernetics, for replacement or auxiliary limbs or remote work in hazardous environments. Useful stuff, but not nearly as delicate as what we were trying to achieve. They were trying to transmit a signal to a robot hand to gently hold an egg: We were trying to pull a single thought out of one mind and stitch it seamlessly into another.
Our first major breakthrough was impression: Not the conveyance of explicit knowledge or of a specific message, just a vague sense experienced by the broadcaster transmitted to the receiver. It had to be a strong sense, which meant staff with intense phobias being the broadcaster knowing what objects were beneath a series of cups, and the receiver choosing a cup at random based on the impression being transmitted to them.
It wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, but the results fell well outside of what would have been possible on pure guesswork and we were pumped to fine tune the technology to see what it could do.
I say “random,” because even though it wasn’t, even though we knew it wasn’t and even though the receiver knew that a successful test would be proof that it wasn’t, they still felt as though they were choosing randomly. At no point did they feel like they were under someone else’s influence or receiving information externally; in every single instance, they were convinced that the experiment had failed and they were just choosing at random.
That should have been our first warning.
We advanced from cups viewed from two positions to mazes navigated from two positions, and then from mazes to simple guessing games like battleships and go fish. Again, no explicit information, but impressions that still left the receiver under the illusion that they were just lucky guessers.
From simple games we moved on to more advanced guessing games like celebrity heads and poker. This was a significant step forwards, but we were still relying on impressions that could be rationalised by the receiver as guesswork and luck. At no point was anyone being fed information that they couldn’t have conceivably deduced, remembered, calculated or bumbled their way into naturally.
That’s when the second major breakthrough happened. One of our broadcasters, Jackson, had gotten tired transmitting the correct answers to his receiver and had started feeding them deliberately incorrect answers. Nothing obvious - just answers that were close enough that they could make even someone who already knew second guess themselves. His receiver had a post-it note on her forehead with “Tiger Woods” written in permanent marker on it, and she had been given the clue “Golfing champion.”
By now, everyone had gotten used to Jackson’s shenanigans, so we grinned or grimaced as poor Lena rattled through every wrong answer she could be compelled to try.
“Tony the Tiger. Michael Jordan. Walt Disney. Santa Claus. Mickey Mouse. Bullroarer Took. Babe Ruth. Heisenberg. Wait, who the hell is Bullroarer Took?”
She didn’t get an answer, as the lab immediately exploded into questions and exclamations and people generally just freaking out. We’d done it, and somehow completely by accident: An entirely new, explicit piece of information had been seamlessly added to a receiver’s brain and it wasn’t until a few seconds after they’d actually said it that they even realised it wasn’t information from their own brain.
That was our second warning.
The third warning came quite a bit later, but by pure chance, I was the only one who noticed and when I did, I acted immediately.
Jackson’s shenanigans had inadvertently opened up new paths of inquiry. By randomly but deliberately poking at areas of knowledge specifically unrelated to the task at hand, we were able to isolate the neural activation patterns associated with conscious knowledge independent of emotional belief.
What followed were several successful instances of transmitting discrete pieces of data from broadcaster to receiver, however we then ran into the new problem of getting the receiver to distinguish between their own thoughts and the information being fed to them. Furthermore, when asked to explain the reasoning behind the transmitted answers, receivers became dismissive, evasive and sometimes even agitated, later explaining that the information just “felt true,” a sensation that applied even in instances where the receiver had been deliberately fed incorrect data.
With mounting dread, we realised the danger of the technology we had created.
The true horror sunk in during a coffee break, when by pure chance I saw Jackon’s reflection making an odd hand gesture over the drink of a coworker whose back was turned. I had to force myself to turn around slowly, watching Jackson converse casually without his eyes leaving her face. It wasn’t until she took a sip that he seemed to relax and noticed me by the coffee machine. I did my best to betray nothing, placing my own coffee onto the table in front of him and moving as though to sit when I “remembered” to get cream from the fridge.
This time when I turned I saw his hurried motion plainly in the brushed metal door, and it took all the self control I had not to confront him or punch his lights out. I returned to the table, adding the cream without sitting before returning it to the fridge. I picked up my coffee and was about to walk out of the room with it when Jackson called out to me with some innocent question about my department. It quickly became clear that he was stalling, waiting for me to drink, so I feigned a casual sip with tightly pursed lips as we spoke and he seemed to relax. I took the opportunity to leave with my cup and as soon as I was out of sight went straight to the micro-observation facility.
We had initially aimed to use physical chips implanted in the subject’s brains to establish a connection, but the risk of accidental damage compounded by multiple intrusions in the case of faulty hardware or the replacement of redundant units made this untenable. Thankfully (or perhaps not), we were assisted by our sister department in nanotech, who had developed a biomonitoring system using carbide nanites that could enter the bloodstream through the digestive tract. To test for successful nanite absorption, we just needed to take a blood sample and insert it into an observation case. And it didn’t just work on blood.
I felt my stomach drop as the coffee reading came back positive. A concentration high enough that even a mouthful would fully colonise a body within hours. I felt sick as I entered a vial of my own saliva, and when that test also came back as a weak positive and rising, I almost fainted.
That fucking bastard.
I had to stop myself from running to the configuration deck and came to a sudden halt halfway there. There’s no way Jackson could have done anything underhanded on one of the terminals without someone seeing him. The room, the equipment and change was constantly monitored as a security measure. If he were going to do anything without being detected, it would need to be somewhere private where he could still access the server and the network. He wasn’t authorised to be anywhere near the site’s core infrastructure, but it was the only place where he would have everything he needed.
I didn’t know how I was going to get access to the server room when I arrived - it’s not as if I had access either - but it turned out that I didn’t need access and neither did Jackson.
Lena had access, and she had left the door unlocked.
She looked up at me owlishly from where she was sitting on the floor, cross-legged with a laptop on her knees.
“Oh, Hi Marcus,” she said, parroting Tommy Wiseau’s infamous line as though we were meeting in the break room.
“Lena?” I asked cautiously. “What are you working on?”
“Oh, I’m just making sure that anytime a new host comes online, they’re set to receive only,” she said, as though she were just filling out her calendar. She turned the laptop so that I could see the screen and pointed at the second of two dots on a map of the facility. “See? There you are right next to me. You came online just a minute ago, so I’ve already made you a receiver.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Because Jackson told me to.”
I stared at the unquestioning innocence in her eyes.
“And you have to do what he says?”
Lena rolled her eyes at me. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I repeated. The silence was broken only by the steady whine of cooling fans.
Eventually, Lena shifted uncomfortably. “So, what are you doing here? You’re not IT.”
Not wanting to alarm her, I said the first thing that I could think of. “No, but Jackson sent me.”
The way Lena’s face lit up at his name made me feel ill.
“Does that mean you’re working for him too?”
“Yes,” I lied. Like a man laying down rails for a moving train as he’s riding on it, I grabbed blindly for any string of words that might work. “And he told me to come get you for something important. He’s… outside in the parking lot and says you need to come straight away.”
Lena’s brow wrinkled. “Oh, but I have to stay here for stage three. I’ve just finished getting everyone online.”
“That’s fine. He told me to take over. I have to do what he says, remember? You’ve finished stage two, haven’t you? He says you’ve done a very good job.”
Again, the look of bliss that took over Lena’s face twisted my gut.
“Great! Where can I find him?”
“He just told me as he was walking out,” I said, letting Lena stand up and hand me the laptop. “You’ll have to go look for him. He’s keeping an eye out for you.”
“Okay!” I watched Lena leave the room and closed it behind her, making sure to lock it this time. We shared our parking with three other departments across eight floors, so unless Jackson really was there already, that would keep her out of the way.
She’d been right. Jackson had worked his way through the entire department’s staff and I had a live view of every single person in the facility. Watching the glowing dots meander around the map gave me a truly terrifying glimpse into the future we had made possible.
What caught my eye was something that didn’t exist in the standard interface. We had created individual controls for the kind of transmissions we wanted and the direction we wanted them to go in, but Lena had added a new input without a label.
Clicking on it, a text field appears in which the name “Enfield, Lena” was already populated followed by a yes/no switch.
I pressed “yes” and blacked out.
* * *
I was in the parking lot, on the blue level by bay two-zero-two. At first I wondered how I had been suddenly transported when I realised how strange I felt all over - my body, my clothes and my hair all felt wrong somehow.
I looked down and felt the strength leave my legs as I saw a woman’s body stretching out below me. A woman’s body in a pair of black Mary Janes, matching pencil skirt, white dress shirt and a lanyard whose ID read “Lena Enfield.”
I stared at myself in shock, having fallen to my knees and began running my unfamiliar hands over my unfamiliar body, trying to confirm that I wasn’t somehow dreaming.
“Lena!” a voice echoed across the concrete, causing me to jump in a mix of fear and guilt. I turned in the direction of the voice and felt my heart quail at the side of Jackson striding towards me, his face contorted with fury.
In that instant I felt an overwhelming sense of panic take over and I wanted to be absolutely anywhere except anywhere near him, and in that same moment I felt myself dragged back into the cool air of the server room, sitting on the floor with Lena’s laptop on my legs.
We had theorised that it was possible, but had never been arrogant or stupid enough to try it. The psychological risks and ethical dangers it posed were beyond our ability to rationalise and well outside the original scope of the project, though there were rumours that it would eventually be turned towards a similar end.
But I didn’t have time to marvel at the development. Jackson would interrogate Lena, Lena would tell him the truth, and he would run straight here. I had to act fast.
Jackson would head straight for the server room once he realised what had happened.
I could head straight for the director’s office, but there was no guarantee that she wasn’t also in on his plot. I checked the map again: She had her nanites installed and despite her rank in the organisation had also been set to receive, as had every guard on her floor. Jackson really intended to just dominate everyone in the building. I had all the proof I needed to expose Jackson and have him arrested.
We would need to deprogram Lena. Shit, assuming that was even possible. God only knew how badly Jackson had been screwing with her brain, or for how long. And there was always a chance the higher ups would find out and do what higher ups always do when they have the opportunity to take even more wealth and power.
I fretted for much longer than I should have under the circumstances. Maybe there really was no other way, or maybe I was just deliberately backing myself into a corner. Whatever the case, the sudden jangle of keys at the door alerted me that I had run out of time, and that within seconds, Jackson would be in the room to steal back the laptop, or possibly even frame me, now that he’d been discovered.
I’d considered the option and dismissed it as immoral. Self-serving. A road too dangerous to even consider walking down. But having failed to take any other action, it was the only one I had left.
It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. When the chips are down and the pressure is on, the only person you can depend on is yourself.
I dragged my own icon into the super broadcaster position, and hit “execute.”
* * *
There wasn’t any sudden rush of sensation. There never had been: Broadcasting just took the data you wanted to impart and transmitted a copy to the target. But for some reason, I still expected something.
What did happen was the sound of keys hitting the floor outside, followed by a hollow groan of absolute despair.
I unlocked the door and opened it to find Jackson, grey-faced and swaying with his hands covering his face. Lena was behind him, looking pitiful, but not nearly as distraught as Jackson.
“Hello, Jackson.” I said flatly.
“Don’t…” he moaned through his hands.
People had begun to file into the room, ashen-faced but with a mix of anger, all of them staring at Jackson as he tried to hide behind himself.
I’d used the nanites to broadcast two things: The knowledge of what Jackson had tried to do, and my overwhelming disgust at him for the attempt.
Now everyone knew what he’d done, he knew that they knew and he shared their hatred for himself because I had copied it directly from my mind into his.
“Nobody hurt him,” I said, seeing the balled fists and shaking hands around me. “Nobody let him hurt himself, either. Get him out of here.”
Four men approached Jackson, who didn’t resist as they grimly marched him away. I turned to Lena, who was running her hands through her hair, wide-eyed and shivering.
“H-he was-s in m-my head…” she stammered.
I didn’t have any words of consolation for her. Least of all, because not moments ago I had also been inside her mind. The only reason she knew about Jackson was because I had “told” her. I motioned for another one of the staff to take her away.
“Alright, everyone,” I said to those who remained. “I want an all-hands meeting in the break room. Tell everyone you see, and someone head upstairs to find…”
I trailed off as I realised how much time would be wasted finding everyone in the building and telling them where to go, and then more wasted simply having the meeting itself, and that was assuming nobody disagreed with what I was about to say.
Well, neither of those things were problems anymore, were they?
I activated my transmitter and broadcast a new set of instructions.
“The project is to be terminated. Nobody can be trusted with this power. Destroy all hardware, all documentation, strip the building down and wipe everything.”
The effect was instant: People began moving with an almost frantic purpose, delegating tasks to themselves or people nearby as files began to be pulled out of drawers and shredded, computers wiped and machinery disassembled. I had intended to join in, but found myself at sea in a centre of bustling activity, so instead walked myself out to my car to lie down and clear my head.
Had I done the right thing? Yes. Absolutely. Any other decision would have exposed everyone to the risk of Jackson regaining control, or the project being compromised by a figure in authority. Even if the director was of sound moral character, her superiors might not be, or their superiors above them. Someone, somewhere in the organisation would have tried to take advantage, just like Jackson did. Better to destroy everything and pretend it never happened.
I watched numbly as a procession of staff began to file out with armfuls and boxes of shredded documents, leaving trails of confetti in their wake. Like ants, they threw their boxes into one of the massive steel containers used for waste disposal. Some others had started fussing over the nearest cars, and it took me a while to realise that they were siphoning the petrol.
My initial alarm was quelled somewhat when they left the containers of fuel to one side instead of lighting it immediately. Any kind of fire would alert the emergency services, who would no doubt try to stop what was happening once they arrived.
It was actually kind of peaceful, sitting apart from the action and just watching it unfold. Almost like watching an ant colony cleaning out a lunchbox: All of the inside bits got broken down and taken outside until all that was left was the shell.
They had filled all six bins and four of the cargo trucks by the time they were done. Everything had been reduced to the smallest parts it could be torn, cut, unscrewed, unplugged or just smashed into. There was no cheering as fuel was added or the flames lit from a safe distance. Just the quiet relief of a terrible future averted.
Someone coughed near me and I turned to see Lena and a few other members of staff with a single trolley loaded with some equipment that hadn’t been destroyed. Confused, I turned to Lena.
“Aren’t you going to add it to the pile?” I asked.
“Not this stuff,” Lena said cheerfully, apparently recovered from her earlier breakdown. “We figured it would be a shame if we destroyed literally everything, so we’ve saved some of it. And because you decided to be mister lazy-pants while the rest of us were hard at work, we’re giving you the job of taking care of it.”
I couldn’t stop my brow furrowing in confusion. “I never told you to do that.”
Lena scoffed as the others began loading the equipment into my car. “Good. We’re not here to do what you tell us. The vote was unanimous: We’re all getting out, so you get to babysit the last remnants. Hide it, destroy it, do whatever you want. This is your share of the responsibility. Maybe next time, do your bit instead of wandering off for a nap, okay?”
And with that, they left to join the rapidly dispersing crowd as everyone jumped into their cars or hitched a ride from the others. A column of black smoke reached up from the facility, and it would be a matter of minutes before the firefighters arrived. Just by virtue of the work we were doing, the cops wouldn’t be far behind.
Without time to get everything out of my car and into the fire, I jumped into the driver’s seat and made my way out with the rest, racking my brain furiously as I tried to avoid speeding on my way home.
I never told them to set aside any equipment for me. No, I never CONSCIOUSLY told them. That really was the only explanation: There was no way that - after being given the artificial impression that the entire project needed to be burned to the ground - they would somehow conveniently decide that I should be trusted with the last pieces of evidence. Not just any evidence, either: At a glance I could tell that I had been left with everything I needed to manufacture and configure the nanites myself, just on a much smaller scale.
Despite my best intentions, some small part of myself had subconsciously implanted the addendum that one way or another, I should have the power to continue the project privately.
Fine, then. I’d get home, pack up what little I could fit and get the hell out of the city, state, maybe even country before finding somewhere I could safely destroy the last remains of a terrible mistake.
That was almost two years ago.
I never did get around to destroying that equipment.
In hindsight, I don’t see how things could have turned out any other way. I’m not saying that as an excuse for any of the things I did or as if it makes them any less bad, but having taken the first step, things just kind of kept happening.
It started at work. I won’t say where.
We were testing methods of remote information transmission that didn’t rely on explicit outputs or inputs. Basically communication that bypassed the barriers outlined in models like Berlo’s SMCR: Instead of relying on language to convey meaning, our aim was to find a way to convey meaning itself directly from one mind to at least one other.
Again, with the benefit of hindsight, the implications were obvious, but we weren’t concerned with whether we should, we just wanted to see if we could. Classic hubris of the scientifically minded.
And it turns out we can. Or more specifically, I can. I’ve made sure all traces of the research material has been scrubbed from any database; every hard drive degaussed, every memory stick smashed into tiny pieces, every document shredded and the whole lot set on fire just to be safe. The technology is too dangerous to risk falling into the wrong hands.
Yes, like mine. It turns out my hands are also the wrong hands, but I didn’t know it at the time. I thought if I just kept the research to myself and studied it in secret, I could find a way to use it to make the world a better place. I guess I can still do that. Maybe it will make up for the bad that I’ve done, which on reflection isn’t even that bad.
Sure, I accidentally corrupted the free will of a fellow human being and inadvertently turned them into my loyal assistant and sex slave, but they’re happy. I know they’re happy, because in a lot of ways, they’re also me.
That helps, right?
* * *
Everyone was very excited. It was something worth being excited about. Transmission was old tech and measuring changes in brain waves was old tech, but reliably translating knowledge as it was being recalled into data, then being able to implant that data into another mind was a big fucking deal.
Other departments in other labs were specialising in mechanical transmission - robotics and cybernetics, for replacement or auxiliary limbs or remote work in hazardous environments. Useful stuff, but not nearly as delicate as what we were trying to achieve. They were trying to transmit a signal to a robot hand to gently hold an egg: We were trying to pull a single thought out of one mind and stitch it seamlessly into another.
Our first major breakthrough was impression: Not the conveyance of explicit knowledge or of a specific message, just a vague sense experienced by the broadcaster transmitted to the receiver. It had to be a strong sense, which meant staff with intense phobias being the broadcaster knowing what objects were beneath a series of cups, and the receiver choosing a cup at random based on the impression being transmitted to them.
It wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, but the results fell well outside of what would have been possible on pure guesswork and we were pumped to fine tune the technology to see what it could do.
I say “random,” because even though it wasn’t, even though we knew it wasn’t and even though the receiver knew that a successful test would be proof that it wasn’t, they still felt as though they were choosing randomly. At no point did they feel like they were under someone else’s influence or receiving information externally; in every single instance, they were convinced that the experiment had failed and they were just choosing at random.
That should have been our first warning.
We advanced from cups viewed from two positions to mazes navigated from two positions, and then from mazes to simple guessing games like battleships and go fish. Again, no explicit information, but impressions that still left the receiver under the illusion that they were just lucky guessers.
From simple games we moved on to more advanced guessing games like celebrity heads and poker. This was a significant step forwards, but we were still relying on impressions that could be rationalised by the receiver as guesswork and luck. At no point was anyone being fed information that they couldn’t have conceivably deduced, remembered, calculated or bumbled their way into naturally.
That’s when the second major breakthrough happened. One of our broadcasters, Jackson, had gotten tired transmitting the correct answers to his receiver and had started feeding them deliberately incorrect answers. Nothing obvious - just answers that were close enough that they could make even someone who already knew second guess themselves. His receiver had a post-it note on her forehead with “Tiger Woods” written in permanent marker on it, and she had been given the clue “Golfing champion.”
By now, everyone had gotten used to Jackson’s shenanigans, so we grinned or grimaced as poor Lena rattled through every wrong answer she could be compelled to try.
“Tony the Tiger. Michael Jordan. Walt Disney. Santa Claus. Mickey Mouse. Bullroarer Took. Babe Ruth. Heisenberg. Wait, who the hell is Bullroarer Took?”
She didn’t get an answer, as the lab immediately exploded into questions and exclamations and people generally just freaking out. We’d done it, and somehow completely by accident: An entirely new, explicit piece of information had been seamlessly added to a receiver’s brain and it wasn’t until a few seconds after they’d actually said it that they even realised it wasn’t information from their own brain.
That was our second warning.
The third warning came quite a bit later, but by pure chance, I was the only one who noticed and when I did, I acted immediately.
Jackson’s shenanigans had inadvertently opened up new paths of inquiry. By randomly but deliberately poking at areas of knowledge specifically unrelated to the task at hand, we were able to isolate the neural activation patterns associated with conscious knowledge independent of emotional belief.
What followed were several successful instances of transmitting discrete pieces of data from broadcaster to receiver, however we then ran into the new problem of getting the receiver to distinguish between their own thoughts and the information being fed to them. Furthermore, when asked to explain the reasoning behind the transmitted answers, receivers became dismissive, evasive and sometimes even agitated, later explaining that the information just “felt true,” a sensation that applied even in instances where the receiver had been deliberately fed incorrect data.
With mounting dread, we realised the danger of the technology we had created.
The true horror sunk in during a coffee break, when by pure chance I saw Jackon’s reflection making an odd hand gesture over the drink of a coworker whose back was turned. I had to force myself to turn around slowly, watching Jackson converse casually without his eyes leaving her face. It wasn’t until she took a sip that he seemed to relax and noticed me by the coffee machine. I did my best to betray nothing, placing my own coffee onto the table in front of him and moving as though to sit when I “remembered” to get cream from the fridge.
This time when I turned I saw his hurried motion plainly in the brushed metal door, and it took all the self control I had not to confront him or punch his lights out. I returned to the table, adding the cream without sitting before returning it to the fridge. I picked up my coffee and was about to walk out of the room with it when Jackson called out to me with some innocent question about my department. It quickly became clear that he was stalling, waiting for me to drink, so I feigned a casual sip with tightly pursed lips as we spoke and he seemed to relax. I took the opportunity to leave with my cup and as soon as I was out of sight went straight to the micro-observation facility.
We had initially aimed to use physical chips implanted in the subject’s brains to establish a connection, but the risk of accidental damage compounded by multiple intrusions in the case of faulty hardware or the replacement of redundant units made this untenable. Thankfully (or perhaps not), we were assisted by our sister department in nanotech, who had developed a biomonitoring system using carbide nanites that could enter the bloodstream through the digestive tract. To test for successful nanite absorption, we just needed to take a blood sample and insert it into an observation case. And it didn’t just work on blood.
I felt my stomach drop as the coffee reading came back positive. A concentration high enough that even a mouthful would fully colonise a body within hours. I felt sick as I entered a vial of my own saliva, and when that test also came back as a weak positive and rising, I almost fainted.
That fucking bastard.
I had to stop myself from running to the configuration deck and came to a sudden halt halfway there. There’s no way Jackson could have done anything underhanded on one of the terminals without someone seeing him. The room, the equipment and change was constantly monitored as a security measure. If he were going to do anything without being detected, it would need to be somewhere private where he could still access the server and the network. He wasn’t authorised to be anywhere near the site’s core infrastructure, but it was the only place where he would have everything he needed.
I didn’t know how I was going to get access to the server room when I arrived - it’s not as if I had access either - but it turned out that I didn’t need access and neither did Jackson.
Lena had access, and she had left the door unlocked.
She looked up at me owlishly from where she was sitting on the floor, cross-legged with a laptop on her knees.
“Oh, Hi Marcus,” she said, parroting Tommy Wiseau’s infamous line as though we were meeting in the break room.
“Lena?” I asked cautiously. “What are you working on?”
“Oh, I’m just making sure that anytime a new host comes online, they’re set to receive only,” she said, as though she were just filling out her calendar. She turned the laptop so that I could see the screen and pointed at the second of two dots on a map of the facility. “See? There you are right next to me. You came online just a minute ago, so I’ve already made you a receiver.”
“And why would you do that?”
“Because Jackson told me to.”
I stared at the unquestioning innocence in her eyes.
“And you have to do what he says?”
Lena rolled her eyes at me. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I repeated. The silence was broken only by the steady whine of cooling fans.
Eventually, Lena shifted uncomfortably. “So, what are you doing here? You’re not IT.”
Not wanting to alarm her, I said the first thing that I could think of. “No, but Jackson sent me.”
The way Lena’s face lit up at his name made me feel ill.
“Does that mean you’re working for him too?”
“Yes,” I lied. Like a man laying down rails for a moving train as he’s riding on it, I grabbed blindly for any string of words that might work. “And he told me to come get you for something important. He’s… outside in the parking lot and says you need to come straight away.”
Lena’s brow wrinkled. “Oh, but I have to stay here for stage three. I’ve just finished getting everyone online.”
“That’s fine. He told me to take over. I have to do what he says, remember? You’ve finished stage two, haven’t you? He says you’ve done a very good job.”
Again, the look of bliss that took over Lena’s face twisted my gut.
“Great! Where can I find him?”
“He just told me as he was walking out,” I said, letting Lena stand up and hand me the laptop. “You’ll have to go look for him. He’s keeping an eye out for you.”
“Okay!” I watched Lena leave the room and closed it behind her, making sure to lock it this time. We shared our parking with three other departments across eight floors, so unless Jackson really was there already, that would keep her out of the way.
She’d been right. Jackson had worked his way through the entire department’s staff and I had a live view of every single person in the facility. Watching the glowing dots meander around the map gave me a truly terrifying glimpse into the future we had made possible.
What caught my eye was something that didn’t exist in the standard interface. We had created individual controls for the kind of transmissions we wanted and the direction we wanted them to go in, but Lena had added a new input without a label.
Clicking on it, a text field appears in which the name “Enfield, Lena” was already populated followed by a yes/no switch.
I pressed “yes” and blacked out.
* * *
I was in the parking lot, on the blue level by bay two-zero-two. At first I wondered how I had been suddenly transported when I realised how strange I felt all over - my body, my clothes and my hair all felt wrong somehow.
I looked down and felt the strength leave my legs as I saw a woman’s body stretching out below me. A woman’s body in a pair of black Mary Janes, matching pencil skirt, white dress shirt and a lanyard whose ID read “Lena Enfield.”
I stared at myself in shock, having fallen to my knees and began running my unfamiliar hands over my unfamiliar body, trying to confirm that I wasn’t somehow dreaming.
“Lena!” a voice echoed across the concrete, causing me to jump in a mix of fear and guilt. I turned in the direction of the voice and felt my heart quail at the side of Jackson striding towards me, his face contorted with fury.
In that instant I felt an overwhelming sense of panic take over and I wanted to be absolutely anywhere except anywhere near him, and in that same moment I felt myself dragged back into the cool air of the server room, sitting on the floor with Lena’s laptop on my legs.
We had theorised that it was possible, but had never been arrogant or stupid enough to try it. The psychological risks and ethical dangers it posed were beyond our ability to rationalise and well outside the original scope of the project, though there were rumours that it would eventually be turned towards a similar end.
But I didn’t have time to marvel at the development. Jackson would interrogate Lena, Lena would tell him the truth, and he would run straight here. I had to act fast.
Jackson would head straight for the server room once he realised what had happened.
I could head straight for the director’s office, but there was no guarantee that she wasn’t also in on his plot. I checked the map again: She had her nanites installed and despite her rank in the organisation had also been set to receive, as had every guard on her floor. Jackson really intended to just dominate everyone in the building. I had all the proof I needed to expose Jackson and have him arrested.
We would need to deprogram Lena. Shit, assuming that was even possible. God only knew how badly Jackson had been screwing with her brain, or for how long. And there was always a chance the higher ups would find out and do what higher ups always do when they have the opportunity to take even more wealth and power.
I fretted for much longer than I should have under the circumstances. Maybe there really was no other way, or maybe I was just deliberately backing myself into a corner. Whatever the case, the sudden jangle of keys at the door alerted me that I had run out of time, and that within seconds, Jackson would be in the room to steal back the laptop, or possibly even frame me, now that he’d been discovered.
I’d considered the option and dismissed it as immoral. Self-serving. A road too dangerous to even consider walking down. But having failed to take any other action, it was the only one I had left.
It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. When the chips are down and the pressure is on, the only person you can depend on is yourself.
I dragged my own icon into the super broadcaster position, and hit “execute.”
* * *
There wasn’t any sudden rush of sensation. There never had been: Broadcasting just took the data you wanted to impart and transmitted a copy to the target. But for some reason, I still expected something.
What did happen was the sound of keys hitting the floor outside, followed by a hollow groan of absolute despair.
I unlocked the door and opened it to find Jackson, grey-faced and swaying with his hands covering his face. Lena was behind him, looking pitiful, but not nearly as distraught as Jackson.
“Hello, Jackson.” I said flatly.
“Don’t…” he moaned through his hands.
People had begun to file into the room, ashen-faced but with a mix of anger, all of them staring at Jackson as he tried to hide behind himself.
I’d used the nanites to broadcast two things: The knowledge of what Jackson had tried to do, and my overwhelming disgust at him for the attempt.
Now everyone knew what he’d done, he knew that they knew and he shared their hatred for himself because I had copied it directly from my mind into his.
“Nobody hurt him,” I said, seeing the balled fists and shaking hands around me. “Nobody let him hurt himself, either. Get him out of here.”
Four men approached Jackson, who didn’t resist as they grimly marched him away. I turned to Lena, who was running her hands through her hair, wide-eyed and shivering.
“H-he was-s in m-my head…” she stammered.
I didn’t have any words of consolation for her. Least of all, because not moments ago I had also been inside her mind. The only reason she knew about Jackson was because I had “told” her. I motioned for another one of the staff to take her away.
“Alright, everyone,” I said to those who remained. “I want an all-hands meeting in the break room. Tell everyone you see, and someone head upstairs to find…”
I trailed off as I realised how much time would be wasted finding everyone in the building and telling them where to go, and then more wasted simply having the meeting itself, and that was assuming nobody disagreed with what I was about to say.
Well, neither of those things were problems anymore, were they?
I activated my transmitter and broadcast a new set of instructions.
“The project is to be terminated. Nobody can be trusted with this power. Destroy all hardware, all documentation, strip the building down and wipe everything.”
The effect was instant: People began moving with an almost frantic purpose, delegating tasks to themselves or people nearby as files began to be pulled out of drawers and shredded, computers wiped and machinery disassembled. I had intended to join in, but found myself at sea in a centre of bustling activity, so instead walked myself out to my car to lie down and clear my head.
Had I done the right thing? Yes. Absolutely. Any other decision would have exposed everyone to the risk of Jackson regaining control, or the project being compromised by a figure in authority. Even if the director was of sound moral character, her superiors might not be, or their superiors above them. Someone, somewhere in the organisation would have tried to take advantage, just like Jackson did. Better to destroy everything and pretend it never happened.
I watched numbly as a procession of staff began to file out with armfuls and boxes of shredded documents, leaving trails of confetti in their wake. Like ants, they threw their boxes into one of the massive steel containers used for waste disposal. Some others had started fussing over the nearest cars, and it took me a while to realise that they were siphoning the petrol.
My initial alarm was quelled somewhat when they left the containers of fuel to one side instead of lighting it immediately. Any kind of fire would alert the emergency services, who would no doubt try to stop what was happening once they arrived.
It was actually kind of peaceful, sitting apart from the action and just watching it unfold. Almost like watching an ant colony cleaning out a lunchbox: All of the inside bits got broken down and taken outside until all that was left was the shell.
They had filled all six bins and four of the cargo trucks by the time they were done. Everything had been reduced to the smallest parts it could be torn, cut, unscrewed, unplugged or just smashed into. There was no cheering as fuel was added or the flames lit from a safe distance. Just the quiet relief of a terrible future averted.
Someone coughed near me and I turned to see Lena and a few other members of staff with a single trolley loaded with some equipment that hadn’t been destroyed. Confused, I turned to Lena.
“Aren’t you going to add it to the pile?” I asked.
“Not this stuff,” Lena said cheerfully, apparently recovered from her earlier breakdown. “We figured it would be a shame if we destroyed literally everything, so we’ve saved some of it. And because you decided to be mister lazy-pants while the rest of us were hard at work, we’re giving you the job of taking care of it.”
I couldn’t stop my brow furrowing in confusion. “I never told you to do that.”
Lena scoffed as the others began loading the equipment into my car. “Good. We’re not here to do what you tell us. The vote was unanimous: We’re all getting out, so you get to babysit the last remnants. Hide it, destroy it, do whatever you want. This is your share of the responsibility. Maybe next time, do your bit instead of wandering off for a nap, okay?”
And with that, they left to join the rapidly dispersing crowd as everyone jumped into their cars or hitched a ride from the others. A column of black smoke reached up from the facility, and it would be a matter of minutes before the firefighters arrived. Just by virtue of the work we were doing, the cops wouldn’t be far behind.
Without time to get everything out of my car and into the fire, I jumped into the driver’s seat and made my way out with the rest, racking my brain furiously as I tried to avoid speeding on my way home.
I never told them to set aside any equipment for me. No, I never CONSCIOUSLY told them. That really was the only explanation: There was no way that - after being given the artificial impression that the entire project needed to be burned to the ground - they would somehow conveniently decide that I should be trusted with the last pieces of evidence. Not just any evidence, either: At a glance I could tell that I had been left with everything I needed to manufacture and configure the nanites myself, just on a much smaller scale.
Despite my best intentions, some small part of myself had subconsciously implanted the addendum that one way or another, I should have the power to continue the project privately.
Fine, then. I’d get home, pack up what little I could fit and get the hell out of the city, state, maybe even country before finding somewhere I could safely destroy the last remains of a terrible mistake.
That was almost two years ago.
I never did get around to destroying that equipment.
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