Chapter Five

Before ST finished whispering the last word two men threw him onto the ground. ST’s eyes were filled with anger, but he couldn’t do a thing to protest.

I knew instantly what he was saying. I was angry, extremely angry, not at ST because I knew that nobody could block their minds from being read by the Reader, but at the Higher Officials for attempting to pulverize the humanity inside of me.

“AN128, we need to read your mind by the Reader. There was evidence showing abnormalities in your recent activity.” said one of the Higher Officials.

Now I knew why ST cut me off before I talked more about Jessica. It was the last prevention. They wouldn’t be able to procure the knowledge from his head.

They attached me onto a huge chair with multiple extending arms. All the points of my spinal chord and the central cortex of my brain were connected to complex arrays of devices. On the other side a Higher Official connected himself to the Reader. They powered up the machine.

I could see myself seeing out of that Higher Official’s eye, but that Higher Official I saw out of was staying in a vacuum of space, seeing out of my pair of eyes into all my memories. It was an inception of time, space, and memories. Both he and I could see the events going on in my brain. I saw that day, when I was doing all the pushups and crunches and pull-ups. I saw the perfectly blue sky.

No, I couldn’t let him dig any further. I must resist against the power of the Reader. I began visualizing other images, random ones, and throwing them into the gap of that day. I created fake scenarios of me eating in the cafeteria, practicing shooting in the shooting ranges, training wrestling against dummies. I pictured these images as real and detailed as possible, refining them to the tiniest bits of details. I stuffed them in sequence into the time when I was supposed to be meeting Jessica and playing baseball with her.

I could feel the Reader pressurizing against my head. So far, nobody had ever succeeded on hiding their memories from the reader. But my identity was different from them. “I’m alive,” I whispered to myself, “My mind is alive.”

I formed the counterfeit scenes into layers and layers of walls, covering the truth that no one else shall know. I sent waves and waves of distractions from all senses in my head to distract the Reader. At that point I was fabricating wild colors, noises, smells, and taste purely from my imagination and laying them in all the empty spaces in my mind. The Reader didn’t seem to have much trouble identifying the differences, and I soon felt the tendrils of the Reader reaching through the distractions and breaking the walls down.

No. I couldn’t let the tendrils reach my actual memory. I couldn’t bring Jessica into all this mess like what happened to Marilyn. I must not let them succeed in breaking me down like what they did to ST and to the layers of walls I created.

I began building more walls. I was a kid trying to build sand castles along the beaches. Every time when the construction was just finished, the waves washed it down and I must build one again before the waves could strike. The pain intensified more and more, and my whole body was flinching uncontrollably while my head burned furiously. Logic wasn’t enough for this battle against the Reader; I would be stressed to death. The program could see through all the fallacies and tricks, it could find loopholes and cut through them. My synapses could never be faster than the charges in the computer.

“Think outside the box Andrew! Think outside the box!” I shouted to myself in my head. It was ironic how literal this statement could become.

I unlocked the human potential of me. Without me noticing, the motivation behind me fighting changed from protecting myself to protecting Jessica. I couldn’t bring her into this. I enjoyed my time with her. I felt like myself when I was with her. I experienced the feeling of freedom when I was with her. I felt joy and pleasure and happiness with her. I loved her! I would always LOVE her!

My brain felt like it could be crushed any second, and the reader seemed to be splitting open my skull. Again and again it swallowed up all the fake memories and browsed through the real ones. It was close now, about the time five seconds before I walked out of the base.

I stopped generating the colors and sounds and smells and tastes but started creating something of a way higher level of complexity. I brewed emotions and unleashed them.

I saw that one day, the sun was shining brightly overhead and the sky was so clear. I was scouting on the outside field. I saw a squirrel on the tip of the tree branch, and it didn’t get frightened away when I walked closer. I took out the crackers from my survival pack and threw a bit up to the squirrel. He instantly jumped and chewed it up. It stayed with me on my shoulder as I walked around the perimeters of the field. I felt serenity and a natural friendship between a human and an animal.

I didn’t know how I managed that, but with the emotions, all the pictures came to vivid sensory details that I never thought I could come up with.

I pictured a day when I completed the task perfectly. My fellow soldiers in the unit walked up to me and patted me on the shoulder. We got rewarded and together we were laughing and talking and sharing stories in our dorm until midnight. We stayed up all night. Happiness flowed through me, and that was one of the most joyful scenes I ever illustrated.

The tendrils of the Reader seemed confused by this as it slowed down. The program inside didn’t know how to analyze scenarios like this. It was far too complex and only a true human could understand emotions.

I visualized a dark abandoned factory with only the sound of water dripping. I was alone inside, unarmed. As I walked along the dark pathways with only a flashlight, I heard a growl behind me. I turned my head and dropped my flashlight as I saw a body, with a disgusting face and a more disgusting smell charged at me. My heartbeat increased instantly and adrenaline gushed up, but I was transfixed onto the ground. This was the image of fear in my mind.

I built up a stronger wall against the battering ram of the Reader. It seemed to have trouble distinguishing between these images and it was getting loaded with all the minor details since some details were emphasized and magnified a hundred times as the scenarios changed.

However my head was enduring unbearable pain. It would probably implode at any second. My whole body was drenched in threat and I was shaking furiously. If I wasn’t secured by all the chains and belts I would probably fall off and knock everything away.

I created another scene. I was selected and assigned to a new base from the training camp. I was so happy to hear the news, but I knew that I must leave my friends, actual friends, in the training camp. I should say hello to future and say goodbye to the past, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I would miss my buddies so much and I had to advance into this new completely strange environment. I was torn between the choices of leaving and staying.

The Reader was also functioning at an overwhelming speed. Ever since the machine was created it had no trouble browsing through people’s heads and looking through their privacy. I was the first enemy that challenged its potential.

I would faint at any second now. Both me and that officer connected were trembling violently.

This fortress of emotions didn’t go down that soon. I secured the walls with anger, strengthened the foundation with pride, fortified the edges with trust, stabilized corners with shyness. Finally, I fought back with love. My sand castle was now made of rock, and I watched the waves break as it threw itself onto the impenetrable walls.

I suddenly opened my eyes, my real eyes. Three hours had already passed since I was taken in this room. My whole body was under incinerating pain, and especially my head. I shouted and cried as two medics rushed over. The officer connected to me was now on the floor, unconscious.

“Sir, the Reader overheated too much and was severely damaged at its core. We must repair it immediately!” A voice somewhere said.

I stood up, shaking, and staggered toward the doorway. Before I could take a few steps, I saw the floor coming up right onto my face.

The world went black.