෴Reginald Martine෴

෴Candace Remington෴

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Candace Remington stalked the hallways of the rarified upper echelons of an international business headquarters. The company was known to the world as a fairly successful middle of the pile acquisitions and trading company with an interest in technology. She was looking for anyone to vent her wrath upon. Once this would have meant using her ability to find anyone stepping out of line or making a mistake, and castigating them severely for whatever infraction she’d found. Now it typically meant venting her spleen on any unfortunate victim who crossed her path. Unable to locate a suitable target, she scowled and continued on to her scheduled destination. The summons had pinged in her mind moments before. Since then she’d scrambled to find any of an increasingly small list of valid reasons to delay obeying the directives driven into her consciousness by the mk IV implant.

Finally she arrived at the door to his inner office. She hoped he wasn’t watching her telemetry. She desperately hoped he wasn’t also watching her cognitive stream. She redoubled her resolve and effort to think in nonlinear concepts, without knowing if this would matter at all to the implacable cerebral decryption gradually decoding her mental processes more each day.

He must have been watching the telemetry after all. She’d only stood there for a few seconds to regain some sense of calm when his voice rang out from within the office.

“Candace! Stop hovering at the door and get in here already.”

She opened the door. “Yes Mr. Martine,” she answered without choice or thought. The conditioned response just one more indignity of her current situation. The implant punished her again.

“What? I didn’t—why?” she staggered under the onslaught of minor ‘correction’ pain and nausea.

Martine sat behind his desk, looking at one of the many displays in the room. Her muted grunt of discomfort and staggering in the door caught his attention.

“Trouble Ms. Remington?”

She grimaced and stood upright with visible effort. “No sir, just—”

She crumpled to the floor in a silent scream that devolved into panting a few seconds later.

Martine shook his head with a rueful expression. “Candace, Candace, you’ve got to find a way to stop casually lying to me. I wish it were otherwise, but we no longer have the luxury of polite social dissemblance. You’re clearly having trouble. Let’s diagnose this. Get up off the floor and have a seat here.”

She lay there panting, not seeming to hear him.

“Now.” his voice cracked like a whip.

Candace surged to her feet, an alien and painful looking series of poorly optimized moves that were nonetheless coordinated enough to accomplish the directive to stand, but did it in a way that called to mind a contortionist, or someone collapsing to the floor, in reverse.

The shambling movements lurched the woman over toward the chair like an unskilled puppeteer trying to maneuver a marionette. Poised over the chair, the implant dropped her body into it. She collapsed into the seat like a ragdoll.

Martine growled. “This is foolish. You’re forcing my hand. All you have to do is your job, and not lie to me. You insist on resisting. What am I to do with you?”

She slowly regained her composure, wiping the drool from her chin and sitting up straight. “Your damn chip punished me for no reaso—”

A strangled moan choked from her suddenly constricted throat.

“Verbalize inner offending dialog from before punishment at the door.” He did something with the controller in his pocket.

She jerked into a semblance of an upright posture, sitting mostly straight, as though a wire had been pulled through her spine. “This subject stated the subject's condition and situation as ‘current.’ Cognitive undertones indicating this word to mean temporary.” The voice was hers, but somehow empty and without inflection.

Candace squeezed her eyes tightly shut, tears leaking from between her carefully made up lashes.

“Oh my dear. I do hope you’ll get over these bad habits soon. I’d prefer to leave you on this low setting. The lighter touch is designed to allow you to keep doing your job. One way or another, you’re mine for the long haul now. Get used to it.”

She didn’t reply.

Eventually he shrugged. “Well, if that bit of unpleasantness is behind us, what do you have for me?”

She sagged in the chair and then sat back up, this time clearly under her own power. He watched her struggle and finally regain her composure and equilibrium. “I uh—” she coughed and cleared her throat.

“I have the report from the field asset for you.” she said with as flat a tone as she could manage.

He frowned. “Ms. Remington, are you performing below your ability, or have you been so over-reliant on your ability that you can no longer provide good intel when appropriate? Need I remind you that you have both permission and a directive to perform at the best of your ability, and your ability, in the direct service of your position here.”

She closed her eyes and spoke in rapid fire words. “Chavez has his team ready. They’re ready to drop in on your signal, plus transit time. He has some concerns he didn’t mention, about the team, and about taking Leon into the field. He also made it clear that transit time is up to a full day with current weather and political conditions in the region.” She started to say something else, before her mouth closed with an audible clack.

“Hmm, it seems you have more to say. Candace, please speak freely now. I’d like to hear what’s on your mind.”

She sat there silent for nearly a minute before deciding to speak up. “I don’t understand. Why do you even care about harvesting the catalyst from these creatures? You clearly hate all of us. If you just stopped supplying it, half the world’s catalyst supply would vanish overnight.”

He nodded along with her question. “You’re right. We supply quite a bit of the market for a fairly fungible resource. But your assumption that ceasing our harvesting operations would have much of an effect on the world market is a gross oversimplification.”

He leaned back and started to read the report she’d brought him. “I’m going to ignore your comment about me hating those with abilities. We both know that’s not true. I see those people are rare exploitable resources, why would I hate them? Now, use that damn near omniscience of yours, and tell me why I keep the catalyst operation running, and why it wouldn't matter to the world if I stopped.”

She rapidly blinked several times before words began tumbling out of her mouth. “The shelf life and profit margin is such that just one anomaly is enough to cover the entire current demand. If we—you don’t sell it, someone else will. And, and… All your dirty little side projects are funded by this off book sideline that costs almost nothing to run and brings in a product worth more than its weight in gold.”

His lazy grin tightened, looking less like a smile and more like a wolfish menacing show of teeth. “That will be quite enough Ms. Remington, I see you get the picture. Send the message to Mr. Chavez to mobilize to the African site. I don’t care who is preventing our harvest teams from doing their jobs, just kill them all and get the supply line running again. Remind him that I want Leon on the team as a technical resource in case the problem isn’t what was reported. Anomalies in areas that no one cares about are just too convenient to let someone else swoop in and take over.”

She got to her feet, clearly eager to be dismissed.

He glanced at her cowed form. “Two more things. First, call Leon personally, and ensure he’s clear on what the chain of command will be. We both know those two aren’t exactly friendly. Second, make sure Fidel knows I’m looking to send a message. No survivors, no exceptions.”

He turned his attention back to the screen, ignoring her as she all but fled the room.

෴Turnabout Black Site MD-48෴

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Be-Mod

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The display near the door lit up, displaying a number. Inmate 3811 recognized her number and stood to follow instructions. This thought instantly invoked a short punishment cycle. Short because Inmate 3811 recognized its mistake and began the required mantra to resolve the error in its thinking.

“Inmate 3811 is not a her. Inmate 3811 is not a him. Inmate 3811 is Inmate 3811.”

While repeating this mantra, Inmate 3811 left the large communal room and followed the indicated colored line in the floor.

Sometimes this mantra brought up thoughts of a name. Inmate 3811 once had a word that meant Inmate 3811. Many things used to be different for Inmate 3811. Inmate 3811 knew not to let its mind wander in that direction. That way lead to agony that seemed to never stop. Inmate 3811 didn’t know how long it had been here, learning to think correctly. Inmate 3811 was scared of thinking wrong thoughts. Inmate 3811 passed the still forms of several other inmates who had left the path. They must have been thinking wrong thoughts.

3811 arrived at the end of the painted line. A voice to the left called out “Lisa!” at the same moment a voice to the right softly said, “3811.” 3811 looked to the right.

The voice spoke again. “3811, blue path.”

3811 followed the blue path past more small concrete rooms than 3811 could keep track of before the path turned into a long narrow room fitted out as a gym. A lone person stood in the front of the room next to 3811.

The trainer spoke. “Inmate 3811. You will begin today’s compliance and combat drills.”

3811 prepared itself to follow orders.

“Run at your maximum speed until you reach the sand. Then strike the target as hard as you can. Afterward, return to this spot at a normal unenhanced run speed and await instructions.”

3811 took off. A digital speed display lit up at the end of the room above the target. The number ticked over 114 when 3811 reached the sand. A flying leap followed by a powerful strike rang out like a loud gong strike. The display for speed briefly displayed accuracy and foot lbs of impact force. 3811 jogged back to the trainer.

The trainer looked at the data then delivered a reward from the implant. 3811 shook in place as the implant directly stimulated the brain’s pleasure center. Once the reward finished, the trainer spoke, “Again. Run faster.”

Reward.

“Again. Strike harder.”

Reward.

“Again. Hit the center of the first target.”

Reward.

“Again. Kick the alternate target.”

Reward.

“Again. Faster.”

Reward.

This went on as long as 3811 could manage to summon any speed and strength. When the trainer decided the training session was complete, 3811 was sent staggering off to the high speed treadmill for additional lower impact work. Somewhere in its mind, 3811 was proud to get through an entire session without earning any punishments.

Another implant directed mantra began. “3811 is not special. 3811 is disposable. 3811 follows orders.” 3811 felt another surge of pride in its thinking being made right and proper, with no need for punishment to correct it.

In a nearby room, Inmate 1279 threw blasts of superheated plasma at designated training targets until the trainer allowed a break.

Another large room featured many inmates training hand to hand strikes against heavily reinforced combat dummies.

Another room was filled with inmates performing ordinary, if nonsensical, tasks at the direction of a trainer.

At the other end of the building, there was a full weight room optimized for those with strength enhancements.

A pair of guards wheeled a large bin carrying bodies toward the morgue. Some of them bore massive visible trauma, others appeared to have dropped dead in perfect health. The surgical team there had a crematory running constantly as bodies were fed into it once the precious implants were removed for reuse.