Chapter Ten

“They killed your family?” That was the question I asked Skye when I first talked to her.

She had picked a great tree to sit on. On the tree I could for once be temporarily oblivious to what happened around me. I could just enjoy the present moment.

“Yes. I was seven back then. The whole town got invaded by them, so my family put up some aggressive fights. It did work, but we were soon outnumbered. Then my family got killed one by one, but I got free from the cuff. I pulled out a soldier’s gun and shot a few, but how could I know how to use a gun back then. I got recaptured soon. They thought I could be good soldier material, so they brought me to different bases and camps, eventually here.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, regretting my earlier anger towards her. She was taking way more pain than me.

I moved a bit closer to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulder. I did it a bit awkwardly, but at least it was a sign of comfort. She seemed so calm though. She probably endured a lot of pain at first, but now she seemed to have forced all the pain away, forced her mind to reach a state numb to the past. To be honest I was a bit worried. Her voice seemed completely flat, deprived of the supposedly present sorrow.

We just sat like this. Something inside of me told me I could trust her. I knew I shouldn’t let my guards down; they would do anything to destroy my love. They were taking away bits and pieces of my feeling and turning me into a robot designed for killing. If I lost my fundamental emotional principle in my deep subconscious, then there was nothing left inside of me to stop what I would be doing. I wouldn’t even know if what I did was wrong, because they would have erased that scale too. Perhaps they would just tell me to kill, and I would follow and deemed that I was doing the right thing. I wouldn’t feel guilt or remorse. It was scary just to think like that.

Why shouldn’t I trust her. They didn’t want us to have senses of trust, because trust could be illogical. They wanted us to follow our own judgements and estimations. But without trust, there wouldn’t be harmony. Without trust, we could be turned against each other easily. No matter how individually capable we were, a team would always be stronger. A friend, like ST, helped me so many times, and I didn’t know if I could live through these years without him. Skye understood what I felt, and she was perfect for a friend.

“Skye, do you know what love feels like?” I asked her. Hopefully we could have more human topics to talk about.

She contemplated for a moment. “Do you mean family and friend love? Or that kind of love?”

“That kind of love.”

“Ummm. I have never felt anything like that until lately. I still don’t understand why they think love is so powerful.”

“Yes, it is so powerful. In a way I can’t explain.”

“You fell in love before?”

“Still now.”

Skye looks surprised. “Why did you tell me? Aren’t you afraid I will report you?”

I shook my head. “No, Skye. Once we have emotions and love we have trust. That’s something we possess and they don’t. I don’t need you to make any promises or say anything, but I know you won’t report me, because I trust you.”

“Love… trust…” she muttered, “doesn’t love make you stupid, as what they told everyone. Doesn’t it affect your logic?”

“Yes, it does. When you truly love someone, you will be willing to die for that person. You will be willing to do things beyond your limits for protecting that person. This may be stupidity, or insanity, but you can never predict what happens after this. The power of love is behind this, because you have no way to calculate what the next move will be.”

“Wow. Dying for someone! I don’t know if I would even have the courage to do that.”

“I don’t have the courage either, yet.” Now I’m thinking about Jessica. Will I die for her? “But one day, when you find the person that you love, you will understand.”

“But how do you feel the feeling at first?”

“I didn’t know it was love at first. It’s rather complex. All kinds of feelings mixed together. But then a special and unfortunate incident let me know that it’s love I feel for her. That I would do anything I can to protect her.”

“The Reader incident?”

“Yes.”

“They used the Reader on you because they couldn’t know who you love? Why didn’t they use their psych doctors or computers? Why didn’t they just make guesses but have to look inside your head?”

“It’s hard to use pure logic to understand love. There can be so many factors, so many properties that only the emotional part of our brain can handle. And they didn’t foresee what might happen afterwards, I didn’t foresee the destruction of the Reader either.”

“Then how? How could you do that when you weren’t even sure you can hide your memories from the Reader? How did they not predict the potential you have? How did you not know your potential?”

“Love is unpredictable; I never knew love held so much power. If you ask me to do it again I can’t even do it.”

Skye thought for a few seconds. “So unpredictable, so unstable, yet so strong!”

“Yes Skye, you never know what will happen next the moment you are in love,” I said. “There’s no algorithm for love.”