Cyber Thought Police

by Kyle Robertson

  Everyone began to discuss amongst themselves about Alikira’s entire demeanor. They found no fault in her attitude towards them. They even heard she tried to jack into the Program’s mainframe and that was why they had to move.

  Chip felt like it was time to ask for a little help. He stepped on-stage to the podium. Steve let him talk.

  “So we’re all good? No Di hatred anymore?” he asked the crowd.

  “Di’s on the home team!” One guy nodded to everyone else. The returned the nod. “She’s helping us, so we should return in kind!”

  “Good,” Chip said. “How many of you like crazy course simulators?”

  Many raised their hands.

  “I used to do those when I was a security guard at a knowledge data archive building. It helped pass the time because nobody wanted to steal ‘knowledge’ when they could just get it on their watches!”

  “Okay, good. A lot of you raised your hands. Di needs help escaping the Program’s logic core without detection. I ran the simulation the first time by myself and it took me twenty hours straight to make one that didn’t work. Now the Program’s security bots are twice as fast and much scarier. It took me two weeks to get her in undetected. I really don’t know what kind of logic code lock is on the opening. I need as many scenarios as you can think of to get two of our spies out clearly for whatever time they finish. I’ll upload all the scenarios in Di’s head. Don’t worry. You can’t fill her up.

  When she beats whatever lock there is, she can pick the correctly timed escape simulation, and the Program won’t even know she was there. I think it’s time to return the favor ‘in kind’.”

  Everyone agreed and began to line up to run simulation drills. There were many, so Chip had to get started.

  Carlos walked to Steve.

  “I thought public speaking made you nervous.”

  “It did because in my mind, it served no purpose,” Steve said. “Thank to your words, a purpose was given to me.”

  Cole cringed when Steve said that. Steve smiled and punched Carlos in the chest.

  As Carlos began to cough, kneeling on one knee while Steve walked away, Cole went to pick him up.

  “Bruto… it wasn’t a challenge!”

  “Stop calling your chest a brute.” Cole grinned. “Told ya.”

  At least the inner tension settled because the outer tension was about to become unbearable.

  Chapter Seven: It Isn’t Always Better the Second Time Around

  Alikira was wondering what was happening. Chip told her to stay put, so the wait was excruciating. She heard feedback lightly in her cell below her, but after that, nothing.

  Chip thinks this gathering is about me. What are they planning? Do they want to oust me, because all of them are afraid of me? I did screw up their secret location they’ve probably been at for months. Now, this prison smells like rotting garbage, and they were forced to uproot because I couldn’t execute. They all hate me.

  Silence and waiting fueled her paranoia. Even when she tried to help she didn’t receive any acknowledgment. They just stayed silent. She brought some stray children back from throwing rocks at the borgey protection squad she had patrolling. When she returned them to their panicked parents, there was no thank you or good looking out voicings or anything. They treated her like the machine they thought she was. Her metal nixed her humanity.

  It was 30 minutes and nothing. What were they doing? The wait was torture. She passed the time looking at a large rat tear apart an old protein pack to get to the simulated beef and noodle chunks. As it was nibbling on the pack, Chip finally entered her cell.

  “We’re almost there, Di. I have about forty-five people running simulation drills to make your exit route plausible.”

  “They’re actually helping?! What type of meeting was this?”

  “Steve set everyone straight. When did you tell him about your family?”

  “We were arguing about who had it tougher in the extinction attempt. He remembered that?”

  “I think your argument changed his mind about you. A borgey doesn’t have the capacity to argue. He took what you said to heart and felt the others should too.”

  “You mean the iron marksman who wanted to blank me the first time he saw me actually stood up for me?” she asked in amazement.

  “Steve is crazy, but he’s rational with valid information. Close your mouth, you’re officially our squad member.” Chip smiled. “The simulation is tough, but they really want to help. Some of them put a food ration bet on which route you’d use to escape. They’re hedging their bet by running many simulation timed escape scenarios.”

  “How many people are running simulations simultaneously, and how do you even have enough power to run more than two?”

  “This prison runs on free energy. It’s independent through solar and wind. It doesn’t need a power plant for any power,” Chip said. “Their laws may be primitive, but their technology was top notch, so all forty-five are doing it.”

  Linda finally entered the cell.

  “How is this mind mesh thing going to work?” she asked.

  Chip felt it was time to administer their digital attribute.

  “Follow me to the lab. I’ll tell, show, and administer it.” They all walked to the lab.

  

  As they both lay in their reclining chairs, Chip took elixir from the observation refrigerator.

  “I made a congruent DNA mesh link primer for this to work on you both. When you drink it, your minds will form a telepathic double helix mesh link. Now, it’s permanent, so you decide if you want to know each other’s secrets before you drink this.” He gave them both liquid filled test tubes.

  “Alikira looked at Linda.

  “Okay. I think Carlos is cute and wish I had a butt like Kayleigh’s.”

  Linda was surprised, but then she knew Alikira wanted to get out all her secrets before she drank as to not shock her. She felt she should return the favor.

  “I’m a Tomboy, and I used to really like Sqwiggzeez.”

  “I used to dream about making a Sqwiggzeez community! My parents just couldn’t afford them.”

  “You should’ve seen mine. You would have loved it!”

  Chip was confused.

  “Are you two talking about dolls?”

  “Don’t call them dolls. They were artificial mini-sim figures,” Linda corrected him. “I had a complete community of them with currency, careers, and a government.”

  “They still were dolls,” Chip said.

  “You played with dolls,” Alikira said. “You observed your community you created there.”

  “Are the Semantic Twins ready to test to see if this works?” Chip asked jokingly.

  The two nodded at each other and drank the elixir.

  “They’re not dolls, Transiton. They were collectors’ items,” Linda said to him and closed her eyes. Alikira followed suit.

  Chip looked over them to see their facial scrunching. They let out a few moans but finally settled into their scenario. Chip observed them through vitals monitors to see if his elixir took.

  Working in a primitive prison medical area wasn’t his ideal testing grounds. He knew what he was doing, but pulling nails out with a torque wrench was rather difficult. Since this was his new environment, he was forced to make things work.

  Their blood pressures and synaptic firings were working fine. Linda’s synapses were just slightly higher than normal but within range. They stayed engaged for 18 minutes then emerged from their trances.

  “What was that song you were playing?” Alikira asked as she became fully alert.

  “That was My Man’s Amazin’ by Jenny Waribashi. I was a fan before the extinction.”

  “I take it my elixir worked,” Chip said. “No problems?”

  “Meshing with another mind isn’t that easy,” Linda said. “Especially not techno-augmented one, but we finally synced.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “No, but you have to know hippocam
pus biology to open the door. Steve could never mesh with her.”

  “I wouldn’t let Steve in my mind anyway. Have you heard how harsh his war stories are?! I’d be a basket case who needed therapy for months!” Alikira did not want Steve as a back-up.

  “You meshed for eighteen minutes. If Di needs to be in that long, we’re caught anyway.”

  “Once we were sharing fully, we could have stayed much longer than just eighteen minutes, but since we knew you’d think something went wrong if we stayed any longer than eighteen, we decided to come out to ease your mind,” Alikira said. “I was sharing her Sqwiggzeez community. Thanks for sharing, Linda, and thanks for making that mad scientist elixir, Chip.”

  “It’s probably going to take a while before I acquire all the timed escape scenarios, so if you want to visit Linda’s neighborhood again, be my guest. Call it mind link mesh training.”

  Since everything worked on their end, they just waited for the other Neo-Khaos to finish theirs. Alikira had fun observing Linda’s neighborhood.

  

  The Neo-Khaos volunteers were churning out about 3 escape scenarios per hour each. They had to break up their timing scenarios by the half second. They really wanted to get Alikira through the Program’s defenses unscathed.

  Bertram just finished his fourth within the hour and inserted it into the memory register.

  “How many is that for you today?” Jak asked.

  “That’s my seventeenth,” Bertram said with smugness. “I’m going to get mine picked. I love mignon cubes.”

  “I’ll give you a tostada chip when I win.”

  Bertram looked at Jak with pity.

  “I saw you finishing your sixth this day fifteen minutes ago. I’m eleven up on you.”

  “You can have a fully charged Magrupt, but if you’re shooting in the wrong direction, it won’t make a difference. You’re firing everywhere in the dark. With my calculated time hypothesis, I can hit more accurately with an eighth of a charge.”

  “You’re always trying to get an advantage,” Bertram said. “I have a carpet bombing strategy. My odds are better with more runs. This is a numbers game.”

  As they were taunting each other, Chip walked in.

  “How’s it going? Did you overcome your greatest fear?”

  “I’ve done seventeen escape runs. Those Sqwiggzeez don’t scare me anymore,” Bertram said.

  Chip was surprised.

  “You’re freaked out by Sqwiggzeez?!”

  “Those little artificial intel mini monsters were a precursor to the Program. My little sis was a Sqwiggzer. Yeah, they freaked me out.”

  “Well, according to your definition, Di’s a Sqwiggzer and Linda’s a Sqwiggzeez governor with her former community. They’re actually sharing Linda’s former community through the digital mental cerebral-communications link I crafted for them right now.”

  “They’re both women,” Bertram said. “It’s the girl version of outlandish nonsensical obsession. I was the same. Before the extinction, I had a collection of Brawzon pods.”

  Chip understood. He was just never into Brawzon competitions. Transitons collected evolution data blocks.

  Chip gathered the completed escape runs and counted them.

  “We’re at six hundred three scenarios. Normally, I’d say that was enough, but my former arrogance sent us to prison. The women are meshing to become unconsciously competent with any anomalous hindrances within their shared minds. I expect with their rate of accomplishment, they’ll be ready in twenty-six hours. Can you complete six hundred more by tomorrow?”

  Bertram smiled.

  “We’ll get that many and more.” Then he looked at Jak. “Like I said before. This was always a numbers game.”

  

  Linda had Alikira running drills on saving her community from unnatural disasters. She was doing fine until the mutant giant roach colony attacked. She became terrified and the entire community perished. Alikira psychosomatically broke their link by pressing on her temples.

  “I can’t do this! I’m going to freeze and everybody’s going to die!” Alikira yelled through tears.

  Linda comforted her.

  “Aside from roaches, what makes you freeze?”

  “That’s my only weakness,” Alikira wiped her tears. “When I was the first to find my little brother’s dead body, and roaches came from his mouth and nose to swarm my arm, my mind broke immediately after that trauma. I’ve been avoiding roaches ever since. Living in that project made my avoidance impossible, so those things have reminded me of Gadiel’s death by haunting me. Now, those things are taking up residence in my mind.”

  Linda stroked her forehead.

  “Kayleigh had the right approach, but the wrong tool to fix your problem. What can fix your mind has been right under our noses this whole time. Let’s meet Kayleigh. She has to introduce you to her girlfriend.”

  

  Linda an Alikira knocked on Kayleigh’s cell bars. She was with Jenny playing cards.

  “What’s happening? We were just playing Nitrosythe. Jenny’s up two hands.”

  “We never needed Jules to hypnotize Alikira. She’s terrified of roaches. She doesn’t need to trick her mind. She just needs to overcome her fear,” Linda told Kayleigh. “Jenny, what’s your hobby again?”

  “I wouldn’t call a Ph.D. in entomology just a ‘hobby’, Linda. Knowing the genealogy of insects isn’t really relevant when we’re running for our lives.”

  “You might save all our lives,” Linda said. “Do you still have your insect collection?”

  “I had my locker moved to the med lab, why?”

  “You mean we were just a few meters away from them and didn’t know it? Never mind. Do you still have your cockroach family?”

  “Aside from size, that’s another of the reasons why I had them put in the med lab. Everyone was afraid they’d get out and infest these cells. They just don’t know there are about a hundred thousand cockroaches in these walls already. They just can’t see them.”

  “Well, we need some we can see,” Linda said. Alikira’s gotta touch them.”

  Alikira panicked.

  “Just wait. I signed up to spike the Program’s system. I did not volunteer to touch a slimy roach!”

  “In order to spike the Program, you have to get by the dreaded security smoothly. If you can’t comfortably handle your worst fear, you’ll never accomplish what you signed up for. I can’t support or convince you in a precision time escape scenario. That’s why you have to get comfortable out here. In there would severely hinder your goal.” Linda had to become stern. “Wouldn’t you want to save your own Sqwiggzeez community?”

  “You’re not a nice friend,” Alikira said.”

  “Anybody can be nice,” Linda said “I’m an ‘effective’ friend. We’re in a war where everyone can be killed. “Nice packed its bags and left three years ago. You have to face the worst because war grants you no leniency.”

  Jenny gave Linda the keys. “My name is right above the door, you’ll see it. All the environments are labeled. Just open the cockroach compartment. You don’t want any Brown Recluse Spiders, African Bullet Ants, or Asian Giant Hornets scurrying about, stinging randomly at will.”

  Linda thanked Jenny and they both went back to the medical laboratory.

  “Turn off your armbands,” Linda told her. “You need to feel them for any of this to work.”

  “My receptors are normal. I’ll feel them… crawling, ewww! Do I have to do this?”

  “You get a choice. It’s either cockroaches or Asian Giant Hornets.”

  “How ‘giant’ are these hornets?” she asked as if she was contemplating.

  “If you’re weighing those options, you’ve never seen an Asian Giant Hornet before.”

  “I just heard the name from Jenny a few minutes ago, so no. I have never heard or seen one.”

  Linda went to the large locker to unlock it. The locker was so large, she just thought it was an
other locked room. Her only recognition was jenny’s name stenciled on top of the door. She went inside to see many compartments with another door at the end with Asian Giant Hornets on it.

  “This isn’t a locker. It’s a two-room apartment,” Alikira said in amazement.

  “That second room is where she houses the Hornets,” Linda said. “I was wondering how big this thing would be when she said Asian Hornets.”

  “So that ‘giant’ part of the name isn’t just a species designation,” Alikira assumed.

  Linda saw the numbers engraved on the key and punched them in on the second door’s keypad. The door’s black surface dissolved to transparency.

  Alikira saw a makeshift Asian forest mini-environment through the transparency and thought she saw small birds in the trees. Then she realized those little birds were ginormous hornets!

  “Those things are real?!”

  “Jenny’s smart. We can see them, but we can’t open the door to let them out to terrorize the prison. I bet she’s the only one to hold that key.”

  Alikira grabbed her arm.

  “I think I can do the cockroaches over those any day.”

  Linda walked to the other compartments to find the cockroaches in a much smaller canister. She pulled it out and went out to an observation table.

  Stick your left arm in the limb depressurizer and seal it. Don’t turn on the vacuum. We need the roaches to stay alive.”

  Alikira put her arm in and sealed the top under her shoulder. She saw her hairs standing on end with goosebumps through the glass.

  “If I scream, don’t panic. I’m just recollecting my initial trauma,” Alikira said.

  “Oh I expect your screams. I was going to tell you it’s natural to scream when you confront your worst nightmare. We’re doing this to normalize your psyche to break your brother’s death reminder, so you’ll stop freezing. When it becomes repetitive with no harm, your fear goes away because we’ll break your mental link.”

  Alikira braced herself as Linda opened the canister and shook the roaches into the limb depressurizer. There were many more than just seven or eight. The mother had babies! There was a slew of babies scurrying up her arm!