Psion Gamma

by Jacob Gowans

  “You won’t get out of those without help.” Stripe gestured with his head to the restraints. “I saw you pulling at them. They’re built to withstand six hundred kilos of pressure. So unless you have supernatural strength . . .” He let his words hang in the air as he measured Sammy up with a stare. “Why do you think we are here?”

  Sammy lied as best he could. “I don’t know. Did I do something wrong?”

  Stripe frowned as if he found Sammy’s words to be troublesome. “Wrong is a very awkward word, don’t you think? Very arbitrary. You see, you may not have broken any laws, but you did do something that needs correcting.”

  “What do you mean?” Sammy asked trying to sound scared, like the girl he had passed in the hall. “What needs correcting?”

  “No details. I just want to speak very clearly to you. I want you to understand every single word that I say. Are you listening to me?”

  Sammy nodded, his eyes wide. The closer Stripe got to him, the more he could sense his own fear crawling across his skin like an army of spiders marching up his arms and shoulders toward his brain. Stripe’s sharply cinnamon-scented breath hung in the air around Sammy’s nostrils.

  “Good. You seem like a smart boy. You’re not screaming like most of the crap we get. We ran a DNA search for you on the way here. Nothing was found. It’s happened before. Your family is one of the unregistered pieces of gutter trash, probably from the slums judging by the stench on you. I don’t really care. The point is, one way or another, you will tell me who you are and where you are from. It’s such a simple thing. If you tell me now, I can go have a talk with your family, and everyone will be happy. Including you. If you don’t tell me, I have to make you unhappy.”

  Pieces fell together inside Sammy’s head. They kill Anomaly Fourteens . . . and probably their families, too.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  Sammy hadn’t decided one way or the other, but since he was pretending to be Al, he answered in the affirmative.

  “Good for you. Do you pray?”

  Again he nodded.

  “If you don’t answer every question I ask, you will come to realize through significant pain that there is no God. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you understand every word that I said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me your name and where you live.”

  Sammy said nothing, but his mind raced furiously. If he lied, they’d figure it out. What would be the point? Cold hard calculations flashed before his mind’s eye and he resolved that the only way of getting out of the situation would be to wait for a chance to escape. That moment was not now, not in this chair.

  Dread rose in him, filling his chest and settling over his heart. He would be tortured. He knew it. He wanted to cry. More fear hit him in a way he had not felt in over a month. This is real. This is really going to happen. He steeled himself as best he could against whatever was coming.

  The Aegis smiled. His perfect teeth, end to end, side by side, framed by bright red lips was all Sammy could see. And for the third time in his life, Sammy prayed. God . . . Please God, if you’re there, please save me. He’s going to hurt me.

  “So you’ve made your choice. Good. A little courage never hurt anyone.” Stripe smiled as though he’d made a private joke to which only he knew the punch line.

  Stripe stood up and flipped a switch on the wall. The helmet hanging ominously above descended until it was level with Sammy’s chest. He put it on Sammy’s head, snuffing out all the light. There was a loud sound, like metal scraping tile, followed by something heavy dropping into Sammy’s lap.

  “Lean forward and throw up in this. I don’t like cleaning up messes.”

  The blackness inside the helmet was replaced by a kaleidoscope of images and movements. It reminded Sammy of going to a holo-laser show in a dome theater and thinking he was flying even when he wasn’t moving at all. He picked up speed, traveling through a dimension of spirals and wormholes. He tried to close his eyes, but when he did a painful shock nipped his ear. His whole body convulsed as his eyes reopened. The Aegis snorted softly nearby, unseen.

  As minutes passed, the movements became faster and faster until his eyes could just barely keep up with the swift changes in direction, jerking him around until his brain spun inside his skull. His mind, plunged into such disorientation, could no longer tell if he was sitting in a chair, hanging upside down, or twirling madly in space.

  When his vertigo reached a critical point, he lurched forward and vomited into whatever sat in front of him. His eyes involuntarily closed, shocking him even more than the first time. He retched again and again until he heaved nothing but air and sound. The swirling and turning continued. Every so often Sammy believed he could withstand the pain of the shock just to keep himself sane. But each time he tried to close his eyes the voltage increased, and it hurt too badly to resist.

  When Sammy finally lost all concept of spatial and time orientation, the helmet turned off and retracted back to the ceiling. He closed his eyes and heaved several more times, still feeling as though he were zipping every direction at once.

  “That was fun!” Stripe said. His voice was like glass in Sammy’s ears, thundering through and trying to shatter him. “Now I’m going to give you a tiny taste of what you can expect tomorrow if you decide to continue this silly farce. Your homework will be to think about this next experience every time you consider withholding information from me.”

  Sammy cracked his eyes open to see what the man could possibly be preparing to do. The world was spinning and in the middle of it Stripe stood using a small knife to break the seal on what looked like a tube of toothpaste. With protective gloves covering his hands, Stripe squeezed a small dollop of white cream onto his fingertip, and held the glistening droplet up for Sammy to see.

  Sammy could only see a spinning ball of light.

  “Do you want to tell me what your name is now?”

  “No.” He didn’t remember screaming while the helmet had been over him, but the sound that came from his throat was a hoarse whisper.

  “Could you at least tell me whether or not it’s Muhammad, John, or Michael? Because I could eliminate an appreciable chunk of the male population . . .”

  Sammy said nothing, keeping his focus on not retching.

  “Did you know that there are only three connections between your skin and the sensory area of your brain? So when I do this—” he touched the glistening finger to the back of Sammy’s left hand, “—you feel the change in pressure, temperature, and a slight wetness almost immediately.”

  The spot the man touched felt wet and cold on Sammy’s skin.

  Stripe continued very calmly, speaking as though he were sharing a great secret with his captive. It dawned on Sammy that this was a man who his father, Samuel Sr., would have described as being in love with his own voice.

  “I’ve made the sensation of pain a special study for myself. It’s so wonderful. It helps us feel alive. You probably don’t know much about pain. But you’re here, so I’ll teach you.”

  As the wet dot on Sammy’s skin began to warm, Stripe lectured about the different nerve endings in Sammy’s hand and how they communicated with his brain. All Sammy heard were bits of words like pacinian, spinothalamic, and cortex. Normally his hyper-intelligent brain would have picked up everything instantly, but the tiny dot on his skin had grown uncomfortably warm, as if it were too close to a candle.

  “Let me ask you a theoretical question. What if some brilliant researcher isolated a molecule that could duplicate the effect of temperature change on nerve receptors? The possibilities are endless!” Stripe exclaimed these last words in a rapturous voice. Then he got unnaturally close to Sammy’s face again. His cinnamon breath permeated Sammy’s entire being. The twisted scar on his lip filled Sammy’s vision. “And, you see, here’s one amazing discovery: a person can feel it without any damage to the skin. No death from dehydration . . . even when you
experience such intense heat that your skin should be burning off your bones.”

  Intense pain blazed through the spot on Sammy’s hand. He gasped sharply, groaning through gritted teeth.

  “It’s okay to scream. I know how badly this is going to hurt—curiosity got the best of me. Do you see this red tube?” he asked, holding it up for his prisoner to see.

  Sammy opened his eyes and nodded quickly.

  “Fire. It’s what you’re going through now. Do you see this one?” He held up an identical blue tube. “Ice. It makes it all go away, you see. You know how to get the ice, don’t you?”

  Sammy closed his eyes tight so he would not answer Stripe’s question. He tried to push the pain out of his mind. He wanted to grab hold of anything that would take his mind off the blistering heat on his hand, but everything he thought of slipped away, leaving only pain. Blinding pain. He wanted to yell and scream and thrash unabashedly. But he wouldn’t allow himself to, even if he couldn’t stop tears from leaking out of his eyes.

  Wait for your opportunity to escape. DO NOT SHOW WEAKNESS! he ordered himself in a voice that sounded much like Byron’s.

  Immeasurable time passed and eventually the pain subsided. Sammy could open his eyes now. Stripe had stopped spinning and was now watching him with his immaculate teeth bared and an unreadable look in his gray eyes.

  “Impressive,” he said. Sammy wasn’t sure if Stripe was grinning or grimacing. “Not a peep. But remember two things when you go to your room tonight. Number one, that was a very very very tiny little drop on your hand. What if I rubbed it all up your arm? On your ears? On your lips? And number two, you’ve only met fire. I have other tubes. Enough to keep us busy for a long time.”

  Stripe dragged out the word long as his eyes bored into Sammy’s, waiting to see if he would break.

  “No one ever holds out. In the end, I always win. ALWAYS. Maybe that’s why I like the game so much.” He gave Sammy a slight touch on the shoulder. “Have a nice rest.”

  After Stripe left, two different Aegis with guns took Sammy into the same room he’d glanced into minutes or hours (or maybe days?) earlier. They left him no opportunity to venture an attack. The young girl with dark hair in the corner was asleep. The men secured his neck to the wall with a chain and checked his arm and leg restraints. After they left, he either passed out or fell asleep.

  His rest was fitful. It didn’t seem long before he woke to the sound of the girl being taken from the room in the same fashion that Sammy had been brought in. He watched them go, the girl crying as she was led away, probably to the same room with the black door. His mind raked over his situation for a long time, more than he could keep track of. But then he fell asleep once more. When he woke for the second time, the girl was crying again.

  “Are you okay?” Sammy asked her.

  Either the girl didn’t hear him or didn’t understand him.

  “Hey,” Sammy called out a second time. “Are you all right?” he peered across the room at her. Her short hair didn’t hide her face well. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She clutched her left arm as if it were badly hurt, but he saw nothing wrong with it. Copious amounts of drool fell down her lips and onto her soiled shirt.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked. “Can you help me or can I help you?”

  When she failed to respond a third time, he stopped asking questions. He huddled against the wall, angling his head so he could watch her across the way. Somehow, he fell asleep in that position.

  The next day, the cell door opened and a bowl of soupy oatmeal slid across the floor to him. Some of it sloshed over the sides as it came to rest near Sammy. Another bowl slid to the girl. He’d thought she was sleeping, but the moment the bowl came to rest, she picked it up, drained its contents, and sucked up whatever had spilled near her. Sammy picked up his own bowl and sampled the contents.

  It tasted like worn socks blended into small bits. However, he was famished, so he finished it. The girl eyed the little puddle of sludge near his knees, but he wasn’t about to eat off the floor. Moments later, in walked Stripe.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

  Sammy didn’t answer.

  “Was it better than the gutter you came from?”

  More Aegis came in. This time they were wearing their regular uniforms—the green and brown clothes with the pattern muddied in such a way that it hurt Sammy’s eyes to look at it too long.

  “Are you ready to play?”

  Sammy was led into the room with the black door. He felt the same fear he’d felt the day before. The guards secured him to the chair and left.

  The scent of cinnamon was present again when Stripe got close to him. “Did you do your homework?” was the question.

  When Sammy wouldn’t answer, the helmet came down. His breakfast came up within five minutes of swirling lights and flashes. When Sammy was good and dizzy again, Stripe spoke up.

  “Are you ready to tell me your name so you can leave?”

  When Sammy didn’t answer, the creams came out. This time, Stripe introduced Sammy to pressure. He smeared it across the back of Sammy’s hand and waited. Slowly the cream went to work, inducing the most bizarre sensation that someone was sitting on him. As the pressure built, Sammy’s hand began to ache, then worse. At its peak, his hand felt like it was being crushed under an immense weight. All the while, Stripe spoke to him in a calm voice about the history of his pain research and how humans had evolved an especially keen perception of pain.

  “We are meant to perceive pain more than other animals. Pain defines us; molds us from infancy. Nothing makes a more indelible impression on our minds than pain.”

  About ten minutes into the pressure cream, Sammy started to cry. He stared at his hand, knowing nothing was wrong with it, but unable to stop imagining a giant boulder squashing it. He tried to imagine all the different things that could cause such agony: anvils in cartoons, furniture falling over, an elephant stepping on him—anything to keep his mind off the pain.

  A voice in his head begged him to tell Stripe his name, but the voice wasn’t strong enough and Sammy pushed it away. Somewhere far from his consciousness, time ticked away until Stripe called it a day.

  As the Aegis led Sammy out of the room, Stripe spoke to him. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Remember that. It can all go away. Remembering that will be your homework today.”

  In his cell, as Sammy cradled his hand, which still throbbed horribly, he thought about what Stripe had done to him. His gut told him that Stripe hadn’t expected him to break. Maybe he’s just testing me. The idea that Stripe had even worse tools on hand that he hadn’t used yet kept Sammy up late that night.

  He waited with dread for Stripe to come back for him the next morning, but Stripe never came. The girl across the room slept most of the time, but Sammy didn’t think he would get her to talk to him, anyway. He passed the time in silence, thinking about how he was going to escape. He thought back to the Grinder and how he’d managed to break out of it.

  Anyone on the receiving end of the Juvenile Delinquent Education Facility in Johannesburg called it the Grinder. The education given there was two-fold: learn your books and learn to never come back. Six hours a day spent in class. Six hours a day of manual labor.

  As the son of a territorial prosecutor, Sammy knew the theory behind facilities like the Grinder: make prisons miserable, show the prisoners a better way while they serve time, and allow them a chance to reform. According to his dad, the system worked.

  Sammy never thought he’d actually experience the Grinder for himself. When he ran away from his foster home, stealing food inevitably followed. He knew it was only a matter of time before he was caught, but he didn’t care. After seeing his first foster father, Calven, die of a stroke, he wouldn’t be transferred to another foster family. He couldn’t do it.

  Within several days’ time, security at a grocery store caught him trying to leave with a cart of over a hundred and fifty dollars’ wort
h of food. The police arrested him and put him in a cell. Appearing before Judge Hill, a good friend of his father, had been the most embarrassing moment of his life. However, the judge was sympathetic to Sammy’s unique situation and gave Sammy the territory’s minimum sentence for theft: nine months.

  Bitter, frustrated, and lonely, Sammy arrived at the Grinder and immediately sought out others who shared his hatred of just about everything in life. It didn’t take long to find them. Seven boys, all between the ages of twelve and fifteen, formed strong bonds of friendship. They hated the building, they hated the guards, they hated the work, they hated the crappy food, the phony counselors, the uncomfortable cots, and they hated most of the other kids there, too.

  After serving five months of his sentence, Sammy’s uncanny ability to think deeply showed itself. It happened late one night while he lay on his cot listening to the night sounds of the forest that bordered the Grinder. The idea to break out settled over his mind. He could not and did not resist the idea. Lying there, he saw the way out. He just needed time to work out the details and get everyone on board.

  The Grinder was a single building, large and rectangular, with only one floor. The front third of the building served as the administrative area. It held the main reception area, offices for the directors, the warden, security, and several counselors.

  The middle area of the Grinder was the factory and the gathering room. In the gathering room they ate meals, attended group sharing sessions, and played indoor games on Friday nights. They also had several smaller classrooms. Whenever he got bored during classes, Sammy looked out the barred windows and watched other boys work the farm to grow their food. Beyond the farm’s high fence stood a beautiful green forest.

  The last area of the Grinder, closest to the forest, was the quarters, or “cells” as Sammy referred to them. All of the cells had tungsten-plated bars on the windows and opened only from the outside.

  Security was tight. Cameras left no room for privacy. When a fight broke out, security was on it in seconds. If one of the rougher kids threatened a counselor, security was on it in seconds. Even someone loitering around the halls got pestered by security. All security wore the same stupid uniform: a blue shirt with a sewn-on yellow badge and khaki pants. The kids in the Grinder called the members of security “Blues.”