The lights seemed to dim around me as I began reading the words. I blocked out all my emotions, suppressing any of the tears or screams that attempted to pour out of me, and just focused on digesting the information in front of me. There were multiple points throughout reading the article, written by an anonymous author, when I looked around frantically, my heart racing as I anticipated Danielle jumping into the room ready to kill me.
After mere minutes, which felt like hours, I finally reached the end, and I could feel my muscles give in as my body collapsed to the floor with shock. At first, my mind was so numb from the overload of information that I could barely process any of it. My nerves were in such awe, that my body refused to believe the reality that has just presented itself to me. Despite reading word for word the life-changing information that I had been searching for years for, my mind denied the radical truth, and wanted to crawl back into its pit of nothingness.
Holy crap. I sighed, the tension in muscles being released in a single moment, which caused my body to shake from the energy. Every single hair on my body stood straight up, as I stared up at the holograph re-reading the words to make sure my mind wasn’t going completely crazy. This is real. I closed my eyes, trying to let the shock roll over my body in waves, instead of letting it numb my entire mind with one tidal-wave like rush. There was a ringing in my ears, as the silence that pervaded in the air drove my mind to the point of insanity.
My entire life was a lie. This entire country is a lie. The complete and utter shock at finding out the truth caused everything about my life to suddenly make sense. In an instant, almost all my questions, and almost all my fears were suddenly answered. The truth ran through my mind like a porous liquid that filtered out all the crud that had been rusting inside of me for years, and it suddenly caused everything to become clear.
The article began discussing how President Ash rose to power. This information was nothing too shocking. If anything, it was just a confirmation of what I had already known to be fact. The asshole ran for president in the election immediately following the Great Crash. He told the American people that he would restore America to its golden age of the twentieth century. He told everyone that he would bring so much wealth to America that we would be free to live fruitful and happy lives, but instead he began to control everyone.
Apparently after he was elected, President Ash began holding talks behind closed doors with members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, all in attempts to pass funding for a mysterious program called Protocol 00. He sold it as research that could be conducted in conjunction with the government and America’s top scientists in an effort to eradicate addiction, depression, and a whole host of mental health disorders. But he also pitched it as a last resort to controlling the population in times of war or famine, when a rebellion against the government presented itself. President Ash, using the great sums of money he accumulated through his investment company, began to pay hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars to government figures, who threatened to leak the legislation or who opposed it, due to the risks that came with such a technology.
Eventually he was quietly able to approve billions of dollars in funding to perform research at the top-secret government facility, Area 51. Research promptly began in the year 2037, and no major breakthrough was made until the year 2041, where they finally engineered microscopic robots that were able to manipulate the interactions between neurons in the brain, and effectively control someone’s thoughts and emotions. This made it possible for them to inject these robots into someone’s blood stream, who was experiencing a mental health problem, and essentially neutralize the chemicals in their brain.
But President Ash had a different and much more sinister idea. He commanded his Department of the Interior Secretary to flood the water supply with trillions upon trillions of these robots that were manufactured in self-replicating factories inside the Area 51 facility. Within days almost every American was poisoned with millions of these robots traveling through their bloodstream and their brain, due to virtually every source of the water supply being contaminated.
The mission of the President soon became clear: to create a massive and super intelligent computer program capable of simultaneously controlling the minds of the four-hundred million Americans. But one big problem presented itself. If he was to initiate Protocol 00, everyone in America, including his family members his friends, and even himself, would be controlled by it. Once he turned the switch on, and the program was executed, every single person would be mind-controlled. Even President Ash, being as fucked up as he was, knew that couldn’t happen.
Even he knew that he had to create an escape from the control; a way to liberate a select number of people from the incessant wrath of Protocol 00. And that’s where my father came in.
Jack Parker, my father, was hired to work in the facility as the head of the engineering team that was assigned to design another program that could eliminate the effects of Protocol 00, and effectively liberate someone from the mind control. The operation went under the code name, Blue Jay, hence the device used to shut down Protocol 00 in one’s brain being swallowed in the form of a blue pill. After several years of research, the blue pill was engineered to corrupt the code in the program being run in the microscopic robots in one’s mind, and it essentially prevented the robots from manipulating a person’s thoughts and emotions. It was a way to free someone from the mind control, a safety net in ensuring that the robots wouldn’t literally swallow all of the minds of America.
With the blue pill now engineered, and Protocol 00 ready to be initiated, President Ash ordered several hundred of the blue pills to be stored in a highly secure storage facility inside of Area 51, and then he promptly issued an executive order to initiate Protocol 00. The day the computer program was first executed was October 19, the day that my entire life went to hell, and all my hope at happiness was thrown down the drain.
In a perfect world, after Protocol 00 was initiated, almost the entire population of America would be under the ruthless mind control of President Ash. But instead, hundreds of thousands of people across the nation were found to be flagged in the system in Area 51, meaning that the robots in their brain weren’t effectively mind-controlling the person. Seemingly, someone had manufactured and distributed hundreds of thousands of blue pills to people in the general population, most connected with government workers, and their families. This caused hundreds of thousands of people to unexpectedly be free under President Ash’s regime and the White House knew well enough that if these people stayed free long enough, that the blue pill would make its way to hundreds of thousands more people, and eventually millions more.
Most people who took the blue pill didn’t even know what it did, or where it came from; all they knew was that if they didn’t take it, they would die. This resulted in hundreds of leaks to the media and online about a mysterious blue pill, and to prevent any more people from finding out about it before Protocol 00 was released, the government began increasing its censors and cracking down on known distributors of the blue pill across the nation. President Ash, however, also had the ingenious idea of selling the blue pill to loyalist wealthy constituents, who paid tens of millions of dollars for their freedom.
The government then began to hire thousands of more people to be associates in the Protection Services Agency, where they were strategically placed around the nation near clusters of households of people who had taken the blue pill. The robots in the people’s brains allowed the government to track the precise location of “federal traitors,” as they were deemed, and it allowed them to exterminate nearly hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of hours, the morning that Protocol 00 was enacted. Among those people who were exterminated were my mom and brother, who were transported along with tens of thousands of others to Area 51, where they were to undergo top-secret testing in the facility’s psychiatric wards.
The rest of us, the few thousand who managed to survive the initial cl
eansing of the free population, were nicknamed “ghosts.” For the most part, besides the Hitmen Program, which was funded by the government, President Ash decided to let us live “freely,” knowing that most of us were destined to live a life of despair and poverty.
And in recent years, President Ash had furthermore cemented his control over America, through his use of mind control on members of people in his own regime. By mind controlling, or just plain out eliminating many of the treacherous members of the House of Representatives and Senate, President Ash was able to get them to suspend the Constitution of the United States, and write a new set of laws governing our land, where he would rule over the country as a dictator.
Upon reaching the end of the article, which appeared to have been written by Danielle herself (based on the nasty tone used to describe President Ash), I sighed. Holy shit. I tensed my muscles to try and stop my arms from quivering, but my entire body continued to shake erratically. The shock that overcame me was so powerful, that I could barely manage to click on the next file: “Area 51 Attack Plan.”
I darted my eyes around, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. The evil energy of the computer radiated off my body, and caused a chilling sensation to course down my spine. This computer is used for mind control. I gulped, as I now realized the unimaginable power that this massive black structure, with hundreds of flashing lights, held.
Finally, the dazed look in Hunter and Ethan’s eyes made sense. Danielle is mind-controlling them. An eruption of shock and anger released from my brain, which was still free to think for itself. Danielle is manipulating their every thought and their every word. And she wants to do the same with me.
A mind-numbing fear began to encapsulate my brain, causing my body to freeze with terror. Just the thought of being mind-controlled for a few minutes made me want to rip my brains out with the sheer insanity that it would evoke in my body. If I was mind-controlled, I would be restricted from ever feeling the bliss of happiness and love again, and forever trapped in a pit of nothingness. My memories would forever stay locked away in my mind, and the entirety of my thoughts would become boxed into a marginal space.
Then a darker thought creeped into my mind: What if it’s better to be mind-controlled than to live the way I do? Is it better to end all of the pain and the depression and the loneliness, yet sacrifice the opportunity of ever-being happy again? The concept of manipulating one’s thoughts suddenly fascinated me. I was already unable to think about something that I didn’t know existed. I was already boxed into a set number of pathways my thoughts could travel through my brain. So what could go wrong if I decided to box myself in even further? What could go wrong if I made myself forget that things like pain and sadness even existed?
At first the opportunity seemed intriguing, but then I realized the pure hell it would be. Someone could be forced into forgetting that things like love and happiness even existed, and pushed into a state of perpetual depression and loneliness forever.
That could be my family.
A deep sadness and blistering anger coursed through me as I imagined my mom and brother, and possibly my father and grandma if they were still even alive, being trapped in Area 51, forced to endure an incessant hell from the government. Compared to them, I inevitably had it easy in life at Camp Camel.
I closed my eyes, still denying the reality that had hid itself from me, but now feels like the glue that ties all the loose pieces of my life together. The government is mind-controlling the population. The government took my family away, and I can get them back.
However, that fact still wasn’t even the most shocking to me. The one thought that I couldn’t even wrap my head around, and that was inducing waves upon waves of shock to drown my nerves, was the fact that my father, Jack Parker, had been the one to engineer the blue pill. My father, in a crazy, fucked-up way, was responsible for Camp Camel and the hitmen, and my brother and mom getting taken away in the first place, but he was also responsible for helping to preserve the free will of America, even if it was indirectly.
My dad invented the blue pill. There was a rush of excitement inside of me. But soon the excitement turned to disgust. My dad helped President Ash in his mission to mind control the country. My dad was behind the most heinous act in American history, and maybe even in the history of the world. I couldn’t help but wonder whether my mother knew about this or not. I couldn’t help but think that this is maybe the reason why my father’s name became a sort of taboo in our household. Maybe my mom knew about this all along. Maybe, this is why my mom resigned from her seat in the House of Representatives.
All of a sudden, the truth of my life and the reality of this country, which were buried beneath the darkness enveloping me, started to become clear. But even though it was still possible to see through the hazy, glass film coating my life, it still lacked the transparency that my mind needed to cleanse it from the pain and sorrow.
Although things like enclaves for the ultra-rich, the hitmen, the blue pill, the weird behavior of people worshipping President Ash, and the reason for the crumbling foundation of this country all made sense now, there were still many parts of my life still left unanswered.
I screamed in frustration, the desperation inside of me reaching new cataclysmic levels. The thoughts began to roar through my mind. What happened to my father? Why did my grandpa kill himself? Does my mom know anything about what happened to our country or my dad, and why didn’t she tell us? Is my family still alive, and is it possible to get them back?
All these questions created a cacophony of sound in my mind, as I looked around frantically at the blackness around me for answers. I began to read through the attack plan projected on the wall, hoping that it would somehow shed light on some of the blackness that still fogged my mind, and intensified the pain and hopelessness inside of me.
The file, also visibly written by Danielle, described, in detail, her plan to shut down the mind-control program, and to implement a Direct Democracy in America through protests and the political upheaval of President Ash. There were even parts of the pretty straightforward plan that sounded vengeful, and even a bit sinister. The main idea of her attack plan was to sneak a few people, ideally three, into the Area 51 facility, and have them remotely shut the mind-control program down from inside the compound. The key factor in this was being able to hack into the government database to get three people the highest possible security privileges when passing through Area 51. She claimed, however, to have already done that, and what she sorely lacked, was three capable slaves in order to begin the mission.
It took me a second to finally realize that the word “slave” referred to us. And I could feel my entire body convulse with fear as I continued reading, quickly realizing that after the slaves shut down the mind-control program, they wouldn’t be coming back out alive. I felt my spine tingle as the feeling of terror erupted inside of me. The slaves will be left to die. My mind quickly translated those words. Suddenly it made sense why Danielle had invited us here in the first place, and was now attempting to mind-control us. We will be left to die.
I couldn’t stop the tears from pouring out of my eyes and streaming down my face onto the floor. Suddenly, all the hope and excitement at getting my family back and getting my life back left me, and it was replaced by an incomprehensible amount of rage that caused my body to literally fume with the fire of emotions burning inside of me.
She’s forcing us to sacrifice our lives. She’s mind controlling us, just so that she can kill us in the end. I could barely open my closed eyes with the weight of disgust that hung over them. We will die with no option to escape. We will die buried with the pain and regret. We will die as nothing.
I felt more powerless than ever. I don’t even have control of my own life anymore. I can’t even end this myself; Danielle will already do that for me.
I screamed, my entire body going mad with the amount of emotions coursing through me. I hated power, and I hated the nature of humanity. I hated the greedy, selfis
h ways of humans, and their insatiable will to do what’s best for themselves and their own ignorant needs, while disregarding their effects on other people. I hated the lies. I hated the games. I hated the control that people had. I hated my life. I hated myself. I hated the pain and the sorrow.
I hated everything.
I jumped back, suddenly swallowing another raucous scream that was about to emanate from my throat, as the biggest control freak of them all cracked open the door.
I shivered at the maniacal grin plastered across her face.
She slammed the door shut, and I looked death, right in its sinister eyes.
Chapter 19
Death can sometimes bitch slap you when you want it least, but expect it the most.
“You little bitch.” Danielle spat on the ground, narrowing her eyes as she moved closer to me. She walked toward me slowly, like a vicious beast waiting to pounce on its prey.
I scrambled backward on the ground, wincing as she began to move her hand to reach back into the massive pocket between her boobs. Not the knife. I shook my head frantically, trying to will my brain to stop processing the hellish reality that had suddenly burst into the room.
However, instead of the sharp, silver knife appearing from her cleavage, she managed to whip out a black pistol, and point it directly at my heart. I shivered as the click of the bullet, being loaded into the chamber echoed in my ear. Fuck. I kept pushing backward, even though the metal that encased the guts of the computer was beginning to stab into my back. I could feel some of the buttons beginning to create indentations into my skin as I desperately tried to break through the computer and hide.
“You know what you did,” she said. There was a horrific gleam to her face that caused my body to grow numb with fear. Her creased lips parted to form a deathly smile. “Or more like what you didn’t do.”
Control Freakz Page 27
