by P. S. Power
"Go. I'll have this done in about ten hours. You sitting here won't help me do that."
They went, Ben feeling troubled by the whole thing. It was off, drug use aside. Almost like that man was evil, rather than just annoyed with them.
Once out the door, he turned to Micha.
"I... There's something wrong there. With that guy? I..."
"Oh. Yeah. He's with the government. A spy? Also a great geneticist, so we keep him on here. As far as he knows the Cymeds are just a group that likes to experiment on ourselves for religious reasons. Which isn't that far off. That you might pick up on that is why Kyle was worried about you coming here, I bet. It's stupid of him. Keeping you in the dark is the wrong plan, right now. I won't do that with you." She didn't explain herself, but walked off quickly.
"I take something kind of like what Clyde does. It's an old drug, that just wakes you up and keeps you moving all day. You get a lot done, and want to, which is a big part of this life. If you can manage that, you're way ahead of the game. So we cheat, and make sure that all our people are like that. You'll have that option too, but I think the plan is to wait a while for you to actually regain some strength. This way? Processing. Most of us do this on the second or third day. It's not that..." She moved to a brown building that, other than color, was pretty much identical to the medical center.
Inside there was a decently pretty woman, who had copper red hair, and makeup on, even though almost no one else seemed to bother there. She was about five-five or so, and smiled at them like she'd been waiting for people to come brighten her day.
"Hey, Micha and Ben! I was just about to think on the idea of sending a memo out in a few days about you, Ben. I'm Karine. Let me set up a station for you? You were told all about this, right?" She glanced at Micha, but the smaller woman shook her head, ever so slightly.
"I don't think so. Not really. Ben?"
He didn't respond for a while, feeling out of it, as the red haired lady bustled about, doing something at a table that seemed to have a holo-keyboard set up, and a projected screen. As well as several other things. A strange headset, that looked a bit like a VR receptor, but not exactly, and two cuffs made out of plastic that were attached to the desk. Actually they ran into it, on either side of the amber glowing keyboard set up. That part wasn't really there, just being a projection.
He hadn't used one of those for years. Not since school. They worked just fine, but most things didn't require typing. Not in his world. At least that hadn't been the case for about seven years.
There was a chair that was, as far as he could tell, loaded with things that didn't belong. Sensors, most likely, that would be able to assess everything he did or thought.
Karine smiled at him and waved him toward it.
"This testing will take most of the day. You get to stop for meals, so..." She glanced at Micha who nodded, and answered without waiting for words.
"I'll get that. He's due a refeeding meal now, actually." Those words got her to take off, while the other woman explained the process.
"Okay. The test isn't hard. It will mainly show you pictures on the screen and ask your opinion on different topics. You just need to answer as honestly as you can. The various sensors will pick up what you really think and feel about what is happening, so there's no need to lie. Most people do, and that's almost always about silly things. No one here cares if you think sheep are sexy, or if you hate pizza. Not really. The idea is to find what kind of things you enjoy, what you're good at, and if possible, what things we need to avoid for you. So, shall we start the first section? I'll need to hook you up, but it won't take long. About forty minutes."
Her tone was light, and made it sound like the whole thing was going to be really simple. Easy even. There were no right or wrong answers, after all, just his opinions.
Except that wasn't really true. Even though Ben tried to answer honestly, since the first questions were about things that he liked, or didn't like, if there was even a hint that he wasn't being totally honest, the cuffs around his wrist shocked him. Painfully. Not enough to make him scream or anything, but he jumped each time it happened. That was over little things, too. For instance, he was shown a piece of cake, which had thick looking white frosting. Knowing he wasn't supposed to enjoy that kind of thing, he'd said that it looked all right to him, but not like something he wanted at the moment. There was a number to select for that. Three.
The thing shocked him until he changed it to a five.
The rest of the test was similar. It forced him to admit that math, a subject that he'd done well enough at in school, was boring to him, rather forcefully. Also, that he didn't like men sexually. Not at all, really. He tried to be open minded that way, but being non-committal on the idea wasn't going to work this time.
Thankfully he really was free of racial prejudice, like he'd always thought, and while he didn't care for the government, his dislike of them didn't have him writhing in minor discomfort either.
The first section moved fairly quickly, and seemed to learn from what he said. It honed in on various areas that he had problems with pretty solidly. Like his fear that the government would come for him one day. Also that, somehow, his father had actually been involved in child trafficking, like had been claimed. Even if it couldn't have happened. That one was telling.
After all, it had left him with a fear that he was like that. He was a clone after all. If his dad liked to have sex with kids, or was even just willing to sell them for money, then he might end up doing the same kinds of things.
It wasn't his way, he knew. Or that of David Epson. That didn't mean he couldn't feel like it might be. That had, he knew, dug at him almost the entire time. Secretly, wearing away at his innermost self. What if. It had left him with a sense of self-doubt that had, he realized, set him on his current path. It wasn't just about revenge, but proving that he, Ben, wasn't a monster that was going to turn on the world for his own gain.
That there had never been any truth to the whole thing was clear. It always had been. There had been no way for David to do anything like had been claimed. Even the state officials had admitted that. Before they'd set David up to be beaten to death. Not that they'd meant for it to be taken to that level.
No, the test guided him to that knowledge too, which had really been inside of him the whole time. His father had been speaking out about government corruption and how people needed to be trusted. Not spied on all the time or watched for every tiny misstep. It was clear that the powers at the top just wanted him to learn to keep his lips closed.
He probably should have.
There was, almost certainly, nothing that could have been said online that would fix the world they lived in. There might, possibly, be actions that would work, but David should have known that his words wouldn't change anything. Really, that anyone had even thought to silence him was, most likely, just an afterthought. A thing that some computer had suggested, in case the wrong people finally started to pay attention to the lone voice crying out for freedom.
It was all right there, inside his own mind. After a while, it was on the screen. Showing his own face. Older and with a beard. Then he was shown harder things. Pictures of his father's death. How the three men had beaten him, without mercy.
How someone had, again, most likely a computer not a human, placed him in a cell with three men that would respond very harshly to a person that was accused of harming kids. The numbers were off for it to have been chance. If David had been left in with any other three people in the jail, nothing would have happened. Certainly nothing at that level.
It was hard to see, and he didn't really understand why. Not until the screen went black, and Micha was touching him on the arm.
"Ben? You've been sitting there, staring at the screen I got your lunch?" There really was a plate of food next to him.
The girl, and she looked young suddenly, stared at him, but didn't comment about what he was thinking. A part of him knew that the test had shut off a w
hile before, and that the pictures he'd seen had come from within himself. A residual of his time alone in the dark.
Not commenting on the whole thing, he ate, trying to enjoy the bit of juicy melon that had been provided.
Chapter four
It was clear to him that Karine, no matter what else she might be, wasn't a liar. The testing took most of the rest of the day, and was exhausting, by the time Ben had gotten to the end. He actually hurt from it, his nerves raw, and even after the shock bracelets came off he kind of expected to be hit that way some more.
Micha had actual things to do during the day, so had left and came back at about six with more food. It was about double what he'd expected to get, so he ate half of it, understanding the woman had tried to make up for him missing a meal. It wouldn't work that way, so as hard as it was, he refused to clean his plate while they did some psychic testing. Thankfully, by some kindness, the shock portion of things wasn't used for that bit.
As they left, the girl next to him, his new buddy, Micha, patted her hair a bit. It was in her face a lot, having pulled out of the ponytail she seemed to normally keep it in.
"Nope. Those were going the whole time. You just didn't miss anything. Not that they were hard questions, but still, that was still pretty good."
"When I was guessing those shapes?" There had only been three of them, and Ben had picked at random. That had been his plan anyway.
"Yup. You should have been hit over and over, but instead you nailed it. It can happen. I mean, I could go in there and do the same. Now. After being genetically modified to be good at that sort of thing. Not before. You'll need to learn to use that. Anyway, we have some time before bed, and my schedule was cleared, thanks to being attached to you for the day. We should do something." She didn't seem to mean sex, unfortunately, and when he thought that part, she laughed at him, but didn't say anything.
Not about that.
"I was thinking we could go over to the climbing wall? It's decent exercise and not that hard on the low level portions of things. I know that you could probably use doing something active. It's one of my favorite things to do here."
Which was true. Annoyingly so. He felt a bit stiff, thanks to not doing as much other than being abused by a computer for nearly eight hours. His legs were a bit sore, probably from how they'd been sitting during meditation. That darned pretzel pose or whatever it was called had left his knees aching for a while. It was, he presumed, the kind of thing that you got used to. Eventually. That, or learned not to whinge about.
"Sure? I've never done that, so... I'll suck at it. You're good with that though?"
Next to him, her face blank, and seeming very innocent, the small brunette nodded.
"Sure. I mean, I want to get to know you a bit better first, but sucking is fine in my book." Then she walked away, as if that wasn't incredibly loaded. On purpose too.
Worse, she didn't even laugh after teasing him like that. Instead she just headed off, toward a building that wasn't one at all. It was outside, and while it was about fifty feet high, and had ropes coming off of it, the thing was also automated. There were machines that activated when they moved under the lights near it. The world wasn't dark yet, but it was starting toward dim.
Almost as if trying to sell the ambience of being in the forest at night, an insect landed on his face. That got it waved at, since he didn't know if it would sting him or not.
"Two stations? Assessed level?"
He didn't know what any of that meant, Micha grinned.
"Hey, Wall! This guy next to me is Ben. He's new and has zero skills at climbing as far as I know. He's also weak, and probably slow. We've been starving him, and messed with his head a lot for over a month."
The monument, or robot, whatever it was, didn't speak for a moment. Instead it hit him with a light, scanning him.
"Requirements understood. Beginning level, set point zero point two." The male voice seemed a little mechanical. More than was needed really, since most machines sounded like everyone else anymore.
It was twenty-sixty-five after all. Not seventeen-sixty-five where everyone had spoken in monotone and lived in black and white.
The zero level climbing wall was still challenging for him. He'd kind of been thinking that a ladder would appear, but it was just a bunch of projections that came out of the thing. The exercise of it wasn't that hard however, and the whole thing only took about ten minutes.
Really, the long part of the whole thing was that Micha had gotten him a harness, and attached one of the ropes from it. That way, if he fell, there would be something to slow his plunge other than the packed Earth below him. Since that sounded messy, he decided not to feel bad about the idea. Micha climbed too, and was moving a lot slower than he was.
That was due to the fact that while he basically had a funny shaped and slightly irregular ladder, Wall had basically decided that M needed to climb something that was just barely on the outside of a smooth surface. There were some cracks, and tiny projections, but that was all. Twice the girl fell off, and had to be lowered to the ground by the computer. After he got back down, climbing instead of just letting go, the wall in front of him changed. It wasn't much harder looking, but a few things had been moved out of easy reach. It meant he went even more slowly, but still caught up with the woman in gray that was climbing next to him. How she wasn't sliding down the thing at full speed was hard to see. Her footwear was the same as his, and while the traction was good enough for running, they weren't exactly sticky.
They were however nicely flexible.
So was Micha. At one point she ended up with her left leg going over her head, in order to stabilize herself by wedging a foot into place. They met at the top, more or less, about five minutes after that. He was breathing harder, from his relatively simple climb than she was. While there could have been a lot of different reasons for that, Ben kind of figured that it had to do with him being weak. Probably as a person, if he were going to be honest. He could have had a life filled with activities and exercise, but instead had gone in for snack cakes and VR. That last part wasn't even a good excuse, because there were plenty of ways to use VR that were active enough to count physically. Ben simply hadn't done things that way.
He missed both of those things keenly for a moment, as he moved to sit on the edge of the tower, still connected to the rope. Falling and dying would make him look bad in front of the woman he was with, if nothing else.
She sat too, and leaned back a little.
"I'm afraid of heights. It took me nearly six months to actually work up the courage to try and climb Wall here. I'm also not that wild about snakes, if it ever comes up. Knives, too. How about you?"
Ben looked over at her and nodded.
"My favorite color is brown." Which didn't answer the question really. That got him to think for a bit. "I'm probably afraid of a lot of things. I haven't really thought to list them. Being alone? Losing everyone that I get close to? That kind of thing." Which was all true, but left out his single worst fear, of course. "That, and mice. Really, it's mainly the mice." Shuddering a bit, making a bigger deal of the motion than he really felt, got the woman to smile at him, slowly.
"That's not too bad. Part of the training. You'll have to face your worst fears. Being alone... Well, you did that one already. Losing everyone... Yeah. That would be hard. Mice though, well, you have to know that one will be coming up. No one can be left with a fear of small, cute little things with their twitchy noses. Coming for you. Coming for you!"
Sitting next to him, on the top of the tower, which was made of something other than wood, given how it had changed shape, Micha made fake little grabbing motions at him. Pretending her hand was a mouse. It was adorable. Part of that was her size, being tiny like she was. The rest, well that was just her, at a guess. The woman was playful, and seemed more or less happy. Given that there was a chance, even if small, that her new abilities were going to drive her bonkers, that was pretty strong of her.
As if she'd been reading his mind, she nodded.
"Yeah. It's with me all the time. Will I lose it? Will I know it if I do? How do I cope with all of this? The noise in my head is constant. I see things too. I mean, all the time. It's a real danger. For you." She shook her head then, and looked away, off at the sun, which was finally setting. The trees below had left things seeming darker than they really were.
"For me? It seems like the simple thing to do there would just go in some other direction. Get some muscles going and learn to fight?" It made sense at the moment, but Micha snorted at him.
Then shook her head.
"That isn't... You could do that, I guess. The fact is though; you might be the one that can do this. Can find the powers of the human mind, have them turned on full blast instead of less than one percent, and make it work. In that case... Well, I made my choice. You have to make your own. It's a real risk. It could be that no one can handle that kind of thing. Not really. Meditation helps, but..."
For the longest time, she didn't speak. When she did her face was somber, and turned to look directly at him.
"I'm not going to make it. Not unless something changes soon. It will take a few more years, but I can feel it already. Don't get me wrong, I'm fighting. Every day. Constantly. In the end though, I'm going to be loony as a moon bat. I'm not the one that's needed. The thing is... I can't see if you are or not. If I could, I'd tell you. That's all... Way too far in the future for me. Plus, who knows, maybe I can change things? That's a thing that I know for certain; the future is not written in stone. It can change, and does, all the time. So if you have any ideas about how to fix me, let me know, right?"
Then, without warning, she threw herself forward and twisted in the air, the rope lowering her without pause. Trying not to think about it, and how it could all go wrong, Ben did the same thing. Fear stabbed at his middle, but the rope held and the machine, Wall, helped him out too, even if they weren't old friends.
"Thanks, Mr. Wall." That got him to wonder if the being thought of himself as a male, but the voice answered instantly, sounding pleased enough.
