TABLE OF CONTENTS
ROUND 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
ROUND 2
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
ROUND 3
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
ROUND 4
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
FINAL ROUND
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
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ROUND 1
Local Computer Genius Arrested on Federal Charges
SUMMERVILLE, South Carolina. – Tyler Ballard, 37, was apprehended by authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for practicing federally banned computer technology.
Ballard is best known for inventing the controversial technique of Computer-Assisted Alternate Reality (CAAR) that induces lucid dream states. The program requires a direct connection with the user’s frontal lobe by means of a needle-probe piercing the forehead that results in a realistic computer-generated environment. Users reported no difference between their CAAR experience and flesh-body experience.
The controversial technology was later banned in most countries when all users began to suffer irreparable psychological damage that resulted in vegetative states.
Ballard was practicing CAAR in his basement with his wife, Patricia Ballard, 36. Patricia suffers from bipolar disorder and, Tyler Ballard claims, was responding well to CAAR treatments. Authorities dispute this claim since Patricia has been unresponsive to physical stimuli since the arrest.
Harold Ballard, 12, their only son, was placed in the custody of his grandparents.
1
Click-click-click-click.
The walls inched closer. Reed gripped the bars of his shrinking cell.
His legs, shaking.
The cold seeped through his bare feet. The soles were numb, his ankles ached. He lifted his feet one at a time, alternating back and forth to keep the bitter chill from reaching his groin, but he couldn’t waste strength anymore. He let go of the bars to shake the numbness from his fingers.
He’d been standing for quite some time. Has it been hours? Occasionally he would sit to rest his aching legs, but soon the cell would be too narrow for that. He’d have to stand up. And when the top of his cage started moving down – and it would – he’d be forced to not-quite stand, not-quite sit.
He knew how things worked.
Although he couldn’t measure time in the near-blackout room, this round felt longer than previous ones. Perhaps it would never end. Maybe he’d have to stand until his knees crumbled under his dead weight. His frigid bones would shatter like frozen glass when he hit the ground. He’d fall like a boneless bag, his muscles liquefied in a soupy mix of lactic acid and calcium, his nerves firing randomly, his eyes bulging, teeth chattering—
Don’t think. No thoughts.
Reed learned that his suffering was only compounded by thoughts, that the false suffering of what he thought would happen would crush him before the true suffering did. He learned to be present with the burning, the cold, and the aches. The agony.
He couldn’t think. He had to be present, no matter what.
Sprinklers dripped from the ribs of the domed ceiling that met at the apex where an enormous ceiling fan still moved from the momentum of its last cycle. Eventually, the sprinklers would hiss another cloud and the fan would churn again and the damp air would sift through the bars and over Reed’s wet skin, heightening the aches in his joints like clamps. For now, there was just the drip of the sprinklers and the soft snoring of his cellmates.
Six individual cells were inside the building, three on each side of a concrete aisle. Each one contained a boy about Reed’s age. They were all in their teens, the youngest being fourteen. Their cells were spacious; only Reed’s had gotten smaller. Despite the concrete, they all lay on the floor, completely unaware of the anguish inside the domed building.
They weren’t sleeping, though. Sleep is when you close your eyes and drift off to unconsciousness. No, they were somewhere else. The black strap around each of their heads took them away from the pain. They had a choice to stay awake like Reed, but they chose to lie down, strap on, and go wherever it took them. They didn’t care where.
In fact, they wanted to go.
To escape.
Reed couldn’t blame them. They were kids. They were scared and alone. Reed was all those things, too. But he didn’t have a strap around his head. He stayed in his flesh.
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Started counting, again.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…10.
And then he did it again. Again.
And again.
He didn’t measure time with his breathing. He only breathed. His life was in his breath. It ebbed and flowed like the tides. It came and went like the lunar phases. When he could be here and now, the suffering was tolerable. He counted, and counted and counted.
Distracted, he looked up at the fan. The blades had come to a complete stop. The air was humid and stagnant and cold. Around the domed ceiling were circular skylights that stared down with unforgiving blackness, indifferent to suffering. Reed tried not to look with the hopes of seeing light pour through them, signaling an end. Regardless if it was day or night, the skylights were closed until the round of suffering was over, so looking, hoping and wishing for light was no help. It only slowed time when he did. And time had nearly stopped where he was at.
1, 2, 3—
A door opened at the far right; light knifed across the room, followed by a metallic snap and darkness again. Hard shoes clicked unevenly across the floor. Reed smelled the old man before he limped in front of his cell, a fragrance that smelled more like deodorant than cologne. Mr. Smith looked over his rectangular glasses.
“Reed, why do you resist?”
Reed met his gaze but didn’t reply. Mr. Smith wasn’t interested in a discussion. It was always a lecture. No point to prolong it.
“Don’t be afraid.” The dark covered his wrinkles and dyed-black hair, but it couldn’t hide his false tone. “I promise, you try it once, you’ll see. You don’t have to do it again if you don’t like it. We’re here to help, my boy. Here to help. You don’t have to go through this suffering.”
Did he forget they we
re the ones that put him in there? Did he forget they made the rules and called the shots and forced him to play? Reed knew he – himself – he had gone mad but IS EVERYONE CRAZY?
Reed let his thoughts play in his eyes. Mr. Smith crossed his arms, unmoved.
“We don’t want to hurt you, I promise. We’re just here to prepare you for a better life, that’s all. Just take the lucid gear, the pain will go away. I promise.”
He reached through the bars and batted the black strap hanging above Reed’s head. It turned like a seductive mobile. Reed turned his back on him. Mr. Smith sighed. A pencil scratched on a clipboard.
“Have it your way, Reed,” he said, before limp-shuffling along. “The Director wants to see you after this round is over.”
He listened to the incessant lead-scribbled notes and click-clack of shiny shoes. When Mr. Smith was gone, Reed was left with only the occasional drip of the dormant sprinklers. He began to breathe again, all the way to ten and over. And over. And over. No thoughts. Just 1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3… 1, 2—
Click-click-click-click.
Reed locked his knees and leaned back as the cell walls moved closer. Soon the fan would turn again and the mist would drift down to bead on his shoulders. Reed couldn’t stop the thoughts from telling him what the near future would feel like. How bad it was going to get.
He looked up at the lucid gear dangling above his head.
He took a breath.
And began counting again.
2
“Danny Boy!”
Danny’s aunt’s voice was muffled. She was calling from his bedroom with that thick Irish accent, obviously thought he was still in bed. Eventually, she’d come up to the attic where Danny was hunched over the keyboard, eyes on the screen. His mother had cleared a space out of the corner just for him, no one else, and even when the weather was too hot or too cold, Danny would sit up there all day.
“Danny Boy! Where are you, darling?”
He couldn’t be interrupted now. He’d been acting sick for two weeks and got behind in school work. His mother trusted he was getting the homework done but he’d spent all his time modding the computer to do exactly what he was doing now.
People are stupid.
They used easy passwords and repeated the same one over and over. Who thinks the word password is a password? Morons.
It wasn’t difficult to get past the school’s firewall. Danny broke the encrypted password – using a program he wrote, thank you very much. In two seconds, he’d be a second grade, straight-A student. Once again.
Thank you very much.
Wait. I’m 13, not 7.
“Danny Boy?” The steps creaked. “Are you up here all ready? It’s not even six o’clock in the morning, sonny boy.”
Danny’s fingers danced over the keys.
“Danny Boy… what are you doing?”
One more stroke and—
CRRUNNCH!
Danny fell out of the chair. The sound was deafening, like a metal pole plunging through the roof, smashing wood and shingles. Dust swirled in the new light. The steps creaked again, but something had changed. There wasn’t insulation hanging from the ceiling anymore and there was a pile of boxes that wasn’t there before.
The house changed.
“What are you doing in the attic?” A man was on the top step holding a golf club.
Danny blinked but it wasn’t his aunt. And he wasn’t in front of a computer anymore. He was lying in a crib. He was a thirteen-year-old kid in a baby’s crib. In someone else’s house.
The man’s golf shoes sounded funny on the wood floor. He stopped short of the crib with his hands on his hips, the club teetering in his left hand. “Son, what in the hell are you doing? You think you’re still a baby?”
Danny didn’t move. Then the man smiled like a proud father.
“Well, if you want to do the baby thing again, let’s give it a try.”
He dropped the club and started tickling Danny’s ribs. His fingers hit the funny spot and Danny gave out a chuckle. The man was all smiles, making happy-daddy sounds as he tortured him with loving grabs. Danny tried to knock him away but the man was too strong. Danny was about to piss his pants he was laughing so hard.
“Come here, you.” The man snatched Danny up by the arms with a strong grip, but it wasn’t strong enough. Danny slipped out of his clutches. He heard the man gasp as Danny fell out of the rickety crib, thought he’d land on his feet but the drop was farther than he expected. He crashed, all right; not on the floor, but on grass.
The sun was over him. The house was gone.
A crowd cheered. Danny was wearing a baseball uniform with a glove on his left hand. He’d never played baseball in his life, but there he was in center field with a cap pulled down just above his eyes.
Somewhere, an aluminum bat went ting.
The players on the infield turned around. The ball was high in the sky. The sun was in his eyes. He lifted the glove but couldn’t see it. He tried squinting, tried covering the sun with his right hand but it was blinding. And the ball was going to hit him smack in the face. But he couldn’t let the team down. He had to catch it. He had to—
And then he was swimming in the ocean. The waves crashed around him. There were other kids, too. Danny had never been to the beach, but there he was, swimming in water that churned at his waist—
And then he was coloring Easter eggs. There was a lady at the sink with an apron and some little girl across the table. He’d never seen her before—
Opening birthday presents and people were singing. People he’d never—
Playing Hide and Seek. He was hiding behind a bush with someone he’d—
Baking cookies—
School bus—
The scenes stacked on top of each other until he couldn’t tell where one began and the next ended. It was all a blur. All a blur.
All a blur.
______
The throbbing.
That was the first thing Danny noticed before he cracked the seal of his sleep-crusted eyelashes. The head-splitting throb. His forehead felt like it had been punched with a dental tool.
“Don’t sit up just yet, young man.” A soft hand was on his arm. “Give it a few seconds.”
He did what the man said.
When he opened his eyes, the light seemed bright. It took a minute of rapid blinking to adjust. He was in a doctor’s office, on a patient’s table. The paper that covered the table was bunched up under him, crinkling when he moved. There was an old man sitting on a stool next to him. His face was plenty wrinkled and his hair as white as the coat he wore.
“I’m Mr. Jones.” The man broke out in grin worthy of a father looking at his newborn.
“Wa…” Danny’s tongue was gummy. “Water, please.”
“Sit up first, all right?”
When Danny was up, Mr. Jones passed him a paper cup and watched him chug it.
“More, please.”
“Let that settle for a moment, okay. There’s more when you’re ready.”
He wrapped a band around Danny’s arm and took his blood pressure. Then took his temperature and pulse. He did some scribbling on a clipboard, occasionally looking up and humming.
The room, now that Danny had a chance to focus, was less like a doctor’s office and more like a lab. There seemed to be large equipment attached to the wall that could be pulled out and centered on hinged arms. And behind him, the room went back another twenty feet with a treadmill and monitors and more machines.
“You go by Danny Boy?” the man asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“You were dreaming before you woke up and mumbled Danny Boy. I thought maybe that was what you preferred to be called. Danny Boy.”
“My aunt… she called me that…”
“Ah, yes. Aunts are special, aren’t they?” He grinned, again.
Danny reached for his head that felt so full of… stuff. But Mr. Jones caught him by the wrist. “Just relax a second, Danny Boy.”
“I was having this weird dream… like it was a bunch of dreams all crammed into one.”
“Dreams are like that.” Mr. Jones quickly looked at his clipboard.
“Where am I?”
“You’ve had an accident, but you’re okay now. Would you like some more water?”
“Yes, please.”
He downed a second paper cup and wadded it before handing it back.
“Um, Doctor…”
“You can call me Mr. Jones.”
“Mr. Jones, am I in a hospital?”
“You’re somewhere much better than a hospital, my boy. You’re in a special rehabilitation center that is unique for your condition. You’ll have the best care that money can buy while you’re here and you’ll get to do things no other kid on this planet has ever tried. You’ll also… ah, ah, ah… don’t touch.”
Danny reached for his forehead. There was a round band-aid the size of a Bull’s eye right in the middle where it hurt. He tried to remember an accident, anything that he would’ve been doing that would’ve knocked him on the head, but all the memories were gibberish. He couldn’t remember his home address or phone number. If his aunt hadn’t been calling for him, he wouldn’t remember his name.
“Is this why I’m here?” He tried to touch the bandage again.
“In some ways, yes.”
“Did I fall on an ice pick?”
“No.” Mr. Jones snorted. “You’ve been asleep for a long time while you’ve undergone treatment, so you may feel a bit woozy when you stand up. Be careful, all right? I want you to lean forward and let your toes touch the ground… good. Now stay just like that a second.” Mr. Jones spun on the stool and coasted to the computer behind him. “And don’t touch your forehead.”
Danny’s toes were tingly. Just the little weight that was on them, he could tell standing wasn’t going to go well. He left his forehead alone, reached for his stiff neck, instead. It was sore, too. And there was a knot between the vertebrae. It felt like a band had been inserted just under the skin about the width of a wedding ring that made it seem like one large neck bone. Mr. Jones had one bulging on his neck, too.
“What’s this?”
“That’s part of your treatment,” Mr. Jones said without looking. “It’s new technology meant to stay in touch with your nervous system. We’ll talk more about that later.”
The Annihilation of Foreverland (A Science Fiction Thriller) Page 1
