Remember (33 page)

“Everything seems to be working.”

As it should.
“When do I get out of the Center? I just want this mess to be done and over with. I want to finally move on.”

“It’ll be soon, another week or 2. How does that sound?”

I don't believe in personal assurances.
“Are you sure about that?”

“Conor, just look at the dates. You’re missing just a few weeks, now. You’ve made so much progress in just a few months. Just stay together a little longer. It’ll all be over soon.”

“No prob.”
Real confidence or imaginary?

“Today is just like every other day.”

Sarah holds the door open into the hallway. This room takes on a new scary, creepy feeling. I just want to leave it as soon as possible. Retrieving my memories doesn’t matter at this point. The only thing keeping me here is this social construct. I need my memories to function properly and avoid too many questions later. I have to do this. I just have to. I hesitantly walk into the room.

This disturbance turns me into a hyperaware version of myself. I notice the once unnoticeable, creepy aspects of everything that is this room. Walls change into a shade of lilac and retain their bleak, blank nature. The vast empty expanse sends a shiver through me. There is nothing here, just places to sit. The only comfort lays a few steps away. The familiarity of lying down on that couch keeps me going through my struggle. The psychological struggle turns now physical. Each step sends me deeper into my pit of fear. My feet transmogrify from my method of conveyance to a heavy anchor stalling my motion. The ghastly apparition of a desk offers no aid. Its white skinned form just floats along the wall. The glass inlay helps not, the view of the ground nothing but an illusion. My fear and anxiety melt away as I lay down in a place of comfort, the couch. My worries revealed to be based on nothing.

My arm rests under my head with the palm facing the sky. My absent gaze drifts upward over the white ceiling. Something patterned up there appears, a faint but undeniable impression of a square covering the entire surface and enshrouding a circle. A familiarity about this symbol draws me in, but to what? My gaze pulls away as Sarah enters the sitting space with her words.

“Sorry about the wait. I was just checking your dream journal.”

“You actually look at it?”

Sarah turns her pad around for me. “Conor that journal is a personal record of your experiences here." She holds it until I read through a little. "Anyone that needs the info has access to it. Your perception of events may not match the reality. This is a simple way to verify your impression.”

“Good.”

Sarah continues reading and sits nearby. “Ready to start?” She curls up her feet on the seat.

“Yes.”

Sarah puts her hand within mine. She starts speaking in her hypnosis voice. “You can access another memory. You can put meaning to your dreams. You can do everything I ask of you. You can trust what you remember. Free yourself from all fear and doubt. You are safe here. Nothing can harm you. You can trust the Process. You are powerful. You have the memory inside of you. You have everything you need to remember. You have it…”

(—)

Running is much less fun indoors. I look at the same things the whole time, the meeting place before anything gets too complicated. I see the two Agents now, recognizing Agent 7429 A.K.A Jenna from… (Continued next.)

Mon 8/21/17 1:38 p.m.

…l
ast week. The other one must be 2645. I met him in person before on less friendly terms. The threat and indecisiveness of it still lingers, burned into my head. Towering just as tall as I remember from the night he recruited me for the Division, 2645 in his mid-forties with a muscular build, not body-builder but distance runner. They come up to me.

In a baritone voice, Agent 2645 says, “Hello, I’m Morris. You know Jenna, I take it?”

“Yes, we met last week at a business meeting.” I shake his massive hand.

Jenna nods. “I think I remember you.”

“I have to get started on my workout. I’ll leave you two to talk.” Morris takes off at high speed.

I didn’t expect it. It isn’t that we can’t keep up, we don’t want to. A fake convo about her office starts up. They swapped managerial hands for some new, detail oriented ex-military type. He insists on going over each piece of paper that passes through his office. If he finds even a small mistake, they get called in (anger implied) to fix it. I share factual info. I start a sim body study anytime now. Physical intelligence vs. other intelligence metrics. I search for Morris around the elliptical running circuit. He isn’t here anymore. I look back at Jenna, missing too.

I keep going around the track, looking for clues, something I missed in my mental replay of events. Where are they? Some words overlay my vision. They guide me to a section of the wall where a small lighter circle appears. It grows into a doorway under words that say
walk through
. I do it reluctantly, walk right through, and descend a darkened hallway leading away from the gym. The sporadic lighting gives some areas plenty of light, while in between, the light fades to nothing. I move down the walkway, following directions that now tell me to wait at a doorway for the room. Jenna comes out, and I go in. A set of clothes suggest I change into them. The ribbed body suit fits me comfortably, just the right size. Must be an adventure go-seat suit — manually control a go-seat over natural terrain.

I continue down the hall and enter a cavernous alcove off an underground tunnel. Something that looks like a sculpture of an inverted black metal flower, actually a go-seat with three seats and a cargo space seats the fellow agents. The central tire bar meets with the other sections at the apex. It is suitably big for the space. Morris waits patiently in the center seat and Jenna adjusts her seat. I sit in mine. It seems the right size. The suit attaches to the seat in three places. There is no way to fall out. We rise up 4 meters into the air as the four outer struts climb over the central tire bar.

Morris uses hand gestures to drive us out of the alcove on the go-seat — a perfectly balanced stick leaning with purpose. We speed ahead through other alcoves every few secs. Other passageways join this one until we end up at an intersection. A branching tunnel leads away ahead, like what we just left. Straight tunnels branch off to the left and right. We turn left.

The tunnel quickly ends at a set of doors open to a scrubland. The go-seat easily moves through the rough natural terrain. We reach the mountains in the background and climb through the rocky foothills. A wheeled vehicle can't move without conveying up each bump along the way. I look down at the forgone wheels for something else, four legs. The center stem dampens the turbid surface with shape changes. Our pace over the ground remains unaltered despite the wild turns of landscape below. The upcoming box canyon might impede progress until the go-seat produces two extra legs near the hilt. It climbs like a rock climber up to the set of boxes stacked directly in the middle of this plateau. The go-seat parks and sets us down.

We load the boxes numbered one through five into the cargo area. A quick pat on the side covers the cargo box with a black liquid flow that becomes solid. We board the go-seat. I drive this time and get in trouble with the transitions. Before I know it we are back in the tunnel where I know the way back to the intersection. Jenna takes over from there. She navigates us to a different alcove, big enough for at least six go-seats and sloped gradually. It looks almost empty. We get off. On the way to the stairs leading up, we pass an unusual looking vehicle. A commercial go-seat. All the bars meet around the wheel. The center bar is just loaded with storage space. Having a majority of the weight in the center helps balance. For parking, the three bars attached to each seat spread out flat with a leg under each one. We go upstairs to the lobby. Jenna leads us to an office suite — Main Maintenance.

We find our clothes for the actual mission in a general meeting room surrounded by offices. All the numbered supplies (3 for me) split between us leads us into our offices to change. The standard for a glorified electrician. A padded suit keeps you at a good temperature, safe from job related injuries, and insulated from electrical discharge. The grey suit with black trim everywhere features a set of three metal rods on my belt. I feel something on the end of each bar that I can’t see. A force projection tool. It uses magnetic fields or something to turn screws from a distance. I leave my adventure go-seat suit there.

Morris and Jenna slather a white paste over their faces, the physical id. I open a bottle for 3 and start putting on the paste, a thick layer and use all of it, don’t know about covering my eye lids, but Morris is just doing it. I give it a try, start seeing something on my eyelids, and it's the outside, finish putting it on.

It wants me to choose a new face, so I give myself a bigger nose and brow, make my chin rounder and bigger, and finally change my eye color green. Now, the tech id last. Getting my node from the table, I put it on. The normal place on my shoulder works. The node connects my new face with the new id. Now officially undercover. Jenna grabs a supply trolley from a storage closet and we all go to the garage.

Morris stays at the cover go-seat. I help Jenna load the cart some 50 feet away. The adventure go-seat gives up its cargo for loading. I have to ask about last week. The week of prep pushed everything else out. Here goes.

After we loaded the cart, Jenna plays through the cover vids the cart can show for something appropriate. We stand nearby to block the cam picking up. I whisper for confidentiality. “Does last week at
Zensation
mean anything?”

Jenna disregards the whisper consideration. “You are still thinking about that?”

I try something simple.
“No, I just want to clarify.”

“I was nothing. You refused to eat anything. HQ didn’t see that coming. I just improvised a solution to deliver the mission brief.”

Seriously?
“What was the alternate protocol?”

“We were supposed to get to the cover office. I give you an encrypted drive to upload. The security comprise was too much for me. I came up with a secure option.”

“How did you do it?”

“I had them put the tech programming in my food. I securely delivered the report to you. What would you have preferred?”

What do you say to something like that?

Jenna grabs the fully loaded cart and wheels it away slowly against the gradual incline.

I go meet Morris at the cover go-seat. He sets up everything. I weasel my way to the center bar, press the switch, step back to give some space, and the seats swivel around to one side. The storage space turns into a work bench with room for three carts. The other two slots hold the projector and tools needed for the job, two sets of each. I get in my seat and register my id with the go-seat.

I just relax waiting for Jenna. She latches the cart in place and gets into the last seat. Morris set the destination, so the go-seat reconfigures the cargo area to the middle, picks up the three seats supporting it and moves through the maze of tunnels with ease. I couldn't find my own way back. We stop at a dead end street with a row of go-seats on either side of a metal building. The Main Maintenance go-seat lowers the seats all the way to the ground. Everyone gets off, I unload the supplies, and we each grab one cart, going into the building.

The large metal doors open below a sign saying, ‘Stephens Institute’, the target. We go through a small lobby with a desk to the elevators leading up.

“Stop right there!”

Mon 8/21/17 3:08 p.m.

M
orris produces a pad from somewhere and gives it to the security person. It takes a while for him to say anything. I look around at the lobby — a small area of granite in the middle of a big greenhouse covering the floor. I follow the walls through the dense growth.

“Everything looks good. You have access to the fourth floor, conference room 14,” the guard says. He gives Morris the pad.

“Thanks,” Morris says. We go past the desk showing our ids and pictures authorized access. We cram ourselves into the small space of the elevator for a slow ride from B1 to four. Exit the elevator, immediately turn right into the first conference room, 14, and we are in.

Morris and I unpack the cover supplies — the old-fashioned projector, room node, additional tech, and pad — onto the table. Jenna opened box number one with the V-tech and enters something into the included pad, so the container of V-tech allows enough out for a screen over the door. Said screen shows us working on pads, what anyone outside can see with the door open.

We unpack boxes two and three of the mission supplies, while Jenna takes the room node and puts on the extra tech vials. This assembly goes somewhere on the wall. She starts doing the programming. I lay out the laden body suits that become the assault suits, and Morris looks through the weapons (NILT - a puck sized weapon deploying a knife and electrical payload and VANSP - projectile weapon delivering constant electrical voltage to paralyze), nexuses, and helmets from his box for functionality.

I take out the nexuses just replaced by him. They look like black nodes and interface between tech instances. I put one in the sleeve pocket at the shoulder and seal it inside each suit.

“JB, take this.” Morris throws a NLIT at me. I put the NLIT in a magnetic holster on the thigh of the suit.

Fine rods extend down from the ceiling, attach to the projector, and pull it into the ceiling.

I take off my uniform and put on the fabric assault suit with socks and gloves attached, zip up the midline seam, and the suit snugs tight. Start the interface of the suit and the specs appear on my tech. The suit grows thicker and protective, forming a hollow over my front and various indentations for other weapons we don't have. Super traction plant my feet on the ground. Take off the tech id node, the assault suit can take care of it. I have to figure out how to control the added strength the suit gives me. The training comes in handy. I find a happy medium of how much force to use. Everyone changed. Jenna has a cream velveteen suit with a dark blue shirt. She altered her physical id, also. Morris puts box number four on my back. I help him get the other box on the little ledge across his back, where little latches hold it in place. We put on our helmets, check and re-holster the NLIT’s.