Mind Bender

Mind Bender

I run down an empty hallway. My life is hanging by a thread.

“Freeze, or I’ll shoot!” a man bellows from behind me.

If I obey, I’ll never get out of here. 

I’ll lose my freedom, my high-paying career, new house, luxury car. Yes, that’s how selfish I’ve become. 

At what point did my cushy life supersede my conscience? For doing work that is morally reprehensible. Evil.

The click of my shoes echo down the hall. Behind me, other clicks mark the three armed men pursuing me.

“Stop!” he shouts again, louder this time, his voice booming down the corridor.

I make a sharp left in a heartbeat. Then the deafening fire of a weapon, and my ears instantly go numb. Everything sounds deeply muffled. I no longer hear their footsteps. More importantly, the pistol shot missed me.

Here’s what’s weird – I’m not running down a real corridor in a real steel, glass, and concrete building. No – I’m running down a virtual corridor, inside a virtual world. The simulation is so realistic that I can’t distinguished it from the real thing.

I made my break from Project Mind Bender while my colleagues assembled in the auditorium for an awards presentation. I was one of the celebrated ones, receiving my own outstanding achievement award today.

Last month, I invented a way to blank  the memories of those who’s minds we’ve just bent. My discovery was a quantum leap – a big step toward the next one – of being able to implant false memories into the minds of our subjects. Our victims.

I make a right hand turn, count out four steps, then freeze and turn to my left. This is where I placed it. My secret backdoor. Literally. It only opens once – that’s the way I programmed it into the system over a month ago.

My heart pounds in my chest, and there it is – a door knob I can feel but not see! Turning it, I push the door open, jump through, and slam it shut behind me.

Then I spring awake with a gasp of cool, dry air – back in the real world! I’m lying in one of a dozen mind-link couches, inside a spartanly furnished chamber with bright overhead lights and pure white walls, ceiling, floor. 

Now’s my chance. I rip the thinking cap from my head – that’s what we call the cap with all the wires that link us with the Mind Bender main frame. Then I sit up, begin flexing my arms and legs. Finally, I detach the hydration and feeding lines from my forearms.

My colleagues are still in the virtual world. They lie there, each in their own mind-link couch. Their eyes are shut, their breathing slow and regular.

Five minutes later, I’ve changed from my research jumpsuit and into my civilian clothes. I trigger the door lock with my badge, and then I’m walking through a real corridor inside a real building. A quick stop in the men’s room to splash water on my face, comb my hair. I can smell my own stink, from having laid there for the past four days straight.

Please, God – let me get past the guards and out the door, and I swear to you, the creator of the universe, that I will head for the hills, hide myself, and then work from the outside to expose Trigon Industries. The company chosen to implement government mind control of select individuals, on the way to controlling everyone’s mind. Remotely. By computer.

There’s Cedric, head of security, talking on the phone as I stride confidently past. He pauses for a second or two as I pass his desk, then, blessedly, miraculously, he resumes talking on the phone. I pass out through the metal detectors, then slap my badge against the reader.

Click goes the door, and then I’m out of the building, and striding quickly across a sun-drenched parking lot. 

Any second now, the virtual guards in the Mind Bender sim-scape will figure out that I’ve pulled a fast one, by disappearing without a trace from the sim-scape. They will then contact the security division in the real world, who will then realize I’m missing from my mind-couch. That’s when the alarms will sound. The powers that be will spare no effort in finding me and bringing me back in. 

A pleasantly cool, dry breeze ruffles my hair, my shirt, and I feel lucky to be alive. Finally, I am outside the mind of that infernal machine. I reach my car, strap in, start the engine, and, as I exit the parking lot, I toss my cell phone into a patch of weeds beside the road.

Exhilaration courses through my body, my mind, as I drive the thirty-five miles I’ve rehearsed a dozen times before. I end up on a dirt road, in a densely treed forest. In the middle of nowhere. I pull into the trees, shut off the engine, and then find the electric bicycle I stashed behind a large rocky mound.

I sit on the seat, take a deep breath, and pedal off down the road.

Now I’m untraceable. Deeper and deeper into the forest I go, as the sun moves toward the western sky and the forest comes alive with crickets and frogs. Then freedom. Ultimate freedom! I cross from Washington state into Canada. Here, in the middle of the forest, there is no guard gate. I am free…

Then I hear a man’s voice. And smell stale, fried onions.

“Bill?” the man says.

My stomach wrenches, my heart seizes, as I recognize that voice. It’s Jim Hanson, my project supervisor.

“Bill,” he says, and I can tell he’s suppressing a grin. “Wakey, wakey!”

I spring awake, and I’m sitting in the central lab in the Mind Bender sim-scape. Jim is looming above me. He wears his perfect white lab coat, with several of the company higher-ups clustered around him.

“Bill. Take it easy. It was a clever attempt. But the software security monitors detected your backdoor last weekend. We looped in a Moebius splice, so when you passed through, you were now living inside a new copy of the sim-scape itself.”

“So I’ve been here the whole time?”

“I’m afraid so, Bill. And now it’s time to get back to work. But only after the awards ceremony. After all, you’re the star of the show!”