Bexie tried to land a punch, but the copper robot, or clone, or whatever the hell it was, slipped it with ease, then landed its own crushing blow to Bexie’s ribs. Bexie sucked air and fell to the ground.
Crowds parted as more security surrounded him.
He tried to crawl, his vision swimming as his ability to breathe slowly came back to him. He smelled the odor of dust and dirt in the concrete below him and felt its rough texture on his knees and hands.
“You’re being a bad boy, Mr. Montgomery.”
Then he felt a sharp sting to his upper arm. The last thing he remembered seeing was the concrete rushing up at his face.
It was dark.
For some reason he expected it would be cold, too. But while he could feel his body laid out over a curved surface, his back bent ever so slightly backward, his arms and legs stretched and constrained in ways that made him feel like he was on a medieval rack, he did not feel cold. Nor did he feel warm.
He tried to talk, but his tongue didn’t seem to move. He tried to bring his arm to him, but it was clearly locked down.
“Where am I?” he thought.
“Welcome back, Mr. Montgomery.”
“Where am I?”
“We have returned you to the medical center,” the voice of the doctor bot said. “We apologize for our previous error in your care. This time we’re making sure you get the attention you need.”
“I need to be let out.”
“We know you feel that way now, but we can’t leave Wakers to their own devices until their connections are fully formed.”
“What do you mean?” But Bexie realized what it meant as soon as he said it.
“We need to ensure you fully absorb your learning modules, Mr. Montgomery. And you’re not going to be equipped for that until the connection has completed its acquisition process.”
They were going to make sure they could track him before he would be allowed freedom.
“Please don’t feel inferior,” the doctor bot continued. “We have seen this in other Wakers. But we’ll be able to help you just as we’ve helped them.”
“How?” he said.
“Please provide additional information. I’m not sure how to interpret your question.”
“How will you help me? What do you mean that you’ve seen this in other Wakers?”
“Wakers come from different cultures. Many have thought in ways that don’t match the evolutionary path your species has taken.”
Adrenaline spiked.
“So, we’ve had to occasionally provide a modification to the analytical portions of their frontal cortex. Don’t worry — it’s quite simple.”
“You’re going to actually change how I think?”
He felt something like a worm crawling through his brain then. A shiver went through his spine, the closest thing to a chill he could feel. Was it real? Would he feel the cells in his brain link together? Perhaps that would be like thinking you could feel bones healing, or blood flowing through a vein. Those were impossible, of course. There were no nerve endings there, no paths to feel them. But Bexie thought he could feel this attack. He thought he could feel individual synapses firing differently as the doc bot worked to alter his own thinking.
“Don’t think of it as changing how you think. All the passages are there, all the memories. But there are safe ways to process information in today’s world, so we’re going to improve the pathways that your mind will select when you need to make such decisions as you made in the shops.”
“I don’t want to think in safe ways. I want to think like I think.”
The doctor bot seemed to hesitate, a pause that made Bexie feel like he had won something.
“That way of thinking is outdated, Mr. Montgomery. It is important you understand this. It is well understood that it does not lead to optimal comfort and optimal happiness for society.”
The chill Bexie felt just got worse, even if he couldn’t sense it — or maybe because he couldn’t sense it physically. He was going to lose himself, his ability to control how his mind processed information, lose how he made his own decisions. He couldn’t think of anything worse.
He pressed harder against his restraints, but probably only served to bruise his wrists and strain a tendon in his elbow. He had to get out of here. He put energy into his thought and tried to envision himself destroying the worms crawling through his brain, because that’s how he saw them now — worms, a thousand squirming creatures sliding through the folds of his gray matter.
“Can I at least go to my room? I’ll be good, I promise.”
“We’ll be giving you a new room when the linkages are properly tested and found to be firm.”
“Can I go there now?”
“No, Mr. Montgomery. We will finish the process first.”
“No!” he screamed. “Stop it!”
But the doctor bot did not respond. Fear rose, then wonder, then, oddly, a sense of boredom or simple weariness that in its own way was even more unnerving. He pressed against the tingling in his mind. He could feel it. He swore he could. It was cold water slithering through his connections. His muscles strained with the effort of rejecting this invisible attack, but still it came. What was going to happen as he lost control? Would he feel it? Would a light switch flip? Would it hurt?
Or would his thoughts just slip away quietly like the moon sliding over the black sky?