The Embodiment of Total FrustrationBill SnodgrassAn example of DEP's Text-to-MP3 automation (the "Dave" voice) and an example of fiction for TeenAge, this award-winning story gives insight into feelings of being out of control. What if your thoughts really were not your own?
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This was written in response to a writing challenge to present an entertaining story that relied on second person narrative.
 "It is something everyone has known," you tell yourself. It started simply enough. No fault of your own. It was an act of terrorism—not the 21st century kind of terrorism. Not a bomb left in a satchel. Not a suicide bomber walking into a crowded market. Much worse. But as for your place in it, you feel helpless, totally frustrated at your paralysis. Had you done something—anything at all—to contribute to the situation, the feeling might have been grief or self-abasement. But the truth of the matter, when you consider all the facts, is that you had no part in your circumstances. Nothing you would have reasonably done could have prevented it. Nothing you could have reasonably foreseen could have turned the events otherwise. It was an act of terror. Nothing more. You march forward, a blank smile plastered on your face, 35-millimeter camera around your neck. In your hand you carry a tour map and in your pocket are tokens for the Metro. You look like—you are—a tourist, but it is not by your will, but theirs. While you were still young and the world around you slept, ate, graduated high school and what not, they were hatching the beginnings of a scheme. Really quite brilliant. Really, in fact, genius. The idea seeded itself in their midst, but was nearly ignored as too far-fetched, even for them. One among them though, was convincing enough, and by and by the idea became a plan. Long term, certainly, but a plan. You imagine them saying, “It will be years, but the infidel will suffer dearly when this is completed.” The scheme began working its way toward you. Oh, not by any direct path, but circuitously. Now you know, but when it began, you simply slept your young and innocent nights in peace. They told you about it. Why not? You have no power now. There is nothing you can do now. They began with a pleasant faced sympathizer. A young lady gifted with words of persuasion. She hid away the truth of the scheme, veiling it in a promise of hope for people who suffered—a great hope to quiet the pain of the most tormented of the mentally ill. Veiled as all but a cure for schizophrenia, she ultimately enlisted the greatest minds of medicine and bioengineering. Her part in the affair was forgotten long before Nobel Laureates became involved. Her part was subtle. A quaint word here, a suggestion there, a teary eyed plea for help. As the idea took a life of its own and prestigious names were added to the roster of those on the project, she was forgotten. Others of them took a place to watch. “I am sorry,” the guard says, “picture taking is not allowed in here. You’ll have to check your camera into one of the lockers provided down that corridor.” They watched the project of mercy for years. Watched as the scientist from the drug companies conceded and agreed that they could, indeed, make money on a permanent solution to the random thoughts attacking the mind of the person with schizophrenia. Meanwhile, other researchers—not those of the drug company, but rather theirs—were developing new ways to make things explode. Means undetectable to latest technology and canines alike. This was key. The two innovations would marry into the scheme hatched that long-ago day. Work on both projects endured the passing of decades. Finally, someone at the biotech company declared proudly, “We have a working prototype.” They told you this. Why not? There is nothing you can do now. You have no power now. The biotech company should have had better security, but then again, who would have suspected? The woman who stole the back-up prototype had worked on the project for years. She was a scientist there. She had been there since the very beginning. They had put her there even before the pleasant faced young lady had completed her part in the scheme. As you step through the metal detector, you feel nothing and nothing is detected but you know it has begun. The scanner, though it did not detect their malice, set it in motion. You were chosen at random. Truly at random. You were in the train station in Boston. Your plans were to go to Manhattan, but you did not end up there. Instead, they decided your innocent face was just plain enough to do the job. The years—decades of research had yielded the exact location in the brain of the origin of thought. It had accomplished the replication of the process from organic to electronic, and in the end, the prototype was complete. Meanwhile, their chemists found a means to hide not only a high power explosive charge from the noses and beams that diligently sought such things, but also to infuse the chemical agents with deadly plutonium dust. Detonation would scatter the poison far beyond the enormous effect of the blast. Spirited away from the Boston station, you rode in a dark van. Darker in your mind than it really was, blackened by the drugs coursing your veins. At the back of your neck, below your collar, a small incision was made. You remember a prick, nothing more. The prototype was implanted. Flipping a switch, they took control. Not only could they dampen the unwanted thoughts haunting the mind of one with schizophrenia, they could also implant the thoughts they desired. Months passed as they perfected their adaptation. Then, once satisfied that you would be the marionette they wanted, they shipped you away dressed like a tourist. Your feet obey commands not your own, as you march on behind the others who follow the guide. She is talking. This story by Bill Snodgrass first appeared in Deep Magic Magazine. |
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