Into the Game

My hand hurt.

I had been signing papers for the better part of the morning. My lawyer had already looked over the documents and had marked what felt like a few hundred places where I needed to sign. The room they had put me in was dank and poorly lit. I hated that I was wasting time, but they refused to let me anywhere near the pod room until I had signed all the paperwork.

I tried not to think about what might happen to my brother in the time we had already wasted. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to cry. I could allow myself to cry when I was alone and couldn’t sleep, but now in a room where a bunch of lawyers were waiting for me to finish signing papers, I couldn’t cry. I needed to look like I knew what I was doing.

I looked up at the lawyers and smiled, then turned back to the papers. I was only halfway through. I wished there was just some way I could have just waved my hand and been done with it.

Two hours later I finished and was taken to the next room. I sat in a chair and had technicians attach a bunch of sensors to my body and head. It was so they could test how my body would handle the strain of being in the Chair. I’m not sure why it would have mattered, I still would’ve gone in even if they told me that it would probably kill me. Billy was my responsibility and all that was left of our family, so I was going to make sure he came out okay.

The techs finished their tests and left me in the room while they talked about what they found. I stared up at the buzzing lights and tried not to get mad. It was almost five o’clock. I wondered how much longer they were going to make me wait.

I read more on the pods. They were two inch glass tubes that were eight feet in diameter. The liquid that the tubes are filled with are infused with nanotechnology that allows the technicians to monitor vital signs. The liquid is very similar to amniotic fluid, allowing the subjects to breathe it without it suffocating them.

Drowning in the fluid didn’t scare me. It was the nanotech. Once submerged, the nanites would turn on and plug the user into the interface. Brain waves were instantaneously transmitted to the system servers.

It wasn’t the nanites that I had a problem with. It was how they worked. Once a nanite was turned on, it would serve its function. It could not be reprogrammed. I hoped that one of the billions of microscopic machines didn’t go crazy while I was under and decided to start tearing apart my brain or some other part of my body.

More technicians came in and out of the room, but they didn’t talk to me. They just wrote down some numbers or drew more blood. I had lost track of how many times they’d taken a blood sample since I’d walked into the facility. The guard outside my door didn’t help ease my nerves any.

I knew they had increased security after the break-in. They had wanted the place to appear empty so the public wouldn’t catch on that the test was live, but it seemed like they were taking more security precautions.

It was after six thirty before a balding man in a suit walked into the room carrying a file. He was short, probably just over five feet tall, almost as big around as he was tall. His black hair was starting to turn gray and his eyes were dark brown. If he had been taller, he would’ve looked a lot like my grandfather.

He put the file down. His brow was sweating and he had the serious face my grandfather would wear just before he gave bad news.

“Miss Bates.” His voice was high, with a nasally pitch. “We need to talk.”