Delusional Read online

  I looked up at the sky in complete disarray. My whole brain felt discombobulated and spinning, but not knowing what from. “Mind control program? Second Civil War? Please someone tell me, what is going on? What is happening?”

  The man’s eyes grew wide, “Oh my…” He turned around and mouthed something to the people sitting down, “She’s been mind-wiped. They probably induced her with artificial retrograde amnesia.” There was a look of complete shock and disappointment strewn across his face, and I could feel his eyes peering over me, as if searching for something.

  What am I, some freak? Am I a monster?

  “No, no, Natalie, don’t be upset.” He had a warm almost fatherly tone to his voice.

  “Don’t be upset?” I objected. “I woke up and I didn’t remember anything, and then these strange people tied me up to a chair and tried to kill me, and you expect me not to be upset? I mean like, who even is Natalie? Why do you keep saying that?”

  “You are Natalie,” He said it with an odd expression on his face. He looked at me; no, more like looked through me with an almost impassive shock in his eyes. There was a weird inflexion in his voice when he said my name—the way in which it rolled of his lips so naturally—that sent chills down my spine.

  “Natalie,” I said sniffling a bit, “Is that my name?”

  “Yes,” He said smiling, but he had a deeper look on his face. “Your full name is Natalie Parker.”

  “Natalie Parker,” I said it slowly letting my tongue feel every syllable, “I like that name,” I paused for a second, “What’s your name then?”

  “My name?” He chuckled and shifted a bit, “I’m Jacob Lloyd.” The words sounded forced as they rolled off his tongue.

  “Oh,” I paused thinking again, “Well how do you know my name? Who exactly are you guys?” My voice was calmer, the anxiety and fear finally starting to calm down. These people, whoever they are, are good, I can sense it. My unadulterated hope was attached to nothing; it was merely blind faith in the warm energy that seemed to encompass the room.

  “Well we have been watching both you and Ethan for a while, since Camp Camel in fact, but more about that later.” There was a gleam to his eyes that made it seem as if this man had known me for years. His nose was narrow and slender, and the barely visible creases in his forehead, became exemplified every time his eyes connected with mine. “We though, are the White Knights.” He motioned towards the people seated. “In a nutshell, we are one of the two major groups rebelling against the current establishment.”

  “Wow,” I exhaled as a whirlwind of questions entered my mind. “So then where are we headed right now?” I looked out the window and we were still flying up above the clouds in the middle of nowhere.

  “Right now, we are headed to the main operations center for the White Knights.” A darker-skinned man with prominent cheekbones and a surprisingly deep voice spoke up. “It’s located in a remote part of the Marin Headlands in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

  “Okay,” I said, my mind connecting with the fact that San Francisco was in California, on the West Coast of the United States. By the tone of his voice I didn’t have much of an option as if to whether I wanted to go or not; it was just another sweep in the current of life underneath my feet.

  “You’ll see when we get there,” Jacob added, noticing my confused look, “It will all make sense soon e—”

  “Jacob,” a tall girl with thick red hair emerged from the room that I just noticed on the back side of the aircraft. She had a frantic look in her eyes, “I-it’s Ethan. H-he stopped breathing. He’s losing too much blood.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Jacob immediately followed her into the back room. Before the door shut I was able to get a quick glimpse of a man with dark, caramel colored skin laying lifelessly on the table. He had a gash on his right side that blood gushed from in an endless stream.

  “Who is that?” I questioned with a hand over my mouth in shock and disgust. I figured that he had been saved from Area 51 just like I had been, and there was no doubt that I once knew him somehow.

  They all exchanged apprehensive looks. Then the same teary-eyed girl that was hugging me from before spoke up.

  “Do you really not remember anything?” The girl stared at me dumbfounded either dark, brown eyes somehow hoping that she could will the memories to return to my mind.

  “This would be such a messed-up joke.” I mumbled. “No, I’m not lying.” My words came out much more defensive that I had meant them to. “Does anyone know who and why they did this to me?”

  “It was the government.” Dulce managed to utter out the words, while visibly holding back tears. “They must have been trying to gouge through your memories for evidence and figured they would just delete them off your conscious to make your death that much more amusing. Maybe, they even knew you were gonna escape, and didn’t care cause they wanted you to feel hopeless.”

  I faintly heard her whisper under her breath before breaking down into another round of silent, painful tears.

  “What is wrong with her?” I glanced at Lauren, who patted the sobbing girl on the back with an expression of horror and pity on her face. It was difficult for me to imagine how anyone could feel worse than the emptiness and hopelessness I felt in that moment.

  “You were the last person alive at that Camp!” She screamed, wiping snot that dripped from her runny nose. “I was the one you left behind.” There was a bitterness to her tone that almost made me thankful that whatever memory she was referencing was forgotten.

  “Dulce, stop.” A boy with wavy, long blonde hair, and a smooth voice cut her off before she erupted into a fit of yelling. “Not now. Please not now. You know how crucial this is.”

  At his words her head sprung towards him. “Oh, since when have you given two shits about anyone else.” She waved a hand in the air as if dismissing his comment as nothing more than pointless jargon. “You’re Colton, Mr. please-bang-me-cause-I-can’t-do-it-myself. The second you stepped foot in this organization you had to stick your nose, your mouth, and other things that shouldn’t be anywhere into everything. Don’t think I haven’t heard the things you have done. Just because I’m new doesn’t mean I’m clueless, in fact, you are. You have no right to tell me what to do.”

  “I’m just following orders.” His voice was cold, but it was visible that he was holding himself back from lunging at her. “If you keep acting like you have no idea about the orders Jacob gives, then you very well know what happens.”

  “Well I don’t care!” She roared. “He can throw me out to the streets and shove me right in the middle of every protest. I’ll kill every rich bastard I can find!”

  “Dulce, calm down chica.” The darker-skinned boy with faded hair and curls placed a hand on her thigh. Good thing that he was right in between Colton and Dulce or else they would probably tear themselves apart. “You best shut your damn mouth before you say something you bout to regret.”

  “Antonio.” She hissed. “Stay out of this one. This is different.”

  “It’s always the same shit, just a different powered fan you use to hurl it at the people around you.” Before Antonio could continue with his analogy, Jacob emerged from the back room with a distressed hastiness.

  “Is Ethan gonna be okay?” Dulce asked leaning forward; a pressing urgency in her tone

  “Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Jacob sat down, “For a little bit they had a lot of trouble stopping the blood from his wounds, but he’s better now. Once we get back we will get him some medication and he should be all good to go.”

  “Alright good,” Dulce exhaled, and a look of relief appeared on her face.

  However, Jacob didn’t acknowledge Dulce’s comment and by the passive looks on everyone else’s faces they were too scared to respond. There was a moment where an awkward silence prevailed in the air, and my muscles tensed as an array of anticipated looks darted in my direction.

  “I can’t avoid this.” There was a dazed expression in his eyes a
s he thought aloud. “I didn’t think I would ever have to say this.” He sighed, the stress visible in his finger that vibrated with his every heartbeat. “But you deserve to know.” His voice trailed off and I felt sweat puddle in the palms of my hands as I nervously contemplated what was about to happen. “I have to tell you why you’re here, who we really are, and why I’m trying to fix the mess that I created in this world.”

  He cleared his throat before beginning. There was a visible look of pain and grief beneath his expression, however, there was an emotionless layer that had hardened over eyes, that showed a perfect reflection of my face in them. There was a series of chills that crawled down my spine as I realized that the pain and grief in his expression was only exemplified when his eyes laid on me. He had a warm, almost familiar energy, almost like he was reminiscent of my seemingly nonexistent past.

  “Let me start off by saying that for all of existence our society was trapped in a seemingly never-ending hell. It was a world where good always trumped evil, but the threat of doom always hung over us, and it was only a matter of time until the flaws in the world opened into a gaping hole that caused the rest to fall in. Whether it be a nuclear war, global pandemic or famine due to climate change, mass anarchy due to inequality, the onslaught of robots on the workforce, or the ignorant belief that there is truth in this world, it was evident that one day everything would come to end. And the ultimate demise of the world we all lived in laid not in the power of technology or the fallacy that one day everything has to come to end, but the inevitable outcome that jealous, unfulfilled, depressed, struggling beings will eventually tear themselves apart. It seemed that the impossible, yet only logically way to fix society, and to end the madness of our world and country was to eliminate the pain and grief from our minds entirely; to make it so that our minds are incapable of even registering, never mind feeling an ounce of pain and anguish. The only way to achieve world peace, happiness, and to end all the pain for a desperate population was to seemingly fix the flawed mechanics of our brains; to erase the biological mechanisms that constitute the selfish, arrogant ways of our own minds; to eliminate the imperfections of human nature; and to create the perfect being.”

  There was an effervescent glow to his eyes, that caused a surge of adrenaline to flow through me. The picturesque night sky, dotted with thousands of stars, only added to the sense of wonderment. “I began my mission to create the perfect being, to eliminate all mental health disorders, addictions, and everything else that results in an imperfect society due to the imbalances of our brain chemistry, at UC Berkeley. It was there where I first conducted research, for my graduate degree, and then postdoctoral research, into how nanoparticles can manipulate interactions between neurons in the brain.

  “I was one of those, in reality ignorant, but I still like to say hopeful scientists who believed that by developing technologies powerful enough to manipulates one’s brain chemistry, that it could one day be used for the greater good of the world. That somehow, through the elimination of all cracks in the framework of the human mind, that somehow the cracks continuing to splinter through society would simultaneously heal.”

  He paused, and I could see his expression shift to convey the anger and regret inside of him. There was a seismic shift to the atmosphere. I could almost feel a cool gust of wind howl through the room, subsequently causing the tiniest bit of Jacob’s expression to weather, revealing the mounds of hurt buried deep within him.

  “But I was wrong.” The room fell silent as Jacob uttered those words. His voice was soft, he barely managed to croak the words out, amidst the pain and sorrow suddenly bubbling up from inside of him. There was even a glassy film visible at the surface of his eyes. “I was wrong!” He suddenly roared, his raucous voice echoing off the walls, and reverberating in my startled body. There was now a mad look in his eyes as his hands shook from the force of the emotions inside of him. Everyone in the room shot each other flustered glances, almost expecting the firestorm of emotions to get worse. But then Jacob exhaled, and he closed his eyes entering an almost meditative state as he tried to regain control of the emotions inside of him.

  “Even after such technologies were developed; even after the cure for the perpetual ailment in society was presented to the world, the same evil in society still prevailed. The grief and pain were still omnipresent in humans, and this resulted in arrogance, desperation, and selfishness, which furthermore resulted in the insatiable desire to control. And although this insecure urge to control has existed for all of human history, there was never a technology powerful enough to truly control the entirety of a population, until now.”

  I shivered at the coldness to his tone. He narrowed his eyes, and suddenly the hatred inside of him was visible, and it quickly became apparent that the hatred was directed at none other than himself. “It’s men like President Ash. Corporate tyrants, who have let their own selfishness and insecurities fester for years, that have the desire to secure total power and control because of their fear at losing the wealth that they pretend envelopes the emptiness and covers the pain inside of them. It’s men like President Ash; who can convince the rest of the desperate population that if they hand over power to him, that he can help restore some of the same wealth that he has brought to himself to the rest of the population.

  “It only became apparent after he had all the power and after nothing done was to fix the disaster after the Great Crash, that all his promises were lies. It only became apparent, after he harnessed the power of Protocol 00, the program that I and my colleagues worked on for years to try and restore happiness and balance to the American people and to the world, that he was only attempting to continue the cycle of pain and grief that has plagued humanity for all of its history.”

  He paused for a moment, and I tried to silence my thoughts, and just focus on processing the words that he was saying.

  “He poisoned the water supply with nanobots causing everyone in the population to be infested with millions of them, and he promptly began to hack into the nanobots in the brains of people in Congress. By doing this, he was able to gain full political control of the United States Government by getting both the House and Senate to surrender their political control to the President, and they effectively suspended the U.S. Constitution. President Ash was now able to at will, mind control hundreds of millions of Americans with the newly built mind control computer in the depths of the research facility, Area 51.

  “And until you guys came around he was ruthlessly mind controlling the American people, and asserting his control over all of his opponents. Until you, along with the help of Danielle Walker and Ethan, were able to shut down the mind control program this country and the entire world were enduring more pain and grief than ever before in human history. Until you we had no hope at a better world, and no hope to fix the cracked foundations of our society.

  “But now we have hope! Now we have a chance to finally eradicate all the flaws in mankind, and to create a nearly perfect world—an amazing future. We finally have a chance to heal this broken world.”

  A heavy silence hung over the air, and after a few seconds it still remained unbroken by Jacob’s voice. He sat back in his seat and sighed, the tension and anger inside of him beginning to flow from his nostrils. There was a glow in his eyes, and a certain energy that seemed to emanate off him as he talked about the fractured society.

  I exhaled and stared down at the ground and then looked up at him with a look of complete shock strewn across my face. I looked right at him and into his eyes that were bubbling with hope, but the rest of him had long ago given up. The dark moldering circles under his eyes; the creases that lined his forehead; and the dry, gray hair that filled his well-groomed beard. He looked beaten up.

  Everyone in the room looked beaten up. They all had that sad, defeated way about them that they tried to deny with the smiles on their faces. They looked tired of fighting, in a way they looked tired of living.

  I couldn’t help but start to t
ear up. These people have suffered through so much. These people have lost everything. The world has lost all its good, and somehow, I am the one that brought these people hope to get it back.

  Deep in their eyes, there was a silent flame burning, a flame filled with hope and revenge. It caused a certain, distinguishable heat to billow through the air, and somehow it caused the empty darkness inside me to feel alive. For a while no one knew what to say. It appeared that everyone was reminiscing about their own pasts. Maybe they were dreaming of a better time, if there was one, when there was no mind control program and no ruthless people who mercilessly controlled the United States.

  “Beginning descent to Pure Way, Inverness, California.” The female-like voice of a computer echoed off the glass walls.

  Almost immediately the aircraft began to dip below the clouds, causing my stomach to turn wildly. The blackness that surrounded us on top of the clouds quickly turned into a sort of gray haze as we traveled through them. Everyone’s heads darted upward looking out the windows that wrapped around the aircraft with wide eyes.

  “You’re in for one hell of a view,” Jacob said looking at me.

  “Yeah, it’s always the best at night,” Antonio stared out the window with a hand pressed up against the glass, while both Colton and Dulce were transfixed on the holograph in the center of the aircraft.

  At first, I didn’t understand what all the hype was about, but then we swiftly glided under the suffocating darkness of the clouds and out into the world below, and suddenly it all made sense. I looked out the windows in awe as a panoramic view of complete beauty was revealed. The crescent shaped moon cast an ominous light on the crystal blue waters beneath us and the dark mountains towered above the landscape in the horizon.

  Even in the pitch blackness of night, the light of repose was omnipresent. Cars quietly drove down lit up streets, and majestic houses were perched up in the mountains. There were dozens of towering skyscrapers, thousands of buildings and houses in between, and more than anything else green that sprawled over the land. Boats traveled over the dark waters below appearing as if they were floating ghosts in a graveyard.