Probe

First, there was silence. Then he could see that the darkness was moving in waves. His eyes opened and he looked around.

“Good afternoon Mr. Smith, how do you feel?”

Copernicus blinked his eyes. He groggily observed the scene that lay before him. Three individuals were seated in a half circle. He struggled weakly to move. He realized slowly that he was shackled to a gurney. He had been placed upright and was able to move his head slightly and to speak. He considered his response for a moment and then replied.

“I feel very tired. Why didn’t you put me into stasis? I thought…”

The three looked at each other as they chuckled like supercedent, entitled little birds. One of them responded with what could only be described as a smile, smeared across her face.

“Mr. Smith, I do hate to inform you that this is your second awakening. It has been 5 years since you were placed into stasis. Do you not remember anything during that time? You have been awakened and reintroduced once already. Are you proposing that you do not recall any of these memories?”

The doctors, he assumed that they were such, looked down the ridges of their noses at him, eagerly awaiting his response. He paused. Then, beginning with a trickle, pieces of portions of detached, shattered memories began to display their selves to his psyche. A stream of unrealized, disassociated mental imagery became visible. He had murdered his wife. He was, at this point, strangely indifferent. He inhaled deeply.

“Yes, actually I guess I did have a dream. I don’t feel like any considerable amount of time has passed. I feel like it has only been a few minutes since I was in the chair.”

One of the doctors leaned forward. H e was a squabby little man, with a neatly manicured full beard and a crooked pointy nose.

“Your conscious mind is still awakening. The memories of your dreams will present themselves very soon most likely. Your mind will operate in this fashion for the first few sessions that you are awakened. Then you will most assuredly be, quite more reflective.”

He leaned back into his chair, grinning as he made a few simple notes. They stood up and left for what felt to Copernicus, to be a considerably lengthy period of time. They then reappeared and resumed their seated gawk. The woman placed her tablet on her lap and leaned forward as she began to interrogate him.

“Do you recall the crimes that you have committed?”

Copernicus imagined that he was able to cradle his forehead with his right hand.

“Yes, I think I remember. It doesn’t seem real to me. I feel as if I’m watching a bad movie in my mind.”

He looked straight ahead, cataloguing each of their reactions simultaneously. She leaned slightly closer, re-shifting her tablet as she spoke.

“Do you feel that you were in a state of moral error to perform this act?”

Copernicus strained his neck, stretching it outward until he could feel the blood coursing through his veins and the tendons begin to creak and pop. He looked at each of the doctors as they stared at him, smiling like a drunken fool although obvious with intent.

“No, well I’m not sure. I don’t feel like a killer.”

He leaned back morosely. He was beginning to lack concern for any of the approaching moments. They looked at one another with mild surprise that was quickly stifled with official understanding. They all nodded in agreement and documented their decision with their tablets. They took a moment to review what they had recorded and then turned to face Copernicus. The Psychiatrist who had been sitting in the middle of the three stared at him directly.

“Copernicus Smith, we will be re-introducing you into “chemo-stasis”. It occurs to us that you haven’t even the slightest bit of concern or remorse for the crime you have committed against your wife, her lover, and the citizens of this society.”

Copernicus began to drift between indifference and rage as he smiled and laughed. The man with the beard stood and displayed a small syringe. He approached the gurney and inserted the needle into Copernicus’ neck. It broke the skin like a pencil being rammed into a plastic soda bottle. The doctor seemed delighted to be responsible for the injection. This was the first of three doses of hyper psychotic neural sedative.

Copernicus was awash in a sea of color and flashes of bright white. Then just as before, unending black that seemed to stretch beyond forever. He found himself semi-consciously aware of his dream. He could visualize the moment that he stood over their quivering corpses. The moment when he fully understood; when his mind finally allowed him to acknowledge what he had done. The moment that he chose to let go of any of the hopes and dreams that he had still been harboring. It seemed like a small price to pay. She had taken advantage of his affection for her one too many times; taken his sacrifices as nothing and shown him how worthless he actually was to her. Now she knew what she meant to him. He was torn between anger and affection, love and hate. That moment kept replaying in his mind. Her body, naked and dripping with the blood that rushed from her skull and saturated her hair like a sponge as it coated her skin. He could still recognize who she was although she appeared to him more strangely that she ever had before. He knew that this was how she would always appear to him now. Never again would she be vibrant and beautiful. Never again would she inspire him. She would always just be a bloody mess, shivering on a blood soaked floor. The blood seemed as if it would not stop expanding, ever widening as it stained the soft carpet. She continued to tremble but he knew that she was dead.

He could not feel time passing. Copernicus had no idea how many times his brain had shown him this image. He had other memories, mostly of defeat and disappointment. He felt like he was trapped in oil.

“Copernicus Smith! Can you hear me?”

Copernicus opened his eyes to see a room full of what were most likely medical professionals. Probably psychologists, there were maybe 25, perhaps a few more. Each wore a long white coat and held a small, black, square tablet. The one that was talking stood near him.

“Copernicus Smith, can you hear me?”

He turned his head and nodded.

The one that spoke to him was a young woman. She returned to a stainless steel podium that faced the crowd and gestured toward him. Her red, curled hair was shaking rapidly, like millions of miniature wire springs. The crowd followed the direction of her hands as she guided them to focus on the man who was secured to the metal plank before them.

“We have awoken the subject after a period of 24 months. This is the first awakening in his schedule of incrementation. In his current state it is unlikely that he will remember much but as he is reawakened each subsequent time, he will remember an increasing portion of his memory of the crime.”

She faced the gurney that displayed Copernicus to the curious crowd. He was just now beginning to feel his jaw again. As he began to consider it he could remember dreaming quite vividly, although time seemed non-existent. He had no way to know how long he had actually been unconscious or if this woman was even telling the truth.

“Copernicus Smith can you understand me?”

He nodded.

“Do you have a recollection of your dream state?”

He nodded again, looking around and observing the unusually harsh lighting that seemed to sizzle across the sterility of the auditorium. She was exhibiting observable relief. Her respiration lessened and her movements became slightly less pointed and jerky.

“Very well, let us begin.”

She faced the audience and began to speak.

“You will notice in your reports that the subject was convicted 38 months ago of a dual 2nd degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison until he was selected as candidate for rehabilitation within the Penitential Stasis Program.”

She continued to rattle on as Copernicus tried to fall back into unconsciousness. He could not and even after such a lengthy interlude of silent and solitary thought, lamented this fact. The woman continued lecturing the audience on the subject of “chemo-stasis” and the psychology of solitude and its inevitable effect upon the criminal mind. She spoke at length about the psychological applicability of what a moralist would refer to as “humanity”. How this attitude was actually a type of instinctually driven survivalist behavior.

“The criminal ignores this notion consciously at first but in the end is doomed to fall prey to its inescapable grasp. This inevitability is due to the fact that the desire to commit violent acts is based solely within a need to acquire the affection that a child craves from its parents which eventually develops into a need to remain part of the social unit. This is especially true with murderers and rapists who are in an indirect fashion seeking love. This desire to acquire attention from fellow human beings is bound to sexual satisfaction and through maladaptive progression in males, leads to extremely violent and negatively intended behaviors. Upon separation from the mechanism of satisfaction, the affected individual will be forced to recognize the basis for his or her maladaptive desires and will without any doubt, come to terms with this reality.”

The audience of medical personnel dutifully recorded the dialogue of the speech and kept notes with their small, square devices. The red haired woman concluded her lecture and faced Copernicus.

“Mr. Smith, You have just completed 24 months of penitential reflection, how do you feel about the crimes that you have committed?”

She seemed to patiently await his response. He stared forward, still grasping at control of his thoughts. The room was bright and the vacant leering stares of the audience drew his attention far more that he would have liked. He turned his head to address her question.

“I’m not completely sure how I feel about it.”

The woman’s eyes grew wide as she stifled a gasp and withdrew to her podium. There was a stark and somewhat lengthy silence as the members of the room absorbed the indifference that had just poured from his mouth. She turned back toward the audience, adjusting her microphone and quivering momentarily as she concluded the event.

“Even still, as inevitable as remorse will be, some individuals will require extremely protracted lengths of reflection. Without desired recreational activity the mind will have no choice but to internalize and solve its own psychological inconsistencies.”

She extended her hand toward his immobilized form.

“Mr. Smith, please ready yourself for another period of stasis.”

She picked up a large air propelled syringe and embedded it in his neck, everything went black.

Immediately, he felt as if he had been cast beneath vaporous wads of heavy syrup. It was dark, yet he was aware of the space around him. Then, he slowly began to realize that the air that surrounded his body was bathed in blue light. A deep dark blue, it was just enough that he could see. He struggled to move. Everything was slow. It was as if the air was thicker than he remembered or time itself was struggling to occur. He propelled himself through space but it felt more like he was flagellating rather than walking.

All he could see were the waves of blue. They twirled like heat on a summer’s day as they distorted the air between them. He could see nothing around him but it did not feel empty. He felt that there was somewhere to go if he only could keep moving. He did not feel fear or detachment. As he propelled himself forward the waves of distortion began to propagate themselves as subtle gradations of tone. The Blue was lightening in layers but only slightly. He continued to squeeze himself through the thickened air, a flicker of light appeared ahead of him. It descended toward him slowly. The light seemed to grow fainter as it approached and he began to question whether he was seeing anything at all. Then it was right in front of his face.

It was a small sphere of light that bubbled like a viscous flame and licked slowly in rhythm with its flight, floating like a bubble on a breeze. It moved toward him as he opened his hand to cradle it. There was no heat. It rested just above his outstretched palm and floated. He stared at it. The flame flickered slowly as if to reassure him that it meant no harm. It was calm, beautiful and soothing. He sat down, cradling it while he stared.

Time faded even further into obscurity as he sat unaware of where he had just been. He had no memory of the cold steel or the curious doctor. There was only a sea of wafting blue as his mind slowly began to return to its former existence.

Copernicus looked up from the control panel of the reordering station. His eyes were aching from the strain of staring into the infrared monitors as he surveyed the layers of purity that were being regulated by the electromagnets. His tenure here had been productive. He felt very accomplished as he considered the relatively short period of time that he had actually been employed. It had been a long 2 years but also a very short 2 years. It all depended from which perspective one was looking. He had been hired immediately out of Continental Technical University and rose quickly due to his extremely advanced ability to diagnose and repair the sensitive neurologic electrical systems that had recently been developed by Electro State Technologies. What took most an average of days or weeks to solve in repair simulations, only required hours for Copernicus. He could pinpoint failed regions even without hard line testing. This was so valuable that most within the industry considered his abilities to be a rare talent rather than a trained skill. He was a genius. Everything he encountered existed in his mind as it existed in reality.

The silicon the he was monitoring as it flowed through the magnetic filters would be used in a highly sophisticated supercomputing network that made claims of being capable of completing extremely complex calculations faster than any of the existing networks. The conductive and dielectric components were interwoven in a specially designed helix pattern which required an extremely specific and fragile environment. The constant presence of human observation was necessary. The days were long and this one was close to over. The powering down procedure required 27.8 minutes and it was just beginning. Copernicus felt like his eyes were being inflated by miniature hand held bicycle pumps and they were about to burst. He closed them slowly, feeling the gelatinous lubricant of his eyelids coat the lenses of his eyeballs. Momentary relief soothed his senses as he lowered his head, inhaling slowly and releasing his tension with a deep exhalation. He looked up at the timer, 24.7 minutes remained. He had a moment to step away and stretch his legs.

He lamented accepting his recent promotion, although he was second in command of the entire division and his annual salary had doubled. He still was required to be available at odd and long hours.

His wife, Bethany, was not very happy about it. She didn’t really enjoy sitting at home alone constantly but she seemed to be adjusting . He had a disgusting feeling that taking this promotion had been the worst decision he had ever made.

Copernicus sipped his mango flavored spring water that had been enriched with amino acids. He slowly savored the tangy effervescence of the fruity mango concentrate as the power down procedure completed with a digital chime that signaled the end of cooling and verification. Copernicus finished his beverage with a gulp and headed toward the checkout office. Even though the company trusted its employees and applied the utmost respect, it still took every precaution to prevent mistakes. If any of the highly sophisticated components or extremely expensive raw materials were to become absent it would not only upset the partnership of employees, it would also upset the image of the company. He passed through the x-ray machine, the almost skintight yellow and black jumpsuit left very little probability for theft but he understood their concerns and graciously submitted to their fervent desire to verify his loyalty. As the scanner field vibrated past his face he thought of Bethany. Her hair was feathery, short and almond. She was like a pixie, just more beautiful. She bounced and alighted wherever she went. He often felt so lucky to be in love with such a unique soul. She was a blessing and he saw life with her as nothing short of paradise. Love was a pointless term before they met and now he felt as if he understood every facet of its meaning. Hopefully she would not need to pretend to be excited this evening, perhaps the day will have treated her with wonder instead of regret.