Artificial Selection: A Near Future Thought Experiment

Chapter IX

    Jay slammed down onto the floor, writhing in pain. How could he not have seen that coming? It was more than obvious that suspect was about to turn around — the lowered shoulder, the tensed-up hand, and the darting eyes were all crystal clear indicators, yet Jay had missed it.

    Jay's world was now completely ablaze with white. He could not see. He could not hear. The ringing in his ears was a side effect of being so close to that device. Now he lied completely immobilized on the ground, helpless against the vibration of the floor caused by the stampedes that was happening all around them, helpless against the gunshots that cut through the curtain of ringing around his ears. A heavy blow struck his unmovable hand and kicked the laser knife away from him

    Shit. This situation was too familiar to him. He had spent years trying to forget about that night.

    The ringing began to fade around his ears. He could now hear his own shouts of pain as well as the cries from Michael, Alexandra, and Nicholas.

    He wouldn't mind himself getting killed in this incident. He didn't care about the dangers of death for a long time now. But, but they couldn't die. They were good people. They didn't do what he once did. They deserved a good complete life. That kid, Michael. He was just a young man who understood nothing about the real world. He still got the mind of an innocent kid.

    Images of a girl's face flashed in front of him. Long straight black hair fell down her shoulders and partially covered her attractive olive eyes. Who was that again? She looked familiar... She looked beautiful... She looked... Alive...

    There were more shoutings and screaming now.

    No. Not again. With a partially shocked brain, Jay was struggling to differentiate between reality and his imagination. Which voice was real? Déjà vu was hitting harder than ever.

    The blinding white light gradually faded into the red and blue lights of an empty bar. Rain was falling outside. He could hear footsteps. Rough, hard soles of combat boots were pressed hardly against the tile floor, generating a repulsive, screeching noise as broken glass shards were kicked across.

    "Jay! Can you hear me! We gotta leave." Was this Michael's voice? Or the man in the hallucination?

    Jay felt a pair of strong arms grabbing his arm and lifting him off the floor. He still couldn't see anything. His eyes were temporarily disabled by the flash. The only thing he could "see" was what his brain was willing to project.

    He fell back to the floor as the arms that grabbed him were suddenly knocked away. Then another pair of hands grabbed his face.

    "Jay! Stay with me! Listen, you need to get up..."

    Jay! Stay with me!

    Stay with me!

    Jay! Stay...

    The voice echoed in his head. Jay couldn't tell where it was coming from. Was it coming from outside his head or inside.

    No. Not that flashback again. He didn't want to remember. He spent a long time burying that memory deep inside him, into the deepest parts of his brain, where it would never be unearthed again. He managed to distort the pain into smiles, hatred into compassion. He forced a sense of optimism onto himself and stuck to it so much that he could now act without consciously thinking.

    Jay could open his eyes by a millimeter now. He saw blurred motion. The ceiling was spinning around as people dashed into and out of the room like bullets.

    Like bullets.

    This was all too familiar. The noises. The gunshots. The overall tensing urgency and fear in the atmosphere that were grasping for victims and suffocating them within the walls of their mentality.