Sunday, November 6, 2011

Project BlueLight - Chapter One



Harsh white lights in the ceiling glared down onto the operating table below. A motionless figure was lying across the stainless steel table, heavy metal clasps fastened around its wrists and ankles. The figure appeared to be a male human child of around ten years of age, dressed in white cotton pants and shirt. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all white except for the large black-tinted window in the wall. Men in lab coats stood behind the window, marking on charts and watching monitors that scanned the boy in the other room. One of the lines on a monitor - that had previously been flowing in a smooth, slightly curving line - spiked, causing a red light to flash and catch the attention of a nearby scientist.



"James, increase the sleep signal, it's starting to wake up." He turned and muttered to another man. James turned a knob on a control board and soft green lines of light that had been flashing slowly began to flash faster. The boy strapped to the table began to turn restlessly, eyes moving rapidly under the closed eyelids, arms tugging at the restraints. The man who seemed to be in charge looked down quickly at the monitors. "James! Why isn't it going back to sleep?" He barked anxiously. James confusedly checked all of the settings. "I don't know, sir, it's consciousness is fighting the signal. Its AI learns from experience and it's figured out what wavelength the signal is on; it's blocking our signal!"



The man closed his eyes briefly before fixating James with a penetrating stare. Coldly, he asked, "Are you telling me that we've lost contact with the subject? Do we have any control over this thing anymore?" James' hands shook slightly as he replied, "I-if it's learned all of our signals, we won't be able to control it remotely...we'd have to turn it off manually." The man slammed his fist against the control board. "Then DO IT!" He shouted. "We cannot let this experiment fail, it's a crucial step in our society progressing further and is a multi-BILLION wattage project!" James held a radio to his mouth as he watched the boy beginning to awaken, fighting against the steel restraints. "Watchdog, your assistance is required in Area Four. Project BlueLight must be disabled. Do not terminate the subject, merely restrain it. I repeat, do not terminate the subject, merely restrain it." A staticky voice, cold and devoid of emotion, came back over the radio. "Roger that."



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BlueLight loading at 20%

Systems Check - All systems fully operational

Activate BlueLight OP System? Y/N - Yes



Suddenly, where no consciousness had been, thoughts flashed into existence. He was in the dark. Where was he? There was no sound...no light...no memory. Who was he? What was he? He tried to decipher what was going on, but unable to, quickly gave up and turned to the small brightly lit part of his mind. There were words there. Questions.



Activate Audio System? Y/N - Yes



Hesitantly, he chose yes. Sound suddenly slid into his mind, which quickly processed everything it noted. The soft whir of an air-conditioner. Footsteps approaching from the distance. People breathing behind some flimsy wall, watching him. Hearts beating rapidly. Fingers tapping on a keyboard. All of it was processed in an instant. He turned back to the light and words.



Activate Visual System? Y/N - Yes



His bright grey eyes opened and blurry light streamed in, causing him to wince. He blinked a few times and the images he saw cleared and sharpened dramatically. He was looking straight into a ceiling light, which irritated his eyes. Squinting, his pupil narrowed until the light was comfortable. Glancing around without moving his head, he registered a white ceiling and more lights.



Activate Mobile System? Y/N - Yes



All of a sudden, he could move. He turned his head to get a better view and looked around the room. All white except for the window. Staring at the black window, he wondered who was behind it. Who was watching him. Looking down at his body, he saw his black waist-length hair. He saw the metal shackles locked around his wrists and ankles. He slowly opened and closed his fists, beginning to tug at the metal. It held resiliently but as he applied more and more force to the wrist shackles, enjoying the pressure building up in his arms, the metal groaned and stretched, finally snapping. Metal flew off and bounced off the wall and he rubbed his wrists. That felt good. Just as he was reaching down to break off the ankle locks, too, a door flew open and a small, round, silver object was hurled into the room. It began to beep rapidly and he stared at it curiously. Without warning, it exploded with screeching sound and light that drove their way into his mind, painfully tearing through his senses. Suddenly, all was silent and dark again.



Visual and Audio Systems Automatically Shut Down - Stimulis Within Danger Zones



Will Reboot in 30 Seconds



Reaching down, he felt the metal around his ankles and tore it off, hurling it in the direction of the door. He felt a soft thud through the table as a body hit the floor. He slid off of the table and felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. Reaching up, he felt some kind of dart that was vibrating on supersonic frequencies. He tore it out and threw it towards where the window had been, feeling the vibration in the air as the glass shattered and cascaded down, hitting the floor. They were shooting something at him. He supposed the darts were bad, but how bad he wasn't sure. He ran for the broken window, feeling more than hearing shouts vibrate the air. Everything was strangely silent and peaceful. His mind was making calculated decisions based on the information it was gathering; he was just going along with it all.



He jumped through the window and rapidly felt along the wall for a door. Catching the doorknob, he tore the whole door off of it's hinges and swung it around, feeling several bodies go flying after being hit. His eyesight and hearing began to be restored and he heard yelling and running and electricity sparking from the computers in this room. Cocking his head to the side as his vision slowly flickered back to normal, he took in his surroundings in seconds. He was standing barefoot in this small observation room. Several bodies were lying on the ground; blood trickling from one's face and another's neck twisted at an awkward angle. Hearing something behind him, he spun around in time to see a soldier in black body armor standing in the hallway, pointing a strange looking gun at him. The soldier fired at him and a small dart flew out, high-pitched frequencies being thrown out from it. The dart hit him in the neck and his vision flickered. He felt something foreign trying to dig into his mind, giving orders for him to shut down, to fall back into that dark abyss.



Anger flickered through his mind, crashing into the intruder and halting it, and he reached up and yanked out the dart. The soldier's eyes widened as he threw the dart as hard as he could back at the soldier. The dart tore straight through the soldier's arm and embedded in the wall, the soldier letting out a scream of pain. He leaped through the doorway and slammed the door into the guy's head, silencing him. Glancing down the hallway in both direction, he dropped the door and ran away from the rapidly approaching footsteps. An alarm began going off, echoing down the hallway, red lights flashing brightly. His hair fluttered around him as he ran and, annoyed, he stuffed it down the back of his plain white t-shirt. Noticing how his rough, clumsy steps cracked the floor around where he stepped, he experimented and lightened his step slightly, falling into a smoother run. The floor stopped breaking.



Doors flew by him but he kept running. A door with a staircase symbol on it caught his eye and he pushed open the door, breaking the latch. Oops. He analyzed the information and decided he should turn the doorknobs before pushing. Once in the stairway, he looked up and down. He heard someone from below running upwards, so he turned and began sprinting up and away. Reaching the top of the staircase, he threw open the door and stumbled outside. Fresh stimuli flooded his system and he blinked at all the information. The night air was warm, a red, dim moon not lighting the surroundings very well. His pupils enlarged to provide optimum efficiency for night vision. He was on the roof of a large multi-story building within some big, polluted city. He walked over to the edge of the roof and looked down. Very few cars and people drove past, leaving the city seemingly abandoned, trash blowing around in the streets.



Walking around to the opposite edge, he saw a dark alley filled with garbage and two overflowing dumpsters. The stairway door flew open with a bang and he spun around. A man struggled out, gasping for breath, sweat trickling down his face. The man leveled a gun at him and attempted to shout. "Y- *gasp* you there! *wheeze* Stop right *cough* there!" The boy smiled coyly and stepped up onto the raised ledge around the edge of the building. The man's eyes widened and he took a step forward. "Now wait, don't do anyth-" The boy leaped backwards into a graceful dive and the man gasped, running forward. Looking over the edge, he saw the cracked and broken remains of one of the dumpsters down below. The body of the boy lay motionless amid the destruction. The man shakily raised his radio to his lips and reported what happened before going back inside, rubbing his head. By the time a retrieval team arrived outside at the scene, the boy was gone. Puzzled, they squinted up at the roof and back to where he had landed.



There was no way he could have survived such a fall.

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