3. Gregory M.

Their immaculately furnished flat welcomed him as he made his way across it. He stopped at his wine rack and selected a Swiss Pinot noir. He carried the bottle to the far end of the flat and stood at the floor-to-ceiling window looking out upon the city. Would they have predicted the Pinot noir? Are they yet prescient? He wondered to himself. He turned his attention to the impressive irony: the reason he was able to provide so well for his wife would be precisely what stopped him from providing for her. His wife stood in the doorway to the master suite, overcome with anxiety. Keeping his eyes focused beyond the window, Mr. Ray began to let spill what must be spilt.

“I was an inside man. A researcher. A staff-scientist, an experimenter, experimentee, subject, subjector. I was a trial, one of the first, not the last. I don’t work for CarbonTronics Consolidated, dearest, though I wish I were so innocent.”

She tilted her head slightly, wondering.

“This isn’t the CIA or the FBI or the Mafia, honey. Those guys let you go. All you have to do is best a few hitmen and it’s gone from your past. Then you move on. Not so with my… organization,” he continued.
            He turned to her, really observing her. He had taken her for granted for so long. He noticed her lower jaw slacking just slightly.

“I don’t understand, honey, what makes you say all this?”

“Dearest, have you ever taken an aptitude test?” He was insulting her. He knew her vast education preceded her.

“Why, of course. Not since finishing at the University, though. I’m confused, dear.”

“My… organization uses a type of aptitude test to select its workers, subjects, employees, experiments. But it’s strictly that: an aptitude test. They don’t care about your past. They care about how you will respond to what they do to you. They enhance you. They change you. They want to make sure you can handle it well.” Were the details important? Yes. She would herself die of anxiety if he remained a mystery any longer.

“And you passed the test?”
            “Yes, dearest Bretta, I passed the test.”

“Did they… enhance you?”

“Yes, Bretta. My nervous system. It’s how they change you. They help your brain communicate. All electrical signals are subject to some sort of resistance. Your brain communicates with itself and with your inferior nervous systems with electrical signals.” Again he was insulting her, a prominent medical professional.

“So Bretta, what if you could get rid of some of the resistance felt by those signals? That was these people’s grand question. They answered it—using injection. The active agent binds to nervous components. Spinal column, dendrites, individual neurons, everything. It’s a coating; think of it like an organic superconductor. Brain signals suddenly have no difficulty traveling. More signals per second, more information per second. Faster processing. They dealt with subjects’ overheating with the second prototype serum.”

“Dear, please stop. You’re such an engineer; I don’t want details. Tell me why you’re telling me all this. Other than to be honest with your wife.” Mrs. Bretta Ray grew stern on the surface, but she was really growing dangerously anxious. Was her husband a damn lunatic?

“They did it to me. I was one of the first. It’s not so bad; just helps you think. It really helps you think. Makes you a valuable asset to whomsoever you want to be an asset for. They sent me on an assignment, dear. Reconnaissance in Eastern Asia, and I gained some—err, valuable—information. That information is why I’m abandoning this nameless, faceless, Godless, monstrous organization that thought it could use its damn serum to help me help it. But it’s not so easy, honey. They know that I know how they work, how they use their precocious army of agents to get around all worldly obstacles. They’ll deduce pretty quickly (oh, quickly!) that I’m abandoning them, and they won’t have it. They will come to drain me, honey. Drain my mind. Not my thoughts, or memories, but drain it physically—I’ll have a useless husk of a mind.”

She burst into tears. Which would be worse? That her husband is so hopelessly insane or that it’s true?

He placed the wine bottle on the carpet, where it promptly spilled, and he approached his wife. He kissed her knowing that he may not do so ever again. She let him leave the flat without protest, but she collapsed and sobbed after he was gone.

Mr. Ray had a crude plan. He would find a hotel. They would trace him there, doubtless. They were probably already waiting in the random hotel he would choose. If he could kill them, he would. He double-checked for the weight of his primary and secondary firearms: they were there. Otherwise, he’d make them damn sure that his invaluable knowledge wasn’t to be had.

He had been sitting on the single bed for less than twenty minutes when there was a knock on the door of room 414.

“Mr. Ray, we need to speak about your assignment. It’s pressing, and you can help us.”

Don’t they know I’m one of them—anything but a fool?

The door opened. Mr. Ray saw one of them stowing a lock-picking mechanism. No doubt he had designed it himself, perhaps earlier that day.

Four agents. It was useless. Drawing a weapon—even on himself—would mean instant capture. They’d see it coming.

But there’s an outcome they couldn’t have predicted. Computed. I have no choice, they’ve worked out every alternative to their advantage. I can be sure of that. They wouldn’t come here without deductive certainty of success. But they neglect the irrational. What I know does not belong to them. I’ll keep it that way if I die to do so.

Mr. Ray slowly stood and turned away from the door. The agents calmly approached from behind. There were certain surprises the agents expected; they embodied the ability to expect the unexpected. The surprise of Mr. Ray bolting towards the hotel’s bay window, hurling himself through it, and falling to his death was not a rationally foreseeable outcome. The agents stood dumbfounded for the first time since their injections.

EPILOGUE

Mr. Ray’s body was collected by his former employer within minutes. It was in excellent condition. His brain was scanned, and impressions left therein by the neurological signals of his final thoughts were reconstructed into a comprehensive record of his latest assignment.