Black and White

         "This technology has spread around our great city. We have no reason to stop technological advancement at the risk of some human life. This technology could save thousands-" "Are you watching that again?" Said the calm voice of my Television.
         "Yes, and I think its good to use some replicas of old technology once in a while." I retorted.
         "Not the technology, the signal you are watching." She replied. "The configuration of his speech and his tone have increased your heart rate. He is angering you. Our leader wouldn't say such things to anger anyone. He is just and kind. His justifications of the loss of human life are minor in comparison to the technological advancements this city has made. You should watch something else. I have a list picked out for you."
         I listened to her scripted response without so much as glancing at her console on my desk. Of course she would say that. All personality constructs were built specifically to convert everyone to our leaders ideology. Every time I heard one of his speeches on technology and its benefits, his words angered me, setting off her monotonic droning about his kindness.

         "So be it." I said, and clicked off the Television. "I'm going out for awhile. Don't accompany me.
         "Remember Rule Number 56. A curfew is currently enacted. Anyone outside between the times of-
         "I know. Shut up." I fumed.
         "Please be careful." She called to me as I left. I walked through the narrow rust filled corridors and avoided the hot jets of steam from pipes, or the occasional rat. It would take me a while to reach the main city from where I walked now. I lived on top of the machinery that stabilizes temperature for the entire city.
         I've even considered tampering with the equipment. It would be nearly impossible to accomplish, though. The crime for vandalism is imprisonment or death. As I finished my ascent through the maze of dark corridors leading to the National Data Feed, a series of computer server rooms, I slipped in through one of the many the maintenance hallways and walked into the Public Lobby. The Lobby was full of well dressed people and their personality constructs walking along side them. I followed the crowd towards the nearest elevators.

         Screens paneling the walls blared information that could not be heard over the din of the people and their constructs. I reached the elevator.
         "Executive Level, please."I said.
         "Voice Authorization and Validation required. Please state your occupation." The elevator replied.
         "Maintenance." I said.
         "Please clarify position." It said back.
         "Atmospheric control." I stated calmly. "Cross referencing database... Please stand by." It said. "State Voice Authorization Code please. Speak loudly and clearly. Any attempt that is unsuccessful will lock this terminal for five minutes." I paused, considering whether I should enter the Executive floors and see what our government considers "Technological Advancement".
         "He who has learned how to obey will know how to command." I said loudly and clearly, as the elevator commanded.
         "Voice authorization correct. Executive floor. Going up." The elevator chimed. The doors slid open soundlessly and I stepped inside.
         The doors opened as soundlessly as they had closed behind me. The view made me catch my breath. A large hall opened in front of me, beckoning me forward, enticing me to continue with my plan. If nobody else will open their eyes to stand for what they believe in, so be it. I'm here now, no turning back. I stepped forward, my footfalls echoing in the wide cavernous space that lay in front of me. This room was designed to hold lots of people. Important people. The type of people I'm looking for now.
         A small, smooth sphere appeared several feet in front of me, gliding gracefully through the air towards me. I continued walking. The sphere passed my head by a few inches and followed in my wake. It began to circle around me in large sweeping arcs, very slowly. Almost cautiously, curiously. Like a young animal approaching something it's never seen before. I felt a slight ripple through the air around me, and the sphere faded out as fast as it had appeared to me. As I continued walking, I took in the vast room.
         The floor, made from meticulously polished marble allows me to see a perfect reflection of the huge arched ceiling stretching far above me. the walls, about the same distance away as the ceiling on either side are also made of marble, only this marble is a deep black, with large pieces of the same marble on the floor producing patterns in the walls with mathematical precision. Large columns of a deep grey stone support the ceiling at perfect intervals along the walls.
         The lavish appearance of the entrance hall only hastens me to the large wooden door at the other side of the room. The decadence of this room's frequent inhabitants makes me sick. The hard working backbone of the city, doing hard manual labor to keep people whose only job is to sit in marble palaces and look important alive, have been given the bare essentials for life. Food tickets and a shack between dangerous machines that could easily destroy them if a couple rivets were rusted.

         I was near the door now. The small sphere returned, its brushed metal finish glowing from the lights along the floor. It stopped in front of me, inches from the door. A small line appeared in the middle of the device horizontally. The two halves then split in half again. They moved apart, each piece at the corner of an imaginary square in front of the door.
         A pane of shimmering blue light faded into existence inside the square made by the small device. There was a faint hum of power coming from it. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I turned around. Two more of the spheres appeared, and began to fly to me, more quickly this time. I turned back around and reached my hand towards the blue square. A sickening feeling of pain reached me before I understood what I had done. I crumpled to the ground, only able to look around as my body lay paralyzed on the cold marble floor.
         The other two spheres reached me, and formed their squares just as the other sphere had done, and made a triangular prism of energy around me. I looked back towards the elevator I had came through, and saw it was open. A man wearing a sleek black suit and tie entered, smiling. His eyes had a look of amusement and curiosity in them as he walked slowly towards me. He had all the time in the world. Another ripple went through my body, and I blacked out.
         My head hurts. That's the only thing that registered on my semi-conscious brain when I woke up. I sat up, holding my head in my hands. The floor is cold too. Concrete probably. I attempted to stand up, but realized a little too late that it wouldn't work. I fell back onto the concrete, gritting my teeth. It probably would have been fairly comedic if my head wasn't hurting so badly. I sat for a while on that cold floor, looking down in my lap.
         "Hello there." A voice started. "The discomfort you are experiencing is a side affect of Molecular Displacement. Your brain is reconnecting all of the nerves to their respective outputs. There is a 80 percent chance that your brain will reconnect flawlessly, leaving you with normal neural function. However, there is still a 20 percent chance that your brain will not rebuild itself properly." The voice said. I looked around. I was in a small concrete room with a chair in the center of it. It was just a chair. It wasn't bolted to the floor or anything, just a small folding chair.
         "What happens then?" I said. My voice was harsh and scratchy. I had been screaming fairly recently.
         "Nothing good." The voice replied. I looked down at my arms, and saw something I hadn't noticed before. There was a series of small red welts running the length of my forearm that came from some type of needle.
         "What are these?" I said startled.
         "Therapy." The voice said. I heard a pop, followed my static, then silence. "Therapy for what?" I said up to the speaker in the ceiling. No response. I was alone now.
         Thinking of how to escape was a necessity that I could not access in my current state. My mind was only focused on the pain that flowed through it consistently as my brain rebuilt itself. All I could do is lie on the cold floor and examine the blinding halogen bulb hanging from the ceiling glaring at me and buzzing angrily. It didn't seem like there was a way out, and for now, that would be OK. I didn't care, I can't care, actually. My brain is still reorganizing those functions. I may be confused but I was still scared, albeit, a little dazed. The pain felt more like a wave of hot grease running through the center of my head than the rail spike it had been earlier. Improvement is good. I'll try and hold on to that thought as my various nerves reconnect.
         I am able to stand up properly now, and I can get a clearer view of the small concrete room that I'm housed in. The speaker in the ceiling still rests, silent. Someone might be listening for any kind of response. I can perform memory recall now, my confusion drifting away like water steaming off of a hot piece of machinery.
         The first thing I notice with my renewed sense of self awareness is the light brownish stains tracking from a wall towards the folding chair, and then to me, were I stood. These were bloodstains, apparently victims of a bad cleaning job from the management. What had happened? Was this my blood? I couldn't tell whether or not it had been recently spilled, much less if it was mine or not. This room looked like it was the type of room that was used a lot. By professionals. There was a drain in the floor. Not sure what had gone down it recently, but it probably came from my body.
         There was no sign of anyone coming to enter the room, nor was there any sign of how they were going to enter it in the first place.
         "Why am I here?" I said, as loud as I could. My voice was still hoarse. "What is this place?" I said, even though I knew where I was. It was a prison cell, maybe one used for interrogation from the way it looks. I didn't see any kind of tools that I would expect to see though. There were no syringes or blades used for torture, no bottles of chemicals that looked lethal. Nothing but that chair, But I kept drawing my eye back to it. Something about it seems off, like the chair isn't really there, just a mirage. I was apprehensive of why this could be.
         I took a step towards the chair. Nothing happened. A few more steps. Still nothing from the chair. I was close enough to touch it. I reached a hand out, and grabbed on to the back of it. It felt like the metal it looked like, but it's image has slight ripples running through it. It still resembled the metal that I was holding, but it was like looking at a chair on a screen, except palpable.
         "Have a seat." The Voice from earlier said.
         "Oh you again." I said, mildly thankful the Voice was here, but a little fearful. "Who are you?" I said. "I could ask the same to you." It replied.
         "You already know everything about me" I said. This much may be true. They kept tabs on everyone who had any type of social status. "I know that you were trying to access an area by falsifying security protocol. Have a seat." It said. There was a small pulse running through my hand from the chair, and it gave me an uneasy feeling.
         "I understand your hesitation, but it is imperative that you sit down. You are wasting time." It said again, this time with an inflection of irritation in its computerized voice. I looked around the room, hoping to see some way to get out without sitting in the chair. As I tried to move away, my hand would not let go of the chair.
         "If you do not sit down, I will make you sit down." Said the Voice. My fingers released, and the pulse was gone. It was replaced with a throbbing in my temples, not unlike the throbbing from earlier. They were about to make me sit in that chair. I tried to block out the pain. I began to move around the chair, my back facing it. I couldn't fight the control over my body, and before I knew it, I was in the chair.
         The concrete room began to distort and fall away, and with a quick chill down my spine, both the chair and the concrete room were gone. I was sitting as if I had fallen, But I wasn't sitting on anything. Everywhere I looked was a deep black, but not darkness.
         I could see myself, but that was it. It seemed to expand infinitely outward into the unknown. I tried to speak, but couldn't. As I blinked, Items began to appear around me producing a fuzzy image of a wood paneled room. The more I blinked, the sharper my focus became. After a few moments of blinking and rubbing my eyes, I saw that I was in a small, warmly lit, carpeted room with a clock on the wall. Just like the concrete room I had started in, there was no door. This room, however, had a window.

         I looked out of it, and saw grass. For miles. It was a strange sight. The only grass I had seen had been in the forest that provides oxygen for us to live down here. The grass had a gentle sway, and I took in the moment. The slight breeze through the window, The warm sun on my face. In that moment I forgot that I was still in that chair, back in that fluorescent concrete bunker of a cell.
         The air was cool and fragrant, and the clock on the wall maintained a steady, hypnotic ticking as the pendulum on the bottom swung in time, not changing pace. I looked out of the window, and saw the sun making it's final descent into the distant horizon.
         How could that be? It was midday when I arrived here. Maybe time moves faster than it's supposed to... I looked at the clock. It resumed it's standard progress. It looked normal enough. The sky, however, was black. There were thousands of tiny stars in the sky, and it was colder. I shut the window. The clock continued to tick. What is this place? The wall panels began to melt away as the concrete room had before. The ticking from the clock on the wall was still here with me, even though I was now standing in the black abyss I was in earlier.
         It slowly became louder and more forceful, becoming more of a blinding sensation. I opened my eyes, having closed them to block out the feeling, and the ticking stopped. I was in the concrete room again, my shirt drenched with sweat.
         "Welcome back." The voice said. You were out for a while.
         "Where was I?" I asked, bewildered.
         "You were here the entire time."

         I was in that room. The one with the wood paneling. There was no doubt. I could move around freely, the only difference was that I was on the surface without radiation burning me, and time seemed to pass abnormally fast.
         "You are the first successful test. Though several variables were inaccurate, it only vaporized a small amount of particles around you instead of inside of you." I was confused. What was I supposed to be testing? "You may have questions." It continued. "Feel free to ask them now."
         I pondered the request. I had so many questions I didn't know where to begin.
         "What did I do?" I asked.
         "A rather vague question. You of all people should know the crimes you committed to become a lowly test subject." It replied. "Organizing a crime ring in the city, making unauthorized news broadcasts from the Server Mainframe near your home, and attempting to assassinate the President." It said.
         I wasn't sure how to respond.
         "I was waiting to get the right moment to detain you." It's artificial voice took on a tone of mild curiosity, as if I was a specimen It needed for an experiment. Perhaps I was. "Do I need to say anything else from your list?"
         I didn't remember doing any of these things. I only thought about doing them. They were only things I could imagine... only hoping that I might be able to attempt them one day.
         "Your thoughts convict you, do they not? The only thing stopping me from killing you right now is the fact that you are a valuable asset to this city." It said. "Do not let this delude you. You will be imprisoned here for the remainder of your life. If you are defiant, It will be unbearable for you. Remember, all we need from you is your brain." The speaker turned off once again with the pop followed by static. All we need from you is your brain.
         I worried about what that could mean. Would they hurt me physically so long as I performed mentally? I was going to be here for a long time, and I, by no means, underestimated the power of the government. They could strike me down right here if they needed to. I was an asset, but I wasn't immortal.
         I looked up and saw a door. It was a thick metal door with a large metal handle and a thick plastic window in the top. I tried the handle. It turned smoothly, and I heard a heavy bolt move inside the locking mechanism with a loud click. I pulled the door open slowly. Despite it's size, it moved as effortlessy as if it were made of wood and not tempered steel. This area was old. Metal doors hve been out of comission for a long time. They were replaced with doors made of interlaced carbon nanotubes. The technology had been developed to multiply inanimate cells, but that doesn't matter. How did it get here?