The Future They Made Us Forget, chapter 2

Chapter Two: Can't Have Informed Consent If Being Informed Is Impossible

This is what happened on Day One.

The Phrehibiphor Experiment was scheduled for 11:00 AM. An hour in advance, at 9:56, two assistants unlocked the room where Kayla was being held, and told her she was to be taken to the experiment room. She complied.

Kayla was already physically weak and stumbling, and the assistants knew this. This gave her the excuse she needed. At 10:01, as they escorted her into the experiment room, she “accidentally” bumped into one of them, knocking them sideways into a medical cart. Their lapse of control was brief but impactful. The cart, with its wheels already locked, toppled; vials of medicine shattered on the floor.

Once the assistants had strapped Kayla into the fMRI machine, there was a hasty discussion. Dr. Fuller would be very angry, they agreed; it was imperative that this mess be gone before he learned of it. At 10:05, they agreed to split up – one to fetch replacements, the other to stay and clean. But as soon as the second assistant was alone, he realized he had no broom or dustpan to clear the broken glass. He glanced at Kayla; he must have known it would break protocol to leave her unattended. But she was fully restrained, lying motionless in the machine. Surely nothing would happen in just a few minutes. Surely Dr. Fuller’s anger was a more urgent concern. This resulted in Kayla being left unattended for a total of six minutes, starting at 10:07. Only the room’s security cameras could see her, and no one was monitoring them at the time – at least, not in the first timeline.

26 seconds from the moment the door closed, Kayla had fully freed herself from the restraints. Over the next 18 seconds, she scanned through the shelves, taking what she needed with frantic but efficient motions. By 10:09 AM, she was out the door. She didn’t know the full layout of the building, but she knew what she was looking for. She sprinted down the hall, following the exit signs, knowing they would lead her to the stairs.

And that’s where I came in. By sheer luck, the moment she ran past the fifth-floor lobby camera was the moment I was watching it, while looking for a camera with a better view of Fuller. Of course, at the time, I had no idea of what had just happened before that. All I knew was what I could see on the camera. And what I saw – the way I first interpreted it – was a frightened, teenage girl, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, holding a scalpel in front of her like a weapon. In the twelve seconds she was in view, she entered the lobby on the fifth floor, looked quickly around her, and crept to the nearest stairs, then disappeared downwards. My mind jumped to an explanation: she was a captive, trying to escape the building. I was almost right. Right in the ways that mattered.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, but I’m proud of how I reacted in that moment. My worst fears about this place were realized, and I knew that if I didn’t take action – immediately – then I would never forgive myself. The girl couldn’t see where Dr. Fuller was standing, and if she tried to exit on the ground floor, she’d be in plain view of him and two security guards. She would be recaptured, and God-knows what else. I couldn’t just let that happen.

I didn’t dare let myself be seen on the cameras. At 10:10 AM, I turned off every security camera in the building, stood up, and sprinted for the stairs.

It was lucky that Kayla couldn’t take the stairs at full speed. I wasn’t exactly athletic, and I just barely got there ahead of her, panting as I reached second-floor door to the stairwell. By the time I cracked open the door, she was just half a flight above me.

“This way, quick!” I gasped, trying to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t scare her. “I can help you.”

And then I looked up, and saw her properly.

Her face was gaunt, barely more than skin and bone. One arm clutched a tablet computer to her chest, with a few smaller objects bundled in a closed fist. At her other side, a bony, trembling hand still gripped the scalpel, as she stood poised on the steps above me, ready to fight or run the moment I proved to be a threat. But if I’d been expecting her to panic when I approached, my expectations were soon disproven. She held still, quickly calculating how much to trust me. My first glimpse of the ruthless intelligence that defined her.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked. Not disbelief. A demand for information.

“I – I only just realized this place is holding people against their will!” I hissed. “Of course I want to do something about that!” I was starting to panic myself. Kayla still wasn’t moving, and I had no idea what to do if she wouldn’t trust me. “Listen, someone’s going to come up the stairs anytime now, I saw it on the cameras! Come with me, I can hide you in my office – then we’ll have time to figure out –”

Kayla let out a short breath, coming to a decision. She climbed down the stairs – not fast, but as fast as she could, balancing on unsteady feet while she held the tablet tight to her chest.

When I watched that moment again in the security footage, the contrast was striking. Me, the slightly pudgy, thirty-five-year-old white man in a t-shirt, completely out of his depth, awkwardly holding open the door; and Kayla, a head shorter, the gown drooping over her emaciated shoulders, squeezing uncomfortably close to get past me. I remember looking down, seeing her fist clenched tightly around the handle of the scalpel, realizing that I might meet a very bloody end if I betrayed her.

I talked quickly as we hurried back to my office. “You need to get out of the building, right? I can look at all the security cameras, I can unlock the doors – we can see if anyone’s watching, so we can get out without anyone seeing us – and then I can call the police –” But something in her eyes told me she didn’t think the police would save her. “Or, I mean, I could call someone you trust – or I could drive you anywhere you want, I have my car –”

“It won’t work,” she said.

“What?”

Her words came quickly, low and urgent. “None of that would work! I can’t run, they’re always waiting for me, as soon as I get away. I need to find their…”

Kayla kept explaining, for ten seconds, then twenty, before I noticed what was happening. If it hadn’t been for what I’d already seen, I would have just let her keep talking, not realizing anything was wrong. But I was starting to recognize it. Her words were plain English, they fit together in order – but my brain simply wasn’t making sense of them. Just like with Dr. Fuller.

“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “I can’t understand what you’re saying –”

I had been afraid that she wouldn’t know what I meant – afraid that I would have to spend precious minutes explaining. But the instant I spoke, I knew that she had understood. The look that blossomed on her face wasn’t confusion or frustration – it was fear. She knew what was coming. No matter how long she explained these things – no matter how desperately she needed me to know them – I would never understand them. And then her time would run out.

“Listen,” she said urgently. “I can – – way they do it, if you just let – – ’d have to show you – – and then – – will work. Can I do that?”

“What?? I got the part where, I think you’re asking me for permission for something, but I don’t –”

“Damn it! For the – –! So we can – –! How about that?”

I shook my head.

A rush of words flooded past me, with no more meaning than before. But she knew it wasn’t working. She couldn’t ask for permission; she could only steel herself to do what she was about to do. “Damn it! I don’t want to do this non-consensually!” she said tightly. “But I need you to understand!”

And then the purpose of the tablet she’d brought was revealed. With a lurching motion, she laid it on my office desk, the screen facing me, showing a grid of buttons. Before I could read them all, her fingers reached out and tapped the button labeled OVERSTIM.

The next few minutes were a horrifying blur.

On some level, deep in my mind, I understood what my eyes were staring at. It was the animation I’d been working on. The only difference was the color, no longer blue and green, but purple and white. But somehow, the colors reached deep into my brain, gripping my deepest instincts, holding me in a dreamlike state where I couldn’t form a coherent thought. I only remember a few fragments – the waves of color speaking to me in voices of infinite authority and reassurance, my mind scrambling to obey but the rules turning to mush when I tried to understand them. I felt like a small child again, teachers yelling at me for forgetting my work, trying to follow but getting lost every moment I looked away. The Pattern whispered on and on, noise layering over noise, every moment blotting out the last.

I do remember what it felt like as I “woke up” – my head spinning, still half in the nightmare, a stinging sensation in my arm, my brain frantically digging through half-formed memories for any idea of where I was, what had happened to me. I found myself sitting in my chair – had Kayla put me there? – the Pattern still swirling on the screen, I could see it normally now – Kayla crouching beside me, speaking quickly – the needleless injector still in her hand – I looked back at my stinging arm –

“Is this some kind of mind control?! Did you inject me with something?!!” My voice rose into a shriek – I shoved myself away from her –

But then, my mind caught up with the words she had been saying.

“– a time machine, they have a time machine. Tell me when you can understand me. They have a time machine. They have a time machine. Tell me when you can understand –”

And it all fell into place. Images I’d seen on the cameras flooded back into my mind, as if I was seeing them the first time. The purple-and-white Pattern painted all over the holding-cell walls, commanding my brain to forget what it saw – Fuller gloating about how he could use it – Reggie being in two places at once – “A time machine –” I gasped “– the machine in the basement –”

Kayla explained as quickly as she could. “You were already being mind controlled. Everyone here is, everyone but the doctors in charge. What I did is, I broke the control. The overstim, the P-55 injections, they’re what they tested on me, they’re why I can resist it. Everyone else, you can talk about time travel right in front of them and they just stare past you –”

Biiiing!

I jumped – but it was just a message arriving on my work computer, an awful coincidence of timing. Except, of course, it wasn’t a coincidence. It was time travel.

Hey Marvin, it’s me, Marvin. You need to download this and watch the first video, ASAP.

“Uhhh…” I said, glancing between the message and Kayla.

“Open it!” hissed Kayla, comprehending faster than I did. “It’s from you, right? You trust him, right?”

“…Right!” With shaking fingers, I clicked to download the attached zip file.

When your body is in fight-or-flight mode, the time it takes a computer to unpack an archive feels like forever. It was only 18 seconds, but I spent those 18 seconds with my eyes glued to the screen, cursing progress bars everywhere. The moment it was done, I jumped straight to the first file I saw, 01_WATCH_THIS_FIRST.mp4.

Like many an unedited, amateur video, it began with an awkward close-up of the person making it, as she clicked the record button and then backed away to position herself better for the camera. The people in the video were us: Kayla standing, Marvin sitting next to her. They were in an office not-so-different from my own, no doubt somewhere in this very building. But a small window behind them revealed a night sky. When I later checked the file’s “Date Created”, I learned that they had begun recording at 3:56 AM – over 6 hours ago.

The Kayla in the video was dramatically changed from the Kayla beside me. The desperate look was gone from her eyes, a bit of fat back in her cheeks, standing tall and proud, with an honest-to-God rifle on a sling over one shoulder. She was dressed in an oversized men’s jacket and jeans, marred only by splatters of dried blood, which I could only assume were not her own. But despite her pride, there was still a look of deep exhaustion on her face. [????? note masks]

“Eugh, how do we say this to them?” muttered the Kayla in the video, dead tired, a voice of resignation. She glanced to the side, at my own double – the glance of someone hoping someone else will take charge, so they won’t have to explain things themselves.

But my double could not help her. Whatever our duplicates had been through, Kayla had endured it, but Marvin had been emotionally destroyed by it. He had a hollow, haunted look; he hadn’t shaved in days; and the moment Kayla looked to him, he broke down completely. He sank down in his seat, sobbing into his hands, unable to speak.

Video-Kayla let out a short breath and pulled her eyes away from Marvin, a quiet acknowledgment that she was on her own. Reluctantly, she looked back at the camera – at us.

“Listen,” she said. “We messed up. We caused a paradox, and pretty soon, we’re going to cease to exist. And if you don’t want the same thing to happen to you, here’s what you have to do.”