“How do you feel?” Javier asked as he inched out of the shadows.
With a new mind locked in the present moment, Karina wasn’t sure she could verbalize this restorative sensation. She felt the invisible shackles of the Conversion Signal interlocked around her brain dissolve away. She looked around the dim remains of the A.R.A. laboratory and then back at the stranger standing in-front of her. His face matched the one she now remembers of her father’s photos during his early days in the Navy.
“Oh my God, Javier! Where have I been?” And a lifetime of stolen memories returned with a flood of tears. Old information pierced her brain. Forcing her to perceive as new. The agonizing upload and comprehension of that knowledge sent Karina crashing to the floor.
Javier clutched Karina before she fell to the ground, grasping her head with two hands like a basketball.
“It’s ok sis, I got you. It’ll be over soon. Then you’ll be able to stand on your own again.”
Through the ringing drilling between her temples, Karina thought to herself, how long has she not stood on her own?
So much had been taken from her. Time. Family. Passions and love. All because of the Conversion. Ten years of her free will being cross-checked by the protocols of the E.I.E. When to wake up, brush her teeth, drink a cup of water for proper hydration. Important to keep the conductive properties of the body high for the perpetual energy transmitted through the V.T.E. Bandwidth bracelet. Do your part to power all V.T.E. devices within range! Yea, she’s heard that whisper plenty of times within her temples. Even her job, wasting away baking damn pastries for ten years. An insult to the ambition and intelligence instilled within her long before the E.I.E. existed. The best way to tame a mind like Karina’s was to put her in a kitchen, far away from a lab.
Karina pressed her hands into the cold floor to lift herself up as Javier watched with hovering hands like a spotter in a gym.
“How, Javier…how did you survive for so long? Where’s mom? Dad?” Karina belched out while embracing her brother with a bear-hug. She held Javier so tight he gasped for air to answer. “Sorry-” Karina said, unclenching her vice gripped fingers.
“Well, it’s the simplest explanation out of all I’m about to tell you… I’m an Incompatible.”
“I figured that Javi. How did you survive the last ten years? You were just a child when I—”
Karina paused, remembering the day she last saw her brother’s face with eyes governed by her own will and not synched with the E.I.E’s instructions. Another downpour of tears built up at the base of her eyes. She’d left him at the A.R.A. all those years ago. The day she fulfilled the promise to bring Javier to work after showing him the lab that afternoon happened to be V.T.E’s Inferno Day celebration. The Conversion zero-day. Scenes from the streets were chaotic with Incompatibles being hunted down on live T.V. but no Inspector stepped foot near the A.R.A. for weeks. The building came equipped with a shelter and a pantry for planned catastrophes, so Karina, Javier, and a dozen other people took shelter. Once the food ran low, volunteers needed to go out into the city and search for food or help. Karina, one of the first to raise her hand. Believed she could solve any problem that would arise and make it back safe. Without understanding the mechanics of the Conversion Signal, she was one of the first to get Converted once she stepped outside of the A.R.A’s walls.
“It’s ok sis. I made it. That’s all that matters. But your discovery had a lot to do with it.”
“What do you mean?” Karina asked, wiping the rising tide of tears tapped in her eyelids.
“The Axiom mineral completely blocks the conversion signal. It’s powerful enough to even separate a Converted human from the E.I.E. while in proximity or in some cases permanently. Or even hide a building. If there is enough under its soil.”
“What do you mean by permanently?”
Javier turned his attention to the tables behind Karina. He walked around her, mumbling words to himself that sounded like where’d I put those again as he flipped through notes Karina assumed all to be her own.
“I’ve had to continue what you started, though. To see the extent of the effects of the mineral over the years… On plants, as you saw in front of the A.R.A. Wait till you see the garden out back. And about a couple years ago — is when I started human trials.” Javier finished, passing Karina a handful of notes. Some words were more scribbles than legible, but the constant that resurfaced through the pages as she flipped through highlighted the efficiency of the Axiom mineral between all ages and gender.
Definitions regarding the Converted and Incompatibles were self-explanatory. But other pages unveiled two new concepts for Karina to consider; Reverted and Transfigured.
“What do these findings mean?” The question tickled a piece of Karina’s brain. Happy to be free in her old house of worship.
“Reverted is a state of being after a Converted human has been separated from the E.I.E. with the use of the Axiom mineral. The downside of a Reversion, however, relies on the proximity of the Converted from the Axiom mineral. This can be manipulated by the amount of Axiom minerals used to nullify the Conversion Signal. The larger quantity; the stronger the nullification. But the chances of a Reversion holding are 50/50.”
“How’s that possible even if the Conversion Signal is being blocked?”
“Fear.” Javier answered. His head swayed in disapproval, shifting from the shadows to the illumination of the portable lights.
“What do you mean, fear?”
“The people who couldn’t handle the reversion were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Being separated from the E.I.E.”
Karina’s hand clasped into a fist almost crumbling ten years’ worth of research. A free mind guided the brushstrokes of her imagination, depicting the E.I.E. latching onto her consciousness once more and the suffocating bondage it entailed. It hurt to think some would be helpless without it.
“They couldn’t handle the freedom of their own will returning back to them.”, Javier continued. “Almost as if they forfeited themselves to the E.I.E. long before the Conversion. V.T.E. was already in everyone on the planet’s pockets. It’s not hard to believe they were in some of the hearts and minds of people, too. Especially after seeing it.”
Karina wanted to ask what a failed reversion looked like, but her mind’s eye painted the picture for her. A woman her age on her usual path home from a long day doing the E.I.E.’s bidding until an unsuspecting stranger clad in black throws a sack of Axiom minerals tied to a string around your neck, instantly cutting you off from the E.I.E. Thus making you invisible to the Unified Network. After passing out from literal shock, you are dragged back to the A.R.A., only to wake up with a hysterical panic attack.
“Some kicked and screamed so much I had to restrain them. Others cried for hours until they caused themselves to pass out. Men and women of all ages who failed to be reverted begged for the E.I.E. to take them back. It was as if they thought they had been forsaken.” Javier spoke aloud, as if he read Karina’s thoughts.
“Were you able to reconnect them? Reverse the failed reversions I mean?” Karina asked.
Javier looked at Karina with eyes hardened over the years. “Not all of them. Some of them were so hysterical it fried their brains. Even when I took them away from the mineral and up to Eden Gardens Park, downtown to drop them off, they still didn’t reconnect to the E.I.E. V.T.E. butterfly drones picked them up immediately because of their new status as perceived Incompatibles out in the open. So I started putting them out of their misery here.”
“You’re the explanation behind people around Cardinal-Wood disconnecting from the E.I.E.!” Karina said, wide eye in a eureka moment. “My co-worker was raving about you this morning. The E.I.E. is after you, you know?” Karina found the strength to say after getting over the hurdle of her brother’s mercy killings.
“The mineral negates the signal and turns the user into a ghost at the same time. No one connected to the E.I.E. can see you, not even the E.I.E. and its devices.” Javier answered. “That’s how I could move undetected for so long.”
“So what effect has the mineral had on me?” Karina said, setting down the crumbled notes.
“I’ll explain, but first let me show you the garden out back.”
To Be Continued
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