I look over my shoulder and I see four policeman, well, actually three policemen and one policewomen, running behind me, the way cops run, with one hand holding their hats down on their heads and the other hand kind of balanced on the butts of their nightsticks so they don\u2019t fly up out of the belt, but the policewoman is holding her nightstick in one hand and her hat in the other. To be honest, I can\u2019t remember why I\u2019m running, but once I realize I\u2019m running from the cops, I stay running. I\u2019ve never really liked the hats cops wear. They should either just get berets or baseball caps. Those hats they wear are like a cross between the two, and that\u2019s overkill. They always look menacing in those hats, those octagon hats with the short bills, and mostly I think they look menacing because they\u2019re onto me, or you, or whoever they\u2019re onto. When you see a cop in one of those cowboy hats, or the big round hats that aren\u2019t quite cowboy hats that the Highway Patrolmen wear, those cops don\u2019t necessarily know who you are or what you\u2019ve been doing. The plain cops though, the so-called, \u201cBoys in Blue,\u201d with their dark pants and black boots and those terribly angled hats, well they know everything about you and they know everything you\u2019ve done. Some of them, the real high-ups, Captains and Senior Detectives and the like, they know things you haven\u2019t even done yet. Most people think the guys you want to be afraid of are the guys in the black suits and dark glasses, the guys with the slicked back hair who never say anything but stand on the corner smoking and just watching, and people are right, you should be afraid of them, but they\u2019re not the most frightening of the bunch. The real cats to avoid are cops in uniform.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not like in the movies where they have these teams of psychics and they have visions that lead them to clues and all that. Those movies are just made up nonsense. What they have are computers. Super Computers. They have computers that predict things based on probability. They watch people with secret surveillance equipment and use the things people actually do to find patterns of behavior. Once you\u2019ve been watched long enough, monitored, and figured out, the computer uses your real behaviors to theorize every possible outcome of every possible decision you might make in a day. This leads to nearly infinite possibilities, but super computers can look at every possibility at once, so it\u2019s the same as just having one thing that\u2019s the only thing you could possibly do in a day, to the computer. The computer looks at all these possibilities at once, so it\u2019s you getting up in the morning, taking a shower, and then robbing a bank, or you wrecking your car off a bridge and into a river, or you just having a normal day at work, and the computer recognizes that certain outcomes are more likely than others, and deletes the really outlandish things, and just focuses on the things you might actually do that day.<\/p>\n
Once the computer knows what you\u2019ll most likely do, where you\u2019ll most likely go, etc., they watch for you in places you\u2019re likely to go. So they use the same surveillance to watch your behavioral patterns, your hobbies, your likes and dislikes, use the same cameras and microphones to find out all about you and what you\u2019re going to do, as they use to make sure you don\u2019t do it. If the computer says the three most likely possibilities are that you go to work and spill coffee on your shirt, skip work and go sleep with your mistress, or skip work and go kill the man your wife\u2019s been sleeping with\u2014because they know what she\u2019s been doing too\u2014and your car is spotted a few miles from your wife\u2019s lover\u2019s house, then they can show up there before you and make sure you don\u2019t do what you were going to do. The really scary thing, though, is that you might not even have known that you were going to do something. Some of the stuff we do is just spur of the moment, and we just kind of act on our impulses, so the computers can figure out what we might do if our impulses get the best of us and prevent those things from happening when we didn\u2019t even realize yet what we were going to do.<\/p>\n
Most of those people you see missing on posters and hanging on telephone poles are in secret jails for murders or bank robberies they never committed. This is also why a lot of people disappear for a while then show back up and can\u2019t remember where they were. Think about it. If you were going to just scare a guy, just punch him once and walk away, and they stop you, well that\u2019s not the kind of thing they\u2019d put you away for life for doing, so they\u2019ll pick you up, take you to some secret holding cell, determine you aren\u2019t going to commit another crime after they let you go, and then they just dump you on a sidewalk somewhere and you don\u2019t remember anything so you just assume you\u2019ve been abducted by aliens. But we have much more local problems to worry about.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s why local cops, cops in uniforms, are more of a threat to our freedoms and the privacy of our thoughts than any silent black helicopters or secret government agencies or guys who work for secret government agencies so secret that the people who work in secret government agencies don\u2019t even know who they work for. The uniform cops are more dangerous than the guys who don\u2019t answer to anybody. Those government spooks only show up and scare the hell out of everybody when something high-profile has happened, like if a whole town full of people sees a UFO or something, they show up, they ask a few questions, they stand on the corner and smoke cigarettes, and then they leave again and you never hear anything from them. But the local cops are already here, stationed across America waiting for orders from a computer that may or may not have decided you\u2019re going to commit a crime in an hour. When a cop pulls you over for speeding, do you really think that\u2019s what he\u2019s doing? With all the problems we have in this world you think they\u2019d spend that much money making sure people don\u2019t drive a little bit faster than what somebody painted on a sign once? Most likely, when they give you a warning, they know that you won\u2019t do what you\u2019re going to do if you have a few extra seconds to think about it, so they just hold you for a minute and let you leave, and you don\u2019t even realize that your subconscious mind was using that time to decide not to commit a heinous crime. When they actually write you a ticket, they keep you longer, thereby actually preventing the crime by closing the window in which it would have happened. Your ticket, if you want to call it a ticket, is the fine you pay as punishment for the crime you would have committed. Why do you think so many people get away with speeding? \u00a0Or why you\u2019ll be going slower than somebody else but the cops will pull up behind you and pull you over and let that guy speed off into the sunset? When you really think about it, everything just kind of falls into place.<\/p>\n
So, I know the dangers. I wake up. I\u2019ve been dreaming I worked in a hospital, but I\u2019m all bloody in the dream, and I and realize I\u2019m not in my bed, but I\u2019m running from these four cops, and I don\u2019t want to take any chances. I know the cops back at the station are watching me, or somebody is watching me, on traffic cameras and from satellites and cameras mounted in billboards and everything, so I know to have any chance of getting away I\u2019ve got to do something pretty drastic. I turn the corner off the side-street I\u2019ve been running down and I run right into oncoming traffic, right down the main road through town. The speed limit\u2019s thirty-five for most of Main Street, and since people mostly believe speed limits are real they don\u2019t generally travel faster than around forty. Nonetheless, running headfirst toward cars that are coming at me at thirty-five or forty miles an hour is pretty frightening. It\u2019s exhilarating too, I must say, but frightening first. Whenever you run straight into traffic like that, between two oncoming lanes, you don\u2019t have a lot of time to realize how exciting it really is. I have to keep myself focused on escaping. I have to remember why I\u2019m running. I think I work at the hospital, but I don\u2019t remember who I am.<\/p>\n
A few cars pass, people start honking and yelling out the windows of their cars and shaking their fists and waving middle fingers at me, but I can\u2019t let them distract me. I run like I\u2019ve never run before, and, finally, I come to the bridge. The downtown bridge is probably a good fifty to a hundred feet above the river. I\u2019ve never seen anybody jump off it before, but I really don\u2019t have many options. So I jump up on the railing and look down at the water below. I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s deep enough, but I don\u2019t know much at all about the current and I have no way of knowing whether or not anything is floating just below the surface. For all I know, there\u2019s a tree or an old stop-sign or something just bobbing along there in the murky water, and when I jump I\u2019m going to impale myself on it. I can see, on the surface below, the reflections of the bridge and the surrounding buildings, and how the water reflects both banks back at themselves. I look for my own reflection, I look to see myself staring back at me, but I\u2019m too high up to make anything out but a dark silhouette. It\u2019s like a circle with other circles inside it. For all I know, that\u2019s not even me there, and that makes the jump a lot easier. I don\u2019t think I could jump if I have to watch myself do it. I look up at the cops, and they\u2019re still in pursuit, still without their guns drawn, meaning whatever I\u2019m about to do, whatever the computer figured out, isn\u2019t bad enough they\u2019ll shoot me over it. Then I look back down at the water, and I notice blood on the railing pooling around my feet. At first, I think the cops have shot me, but then I realize the blood is pouring from my hands. My hands are cut and bleeding so badly I\u2019m worried they might be nearly severed. I have shards of glass in my knuckles and when I notice that, both hands start to throb. Once my hands start to throb, I notice pain in other parts of me. My face hurts, my legs and arms hurt, and there\u2019s a pain in my chest when I breathe. The pain causes me to focus for a second on my legs. My blue legs, with darker blue stripes up the sides. Are these my legs? I see that my arms are also blue. I look at the cops and I realize why the blue is familiar: I\u2019m dressed like them. Who dressed me like this? I have a patch, but it doesn\u2019t say police. The patch says St. Thomas Memorial Hospital Security. I was right. I work at the hospital. I hear a policeman yelling. He says, \u201cSir, don\u2019t jump!\u00a0 Stop where you are!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 All I can do is wonder, why would the hospital dress me like this unless I work there? <\/em>And then, I jump. After a second or two of free fall, of watching my reflection fly toward me, everything, even my thoughts, goes a kind of numb.<\/p>\n When I wake up, I\u2019m in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown. I\u2019ve got an IV in one hand, and a little clip on the end of my finger, and there\u2019s a wire running from the clip to a machine that beeps about once every second. I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re pumping into me through that IV, but I assume it\u2019s some sort of experimental drug designed to sedate my natural human urges, to make me a mindless machine who just goes to work and feels like everything is okay and there are no real secrets in life. The thing is, it\u2019s not working. If it were working I wouldn\u2019t be sitting here thinking about it, would I? After a few minutes I notice the clip on my finger is related to my heartbeat. When I worry about the IV, the machine beeps faster and I can feel my heart beating faster with it. I\u2019m not sure, though, if my heart is controlling the machine or if the machine is controlling my heart. Sometimes, when they experiment on humans with new drugs and truth serums and things like that, they use machines to control people\u2019s physical reactions, so they can see in what physical state the person has to be for the drug to best work. They did a lot of experiments in the 60s with the MKULTRA project. Really sick things. They did things like gave LSD to prostitutes and then raped them in front of two-way mirrors, just to see how they reacted. This was all very top secret, but after 30 or 40 years the government admitted to the project and released some<\/em> of the details. They\u2019ll never admit to everything, though. You can bet on that.<\/p>\n One thing they never admitted to was actually discovering a truth serum, but maybe that\u2019s what they\u2019re pumping into me. That would be pretty pointless, however, because I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m here and I certainly don\u2019t know anything important about anything else important. I know what most people don\u2019t know, that we\u2019re under constant watch, but that\u2019s it. Unless there\u2019s something I don\u2019t realize I know. When I was very young, too young to remember, my father was shot and killed, and shortly afterward my mother killed herself and men in dark suits came and took me away and put me in this home with other children who had no parents. Maybe my parents worked for some agency or maybe they knew or saw something they weren\u2019t supposed to know or see and maybe they were murdered, and now the cops want to know if, before they died, they passed on any information to me. Maybe the drug in the IV is pumping into my subconscious mind, and maybe they\u2019re just waiting for me to start talking about things I don\u2019t even know I remember.<\/p>\n My arms and legs and back are very sore, and my hands are all bandaged, for some reason. I have bruises on my thighs and the tops of my feet but I don\u2019t have a cast anywhere so I don\u2019t think I broke any bones doing whatever I was doing when they caught me. My face feels swollen and sore, and when I try to lift my hand to my cheek I whiplash my wrist and realize I\u2019m handcuffed to the bedrail. This confirms my suspicion that I have been caught, and I\u2019m not just here because there was an accident. My other hand isn\u2019t cuffed, so I reach up and touch my face, and my nose and eyes and cheeks are all very sore. There\u2019s a lot of commotion on the other side of the curtain that\u2019s drawn around me, but I\u2019m not exactly sure what it\u2019s about. So many people are talking at once I can hardly make out any of it. I hear the words contraction, water, and break. Somebody told a woman to breathe.<\/p>\n I have to leave the hospital. I have no doubts about this. I start feeling around on the bedrail I\u2019m handcuffed to, and I notice the rails actually thread into each other, so all I have to do is unscrew one of them and slip the handcuffs off the bed and I\u2019m free. The proposition seems so easy I start worrying maybe they want me to try and escape, but what choice do I really have? I need to come up with some sort of plan. I\u2019m in a hospital gown. I can\u2019t just go running out the front door in a hospital gown. I need to find a change of clothes, but first I have to get out of this particular room and maybe into a different cell block where they won\u2019t recognize me as a newly processed inmate. After I\u2019ve unscrewed the bedrail and slipped the handcuffs off, I take the handcuff that had been strapped to the bed, because even if they\u2019re closed you can push them all the way around and put them on somebody, and I cuff that side to my wrist as well, next to the side that was already cuffed there, then I slide the cuffs up as close to my elbow as I can get it. The hospital gown comes down to just above the elbow so the cuffs are surprisingly not noticeable. I sit up on the foot of the bed and pull the curtain back, and I can see out into the hallway, and there are a few other people out there in gowns pulling around their IVs, so I don\u2019t unhook mine, and I prepare to blend in.<\/p>\n Nobody tries to stop me as I walk down the hall, looking as perfectly natural as possible, hauling this IV hooked up to a coatrack behind me. As I pass different rooms, I notice none of the other patients are handcuffed. So I am definitely in some sort of mental facility, which, in a way, is good, because that means I\u2019m not a criminal. But it\u2019s also very bad, because it means they think I have some kind of mental disorder and they\u2019re going to eventually use me for some kind of gross experiment. In a way, I wish everybody were handcuffed, because at least then I\u2019d know I was a criminal and I wasn\u2019t going to be electro-shocked and water-boarded and hung upside down and all that. There\u2019s a lot of commotion around one of the rooms I walk by, so I peek in, and I see a doctor handing a newborn baby to a mother, so whatever this place is, they have some kind of breeding program as well.<\/p>\n I get to the elevator with little incident, and I go down to the basement where I hope there won\u2019t be a lot of other people. The elevator doors open, and the first thing I see is a sign that reads, \u201cMen\u2019s Locker and Shower\u201d and has an arrow pointing down the hall. Where there are showers,<\/em> I think, there are clothes. <\/em>I need to get out of this gown and get rid of this IV, so I tear the IV from my wrist and leave it in the dark hallway, and I head toward the showers.<\/p>\n The only clothes I can find in the locker room are these blue pants with a darker blue stripe on them and a blue, long-sleeved, button up shirt. It\u2019s a security guard\u2019s uniform. It\u2019s perfect. Nobody\u2019s going to stop a security guard. I grab the clothes and get back down the hallway, into a dark corner, just in case the real guard is somewhere nearby, and I put on the uniform and it fits perfectly, so I relax a little. I notice the patch on the arm reads, \u201cSaint Thomas Memorial Hospital,\u201d however, and now I\u2019m concerned again. Saint Thomas is a real hospital downtown, so whatever experiments are going on here, real doctors and regular people might be involved in. It\u2019s an obvious reason for concern.<\/p>\n I ride back up the elevator and walk out the front doors of the place and nobody looks at me twice. As soon as I\u2019m outside, though, I see this silver glint in the sky, which is most likely an unmanned drone like the army uses, possibly watching the hospital to make sure nobody leaves, since they have real patients mixed in with everybody else. So I have to get out of there. I never look up at the sky again. I keep my head down. I\u2019m just a security guard going home after a long day at work. There\u2019s a shopping plaza nearby, and I make a tough decision: do I keep to myself, or do I go out in a crowd where I can blend in? I figure I\u2019m safer in a large group because I\u2019m harder to spot that way, so I saunter through the hospital parking lot and across the main road and into the shopping plaza. The biggest store in the plaza is a grocery store, and I realize I can\u2019t remember the last time I ate. But now that I\u2019ve been in the hospital and been pumped full of experimental drugs, I\u2019m worried they\u2019re introducing these drugs into the general public by putting them into the food supply.<\/p>\n I walk behind the building, and there\u2019s this dumpster behind the grocery store, and I\u2019m rooting around the dumpster, looking for expired food, when I notice all these cats. There must be twenty of these cats, some kittens, some full grown, just meowing and playing and fighting and kind of surrounding the dumpster I\u2019m inside. I don\u2019t have anything against cats, in fact, I\u2019ve always liked them better than dogs, but this is really kind of strange and spooky. Then I notice that a lot of the cats are looking at me with these dark eyes. Cats don\u2019t normally look people in the eye, but here I am, standing in a dumpster, waist deep in boxes and old produce, holding a rotting head of lettuce in one hand, dressed like a security guard, obviously suspicious as any individual could be, and here are these cats, some calico, some just mangy, some black, all with these dark eyes, and they\u2019re in the parking lot, and they all start circling the dumpster, and staring at me, and they stop meowing, which heightens the terror. These cats had been whining, making terrible noise the entire time, but now that they\u2019ve noticed me, they\u2019re silent. They just watch, move closer a little at a time, like they\u2019re organized, and I have to get out of there.<\/p>\n I watch the cats out of one eye for another few minutes, and stop rooting through the dumpster and find a case of expired individually-sized yogurts. The kind women on diets eat. The way I see it, yogurt is bacteria anyway, so what\u2019s the difference between expired and good yogurt? Now that I think of it, you could say the same thing about blue cheese. When cheese gets old, it turns blue. What does blue cheese do when it gets old? Does it turn to cheddar? I\u2019m kidding, but my point is valid. And, I figure that bacteria, which I\u2019m about to eat, might be the most effective anti-venom when it comes to whatever drugs they\u2019ve put in the public food supply. So I get out of there. I climb up out of the dumpster and leave, and I swear as I leave the cats all stop and look up at me like they want to make sure they see my face before I get out of there. And I eat my yogurt on the run. It\u2019s sour, and has these blue specks on the top, but on the whole it doesn\u2019t taste much different from any other yogurt. I don\u2019t eat the little strawberries at the bottom of the container, because that seems like the best way to get sick. As I near the front of the store, I tear the bandages off of my hands, because a security guard walking around with both hands bandaged just doesn\u2019t seem normal.<\/p>\n I round the corner to come out from behind the grocery store and into the plaza and toss the yogurt container and act as naturally as I can. Everybody\u2019s looking at me, and I don\u2019t have any way of knowing whether or not they\u2019re secret police or just people who like a man in a security guard uniform. I\u2019m careful not to look at any light-poles or parking meters or up in the air toward the drones, but I do catch a silver glint above me, and this time I can even see the contrails.<\/p>\n I pass a woman pushing a stroller and she looks at me like she knows I\u2019m not who I\u2019m pretending to be. There\u2019s a man in jeans and a plaid shirt putting a key into the door of his car but for some reason he\u2019s looking over at me. I notice a woman inside the card shop, on the other side of the window, peering out at me, and she looks away when I make eye contact. But then I see all the proof I need.<\/p>\n It\u2019s this big electronics store. When I walk by, I notice I\u2019m on every TV in the window display. Seriously, whatever I do shows up on the screens of an assortment of flatscreen TVs, some on stands, others mounted to the walls. When people walk by, they see me standing there, then they see me on the screens, and then they see how bothered I am by appearing on the screens. Some people actually stop and just watch me stare at myself on all these TVs, and eventually I lose my cool. I turn around and I look for anything I can find to break the window. The closest thing to me is a trashcan, so I grab the can and turn around and charge the window, charge my own reflection. At first, the whole thing looks a little familiar. When I\u2019m still a few feet from the window, I have a hard time making out myself, but I see a silhouette facing back at me, with the cloudless sky behind me. As I charge the window, I see myself get clearer and clearer, until I see me lift the trashcan and smash it through the huge storefront, and shards of glass rain down around me. When the glass stops falling I see myself standing on the sidewalk, perfectly still, and I notice that almost everybody in the plaza is watching me now. I don\u2019t run. I step up into the store, through the new entrance I\u2019ve made, and I start smashing the TVs. I grab one, probably around thirty-seven inches, off the TV stand and I chuck it out into the parking lot. I put my foot through the screen of another that\u2019s low to the ground. I start punching the rest, and when I do the glass and plastic from the screens cuts into my fingers, my knuckles, the tops of my hands and my palms, and soon blood pours from both hands and wrists, and I start getting worked up and light-headed.<\/p>\n Before I really have a chance to look around and assess the damage, I hear voices telling me to stop what I\u2019m doing, lie down on the ground, and put my hands on the back of my head, so I take off running toward downtown. Something flashes in my memory. Everything feels familiar. I can\u2019t stop thinking about walking through the halls of some hospital, somewhere, and peaking in through an open door to a room where a child had been born. The mother\u2019s eyes were black, I remember that, how dark they glowed, how far away but inside my head they looked, and I\u2019m falling off a bridge toward clean water, but I\u2019m in this hospital room, but I\u2019m running and the sun hurts, and I\u2019m also in this hospital, and everybody in the room, the doctors, the nurses, the father of the child, sees me standing there but doesn\u2019t speak, just looks at me and they all have the same dark eyes, and I see the child, and a nurse, staring at me, wraps the baby up in these bloody rags, and I notice the baby has a birthmark on its shoulder, these nine circles, one inside another inside another, but the birthmark looks sloppy, like it\u2019s hand-painted, and I can see the brushstrokes and the doctor hands the child to the mother, and she holds it close against her breast and then she holds it up for the father to see, and when she does I can see the child\u2019s birthmark is smudged, and I see a stain on the collar of the mother\u2019s gown like the birthmark is painted with India Ink and is still wet, like it\u2019s all some game, and the child looks at me too, and the child has dark eyes and it laughs instead of crying, and then I can\u2019t see anything and I\u2019m just running toward the dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I look over my shoulder and I see four policeman, well, actually three policemen and one policewomen, running behind me, the way cops run, with one hand holding their hats down on their heads and the other hand kind of balanced on the butts of their nightsticks so they don\u2019t fly up out of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-ryan-havely"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15771,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15594\/revisions\/15771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}