The Know 12

I awoke to the sound of a blowtorch and a man with a mask.

"What!?" I yelled attempting to get up.

"Hold still please, just doing a bit of maintenance."

"So that’s what you call this… maintenance?" I put my head back down on the metal table. Rust crunching beneath it. The man continued to weld the bone on my arm back together with the torch.

Glancing around the room I could tell that we weren’t far from the bar. The smell and the wood on the door were the same. I turned to my left to see Riley asleep on the cement floor, under the dust-covered windows. On my right was a door that led to a different room.

"So where are we exactly?" I asked looking back at him.

"Classified infor… infor… information." He stuttered.

I immediately realized that he wasn’t human. The glitch and the covered eyes were classic signs, as well as the brief audio answers.

"Well then can I ask who made you?"

"I am." Another man said walking in through the door.

"My name is Cathal you may recognize me from the video." He said pulling on a pair of gray rubber gloves.

"Before you begin asking any questions let me explain." He walked behind the welder out of my view.

I heard him tinker with something in the corner of the room and then footsteps back over to me. He brought a stool with him and took the gloves back off.

"Somehow ‘they’ traced you back to me and found where you were before I could get to you."

"Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean traced me back to you?" I said sitting up only to have "the mask" push me back down.

"What do you mean?" He paused momentarily and then continued. "I created you." "I though you would have figured that out by now."

"But what about all the scientists and… and the room?" I said recalling the first moments of my life.

"Ah yes well, I suppose I shouldn’t say that I was the only one who made you. There were others, but this is not the time to discuss such matters."

"This is the perfect time!" I said sitting up again.

The man grabbed my shoulder but I grabbed his wrist and bent it backwards. I slid to the end of the table and stood up, his wrist still in my hand. He froze not sure what to do. Standing inches from him, I looked at the glass shielding his eyes, and saw myself.

"You couldn’t have been made to serve." I whispered to him but directed mostly at myself.

I let go of him and plopped back onto the table and sat there staring at the ground. The robot didn’t move. He held his blowtorch, as if he was going to use it but couldn’t. I heard Cathal stand and walk over to the robot. He walked behind it around to the other side examining him.

"What did you do to him?" I heard him whisper after a long silence.

"He couldn’t have possibly understood what you said. George here was made to answer questions and commands. How is can this be?"

Cathal walked back over to his stool and sat there thinking.

"Why are you so shocked about the fact that George could have an opinion, and not shocked that I do?" I spoke up.

"Well… you have a real brain and heart. Even though George has artificial intelligence, it should have been overridden by his program." "I mean you don’t think that he can actually… feel… right?" He nervously laughed.

"I do Cathal."

He leaned forward on his stool and rubbed his poorly shaved face with his hands. "I’m getting too old for this shit." "I getting sick of it!" "Don’t you make me feel guilty!" He yelled as though he was loosing his grip on sanity.

"All I’m trying to do is change what has been changed." He swallowed hard and stood up.

"Now if you would please follow me into the other room so we can talk in a more comfortable environment."

So my hypothesis was correct I was created to be a weapon. I sense some other reason for creating me though, something other than eliminating corruption. As we walked into the other room a strange perfume filled the air.

"Please have a seat." H said pointing over to a fluffy red couch.

"Now I see your wondering why I made you." "I’ll tell you right now that gun fire doesn’t cause a robot to shut down an overload does." You were thinking about your purpose and as I just found out in the other room that causes some sort of overload glitch. I’m not sure why just a bug I suppose."

"Well in other matters… I’ll just start from the beginning." "I work for the government, or worked rather, since they’ve found out what’s happening here." "You were originally made to be a war weapon." "You were to be brought up like a normal child but programmed to view the U.S. as perfect which would give you a an extra push when fighting." "You are more powerful than you realize but we will get into that later." "Unfortunately for them I had figured out what was going on."

"How? Everyone has a Chip don’t they?"

"Yes, but nothing is perfect you see. Why do you think your friend tries to believe what you tell him about our government?"

"I assumed it was because the GSS was not working." I said.

"Wrong, the Chips were designed to put ideas into our heads and nothing more. I broke free from their ‘idea’ when I overheard the Supreme Ruler talking to someone in his office. I chose to not believe what my brain was telling me. I chose not to believe the world was going to end, and I chose not to believe war was the only solution to save our country."

"So we have a couple of options. One we somehow make people ignore the Chips. Two we invade the New White House and kill the Supreme One. Three we sneak into The Cell. Four we give up, get killed, and our country goes to war, innocent people die, and zombies continue to walk the streets." Cathal said folding his hands and leaning back in his chair.

"What’s The Cell?"

"The Cell is where ‘they’ control the GSS from. Where ‘they’ insert ‘ideas’."

"Well I can tell you how I ended up changing the plans for you…"

"You don’t need to I can probably guess. You changed my ‘program’ and put in memories of riots and the truth so when the Chip was inserted I already had the choice to not believe in the government’s lies."

"Correct."

Just then Riley stumbled through the door and steadied himself using the back of the couch. His eyes were half-open, but I could tell something had been ignited within him, a flame that hadn’t been there before. It was a flame called revenge, and proved that he was on our side.

"So what was that plan you were telling me about earlier number 11?"