Chapter 288: Life in the S&T Office

Friday, January 27 to Saturday, February 4, 2006

We played games for the next several days. They designed the games, discussed and executed them; while I played my game of not letting them know I was playing games with their games. Sight blobs are WONDERFUL things, especially when helped by their having lax security, because I was able to keep up with their plans via their computer system. I resisted the temptation to email anything to anyone (for example, my entire DHS file to Maureen in the Math office at OSU, to my lawyer, or to a newspaper). It would leave a trail that I had no way of getting rid of. The finger would be pointed at the person whose password I used, but it was still too much of a worry, especially as I didn't think it'd help and things weren't that urgent now.

For example, when they brought strange people in to talk with me, I played my game by telling them I was a prisoner, that I missed my family, etc. I did that even though I knew it was useless, because by the time I met strangers, I'd read enough of the scientists' notes to understand that whatever I said would be thought as part of the scenario. The only tactic I could think of get past that was to beg the strangers to call my parents and give them the phone number, and hope one of them did so. I tried that once, but got yelled down and physically stopped by the guard before I got even close to giving the full message. I was threatened with all sorts of dire consequences if I tried to pull that again. Those threats were delivered in front of the strangers; that's how confident they were that this would be seen as an experiment rather than something real.

I was formally a "Special Project", with a completely bogus description that explained my being in a fake prison inside their building. Most of the people on this floor didn't even know I existed; the two guards in the front office were to keep them out as much as me in. They knew some sort of "Special Project" had taken over the offices, and they had no interest because there were always a lot of special projects going on. [[With the top leadership not setting clear directions, people worked on all sorts of stuff, a lot of which was silly, especially the "Special Projects" because that name just meant they didn't fit within an existing, authorized, project.]]

The people working on me had their main jobs they worked on most of the time, with working on me being a whenever-they-could-fit-it-in activity. There was usually at least one or two of them around doing something or other with me because the scientists' routines were pretty loose. In addition to the games they played on me to try to uncover my mind control powers, there was also a never ending stream of normal psychological stuff: IQ tests, personality tests, and dozens of tests I had no idea what they were because they had names which gave me no clue. I suspected most of them had been named after the psychologists who'd invented them.

In the most part I played those very straight. For the IQ test, for example, I knew they had my college transcripts so there was no point in using only one mind to take it. The only distortions I did were those that I thought would make me seem nicer and more worthy of being released (which didn't work). I also talked as much as I could ("PLEASE let me go home!"). That also achieved nothing, because if it had affected someone, they would have assumed it was mind control.

The only noteworthy event during the first week was my texting my lawyer two evenings after my first Washington text. It took that long for me to get access to a cellphone for long enough at a time he'd be awake. I set the phone to vibrate only, then sent, "Mark Anderson unmoved. Subject of constant psychological experimentation. DHS file stresses terrorism risk but is fake excuse. Plan MA stay >2 wks. TBII, DNCB."

I got an answer in twenty seconds:

#msgs? 4 times
Useful? Very
Proof? Ava happy NP helping
MA out? Hard/unknown/time
MA only? Yes
Other? Fighting 4 MA. Moran deny see MA. Keeping ur msgs secret unless u okay tell
Stay strong.

The answers were all much as I'd expected, except I hadn't had any specific expectation for the proof. I thought Julia's choice (I was sure it was hers), was an excellent one. It was even good if the DHS intercepted the message because they'd assume someone with the initials of NP was helping me.

It was too risky to get into a back and forth exchange, so I just cleared everything, waited for a while to make sure no more messages were being sent, then put the phone back into ringing mode and left it.

It looked like I was going to living here for quite a while. Fortunately, they were looking after me better than the DHS in Portland had. One of them brought me takeout for dinner every evening, I got a kind of shower: a large basin of water, soap and a washcloth placed in the bathroom for me to strip and wash myself with. I got another change of clothes too, and we rotated them every two or three days. Julia would be horrified by that inhumane treatment.

Because of the camera on me, I couldn't steal any food. I might've gotten away with a few cookies as I walked past the kitchen, but these people were too smart to take risks with. Fortunately, they saw that I was eating everything, and the food portions trended larger, subject to what was happening in any food manipulation games. The meals were still significantly less than I wanted, so I was hungry all the time. I VERY much didn't want to tell them I had a strange metabolism, because that would immediately make them want to know why, and might start them on all sorts of biological testing. That had no possibility of helping me.

I'd arrived here on a Friday morning, and things ticked along reasonably well until the following Friday (Feb 3) evening's dinner. The person delivering it stopped outside my door, put the dish down on the desk, took a small syringe out of his pocket, and injected both the dumplings with whatever was in the syringe. He capped and pocketed the syringe, then delivered my food to me. As if that wasn't scary enough, he was taking considerable care with the syringe, treating it as dangerous.

I'd not read ANYTHING in any of the files about putting a drug into my food. I knew my way around the place very well by now, so I pretended to have a sneezing fit (I can fake sneezes easily) while I quickly found a usable screen, logged in and checked my file. It took about thirty seconds to confirm there was nothing in my file about this. I did a very quick search around the floor, and no one was watching the live feed of what I was doing (I wouldn't expect anyone to be at this time). That didn't mean people weren't doing it elsewhere though.

I was stumped about what to do. What sort of drug was it?

• A sedative to put me to sleep? Why? Were they going to do experiments on my body while I was unconscious? How dangerous would they be? I had zero ability to defend myself while asleep, so that scared the hell out of me as I was, after all, being held by evil people.

• A 'drug' in the recreational sense? If I got high, God knows what I might do. Light blobs and objects flying all around the room would be terminally bad news.

• Poison? There'd been no hint in the files that my time was up. They still had several experiments in progress and had started a new one this morning. But maybe Wright had decided without telling anyone; my BBA studies had discussed the propensity of some bosses to make decisions without telling their staff.

One of the first thoughts I had was that it might be yet another game. They pretty much had to play games to find proof that I had mind control power. There was no way of knowing though, and the food was in front of me right now.

I couldn't think of a single drug that I'd be willing to take that they'd be likely to give me, but I could think of several I very definitely didn't want to take. That was a worry.

I always eat everything they give me. I even eat it quickly and with relish to encourage them to give me more, so my not eating all of it now would be an extremely unlikely coincidence. Pretending to eat it and somehow NP'ing it out of my mouth would be tricky too. To date, I've always faced the camera when eating simply because it's most comfortable to sit on the floor and lean against the wall, so to turn around to eat facing the wall now would be very weird. Plus I had nowhere to hide the food after removing it from my mouth. Perhaps I could tuck it under a blanket, but if they found it there, it'd be difficult to explain how and why it'd gotten there. Plus if I did pretend to eat, how fast and what symptoms should I fake? Falling asleep, getting high, or dying in convulsive fits.

The best possibility seemed to be to find an excuse not to eat it. I could have an emotional meltdown: crying and calling for my mommy and daddy. Or maybe I could get violently angry and throw my food across the room. I could pretend to be sick, even throwing up on demand (easy for me). What I finally decided to do was pretend to taste something unpleasant in the food. I knew some people had better senses of taste than others, so hopefully they'd think I had a particularly good one.

I ate about a quarter of my meal with my usual speed and enthusiasm, then cut off a piece of a dumpling while I chewed the previous mouthful. As I was swallowing that, I was lifting my fork with the piece of dumpling. I opened my mouth and was just about put it in, when I stalled. I pulled it back then sniffed it suspiciously, making an expression consistent with "Yuck; I don't want to eat this." I looked around, as if searching for somewhere to put it. Not finding anywhere, I put it in a corner of the takeout tray, moving other food out of the way. I forked up the rest of that dumpling, smelled it, and found it just as bad; so that got put in the corner too. Then I lifted the uncut dumpling, smelled it, but appeared unsure. I lowered it to the tray, cut it in half, raised it again, and it evidently smelled much worse now. It joined the other dumpling in the corner. I smelled the fork tines, appeared worried, so finished the rest of the meal just using the plastic knife, smelling each portion before putting it in my mouth.

I called out to the guards. When one opened the door I said, "If anyone else got food from that place, warn them the dumplings smell funny."

He'd watched the injection being done, but he made no comment now, just taking my tray away.

Now I had to decide what to do. If the syringe had contained poison, I needed to bust out of here asap. If it contained a teenager's drug of choice, then it was probably just another experiment. That'd be fine if they dropped it, but a worry if they kept trying. If it was a sedative so they could do something while I was asleep, they could find some other way of achieving that. How bad that was depended on what they were going to do with me.

The trouble was that busting out of here would completely and utterly fuck up my entire life, for however short that turned out to be. I'd never be able to go home ever again, never be able to get a degree or a good job, and would always be living in fear of being discovered. Money was also an issue, as I'd foolishly buried money only in Oregon, rather than across the entire country. Actually, I wasn't too worried about money, as I can be a VERY good thief if I need to be. It'd take time and be somewhat of a risk, but it wasn't a major problem. I could probably live well as a professional thief, ideally stealing from bad people rather than Joe & Jane Public.

I decided to wait and see. I wasn't in imminent danger. They had to pull back the bolt on my door before entering, so I'd get a second's warning. If the bolt opened and a sight blob showed five guys out there with guns drawn, then I was pretty sure I could handle them, especially because I could sit close enough to the door that I'd sense their intentions as soon as they opened the door. Chances are they'd want to take me somewhere else to do the deed anyway.