Innocence is a Bullet

Running, how long it had been since he’d been running? Probably at least five years. He couldn't remember anymore. Whenever central took over, that'd be when it stopped. But now he was running, clearly, something important was happening.

If he had to guess, he hadn't really been without the feeling for the same period of time. A pinprick at the back of his neck reminding him that the controllers in central were there, watching, setting him in motion as the elite soldier he was. When the war came, they needed soldiers, so he signed up. Problem was, they didn't have time to train him, but they did have a way of loading knowledge into his brain. He just couldn't access it. So here's what they did, they loaded the knowledge in his brain, and then they assigned him to a controller. It was safer for everyone if he ceded his motor function to the controller. He could, with just the willingness to lock his mind into a body no longer in his control, be a hero, a savior. The ashes, fire, and general bleak outlook of the city showed the results of his heroism.

It was thrilling, if only in a morbid sense, that he was running. The controllers at central were incredibly calm, and coordinated, but not this time. Their omnipotent hivemind must be having the first off day in memory. He didn't even know what his target was, all he'd heard was brief, vague bits of chatter at the back of his mind. “Turn left here.” “She's up ahead, under the cover.” Not that these were words mind you, just the impulses he felt his body receiving to move his legs and eyes as the controllers willed.

He rounded the corner, and suddenly he stopped running. He realized THAT was the target. A little girl, she couldn't have been much more than about eight, sat there, clutching her left hand against her chest. He couldn't believe it. His finger was moving toward the trigger, his gun was raised. Was he going to shoot her? He couldn't shoot her. The controller determined what was right and wrong, they controlled every action. They wanted her dead. He couldn't do that. For the briefest flash, he was afraid he'd have to fight back, he'd have to push. Something that instinct told him was intensely painful, but he didn't have to. She ran, scurried down a hole he hadn’t noticed in this ruin of a building.

He jumped after her by impulse from central. The hole fell into the old sewer system. It still smelled like a sewer even though it probably hadn't been in use for these past two or three years. The war had taken a lot, more than anyone expected. He looked around, it was a sewer, there was truly nowhere for her to hide, but he didn't spot her. That's when the next thing that hadn't happened in several years occurred. The pain at the back of his neck, the moderately warm needle, right at the base of his skull, vanished. Well, that meant that the controller was away, no longer giving him commands. That never happened. He hadn't had a moment of rest without the knowledge of the controller being there since he signed up.

Freed to his own actions, he dropped his rifle and decided to call out. He couldn't talk when the controllers were there. They couldn't control what he said, so they simply turned off his ability to speak.

“Little girl! Are you here? I don't mean to hurt you. I want to help you. I'm a soldier, helping people's my job.”

He heard a small clatter to his left, he turned, and ran toward the sound, sloshing through the muck. The girl stood at the junction between two pipes. From the tinge of her clothing, she'd been lying down, trying to get into the mire as much as possible. Dirty and ragged, she held up her hand and opened it. Inside was a little golden locket. With a sharp click she opened the locket, exposing a tangled mass of circuitry only a drunken electrical engineer could imagine to understand. Protecting this delicate maze of gold and silicon was a thin layer of synthetic glass.

He was shocked, he didn’t think anything this delicate had survived from the time before the war, except those items in central. She then spoke with amazing clarity for her age.

“I wish to take this to the central cylinder, to command. This will free all you bullets fired from central. I need your help to do this.”

He looked at it and tried to figure what to say.

“I can't take you to central, I haven't...”

Then it happened. The pain was back, that damned needle. His hand jumped to his pistol and started to raise it. She looked at him with a slight hesitation of fear and then said, “Don't fight it. Don't fight it!”

If he didn't fight it, she was dead! Jarringly, she reached up, and with her hand still holding the open locket, she slapped him across the left side of his face, much like one would if you were swatting a fly. It didn't hurt, at least, the slap didn’t hurt. The base of his neck was fire, hotter than he'd ever felt. If he could scream, he would. That's when he realized he was frozen. Not a single muscle in his body could move, no matter how hard he tried. He wondered if it was the same for the controller. Then, after what felt like hours of paralysis, the pain was gone. The controller was gone. He started to flex his hands gingerly, because they still hurt from his muscles being locked up.

The little girl had slumped against the wall of the pipe. She looked up and said, “Finally, that took longer than I would have thought. Now you’re free. And now you can help me get to the Cylinder.”

“I can’t take you to... central,” he assumed that was what she meant by ‘the Cylinder’, “I can’t function right now. At the very least I know they wanted you dead, don’t know if I agree with that, but I can’t help you. This isn’t how it works, I gave them my body, and the controllers tell me what to do, what's right and wrong, make me effective. That’s the system, it’s just... not working right now.”

She laughed quietly, “The irony of telling me I don’t know what is going on. Do you know where you are, how far it is to the Cylinder?”

“It should be...” he stopped to think, it had been a very long time since he had to figure out his location. “It should be about 1000 miles to central, but regional command is only 400 miles or so South.”

She belly-laughed at that, he wondered if she would fall over. “So you were fighting to control the Northern Lakes right? Let’s head above ground, you are only off on your estimate by 350 miles, roughly.”

She led him to a ladder, and they climbed out of a manhole in a large intersection. Wordlessly, she pointed across the intersection to a sign, worn down by the explosions and fires in the area. Its lettering was just barely readable, “Kenosha Regional Mall”.

The girl then spoke, “My name is Grace, and I am afraid you are much further South than you thought. The war ended within probably 3 years of you signing up, and since then the controllers have simply been using you.”

“It can’t have ended then, who have I been fighting these past 2 years?”

“You don’t get it, do you? You gave them access to your brain, that includes instincts like the feeling of time passing. The war ended 7 years ago, you have been fighting nearly 10 years, first against the invaders, then as a Bullet for the Cylinder.”

“You’re crazy, I may be off on some things here and there, but I am NOT getting my head worked over by some 8-year-old girl.” he said, beginning to walk off.

“Hmm, I suppose I would look about 8, yes.” Grace muttered to herself, “Regardless, you don’t seem to understand. You let yourself be used as a tool, and slaughtered countless civilians. More immediately concerning, as far as the Cylinder knows, you are dead. I severed the connection they had to you, so unless you somehow start remembering the things you never had to think about, like your current location, you won’t last long. The instructions, impulses, you received? They’re gone, and never coming back.”

He fell to his knees and swore under his breath. As much as he would like to believe that this little girl was wrong, he knew two things for certain. He had a bunch of ‘new’ memories he was sifting through to try and figure out where he was, all fruitless. He also knew he could see hundreds of faces of combatants, but not wearing the armor of the enemy, and with faces that looked all too American.

“So,” he said, his voice catching, “What happens now? I can’t even remember my own damn name, and I am no longer some elite soldier. Apparently, I am just some homicidal dreamer too far from home.”

“Come with me.” Grace commanded. “Before you were a tool, acting in what you were told was the best interest of all. You can’t be held guilty for that. What matters now is what you can do, acting for the truth.”