Crisis 2.0

Don’t tell me how long it’s been. I know all too well when it happened, because my third child was born in the middle of a forest no more than a week after. He is 13 now, and we are still on the run. Everything I once knew has been destroyed. There is a new world now controlled by crooked men who thought it best for everyone to be forcibly directed. It was certainly a small price for them to pay to create what they are convinced is a utopia.

In my younger days, I worked for the government straight out of college in 2027. I was an engineer on the creative team where, among other projects, we were tasked to make a gadget to help the soldiers and other special forces communicate. After bouncing around ideas, we settled on an optical implant that would link the brain to the internet. I helped design how the implant would look when the user had it in and I remember thinking it was so cool. We had a soldier volunteer to have our implant put in after three years of development. The initial implanting of the optical implant went really well, as well as the soldier’s first use of it. He could see everything, do everything, and make it go into normal sight mode. It was great, until our programming team wanted to check how secured it was and decided to hack the implant. Our team got back together a few days later to watch and see what the effects of the hacked device would be. We watched as the soldier volunteer went from nervously joking with us to numb without warning and we could no longer get him to respond to us. That’s when they said they hacked him. Then to test further, the programming team realized they could make him do things. They made him do funny things, like the Macarena, but all the excitement I had in that project died there. Not many days later, following the untimely death of our soldier volunteer, the project was dropped. At that time I was pregnant with my first son and went on maternity leave. When I came back to work, I was moved to another project.

In two years, the optical implant was declassified and the rights were bought by the company where a number of our minor technical leads and programmers for that project went to. It was right around when my daughter, my second child was born. In another year, the implants were released for public use and made affordable. There were ads for the implants everywhere. They claimed that the optical implants would enhance communication and was the future of mankind. The company mainly targeted their ads towards business people and teenagers to start. In a matter of months with their intense ad campaigns they had everyone flocking to get their implant surgery. It just went so fast. I remember thinking things might not be so safe anymore when my family, friends, and co workers started berating me for not only my husband and I not getting the implants, but also not getting the implants for my five year old and three year old.

On Memorial Day the president came on tv to make a speech. My husband had turned it on just to hear his speech, not that we agreed with anything the president said or did. I watched it too, and then I saw it. The same blank look came over the president and everyone around him that came over that soldier just a few years prior. Then the president went on to talk about how he was mandating that everyone get the implants and that the order would be carried out the following day, claiming that the implant was a basic human right now In our society. That’s when my husband and I realized we couldn’t stay where we were anymore. We took what we could, piled it in the car, took the kids and left. Our families, in a mind-controlled state, came to find us to bring us back to get our implants. We ran away from where we had been staying in our car and ran on foot.

Later after we had found a group of non implanted people we were able to settle down for a little bit.

There we realized that these implanted people were all being legitimately mind controlled. One of our new neighbors called it the real zombie apocalypse, which is quite accurate. By the time my youngest was weaned, my husband and I led an expedition to figure out who was controlling the implants. We found out that one of the programmers of the original government project was the mastermind behind it all, and that this man and his accomplices were controlling not only millions of people, but entire governments. We were let in, however, so that this twisted man could find out where we were hiding. It was no surprise for us since we posed threats to his operation on multiple occasions, just to gain the information we managed to find. Upon observing how we treated the implanted, refusing to kill them because they are not In control of themselves, the mastermind programmer sent a mob of citizens to follow us back to our hideout. The whole town of allied unimplanted people had to evacuate and relocate. There was no hope of defending the town and we had a better chance of having our location continue to be unknown if we left.

Once we established a new headquarters, we decided to devise a plan to infiltrate the hive mind. It took longer than we thought to come up with, since we had to go on multiple other side missions to figure out the details. We also were forced to relocate every couple of months thereafter when we were found out.

Today, we deploy for hopefully the final mission that we had planned for over a decade. The one that ends it all. My husband sits next to the pilot of the helicopter as we head to the building where the main control system is. My two older children, three other young people and I sit behind them. My sixteen-year-old daughter nervously rubs her heart shaped, gold locket in her fingers and I rub her back.

The pilot informs us to prepare for landing. My husband turns around for a briefing,

“When we land, it will be about a four mile walk to the building. I need all of you to be paying attention to your surroundings. If anyone sees us before we are well into the building, we have to abort.” He looks at his watch and pulls up a holo map of the building. He continues, “Our tech team should have most of the security and cameras down in forty five minutes. If they don’t get it down much after four o’clock, we’ll have to enter through the sewage drain, instead of door 15. Everyone got that?”

We nod and swing open the door to the helicopter when the pilot tells us. Before we know it, we are two miles into our trek through dense fawna. When the brush becomes easier to move through, we have to pay extra attention, making sure not to be detected.

A little over four hundred meters away from the building, we get the message that our tech team shut everything down. Our small team manages to make it across a little open area and into the building.

From there, I take my son and two of the others to wreck the server room and my husband takes our daughter and another guy to take the satellites and extra transmission antennae down from the roof. My husband and I lock eyes before parting and I take one last look at my daughter as she follows her father. My team and I don’t get far before meeting our first implanted person. They are armed with a gun they can barely hold. Many implanted people under this hivemind control don’t eat or drink or do bodily functions, because they are not told to do so. They can’t break away for any reason and many have died due to this programming flaw.

My son wrenches the implanted person guard’s gun out of their hands and slams their head into the wall of the hallway multiple times until the guard lies unconscious on the floor. Another comes around the corner and sees. I order my group to put their masks on and I throw a gas bomb that causes people to pass out. After the close call we continue on. After knocking out some of the implanted people we encounter in the server room, we plant the explosives. Originally, I wanted to cut the power, but there is also a generator that kicks on and by the time you have both of those out, you get caught. And I’d know all about that, since I nearly died trying five years ago.

By the time we were done planting the explosives, the sirens started going off and my group and I made our way out a high window, as we planned. On our way down, implanted guards take shots at us and I am forced to retaliate as the rest of the group comes down. Then drones come by and we run for cover. The drones are small flying robots that closely resemble the little camera drones I would fly with my brothers when I was young, but these ones have guns. A young man in our group is shot in the back of the leg and I am shot in the back of the shoulder, but we make it to shelter and shoot the robots down. My son throws something on my shoulder to stop the bleeding for the moment, but it burns as he does. We move to better cover and manage to shoot down more drones gunning at my husband’s group with my better arm. My daughter is shot-I don’t know where- but she screams in an anguish that causes my heart to sink to my feet. I mow down anything near, or aiming for my daughter with hyper accuracy. As soon as my husband says his group is back on the ground, I set off the explosives. The server room is one of the largest rooms in the building, so when the room explodes, the entire structure collapses. This provides us with fairly decent cover to escape to the helicopter. I am overjoyed to see my husband and daughter as we reunite, running through the dense forest, though I have no time to show it. Drones shoot at us through the trees and many that we don’t shoot get caught in trees and vegetation.

We made it back to our helicopter, though heavily injured. I lie on the floor of the helicopter once I get there, the pain enveloping me. After we make liftoff, my husband, son, daughter and I embrace each other and my husband takes care of my wounds, while I help and assist our children and the others of the squad.

Our tech team congratulates us when we call in to report that we completed the mission. They say that they had just begun to be ambushed by an implanted mob, when they suddenly stopped. They appear to have all snapped out of their mind control and are acting normal as of the moment. The squad rejoices and my husband and I sneak a kiss. While this may be the end of the implanted, we have many more repercussions to deal with. However, for the moment, we won.