PARTISANCHIP: EPISODE 3
Dystopian Psychological Thriller
PARTISANCHIP: EPISODE 3
A Dystopian Psychological Thriller
©2022 Stephen Conway
KNOCK
KNOCK
KNOCK
Ah. There they are. The SWAT team arrived—as Marlena said they would. She knew what she was talking about. They’re here to take me away. At least they’re polite by knocking first.
Before Marlena showed up to remove the microchip from the middle of my mind, my index finger was knuckle deep up my nostril—trying to fish the chip out of my head. Like one of those pieces of dry snot clinging to the inside of the nasal cavity. A stalactite hanging from the ceiling of my sinuses. Plucking it out would save me some physical and financial discomfort. Ten grand in gold—that was Marlena’s fee.
Before the SWAT team arrived, banging away, Marlena showed-up. Knocked the gentle Morse Code signal we’d agreed upon.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Marlena said walking into my dumpy apartment—her pupils wide and dark. Scanning for any situational threats.
“Yup. My body my choice.”
“They’ll get here pretty-fast once the chip’s sucked out,” she said. “Got an emergency go-bag ready?” she said, dropping herself and her small backpack on the loveseat. She unzipped the bag while keeping her eyes on me. Removed several objects, sterile baggies, small bottles with liquid.
“Yup. I’m ready to go,” nodding to my messenger bag hanging off a chair.
”Please—don’t take this lightly.” she said. “They have teams on stand-by. I’ll be lucky if I’m able to get away in time. Had a few close calls trying to get here undetected.”
“Don’t mean to sound like a jerk—but that’s not my problem.” I said. “That’s why I’m paying you.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “If you get caught, they have ways of making you talk. You might turn me in. Might use me as a bartering-chip to get your ass free.”
“Here,” I said. Tossed her the velvet sack of gold. Decades of hard earned—now devalued-cash paid for it. Marlena opened the pouch and bit down on a piece of the gold bullion.
“It’s good,” she said.
Gold was untraceable. Valuable in this world. Inconvenient to carry, but it could potentially buy you some freedom; buy you stuff on the black market. Stuff most people couldn’t get. Worse, they made ownership of physical precious metals illegal. Get caught and you’re going bye-bye. The Consortium doesn’t like competition. Any competition.
Marlena said, “You won’t get far before they show up.”
“Yeah. Well. When you wake up to reality and it’s not you in your head” I said. “You realize it’s them. When you go to sleep and it’s not you in your dreams—you realize it’s them,” I said. “So, if this is living I’d rather be dead.”
“Okay, just remember: soon as this thing comes out it sends a signal that dispatches a goon-squad to the chip’s last location. If you’re caught they’re going to give you a rough time. Give them any reason to kill you, they will. Otherwise, you will be tortured until you give information about me; use you for their own purposes; or any other scenario you’d have a hard time imagining.”
“Understood,” I said, even though I really didn’t. Wasn’t prepared to get out of here with such short notice.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said.
She had me rinse each nostril twice with a saline solution. A face-douche. Uncomfortable but my sinuses were clearer than a fresh spring rain.
“Lay back on your couch,’ she said. “Not much time. Quick. Lay-down here,” she said. “Good. Tilt your head back a little more on the cushion,” she said. Snapping on a pair of sterile latex gloves, she lubed-up a black, semi-flexible tendril about the thickness of number-eight spaghetti.
“That looks very German,” I said.
The corner of her mouth turned up into a smirk she tried to hide.
“It’s called an endoscope.” she said. “Now shut-up.”
She pressed a button and a little book-light lamp glowed at the tip of the pasta-scope. “This is the fun part,” she said, placing the thumb of her gloved left hand on one of my temples, her middle and index finger on the other temple to steady my skull. “Here we go,” she said, sliding the German vacuum-scope up into my right nostril. Checked the small video feed from the camera mounted on the tip of the telescoping tool. She pushed with tweezer dexterity. Followed up-along the bony cartilage of my nose: the septum. I felt it move past my cheek bone, and up under the soft tissue behind my eye. Other than the tiny sensation of steering movements she made to navigate through my sinuses and behind my eyeballs—there was a little bit of pressure.
“Don’t move” she said. “Don’t breathe, either. Unless you want to have scrambled brains for the rest of your life. I’m making a straight line to your pituitary gland” she said, “center of biochemical activity and growth regulation.”
Marlena released a safety button on the handle of this thing lodged in my brain. Holding the air in my lungs tight a little vibration shimmied along this German rubber hose up my nose. Then she pulled some kind of trigger. The mild jolt caused a flooding of sinus fluid behind my eyes. Tear-ducts gushing. Choking.
