My arms thrashed frantically in the water, but I could feel
myself sinking. “Help I can’t-“ water filled my open mouth and I coughed,
kicking my legs frantically, trying to stay afloat. “I can’t swim!” I finally gasped out, but of
course there was no one there to hear me. My head sank bellow the
surface and I could no longer breath the precious air above me. Bubbles
streamed out from my nose and I drifted deeper and deeper down into the water.
My lungs felt like they were on fire and my vision was dimming, the world
spinning before my eyes. The only thing I could hear my heart beating and the
distant sound of rushing water as my lungs finally gave up their struggled and
I inhaled the murky liquid. I realized,
as my vision grew black around the edges, that I was dying. The blackness
overcame everything and I let my body relax, the tension flowing out as I
settled at the bottom of the lake.
I awoke with a gasp, immediately blinded by the blaring
white of the room I was in.
“So how was it?” said a smiling woman standing beside the
hard bed I was on.
“I- I’m sorry…?” I said, confused, “Where am I?”
The woman tilted her head to the side, “In the experimental
center of course. How was your stimulation?”
“My… stimulation?” I said, now completely disoriented. The
memories of the lake slammed into me all at once, and I gasped as if I had
actually been hit. “I was drowning- I DIED! What’s going on!” I attempted to
get up but my wrists were connected to the bed by a tangle of brightly
colored wires, some of which went directly into my skin. “Where am I? Who are you?” My eyes darted
around the pristine room, like a crazy person’s.
"You don't remember?" the woman asked.
"Remember what?' I spat out at her.
The woman’s face hardened as a realization dawned on her.
“Control, we have a 451 case here, patient 68200B,” she said softly into a cuff
around her wrist.
“What’s. Going. On.” I said, yanking at the wires on my
wrists.
“I’m sorry, there’s been a slight malfunction with your
stimulation. It appears your prior memories have been erased. It’s not uncommon-“
“Not uncommon! What are you talking about? I just DIED. My
mom- I have to talk to my mom!”
The woman- a sort of nurse, I assumed- sighed, as if people
losing all their memories was the most annoying thing in the world. But I
hadn’t lost any of my memories, I still remembered everything up until that
moment in the lake. Arguing with mom, storming out, slipping on the rocks and
tumbling into the water… “What you remember of your life was just a
stimulation,” the nurse said, interrupting my thoughts, “When you come back to
the real world, you’re supposed to retain all your previous memories before the
stimulation but sometimes there are… complications. You just lived what you
thought was fifteen years but really it was only about…” She checked her watch,
“…three minutes.”
“…Why?” I said not believing what I was hearing, “Why have
these… ‘stimulations’?”
“It’s a social experiment of sorts.” Just as she said this,
a girl my age burst into the room. She was had on plain white clothing, like
what I was wearing.
“AMYYYYYYYYYY!!!! How was it? Where the parents rich? Did
you have any siblings? How did you die?” she squealed, jumping on the bed next
to me.
“My name’s not Amy, it’s Erika,” I said, recoiling from the
girl.
“Very funny, ‘Erika’,” she said, “Well in that case, I’m not
Dana, I’m Charlotte! Oooooh, we could use our stimulation names like code
names. That would be awesome!” She laughed.
“Do I…Do I know you?” I asked. Before Dana (or Charlotte) could respond, the nurse placed a hand on her shoulder. “Amy has suffered a slight malfunction,
please excuse yourself so we can take care of it."
“I… What?” She said, reaching toward me, but the nurse was
all ready escorting her out of the painfully bright room.
The nurse turned back to me after she shut the door behind Dana. “I’m afraid the solution for
most 451 errors is termination. Please do not struggle.” She walked over to the
side of my bed and pressed a small yellow button by the headboard. I immediately
felt dizzy and panicked at the same time, and the wires connecting to my wrists
began to grow hot.
“Hey waaaddayaaaa mean ter-terminashion?” I asked, my mouth feeling disconnected from my body, like the words were forming two
minutes after I thought them in my head. The world was beginning to dim again,
just as it had when I was drowning. “S-stop…” I said, weakly trying to pull the
wires from my wrists.
“Just relax,” the woman said with a cold smile, “This time,
it’s for real.”
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