The Purging

Number One Forty Seven

CHAPTER 17

“Open your eyes please, number one forty seven.” The shrill nasal voice reverberating in his head is unfamiliar. Ben struggles to open his eyes and survey his surroundings. Everywhere he looks, all he can see is the same pale shade of white. A halogen spotlight is shining down from the ceiling directly into his eyes. Squinting through the brightness, Ben attempts to respond, but finds that he cannot open his mouth. “Ah, there you go, I was starting to think that we had another brain death situation. Beginning preliminary testing protocols.”

The light moves aside and the ceiling above him opens up. A long mechanical arm descends from the opening and hangs just overhead. The tip of the arm begins steadily blinking red, “Follow the red dot with your eyes.” Waving to and fro slowly at first, the arm then drastically increases its pace, until it is zooming across Ben’s field of vision at an incredible speed. Much to Ben’s surprise, he has absolutely no trouble tracking the dot's movement. After two minutes of steady motion, the arm stops waving, and retreats back into the ceiling. “Alright, everything looks good with the optics, no issues with cognitive interference. How do you feel, number one forty seven?”

Ben feels like his jaw is on fire. With a sickening crunching noise, his mouth begins to move of its own accord, “What the fuck is going on here? Where am I?” Ben recognizes immediately that the voice he's producing is not his own. It sounds more like a telephone operator talking through a megaphone.

The stranger in his head responds snidely, “Pretty sure I asked how you were feeling. I, however, did not ask you to yell at an empty room. So, to reiterate, how are you feeling, number one forty seven?”

He groans in frustration and does his best to answer the question, “I feel like I’ve got a wicked hangover and I can’t move. So to reiterate, what the fuck is going on here and where am I?”

The voice chortles slightly, “OK, much better. Where you are is Seattle, sort of. A research facility underneath what used to be Seattle to be more specific. What’s going on is a hardware testing trial.”

“What kind of hardware are you testing on me?”

“Testing on you? No, no. We’re testing you. You are the hardware. Oh, on that note do me a favour and brace yourself for a sec.” Ben’s entire body shakes in a brutal tremor, sending waves of pain from head to toe. It passes quickly, however, and he is delighted to discover that he once again has control of his own body. That is to say, if it were his body.

Ben Guitierrez is no longer a man flesh and blood, but a walking mass of metal and wires. Arms and legs shimmering in the bright lights of the chamber, he holds his hands out in front of himself to get a clearer look. The voice once again butts in, “Pretty sweet, right? To truly appreciate it you have to take in the whole package at once.”

One of the walls opens up and a full length mirror slides out. Ben approaches it hesitantly and takes a good long look at his new self. Gone is the toned physique he spent years sculpting, replaced by an intricate tapestry of interwoven metal plates. Where his face should be, there is nothing more than a shapeless surface with two seemingly bottomless black pits for eyes. A mass of wires runs from the back of his head into the shoulder blades and down the centre of his spine.

Looking down at his groin, Ben notices that a piece of him is suspiciously absent, “What the fuck happened to me? I never agreed to any of this!”

“Your agreement wasn’t necessary, you were a valid candidate and subjects one through one forty six were failures for various reasons, so here you are. Hold your arms out at shoulder height please.”

Ben grumbles loudly and screams back at his invisible tormentor, “Now hold on a fuckin’ minute here! I’m an American citizen ass hole! You can’t just kidnap me and perform a bunch of experiments! I’ve got rights!” The voice breaks out in uproarious laughter, which seems to go on for minutes. Just as Ben starts to believe the mocking guffaws will never end, the voice speaks again.