Connected

Disconnected

RYDER

Humans are like machines. We all function, we all work. We all wake up, booted up by our brain and performing our daily routine, day after day,just like a machine.The blood that runs through our veins, not so different to the circuits that run across a motherboard. We're connected to others, through social media, through technology. We function like machines, you and I, and personally,I believe, that it's the constant feeling of being connected to the digital, that makes us feel so disconnected with reality.

~Raeez Mather~

I couldn't sleep that night. There was a strange feeling in my chest that I can't describe. For some reason, I found myself wishing that I was with Doctor Alice, or Doctor Morgan, but they had gone home already.

The doctor gave me a pill, and I fell asleep. When I awoke, they told me I needed to relax for the next few hours. That was seven hours ago. I didn't know what the time was, there were no clocks inside the lab. I sat in the spare room the doctor had given me, looking out my porthole. I could only see a plethora of flashing lights, and nothing more. We were too high up for me to see anything.

I don't know what they did to me when I fell asleep. I only know that when I woke up, I felt...strange. Again, a feeling that I can't exactly describe.

What had they done to me while I was asleep? I didn't know.

I had a strange dream. Machinery, dreams of large metallic arms plucking out my eyeballs and placing them back into my skull. Blood all around me. It woke me up with a start, and I couldn't go back to sleep. That was my first nightmare that I'd ever had in my life.

I wandered the empty lab aimlessly as the night dragged on. It had been a month, but the doctor never gave me any other clothes aside from the white pants and shirt. It was washed everyday, and I wore it every day.

The machinery still whirred subtly in the darkness. I could see the doctors holotop, the screen was still on. I guessed he'd forgotten to turn it off.

I had nothing else to do, so I figured why not, and went through the doctors holotop. He didn't have anything interesting except for a few dozen files of BDSM porn hidden behind a password. Not hard to crack, it was the same password he used for his actual holotop that I managed to keylogg from him earlier. The doctor protected his porn pretty terribly. A weak,predictable password and magazines under his bed.

I sat there watching his videos, some of which were almost three hours long. Strangely, I never got the same response physically as I did before. I wasn't sexually aroused. I wasn't disgusted either. I just...was.

After about twenty minutes of hardcore bdsm porn, and realising the doctor had over two gigs of it stored within that single folder, I shut it off,sifting through the rest. While I was scrolling through the several different files,one caught my eye.

It wasn't protected, but it had a clear heading in capital letters.

"RYDER."

That was the file name. I clicked on it, only to find several video's, and I was skeptical as to whether it was the doctors porn again. But why would he hide his porn in a file with my name on it?

I clicked on one of the video's, the one in the very middle amidst the long list of videos,  and the doctor's face popped up so suddenly, I nearly leapt up from my seat.

"Doctor's log, entry number 3217. Zephyr 30-03-22 has been successfully activated...he's scared. Which...is definitely to be expected, to him this is like waking up in a place you don't understand, like being kidnapped. In a way, him being afraid is a good thing. It shows he's capable of fear and has further solidified my success. I've done it. I've successfully merged man and machine."