The Device.

"I can't believe that I let you talk me into releasing the DCD without further testing."
"But sir, we had no idea that this would happen."
"That's what I pay you for, James. You're supposed to expect the unexpected."
"But sir.."
"Just shut up, James. You've cost us all our jobs, and you've put the lives of every person on the planet in jeopardy."

---

As the light entered my cautiously parting eyes, I awaited the arrival of my pain. But something was different. The pain never came.

I felt happy; my mind was free of the haven of tortuous thoughts that had become almost second nature to me. My mind was clear, and I felt great. And that's when it hit me. The last thing I remembered was counting down from one hundred while the numerous faces peered down at me from above. These faces were all the same; the only differing characteristics between them were the eyes. A blue mask covered the rest of their head. Doctors. I was being put under in preparation for my surgery. I was having the same operation that countless doctors were performing across the world. I was having the DCD implanted into my brain.

I had been suffering from depression off and on for about three years. My parents were frantically trying to get me help. They sent me to see countless psychiatrists throughout the years but I didn't see one for more than a month at a time. However, the sessions weren't helping my depression. The thought of suicide loomed over me at all times. I thought about committing suicide every day, but I never had the nerve to go through with it. Then we saw the commercial.

I was sitting in the living room with my parents waiting for the commercials to end so we could continue to watch the new episode of Jewel Hunters, when the television went black. At first I thought the TV had malfunctioned but then the text slowly faded onto the screen. The text didn't make sense at first, but I was already hooked. Not an ounce of my attention was spared while I intently waited for the next line of text to appear.

Are you depressed?
Are you constantly plagued with the thought of suicide?
Does your heart ache for happiness?
We have your solution.
The DCD.

This was the first time anyone in the room had heard of the DCD. The ad continued to describe how the DCD (Depression Correction Device) worked to counter the chemical imbalance, which is directly linked to depression. The device was a small computer chip that would monitor the chemicals within your brain. If it detected an imbalance it would immediately release a counter chemical that would correct this defect in your head. The resulting feeling would be of nirvana.

My mother was already talking to an employee before the ad came to an end. I was totally astounded. I would finally be able to live a normal life, one free of the torment of depression that I had felt for the past three years, one where I could be happy and safe.

I waited anxiously for the moment my mom would end her conversation and tell us what she learned. But it seemed like that moment would never come. It was an eternity before she set the phone down and looked at me.

"One month," she said. I had a small inkling what she meant by this, but I played dumb instead.

"What?" I asked in anticipation of her response.
"You're surgery is in a month."

A month! In that single instant all my joy and happiness was released. I felt sad again. A month seemed like an eternity. It was hopeless to be happy about having the surgery in a month. Countless things could happen in a month's time that would keep me from having the surgery. I felt the pit of despair grow inside of me, as I pondered the obstacles that would appear during the month to attempt to keep me from having the surgery. I felt worse than I ever had before.

Every day I waited for the surgery to come. And every day it seemed to retreat further off into the distance-a distance that I would never reach. The more I thought about it the worse I felt; but I was unable to focus my thoughts on anything else. The day would never come. There seemed to be an ever-growing gap between present time and the date of the surgery. Suicide once again started knocking on my door.

Finally the day came, and I found myself lying on a very uncomfortable bed in which my feet lay limp over the edge. The doctor was preparing for surgery, which, I was told, would take approximately twelve hours. Afterwards, I would have to stay overnight at the hospital until they could do some tests and examine the DCD to make sure it was working properly. My parents hugged and kissed me as the doctor rolled me through the swinging doors into the surgery room. I laid back down on the rock hard bed and a smile formed across my face. This sent a surge of pain throughout my face forcing a groan to escape from my lips. That's when I realized it had been nearly three years since I had last smiled. But the pain did not deter my happiness. Because the day had finally come, the day in which I would no longer have to fight what had been a daily battle against suicide. Tomorrow I would be a free man.

I was now feeling better than I had felt in my entire life. The pain brought on from smiling was still present but the pain in my heart was not. The evil tyrant was gone and my shackles were cut free. The feeling of freedom filled my lungs as I triumphantly breathed in a huge breath. As I released it I drifted off into a deep sleep, one that was full of wonderful dreams, each happier than the last.

---

Life was good. My parents were happy and best of all I was happy. I started getting more involved at school. I joined as many clubs and sports teams that my schedule would allow. I soon excelled in every aspect of life. I was the captain of the soccer team during my junior year, and I was the President of the Student Body during my senior year. Everything was going great-until I started having the nightmares.

It was the summer before my freshman year in college. It had been a solid two years since my surgery and everything was fine but I started having strange dreams. At first I had the dreams only once a week. Then they came more often, sometimes three times a week. And I continued to have them until I was finally dreaming about it at least once a night. At first, I wasn't quite sure what to make of these dreams, I shrugged them off, but as I continued to have them my fear rose until I was frantically avoiding sleeping because of them.

The dreams always started off with a man, whose intent stare chilled my body all the way to my soul. And then he spoke to me; except not in his own words. The man recited my exact thoughts; he seemed able to read my mind. Everything I thought would trail off of his tongue about a second after it had entered my mind. The accuracy of his words was astonishing. I trembled with the fear of who this man was and how he knew what I was thinking.

This is how every dream was. Except every night the words he spoke were different, because my thoughts were different. But still I had to find out what this dream meant, and I had to do it soon.

---

My search for the answer ended back at the place where my life had virtually begun--VirtuaTech, the developers of the DCD.

I knew that my dreams had to be a side effect of the DCD implanted in my brain. I knew this because I had asked every dream specialist, and many of them told me of other complaints similar to mine. All of these complaints were from people who had recently undergone the DCD surgery, no more than two years ago. This startled me, and so I went to VirtuaTech to get some answers.

Of course I knew they would be no help at all. It's not like a gigantic corporation to openly admit that their life saving device causes strange dreams. But I had to find out what was happening to me.

As I slowly exited the taxi a shadow covered my body. I scanned upwards and was face to face with a monstrosity of a building. My eyes slowly traversed the building until I reached the top. On top of the fifty floors of pure steel was the name I had come to see: VirtuaTech. The sunny Californian sun felt comforting as it warmed my cool skin. As I approached the entrance, I took in a long deep breath in preparation for whatever was beyond those doors.

As I opened the door, the cool air hissed through and brushed past my face. The smell from inside was that of cleanliness. Not the smell of soap, but the smell of an environment in which there is no bacteria present. Recently, a small company from Georgia had created a spray, which completely wiped out the presence of bacteria. It allowed huge electronics companies, such as VirtuaTech, to produce sterile environments in which their electronics could work. Every night when the employees have gone home, the building is sprayed down to rid it of the bacteria present. Once the spray is finished destroying bacteria it gives off an indescribable smell that sends a feeling of peace throughout the entire body. This was the smell, and the feeling, that I had just released from inside the building.

The second the door closed off the outside world I heard a man's voice. "Welcome to VirtuaTech Mr. Jamison. We have been expecting you."

I quickly spun to see where the voice originated from but there was not a soul in sight. The only thing I saw was a small speaker on the wall next to the door. The voice must have come from the speaker, but how did they know my name? Then it hit me. I have the DCD implanted in my brain. They must have taken pictures of me and kept them in a database. When their cameras outside took my picture all they had to do was locate my name in their database. Many companies were resorting to this now. Some were even lucky enough to have the entire database of the human race in their hands, which allowed them to accurately find the name of any person who entered their building. This gave the person the feeling that they were known and loved-a great tactic if you want to manipulate them into buying your product.

The voice returned again. "Please take elevator B to level fifty. I will see you soon." Elevator B? My eyes darted around the room for a sign of this contraption. Where could it be? As if he read my mind, the voice replied, "Elevator B is directly to your left." Almost immediately I looked left and saw three elevators each labeled with a single letter of the alphabet. I briskly walked over to elevator B and raised my hand to call the elevator. But before I could push the button the doors parted. Without question I walked straight into the elevator. The sweetly flowing music gently filled my ears. I pushed the button for level fifty and immediately the elevator whisked away. Before I knew it, the elevator came to a stop and the doors softly beckoned for me to exit. I placed my foot onto the dark green carpet, which lined the hallway, and I glanced around. The entire hallway was bare, except for the door at the far end. This was the only thing on this hallway. No pictures no wallpaper-nothing; just this door. That must be where I am to go.

As the door gently opened I saw a desk, with a man sitting on the other side. He looked to be in his mid forties. His hair was blonde, with barely visible wisps of gray around the edges. His piercing blue eyes gazed straight through me-as if I was not there. And then he cast away all doubt of my presence with one word. "Welcome."

His voice was deep and powerful. It reached out and touched every part of my body. The power this man had over me was incredible. He had been able to take control of my entire body with one word. I was stunned immobile. My body would not respond; my lips would not form a word. The only things that worked were my eyes; which gazed directly into his and begged for his love.

"Sit down Mr. Jamison," instantly I obeyed, taking my seat across from him in a very small, uncomfortable chair.

"You have come about your dreams."

This jarred me free of my state of silence. "How did you know?" I asked.

"You would be surprised at what all we do know, Mr. Jamison."

He paused to take a breath and then he broke out into a speech.

"The DCD was specifically designed to help individuals, such as you, break free of the restraints caused by depression. Its original design was to monitor the balance of key chemicals within your brain. If it detected an imbalance it would release a state of the art chemical, developed by the brilliant scientists here at VirtuaTech, which would instantly correct this imbalance and leave the person feeling happy. We also enabled it to send data directly to our headquarters here in California. It would only send us data upon the detection of a chemical imbalance. We would receive this information and would then store it in our database. This would allow us to do further research into the effects and causes of depression. But that was only the original design," he paused, completely seizing my attention.

"Many months before our official release of the DCD a man from the government entered my office. He explained to me how the DCD could provide a major resistance against terrorism and threats to National Security. He asked me to alter the DCD to monitor the thoughts of an individual and record these thoughts in a database. We could then use a computer to search these thoughts for any threats. It would allow us to easily monitor the thoughts of countless individuals across the planet for any possible signs of terrorism. It would be the greatest form of safety ever imaginable. We could see the attacks before they happened, and we would be able to prevent them. We could predict the future in a sense. And so I decided to start researching this new technology.

"I put together a team of our top scientists and began the search for a way to tap into the thought process. And we realized that from where the DCD would be implanted it would be incredibly easy. The DCD was already monitoring the chemicals within the brain; we just needed a separate process to monitor the brain waves themselves. Within a week we already had a working model. However, there was one problem," he said as he gently closed his eyes.

His eyes slowly opened and once again his voice broke the silence. "The human mind is constantly thinking. There is hardly a second throughout the day when the mind is not creating new thoughts. And these thoughts are created at an alarming rate. We estimated that the average human mind has over three hundred and ninety-one trillion thoughts a day. We would be storing all those thoughts on a computer in an existing language. Every day there would be at least thee hundred and ninety-one trillion thoughts for every person who had the DCD. The number of thoughts would grow exponentially, and the amount of space required to store these thoughts would grow at the same rate. We needed a way to compress this information so that it could be stored. We searched for two solid weeks, and came up with nothing. There was no way to compress the data; we just needed an incredible amount of space in which to store these thoughts. We would need millions of computers and each one would need as much space as possible.

"This is precisely the plan of action we took," he paused, offering a chance for his words to sink in. Then he continued.

"We expanded our headquarters underneath the surface of the earth. The total extent of the building goes two miles underneath the surface of the earth. Each square inch of the space underground is used for storage. We have an ever-increasing amount of computers there, each with an undisclosed amount of space. We also installed the lower half of the building with a new cooling system. The storage area is cooled down to a startling ten degrees Celsius. This allows the computers to process at alarming rates. It also prevents them from over heating. We also networked every computer within the facility with the database of thoughts. On the computer here in front of me I can access every thought you have had since the day of your operation. I can tell you exactly what you are thinking right now, and I can tell you what you were thinking at ten o'clock on April tenth," he paused while his icy stare kept my body from thawing out.

"But then we noticed that the device had strange effects on people."
"The dreams," I stated.
"Yes. But the dreams are not the only side effect."
"What? What are the other side effects?" enraged, I lunged at him from my seat.
"Please sit down, Mr. Jamison, and I will explain," I let myself relax, and sat down in the chair.

"The first side effect we noticed was the manifestation of the dream. Each person has the same dream. It was their subconscious attempting to warn the person that they were being monitored; but no one was able to correctly interpret the dream. Then we started seeing patterns in thought. People's thoughts changed and became more corrupt and violent. In fact, the people had more violent tendencies than ever before. Their anger could manifest itself at a moment's notice, causing them to shout or become angry over small things. But this was not the thing that scared us the most. There was one more side effect that made us fear the worst. We noticed these people were getting stronger and more intelligent every day. The DCD was making drastic alterations to intelligence and strength. You might not have noticed these effects, but we have. We have been monitoring your every thought; you are much smarter than you used to be. You come to conclusions much quicker than before, you're ability to use logic to rationalize events is at an all time high. But you aren't the only person with these changes taking place, every person with the DCD is going through the same thing as you."

"Why are you telling me all of this?"
"Because, you won't remember any of it anyway."
"W-What? How could I ever forget this?" I stammered at him.
"Because you won't be alive much longer," he replied.
"What do you mean I won't be alive? What are you going to do kill me?"
"No. As you speak the DCD is giving us complete control over your body. We are manipulating your brain so that you will be our slave; obeying our every command. We realized very quickly that the advanced abilities produced by the DCD could provide a way for us to further extend our power. With an army of super humans no government could stand in our way. We would be able to conquer the world. And that is precisely what we plan to do," he spoke for the last time.

And then an overwhelming feeling of darkness surrounded me. It was not the feeling that was so commonplace when I was depressed; no it was something different. This was the feeling of emptiness. They had stolen the one thing that made me human, the one thing that makes everyone human. They had taken my ability to make decisions. I was now just a brain, thinking and waiting, until I was given a command. And then I would obey this command to its fullest. I had once again lost my freedom, but this time to a worse enemy than depression. This time there would be no escape for me. I would never be free again; I would never be able to make my own decisions. An evil corporation was now controlling me with one goal in mind: world domination.

And just as fast as the feeling of emptiness swept over my body-it disappeared. It was replaced with a feeling of happiness and desire to serve VirtuaTech.

Damn the DCD, damn it to hell.