Dissenter
His mind tasted of coffee dregs and sea-spray. Minds don’t really have a taste but that is the way that it feels when you are in there. This was all being recorded so I sub-vocalised “Sensory hallucination, bitter and salt.” My colleague repeated what I said, word for word but added “undertone, reminds me of liquorice.” I try to be more objective.
The day had started routinely enough. I live at the centre with all the other Espers in the region. I am a grade two witness, which means that I am talented, good enough to need special treatment and my own room. I rarely leave it unless there is an assigned task. The jobs come through on the computer, never more than one in a day and often none at all. I logged on after my shower and an alert flashed up.
Requirement to witness, room A29, 16:30, political.
They never give us more information than we need so that we don’t form preconceptions. It doesn’t matter since the experience of probing in to someone else’s mind is intense enough to blot out any opinions. What we think is based purely on what is there.
I had a job and that meant that I would need to prepare. I always get ready in the same way, not because it is a ritual but because I like things to be tidy. Maybe it is a way of coping with the mess inside people’s skulls but I have always been that way, even before I was trained. It is six years since I started with the agency. The longest that anyone has lasted is twelve. At least this one was a political. They don’t give you the nightmares that some of the others do. Technically, they are only “accused” when we stand witness but that is a formality. They are guilty as soon as we give the evidence.
The first stage in the preparation is the visit to the medical centre. They would come to me if I asked but I prefer it this way. It is all done without any human contact. You walk in to a booth and lie on the bed. We carry ID chips inserted into a muscle mass, the left pectoral in my case. It doesn’t much matter where as it is smaller than a pinhead and can be read from eight feet away. It got read as I lay down and my medication was ready in under a minute. I always take the same drugs. An acid suppressor for my stomach; an anti-nausea drug though I shouldn’t need that for a political; an adrenal suppressor to keep me calm and a stimulant to keep me focussed. Some of the drugs are slow release and some of them have to be taken just before the witnessing but I know the drill. I have done this many times. I don’t use the Psi enhancement drugs and haven’t in years.
My next stop was the sensory deprivation tanks. There was a technician on duty but she was trained to close her mind until I could barely feel her. I quickly stripped naked and she sealed me in to the tank before hurrying away. The technicians monitor remotely, just in case. Espers are valuable and they don’t want to lose one from drowning. I find that three hours in the tank is about right. Too little and my mind still carries overt traces of personality. Too much and the subconscious starts to create things to fill the void. I floated there and felt the nothingness, letting the lack of boundaries blur my sense of self in the blood-warm water. The tank is as close as I can become to a thing of mind only.
I got out with an hour to spare and dressed in a new paper suit, crisp and fresh from the packet. I used the walk to the witnessing room to re-enforce my focus. The suites are built far apart to help cut down on mental interference. The grade one Espers sometimes complain about stray thoughts but I never have any trouble. There are two preparation chambers for every room. We always have a co-witness to validate evidence. I couldn’t feel the other and that was good. Espers tend to leak emotions if they are not well prepared. The room was as I like it; bare except for a foam mattress and a glass of milk. I took the rest of my tablets before lying down and starting to build my ego shields, section by section. The image that works for me is black leather, thick and hard, panel after panel covering my memories and emotions until there is a part of me that is self and a part that is no-one. The job became easier as the stimulant took effect. When I was satisfied with the barrier, I stood up and walked to the door that took me in to the suite. I could feel the fear before I stepped in to the room.
The room was a pale green that is supposed to be relaxing. It was otherwise blank with the equipment concealed and the experience as empty as possible. There were three other minds there. There was the testifier, already strapped to the chair with wide padded bands. He looked ordinary enough with no clear racial origin but that meant nothing with modern nanotech surgery. There was technician with a tightly focussed mind, all goals and priorities. Physically, he was slightly paunchy with thinning hair. Minds and bodies don’t always match. The other mind was barely there and I might have missed it if I couldn’t see him. It was a younger Esper, perhaps in his late twenties. He wore a suit like mine and his face was utterly blank. I didn’t know if I had worked with him before. I nodded a greeting.
The technician fixed us up to the recording gear, one either side of the testifier. I focussed on the part of my mind that was not me and tried not to notice the technician. His sense of purpose was strong and it coloured my mind, flaring intensely when his fingers brushed my temple. Someone less emotional would have been better. I rode out the surges until he had finished making the connections.
For the record, I vocalised my name and took the secular oath. My colleague announced himself and repeated the same empty words. His name seemed a little familiar but I didn’t allow myself to follow the thought. As the senior, protocol is that I make the request. “Permission to link?” He nodded and held out his hand. Some
Espers find it easier to link if they have physical contact but it is a bad habit. I ignored the offer.
My co-witness tasted of wood smoke and I recognised him at once. We had worked together before and he was adequate. He walls off less of himself than I would consider professional but I could work with him. We both sub-vocalised “link established” and looked over at the technician who nodded confirmation that he was getting a clear record. We looked at the testifier and his fear shut down until it was hardly there. That wasn’t usual. Often, they would struggle at this point. We linked with the imprisoned man, entering his consciousness warily.
His mind was a shared place with two willing participants and a third who resisted. Things were not as I expected. There were three shields rather than the two that that should be there. My own was dark leather and familiar. My co-witness had visualised his as wooden panels that joined neatly with only a slight leakage of sensory impressions. The political had a shield of imaginary metal over his whole mind but it was hazy and ill defined. He had been trained to resist Espers and that was both unusual and unwelcome. It was also pointless, incriminating even. An honest man would have no use for a shield.
The bitter and salt and wood smoke blended strangely. My own mind has no flavour to me but I have been told that there is a touch of lemon to it. I reported the flavours and we moved towards the surface. There was some resistance as we penetrated his mind but the shield quickly tore away in ragged chunks. The political had a little talent and we could have made him one of us if he had come for training. It was a waste.
There was an assault of noise as soon as we entered his real mind, the mind that was him. A popular song, catchy and jangling shouted at us. I caught a hint of amusement from the co-witness and I told him to tighten up his barriers in a tense whisper. I was about to go to the source of the sound to shut it down but the co-witness blocked me. He was right. It would be easier if the political was focussing on a noise that we could ignore. Instead, I sub-vocalised what we found and my co-witness did the same. I didn’t listen to him. We are supposed to be as independent as possible but we are Siamese twins of the mind, overlapping and re-enforcing each other. I suppressed my irritation at the idiot tune and started throwing triggers at the political. We created images of leaflets, banners, codes, emails in a flickering stream that battered at him. Some triggers evoked no response but others brought out flashes of memory smothered too late. Meetings and faces, distorted by his recollection into charactures, answered us. We quickly described the cascades of strobing images, each giving our own impressions. Later, a judge would collate them but we recorded them without judgement. We are witnesses only.
We saw conspiracy and subversion with suggestions of a wider network. We heard snatches of radical speeches that twisted the truth. I sub-vocalised for the record “Evidence, deliberate dissention from the agreed view. Evidence, spreading dissention.” The reports became a litany of guilt.
Not all of the triggers gave us results that mattered. Images of guns gave only the armed protectors of the consensus government. Images of explosives were unrecognised. Nothing linked to violence but he was clearly a nonconformist. He would need to be deep scanned under drugs by the machines. They collect everything but they can not interpret, only harvest. I might have felt sorry for him if I allowed myself but he had gone against the will of the people and so lost all rights.
When we started to get repeat responses to stimuli, we changed the triggers. Sexual images gave us back revulsion. That was unusual and so we probed deeper. Images of men gave us loathing and disgust. Images of women gave a weaker response but mixed with fear. My co-witness offered images of children and we were answered with a shapeless feeling of happiness. We pushed harder, forcing our way deeper in to his mind. We felt his weak attempts to eject us but we forced his will back and down. The pressure hurt him and his mind was loud with the pain. We didn’t relent although the noise was a new distraction. Despair coloured his mind and the pressure eased. New images appeared, a few children of different ages. This was a family seen through a child’s eyes, the family of the political. There was nothing sexual towards the children, just affection and rivalry. We threw sexual images at him again and he answered with a couple in the darkness and a half heard sound of mating. Those were his parents and he felt only disgust.
His mind started to fragment, shimmering before us. We had only moments as we chased his memories down into the Id. We found desire, weak and overlaid by self loathing. The co-witness projected a final image of limbs twisting in gross passion and the dissenter reacted with a spasm of shame soaked terror, brilliant and horrible in its intensity. A woman’s mocking laugh echoed in the stillness. This was the event that sublimated his desire into revulsion and revolt. We had found the core of his sickness but we do not cure. We are witnesses only.
His mind failed and folded around us as he fled in to psychosis. Half formed thoughts shattered into a sandstorm of incoherence. We were the only meaning. There was no more that we could do so I pulled back, quickly reaching the edges of his broken psyche. I held the link for a moment longer to complete the record and ended the session. The political had been damned by his memories but we bore no blame. We had been fair witnesses.
I gradually became aware of the room again and saw that my co-witness had fallen to his knees. I was still on my feet but my muscles were burning with fatigue. The technician spoke for the first time. “41 seconds. Well done, gentlemen. The people thank you”.
I pulled off the sensors and walked out of the room without looking back. I needed a shower and time alone after the disgusting intimacy. As always, I prized my perfect sanity more than ever after walking in another’s nightmare. Balance is a wonderful thing.