Manipulator
Authors: Thom Parsons
Dedicated to Georgina Harper.
The only one who could make me write.
MANIPULATOR
noun: Manipulator
plural noun: Manipulators
1: A person who controls or influences others in a clever or unscrupulous way.
2: A person who handles or controls something skilfully.
3. A person who controls people to their own advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly.
PROLOGUE
“It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”
Walt Disney
Chapter One
Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)
Location: Unknown
Click.
“For the benefit of the listeners, everything recorded from this point on is classified. This tape is only for use by the members of the FBI’s Special Projects Division, and the FBI's Internal Affairs office. My agent ID is Four-November-November-One-Three. This is Victoria. The subject I am interviewing is a field agent within the Special Projects Division of the FBI. It tells me here that he has an outstanding record, alongside some amazing achievements. However, his current status within the Bureau…”
Victoria flicked over to the second page of the file that was laid out on the table in front of her. She looked over it for a few seconds before raising her eyes back up to the man that was sat at the opposite end of the table.
“…disavowed.”
Her words were cold, professional and without care, perfectly matching the atmosphere of this tiny and lightless interrogation room. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a smartphone, only to look at it for a second before putting it straight back where it came from. “The date is December 15th 2035. The time is 11.42am. For the benefit of the tape, can you please confirm your name? We need this officially on record.”
“
My name is Owen Archer,” the man sitting opposite her said. They were the first words he had spoken in hours, causing his voice to croak slightly.
“And your job title, Mr Archer?” Victoria continued.
“I was a Memory Analyst with the FBI.”
Victoria nodded slowly as she read through Owen’s personnel file in front of her. Before long, she continued with her questions. “And what exactly was it that you did?” she asked, looking up at him as she spoke.
Owen didn’t respond immediately. Admittedly, he was a little thrown off by her question. Now, here he was, tying to gauge just
who
it was that he was talking to. “You mean you don’t already know?” he asked, feeling slightly confused about his situation.
“Not fully,” she responded emotionlessly, looking Owen dead in the eyes as the words left her mouth. “I’ve only been partially briefed on both the current situation and the details of your job. I’m here to listen to the whole story and to ask unbiased questions.”
Owen nodded, but said nothing in response. He understood exactly where she was coming from. More importantly, he understood why she was here.
She’s the jury, here to judge me on my actions up until this point.
“For example,” Victoria continued, snapping him out of his thoughts. “I know that from looking through your file here, you were one of the top field agents within the FBI’s Special Projects Division. Out of nowhere, you went rogue. You dropped off the grid. Then… you resurfaced, having broken countless laws in your absence. Care to explain?”
“Business turned personal,” Owen said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I see,” Victoria responded. Casually, she pulled a notepad and a pen out from the inside of the her jacket and laid them down on the table in front of her, ready to start taking notes about everything that this man had to say. “Tell me how it all started.”
“I’m not able to jump right into my story,” Owen stated. “If I did, you probably wouldn't know what was going on. Everything that has happened, happened because of a piece of technology. A machine. It’s called PRoGRaM.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s because it's not public knowledge,” Archer clarified, visually peaking her interest with his interesting choice of words.
“Then let’s start there, shall we? Tell me about PRoGRaM. Tell me about your job.”
“Well…” Owen said, leaning forward onto the table in front of him, finally feeling ready to begin his story. “I have the most incredible job you could never imagine.”
PART ONE: ELI ROTH
“What does it mean to lose you memory? Your psyche, spirit, soul, your history. The spark, the flame, the fire, the love you feel. Are you still present? It's a mystery.”
Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton & Rick McMurray
(Ash)
Chapter Two
Date: December 8th 2035 (One Week Earlier)
Location: PRoGRaM
Disorientation.
We’re in.
The blinding white light that had swallowed him only moments before began to fade, as did the ringing noise that echoed in his ears, only to be replaced by a sharp pain at the side of Owen Archer’s head. This was a normal day to day thing for him. Owen knew that it would fade shortly, but despite the number of times he came here, it never got easier. Slowly blurring into vision came the images of where he was.
Owen was standing upright, feeling slightly dizzy yet trying to focus himself on the bright white architecture of the room all around him. No decor, no furniture, no windows. The only thing of interest was a single door with a small red light above it. He was all by himself, if only for the moment, in a perfect cube of a room, roughly ten meters in length, width and height. Surrounding him were white walls, a white ceiling and a white tiled floor.
Luckily for Owen, he wasn’t alone for long.
Uncharacteristically, he’d brought along a colleague. Beside him was the final member of his party of two, Kate Miles. Unlike Owen, she was new to this game, and as soon as she opened her eyes and gained control of her body and mind, she immediately lost it again. Kate's thin frame collapsed down onto her knees, seemingly exhausted and lost for words.
Her long, dark red hair fell down over her face, covering up her features whilst she tried to compose herself. This was usual for first-timers, although it even happened occasionally with some of the most experienced users. It was something that Owen had seen many times before. Kate wasn’t the first to be overwhelmed by PRoGRaM, and sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.
She was here on a training exercise, the first one that Owen and his team had ever been involved with. It was a collaboration between the Special Projects Division of the FBI and the rest of the Bureau, as a part of a covert nationwide rolling-operation. As far as Owen was aware, the FBI were bringing some of their regular agents up to speed on the technology, but it wasn't his place to ask questions. He just assumed that one day they were going to be expanding their operations. This was the first phase of setup in getting them ready for that day.
This was her second incursion into this digital world, and it seemed to Owen as if Kate was feeling just as queasy and unstable on her entry this time as she was the first time around. He instinctively hurried over to help her up, extending a hand to her. “Welcome back to PRoGRaM,” Owen said as he helped Kate stand upright and gently released her. He kept himself alert and ready to grab her again as her balance was obviously still unsteady. "You’ll get the hang of entry eventually."
She swooped her hands over her head pushed her dark red hair out of her face and back behind her shoulders.
“How are you feeling this time?” Owen asked.
Slowly, Kate leaned herself forwards and put her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath and gather her thoughts back together. After some heavy breathing, she managed to stand herself upright. “Better. I think?” she responded as her deep green eyes narrowed. Her brain finally got around to taking in the room around her. She looked at Owen, trying to gauge her situation. “So we start in The White Room again?” she asked.
The White Room was the place where they
always
materialised upon entry into the world of PRoGRaM. It was their basic entry point, a room coded separately from the rest of the world. It was somewhere reliable that the team could start out from, but more importantly, it was a room from which the team could go anywhere.
A room outside conventional space.
“Yes,” Owen replied. “We’ll always start in the same place in PRoGRaM, no matter what the operation is.”
Still, despite his explanation, a look of confusion covered Kate’s face, which was completely normal under the circumstances. All of this was very, very new to her. She didn’t yet know the importance of the room that she was stood in.
“Why can’t we just wake up where we need to?” she asked.
“For several reasons,” Owen answered.
This is my area of expertise; making sense of the impossible.
“The most important one being the fact that waking up here in this ‘White Room’ helps you as an individual, and your mind, to distinguish between the real world and the PRoGRaM world. There’s nothing stranger than waking up in PRoGRaM inside a virtual representation of your own bedroom. It’s things like that which can make you question yourself when you wake up in the real world, so its our way of separating realities. This ‘White Room’ was actually Nick’s idea, he’s the one who programmed the code for the room, and implemented its use.”