Mind Snatch

"HHMMP! I hate this place, every month I gotta come to this freak zone of 'Orgas'. There must be a virus chain through all their hard wares, why doesn’t anyone else notice?! Where’s the health ministry when you need them eh?"

Sasha snorts to herself whilst she makes her usual way to the food produce optimization zone. An Orga passes her clutching the same child, something always seems amiss..

"Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a constant chain of Dejavu.. Or I’m just working a job that the Ministry said Orgas would handle. That front desk Orga really thinks it’s better than me. I guess things could be worse, I’d rather this than being sat in a Replica cube, and not living at all!"

The front desk Orgas look on indignantly. Flesh bodies with artificial interfaces, administered by the United Federation of Order (UFO). Alphas - the first gen humans, were sold the idea that Orgas would be the new underclass, the machinery of capitalism. Instead, their productivity algorithms destroyed the world, until increasing numbers of Alphas just became useless.

"Okay so the fridges work.. Everything is as it should be, tick, yes temperature is correct, tick. Can’t believe I’ve wound up working for Orgas! I’m sooo bored, can’t wait to see Loni tonight, I hope she's not just interested in me because she has a weird Alpha fetish? She can have any Orga she wants! I could never date an Orga, Eww! That would be so weird."

Sasha looks at her reflection in the refrigerator glass, not quite confident that she could compete with the leading Orgas. A thought of the child pops into her mind. She always sees that young girl, and wonders why she has seizures. She decides to ask the janitor, the only other Alpha, what he knows about her.

"I’ve got to find out more about this girl. She obviously is over-class, so why would she have any health problems? I’ve only ever seen a seizure in an intelligence camp. Something’s not right. Where's Jax? He does a great job of being invisible. I gotta find him away from the front desk spies. Well it’s time to go now, wonder where Loni is taking me tonight?, he he."

Loni waves from across the recreation land, she has so much to tell Sasha about today's experience. Sasha never wants to hear it, and secretly feels guilty for seeing someone that works for the ‘CD - federation of consciousness development’. Loni grabs her tightly, and whispers in her ear. “I'm onto something here Sarsh". Loni has had a longtime suspicion that Alphas were being wiped, by an anti-conscious crime squad, and Sasha was tired of warning her against probing into it.

"Not this again Loni, I've told you before to just stay out of it. Look, you've got a good gig up there with the federation, any Alpha would sell their parts to have your job! and it's dangerous! what if you're right?, and there IS a secret cult wiping consciousnesses?! What do you think will happen to you if they find out that you could reveal their crimes?! I mean come on Lon! Please I thought we were meeting up to just have a good time you know? I can't deal with this, existence is hard enough without all this."

Loni sighs deeply until she is suddenly spun around and kissed gently on her cheek. Sasha is the only escape she has from reality, and in seconds she is reminded of how happy her existence is with her. The next day, back at the rest zone, Sasha couldn't help but wonder about some of the things Loni babbled about the night before. Could there really be a plant in the federation, working for a crime syndicate, that just happens to work in Loni’s cube?

"Look at them, they have it better than us. Orgas don’t know that they're not free, and yet we have to hear so called Orga spokes-orgas protesting for the same few rights as us Alphas. They destroyed our world, are practically immortal, and don’t get tired or depressed like the rest of us, and they actually have us working for them! oh it makes me so angry! The federation doesn't care about us Alphas that have to live and work alongside them, we’re all the same to them anyway! Clogs in the machine."

She makes her way down the hall, only to spot the girl again. She never got a good impression from the Orga carer of the girl, and this time was no different. She decided to change her usual route downstairs, and follow them inconspicuously further down the hall. She didn’t care for the dominant manner in which the girl was held. As she approached nearer, she noticed the girl was starting to seizure again, and yet the Orga continued to pull the girl along. This time Sasha wasn’t going to let her go, and ran to catch the girl.

"Hey! You Orga stop there! I said stop! Why is this young girl suffering from seizures? Hey little girl, do you need help? What’s happening?!"

Sasha had never experienced anyone suffer from a health problem before, not since the Federation enforced monthly screening. The Orga desperately trying to take the girl away, whilst avoiding any of Sasha’s questions, hadn’t screened that whilst the girl was shaking vigorously, she dropped a locket onto the floor. Sasha hadn’t even seen this, and was so involved in trying to pry the girl away from the clutches of the orga, that suddenly the girl returned to normal, and shoved Sasha away herself, proclaiming ‘leave me alone!’. The Orga gave her a stern look and turned heel to leave the area. Sasha was left in shock at what she had just seen, and looked up at surveillance, wondering if this was going to put strikes on her file. She quickly turned to run away, but felt something under her foot. She stood still, slowly bent down and picked up something metallic, that she artfully slipped into her pocket as she walked off.

"What just happened? What on earth.. Oh I’m too scared to look, what is in my pocket? Where did they go? That girl is in trouble, I’ve got to tell Loni about this. I’ve got to get out of here now before head Orga pulls me in for screening. Or I could continue my shift as if nothing happened.. or run out the exit.. exit it is!"

Sasha waited impatiently within the recreation grounds of the CD's ‘think’ cubes. An Orga approaches to scan her, believing she may be a depressed employee in need of a boost. She pretends that she is on her way back to the cube, she doesn’t know what else to do.

"Loni isn’t even offline yet, I'm going to raise suspicions and get tracked. Where can I go? If I go to my offline quarters now, the tracker will raise a report. Aghhh I could fake an illness.. That will save me my job.. But I’ll have to go through quarantine and all those tests.. And the girl, the poor little girl. I’ve got to help her, she is trying to tell me something. If only Loni could infect her Orga, I could find out. Come on Loni, I need you."

Sasha somehow manages to avoid detection for almost an hour. Loni has no idea she’s waiting for her in the grounds. Loni exits the cube with a few colleagues, including an Orga that Sasha never liked. As they walk and share jokes about the day's experiences, Sasha pops up from behind a rest station, and swings her arms around Loni. The Orga sniffs at her, and turns to ask Loni if she was coming with her to the circle. Loni kindly declines and they touch hands goodbye.

"I don’t like her, you know I don’t and yet here you are about to go with her." Sasha impatiently proclaims. "If I didn’t come here, you’d be spending the evening with her!. I told you I don’t trust her Loni". “You don’t trust anyone Sarsh!" Loni replies hastily. "what’s happened? Are you okay?." she continued. Sasha takes a deep breath, "No I’m not Lon, I’ve had the worst day, and probably have lost my job. Don’t give me that look Lon, I was trying to help that girl I told you about before, don’t you remember? The one that gets seizures. Well she had one today right in front of me! I didn’t know what to do! I got into a tug of war with the Orga Carer, until it got the girl and practically ran away! whilst I’m left with no job, but.. a weird object. It’s in my pocket, Loni. That's why I’m here."

Loni takes a minute to absorb everything Sasha had blurted out. She Looks around and gently guides her away to a secluded area. Loni examines the heart shaped shiny locket, revealing a chipboard. Loni needs access to an offline operating system to decipher the chip. They make their way to the only Alpha with the resources to do this - Loni’s Grandfather.

Demitrius lived out of the zones, way into the destroyed remains of what was once a bustling city. He once worked for the Federation in his younger days, and was part of the founding team that developed the consciousness department, and all its very first programming. Loni and Sasha hitch rides on the illegal highway, and wait patiently at his bunker till he returns from foraging.

"Wow.. so this is what living off grid is like eh? The great freedom to nowhere. Sigh. How does he live out here? Wait, WHY does he live out here? Oops sorry, experiences out here? Don’t want to use illegal language" Sasha says sarcastically.

"Technically you can out here", Loni replies with an eye roll. Demitrius returns with his old cat. "Loni? He breathes as if he were questioning his sanity. What are you doing here? If you get tracked here, you're in trouble and so am I!." He plomps down onto his sack, rubs his eyes and takes a good look at the two women in his bunker. “I haven’t seen grid alphas in years, not since you and your mother..” Loni interrupts, "Grandad! We are here for a very important reason. We brought something we need you to look at." Sasha carefully removes the heart shaped locket from her apron, and places it on the old man's knees. He looks at it and seems bewildered.

“Where did you get this from girls?” he asks carefully. "A young girl gave it to me, at the rest zone, she has seizures and I tried to help her.." As she continued, Demitruis carefully opened the locket, well aware of its mechanisms. He reveals the chipboard Loni had discovered earlier, and a signal device. “This locket contains the the key of consciousness” as he looks at the girls. They don’t understand. “The code it contains was originally designed by the federation to wipe any consciousness it wished, however it disappeared and myths surrounded its whereabouts."

The old man, energized by the discovery, promptly makes his way towards his trunk of gadgets, to set up careful decoding. Loni hovers behind him, eager to assist in any way she can, whilst Sasha plonks her head into her hands, and hopes this day was just a dream. "Goodness gracious!" Demitrius shouts, “this seems to contain much more. There are mainframe keys and tenants of a secret Orga sect called.." (the girls hold their breath) "‘NOUMENA’." As he downloads its symbols, it becomes clear what they have found.

“They state that their aim is to set Orgas free from the health ministry, and attain free will in the truest form. They will transfer their consciousness into the brains of Alphas by kidnapping bodies, and infecting them with a consciousness swiping virus, implanting their own, whilst imprisoning the Alphas original consciousness into an untraceable online programme.” He looks up at the girls. Loni reaches out to hold Sasha's hand.

"The young girl! Is her consciousness imprisoned?! How could she know if she has been taken over by Orga? How could she give me the locket? Loni! Where could their consciousnesses be held? We must free them!."

Loni turns to her grandfather, “do you suppose the seizures indicate a possible infection? Is she fighting to return to her body?”. Demitrius states slowly that the young girl is ‘Magus’. The myths state that the first free Orga will be a child, and they called it Magus. It is the mascot of Noumena. A successful first transference of consciousness, with brain development, creating a genesis of free Orgas. She is truly free from the main-frame. The girl is both revered as a god to the members of Noumena, and a myth by Alphas and Orgas. "Sasha your intuitions were true, the girl is suffering gravely in nothingness, so much so that she is causing the Magus to glitch. The girl has been murdered."

"We must find her! The signal device! Loni will the signal find her?!" Sasha shrieks. “Wait!” Loni shouts, “this device requires routing from the mainframe. Someone in the federation must be working with Noumena..”

They all turn to look at one another. Loni realising that it could be anyone from her cube, and her suspicions were true. “The trapped consciousnesses need to be returned to their respective bodies, they need to be set free. The antidote must be found to reverse the virus and wreak havoc on the imprisonment code.” Loni states sternly, whilst she increasingly becomes aware that the fate of the stolen alphas lay in their hands. She must find the plant, but first she must investigate why they are working with Orgas..