Mindguard by Andrei Cherascu

artificial mindguards,
will alienate a significant part of our clientele. It will create the image
that we are against progress and it will cause a decline of trust in our
services. Mac is a brilliant businessman but he does hold certain moral values
that are not the values of the market. He refuses to compromise and he will not
compromise in the future. We both know that and so does he. It feels like a
spear that has been thrown in the air and is now starting its slow descent.”
    “So, you think
Mac accepted this unnecessarily hazardous mission for prestige?”
    “Perhaps he believes
it will improve the company’s image and alter its jeopardized future.”
    Sheldon felt a
pressing need for another glass of wine, not because he craved the alcohol but
because the ritual of drinking wine helped him calm down and think more
clearly. He was a man of ritual. Even his movements had a ceremonious pattern.
His mind sought an anchor in this behavior, so that it could withstand the
strain of its own complexity. Otherwise, he sometimes feared, it might collapse
under the enormous pressure of its own capacity. He was the best in the world
and remaining on top took great sacrifice. He knew that from his grandfather.
    He thought back
to the day when Mac decided to quit being a mindguard.
    “I can’t afford
the tiniest glitch,” Mac had said that day, many years ago. Kriss White did not
take the news very well. “Tiny glitch, what the bleedin’ hell are you talking
about?” he yelled. “Everything’s clean, there is no goddamned glitch!”
    “I can’t have
even the possibility of an error, do you understand that, White?” Mac replied,
struggling to remain calm. Everyone in the company had been upset with him and
some had even quit but Sheldon had understood. He had understood perfectly.
    On his last
official mission as a mindguard, Maclaine Ross and his team had been ambushed
while carrying government information through the Merrian Desert. At that time,
Mac was the only man in the world who functioned simultaneously as a mindguard
and bodyguard. Both were immense responsibilities but he handled them
excellently. His company was known as the absolute best in the field of
thoughtprotection.
    On that
particular mission, the team got ambushed by desert dwellers, who attacked them
with rocket launchers, to everyone’s surprise. The attack was so brutal there
were even casualties among the bodyguards, a rare occurrence in Mac’s agency.
After sheltering his surviving team members in a cave, Mac remained outside to
cover them. A rocket was fired straight at him, missing his head by only a few
inches. It hit the wall of the mountain, dislocating an enormous rock, which
fell right on Mac’s head. The impact should have killed him; it should have not
only broken his neck, but shattered it completely. Because of his muscular
insertions and all his genetic advancements, the rock broke into tiny pieces
and Mac’s head did not. He did, however, fall to the ground and lose
consciousness. Francois, who was on one of his first missions, hurried out of
the cave and carried him to safety. Kriss White - back then still an active
field member - assumed command and guided the mission to success, completely
slaughtering the desert dwellers in the process.
    When they
returned home, Mac was put through a number of medical tests. The doctors found
no damage to his brain, at least none that could be recognized by modern
medicine. But Mac was cautious. He took himself off active duty for a while. In
the following days he had two instances where he forgot certain things. They
were trivial bits of information: the name of a planet, the exact departure
hour for one of the future missions. Trivial, but decisive. Mac took the
painful decision of quitting his career as a mindguard.  
    “Listen, you
shithead,” White had yelled, “if the scans say there’s nothing there, then
there’s nothing there. You’re probably still in shock. That’s why