Mindwalker by AJ Steiger Page B

stares straight into the camera, hollow-cheeked and grim. “I’ve evaluated all my options, and I can’t see any realistic possibility of a life without constant pain. I’m ready for voluntary passing, and I don’t think some doctor should be able to stop me.”
    What a strange combination of determination and despair—someone going to such lengths to die when death is available to anyone with a razor or a bottle of sleeping pills. But then, if someone voluntarily passes, her family receives full life insurance benefits. That’s not the case if someone commits suicide illegally.
    â€œMackey’s situation has been receiving attention from both sides of the debate,” the announcer continues. “The renewed controversy over Somnazol has stirred up protests.” The screen displays a demonstration, people waving signs with messages like DO NO HARM AND DEATH IS NEVER THE ANSWER .
    Disgusted, I turn off the TV. Where were all these protesters when Steven was applying for
his
Somnazol?
    Of course, despite her many physical problems, Mackey’s still a Type One—she must be if she’s a representative. No doctor wants to destroy a healthy mind. Yet they hand out the pills like candy to Fours and flood the media with propaganda telling us that Somnazol is the ethical and responsible choice for those who are irreparably damaged, that society has become much more peaceful and orderly since it was legalized. No one wants to bother trying to fix broken people, especially those without the money to pay for real treatments. Much easier to just let them die.
    Sometimes I hate this country.
    I poke at my food, rolling around a tiny wheel of carrot. My appetite has abandoned me. Steven’s memories keep replaying in my mind—all the months of hell, long periods of dread and loneliness broken only by visits from his captor. All the nights spent crying, muffling his sobs against the filthy mattress where he slept.
    I wonder about the other children. I never saw them in his memories. Were they held captive separately? Or were they already dead by the time Pike found Steven?
    Maybe it doesn’t matter. After our final session, those memories will be gone from Steven’s mind. His eyes will open, soft and puzzled, like the eyes of a sleeper awakening from a long, dark dream. He will forget me, too. He’ll leave, fresh and clean as a newborn, with all his horror and sadness scrubbed away.
    But that horror will remain within me. I will never forget what happened in that small, dark room or the tears of that terrified boy.
    I hug my knees to my chest.
    If Father were here, he’d wrap me up in his arms and know the exact words to say. He’d help make sense of this mess in my head. I’d do anything to talk to him again, just for five minutes.
    I know I won’t be able to sleep, so I go down into the bare, tiled room and turn on the Gate. I face the hard drive and wave a hand over the sensor, bringing up the holographic monitor, which displays a rotating image of a brain. Steven’s brain. I find myself staring at it, hypnotized by its slow turning.
    The room is dim—I didn’t bother to switch on the overhead fluorescents—so the only illumination is the screen’s pale glow. I replay the readings from the session, watching the flowof neurological activity, like weather patterns moving over the landscape of his gray matter. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of activity in his amygdalae, the tiny almond-shaped structures connected to fear and memory.
    All the horror and sorrow of the human condition—as well as all the joy, wonder, and love—can be reduced to this, chemicals in an organ resembling a lump of cauliflower. Sometimes, I find that comforting. Sometimes, it just makes me feel empty.
    I tap spots on the screen, zooming in again and again, until I can see the sprawling networks of neurons, rendered in a soft, transparent blue. I blink