The Fall by R. J. Pineiro

had literally abandoned him.
    Stop torturing yourself.
    He tilted his head at that last thought.
    Torturing?
    Jack suddenly realized that in a strange way, what he was experiencing was a form of imprisonment of his mind. His perception was being held hostage by whatever neural damage he had likely incurred during the fall, and his SEAL training taught him that one way to survive long periods of captivity was by forcing happy thoughts into his mind, by recalling the good times.
    He chose to remember when he had first met his wife, the feisty Dr. Taylor during his initial weeks at the Cape. Angela was the only daughter of Miguel “Mickey” Valle, founder of the legendary Paradise Motorcycle Shop in South Miami, where she grew up among bikers and hackers before earning degrees in engineering from nearby Florida Institute of Technology and a doctorate from MIT. It had not taken very long for the slender brunette and former criminal hacker with high cheekbones, light-olive skin, and amazing hazel eyes—and who seemed to live on energy drinks—to get under his skin. And what made it impossible for him to give up the hunt was the way Angela tried to hide it all by minimizing makeup, keeping her brunette hair very short, wearing faded jeans, black T-shirts, and riding boots and jackets. But even her tomboy-biker tough looks couldn’t hide a natural beauty that Jack found simply irresistible. And his persistence paid off in the end. After a long courting period, the couple was married on the beach among a colorful collection of characters from Angela’s side of the fence, from bikers to hackers. Across the aisle, the groom’s side was limited to Navy personnel, mostly his SEAL brothers, plus Pete, who stood as best man for the short ceremony. Following an adrenaline honeymoon rock climbing El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in California, the couple settled into a little bungalow-style house in Cocoa Beach, just minutes from their work at the Cape.
    Jack reminisced while looking up at the moon and the stars, which instantly reeled him back to his screwed-up reality.
    Sitting in the passenger seat while Palmer calmly steered the rig down Highway 528 through Cocoa heading for the bridge leading to Cocoa Beach and the Atlantic Ocean, Jack got the sudden urge to punch someone—and have someone punch him back very, very hard. Maybe that’s what he needed instead of some happy fucking thoughts: a good old-fashioned bar fight to get his head screwed back on.
    â€œYou okay there, buddy?” Palmer asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
    â€œDo you ever get the feeling that things aren’t the way they should be?” Jack asked before he could stop himself.
    It only took a microsecond before the conspiracy theorist nodded and said, “All the time, my friend. All the damn time. I’m telling you, nothing, absolutely nothing is really as it seems. Everything, from the water we drink and the food we eat to the clothes we buy and the girls we date, is carefully controlled and watched by big brother up in the sky. There’s really no place to hide. And the Internet only made things worse.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œIt proved that people are quite willing to trade off their privacy in return for things like free Facebook accounts, giving Uncle Sam even more insight into our personal lives.”
    â€œSo, what can you do?” Jack asked, choosing to keep stoking this guy as a way to disengage from the reality of his situation. Though in a way, Jack’s current altered state of mind only helped give Palmer’s view of the world a certain degree of credibility.
    â€œWell, of course you go on,” Palmer replied matter-of-factly. “You keep doing what they’re expecting you to do, every day, week after week, year after year. But you do it with full knowledge that the world as you know it is nothing but an illusion created by those in power.”
    â€œAn