There are worse evils than death - Information War Fiction

It was hard to tell what bothered me the most about how they woke us up every morning, the way the alarm triggered the lights to flicker in an off-beat fashion or how obnoxious the mixture of a gentle voice goading you awake intertwined with a buzzing screech sounded.

I only knew that being taken out sleep abruptly offended my sense of humanity and freedom. I had promised myself that when I reached a certain age no man would be telling me what my schedule was going to be and all the plans I had made to achieve autonomy had been ripped away from me right when I had thought I had my dream in hand.

Today was not much different than any other, at least I made it seem that way. Every morning I would drag myself out of bed and shuffle over to the transference port that was thoughtfully installed right outside the bathroom door and so I dutifully I stuck my hand into the dreadful machine. My training in deception made my act look perfect, I knew they wanted me look grateful as I felt the needles pierce my finger tips so put on my best dope face before I rolled my eyes into the back of my head.

Faking a fiends reaction wasn't the hard part of faking this by far, I had used the power addiction has over people to my advantage more than once in the course of my career, it was finding the materials I needed to make the pouches of blood real enough to fake skin so I could cheat the damn thing. Any mistake on my part would have led to disaster but the latest method my "masters" had been reduced to in the long process of breaking me thus far seemed only to be drugging me up in order to wait me out.

The first week of this new treatment was the worst but not because of the sickness the brain numbing concoction caused, it was that it almost worked to make me complacent.

No matter what they had tried to make me accept them and become a part of their supposed community, and tried many things they had, I never for moment felt like giving up until this trick.

I falsely thought the tolerance I had built up to both the civilian and military grade drugs that were known to me and underestimated the chemists under the employment of this twisted place. What ever it was that they cooked up had given a sensation of bliss without the other side effects I associated with similar drugs. Before I had realized it, the hope of escape had been replaced with an odd notion that I could change things and somehow save the rest of the captives being held as citizens here as well.

Just when the daily treatments had begun starting feeling natural the person they called the 2nd made an announcement that we the people were going to hold our first election in the town's history to pick the leader among us. In my altered state of mind I actually believed that this was a real chance to convince my fellow prisoners to break free of the cages that forced us together. I believed it until the moment I won the authority over them and it all came crashing down hard enough to wake me up to the truth.

I was carried up to a stage and directed to a podium by the 2nd where I received the medal to denote my new ranking.
It was then, looking at the number written on my oversized medallion, that I realized that my thoughts were being clouded by their toxins. It read the 3rd and not the 1st like I had assumed it would.

If I had my wits about me I would have never been fooled so easily but the crooked way the 2nd was looking at me combined with the blank stares from the crowd of people snapped me back into reality. I seized the moment and took to the microphone at the podium. The mob cheered for what seemed like an eternity and I had their full attention when the applause died down.

I went into the greatest speech in the name of liberty ever uttered by a politician and poured my heart out. Every time I told them about the possibilities outside the walls of the town and the fields beyond I swore I saw a glimmer of life behind the dead eyes staring back at me.

It was only when I gave my final cry to rally against the ever changing cast of those who called themselves the 2nd that I knew for sure that I was wasting my time. It was if I were speaking to a computer that only knew how to repeat commands being put into them and could not act on their own. They were more domesticated than the sheep they claimed to shepherd in at least the sheep would bleat on their own volition where these folk could only do what they were being told to in the moment and would wait for a person of greater standing in the hierarchy to breath I ordered to hold their breath.

They owners of the zoo sure did know how much life convenient, I honestly had to give them that when I realized how well they could break that which was in their grasp. If I had ordered them to fight, then the 2nd would have just told them to go home and take another dose from the transference port so they could relax and have the evening off.

No matter what I promised them I could not compete with that comfort. I could only offer them strife and hard work where as the masters always gave them food shelter and chemical love when they needed it. The idea of providing for themselves was seen as a joke far too silly to seriously respond to.

I was on my own.

The one they call 1st must have been pleased by the display of control the cabal had over the townsfolk and I let everyone think it broke me. I knew that I had to get myself out and the first thing I had to do was get clean and sober again.

I worked out that the machine was both testing blood from my fingertips as it was administering an increasingly higher dose of the drugs I wanted to quit. Every method I tried to identify the chemicals failed as well as the traditional ways to detoxify my system made me sick and desperate from withdrawals so that left me with only one option, I had to fool the system. They couldn't know I wasn't taking their drugs so I came up with a plan.

I decide to flex my new found authority as the 3rd and was able to convince the people that we needed to protect ourselves with a round of vaccines immediately. I spread around the idea that the next member to come in to our society could be the one who spreads the plague which kill us all and a few other choice rumors to get the fear to become real enough to get the 2nds to react. They of course thought it was a great idea because even though they knew every person they added to the colony, whether the participant was willing to join or not, was thoroughly screened and cleaned as they said, it still gave the façade of a victory to keep us from looking for any real win. When it came time for me to take the shot, a bit of bullying about rank and some slight of hand was all it took for me to get a placebo in place of the useless vaccine.

The ploy bought me more than enough time to go through my own period of withdrawal in peace because more than half of the previously healthy population fell deathly ill from the viruses they injected into an immune system that had no response for such an onslaught of germs.

With such a lack of eyes on me I had for the once the ability to get some time without the many watchers keeping track of me. I went to the shore and gathered materials to plan an escape. Despite my own sickness, I crafted gloves to store blood samples in and made the habit of harvesting the drugs that were supposed to be injected into my hands every day. I found that I had more than enough to mix into the small amount of blood that my newly made gloves held and so I could use the extra for other things.

With a weapon like this new chemical in my power I was able to make some real moves. I made a routine out giving the local grocer an obscene amount of the foul stuff until he was suffering from a miasma so thick he couldn't remember his name let alone how much of his wares I was taking for free. Everyone who helped me did so with a smile on their face that will stick in my mind forever.

Once I was off the poison and free of the sickness it caused, I gained the drive that had been lacking and put myself to the test. Within only a few days I had built a raft and had it loaded with supplies and was out to sea. As hard as it was to alone out on the ocean the feeling of freedom and purpose was overwhelming. Not having to be on the call of another was all I was looking for since the day I awoke in that horrid place and I finally had it.

I traveled for over two weeks, riding the waves and taking in the sun caring only that I was traveling in a straight line. The hope of land was all I needed to keep my strength but still I found myself staring out toward the horizon with a fixation that made me anxious. I should have listened to that foreboding feeling, perhaps I would have been prepared for what came instead of land.

When it came out of the sky I thought I was just a cloud, it didn't take long for me to know it for something else. It's shape had the amorphous effect of the wisps it pushed through but move it in such an unnatural way it had to be something else. It moved toward me with a what seemed to be an intelligence but it didn't look like any drone I had operated before. It moved as if traveling like a sail in high wind, both with and against the air currents and I was completely awestruck by how easily it broke the rules of physics and therefore reality itself.

It rippled and zoomed down from above as if to swallow me whole and the only reaction I was able muster was to duck onto the deck of my makeshift boat as the whole world went white around me.

When I woke up I was confused. My head was ringing as if I had just been through twelve rounds of sparring but that wasn't what was strange. Instead of the awful noise and flashing lights there was a smiling face. I however, was in no mood to smile when I recognized the face behind the grin.

It was one the 2nd's and a particularly nasty one at that. This women had been one of the first of my captors to give me the so called treatment. Her method included serious verbal abuse and gaslighting that had me thinking this town was a natural existence for mankind and I was the only person responsible for the woes of society.

She began to speak and flashbacks of hearing the words, for the greater good, but instead she told me that I only had this one last chance to give them information. I almost shouted in anger but instead sighed because of foolish this all seemed. That's when I focused enough to see that the room was filled with people. It wasn't my home or even the hospital but instead it was some sort of underground bunker. It had the look of a cave but not the feel, instead of being dank and humid it was dry, so dry it hurt to breath deeply.

I knew a place like this and the people in it. I was surrounded by all the 2nd's that had tortured me since my capture, and they looked worried. This was their hiding place, a prison of sorts they had built to protect themselves from the very society they claimed to have power over. Rich paranoids had been building these all over the earth during the build up to the last world war and I had been in plenty in my former career days.

The whole scene stunk of fear, all I had to do make these people cower was to rise and stand straight when I denied them their precious information that last time. I demanded to see the 1st or very bad things were about to happen, being that I had been dragged back here after weeks at sea, I meant it too.

A nervous chatter broke out among the crowd 2nd's because I'm sure they trusted me. It took what seemed far too long but eventually a 2nd who I had only brief contact with in what seemed only a dream until then came forward and told me that the 1st was no more.

A was about to call him a liar when he brought over an old portrait of an old man. I took it in looking for something special or notable about this person but only saw his bad skin, greasy hair and beady eyes.

They explained to me the 1st had passed away many years ago but had a legacy in his town. He had been the one who had broken all of the 2nds and funded the society we had been living in with money had made generations ago. They spoke the 1st being dead but to wait until another that could fill his shoes properly was found.

I was told, that person was me. I had been privileged by their group with the opportunity to be tested for the role of their new leader. Each one of them had been given a chance to break me just as the 1st had done to them and,lucky for me, I had survived intact. I had proven myself worthy in the eyes of all who counted.

Of course the only question I had after finding all of this out was that if became the 1 could have what ever I want from whoever I want, when ever I want it, and that would be what determines my decision.

As an answer all the 2nds bowed and in unison said yes to their new 1.

Naturally I did the only sane and reasonable thing a good person would do in that situation. I left and went on to live my dreams in peace and never looked back on that horrible time in my life.

This fictional story was inspired by the BBC program The Prisoner. Special thanks to @stevescoins for showing me this great show. If you liked this story and would like to see more posts like this please upvote and share. Thank you for reading.