Lori sleeps so much now. I guess all those years of performance makes her want to just lie down and be a vegetable whenever she gets a chance to. Some chip is lying on the floor next to her neck. I’m not sure how she dropped it, but it’s out there in the open.

“Adel, what’s this?”

“That’s strange. It’s Lori’s chip.”

“Chip…?”

“Yeah, MRS. It’s like a diary but automatic. It records ‘highlights’ of your thoughts and emotions throughout the day, but to look back through it, you have to manually prompt it.”

I raise my brows.

“Knowing Lori, she probably would just let it do its thing in the background and never look back. Or, well, she probably looks back at it a lot now that she’s in an environment where she doesn’t have anything to do other than ruminate and do a little work here and there.”

“Well, you called her out that time, not me.”

“So, what is it now? Do you want to dig through it or something?”

“I’m… curious,” I shrug.

“I think you’re best off at least getting permission from her first.”

If you want something, ask for it, a voice in my mind mutters.

“I… want to see what’s in there.”

Press forward, and expect resistance.

She starts this staring match with me for a good minute or two.

“Now that I think about it, fine, she probably needs someone to look back for her anyway. Okay. Come with me,” Adel mutters, groaning and aching as she gets up from her chair. Knowing how strong she is, I wonder what they did to make her so sore. “Computer’s in the next room.”

I follow her to the creaking door. She extends her open palm to me, placing the chip so it magnetically snaps to a designated area of the glass.

Adel hits a few buttons before video appears on the projection. A pair of hands offer some kind of soft object. What I assume are Lori’s hands, from a first-person perspective, hesitate before reaching out to it.

“Is that a… rabbit?” I ask nobody.

Stolen story; please report.

“Yeah, she calls it ‘Beth’,” Adel mutters. “I’ve never heard much about this, though,” she focuses on the scene as intensely as I.

The child Lori’s hands pick up and throw the rabbit away.

“Lorianne!” The nanny shouts in disappointment. “This is the only toy you will get. She is your friend. If you don’t embrace her, there are going to be times where nobody else will be there for you.”

Lori then stops for a few moments before going to her knees and staring at the floor. . “Look,” a nanny, I assume, kneels down and looks Lori in the face. “I don’t like how it is either, but you are going to be alone, a lot.” She walks to grab the rabbit and hands it to Lori again. “We can only spend so much time with you. I’m sorry,”

“Kruger, Lorianne! You’re next,” a nurse shouts from the next room over.

“Now, go get your shots. Nurse will kiss your boo-boos, okay?” she presses the rabbit back into Lori’s chest. Tears then drip onto the rabbit’s body.

The next sequence of images were mere fragments of Lori screaming, kicking, swinging fists, the rabbit falling to the floor, masked faces and white coats holding her down.

Next, she's still angrily sobbing, but then holding onto the rabbit tightly. She is offered a small bowl of soup with a spoon, which she turns away from. The spoon continues to approach her face, to which she swats away, still sobbing.

“Lorianne, you need to eat, you are underweight,” the technician or nurse says, partially muffled through the mask.

Lori clutches the rabbit tighter.

The hands give up feeding her, and then offer her some kind of solid bar instead. Lori waits as the white coat then walks away, quietly grabs the food bar, struggling with the wrapper for a while, then grasping the cake or cracker object and clumsily bites into it, dropping half of it, picking it back up, and then stuffing the remainder back in her mouth.

Next scene, she’s stuck between two of her classmates trying to rip her new friend out of her arms in some kind of three way tug of war. She screams, getting angrier and angrier with every breath, until she lets go, then chases her attackers down and drags them into a thunderstorm of angry fists. The next several minutes consisted of the first and most brutal toddler-on-toddler beatdown I’ve ever seen.

“You got what you wanted out of this?” Adel turns to me.

“Yeah, I guess…”

Adel slowly moves the chip away from the spot on the glass.

“Here you go.”

“Thanks,” I mutter weakly.

Aside from that, I’m left speechless by what I saw. No wonder why Lori’s so tormented in her own mind, and takes out all her rage on Jackals, or anything in sight. And the show directors only keep capitalizing on it, somewhat understandably… though I hope she never has to hear that.

Awkward silence as Adel and I kind of sit about in the room.

Lori then enters the room with a zombie-like gait. “What are you two–...oh,” she mutters.

“This is yours,” I hand her the MRS chip.

“Thank… you… though, as you imagine, there’s… a lot in there that I’d rather forget…” she mumbles, barely audible, eyes down.

“They’re all part of you that can’t be taken away,” Adel says.

“I know,” Lori grumbles, slowly trodding away through the doorframe.. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wish otherwise.” She feebly closes the door behind her.