I got some good sleep, but I had weird dreams about the World AI dropping me on a trust fall. What I’d expected to wake up to was crepes full of peaches and crème fresh with a sprinkling of powdered sugar. What I did wake up to was more rude.

Some gloopy gel was dripping off my hair, falling in sickening plops along my shoulders. Someone had made the effort to wipe my face, but my ears felt plugged, and I had trouble blinking my eyes open. I didn’t want to open my eyes, so I focused on sound first. You know how you don’t notice something constant until it stops? I hadn’t realized that there was this constant hum that resonated in my body while I was in VR. Now that the hum was external instead of internal, I noticed the lack.

My mind whirled! Had they figured out that they’d made a mistake and that I wasn’t a criminal? Had my parents posted some bond to have me released? Was I being considered for parole? I got excited at the thought of going back to my old life, which was almost idiotic if you compared it to my virtual life, but I wasn’t thinking all that straight as I was waking up chilled and covered in goo.

Now I was ready to open my eyes, so I did and saw a small room. It had a couch (which I was laying on) that was liquid proof and a little slippery, but it curved against me in a way that made it so that I didn’t just slip off of it. There was a lamp with light that hurt my eyes a little bit, but blinking helped. My eyes almost automatically noted the light above the door that glowed a soft green in a window-like thing that probably showed on both sides of the closed door. There was a comfortable chair, tissues on a little side table, and a round trash bin that looked empty from where I sat on the couch.

It was almost like a doctor’s office, except that the chair and exam table were comfortable instead of sterile. I guess I’d gotten used to having clothes magically appear on my body because it took me a few minutes of looking around to notice that I was naked, save the gel and light hospital-like blanket that covered my body. I moved to wipe my hand through my hair to dislodge more of the gel, but it came up short. It was only my left hand, but it was shackled to the bed, and that made me notice that my couch was a “safe” distance from both the door and the comfortable chair.

I spent some time using the blanket and my right hand to clear out my ears and get some of the worst of the gel off my hair, if only enough so that it didn’t plop disconcertingly. This caused a few wrestling moves as I slid all over the little couch, but I was making progress when the door opened.

A short man with a military haircut and a non-military waistline shuffled through the door, a clipboard more prevalent than his face. He flicked a switch on the wall and the light over the door switched from green to a purple color. He wore a comfortable suit that looked like it belonged on a homicide detective, and it was crumpled like he’d slept in it for a few nights.

“Hello, there,” he smiled a professional smile at me over the top of his clipboard. “I wouldn’t bother with the gel. It’s rather messy, but I’m used to it.”

“Uh, okay,” I said, and missed my Clickbait talent.

“I’m Dr. Phendal, the incarceration center psychiatrist,” he introduced himself and sat in his comfortable chair. I don’t know about most people, but the term psychiatrist sent a chill of dread up and down my spine and all the way to my little toe. “There’s no reason to be alarmed as this is just a routine checkup.”

“Okay,” I drawled out my answer slowly and he wrote something on his clipboard. The symmetry of his note scribbling and the pen clicking of the Detective the night before had me confused even more.

“Your case was flagged last night for inspection and luckily, I had a last-minute cancellation today and so I could squeeze you in,” he was smiling still and this time I could see his lips. His eyes were suspiciously kind and crinkled along with his smile. “You’re Janet Mosely, correct?”

“Yes,” I answered, following Jean’s advice again because, in my mind, this man was just like that Detective from the night before. I blame it on the fact that I’d once again woken up in a strange place with no warning and was being judged. The last time something like this had happened, I’d been spider food for hours before I’d managed to adjust to the shifting surroundings.

“How are you feeling?” and his buggy-kind eyes locked onto me like a specimen in a petri dish.

“Confused,” I started to blurt out all sorts of things and then stopped. “Am I being released? Did they figure out it was a mistake?” Yeah, that’s what I blurted out instead.

He laughed and my gut sank. For him, this was funny, but I hadn’t been joking. I could see it from his perspective. He saw people like me all day every day. Criminals. Probably all different kinds of criminals who did all sorts of crimes. I could see how this could be funny to him, but it was devastating to me.

“No, I’m sorry,” he was still chuckling as he said it. “Your case has been flagged for possible Stockholm syndrome. Do you know what that is?”

Okay, granted, I hadn’t given very intelligent answers to things so far, but was that really an excuse to be so patronizing? I swallowed down hope, and my disgust for this guy. I was truly trying to be good.

“Yes,” I answered clearly. “Stockholm syndrome is where the victim becomes enamored with their tormentor.”

“Certainly, that is one way to look at it, but in this case it’s less about victims and torment, and more about someone incarcerated falling in love with their jailor,” he explained, his brows and cheeks merry like he was Santa Claus or something. “We have noted an unusual generosity in your behavior patterns that have us concerned.”

“Uh, huh,” I really missed Clickbait.

“There was a punitive incident recently?” He let his brows inch up and I wanted to snatch them off his supercilious forehead.

There are two factors to my perfectly rational dislike of his profession. First, all potential authors are required to take several psychology classes to infuse realistic characters into their works. I know enough of the psychobabble to get by. Secondly, everyone who fails at their chosen profession goes into mandatory psychological counseling and my counselor was a complete asshole. They do IQ and EQ testing and then the counselor sits with you for a while to figure out what you might be qualified for and if you can get training in another field. I’d thought that psychologist or counselor might be the thing for me, but my counselor had been a total jerk and classified me as hopeless and unsuitable for further career training. Sure, my IQ was high enough and if left alone in a room by myself, my EQ tested okay, but he’d flunked me on EQ because I was an introvert and didn’t present in a way he could understand. I didn’t understand that it was my fault that his divorce had left him bitter and unjust. I’d complained, but it had come off as sour grapes for being denied further training. There’s more to all that, but I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just say that if there’s one person that I’ve ever hated more than the World AI during the spider attacks, it was that counselor.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“Punitive incident?” I choked on their term for the spider torture.

He looked down at his notes. “Yes, it says here that you had trouble adjusting to the incarceration environment and were subjected to an alternate option that was less appealing than the one you chose.”

A red haze lowered over my vision. There is nothing more unfair in this or any world than someone who blatantly chooses to downplay your trauma by couching it in less tragic language.

“That isn’t exactly why you’re here today, though,” he looked up and tried to sound reassuring and stern at the same time. “You’re here today because we think you might be experiencing inappropriate emotions toward your AI superiors. I’d like to stress that you are not in trouble, and that the things you say here will not negatively reflect on any real person.”

Duh, duh, duuuuuuun. “And what happens after this meeting?” I asked, my fingers plucking at the edge of the blanket.

“Once we’ve had our little chat, you may qualify for re-assignment to another incarceration program,” he explained, his clipboard on his lap and his hands spread wide. “It would be random, of course, as you are an inmate, but it would free you from a potentially harmful or traumatizing personality realignment.”

Good gawds! These people and their word juggling. In English, he was saying that I’d be randomly chucked into another door.

“We’re showing that you spent a majority of your earned VR perk points on AI upgrades,” he transitioned with a glance at his watch. “Could you explain your reasonings?”

The sarcasm bitch in me really wanted to say, “Because I’m madly in love with the sadistic bastard who tortured me with a giant spider for what felt like two lifetimes.”

“It’s just how I was raised,” I ended up saying what I thought my mother would like to hear. That tended to get me out of trouble with her, so maybe it would help here. “When you take care of others, they tend to take care of you right back.”

“Is that part of your religious upbringing?” he scribbled, but then looked back up at me when I didn’t answer right away.

“So, I’ve got to be a religious nut to be kind?” my sarcasm bitch did NOT say out loud. “We might not have been devout churchgoers, but my parents taught me values anyway,” was what I settled on instead.

“I see,” his eyebrows rose a few inches and his pen scribbled. “Do you feel that your AI overseers pushed you to buy upgrades for them over yourself?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered.

How unnerving it was to me to realize that my actions were so out of character for any human incarcerated in this way. It was so inconceivable that I would retain my generally good character even after being incarcerated unjustly that they thought I was crazy because of it. If kindness was crazy, then I had to switch the script before they tossed me into amputee-land. My mind processed as toes curled back up under the blanket, so I felt just a little less exposed.

“I’m showing that you were made aware of an upgrade that would provide a bed and another that would upgrade your VR food choices,” he tapped his pen on his clipboard.

“Yes,” and again, I opted for Jean-level brevity.

“And yet you chose to upgrade your assistant and the World AI, even though those upgrades were far more expensive than a bed and food?” he pressed with a scribble and a tap. “Why is that?”

If I couldn’t just be kind, I’d have to come up with reasons that made my moves seem clever instead. I did have ulterior motives when I chose the World AI upgrade, but I didn’t think they’d like the idea that I was trying to bribe my captors into treating me better, especially when a smaller upgrade probably would have sufficed. Considering that I’d passed up the furball love upgrade, I couldn’t say I was trying to gain favor with my cohorts in some idiotic ploy to overthrow my captors either. I didn’t want to be considered a kiss-up. And everything I said was going to be analyzed by humans in moods that I couldn’t begin to predict, so it had to be innocuous too. This was impossible. Then I thought about our viewer count, and ratings.

“I did it for the ratings,” I finally blurted out. “I figured if I was going to get out sooner, I’d need a successful show and I don’t know anything about that.”

“Really?” he nodded like every word out of my mouth was utterly fascinating, something they must teach in a class I wasn’t offered because my stupid counselor thought I couldn’t string two sentences together.

“Yep,” then again, maybe he was right about my not being able to string sentences together, but this guy was employed, and he wasn’t Mr. Congeniality either. “I mean,” I felt pressed by my own internal demons to do better with my explanation, “they know the business better than I ever could, so if I was ever going to get to one million viewers, I’d need their help more than one more measly point in my own stats.”

“Interesting,” he was saying as he scribbled across the page twice. I don’t know how he was writing more than I was even saying, but I was resisting my curiosity. That and the shackle held me to the stupid slippery couch that if I squirmed too much on, I was going to be more than psychologically exposed to this… person.

“And now that I’ve upgraded them,” I went on, reasonably aloof for the fact that I was sitting butt-naked on a chair oozing of goo with nothing but a heavy sheet to cover myself, “it would be cruel to have to start over with another more basic model. Don’t you think?”

“Considering that you are incarcerated and have lost your right to self-manifestation until such time that you can more functionally fit into society again,” he was saying, but then I was replacing the big pompous words like “self-manifestation” with “dignity” and “more functionally fit into society” with “conform to our uptight, intolerant standards.” I zoned out on whatever else he had to say and just did what I’d done as a kid when Mom was mad and trying to make a point.

“Of course, you’re right,” I intoned, flinging just a bit of goo off the chair and onto the floor. “I’m grateful for your concern and for having this chance to…” You just zoned out too, didn’t you. Don’t deny it. Everyone does. If they didn’t, wouldn’t their brains melt out their ears or something? Mine would. It’s okay. I wasn’t saying anything important. I was just fluffing his ego so the World AI I’d just started getting along with wasn’t archived and I wasn’t dumped into Little House on the Tundra, a little-known Russian remake of Little House on the Prairie only more Dostoevskian with a little more Russian literary themes like famine and misery than pluck and optimism of American literature.

You just did it again… zoned out, right? No, I get it. I could tune you back into the rest of our psychological evaluation discussion but it really just boiled down to him scolding like some post-graduate professor who has to explain something to a theater major because they got stuck teaching a gen ed class and me doing the nod and smile with the vapid adoration that we must learn to survive the well-meaning-but-totally-clueless-to-the-suffering-of-the-masses as they seek to blame our social station on our life choices.

Once he was done being a dick, I was put back in my pod, a very unnerving experience. I was led into a warehouse with lines and lines of these pods all hooked up like we were Matrix batteries and considering that I’d just been stuck in a box of a room having a very Matrix discussion (minus the blue and red pills), I felt a bit disconnected from both life and reality. Two huge security guards almost literally picked me up to stuff me into the top of a washing-machine-like device with an octopus of tubes and wiring that did not look safe as some of them oozed a bit and others sparked. Then I was drowned in goo. It was only then that I understood the mercy of having been shot with tranquilizers so that I missed this the first time. I’ll save you my trauma and simply return you to the main storyline, which is infinitely more interesting anyway.