In the Mind’s Eye

Part 1

Chapter 1

Lieutenant Jargin walked along the well lit hallways of the Hildebrand. As he neared Joseph Kennings’s room he made sure that his uniform was not wrinkled or off center; and he straightened his Second Lieutenant insignia. The sooner I get this over with the better, he thought. He stopped in front of the door to Joseph’s quarters and smoothed over his hair with his hand. The lieutenant pressed a button and the door slid open, revealing the interior of Joseph’s room. Joseph was sitting at his desk, holding a small picture which he slid under a stack of papers upon the arrival of Lieutenant Jargin.

“What are you doing here?” Joseph asked.

“Well,’ Jargin said, straightening his collar and trying to act as important as possible, ‘I am here to inform you that you need to have your brain cerebroed.”

“What?” Joseph said incredulously. “I’m not letting you dig in my brain.”

“In the contract that you signed, it says that you would agree to random cerebroing and drug tests.”

“Yeah, like I can get drugs on this ship.” Joseph said snidely.

Reluctantly, and near hostility, Joseph was led down to the medical ward of the Hildebrand. Although he tried hard not to show it, he was very uncomfortable sitting in one of the soft easy-chairs with the U-shaped cerebro scanner straddled around his head.

An hour later, Zach Malor and a cerebro technician sat at a computer screen looking over the results of Joseph’s cerebro scan. The technician was having trouble viewing the video results of the scan due to the massive amounts of information the scan contained. He was used to several days or weeks of data, not years; as was in Joseph’s case.

“I just can’t make sense of this Major.’ the technician said. ‘I’ve never dealt with this much-’ he paused, waiving his hands in circles, ‘stuff. Something must be wrong with the software; it’s not giving me what I want.”

“Then I’ll find the video. You go take a nap or eat a snack or something. Just relax. I’ve had some experience in large quantities of cerebro scan data. I’ll find what you need.”

“Thank you.” The technician said exasperated.

Within fifteen minutes, Zach had found and decoded the video scan data. He rewound it back a year and was amazed at what he found.

“So this was why he was so afraid to get cerebroed.” Zach said to himself.

Displayed on his screen was the medical ward of an Eastern Alliance cruiser. The camera (Joseph’s eyes) was constantly flicking around the room, as if he was distressed or frightened. Joseph was being escorted by two marines with phosphorescent green meshes covering their bodies. Joseph was bodily placed into a cerebro chair and strapped down. As memories were downloaded into his brain, Zach realized why Joseph hated the Alliances so much.

The first memory was of a man being stabbed to death (first person of course) that made Zach’s skin crawl. The second was of a person being tied into a medical chair and have large syringes slid unceremoniously into the crook of their elbow. The syringes were full of some sort of clear liquid that caused dark black burns on the victim’s skin. Although the speakers were set to a low level, Zach could clearly hear the victim’s screams.

Zach stopped the video and looked away. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as he worked over the atrocities the Eastern Alliance had committed and why Joseph fought so hard against them during their raid on Aladere. He now understood Joseph’s hate.

But what Zach didn’t know was that the atrocities he had witnessed were only a small part of what had really happened to Joseph Kennings.