Sixteen Seconds

By Aubrea Summer

The capabilities of the human mind are limitless when sixteen seconds become the distance between a thought, and a revolution.
Psychokinesis was a foreign word, an umbrella term for things no one believed in, yet the rumors began to spread, rumors that became weapons. For the first time, the people stood a chance against the reign of corrupt power.
Give your thoughts for your life.
The NID, Neurological Impulse Device, ended the uprising. The mandatory implant allowed only eight seconds of thought. Any longer, and the results were devastating. Without free thought, progress and compassion withered, leaving nothing behind but a nation yet to realize that something about their children was changing for the worse, unnatural and dark; empty.
War was fast to follow, and even quicker to end without a solution. There was nothing anyone could do to fix it, and nothing left to fight for. Survivors existed like ghosts, wandering the ash of the country, avoiding the unfeeling, animalistic children, abandoned like the ruined cities.
A new rumor promising hope has surfaced, almost ten years later.
Risk your next breath for your freedom.
Give your life for your thoughts.
Death is not the end, only a clever disguise for a solution. There is a way to save the future, but the gamble is your life. Survive, and reignite the thoughts of a nation. Fail, and mankind will remain another doomed deformity, edging towards extinction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aubrea Summer
• Release date: Apr 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311069511

Aubrea Summer

Raised by a blue eyed warrior woman who told her stories before she was born and a father who sang them to her from the soul of an acoustic guitar, Aubrea Summer grew up in the wilds of Northern Arizona. Television consisted of three channels from an antenna, promising books to be the more fantastic of escapes. Winter sports meant a car hood tied to the rear of a moving pickup truck, decorated in teenagers who, more often than not, went careening into the mud puddles. There was never a lack of inspiration, and writing became her passion at a young age. Her dream is to one day own a house on sixty acres with room to take in all the homeless Rottweilers in the world.

Book preview

SIXTEEN SECONDS

Prologue

Ten pairs of starving eyes watched their prey move tentatively down the sidewalk. They stayed off the pavement, tucking into overgrown shrubs. Their need to remain silent battled their overwhelming desire to attack. The only sound ringing down the vacant street was the jingle of tiny metal rings against their slightly larger like. One wrong move or one unexpected sound would trigger flight. Prey grew scarcer as winter snuck in. Every kill was important; a matter of living or dying, but this one was small. The pack was larger than the meat would feed. They would have to hunt again later. This would do for now.

In unspoken commands, the largest of the group ushered the rest into a semi-circle, coming around the brush and locking eyes on their prey. This pack hunted often together, working without the trappings of sound to flank their unsuspecting quarry, forcing it into the corner where two buildings met. They’d found this method of hunting quite successful. The kill wasn’t always without danger. Sometimes the prey would fight back, gnashing teeth and scratching extremities making their best attempt for survival. A few times they’d lost a member at the design of potential prey. Repetition brought skill, however, and they’d learned the most difficult of lessons fast. The smell of blood was always an indicator. Those tarnished with its stain were typically aggressive, while those who were timid and in hiding went without much of a fight. Unfortunately, the easy ones were thin and frail, offering little sustenance or meat. The aggressive ones, the ones with bloodstained footsteps and collars, those were far more plump and often worth the risk. Predators understand risk. Ten against one should prove easily favorable odds, as long as they stayed together.

Stay together: The unspoken rule.

The pack rushed in, no longer cautious of being seen or heard. Their prey was suddenly aware, whirling to face the crescent moon of advancing hunger, a shift in the breeze carrying a sensory warning of the progressing danger. Fear was buried beneath age old desires for survival, yet managed to raise an eyebrow, enough to freeze legs needed for running. It simply stood there silent, without a tremor, until the first fist closed around fur and flesh, tearing skin from tissue and meat from bone. If they’d remembered, or ever known what it was, they’d have noticed the worn collar. They never had the chance to learn. They couldn’t care if they had. Food was all that mattered. The tinkling of tiny metal rings against the pavement could barely be heard above the loud snap of the vertebrae that once held the dog’s skull to its spine. Buttons. 72654 Bridgeport Street.

PART ONE

***

Chapter 1

The world hadn’t ended, but damned if it wouldn’t have been better off. Five seconds. Roland abandoned the thought to a new mental dilemma; a sniper rifle, or a cigarette. He couldn’t decide which would currently bring him more joy. Three seconds. His eyes shifted to the skyline. Clouds crept in over the edge of the far buildings, framing the city in pre-monsoon ambiance. Rain meant fresh water, clean, drinkable water and the chance to exist a while longer. Exist. That was it. Roland long since gave up the concept of living. This was not life. This was merely survival to him now.

They milled about below his perch on the outlying ledge of a top floor window balcony. Roland made camp here a few nights back, after the marauders came through. After they took the young girl and killed the others. They were of no kin to Roland, but the bond of weary travelers kept the group closely knit. The girl, whose name escaped him now, would sing occasionally, just a few words to some song from long ago. It was all she could manage, but it was a nice distraction since music in general was obsolete. All things end, however, except this wasted planet. Earth seemed to stumble on without the awareness that the desperate corpse of human kind refused to relinquish its rigor mortis grasp on the planet’s coattails, weighing down every forward movement until they were only fruitless mimics of recovery. There could be little hope of salvation when what was left of the human race only proved how parasitic they could still be, even when there was nothing remaining to take. Whether he cared for the condition or not, Roland was lucky to be alive. The five men came upon the sleeping group in the night, silently, slitting the throats of Mary and Josh, taking the school age girl and fleeing. They hadn’t seen Roland, propped up where he’d fallen asleep against a knotted tree trunk on the far side of the camp. He made no effort to intervene. Making plans was out of the question these days. It took more than eight seconds to maneuver an idea into a tangible plot of rescue. It took too long to even worry on the memory. Roland felt little guilt about it. He felt little of anything these days, wondering briefly how different he really was from the drones that prostrated below.

Food would soon become a necessity, and Roland was unable to salvage any of the meat from camp. The looters snatched the rest of the cleaned deer carcass they’d brought down in a successful hunt. Beans it would be, again. Roland was to the point where contemplating the taste of his leather boots wasn’t as ridiculous as risking the time to think about it. He was sick to death of beans, and beans were definitely not worth the energy of a thought. The deer meat was. Roland’s stomach rumbled at the memory of the steaming steak he’d had days ago. It was so tender and warm, filling his nose with the smoky aroma from the fire, perfectly seared in the exterior of the meat.

Son of a bitch. Roland jerked straight up, hand instinctively pressing against his head, just behind his left ear where the tissue is thin over the bone. That telltale zap of electrical current accompanied by the high pitched, shrill toned note executing off key harmonies through every tissue of his brain halted his memory. The thoughts were gone, the silence thick and welcome, pressing between his ears.

Over some deer meat? Roland shook his ringing head, angry at himself, but trying not to continue entertaining it. He’d only earn himself another fry, and two in one day gave him a migraine. Eight seconds. Eight little strikes of the smallest hand on a clock. He’d timed it on so many occasions. It never varied. Person to person differences held no sway over the allotment of time. As long as you changed thought patterns prior to the cutoff, you could avoid getting fried. Usually Roland was well practiced at the matter, except when he was hungry.

A muffled, skin rippling thud resounded below. Roland cocked his head to find the source, thinking only briefly that he’d heard it before somewhere. He chased off the thought with another. The drone lay in painted stains of red across the sidewalk, nothing about the splayed limbs resembling natural or suggesting life. They did that sometimes, walked right over the edge of some windowsill or rooftop. Roland didn’t understand why. He couldn’t rightly ponder on it much. They didn’t appear to have a reason for it. Maybe they were just done existing. There were definitely days that Roland would agree with that. Seven seconds. He was pushing it today. He blamed it on his still boisterous stomach. Beans it would have to be.

Chapter 2

The single school day felt longer than the lazy freedom of summer would ever dare to be. Alison never minded it so much before. Everything was changing so fast, everything except the face of that blasted clock. Two birthdays had demeaned her life’s goals since she began teaching at the elementary school, and still she couldn’t decide if this was going to be the path she took. Alison always wanted to be a teacher, and now that she was, she didn’t know if she truly wanted to be anymore. All the reasons she clung to so fiercely about the importance of free thinking and education through college were thrown in her face the instant she was given her position. It wasn’t about the children or the future anymore. It was about control and conditioning, and inside Alison Reece died a little every day. As badly as she wanted to throw her arms up and stomp down the hallway, a desolating fear kept her behind her battered wooden desk. To take a different route now would mean starting all over, and that took a certain financial leniency many people don’t possess. There weren’t a whole lot of options either at this point. Stagnant and uncertain was still better than unemployed and broke. Steven, the crazy art teacher, swore every day that the world was coming to an end.

They took the guns already. He would seethe. They monitor us through every cell phone and security camera. They are preparing for a military take over. We won’t be citizens anymore. We’ll be prisoners. We can’t even fight back. They already took the guns…

His rant would run in a circle like this until someone walked away. They, of course, were the government. Alison usually listened when Steven vented. He was pushing early retirement and the school board wasn’t arguing. Their take on his sanity was slightly relevant to the unkempt white wire bushes that scoured the entirety of his brow, constantly slicked down by the stump of what was once his right index finger. While the board members would be grateful to see him go, his students voiced the opposite. His eccentric appearance guised genuine compassion and an undiluted fervor for teaching, making him a favorite among the youth. He greatly reminded Alison of the adults from her childhood and by comparison, Steven was qualified to write self help books.

When she was in grade school, which is the earliest Alison can dig up a clear recollection of actually listening to adults, she’d heard the same conspiracy theory diatribes from her parents and their friends. Growing up in a city like Los Angeles, she’d been subjected to the overwhelming melting pot of political views and personal opinions. She’d watched children kill other children in schools, planes fly into buildings, and countless wars fought with no peaceful outcome. Alison had no false ideals about the world. Now, older than her mother had been when Alison was born, she found herself growing discontented with the direction this human race was running.

A full Senate term after DuPont discovered the massive underground oil field in Wyoming, they had their people in place, inserting them in the slots that served best to maneuver forward. Silently the US receded from the United Nations without any public knowledge or press coverage, black balling the rest of the world. Before American’s received their next electric bill, the gun ban was passed. There was no vote. They simply made it law, and enforced it. People organized and argued, protested and rallied; fell and bled and died. It changed nothing. Nothing could stop it. Those who turned in their firearms and ammunition of their own accord would not be considered a threat, nor would they be punished. Those who did not would be searched out and penalized with incarceration. They weren’t fooling around either. Every member of every United States service branch was now domestic, and there were more uniformed bodies than facilities to house them. Military deployed into the cities, overwhelming and overtaking them, systematically tracking down all non-complacent registered gun owners. They were sought out and dispatched if they did not comply. They didn’t bother bringing them in to face trial. They shot them with the very weapons they took from their hands.

The population did not go quietly, and lives were lost on both sides in the process spanning through two winters that they so lovingly called The Cleanse. Military troops were ambushed by militia groups that organized in defense of their rights, which didn’t seem to matter anymore. As sure as she was that many people still possessed firearms and vengeance, Alison knew they were still too few. The killing stopped, the country quieted, and the oppression was swept under the rug by the wagging tails of the media hounds. You can put a spin on anything if you’re willing to burn for it later.

Steven wasn’t alone in his beliefs. Most people simply resign themselves to the abuse from a higher power when they lack the means to correct it. They were most undeniably lacking the means these days. Folks still quit their jobs and kids still dropped out of school. Grocery stores still charged too much for hormone ridden meat and gas stations still ran off the blood and lies bred by war. The only difference was that nothing changed. Nothing was allowed to. Courage in human beings is a funny thing. They waste it on frivolous moments in their younger years, and abandon it when it’s needed most. If no one would fight back, oppression would only grow stronger, until there was no resistance left. That is how society falls, when courage is long since forgotten. Unfortunately, fear is a far more powerful motivator.

The bell rattled Alison from her thoughts, signaling lunch break. She pushed her wire framed glasses up her nose for the twelfth time since breakfast, and the millionth time since birth. All right kids, see you in forty five minutes. Remember, the basketballs must be returned to the same monitor you check them out from.

Her words fell on the distracted ears of almost thirty rambunctious children who still cared enthusiastically for cartoons but could finally remember to wear undergarments and match their outfits without their parent’s instruction. While she empathized deeply with their troubles, she envied their complete ignorance of them. Lunch meant freedom, and freedom means everything to children. When does that fade? Alison wondered at her sour mood today, rolling her eyes. Usually she was better at keeping her dark thoughts away. Every day was one long bad feeling. There was a constant, ominous shadow in the back of her mind. She couldn’t shake it. Nothing ever happened, and still it wouldn’t go away. One more month and she’d be free for a few. A nice trip down the coast was in order. Maybe she could get some work done on her novel. She’d been putting it off for a while. She worried writer’s block might be a terminal illness for her.

Miss Reece?  A timid voice begged her attention from the doorway.

Yes Sera? Alison smiled at the waif of a girl. Sera was by far her brightest student, and the paintings Steven had shown her were fine work for the hands of a child. There was no doubt the girl was gifted, and Alison was fond of little quiet Sera.

Are you busy? Um… I mean, I guess, can I talk to you? Her voice sounded more hesitant than usual, maybe even a bit fearful.

Alison’s concern responded. Is something wrong Sera?

The child stepped closer to the desk. Please, come with me. Please. I think I did something wrong Miss Reece.

The fear in her voice was genuine. Alison was across the room following close to Sera’s side as the little girl led her into the hallway. The teacher stayed silent, seeing such a strange look in Sera’s eyes. She didn’t quite know what to say. Then there was a tiny hand around her fingers, guiding her towards the bathrooms. The children were allowed to go in the restrooms the first and last ten minutes of lunch, as there was a monitor present at those times. They could always ask, of course, to go at other times, and would be granted a pass. The initial ten minutes were up, and the students scarce. The clamor of laughter and yelling could be heard from the cafeteria. They were otherwise alone in the hallway, which suddenly felt huge and alien to Alison. She’d been through here a thousand times, but right now it held all the mystery of the deep sea floor. Little Sera pushed open the bathroom door, silent and petrified. Alison followed, still wondering why she had no words or questions. She simply turned the corner of the entryway in the wake of the tiny blonde girl that would change the future of the world.

Chapter 3

One might taste the slight foul creep of bile in the back of their throat when looking over the scene below. Roland was used to it, aside from his instinct to avoid such a time consuming thought. They walked right past the mess on the sidewalk, not even looking at it, traipsing through blood spatter like leaves on the grass in the park. They died all the time, mostly from starvation. Roland often wondered, for intermittent micro moments of time, why they didn’t eat certain members of the fallen. He’d seen them turn on each other before death, bigger ones eating smaller, weaker ones. He’d watched groups of them loom over the dead bodies of others and gorge themselves on all the meat they could get from the corpse. Then, sometimes, they just ignored the dead. They weren’t people, they weren’t friends, and for some reason, they weren’t even food. Grief was not an intact emotion, littered by the wayside with everything else they were missing. Still, Roland found it odd, seeing that so many others who weren’t drones took to cannibalism after the war. Food ran short. People ate other people. Roland never had. He refused several offers from passing merchants to purchase the meat. That was one thing Roland didn’t have to think about.

The distraction lengthened Roland’s ability to reach a decision. Damn it if a cigarette wouldn’t be relaxing. No serious thinking was needed there. The rifle, however, would make him feel better. Making decisions was far more difficult when you had to stop thinking about them every few seconds. Some people couldn’t do it, couldn’t control it. They opted out. Droves of people gave up. Three seconds. That was still a sore spot. Roland couldn’t always control that one. She’d been everything to him. She didn’t have it in her to fight. She gave up. She… Roland slammed his hand into the concrete sill. Fried twice in one morning. He needed better distractions, constant diversions. This involved physical activity. He didn’t have to think to run, not consciously anyway. It was time to get out of this area. Maybe he could find a place with less of them aimlessly wondering the streets, numb and robotic. Seven seconds. Time to move.

Gathering up his dwindling supplies and carefully arranging them in the oversized backpack took less effort than a long piss. It would have been quicker if he didn’t have to stop planning every five seconds or so and look up at the clouds. The sky offered interruption, a separation of consecutive thoughts. The storm seemed to stay above the horizon, not venturing high enough to spill any rain. Roland would need water sooner than the clouds would provide it. Five seconds. The rifle. He finally decided. He could put a few of them out of their misery. Cut that one close. Seven seconds. It took all morning to make that choice. Roland didn’t think it was wrong to shoot them. They weren’t really alive, anyway. Five seconds is good. Back to baseball stats he could never forget and didn’t have to think about. In 1999 Jeter had one hundred and two runs batted in. That little cushion was one of the only reassurances Roland had.

Office buildings. The thought is fast and leaves no other clue. Those giant water bottles. Roland put it together. Memory flitted through time to time, if it was a quick thought. He’d found water that way before. Keep it short and sweet and he would find it that way again. Roland often thought of himself as a rat, a rodent, a terrified, sketched out half crazy beating heart in the dark trying only to find the scraps to stay alive. This whole thought never came as one segment, of course. Roland wouldn’t allow it, and right now, he wasn’t hungry either.

There were offices in this building. He’d seen them. Six seconds. Focusing on furniture and broken glass, he headed out the door towards the ground level lobby. The place smelled like hot fresh death. The carpet still looked brand new. Idle, haphazard notions rattled around for a moment before they were tossed out like grenades with no pins. The inside of Roland’s head could be likened to alternating strands of Christmas lights set on flash mode. One idea is allowed to light up, one thought, but it must burn out fast enough as the next section, or idea, flickers on. The former thought hasn’t fully dissipated, it is merely dormant. It can be relit once another has interrupted the consecutive execution of the thought. There are always new thoughts turning on, turning off, pausing, waiting, developing, reawakening, and sometimes even becoming whole. If he is patient, eventually the lights will have cycled through enough times to leave at least a few bulbs warm.

The ground floor persuaded Roland to send his breakfast hurtling against the bottom of a nearby wall. Beans don’t match the paint. He could have sworn he chewed them. Three seconds. He ignored the desire to contemplate the moment, throwing an arm over his nose and mouth to ease the stench. Why were there so many? Two seconds. Roland scanned the corpse strewn lobby for a water cooler, quickly realizing why they were all in here; what had led to this mess. Sometimes you can’t stop a thought, no matter how you try. Sometimes you get fried for the good ones. They’d ripped each other apart, fighting desperately over the last of something we took for granted. The majority must have died before they ever had a sip, crushed and trampled under the naked bleeding feet of the horde. There were so many of them. The doors were electronic, sealed now that the power was out. Roland cursed, holding his head. Maybe they got in before the electricity failed. Although the lobby resembled the aftermath of the blitzkrieg, the decay wasn’t nearly enough for it to have been that long. How did they get inside if there is no way out? Five seconds. Roland had climbed the fire escape, never leaving the room he happened into through the window he broke. There was no water here now, and no more time to give care to wonder.

Back upstairs, back through the jagged glass under-bite of the remaining window, and back down the fire escape. Roland jogged the familiar streets, ignoring the slap of the pavement through the thinly worn sole of his left boot. It would be without one soon, just like the rest of the world. They seldom even looked his direction, yet somehow still knew when he approached; ducking behind dumpsters like frightened alley cats and scattering into the closest shell of a sanctuary. As if he could really harm them. As if there was anything worse that could be done. He’d heard of them attacking the living, ripping at skin and biting like animals. He’d never seen it. He wasn’t even sure if he believed it. None the less, Roland still found it uncomfortable to walk too close to them, to be among them at all. Everyone stayed out of the cities. That’s why he was here. He wasn’t terrified of them, not like most others were. He could pass by and scavenge where others wouldn’t. The worst part, the eerie overwhelming kicker, the thing that set his teeth on edge and made his skin dance in tiny shudders was always the silence. The only interruption of an occasional bird chirping or the scuttling of windblown paper across a crumbling street merely added to the unnatural looming dread. They did not speak. They never had.

Roland cut through the park, disregarding the putrid smell of yet another drone corpse, laid to rest on a bench. They were all going to die eventually. Four seconds. It still surprised him that any at all remained. Some basic instinct for survival kept them foraging, kept them searching for food and water, kept them in their prolonged state of vacancy. They were here, all right. Roland could reach out and touch them, if he had the nerve, but they were not here.

Four million, three hundred thousand babies born that year… Eight million, six hundred thousand parents not thinking twice. Four million, three hundred thousand children entering an unknowing population; children born hostages of some internal hell they could not break free from. Maybe they didn’t want to, maybe they didn’t know how, maybe they couldn’t. Hell, for all Roland knew, maybe it wasn’t as bad as where he was now. He didn’t want to think about it, and not solely to avoid being fried. It was still too easy to set off the aching echo where a heart once beat. It hadn’t been long enough to get a college degree, let alone forget completely. Three seconds. Drones or not, they had all been somebody’s children. Six seconds. That would be enough lamenting for the lost. He would join the ranks of the untimely if he didn’t get into gear and salvage some provisions.

Chapter 4

Why she had chosen her, Alison would never know. Maybe it was because she was nice to little Sera, and so few others even knew her name. Whatever the case, Alison felt some pride in the act. She’d been chosen by this tiny, quiet child; selected from the other adults in the little girl’s life to bear witness to her secret, which, up until now, not even little Sera Rais knew much about herself.

The bathroom was empty, bellowing an echoed retort from the closing door. Bland tile reflected yellow lighting across the peeling paint of the stall doors, all of which hung open except for the farthest, closed but not latched from the inside as a thin gap could be seen between the door and the frame. Alison grew uneasy, though she couldn’t pinpoint why. The last minute felt like half an hour, creeping by in limping seconds. Up until now, she had not been worried, more cautious as to the cause of Sera’s plight. More often than not, kids over-reacted to social situations or emotional stimuli. Sera appeared frightened, but Alison remembered her own childhood well. She’d been a lot like Sera; quiet, shy, introverted to a dangerous extreme that kept her isolated in her peer group. Other children picked on her often and she spent many a recess alone with