บท 4: Memories (Part 1)
'Where am I?' Victor asked himself as he floated in what seemed like complete darkness. He could not see, smell, hear, taste or feel anything around him. Only his thoughts kept him company.
'Is this heaven? Or hell?' Victor thought as he tried to make sense of the situation. The endless void felt overwhelming to him, he could do nothing in this situation but think.
It felt like a prison, solitary confinement. It was driving him mad. Sometimes, it felt like just seconds had passed since he starting being in this endless void and at times it felt like an eternity. The concept of time to Victor wasn't a tool for him to use to tell whether it's morning or night anymore, it was his torturer.
'One thousand four hundred and sixty-five, one thousand four hundred and sixty-six, one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight… or was it sixty-seven? I guess I should start over again.'
Victor tried everything to keep his mind active, trying to keep himself from going insane. From counting until a million to remembering every memory he ever had, it was boring, but it kept his mind active.
His father was a politician and politicians always had a mask they put on for their public appearances, to try and woo the crowds. And his father was no exception.
He was never there for his birthday parties, not even during holidays. Instead, he was out telling people how great he was and to vote for him. He talked to businesspeople daily and at times brought strange people to the house.
Victor's mother loved him at least he thought she did. She tried her best in his eyes to take care of him. But after Victor had turned nine, his mother stopped celebrating anything with him. Instead, she followed his father more often. All Victor was left was a few dollar bills every week on the kitchen counter in an empty house, not even a note saying they loved him.
He went to school, as usual, nobody knew who his parents were. To avoid standing out, he said his parents worked in business. It helped explain why they weren't there most of the time. He made friends, good friends. They took care of him, and he took care of them. They laughed, argued, fight and in the end, they always got back together.
Victor had run out of memories to think about; he had only lived for such a short time. He began to worry, what happens now? Does he try to count sheep? But he already did it before he thought, but as he thought he felt a sharp pain.
He did not know where but a sharp pain pierced him. 'Pain! That was a pain right?! I felt something!' Victor shouted in his mind excitedly; he tried to find out where that pain came from. It was a fantastic feeling for Victor; he had finally felt something! He wasn't dead; he was alive!
It proved that his attempts at keeping himself sane weren't in vain! But as the pain faded something new came in. It felt like liquid flowing into him; it felt cold. Soon memories that weren't his flowed into his head. It was a cooling sensation, and it made Victor feel… alive!
'How beautiful…' Victor thought, somehow he had finally felt something, showing him that he was alive. From the sharp pain to the cooling sensation afterward, it was indeed blissful. Victor let the information flow happily through his brain as he savored in the feeling.
But as everything does, the sensation faded and Victor was once again by himself.
'These memories, they aren't mine but...' He looked into them and felt like they were his own. There were in total three memories to sift through, and Victor had decided to look through all of them.
As Victor looked into the memory, he realized he could see everything, from the time of their birth to the time of their death. The first memory was from a boy who went into the army. He was born in a hospital and was taken good care of by the nurses. His parents were kind and good-hearted, they were good people. As the parents exited the hospital with him, it felt like a whole new world.
The place looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, flying cars dashing through the skies in an orderly fashion. Tall Skyscrapers filled the area with long bridges connected each of them. The area below was filled with shops operated by different merchants, whether they are selling trinkets or food it felt like they had everything there.
It was truly magical and felt like a brand new world. But Victor couldn't keep looking at the scenery as the memories kept moving forward. Soon he was at the house of the family, in the middle of one of the residential skyscrapers. The house's size looked like a three-room apartment with enough space for the three of them to live comfortably. It seemed like they were considered wealthy.
The father was a lieutenant, who had a squad of men at his control. While his mother was an officer stationed in the communication's department, they had an exciting love life according to the mother, but the memories didn't include it. What a shame Victor would say as he looked towards the child.
The child grew up in a military family; there were usually two ways it was going to go. Follow his parents to the army or rebel against his parents and pursue other dreams. But it seemed like there wasn't any choice in the situation. The most well paying job in this sci-fi world was to be either a businessman/businesswoman or to enlist in the army. And so the boy who was now 12 entered the military.
Victor felt the boy's age was too young, if he were told at that age to join the army he would have likely cried on the spot! But the boys in this era seemed to be mature, or maybe he had already thought of joining the army for a long time. It was a waste that the memories didn't include the boy's thoughts.
Soon the boy was accepted into the army, and a large flying vehicle that looked like a military truck arrived outside the residential skyscraper. His parents waved him goodbye in tears, and he left. The boy was only just one of many children that enter into the army; it made Victor wonder how many people lived in the skyscraper.
Soon they were shipped off to a military base outside of the city to the east where it was a desert. Life didn't seem to grow here, it just brown dusty dirt and some rocks. They landed at the military base, and the boy and the other children came down from the flying truck they were immediately tested.
Push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and running were the test they told the children to do. Most of them collapsed half-way, but the boy was one of the few that managed to get through the test, though barely. The children were then split into two groups, the ones who didn't finish and the ones that did before leading the two groups separately.
The group, the boy, was escorted to individual tents of their own and enjoyed a warm bed with a pillow to lay their tired heads on. Afterward, they got to enjoy stew cooked for them by a chef from the kitchen of the barracks beside them and spoke about how it's like to be in the military. Victor, however, felt sore, very sore. He could feel what the boy felt in his memories which was something he enjoyed, any sensation he felt was blissful than his eternity of nothingness before.
Soon the next day the two groups came together again and saw the other group looking like a mess compared to them. They had leaves in their hair, mud on their clothes and looked as though they hadn't slept at all. It showed a glimpse of what will happen if you didn't pass the tests.
Soon it was just repetition, the children trained the physical bodies and rested depending on how well they did while Victor kept feeling the soreness from the exercises with glee. Soon it came for the children to be exposed to weaponry. First were retractable batons, it was a short metal stick that could be hidden easily as the rod could be hidden into its grip.
The instructors told them how to use the stick and what were the best methods of hitting, after that they had paired up the children to fight with each other with the batons. It felt brutal to let kids fight each other with metal sticks, but to Victor, it didn't bother him. Pain to him now felt like being alive, so what if they get injured? They at least get to survive!
Soon the duels started, and the boy that Victor's memories were linked to was getting beaten hard by the other child. The boy was much smaller compared to the other child giving him a significant disadvantage. The boy tried to block with his arms which felt futile as his arms took most of the damage. Each hit stung more and more each time the other child kept whacking the boy with no remorse.
Victor, feeling all this felt more and more alive as he felt each hit, the boy, however, started tearing up from the pain each hit made his arms burn with even more pain. Soon the boy realized that he couldn't take the pain any longer and needed to attack.
The boy took the chance of the other child raising for another strike to push his entire body towards the other child's stomach. The force had caused the other child to cough out his saliva, and the fell onto the dirt. With the other child dazed from the impact, the boy saw his opportunity to enact his revenge. From on top of the other child, he raised his baton and struck the other child's face causing a "thwack" sound.
The feeling from hearing the sound sent shivers down the boy's body; his body was telling him to continue beating the other child. The boy raised his baton again and struck the other child in the face. Again and again and again. "Thwack," "Thwack," "Thwack." The sound of metal hitting flesh made the boy's adrenaline skyrocket it was a sensation he could get addicted to, and Victor felt the same.
Each hit felt good; it felt right. Victor now saw how fun violence was when he was playing video games he had always played violently, killing innocent bystanders and was evil in general. But he had never tried doing it in real life; he knew it was wrong after all. But now, he now felt how good it is just to hit someone: the sound, the feeling, the release. With no consequences, it was like a drug.
But of course, there were always consequences. When the boy had stopped, everybody was looking at him with fear while the army men looked at him with disgust. He had just murdered a fellow child. Soon the army men grabbed him and put a black bag over his head; he was being dragged somewhere.
Soon the bag was lifted, and he was in a cell, prison. Something Victor was curious about, how would the boy react being in prison compared to how he did. The boy seemed fearful unlike how Victor was; the boy looked around as he grabbed the bars. He shouted to let him go, saying he was sorry repeatedly though no one was there to listen to him.
Days go by, the boy was given food at regular intervals but had no human interactions other than the army man giving him food, this meant he was still at the military, but military jail. After some days past, the soldiers let the boy out, he was excited, were they finally going to release him?
They placed a black bag over his head and dragged him somewhere. When they removed the black bag from his head, he realized he was strapped down onto a surgical chair. A doctor was smiling at him as they placed a mask over his mouth, with a tube extending out somewhere. He tried breathing, and it smelt like fruits, soon he slowly dozed off, and the memories ended.
It left Victor wondering, why didn't the soldiers stop the boy from killing the other child? And what happened to the boy at the end?
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