When You Wish Upon a Star

The year 2013 wasn’t the greatest year for me. Lot’s of other people enjoyed it, but not myself particularly. In January of that year I got Caught sneaking into a building, just because it’s said that it’s impossible to do.

Let me rephrase that. In january of that year I got caught sneaking into the building for the third time in a week, because it’s said that it’s impossible to break into. I would break in, and prove that it was easy to steal their stuff. The building was owned by Sci-Con, and was pretty much empty except for some tanks that looked like they was some form of coffin. It was creepy.

On my third attempt, I was actually sneaking back out when I tripped something. To this day I don’t know what it was that made me. a security guard had me tackled in less than 30 seconds though, a record for these kind of buildings. Breaking and Entering is what I did. I didn’t get paid for it and I never stole anything, it was just something I did. The thrill of finding ways to break into these kind of buildings? I loved it. Nothing better than spending months or years, wracking your brain to get into the building.

I thought I was going to be locked up, to be honest. I figured that I was going to be thrown in a cell and they were going to lose the key. Even back then, Sci-Con wasn’t someone to fuck with. They’re technology launched us into the future. They always had the best and the most modern household, or work, items. So when a woman comes into the room I’ve been put in after the security guard cuffed me, I was surprised to see she wasn’t a cop. She wasn’t happy to see me, by any means, but she wasn’t a cop. She sits across from me. I settle in, and let her scan me, which is what she was doing. She was judging me. I got that a lot. I was covered in tattoos at 26, and though I wasn’t huge I held myself up in bar fights. my hair was shaved close to my head, and I had both ears pierced though I hadn’t worn anything in them since I was 23. I worked in a lab full of old men trying to out do each other with the same subject, while I quietly kept finding new things to do that got me paid more than the lot of them. Finally, she began to speak.

“Francis Dewitt.” is what she says. I smile at her. she was an older woman, in her 40’s, but she looked nice enough if she hadn’t been woken up at three in the morning.

“That’s my name, yes.” I say as politely as possible. She pulls out her phone, and begins scrolling like crazy. I’m confused. Is she reading that fast?

“You’re 26. You work in a lab owned by Great Tech.” here she glances at me and I shrug.

“For the record, no, they didn’t ask me to do this.” I add as an afterthought. that got her to smile.

“Oh, I know Mr. Dewitt. We’ve watched you awhile. You’ve broke into Benjamin Tower, Meyer’s Mansion, Great Cities Bank, and Rituals Museum, among about 12 other supposedly impenetrable forces around the U.S.” She says without looking up from her phone. That got my attention. I never told anyone about my hobby. I never stole anything, and I never took pictures or videos like some idiots do. I do it because I know that I can. I know that I’m smart enough to do it on my own. So how do they know about it?

“How-” I begin, but before I can finish my sentence she cuts me off.

“We’ve been watching you, as I said. you’re a bright man. Highest IQ of any living human being, though a few points shy of the highest IQ recorded. You also know how to apply these brains you’ve seemed to have developed. You started this… Tradition of yours about three years ago, and you’ve consistently broke into a place ever since. We knew you’d come here eventually, and we knew that you also liked to break in more than once, to prove that it wasn’t a fluke of the building system.” She says. It looks like she’s reading this off the screen she’s holding, but I can’t be for sure about it. Not knowing how to respond, I stay quiet instead.

“We almost didn’t catch you, and We’ve been looking for you. Tell me, is this your second or third time in here?” she asks, looking at me and setting the phone down on the table. the screen is black now.

“Third.” I say, and confusion laces my tone. I set my cuffed hands on the table and lean forward, shifting to get more comfortable. they’ve given me a padded chair, and the table wasn’t metal but wood. this wasn’t an interrogation room, but it was starting to feel like it.

“I see. We could have lost you then. Mr. Dewitt, do you know who I am?” she asks, changing the subject so fast it surprised me. I study her this time. she’s tiny, but she sits up straight, and she doesn't look away when I make eye contact. she’s in slacks and a nice shirt, but her hair is thrown up hastily, meaning I woke her up as I suspected before. I take in her phone, an expensive thing that looks like it lives in her hand or not far from it. That with her attitude and her questions, and I think I have a good idea of who she may be.

“You’re Mr. Tifo’s secretary. Which makes you…” I mentally run through my list of people I had studied for this building.

“Ms, no, mrs. Hewin.” I say. She looks slightly surprised. Mr. Tifo was the founder and CEO of Sci-Con. so if she was here, I was in some serious shit. She clears her throat, but nods at me to let me know that it’s the correct answer.

“I have a problem, Mr. Dewitt. I want to send you to jail.” she pauses when I sit up, surprised at her bluntness.

“But, Mr. Tifo has a better idea. He wants to put you through a series of tests. If, by chance, you pass, he wants you to do a job for him. If you don’t pass the test, he wants you to work as part of his research lab. In return, he won’t turn you in.” She says, and not once does she sound happy about it. She doesn’t want me to take the job.

But I really, really, don’t want to go to jail.

“What kind of job?” I ask. She reaches down for the first time to the bag that she had brought in with her. She pulls out a clipboard, and a pen.

“It’s a project in progress, so I can’t tell you much. I can tell you that, if you say yes, any of your living relatives will be paid a monthly salary of $2500. You, of course, will be here with us until the project is complete, like the Sci-Con tradition says. No one can leave until the project is announced publicly.” She says, handing me the clipboard. I scan the first page, and it pretty much tells me the same thing she just did. I lift the page, and there’s about 17 just like it. I wasn’t going to read all that.

“So you want me because…” I ask after a moment. She sighs.

“Your brain. It’s highly functional, more so than anyone we have ever found. We need someone who can…. We need a brain that can sort through situations at an incredible speed, and maintain pathways between multiple connectors.” she says. I can tell she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but I get the jist .they want my brain, not me specifically. They want to use it to test multiple links, something they’ve wanted to do for years. it allows people to share things they hear, and certain things they think. It’s never been officially released, but they did announce it as something they are working on.

“And how long will this last?” I ask finally. She smiles again.

“As long as the project needs you, Mr. Dewitt.”

The first month wasn’t bad. It was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t bad. They ran tests on my brain, scanned it, put me in scenarios, tested my reactions. when I had supposedly passed, they let me in on the project. They wanted to create a computer software that worked like a human brain, because even with computer speeds they still couldn’t process what they wanted to.

They wanted to start giving people their wishes.

I had laughed when Mrs. Hewin told me about it. But once I thought about it, the scary realization was that it could happen. if someone made a wish while wearing their helmet, and the computer heard the wish, it could release chemicals, or hormones, or anything else needed by that individual into the helmet that they were wearing and make that happen. It was a crazy, far fetched idea, but they were amazingly close. the transmitter, a large satellite I had never seen, was supposedly ready. the helmets were ready, and worked. the only problem was the computer. They wanted something to model it on, and that’s where I came in.

They would put me in one of those coffin like things I saw in the first building, and attach electrodes and wires to my head and sometimes even under my skin. then they would fill it with this nasty, slimy, thick, cold gel, with only a tube in my mouth to breathe out of. It made it pitch black. 99 people would then attach the helmets, and I would suddenly hear all these wants and needs. cars, money, love, harm to someone. I had to sort which ones could be done: The love, for example, I could cloud them in a chemical that would make someone more attracted to them. I could give them a hormone to make them more confident, and I had to sort those away from the ones that couldn’t be done, like the car and the money, or harming someone. Then I had to figure out which combinations of chemicals and hormones to spray at the person, and direct it at the helmet that was transmitting. All under a time limit. I got pretty good, if I do say so myself.

That lasted until June. Then, one day, as I was climbing into the tank I noticed that the others, which had previously all been open, where now shut. An alarm went off in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. they’d treated me well so far, and I had no reason to question them. I had stripped, as I had every other time, and climbed in. They had told me that they were introducing a new piece of equipment for me, and that it would hurt if I didn’t have an anesthetic, so I wasn’t alarmed when the needle went into my arm. I felt my body go numb, and it was nice. my thought was, Now I couldn’t feel the cold of that jell when they poured it on anymore. I got all wired up, and I was more than a little shocked when I felt someone violently shove the back of my neck. I didn’t feel it, but my whole body moved with it.

“Calm down, Mr. Dewitt. It’s completely ok.” one of the technicians assured me. But it wasn’t ok. It was hard for me to breathe now, and I tried to tell them that. My mouth wasn’t working well, so the garbled mess that came out of it wasn’t something that they would have understood. instead they put my breathing tube in and begin filling my coffin as they help me slide to the bottom. I can hear the buzzing as the machine fills the space with the nasty liquid. once it stops, I feel one helmet click on.

“Mr. Dewitt. This is Mr. Tifo. I’m so glad you decided to join our team. Today, is our final test. If you… succeed, then the project will be announced tomorrow.” the distant voice that I usually heard was directed at me now, not just a general being who granted wishes. I was wheezing, it felt like my lungs were collapsing in. I tried to send something back, anything, but I couldn’t. that wasn’t how the machine worked, messages only went one way.

“Now, Mr. Dewitt, we’re going to help you with that breathing problem, but you have to trust us. Do you understand? keep your mouth closed, Mr. Dewitt, the gel is not something you want to taste.” the voice said an instant before the tube I’d been breathing through was yanked away from me. of course I opened my mouth, and got a nasty, horrible mouthful of something that tasted like puke and garbage. I tried to spit it out, but I only managed to start drowning myself in it.

“Mr. Dewitt, close your mouth!” The voice barked, and I obeyed. then he told me to swallow what I had ended up inhaling. at this point I was feeling the lack of oxygen and obeyed, just wanting the tube back. instead, to my horror, once my mouth was empty and my esophagus cleared, I felt my lungs inflate. I didn’t breath air in, but something moved down my throat and into my lungs. a steady in and out rhythm began, and I was so shocked and scared I was paralyzed.

“There, you see? I told you we had fixed the problem. The device at your neck will provide you with oxygen, as well as any nutrients your body will need to stay alive. the jell, well, that’s to keep your body in the condition it is in now.” there was a pause, and my brain kicks in. What was going on?

“You see, Mr. Dewitt, the project is ready, It’s been ready, besides a few test subjects including yourself, for some time now. 99 others are in tanks, just like yours. the people you granted wishes to every day for the past six or so months. You never saw them, but they felt you help them. Now that the test is complete we can launch the satellite. But you see, we still haven’t came up with a computer system that will work with what we’re doing.” he says. My mind is racing. 99? That makes me 100. why so many people? What was he talking about?

“We need you, Mr. Dewitt. The project still needs you. So, for now, you and your friends are going to go in the satelitte. you will be out computer. they, unfortunately, do not have the capacity that you do and so they’ve been all but shut down. the only thing working is the passageways that will tell you what the people wearing a helmet is thinking. they’re the transmitters, Mr. Dewitt. they’ve had all the formulas for any chemical reaction ever put into their…. now erased, memories. which means it's all they would know, if they were awake. All you have to do is sort whether or not it can be done, and send an ok to them. They will take the wish and find the appropriate chemical for it. All you have to do, is take people's wishes, and determine whether they will receive them or not.”

I’m panicking. I didn’t sign up for this. they wanted my brain, but i didn’t think it was to this extent. Why would they do this? HOW could they do this? send people up into space to sort out naive wishes and hopes? We have lives too. I want out of this machine, but the jell makes it hard to move. the sedative they gave me doesn’t help.

“One more thing, before we go, Mr. Dewitt. We’ve had a machine put into the pack on your neck. If for some reason you decide that you don’t want to sort the wishes transmitted, or you stop doing it for some reason, you’ll feel this.”

At his word a wave of pain hits me. I clamp my mouth shut from a scream only because I don’t want to taste the gel as it feels like every nerve of mine ignites. in an instant, it’s gone.

“Sci-Con appreciates all you’re doing for us Mr. Dewitt. The satellite will be launched within the month, until then I will have the occasional group of curious, wealthy, observers in. Other then that, Mr. Dewitt, You are going to be what people wish on from now on when they look up at the sky.”

And the man is gone.