This is a departure from my previous stories, and if the response is positive, I plan on turning this into a series. Its my first time with this subject matter, so let me know how I handle it. Also, if you like it and want to see more, be sure to let me know where you'd like to see the series progress. And as always, thanks for reading!
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Barry was hacker. It was how he made his money, it was how he spent his spare time, it was how he spent practically every waking moment. He had been doing it since the age of twelve, and he was one of the best by the time he was fifteen, and he was still the best now as he passed twenty five.
He had been in the private information business for so long, he was used to uncovering surprising secrets and unknown truths. From public access town records to top secret government files, he had hacked and obtained more information then most people normally absorb in a lifetime. With that being said, he was jaded enough that he was convinced he had seen it all, that there was nothing left to discover that would could truly shock him. He was wrong.
It was a routine assignment from one of his corporate clients that changed his life forever, hacking into classified military files for information to give them an advantage in the latest multi-billion dollar construction contract bidding war. Previous costs, siphoned funds, actual budget restrictions, that sort of thing. He had just finished accessing and downloading the requested stats, and was just casually nosing around the system before vacating when he stumbled across a file with a bunch of Weensville address scattered throughout the info pile. Curious, he flash-loaded the entire file and got out before the security measures discovered he was in there. It wasn't until a week later that he actually took the time to look at them.
It probably shouldn't have come as a shock to Barry that his home town was part of a vast top secret mind control experiment. But it did.
Barry spent most of that evening and the entire night sitting up in his bedroom/work station with a pot of coffee, pouring over the files meticulously. By the time he had drudged through the back-history of the experiments and read the updates on its current status, morning had arrived unnoticed. Getting to the heart of the matter was a long and difficult process, as military documents weren't exactly written like stereo manuals. But eventually he was able to get a clear picture of what was going on.
The project was called Operation Puppetmaster, and Weensville was the subject of the study. An ongoing experiment since the early sixties, the project involved the goal of brain-washing and then controlling large groups of people. Towns. Cities. Armies. The applications were limitless, and terrifyingly so.
It consisted of two phases: brain-washing the populace, then commanding them through mind-control. The first phase was multi-faceted in its approach, involving chemical additives introduced into food supplies and water sources, subliminal messages saturating public channels and local cable providers, and subversive propaganda techniques utilized in public schools and local government-run companies, of which there were many in the small town. Through these methods, the subconscious was trained to become complete responsive to outside influence, which could then be easily triggered by a pre-programmed series of passwords. After that, the subject would enter something very similar to a hypnotic state, completely under the control of their new "Puppetmaster".
The commands were specifically designed to avoid accidental activation. When asked to spell "Chimera", anyone primed for mind control would instinctively answer with "I beg your pardon, Billy?". The correct response to this reply was "Orchid Ice Cream", which would trigger the hypnotic response. Any other answer, such as repeating the question, or asking who Billy was, would cancel the trigger, and the hypnotic response would not take effect. But once activated, it remained activated, the "Puppet" being completely open and obliviously obedient to any and all direction.
The project was a huge success, but it had hit a brick wall nearly five years ago, when the scientists involved discovered two major flaws that negated any practical military application.
First of all, once activated by a Puppetmaster, the Puppet could only be manipulated by the person who initially triggered the response. All attempts to transfer command or re-trigger subjects failed miserably. Barry couldn't begin to understand the complex psychological double-speak, but it apparently had something to do with confusing the subconscious mind.
Second, and more important, was the ease at which the subjects could be deprogrammed. Once they were made aware of the code words and their desired effect, all programming was instantly negated, as the conscious mind informed the subconscious mind, which promptly tore down the walls of the entire program. This meant Barry had technically already deprogrammed himself, a small relief overshadowed by the bigger picture.
In some ways, the town was safe, since the project was abandoned. But, in true military fashion, the town wasn't deprogrammed, but merely put in a holding pattern, in case the citizens could ever be made useful in the near future.
It was this last part that scared Barry, because he knew the only thing they'd be useful as at this point was programmed killers, those brainwashed lone assassins you hear conspiracy nuts talk about all the time. Barry knew he had to do something, but he didn't know what. At first he thought of running to the press, but they wouldn't believe him, even with the documentation. And even if they did, the government would probably bump him off before they could break the story, most likely having one of his own programmed townsfolk do the dirty work.
Deprogramming seemed easy enough, and he could probably take out ad space on a local channel or in the newspaper and let everybody deprogram themselves like he had, just reading about it. But that was just as risky as alerting the media. There seemed to be no way out.
Barry eventually staggered downstairs and into the kitchen in search of more coffee, his brain hurting from the stress of the situation, his mind awash with conspiracy theories and desperate planning. He couldn't figure out what to do. He was so engrossed in the dilemma that he nearly dropped his fresh cup of coffee when he walked in on his sister and mother exercising in the living room.
Barry still lived with his mother, Helen, and he was comfortable with the situation, even if other people weren't. His father had died when he was just a boy, and so he had been the man of the house since then. He had felt a little guilty about moving out and leaving his mother all alone, and so he just never moved out. His bedroom still looked like he was a High School student, if you ignored the thousands of dollars worth of high tech computer equipment, but he didn't feel like he was living under her wing or avoiding adulthood. He managed to pay all the bills so his mother could work part time and take college courses (her new passion), and she kept the house neat and saved him the trouble of having to adapt to the outside world. It was an ideal situation, and he felt no need to escape.
His sister Nancy, on the other hand, had desperately wanted to escape, and did so. She currently lived on campus at the state college located two towns over, but managed to visit them every weekend. She and Helen hadn't gotten along when she was younger, but now they were growing quite close, and were getting into the Mother/Daughter relationship, which was one of the reasons Helen had started taking college courses. The whole bonding thing left Barry a little cold, but that was probably because he still didn't get along with Nancy. Even though he was five years her senior, she still looked at him as a computer geek loser and a mommy's boy, and she rarely hesitated to say so. He'd tried to explain it to her, but she was so deep into social groups and the night life that the idea of wanting to work in seclusion was practically an alien concept to her.
Nancy would come over early Saturday morning and work out with Helen, their new fitness craze that was another part of the bonding process, and that was what they were doing when he walked in on them. Barry usually made it a habit of avoiding contact with them until the afternoon, knowing how much their time together meant to them, but he had completely forgotten what day it was. He let out a yelp when he almost tripped over them, as they were on the floor stretching when he wandered in.
"Hey pumpkin!" His mother looked up and smiled at him, still stretching. "Imagine seeing you before noon! What's the special occasion?" Nancy looked up at him as well, minus the smile. She seemed a little annoyed that he was there.
Barry struggled to respond, but he was overcome by the thought that his family was under somebody else's control, unwitting slaves of Project Puppetmaster. Paranoia washed over him, and he found himself blurting out the first code word. He just had to know.
"Hey guys, how do you spell Chimera?"
The both stopped stretching and look up at him again. No noticeable change took place, and they still looked and sounded normal. But it was almost eerie the way they both replied "I beg your pardon, Billy?" in unison.
