Black Jack Read Free

were sharing a body with ‘others’. And all of them unavailable to the core personality or the ‘real Dakota’s’ conscious recall. Her inner world would become a labyrinth full of strangers who could only be called forward and controlled by him or someone to whom he gave the appropriate access codes.
    The other programmers and handlers owned the obligatory three-ringed notebooks and laptops with all the access codes and triggers for their slaves, but he had been trained in the oral method. He had it all memorized, especially the secret back door codes that he never revealed to anyone.
    He was not a squeamish man and he stepped easily into the growing puddles of blood, to lean over her. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. He removed her earphones. His nostrils flared. The smell of her. Blood, sweat, a sour note - vomit, fear and something else… A child thing… His thing.
    The first alter to be programmed utilizing the thirteen by thirteen grid was always the protector persona.
    ‘She looks like you,’ he whispered. ‘But she is not you. We will always strap you down and hurt you. But she will come forth and hold allyour pain. Her name is Merica.’  He paused for a moment to let the formal, unique name he had given the protector persona sink in. ‘I am now speaking with Merica, the one who holds all the pain. You are Dakota’s protector. From now on your only task is to keep her safe. If she disobeys us, you must do whatever necessary to stop her. ‘Or…’ He touched her face with an electrically charged ball wrapped in salt water. Dakota’s body convulsed violently. ‘We will hurt you. Don’t ever forget. Do your job well.’
    He lightly pressed his fingertips behind both her ears, and administered another low dose of electroshock to lock in the command. This ‘feel the pain’ sequence would be repeated again and again until Merica could be ‘trusted’ to take over the function of Dakota’s prison guard, the insistent voice inside her head that her twisted logic would call ‘her protector’. For the rest of her life Merica would keep not only the girl and later the woman isolated and pliable, but, more importantly, also her programmer and owner from capture or retribution. Merica would resist any recollection even in the hands of the most qualified therapist.
    The next persona he sectioned off was a weak thing, hardly human. It had no courage. Its heart, he told the girl, had been ripped out and sealed in an Earthen jar. ‘Now give all your feelings of wanting to hurt us to it,’ he commanded. In this way any desire for retaliation or revenge against her tormentors would no longer be accessible to the dominant personality, but held by that sorry, stunted creature. It too was given a formal, unique name - Eylon.
    In this manner anger was channeled into another alter and told it that it was not human, but a chained, wild creature. Only he had the keys. Only he could access that frothing beast. Over time that creature would be stoked, nourished, given legs, hands, wings, heart, mind, soul, and be set against any that would try to help her.
    Week by week with faultless precision he created many other alters. Almost all, permanently crippled, or taught to view themselves as hateful and hated. Some were frozen as little children; others blind, mute or deaf.
    Hope, he told her, led to wanting, and wanting was very bad, the cause of great suffering. ‘Friends will always hurt you. Boys will hurt you. You must remain alone. Don’t ever let anyone touch you. Or…’ He held open both her eyelids and squeezed a few drops of chemical irritant into her eyes. While she writhed with pain the lights were switched off to simulate blindness.
    ‘See what wanting does? Now you are forever blind.’
    Wanting was christened Cromag.
    ‘Your job,’ he told Cromag, ‘is to keep her from wanting. If she wants, take it away instantly. Replace it with doubt and discomfort.’ Cromag would spend the rest of