Program 12 Read Free Page B

progress, or so I’d heard.
    “Your Program is coming along quite nicely,” McVeigh had told me. “I can only imagine how well you will do once your human identity is programmed into your core.”
    I knew that McVeigh was happy with my progress here at Vesta Corp, but I did not comprehend much of what he said. What I did know was that as long as my treatments continued to work, I’d remain activated. I’d retain a purpose. That was all that mattered.
    Looking down, I could see that the leather straps were hanging down, no longer constricting my wrists. Even without the straps to hold me down, I did not move. I remained seated, waiting for a White Coat to come strolling in through the door. As I waited, I noticed that my skin where it had been torn from the pressure of the restraints was flapping around. I’d have to pay a visit to the doctor again so that she could tend to the tear.
    “You must find a way to fight the pain, Thirteen,” she’d tell me, just like she always did.
    And then I’d nod, because that was what I was expected to do.
    The truth was that I had no control over how my Program reacted to pain. Everything I did, everything I was – it was all controlled by the scientists. I didn’t choose to react. My Program, the one which they’d built, did. I twisted my wrist so that my palm was facing up, and I gazed down at the open skin. No blood. No bone. Only exposed metal.
    “Program, please move towards the door to await your caretakers.” The scientist’s voice echoed throughout the room. “If I have to repeat myself, Program, I will see to it that Mister McVeigh is called, and I’m sure neither of us wants that.”
    Slowly, I took to my feet, nodding towards the frosted glass as I made my way to the door. My caretakers had yet to come and retrieve me. Until they came for me, I was forbidden to leave the room. Programs were not to be left alone, especially to stroll through the facility.
    “Freedom for the Programs means danger for the living,” McVeigh always told us. “We provide a strict schedule to ensure you live up to your potential. If you fail to comply with our requirements, you will be subject to deactivation.”
    I'd seen a fellow Program be deactivated only a few days earlier. The White Coats seemed puzzled as to what could have gone wrong. She had received her daily treatment before heading into inspection.
    “The inspection should have proceeded as normal,” the White Coats said regretfully. “It never should have happened.”
    I remembered walking to the Pod room. The bright, white hall was empty and quiet for the most part, until she came along. Her voice, full of anger and desperation, broke through the silence. She didn’t sound like us. She sounded like one of them. She sounded alive, mortal.
    “You can’t control me,” she screamed. “I know who I am. I know what it is that you are doing here! I will stop this. Do you understand? I will find a way to get the truth out there to the others!”
    McVeigh assured us that he would take care of the problem.
    That was the last I ever saw of her.
    This was Vesta Corp. This was the place we called home. Charles McVeigh was the man responsible for giving us life, for giving us everything that we could possibly want. He told us that we were a part of something bigger than we could possibly understand; that we were the new race. And I believed him.
    I didn’t know much about the world outside of these walls, only what McVeigh told us, and what I had learned from being around the White Coats.
    And even though I was a Program - a computer built to act human - I still considered myself to be alive. Sure, there were distinct differences between us and the humans around us. For one, Programs did not bleed, nor did we have beating hearts. We felt what only what our Programs registered; what we were programmed to feel. We reacted as we are programmed to react. Everything that we were has been carefully constructed and