Behold the "brain experiment gone wrong" fic. The subject fascinates me and I wanted to write a story on it for a very long time. Finally 70% of this came out about 2-3 months ago but I just didn't quite know how to wrap it all up. So all this time I kept revisiting the draft, adding or subtracting something until I got tired of fussing with it so now you can read for yourselves and hopefully enjoy...

PS: Guest - yep, that's the idea :-D I realized two things, though - I fucked up Berdie's name (but I like my version so I'll keep it) and it kind of needs a re-write that includes a resolution (thanks, Jamla :-) ).

Litchfield Minimum Security Pr… Federal Correctional Institution isn't as much forbidding as it's ugly, at least from the outside. That's what Piper decides as they make their way down the very long driveway. The closer they get, the more it starts to remind Piper of her old high school. Which, she figures, is a good thing, because she absolutely killed it in high school.

As soon as Cal puts the car in park, she jumps out and tries to open the trunk.

"It's stuck," she shouts, a little too loudly and high pitched, judging by her brother's wince.

"I haven't opened it yet, Pipes. Relax. You've got time, the meeting's in 15."

Inside, Litchfield looks like the airport terminal of a budget airline: stark, cold, forbidding; empty of meaning, reluctant to life. This is where dreams come to die. It's one of her more dramatic thoughts, she has to agree, but then who doesn't feel even a little bit unsettled when they visit a prison?

Piper hauls her holdall next to the row of plastic chairs and plops down. She's not sure if there's like a number system – she can't see any evidence of such – and she kinda doesn't want to actually ask the few inner city looking young men or the uniformly scowling middle aged women in there. She sits undecided until the guard behind the thick window vaguely looks in her direction. Winning smile automatically in place, she sprints to the window, secretly hoping she hasn't cut in line, if there is indeed a line. She can't quite imagine there not being one.

"Hi! I'm Piper Chapman."

"Visit or surrender?"

"Excuse me?"

"What are you here for, ma'am?"

"Oh," Piper snorts a chuckle, her face crumpling into a grin, "neither, actually. I am here to see Birdie Smith? OK, technically, I guess that counts as a visit… It's a project we're collaborating on."

Behind the glass, the guard absentmindedly nods mhm. Her eyes flick over the messy paperwork on the desk. She stops short and Piper's grin floats mid-air. The guard looks up, catching the grin right before it crashes, leaving Piper to look young and goofy. The guard is mocking her; she's sure of that.

"That's funny. I have a Pepper Gapman here, scheduled to surrender today. That not you?"

Piper giggles, all teeth on display. What are the odds, right? It would be a mildly amusing joke if she wasn't the butt of it. She shakes her head from side to side, the movement deliberately silly.

"No, I'm definitely not Pepper Gapman, although –"

"Piper Chapman?"

Finally. Piper lets out a deep sigh. The sound is a lot harsher than she'd expected it and she looks around to see if it's been noticed. Behind the glass, the guard nods her head knowingly and returns to her copy of Night Shift. One of the tired looking hoodlums lifts his head specifically to stare at her with his cold, insolent eyes. OK; whatever. Breathing, even heavily, is perfectly normal. At least in Connecticut it is, Piper thinks, defiantly straightening her back.

"Birdie Smith?" Piper asks brightly, extending her hand towards the friendly-looking new arrival. The short, delicately built woman uses both her hands to shake Piper's: one actually doing the shaking, the other cradling the forearm being shaken. Piper almost bends down to offer her cheeks for a Eurokiss but Birdie smoothly waves her towards the gate leading further into the facility.

"Miss Chapman all good?" Birdie asks the guard, who nods, already disinterested.

"So, given that we didn't have time to get clearance for my business partner and that my brother… well, he didn't get cleared… in time, I mean," Piper's perpetual grin falters here; Birdie nods reassuringly and Piper continues, "I will be the only participant from our group today. I would have asked you to help but it wouldn't work."

"Right," Birdie smiles, showing Piper into her office. It's small and only has one window but Piper finds it surprisingly welcoming. It reminds her of her 4th grade teacher's: tidy but warm. She sits down into a yellow chair and smiles again.

"Let me explain how it works." She pulls out a pair of large headphones from her holdall. "All you have to do is put these on," she demonstrates. "Except they're not actual headphones. They're brainwave scanning devices. So you put them on and when the device is activated, a bunch of pictures flash by your eyes. There are two groups participating in the experiment and they must not be aware of each other. In this case, one group is me, my brother and my business partner. Today, it's just me because of the… you know. The other group is the selected inmates. I'm shown the pictures of the inmate group plus some randos and they are shown a bunch of random people, my picture, my brother's and my business partner's among them. The idea is to see if there is a match, if individuals from each group ping upon seeing each other's picture. When the machine pings for a possible match, we're alerted to activate the decoding app. The device then decodes the brainwaves into actual images and words."

"Does it do all that? That's… that's fascinating."

"I know. The beauty of science," Piper grins.

"And… as regards to the client's privacy? Isn't this a bit like mental invasion?"

She's already agreed to the experiment and Chapman has already explained it to her but Birdie still feels like the least she can do at this point is to ask one more time. It's important to her to have the blame spread as thinly as possible.

"It's actually a lot like mental invasion, because it's all involuntary, what memory pops into your mind. It's also supposed to be a very strong memory related to that person, so if it's a rape or any other kind of intense violent interaction, that's going to show. If you just passed each other on the street once, that is very unlikely to register. Well, that's the theory we're trying to prove. Which is why," Piper's bright smile has the decency to turn sheepish for a moment and her voice briefly lowers, "we're testing this device on inmates. We're lucky to have the MCC's cooperation for this, Ms Smith," Piper babbles on, "because we're been turned down by several state run institutions. But we are looking to sell this to the Department of Justice, so it's really for a good cause. This is going to completely change witness testimony and it could very well do away with prison informants."

Birdie nods, an uneasy feeling having slowly invaded her insides, in spite of her earlier resolution.

"Plus," Piper insists on assuring her, "we are going to destroy the physical evidence once the match is confirmed. I mean, if there is a match."

"I don't want to take part in this."

"It's a cutting edge scientific project," Birdie observes, hoping to engage Alex's intellectual curiosity. The brunette shrugs, stretching her legs out and turning her head towards the window. There's nothing to see, the window is semi-opaque, only letting in an approximation of sunlight. But it's a lot better than staring at Birdie's inspirational posters.

A long, awkward silence lingers.

It's obvious to Alex that Birdie is keen on this, whatever it is. But Birdie can stuff It, just as she can stuff all the rest of her good deeds. Alex is here to do her time, move the fuck on as quick as possible and never look back, not to be one of the hands with which Birdie's patting her oh so humanitarian self on the back. Although she wouldn't actually mind being a certain finger pointed in Birdie's (and Healy's and Caputo's) general direction. She'd be the first to sign up for that project.

Birdie's not ready to give up either. Healy has dumped his least favorite inmates on her, his way of saying "welcome to Litchfield, bitch", but she is determined to build her reputation here. So she pulls out the big guns.

"Look," she says, linking her fingers, her face turning resolute even though her voice remains soft, "you're not helping yourself by refusing. You've got 4 years to go and I know – I know – you hate it here. I don't blame you," she says and stops a little. For a moment she looks like she means in general, like she can actually sympathize with the why behind Alex's life choices. Alex shrugs the thought away but it's a bit too late and she frowns, already feeling the hooks sinking into her delicate sense of hope. Birdie, you fucking manipulative bitch. Birdie smiles, stubbornly sure of her own good intentions. "So take part in this. Every single one of these stupid little projects," she grins, even though Alex grimly refuses to acknowledge her complicity, "is going to help you look like you're engaging. Early release is a thing, if you remember Aleida."

Her first reaction is to scoff. Then again, what else is there to do? Alex sighs. Since they burned all the other books after the bed bug debacle, she's read the Qur'an 3 times already. A short trip to the science camp might jolt awake whatever intellectual muscle's left inside her skull before she turns into a receptacle of base needs like the rest of them.

"So what's this particular stupid thing about?"

"It's a pair of brainwave scanners. They look like headphones. You put them on, look at some pictures, your reaction gets scanned. That's all."

"That's all?" Alex raises an eyebrow. The fuck that's all. "What pictures? What reaction? Is this something sex related?"

"It's not specifically designed to read that kind of thing but I guess it can," Birdie says, automatically filing Alex's reactions in her "shrink" drawer. "Look, there are two groups who aren't aware of each other. You see the pictures of the participants from the other group. If your mind reacts to any of them, the device pings and decodes the information. You get your results in a week."

"Results?"

"If you're matched with anyone participating." Well, not exactly anyone but Birdie doesn't have to explain everything to the inmates. She knows the duty of candor kind of requires her to. The MCC not so much. She's not comfortable with many of MCC's methods but we all have jobs to do and we try to do them as best we can. You can't be an absolute paragon of virtue in a world as immoral as the one we live in, she sighs internally.

Alex thinks about it for a few moments then scoffs again. If I'm matched?! Definitely stupid. Also, what exactly are they doing with the information they collect? If you hand them free access to your brain… well, what more do you have to call your own?

"So what if I am matched with anyone? Do I go to SHU or something?" She winces at the inanity of her jab but the project is idiotic so it's hardly worth an earnest effort.

Birdie laughs. It's that annoyingly friendly laugh, I'm so open minded. What it means is "good to see you're cooperating, inmate."

"Of course not. It's just a memory device. If you're matched, they compare the memories. That's all."

The memories? Is this something having to do with the cartel? Alex reckons she'd been completely truthful – well… as far as the questions the DEA has actually asked – and tries to quickly go over things that could further incriminate her. The thought of a certain off shore bank account blooms in her mind but stops short. Great, now I'm spooked into seeing mind control everywhere. She tries to shake the paranoia away.

"What are they going do with the information they collect?"

That, of course. Birdie's carefully considered the issue of privacy before agreeing to co-run the project; she's not a scientist and she's (pain)fully aware that her grasp on the range of the experiment can't match Chapman's. And maybe this isn't safe. Certainly she's caught on to Chapman's evident talent at using her innocent girl shtick to sell her services to the MCC. And the MCC absolutely isn't concerned with inmate privacy. But, ultimately, Birdie's job is to get Alex and everyone else on the fastest – rather than safest – path to release. Faster than Healy does with his group, in any case. Life has its risks, she'd concluded the day she's signed the paperwork. So she puts on her most sympathetic face and bends closer. She'd touch the brunette's arm if she didn't know that would be counterproductive.

"The success of this project could bring an end to the use of informants."

Alex looks away, helplessly aware she's being manipulated again. She's in here because someone ratted on someone else, who snitched on a third and a fourth, all the way to the person who gave her name out to the feds. The basis for the "conspiracy" accusations. Fuck yea, she'd love it if all snitches in the world were left with nothing to bargain for their sorry asses. But before that sci-fi project becomes reality – if it ever does – the fucking MCC would have a piece of her brain to top their systematic destruction of the once lucky Alex Vause.

"Is this going to help with possible early release?" It sounds idiotic. Worse, it's humiliating. Because once they have access to your brain… who's to say they can't help themselves to whatever? The endless rabbit hole...

"I will add it to your report," Birdie smiles. "It's more than you're doing at the moment, Alex."

She sits in the chair with the memory device on. It looks like a pair of noise cancelling headphones. A quality pair, kind of like the one she bought right after going to work for Fahri. An image flits by: her lounging in bed in her mom's trailer, music pumping through shiny black headphones. The grey, uncaring world was held at bay for a while. Then it changes to this song she's not thought about in ages. Girls in… no, Women in Magazines? Something like that. I want women in magazines, the male singer wails. She chuckles loudly. Alison has got back with her stupid on again, off again boyfriend. He probably wants women in magazines too, judging by Alison, with her carefully put together bland self.

Oh, she does remember the night. The memory cuts almost physically. She's trying to cheer herself up and it's not exactly working. Only an hour or so ago, Sylvie had ditched her for her sober friends. It's a confusing feeling that has apparently been lodged in her brain all these years – cold, sharp. She feels useless, perfunctory. This is a stupid memory. Is Alison in Litchfield? Sylvie…?! Can't be… She opens her eyes, looks around, tries to get up.

"Anyone here? I want to stop," she says to the empty room with its dull walls, painted institutional white. Her voice bounces faintly and dissipates, swallowed by the blank atmosphere. "I know you're somewhere behind a concealed mirror or something."

An image jerks her back with surprising force. It's an awkward feeling, unlike her earlier clear but uncomfortable recollection of things past. She's not just remembering. Every ticking second is shiny and unexpected.

There's this girl on the sidewalk. She's got ridiculous blonde curls and the wind blows them back into her face. Alex is amused in spite of herself. She follows the girl with curious eyes, wills her to walk in. Can I make you come in just by the power of mind? She chuckles to herself. It's stupid, but at least it made her smile. She takes a swig of her beer just as the girl and her friend walk in.

Alex has returned to listening to the earlier conversation at the table, buoyed by her newfound cheer. Can I make you look? She challenges her mind again. It worked once. Their eyes briefly meet. The girl is waving a sheet of paper at the bartender. Is that a… resume? Alex laughs out loud. Kristen catches her eye and grins, knowingly. The girl turns her head and finds her, sees her smirk. She looks confused but also vaguely intrigued. Well, vaguely is far from her best work ever but it's better than she'd thought she could do at the beginning of the night.

Piper sits in the plastic chair, already bored. The device is on. She knows there's not going to be any match today. Cal's results, on the other hand – she can't wait for that. There's gotta be something there, the three of them have long joked about it, even though Cal keeps on insisting he's never been around female street doctors.

It's kind of cold in here, she muses, wondering if she should've worn a hoodie on top of her t-shirt. Her smile gets a little strained and she absentmindedly shoves her hands between her thighs. It's a prison, after all. She thinks it's not too bad for a prison, cleaner than she imagined, not that she has anything to compare this to. Just… there's a bit of a nag at the back of her mind. She adjusts the device, realizing one of the straps is tighter than the other. It probably makes the headphones sit wonky on her head. Lucky it's just Birdie behind the wall and she won't laugh at her. Birdie's cool, Piper smiles.

Polly had reminded her: once the device is on, she needs to wait for 15 minutes, regardless of whether a match happens or not. That's how long the process takes. Distant voices reach her ears in spite of the device. Are prison walls supposed to be really thick or not thick at all, so you hear everyone's business all the time?

She refocuses her mind on the task at hand. The experiment requires the inmates' pictures to flash at speed in front of her eyes, so as to remove conscious recognition and allow the subconscious to do its business past any bullshit barriers. Still, she likes to think that the faces are surprisingly varied. In at least 5 instances she fancies they look familiar enough for her conscious self to allow the possibility that she might have met them. They probably resemble famous people, she muses, or maybe I ran into them on the street. 10 million people, after all. The voices feel closer now. It's like being in an airport…

She is waiting for her luggage by the carousel. Everyone has picked theirs, except for her. Utter dread and despair has left her insides spinning empty right along with the carousel. She can't take her eyes off it, fascinated. In her mind she keeps repeating mon bag, mon bag. Some part of her is aware it sounds idiotic but she can't stop because if she does, if the carousel does, then she's finished. She can't even articulate anything else. Someone tells her something and all she can make out is Paris shuttle. It somehow gets through to her that it's what she needs so she sits by the carousel and adds Paris shuttle to her mon bag mantra.

"Good thing you didn't, because there's $50k in there and Kubra would've had you killed."

Eyes wide, mouth slightly open, Piper's body jerks in her chair but she's too deep inside the memory to fully return to the present coordinates of her existence. The familiarity of that voice is undeniable, though her mind stubbornly refuses to release any visual details. It's like she's stepped deep into a comfortable room of her inner being and the light switch isn't working. But it's beckoning her in and she wants to be pulled because this is where she should be.

"If anything matches?"

"You'll know," Polly assures her.

This is knowing in a different sense than 2+2 = 4 or her name and address, though somehow she senses it's not quite what Polly meant. Knowing like you know you're in love… She's so close, she's going to figure it all out –

Her mind has other plans for her today. It pulls her under, unforgiving.

It's really cold and she isn't dressed for it. It's the wind chill. Low clouds moving fast, replaced by other low clouds moving faster… Polly's with her on the sidewalk. A gust of wind blows Piper's hair and she has to untangle it with both hands. They laugh. Then Polly's face changes, all businesslike.

"Come on, we'll do this real quick. We go in, you hand in the resume, we tick the place, we move on to the next target."

"Right. Shouldn't we have a drink first?"

She feels like… she's either thirsty or cold. She can't quite pinpoint what it is. A vague feeling. Vague but insistent enough. Like something essential is about to happen. For a flitting moment, the heaviness of the moment weighs on her heart, desperation so raw it throws her. Her eyebrows shot up. She shakes her head and she's back on the sidewalk, hands cold, hair messed up by the wind. Clouds keep passing by. What the…? It's just a waitressing job, hardly worth such levels of anxiety. A dip in her blood sugar? Most likely. She should be more disciplined with her eating. Polly's voice comes back into focus as she rummages in her bag.

"This place? Probably too expensive."

"Right, but Pol, if I get the job we'll be here all the time."

"Then I'm expecting drinks on the house."

They go in. It's one of those new wine bars, not too crowded. Not yet. It's probably too early. There's just a bunch of people chatting loudly around two tables pushed together. The bartender's friendly. He has a predictable goatee and glasses. Seems like everyone has glasses these days. She bends slightly to speak in Polly's ear. Her eyes twinkle.

"Do you think I should get glasses?"

Polly pulls a face. She taps the resume in Piper's hand.

"Keep focused."

Right. The bartender's serving someone. She looks around. For a fraction of a second, their eyes meet. She smiles a bit, turns her head but there's still a tiny smile tugging at the corner of her lips. There's this woman at the two tables pushed together. With glasses. She has this sort of wistful look in her eyes, Piper's not sure how to describe it. Interesting, maybe; like she's adrift at sea emotionally. If Piper was trying to pull, she most certainly wouldn't have lead with something as open and raw as that. Maybe the woman has had a bad day, maybe she's just the needy type. And yet… there's something there that worms its way inside her chest so softly she can barely sense it. She's distracted so she ignores it.

"We're not hiring."

"Well…" she looks back. Their eyes meet again. Still that look, but now softened by a smile. A roguish smile that's just for her, Piper reckons. Her cheeks color slightly. She feels a bit silly. The timing is wrong. She and Polly aren't here for… whatever. They're her to get her a job so she can keep a roof over her head and escape the nagging of her parents.

"Just keep it there, who knows," Polly insists to the bartender.

"Can I have a margarita?" By now she just knows the woman's eyes are still on her, she doesn't even have to look. A private little smile tugs at the corners of her lips. Just one drink, right? Just one.

Polly slaps her arm.

"What did we say earlier?"

"Come on, Pol, what's the harm in just one drink?"

Earlier feels like a lifetime ago. It's kinda funny, she thinks, looking around, careful to avoid the two tables pushed together. Maybe it's the sudden warmth she feels, the trendy cheerfulness of the place, contrasting with their mundane task of the day in dreary weather. Low blood sugar. It must be, right?

"That's enough," Piper says out loud, pulling at the headphones, her voice shrill. This is ridiculous. It's not how the experiment was supposed to go. It was –

She's crying. The teenager in the window seat steals worried glances at her. His mother, on her right side, is snoring softly. The New York Times rests on her chest, moving up and down with it. She's crying. Utter devastation. She tries to remind herself she's going home but it feels like a lie, because her parents' house is no longer home. In fact, she's moving farther and farther away from home. It's like she's going back in time, like erasing a wrong turn in her history. Going back to make it all neat and presentable again before someone notices the disturbance.

She tries to tell herself this is what she wants. It is, in some ways – some very understandable, sensible ways. And yet she keeps crying. She feels like she's inside an overwrought post rock tune. Feels the despair ooze out of her pores and becomes aware of a perverse enjoyment of every hitch in her breath, of every sob that shakes her shoulders and chest, and, really, every bit of herself. Feels the despair and devastation feed on itself and swell within her chest, inside her throat, until she can hardly breathe.

An insistent beep jolts her out of the nightmare. Hyperventilating, Piper looks around the room, taking in the dull white walls. It's a room with a chair and table. There's a door across from her. No windows. Right, she's at Litchfield. The experiment. The beep comes from her device. She doesn't remember it ever beeping. She tears it off her head and throws it onto the table. She's not feeling so good. Her pulse is racing and her head is spinning.

It really wasn't supposed to work like that.

"If you're matched with anyone participating."

That's what Birdie had said, Alex muses, turning on the shower.

She emerged back into present time reality only when of the COs had tapped her on the shoulder. The device must've tickled her memory centers into overdrive because she had gone down a Piper-related rabbit hole. The two of them on tropical beaches, in European medieval town centers, in Japanese fast trains, even in the fucking Outback, though they had never actually visited Australia aside from that one stop over in Sydney. But here was her mind, presenting her with ready-made, senses-triggering memories of them perched on Hanging Rock.

For a moment there she was disoriented by the blank white walls and the stale prison air.

"Come on, Vause, party's over," the CO had urged her.

She was only supposed to get her memories activate if she matched with someone. Does that mean…? But how? She was so resistant to the stupid experiment that she had barely paid attention to the fast moving pictures. After like two slides she'd just zoned out. Pictures of the kind of people you'd see every day on any given sidewalk in NYC. Who cared? And who cared about the stupid fucking kind of experiment that people on their college education ego trips used to advance their stupid ass "careers". She let out a chuckle. Careers that paid maybe 80k a year if those experiments proved useful to some mind conning corporation. The kind of money she'd make in a week. Well, used to make. Nowadays she's paid 50c a day to fold towels. So much for careers.

So what does that actually mean? Does that mean Piper, of all people, is… here? Here, where? Because she sure has never seen her among the inmates – or the guards, for that matter. The thought of Piper as guard makes her laugh out loud. Someone in the next stall lets out a long, squeaky fart.

"Look, there are two groups who aren't aware of each other. You see the pictures from the other group."

That means… what? That Piper is some kind of mad scientist?! English fucking major Piper is literally playing with people's minds now? It's kind of fitting, she has to admit, although the well worn memories of Piper's clumsiness make her chuckle again. Then again, the blonde had always fancied herself crafty. Why not make a career out of it? But why come here? Is she trying to fuck with her again? Will the bitch never stop? How much more pain can she inflict?

Except, it starts to dawn on Alex, she's not feeling that bad at all. Rather, the memory was uplifting… Calling Piper a bitch feels a bit dated now; like words that come out of habit and not pushed by actual emotion. Maybe it's the unexpected hotness of the shower but right this moment she could totally see Piper's point of view, all these years ago. I wouldn't have gone about it quite so bluntly, Alex even smiles, but, yea… Piper was right to leave.

Birdie has also said that if matching happens, the results will return in a week. Like, what does that even mean, results? What kind of results? Why would anyone care that she met Piper Chapman one particularly cold October night?

"Cut it out, Snow White. It's not like you're gonna scrub yourself any whiter'n you already are," a black inmate yanks the shower curtain, stepping into her space. Alex is in such a good mood by now than she just grins and casually wraps herself in her towel on the way out of the showers. The inmate shakes her head and loudly kisses her teeth. She's never seen Whitie smile before.

I don't know that I'm satisfied with how clear my intentions came out in the end but I have been sitting on it for so long I just wanted to get it out already. The twist seemed as good as any I was ever gonna come up with. I hope it was decent enough, because I genuinely hate the use of prison informants; I wish this device actually existed (though without the malfunction...).