Kelly
Twenty and Under
Kelly finishes speaking to the trooper who is his only Dahax friend. He is not happy from what he has been told about Brian, the Youth Leader did not keep his promise to him.
His stride is with purpose and before long he is entering his room. There is Brian sitting at his computer working. Kelly wants to scream at him, but walks quietly up behind the Youth Leader. Placing his hands on his hips he speaks sternly. "I literally asked you, no I made you promise that nothing, nothing would happen to the trooper. If I remember you said it would be more embarrassing for you to make a big deal out of it. So what did you do, you had a scream fest for everyone to hear."
Brian smiles and shrugs. "I swear, nothing happened that was important." He turns back to working on his computer ignoring Kelly.
He watches the Youth Leaders fingers just typing away. It is beyond belief. "You embarrassed him. People knew you were belittling him."
The Youth Leader looks at him with a smirk, "I didn't belittle him. Besides he is just a trooper."
Kelly flinches in spite of himself and can barely keep the fury from rising as he speaks. "Just a trooper? Just a trooper. Who are you? You're not my roommate. I got that information you wanted and immediately sent it to you. I mean immediately, and you tracked him down that second. You told me, you have felt isolated and wanted to reach out and make new friends, or something like that. I believed you." He can barely keep his temper in check as he speaks. "I also thought you had a counseling session, you had two freaking reminders this morning."
"Come on, I was just joking about just a trooper. As for my counseling session it was canceled and rescheduled." Brian looks up at Kelly smiling, "Come on, everything is just fine. You're making too much of this. I thank you for sending me the information so quickly. I have destroyed the access code."
He turns away from the Youth Leader and just stares at the wall for several minutes trying to rein in his anger. Finally, he turns back and with a whisper says, "I have never known you to be insensitive. It's not you...and I feel like you betrayed me. You know loyalty to friends should be first, I thought that was one of your rules...that's right your rules."
Brian turns and then stands looking down at Kelly. "Loyalty is first always to our Great Leader. He is first, never put yourself above him. Do you understand! Do you?"
"Yes, my mistake."
The Youth Leader's stares hard at him, there is something about his eyes that frightens Kelly. He can't move or speak.
With a whisper Brian looks up as though in awe of some miracle. "My allegiance to Our Great One is everything to me, to you, to us all." He stands silently for some time and then suddenly looks about looking confused before sitting again. "I ah, have to study."
Kelly takes a few steps backward before turning around and going to his own desk. When he sits he watches Brian at his computer, he is definitely worried about what is happening. "I have some work to do, so if you need anything I will be super busy."
Brian speaks calmly, "Sure whatever. I am busy too."
Now Kelly types frantically; for now he has only one goal and he is going to do his best to accomplish it.
…...
Three Hours later
Kelly is now in Alex's room and puts a finger to his lips so that Alex knows to say nothing. He sits and puts in place their program to fool the monitoring that Alex is unfortunately under. "Okay, we gotta talk."
As soon as he sits, he snaps at Alex. "We screwed up, we screwed up badly. Massively."
Alex sits back, there is contemplative look on his face. "Are you talking about our program to help the Youth Corp. The program, we hope will wake them up from their last big bad bonding experience they are undergoing? Let's see you are the one who made that small change using that program that was disabled."
Kelly crosses his arms onto his chest, he can feel a chill racing up his spine. "I didn't use that program, I simply wrote a small program; in fact more of a script to be called when your visuals come up. It used your sunflower and Avena is said. The program just says; remember the day they left home. We discussed this. It was the only thing we could think of that might get them out of the last bonding; I mean that conversion done on them."
"No, I know. We are snapping our fingers and waking them up from their hypnotized state." Alex gives him a crooked smile as he continues speaking. "Let's face, it we knew it may not work; or work on some; and maybe not at all. We have not been trained in conversion. However, I think it was and is the best we can do."
"True, I guess I was just hoping that just two," He points to Alex and them himself, "Of the Twenty and Under group could really achieve something!"
"Why are you stressing. Only a few have undergone this procedure so far and we are not going to try and wake them for at least a month. Their going to be all wacky smacky, as you like to say for now."
Kelly regains his composure. "You are correct we need to wait before trying to wake them from their hypothesized state." He takes a deep breath. "Just I, just I...today Brian. He can be a jerk, but there is a kind side to him. When you get to know him you can feel it. Likely why Youth Leaders like him are used to bring in humans into the Regime."
Alex sits up and chuckles, "Tough, but sweet." He then sits back again and his tone is now somber. "You knew that they were going to be screwed up. What is really bothering you?"
He is not sure if he should talk about this. Maybe he should try and sneak into the program and get rid of his tweak and clean up his trail and just forget it. Really his and Alex's idea sounded really good when stoned, and they were still so excited after. They felt like the good guys. Now, after what he has discovered today he is not so sure. What he knows, is that they know absolutely nothing about conversion or bonding. They were going off the small bits of information that they had learned about the two procedures. His mind just keeps going over everything they had found and what they thought they might be able to do.
"Would you like something to drink?" Alex stands and walks over to a small cooler and opens a container. He holds up the container for Kelly to see and pours the liquid into two glasses. "You are really being quiet over there." He walks over and then holds up one of the glasses in Kelly's direction.
Kelly nods and takes a glass from Alex. He still can't seem to talk and his friends face is turning from bland; to I am getting tired of waiting, look.
Alex turns and looks directly at him. "I will say this one more time. What is really bothering you? I don't want to hear about Brian acting weird. We know him and his friends are going to go through a tough time. Confusion and over the top devotion, and etc."
He takes three slow sips from his glass. "When I saw Brian. I guess, I guess, I...just realized what we did. I went in and found the program whose name I used so we could use it to snap our friends out of their trance. I mean, I hope it works. More and more, I have doubts. So I found the program Avena."
"I thought its encryption was something you had never seen before. To hard to read?"
Getting up he takes the glass back to the small sink that Alex is lucky to have. "I can wash it for you."
His friend shakes his head. "I will wash them both later."
Kelly sits down again and shrugs. "I decided I needed to really try and learn more about it. I found that when the Avena program may have had the intense encryption process done on it. As far as the bonding program thinks, it is just a comment that the programmer placed and therefore it no longer uses the program."
"No, offense you already told me this, which is why you used Avena as the wake up word. A programming flaw if found by another programmer, something like that." Alex then rises and goes to the sink where he quickly washes the two glasses as Kelly explains himself.
He slumps and lays his head back on the sofa. "The program was changed and encrypted; and commented out it appears...ah, just before the Youth Corp was called to active duty and we all came here." Closing his eyes he takes a deep breath and speaks quickly without taking another breath. "I think the Avena program, is a program that someone used for outside of the bonding program. I mean; its kind of a wake up program. Like someone else is going to reverse the bonding done on them or change something later. Sneaky. I can't tell because the stupid program has some encryption I have never seen before. Hard to read and I think it has had coding removed. Why they didn't just delete..." He sits up gasping for air, then he opens his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. Then he continues to speak as quickly as before. "Something weird about it. I think that is why it has been left alone, also as I said it has been commented out and therefore not being used. However, what if someone has their own game plan for the Youth Corp? We may be making real monsters or interfering with someone else who has plans to really control them when it is beneficial to them." Finally, he opens his eyes and forces himself to be calm.
"Ah, we tried," Alex shrugs. "We don't know what will happen. I say we continue on with what we are doing. We can't make it any worse. If someone is planning on kicking some weird personal plan into action by using them." Again he shrugs, "Well, if its bad; maybe we stopped it. It's a conversion program, call it a bonding program if you want. It's still a conversion program, which means people with bad ideas put that in. So, I say we did good. I don't think we made it worse, we canceled out the bad; or the bad happens sooner. It would have happened anyway. Whoever, did this will be disappointed or whatever. We tried, please remember we tried to help them. No, one else could do this without getting caught."
"Then why did they hide the program? I mean, it isn't hidden, I think the programmers now are just ignoring it as it would take time to try and look into it. Also, they know it is not doing anything now since they have seen no problems with bonding sessions. Well, why would they care. You know they are busy, busy, busy. I was thinking that it was them in the first place who wrote it." Kelly feels like his world is fading into some shadow world. "Now, I am not so sure that is correct. I think someone has done something for their own agenda. We discussed this, Youth Corp are like living, breathing weapons."
"Okay, that was confusing. Do not worry, we tried and that is more than anyone else would have done for them."
"That's true. You are as close as we are ever going to be to understanding this conversion process, what do we call it," Kelly stops for a moment, "The let us take charge of the Youth Corp minds."
Alex smiles slightly. "So we stay to the plan. We activate the sunflower in about a month. You fix the program after we activate so our change is completely removed. With luck if there is a problem, well it would have been there anyway."
"You, aren't sorry we did this? We acted like Youth Leaders." He shakes his head and his voice is shaking with emotion. "We are now the, know better than everyone else."
"You mean we don't know better than everyone else, including the Youth Leaders." Alex stretches and glances at Kelly and smiles. "Nah, I am not sorry for doing this, I finally have friends. If we get taken and even executed; well, it will be more than I will ever have had a chance to do. Tired, of feeling like some tool someone picks up when needed and then basically they just put me away when finished with me. Even if the room is nicer than yours or others. A nice place when you basically are locked up in it, well it is not a nice place." He grabs Kelly who is sitting next to him and hugs him for a moment. "Friends are important and those Youth guys and gals have no idea that they have two friends looking out for them. Besides remember eventually even conversion will eventually fail. Likely why they do the lesser bonding program; they can keep updating their minds with the propaganda. When they stop doing the bonding their minds will go back to thinking on their own without the influence of the programming done on them. Even those undergoing some of the harshest conversion will eventually find their way back to themselves. The only problem is that after time they can embrace the propaganda fed to them. This way they have a chance, even if it is just to reverse the harsher bonding conversion. Also, even this conversion procedure is not as harsh as what could have been done; it is just a stronger bonding. However, if they succeed they could have individuals living in a devoted confused state willing to do what is asked without even understanding what they are doing. If we succeed we give them a chance to use their own free will to make their way through their lives."
"You are one passionate and amazing person. I get it now. Your talent and passion are certainly there, but you are one really smart guy." Kelly chuckles and shakes his head at his friend. "Hate to do it, but I have to turn your monitoring back on. You know just in case." He walks over to the computer and just before he reactivates the monitoring program. "Friends, look out for friends." Shaking his head he lifts his hand as if making a toast, "To the Twenty and Under group."
Alex smiles and lifts his hand as well, "The Twenty and Under."