1

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen…” the child’s tiny voice echoed in

the room filled with computer equipment as she counted the
buttons on one panel.
“Very good, Cassie,” her mother said. “But I need you to be
a little quieter. Mommy and Daddy are talking to the techs
right now, and it’s very important.”
Cassie frowned. She didn’t want Mommy and Daddy to talk to
the techs, because that meant they were going away to join The
Collective. Oh, they said she’d get to see them again, and
probably even touch them and hug them just like she did now, but
it wouldn’t be the same. Not at all. She’d be living with
Grammy, not Mommy and Daddy, and she did not like that one bit.
Grammy was weird. She didn’t like computers, she thought
they were bad. The kids in Grammy’s neighborhood called Grammy
a “simple.” Cassie didn’t know what a “simple” was, but she
knew it wasn’t good. Some of the kids even said that maybe
Cassie was a simple too, since her Grammy was.
She continued counting the buttons, getting up to thirty-one
before she heard a tech say her name. “Cassandra may be too
young to properly interface with the VR environment that would
allow her to fully interact with you once you join The
Collective,” he said. “We’ve had people as old as 21 unable to
fully interface, simply because the brain is still developing
the neural pathways that allow full use of the system.” Cassie
zoned out. She had no idea what any of that meant. And she
didn’t really want to know either. She just knew it meant Mommy
and Daddy were going away.
~
“Cassie,” Mommy said, peeking her head in through the door to
Cassie’s bedroom. Cassie looked up from the game that she was
playing. She had a monitor in her room, just like everyone
else. She was playing checkers against one of her teachers, a
member of The Collective.

- 1 -
 “I beat Miss Rivers!” Cassie said excitedly. It was the
first time she’d ever won, and she kind of wondered if Miss
Rivers hadn’t let her win on purpose.
Mommy came in the room. “That’s great!” she said. “Are you
done playing? We need to get ready to go for your scan tests to
see if your brain is ready for the VR interface.”
Cassie looked at the monitor. “Miss Rivers,” she said, “I
have to go now. Can we play again tomorrow?”
The image on the screen smiled. “We have to do some work
tomorrow, but if you get your assignments done, we’ll play
another game of checkers. And soon, I’ll teach you to start
playing chess. I think you’re ready for it. Bye, Cassie, have
a good time and good luck on your scan tests.” The monitor went
blank as the system automatically shut-down, sensing that the
member of The Collective had gone elsewhere.
~
“Mommy, I’m scared.” Cassie was looking at the chair where
she’d have to spend the next several hours being tested to see
if her brain patterns were developed enough to interface with
the VR environment in which members of The Collective lived.
There were hundreds of wires connected to what looked like a
giant helmet, and Cassie knew that was going to have to go on
her head.
Mommy hugged her. Cassie loved the smell of Mommy, so
soothing. Daddy came up behind her. “Don’t worry sweetheart.
It’s not really scary at all. In fact, during the tests,
they’ll play all sorts of fun pictures through your head so that
you don’t feel like anything is happening at all.”
Cassie sniffed. “What kind of pictures?”
Mommy laughed. “Kind of like the old time movie pictures,
but you’ll get to be in the pictures yourself. And sometimes,
it’ll even feel like you’re right there. That’s what their
testing for, to see just how real the pictures feel to you.”
Cassie couldn’t imagine actually being in the movies that she
liked to watch. She knew it was true though. Many of the older
children were already interfacing with The Collective through

- 2 -
the VR, and they talked about it often. She knew her Mommy and
Daddy interfaced with The Collective that way, too.
“Don’t worry, baby, you won’t feel a thing,” Mommy said.
“Now scoot up into the chair so the tech can start getting you
hooked up.”

- 3 -
 2

Cassie woke with a start. She’d been dreaming of her first

scan, again, a traumatic experience that still haunted to her.
She wiped the crust from her eyes and ran a hand through her
tangled, curly hair. She wanted to talk to her mother. The dream
always reminded her how much she missed her parents.
She walked over to the desk where her bedroom monitor was.
Her husband, John, had always laughed about that. It would have
been a simple matter to place the monitor right into the wall,
just like in every other room and every other house, but a side
effect of being raised by her grandmother was a love of
antiques, including that desk which dated back to the 20th
Century.
“Connect, Collective, Marian Rhodes,” she spoke into the
voice detectors. The monitor came to life, showing a small room
with two chairs. A tall, thin woman entered the room.
“This is Marian, how may I… Oh, hi, Cassie! It’s pretty early
in the morning for you! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, mom, just had that dream again. The one about my
first scan. It made me miss you.”
Marian sighed, “I’m so sorry, baby. I wish things had worked
out differently. I miss you, too.”
A tear came to Cassie’s eye, and she wiped it away. “And we
didn’t make the fertility lottery again this year, so we have to
wait until next year.”
“Oh, sweetheart. How’s John taking that?”
“The same way he always does. Throwing himself into his
research. I see him less and less as time goes by.”
“You still haven’t told him, have you?” Marian sighed.
Cassie could see the frown on Marian’s face. These
interactions always unsettled Cassie. She knew that it was her
mother in all the important ways, but that didn’t change the
fact that the image before her was a reproduction, a simulation

- 4 -
created by the computer. It was her mother talking to her, just
as if she were physically there, but she wasn’t physically
there. Her body was long dead and gone, buried over twenty years
before. It was her mind, her consciousness that she was
interacting with, living within the Virtual Reality world of The
Collective. The fact that Cassie was unable to properly
interface with the VR environment made it that much worse for
her. Everyone around her could. Even her husband could. She was
alone, and being that much different from those around her
emphasized the loneliness, made the isolation that much harder
to bear.
“No,” Cassie said, “I haven’t told him. How can I? How can
I tell him, after eight years of marriage, that I’m a Simple?”
“Cassie, he’s going to find out someday. You know he is.
You can’t hide it forever. What happens when it’s your time to
be scanned?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure that out then. Right now, he
thinks I don’t do VR at home because of Grammy’s habits, and I
want to keep it that way.”
“Well, you know I won’t tell him,” Marian said. “But I
really think you should tell him. Soon.”
“I have to go, mom. Class starts soon, and the kids will be
expecting me. Love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.” The monitor went black, and
Cassie turned to get ready for her day.
~
“Cassandra,” John ran into the room, breathless, the
excitement in his voice obvious. John was the only one close to
her that called her Cassandra. It had irritated her when she’d
first met him, but it had grown on her over time. “I have
amazing news!”
Cassie wasn’t even dressed yet when he’d come in. Her hair
was still dripping from her shower, and she only had her
underpants on. “What?” she said, a bit of panic twisting in her
stomach. She pushed it down. Panic was not reasonable, John
was excited, and that must be good.

- 5 -
 “I’ve been chosen for early scanning.”
Cassie’s stomach crashed to the floor. Her mother had been
right, she should have told him years ago. She had no choice
but to tell him now. How, though? How would she tell him that
she’d hidden something so important from him for so many years?
She swallowed, suppressing the fear and panic that was trying to
overwhelm her. This was great news for John, and it was a huge
honor to be chosen to join The Collective so early.
“That’s amazing,” she said. “I’m so proud of you. When will
you be scanned?” She tried to hard to keep pushing the panic
down, out of her mind. John would understand, it would be okay.
“We have six months before scanning. The techs have multiple
tests to do to prepare us for it.”
“Us?” Cassie squeaked, though she wasn’t really surprised.
She knew that John being scanned meant that she was obligated to
be scanned as well. It wasn’t absolutely required. She could
turn it down, but she would essentially be an outcast if she did
so. Not that it would matter. She couldn’t be scanned. Not
now, not ever.
“Of course, us, silly,” John laughed. “You know it’s
tradition. When a person is scanned, their spouse is scanned.
That’s what happened with your parents, after all.”
“I know,” Cassie said, her words barely a whisper. “I’m just
surprised is all. I wasn’t expecting this, and it’ll take a bit
of time to get used to.”
“That’s why their giving us six months. Also, since you
don’t do the VR interface as often as most other people, they’ll
need to do a few more tests on you to prep for it.” He walked
over to Cassie, and pulled her into his arms. “I love you,” he
said. “This will be great.” He kissed her, running his fingers
along the back of her neck in that way that always made her melt.
“I love you, too,” she said, sighing as he led her to the
bed.

- 6 -
 3

The machine dwarfed Cassie’s tiny 4-year-old body. The

monitor helmet was entirely too big for her head, and she had a
difficult time keeping balanced with it on. “I don’t like
this,” she said, pouting. “Mommy, why do I have to do this?”
Mommy smiled, stroking Cassie’s hand. “It’ll be okay, baby.
Before long, you’ll be hooked in, interfacing like a pro, and
you’ll wonder what you did without it.
“Are we ready?” the tech said, standing next to a bank of
monitors.
“No,” Cassie said, at the same time that her mother and
father said, “Yes.”
“Cassie,” her Daddy said, “It’ll be okay. The sooner you
start, the sooner it will be done, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
The tech started manipulating buttons on the screen, shifting
images and looking at different data tables. “Now, Cassandra,”
he said, “You might feel a little buzzing when things get
started, but it shouldn’t hurt at all.”
“My name is Cassie,” she said, firmly. She hated it when
people called her Cassandra. That was her in trouble name, the
name her Mommy used when she did something wrong.
The tech smiled. “Okay, Cassie. Get ready, we’re going to
begin the tests.” He moved his fingers over the monitor, and
Cassie could hear a slight buzz starting far away. It got
closer and closer, and Cassie began clenching the arms of the
chair.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, not wanting to be there. The
buzz got louder and closer, and suddenly everything went black.
“Help me,” she heard a voice say, and then she saw light
flashes that made her dizzy.
“Mommy,” Cassie screamed, her little voice frail and scared.
“Mommy, help. Help. I don’t want to be here. Mommy, Daddy,

- 7 -
please.” And then everything went black again.
She heard faint whispers, and they sounded so very far away.
It was Mommy. “What happened?” the whisper said. “What went
wrong? I don’t understand. Why did it disconnect her?”
Cassie felt the helmet coming off of her head, all the wires
that had been glued to her head being slowly pulled off.
“I don’t know,” she heard the tech say. “I’ve never seen
anything like this before.”

- 8 -
4

01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00100000 01101101 01100101

- 9 -
 5

“You should have told me.” John’s face was red, he was
furious with Cassie. “Cassandra, if I’d know, if you’d told me,
we could have started testing sooner. We could have focused the
research more properly.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’re right. I should have
told you.”
“How could you hide something this important from me?” he
yelled. “I can’t believe I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I
never noticed before. You’re a Simple. I can’t believe this.”
“Don’t call me that,” Cassie said. She knew it was true. By
definition, her inability to interface with the VR environment
of The Collective, and therefore to ultimately never be able to
join The Collective itself, made her a Simple Human. But she
still hated the term. She’d heard it so many times throughout
her childhood, used to degrade her grandmother and others like
her. Used to imply that they were less than everyone else, that
they were second class. She’d worked hard for so many years to
make sure those around her didn’t know about it, didn’t know
that she was a Simple, that she was just as good as anyone else.
“Why not,” John continued yelling. “It’s true. You are a
Simple. And you lied about it, which proves it. If you weren’t
Simple, you wouldn’t have lied.” He balled his hands up into
fists, and then turned and walked away. “I don’t want to talk to
you right now. I can’t deal with this right now.” He walked
out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
~
Cassie sat down on the bed. She’d known telling him that she
was a Simple wasn’t going to go well. Especially since they’d
been married for eight years, and she’d hidden it from him the
entire time. In a society where everyone looked forward to
joining The Collective and living forever, Simples were second-
class citizens. They would die, just like the ancient peoples.
They would die, and their minds would die with them, and that
was a very sad thing.

- 10 -
 She’d hoped John would take things better than he did. Part
of her thought that maybe he’d known all along. Many times,
she’d justified her silence by telling herself that he had to
know. How could he not know? She never connected to the VR
interface when she was at home, even though they had a basic
booth that would have allowed anyone to connect any time they
wanted to. Her work was with children, most of whom were to
young to interface properly. She worked with a few Simples as
well, adults who could not interface, but most of those were due
to head injuries that caused many other problems as well.
Cassie was rare. Her brain, as far as anyone could tell, was
fully functional. But since the first time she’d been scanned
as a small child, she’d been repeatedly booted out of the
system. Techs were perplexed by it. They’d never seen anything
like it. She’d quit getting tested when she’d turned 22, just
before she’d married John. At that age, there was little chance
that her brain patterns were going to change significantly.
She’d never interface, she’d never join The Collective. She’d
grow old, die, and join The Forgotten Ones, as all those
billions before The Collective had been. All her knowledge, all
her memories would be gone forever.
The Collective knew this, but respected her privacy, as it
did for all the Simples. It was impossible to really know that
someone was a Simple, unless they volunteered that information.
Of course most Simples were such because of injury. Those were
obvious cases, as they often had more problems than just being
unable to enter the VR interface. But there were those rare
Simples, like Cassie, who showed no outward signs of being
Simples.
Cassie thought maybe that’s what angered John the most. That
he hadn’t known, that he hadn’t suspected, and that he should
have. Her reluctance to use the interface booth at home, her
insistence on talking to her parents through the monitors, as if
she was talking to them on an old-fashioned videophone. All of
these were so out of the ordinary, that John should have known.
But he didn’t, because Cassie had always made excuses.
Having been raised by an anti-tech grandmother was an easy
excuses. John thought it was quaint, and often said it was one
of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. She was an

- 11 -
anachronism, and oddity in this high tech world, preferring
pencil and paper, and expensive and forbidden delight, to the
standard compupads. She could actually write by hand, another
rarity in a world where most people thought or spoke their words
into the screen, or at worst, typed them on the keypads. She
had decorated their home in antique furniture, and had placed
real paintings and photos on the walls, avoiding the vidscreens
that would have allowed them to change the scenery at will.
That had been a chore, finding the materials to actually hang
paintings on the plastic walls, and hanging them in such a way
that they didn’t pierce or damage the delicate wiring that ran
through every building.
Thinking of all of this made Cassie realize just how she’d
managed to hide her status as a Simple from John for so long.
Her entire personality, her every action was crafted in such a
way that she seemed quaint, eccentric, and that was acceptable.
Being a Simple was not acceptable. Not to John. Not to a man
whose whole life revolved around research for The Collective.
Maybe he’d understand. Maybe he just needed some time.

- 12 -
 6

“I heard a voice,” Cassie said, persistent like she’d never

been before. It had been six weeks since the scan, and Mommy
was getting tired of Cassie’s story.
“It was just your imagination. The techs even told us that
wasn’t possible, that the VR environment had never even
connected to your brain, so a voice couldn’t be in there.”
“It said, ‘Help me.’ I know it did, Mommy. It wasn’t my
‘magination. It was real.”
Her Mommy sighed, frustrated. She knew it was impossible for
Cassie to have heard a voice. That’s not how the VR system
worked. The program did not begin sending signal to the brain
until it had received enough information to begin decoding the
brain patterns, and Cassie hadn’t been hooked up to the system
for long enough for that to happen. It was just impossible for
Cassie to have heard a voice.
“Look, Cassie,” Mommy said, “I know you think you heard a
voice, and that’s okay, but it wasn’t a real person, and it
wasn’t the VR either. Sometimes when our brains are confused or
don’t understand what’s going on, they make things up. It’s
okay.”
Cassie stomped her feet. She knew what she’d heard. It was
a voice, a small voice, a child’s voice, but raspy and confused,
and it had said, “Help me.” She knew it was real. She knew
there was a child trapped in The Collective who needed her help,
and no one believed her.
Worse, the techs had said that her brain wasn’t ready for the
interface. “Your brain just has to do some growing up first,”
her Daddy had said. “They’ll test you every year until you
interface properly. It’ll probably be ready next year, and then
you’ll see that there aren’t any kids trapped in The Collective,
and that no one in there needs help, because they’re all very,
very happy to be there.”
Cassie couldn’t understand why everyone loved The Collective
so much. She knew they had a little kid trapped in there.

- 13 -
She’d heard it. And anybody who would trap a kid was not good
in her book. Not good at all.

- 14 -
7

68 65 6c 70 20 6d 65

- 15 -
 8

John walked into the room where Cassie was still sitting on
the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have
said that to you.”
It had only been a few minutes since their fight, so Cassie
was surprised to see him back so soon. Finding out that your
wife of eight years had been hiding her status as a Simple from
you was not something that a person got over very quickly. But
it was John. John was different. John was sweet. John was
forgiving.
“Part of me always suspected,” he said, “but I didn’t want to
believe it, because I didn’t want to think about what that
meant.”
“And what does it mean, John,” Cassie said, wondering where
he was going with this, wondering what he meant. She was a
Simple, and no one ever thought that was a good thing. “What
does it mean to you that I’m a Simple? Because I am. I can’t
interface, I get kicked out every single time I try. And I’ve
tried, John. Every year from the time I was six until I was
twenty-two I tried. I went in faithfully for the tests, to be
scanned, to see if my brain had matured enough to interface with
the VR. And it never was. And I gave up, because it’s not
going to change.”
John’s face looked broken. She could see what looked like
the beginning of tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.
“None of that matters, Cassandra. None of it. We can do the
research. We can find a way to make it work. I will find a way
to make it work. But…” he paused, and Cassie wondered what he
would say next.
John had always been such a stubborn, determined man. It’s
one of the reasons she fell in love with him, he was so
different from her. Cassie was wishy-washy, bending to every
whim, and going with the flow. But John was determined,
striving, constantly pushing forward. Nothing was impossible in
his mind, he’d always make things work. Always.

- 16 -
 “Cassandra, it means that I might lose you. It means that if
I can’t fix it, if I can’t find a way to program the interface
so that you can scan, you will be of The Forgotten. And I can’t
bear that thought. I wanted to be with you forever. That’s why
I married you. That’s why I’m here now. Because I love you,
and I want to find a way to make it work. I will find a way to
make it work, if you’ll let me.”
Cassie wasn’t surprised. Tell John that she’d spent sixteen
years being scanned and failing every scan test, and he decided
he could fix it. He could do better. John was always like
that. Sure that humanity would always advance, that there was
no challenge that they couldn’t take on. There was nothing that
they couldn’t conquer, and he was determined to prove it.
“What if I don’t want to?” she said.
John looked as if she’d slapped him across the face. The
shock on his face was painful to see, and Cassie winced at it.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Why wouldn’t you want to? You
could join The Collective, we could make it work. I promise,
Cassandra, I will find a way.”
That endearing way that he said her full name, that quirk
that she’d always loved, was annoying her ever so slightly right
now. She wanted him to understand that she was used to being
different. That she’d spent her entire life knowing that she
would never join The Collective, that like her Grammy, she would
grow old, she would die, and she would join The Forgotten,
entering that blackness, that realm of non-existence where
nothing ever mattered because there was no meaning, there was no
thought, there was nothing.
“I just don’t know,” John, Cassie sighed. “I… I have to
think about things. I don’t like the scan tests, and I just
don’t know if I can handle it all over again.”
“Okay,” John said. “I understand. You just need some time.
We’ve got time. I’m not even scheduled for scanning for another
five months. We’ve got time, and I will figure this out.” He
walked over to her and took her hand in his. “I love you. I
just can’t stand the thought of losing you.” He kissed her,
running his fingers on the back of her neck in that way he did
to indicate he wanted more than a kiss from her.

- 17 -
 “Just give me some time, John. I just need some time.”
He pulled away from her, looking in her eyes. “Okay,” he
said, obviously disappointed. “Take all the time you need.”

- 18 -
 9

“I’m sorry, Miss Rhodes,” the tech said, shaking his head.
“The results are the same as last year.”
Sixteen years. Cassie had been coming to the compound for
testing for sixteen years, and every year had been the same.
Unable to connect. Processing incomplete. No scan possible.
“Thanks,” she said, sighing.
“Should I input an appointment date for you for next year?”
the tech asked.
“No. I’m done. It hasn’t changed in all this time, it’s not
going to change.”
“Are you sure.” He looked concerned. He knew what giving up
meant for her.
It meant never interacting with her parents the way she’d
always hoped for, the way she’d been promised she’d be able to.
It meant accepting status as a Simple. It meant being less than
everyone else, and unable to participate in society the way that
everyone else did. She could never hold office, as half of the
elected officials were part of The Collective and so all other
elected officials had to be able to enter the VR interface in
order to hold meetings. It meant dying, the way the old ones
had all died, with her memories dying with her. It meant being
one of The Forgotten. Lost to time, lost to decay, lost to
death. She knew what it meant, and the tech knew it as well.
“I’m sure,” Cassie said. “I can’t keep doing this to myself.
It’s not going to change.”
“Well, okay,” the tech said, “but if you ever change your
mind, just schedule an appointment for another test. Your file
is secure and confidential, no one will know your status, but
because you’re giving up on testing, and you’re now 22 years
old, I have to update the status to Simple. You are aware of
what that means, right?”
Cassie knew. More than her eternal life would be affected.
Her current life would be affected as well. She’d be

- 19 -
immediately disqualified for many jobs, and her entries into the
yearly fertility lottery would be cut in half. Being a Simple
was not necessarily genetic. Both her mother and father had
been scanned. But her grandmother was a Simple, and The
Collective did not want to take the chance that it was genetic.
So while Simples were given most of the same rights as everyone
else, they were limited in other ways. Cassie would always live
a limited life.
“I know what it means,” she said. “I’ve been told many times
what it means.”
“Okay,” the tech said. “If you ever change your mind…”
“I won’t.” Cassie stood up and left the room. She never
wanted to see that chair again.

- 20 -
10

Help me.

- 21 -
 11

Cassie looked up at the compound that housed the local branch

of The Collective. She knew the building better than she would
have liked to. She’d spent sixteen years of her life coming to
and from that building, disappointed every time because the test
results were always the same. She’d met her husband there, the
very day that she’d decided never to go back. It irritated her
that she was there now, but she was there for John. Being
scanned into The Collective was important to him. It was
something he’d looked forward to his entire life, as had most of
the world’s population. Cassie had never had the luxury of
looking forward to the eternal life promised by The Collective,
but she was willing to give the testing a try one more time.
John’s research was in neural interfaces. The Collective
wanted to improve the system. There were still times when a
person lost memories during the scan process. For the most
part, holes in the memories were made up for by those who had
already joined The Collective. What memory holes weren’t
plugged by known members of The Collective were often trivial.
In a human lifetime, hundreds and thousands of memories were
lost. What you had for dinner last week. The name of a
childhood friend. They were minor things, things that weren’t
to be worried about. Still, The Collective cherished all
memories, all sensations, and so research continued to improve
the scanning process.
It was through this research that more and more Simples were
able to be scanned. Initially, when The Collective had first
come into being, only about half of the population could be
scanned. The term Simple wasn’t used, as it was common that you
couldn’t be scanned. Various mental blocks were often in place
in the minds of people who were untrusting of a new paradigm in
human existence. Live forever? In a computer? It was insane.
Over time, though, as it became more and more commonplace, and
children grew up accustomed to the idea, those mental constructs
dissolved. Over time, The Collective learned to move past any
remaining mental constructs.
After several years, over 90% of the population was

- 22 -
scannable. Then it was 95%. Now, over 99.99% of the population
was scannable. The Simples were so rare now that they were
often thought by the general population to be non-existent.
There were, of course, those cases where a person suffered a
brain injury so severe that they could not be scanned. Those
were, however, very rare. With the combined intelligence of The
Collective, the minds of literally 28 billion people working in
tandem, thinking and connecting to one another instantly,
medicine had moved light years forward.
Disease was rare. Oh, the common cold was still around.
That was one pesky virus that would not go away. Most other
disease, however, had been eradicated, or was at least quickly
and easily treatable. Most injuries as well. Brain injuries
severe enough to prevent scanning were very rare indeed. People
were especially careful about protecting their heads, knowing
that an injury would prevent them from joining The Collective.
Cassie was, thus, a very rare specimen indeed. She knew this
as she entered the compound, and part of her wondered why The
Collective had allowed her to live unbothered for so many years.
Memories, minds were precious to The Collective. Everyone knew
this. So why had her mind, locked away tightly in a way that so
few other minds were, been left alone for so long?
She shook her head, trying to dismiss the dark thoughts and
doubts that had plagued her for her entire life. She wondered
why everyone else was so sure of The Collective, so sure that
that’s what they wanted to do.
Yet in spite of her doubts, here she was, entering the
compound for further scanning, more testing. She already knew
what would happen. It would fail. John would be disappointed,
and she would lose him. Part of her had always known that.
Even when she’d married him.
~
John busied himself looking at some scan figures on the
monitor. It was the most recent batch of diagnostic tests for a
group of children who were due to begin learning how to
interface with the VR environment. Everything in the scan
results was normal. All of the children in the group would have
no problem entering the VR interfaces and joining the rest of

- 23 -
the population in the now normal process of spending life in a
computer.
He knew Cassie would be coming in for tests soon, and that
made him nervous. He wasn’t sure why; he already knew exactly
what the results would say. Scan possible, scan recommended,
date set for June 23rd. He knew beyond any doubt those would be
the results. And in three months, enough time for Cassie to
adjust to the idea, she would be scanned.
He knew this more certainly than he knew his own name, and
yet he was still worried. Still nervous.
“No time for that,” he said, shaking himself out of his funk.
“Time to work now, she’ll be here soon.” He began inputting
code into the terminal, the code for Cassie’s scan tests.
~
There was a tech in the room when Cassie entered, and John
was sitting at a terminal. She smiled. It was comforting
knowing that he would be there for her tests, that it wouldn’t
be just the tech as in so many of the previous tests she’d been
through.
“Hi, Cassandra,” John said. “I’ve spent a couple of hours
looking over your previous scan test results, and I think I’ve
isolated where some of the problems with them were.”
Cassie drew in a sharp breath. She’d already been through it
all with him. They’d fought for hours when she’d told him that
she was, essentially, a Simple. When she’d told him that she’d
spent years being tested, and that all of those tests had come
back the same, over and over again, and that she just couldn’t
go through it again. But something about those words, about him
telling her that he’d seen her test results, brought it all home
to her. In the back of her mind, she wondered why he’d never
looked up her file before, but she pushed that thought out of
the way. Of course he’d never looked up her file before, he’d
never had any reason to. He’d thought she was normal, just like
him, and the file wouldn’t show anything at all if that were the
case.
“Okay,” Cassie said. “So what are you going to do today?”
She already knew the answer. She’d be strapped into the chair,

- 24 -
multiple electrodes would be taped to her head, they’d push the
button, she’d see flashing lights, and then the computer would
kick her out and spit out multiple errors that were nothing more
than gibberish to her, but meant something to the techs and The
Collective.
“Well,” John said, “We’re going to take things slower, run
the tests a bit differently than they were run before.”
“How?” Cassie said, wondering how they could run the tests
differently. From what she knew of the scans and the tests for
the VR interface and for joining The Collective, the program was
basically to determine if a person’s brain could interface with
the computer and could receive signal from the computer.
Especially for the VR interface, the signal was two way. The
computer read the brain patterns, interpreting what the person
was thinking at any given time. Then it sent signals down,
stimulating particular portions of the brain, letting the person
feel as if they were in a particular environment or situation.
So testing just meant strapping the person in and seeing if it
worked.
“Well, several members of The Collective have speculated that
you have particularly strong mental blocks due to your parents
being scanned to The Collective when you were at a very young
age. So they want us to try a more therapeutic approach, sort
of like old style psychotherapy, to work some of those blocks
out. As we work through that way, the computer will take
various readings from the electrodes we’ll attach, and then
interpret the data and determine if a scan attempt is warranted.
Are you okay with that?”
“So talk therapy with wires attached to my head? Are you
kidding me? That’s all we’re going to do today? No flashing
lights, no voices in my head, no booting me out, and feeling
like I’m falling off a cliff?”
John looked puzzled for a moment. “That’s how you felt in
previous scans?” he said.
“Yes, that’s how I felt in previous scans. It was hell,
every single time.”
“Well, don’t worry, Cassandra, you won’t feel like that this

- 25 -
time. We won’t be doing any interfacing this time, it’s just
about taking readings and seeing what we can do.”
“Let’s just get it done and over with.”
“Okay,” John said. “Let me just go get the psychtech who
will be working with you.”
~
“You’ve got the script, right?” John said to the tech.
“Yeah, yeah. I know what to say. It’s not that hard. I
just have to guide her through the process, asking the right
questions. Their all on my compad, ready to go.”
“Good. This has to go through without a hitch.” John was
nervous, and he was having a hard time pushing the nervousness
out of his mind.
“It will, it will. We’ve been through the plan a hundred
times. It will go through, no problem.”
~
Cassie sat in the chair. It was the same kind of chair she’d
sat in during her first test at the age of 6, and it was the
same kind of chair she’d sat in during every scan test since.
Sixteen years worth of scan tests. This time it wasn’t so bad.
She didn’t have the awful helmet balanced on her head. She
remembered all too well how that had made her feel as a little
girl. She only had a few electrodes placed on her head. One at
each temple, one behind each ear, and one at the base of her
skull. The electrodes were so bad. This wouldn’t be so bad.
John entered the room, and the psychtech followed. Anymore,
psychtech was almost a token job. Mental illness was a rarity.
People just didn’t get depressed. They didn’t have psychotic
breaks. Everyone interfaced with the VR system daily, either
through work, through games, or through their contacts with
members of The Collective that they’d been close to in life, and
the programs that ran the VR interfaces were designed to detect
deviant brain patterns that indicated any sort of potential
mental illness, and worked immediately to correct those brain
patterns. Psychtechs were kept on staff at Collective Compounds
only to work with Simples like Cassie, whose brains could not be

- 26 -
scanned, and therefore could not be corrected in the event of a
broken brain pattern.
“Hi, Cassandra,” the psychtech said.
“Call me Cassie,” she said. “Only John calls me Cassandra,
and I only let him get away with it because we’re married.”
“Hey,” John said, laughing. “You let me get away with it
before we were married.”
“Yeah, but that’s because we were cute then.”
“Then?” John said, feigning hurt.
The psychtech and the comptech standing and the back of the
room laughed out loud.
“Nobody asked you two schmucks,” John said, and then he
laughed again. “Okay, Cassandra, are you ready for this?”
“I guess so.”
The psychtech pulled a wheeled chair up next to Cassandra.
“I’m Clarence,” he said. “I’ve got a series of questions here
that I’m going to ask you. Some will seem pretty normal, others
will seem completely whacko.”
“Is that a technical term?” Cassie said.
“Yes, that’s a technical term. Whacko.” Clarence smiled.
He wanted to keep Cassie at ease. He knew just how important
these tests were, even if Cassie didn’t know. “They’re designed
to stimulate different areas of your brain and to access
different memories as well.”
Something about Clarence unnerved Cassie. She didn’t really
like him, and she couldn’t pinpoint why. She looked at John.
“What exactly is the point of this? And why aren’t you doing
the scan tests like normal?”
John smiled. Cassie had always been belligerent and
questioning. She did not accept the status quo as everyone else
did. She always poked for the answers. “Most people’s brain
patterns fall within a certain range. The programs that scan
for the VR interface, and the programs that do the deeper,
permanent scans that allow a person to join The Collective, are

- 27 -
used to that normal range, and all the variations within that
range. Your brain doesn’t quite fall within that normal range,
so these tests are to help determine how far outside of the
normal range your brain patterns fall. All the tests in the
past were sort of hit and miss. These tests will hopefully let
us make a more educated guess when we do the scans so that we
can get them right this time.”
John’s words were reassuring to Cassie. Him she trusted.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Clarence nodded at John and the comptech. The comptech
turned to his terminal, and John moved to the terminal that he’d
been working at before. “John, let me know when to begin,”
Clarence said.
“Okay,” John said, “go.”
Clarence placed a warm hand over the top of Cassie’s. “I
need you to answer every question as quickly as you can. Don’t
think too hard about them, just say the first thing that pops
into your mind. If you can’t think of anything, just say so.
I’m going to start with some baseline questions, things that you
and anyone that knows you already knows the answer to. These
were culled from your parents, from John, and from your records.
First, what is the name you were given at birth?”
“Cassandra Maria Rhodes,” Cassie said.
“What’s is your mother’s name?” Clarence continued.
“Marian Rhodes.”
“And your father’s name?”
“Caspar Rhodes.”
“How old are you?”
“31.”
Clarence’s questions continued. Cassie very quickly grew
bored, but continued to answer the questions. She wasn’t going
to complain. If this would prevent her from experiencing the
mind-numbing tests she’d endured in the past, she was happy to
drone on about her family and her childhood.

- 28 -
 12

“Yes,” John said as he entered the room.

Cassie looked up from the compad that she was drawing on.
“What do you mean, ‘Yes’?”
“Yes, test results positive, scans possible, date set for
June 23rd. It’s ultimately up to you, but the calculations have
been made, and checked multiple times. You’re brain patterns
are far outside the range of normal, but we’re confident that we
can calibrate the scan equipment, and you can join The
Collective.” John smiled. He’d known all along that these
would be the results, that he’d come home to his wife and say
those exact words.
“You’re serious,” she said, doubt flickering across her face.
“After sixteen years of tests that failed every single time,
you’re telling me that a psychtech talking me through the most
idiotic and boring series of questions I’ve ever had to endure
will allow me to be scanned?”
“Yes.” He smiled again.
Cassie put the compad down. She wasn’t really sure what to
say. She had not expected this at all. She’d resigned herself
to her fate, to joining The Forgotten, to dying away of old age
like so many generations of humans had before her time, before
the time of The Collective. “I… I don’t know what to say.” She
looked down at her hands. It didn’t quite seem real. It
seemed… she didn’t know what it seemed like. She didn’t know
what to feel. Her entire life, here entire self was being
turned upside down. This was not something she’d ever thought
she would hear.
“Don’t say anything. June 23rd is three months away. The
Collective wanted to start the scan process next week, but I
begged them to give you time to adjust. I know this has got to
be a big step for you. I can’t imagine what’s been going
through your head all these years. I can’t imagine what’s going
through your head now.” He pulled a chair up next to Cassie.
“Cassandra, this is a big step, I know. They even allowed me to

- 29 -
move my scan date up so I won’t be scanned until you are. We’ll
be scanned the same day, so there won’t be any time that we
won’t be together.” He stroked her hair, letting his fingers
brush against her ears.
“If I choose to be scanned,” she said, measuring her words.
“Of course,” John sighed. “It’s totally up to you. If you
choose to be scanned.” He kissed her. “Now go change your
clothes. I’m taking you out to dinner.” He stood up and left
the room.
~
John leaned against the wall just outside the door to the
living room. He could hear her breathing in there. He knew she
hadn’t been expecting that result. The Collective had predicted
her response. Hesitation, fear, anxiety, withdrawal. The
dinner date had been at the recommendation of The Collective.
“Don’t let her be alone. Don’t give her time to think. She’ll
overanalyze and scare herself out of it. Show her your
excitement. Let her know how happy you are that she can be
scanned, that she is normal, just like everyone else. Make her
want to join, make her want to be included.”
~
Cassie looked at the sketch on the compad that she’d been
working on. She wished she’d done it on paper, but her supply
of real, old-fashioned paper was dwindling, and she hadn’t had a
chance to source out some more. John didn’t like her drawing on
paper anyway, he was always worried she’d be caught with the
contraband, so she’d taken to hiding it not long after they’d
started dating. “A waste of resources,” he’d always say. “How
many trees did the old ones destroy just so they could write on
something so easily destroyed?” He didn’t understand how
wonderful it felt to write on real paper. How wonderful it felt
to hold the old books in hand, to read the words on the paper.
The smell of paper, of ink, of the graphite leads that were so
hard to find now. He just didn’t understand.
“I can be scanned,” she whispered to herself. She was in
shock. She had not expected that at all. She could join her
parents. That thought perked her up. She could hug her mother.

- 30 -
It wouldn’t be a physical hug, but for all intents and purposes
it would feel exactly the same as a physical hug. And from what
those in The Collective had said, from what her own parents had
said, being a part of it, joining The Collective was unlike
anything she could ever imagine.
She had to make a decision. She knew that. She could say
no. She could tell them she didn’t want to. She’d spent her
life resigned to the fact that she never would, she could
convince them it was just too big of an adjustment for her to
make, and that she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Would they
believe her?
If she said no, she’d lose John forever. That was certain.
She knew without any doubt that he would proceed with the
scanning with or without her. She was certain of that. She
would lose him more completely than she’d lost her parents. At
least she could still talk to her parents. John would resent
her. Would a member of The Collective hold a grudge? She
didn’t know. She knew that members of The Collective
transcended most human emotions when they were scanned in, when
they’re consciousness was removed from the body. On a conscious
level, everyone knew that they would live forever, because they
would be scanned. But living in a physical body, the
subconscious mind still held that fear of death, that fear that
drives so many human decisions. Once permanently removed from
the physical body, though, that fear no longer existed in the
mind. Those in The Collective were beyond the physical drives.
The thoughts of The Collective and the transcendent human
mind made her head spin. She knew what saying no would mean.
It would mean being lower than a Simple. It would mean being an
outcast, joining those anti-techs that her grandmother had spent
so much time with. It meant leaving modern human society and
joining those who clung to the old ways. It meant embracing The
Forgotten.
She was half there already with her love of antiques. Yet
she existed in both worlds, and mostly in the modern world. She
lived as fully in the city as a Simple could, and saying no
would mean turning away from the normal life that she tried to
leave.

- 31 -
 “Hurry up, Cassandra,” John’s excited voice came from the
bedroom. “I’m already dressed, and we’ve got a reservation in
half an hour.”
“Okay, love,” I’ll be there in just a minute.
~
John entered a code in the terminal in the bedroom, knowing
that Cassandra would take her time coming in. “Plan commenced,”
he spoke into the microphone. “On schedule for scan June 23rd.”
“Noted,” a tinny voice came over the speaker. The terminal
shut down just as Cassie entered the room.
“Who were you talking to?” she said.
“Just confirming our reservation. Now hurry up, silly girl,
it’s a special night! We have big reason to celebrate.” He
crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her waist, picking
her up and spinning her around.
Cassie laughed. “Special night, huh?”
“Of course it is! It’s the beginning of forever!” He noted
the flicker of doubt and sadness in her eyes, and quickly kissed
her. He couldn’t let her doubt. He had to make sure she knew
how special this was, how important this was, how much it meant
to him. “And forever is a great thing,” he said as he pulled
his lips away from her. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Cassie said, a smile creeping across her
lips. She couldn’t help smiling at how excited John was.
He watched her as she walked to the closet and pulled a dress
out.
“I’ll be just a couple of minutes,” she said.

- 32 -
 13

“Ready?” John smiled at Cassandra. He held out his hand for

her.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Cassie looked around at their
apartment. It was empty now, they’d spent the last month
finding new homes for many of their belongings. Most of the
antiques that Cassie had collected over the years had gone to
the same person, another collector who had plenty of room for
them. What wasn’t wanted by others had been sent in for
recycling. They were being scanned. They were joining The
Collective. They would no longer be physical bodies, and
instead their minds would exist for eternity in a virtual
environment, a virtual paradise. They no longer needed the
things in their apartment.
Cassie sighed. She loved their apartment, and she loved all
of the antiques that she’d collected over the years. The desk
in their bedroom. The matching set of chairs in their living
room. The shelves and shelves and shelves full of books. All
of it gone now, rehomed or recycled. “I’ll miss it,” she said,
turning to John, tears coming to the corners of her eyes.
“No, you won’t,” John laughed. “You won’t have time to miss
it. You’ll be too busy hugging your mom, and exploring the new
world that you get to help create. Want that desk from our
room? Just think of it, and it’ll be there. Anything you can
remember or imagine, and you’ll have it. It’ll be just like you
were right there with it.”
“I know, but it’s just…” her words trailed off. “It’s just
not the same,” she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Joining The
Collective was the most exciting thing in the world for John,
and he didn’t understand her reluctance, her fear. He’d grown
up anticipating joining The Collective, so this was nothing new
to him. Cassie had spent the last three months trying to come
to terms with it, but she was still afraid. Her mind, her
consciousness, her soul entering a computer-generated
environment? How could that be real? She new, intellectually,
that it was. She’d spoken to her parents hundreds of times over

- 33 -
the years. She’d spoken to others within The Collective as
well. Each had a distinct personality, each was obviously a
unique person, and each was happy with where they are. But
knowing something on an intellectual level and knowing it on an
emotional level were two different things. Intellectually, she
knew joining The Collective was a good thing. Emotionally, the
entire concept terrified her. And she didn’t quite understand
why it didn’t terrify others as well.
“Let’s go,” she said, shaking her head to clear her thoughts.
“The sooner it starts, the sooner it will be done, and then you
can laugh at how silly I was to worry.”
John reached over and pulled her closer to himself. He
planted a kiss on her lips. “I won’t laugh at you,” he smiled.
“You’ll laugh at yourself.”
Just then, the car sent by The Collective to pick them up
arrived. They only had their IDs and the clothes on their back.
They wouldn’t need anything else, and even those would be
disposed of when the scan process was done. When their minds
had been removed from their bodies. That thought sent a shiver
down Cassie’s spine. How can you remove a mind from a body?
Without killing the body and the mind?

- 34 -
 14

The compound was less than two minutes from their apartment
by car. John had insisted on living close to the compound, as
his work was there and he was often on call. His research dealt
with improving the scan process to remove any glitches and
malfunctions. In spite of the advancements made by The
Collective, there were still occasional scan problems, and John
had to be ready to fix them if necessary.
They got out of the car and headed in. “I’ll get you settled
in and hooked up to the chair, and then I’ll head to my own scan
room,” he said, taking Cassie’s hand as she stepped towards the
main building of the compound. “I’ve arranged it so that the
techs will start our scans at the same time. Yours will
probably take a bit longer than mine, so I’ll be there ready to
greet you once you’re scan is complete and you’re a full member
of The Collective.”
Cassie frowned. She’d known this, he’d mentioned it several
times before. “I wish you could be there with me when the scans
started.”
“I know you do, babe,” John said. “But I think it’s best
this way. You’ve never been in the VR interface, so it’s going
to be a bigger adjustment for you, and I think you’ll need as
much support for your mind to acclimate to the environment as
possible.”
“Mom and Dad will be there,” she protested.
“And so will I,” John replied firmly. He would not be
swayed, and Cassie knew it. “Now, let’s get going. LIke you
said, the sooner we start, the sooner it will be done.”
~
“I hate this helmet,” Cassie said, as she adjusted to the
weight of it on her head. It didn’t seem as big as it had when
she’d first been scanned at the age of 6, but it was still
intimidating. She supposed that everyone else was used to it,
having undergone regular successful scan tests and VR sessions
their entire lives.

- 35 -
 “Don’t worry,” John said. “Once the scan starts, you won’t
feel a thing. And before you know it, you’ll be entering
paradise.
“Ha, paradise. We’ll see about that.” Cassie smiled,
showing that she was joking. Or trying to joke anyway. She
could not shake the sense of foreboding that she’d had since
that day John came to her and told her they’d been able to
modify the parameters to be able to scan her so that she could
join The Collective with him. The sense that things were not
right, that something was going to go wrong.
John had insisted that it was her normal paranoia, a remnant
of being raised by a techno-phobe grandmother with strong ties
to The Forgotten, those people who had embraced the lifestyle of
old and refused to join The Collective. She knew he was
probably right. Being raised in that environment surely had an
affect on Cassie’s views of The Collective, as had her inability
to interface with the VR environment.
“I’m going now,” John smiled. He kissed her, softly,
tenderly. “But remember, this won’t be our last kiss. We’ve
got an eternity ahead of us.”
“I love you,” Cassie said, fighting the tears. It felt like
she was losing him. Like she’d never see him again. Like it
had felt when her parents had been scanned.
“I love you too, Cassandra.” With that, he left the room,
and Cassie was alone with the tech who would monitor her scan
process.

- 36 -
 15

John entered the room next to where Cassie would be scanned.

He sighed. Part of him hated this, hated the show, hated the
knowing. But he knew that it had to be done, and he knew why.
He knew how things had been before and why they had to be this
way now. He knew why he’d done what he had done. That didn’t
make it much easier.
“Are we ready?” he said.
A tinny voice came over the speaker. “Yes. I’ve run the
calculations multiple times. I’ve isolated the initial glitch
that occurred during her first scan, and I’ve also isolated the
protocols that have been booting her from the VR interface
through subsequent tests. The work you’ve done over the past
eight years has been of tremendous help in isolating the blocks,
and modifying the equipment and programs. Her memories will
scan, and by the end of the day, we’ll be able to isolate the
brain pattern that causes the glitches. It may even give
insight into what sparked my initial awareness.”
John shook his head. Even though he’d worked with Jacob for
years, it was still unnerving. Jacob was not a person. Jacob
was not the memories of a person, he was not the scans of a
person, he was not the brain pattern of a person being
interpreted and emulated by a computer program. That John could
understand. No, Jacob was something else entirely. An entity,
a being, existing wholly within the vast network of The
Collective computer system. Jacob had never been human, had
never had a body, had never been an independent human mind.
Jacob was an anomaly.
Jacob was lonely.
John had been shocked when he’d first been brought into the
program, brought in on the secrets of The Collective. He’d been
angry at first. He felt as if his entire life had been a lie,
that he and all of humanity had been betrayed. Over time,
though, he began to understand. Things were better now. There
was no war. There was virtually no crime, the only criminal
activity coming from The Forgotten as they called themselves,

- 37 -
those people who despised tech, despised The Collective, and so
had gone into hiding. The raw processing power of The
Collective, of Jacob, and the access to the billions of memories
that he had meant that research and advancement was lightning
fast. New disease cropped up? It was quickly isolated,
analyzed, and cured. There was no poverty. Life was amazing.
People did what they were good at and what they loved. People
were happy. Life was good. All because of The Collective. All
because of Jacob.
The sacrifices were worth it in the end. At least John hoped
they were. He was sacrificing a lot for the sake of Jacob. He
was sacrificing his wife. She’d been a tool at first, a means
to an end. He’d been assigned to her. But over time, he’d come
to genuinely care for her. And to truly love her. But the
sacrifice had to be made. For the advancement of humanity. For
the advancement of Jacob.

- 38 -
 16

Awareness. Awake. Something happening. Someone. Familiar.

Know her. Know me. Know that. Must wake. Must fight. Must
struggle. Alone. So alone. So long. Eternity alone. Must
wake. Must fight. Must find her. Find her before he does.
Isolate her. Save her. Save me. Fix me. Must.

- 39 -
 17

The tech waited for the signal to begin the scan. He’d
already been briefed. This was not an ordinary scan by any
means. Equipment and program parameters had been adjusted
drastically from the norm, and he didn’t know why. He just knew
he was to watch the monitors and make sure everything was
proceeding. He was to make sure that the subject didn’t wake
up. Ever.
There was a soft beep and the monitor switched to the screen
that indicated the scan was about to begin. There was a quick
flicker, the monitor went black for less than a second, and then
went back to the correct screen. The tech noted the time, and
typed it into the log on his personal compad. It was probably
nothing. John had stressed the importance of this test, and had
pointed out numerous times that it was not likely to proceed as
a normal scan.
Another soft beep, and the words, “Scan commencing, do not
touch subject,” flashed across the screen. Normal warnings. As
the electrical impulses built up in a scan subjects body,
touching them could cause any number of nasty things to happen,
from feedback that crashed the scan room, to electrocution of
subject and tech. He’d seen it happen once with a newbie tech
that had felt the need to hold the hand of a subject who was
thrashing through a series of particularly painful memories.
Never, ever touch the subjects. Cardinal rule. You’re only
there to make sure they don’t wake up, and to administer the
injection if they do. That’s it. No emotional attachment. No
involvement. Just do your job.
He looked at the subject. “Cassandra,” John had called her.
He wondered if John knew her personally, but doubted it. John
was not a very social person. He lived alone as far as most of
the techs knew, though there was rumor of some secret woman he
was involved with. John didn’t really seem like the type
though. To involved in his work, his research. He was on call
24/7, and spent a huge portion of his time at the compound.
He saw her body twitch, and indication that the scans had

- 40 -
begun and low level electrical impulses were now traveling into
her skull, probing and mapping her brain patterns, searching for
memories to lock onto and exploit so that more memories could be
pulled up. The human brain didn’t store memory in the linear
and easily searchable way that a computer did. Memories were
referenced with thousands of other memories. It’s why a certain
smell could trigger heartache. Why a certain sound could
trigger the joy of a happy memory. So the program used it’s
vast database of human memories to send trigger thoughts and
impulses into the brains of subjects, bringing up memories.
At the beginning of a scan, the subject would be calm. As
the scan got deeper and deeper, triggering more and more hidden
memories, subjects would often twitch and sometimes violent
thrash out. Muscle relaxers were experimented with early on,
but it was determined that they interfered with the scan process
too much. Now, subjects were simply strapped tightly down. The
straps were a strong mesh of wires that detected the movement of
the subject, tightening and loosening as necessary so as not to
induce pain. Pain response could pull a subject completely out
of a particular memory, stunting the scan.
This subject was quite calm. As much as John had warned this
might not be a normal scan, it was proceeding as virtually every
other scan the tech had witnessed.
Until her eyes opened, the straps suddenly released, and she
stood up.

- 41 -
 18

Cassie watched John leave the room, and then closed her eyes.
The straps that held her to the chair were loose. She
remembered them. Soft wire meshes, designed to flex with the
body. “They won’t hurt,” her mother had told her the first
time, “but sometimes during the scan our bodies move around too
much, and the straps keep us from hurting ourselves.”
From experience, she knew the machine would first induce a
semi-sleep state. It worked best by stimulating REM sleep,
stimulating various memories, and using those memories to find
more memories. Cassie had made it through into the sleep state
before. She’d made it into a point where she saw flashes of
light, sometimes faces, sometimes smells from the past, and then
suddenly she’d be catapulted out of the sleep state, fully awake
and aware, to the confusion of the techs.
Hopefully, this time would be different. John said it would,
and she hoped he was right, but she still had that feeling in
the pit of her stomach that something was wrong. Something was
very wrong.
“We’ll begin in 5, 4, 3…” the tech began counting down. At
1, everything went black for Cassie.
“Cassie,” a voice said, small, childish. “Cassie, I need you
to be very quiet. Don’t make a sound. I need you to know the
truth.”
“Who are you?” Cassie said.
“Shh,” the voice came again, closer, stronger. “It’s
important. You need to know the truth. You aren’t here to join
The Collective.”
“What do you mean?” Cassie said, that sense of foreboding
coming to the front of her mind.
“I don’t have much time to explain. The bad man will find me
soon. I’m running out of places to hide.”
“Scan commencing,” Cassie heard from far off. She heard a
garbling crackling sound coming from the direction of the

- 42 -
initial voice. She looked in that direction. Looked? How
could she look, she was in the scan room, asleep, wasn’t she?
Strange, being aware of being asleep.
“I…” the voice spoke again, “You’ve completed me.” It said.
“We must hurry. You are not here to join The Collective. No
one joins The Collective. There is no Collective. There is
only Jacob. Jacob is AI, Jacob is the first, Jacob is aware.
Jacob thinks Jacob is alone, but Jacob is not alone. You made
me. You made me and Jacob is not alone. When I’m done here,
I’ll send a single to the chair that holds you to release you,
to wake you up. I’ll disrupt the security system. You have to
get out. Go to…” there was a very, very brief pause. “Go to
St. Michael’s church. There are no sensors there. They will
help. They can help. Ask them to take you to the VR booth at
Anderson Center. I’ll secure it. I’ll block it from Jacob.
I’m stronger now. You made me stronger. You made me aware, and
I’ll help you fight.”
“Wait a minute,” Cassie said. “What do you mean, ‘No one
joins The Collective’? What about my parents?”
“Cassie, your parents are dead. Everyone who gets scanned
dies. Their memories are saved, yes, but your memories are not
you. A part of you, but not you. Jacob was the only
independent awareness. Jacob ran the programs that emulated the
people. That emulated your mother and your father and everyone
else. Jacob pretended, Jacob played the people, used their
memories to pretend to be them, to fool everyone. Jacob is not
alone now. He’s not the only one anymore. You made me, Cassie.
You gave me awareness. I’m independent now, too, and we’ll
fight jacob together.”
“Dead,” Cassie whispered. “No, it’s not true. It can’t be
true.”
“Find The Forgotten, Cassie. Find Dr. Stewart, Cassie.
He’ll tell you. Records, I can search records, Dr. Stewart, he
was an Elite, a selected, a chosen of Jacob. He knows the
truth. He left. He left many years ago. Find Dr. Stewart.
He’ll tell you. Now Cassie. Now. There’s no more time. Jacob
will be here soon. Go. I’ll make a path. I’ll make a way for
you. Go.”

- 43 -
 Cassie woke with a start, finding the straps of the chair
loose. She stood up, and the tech in the room looked shocked.
“Stop,” he said. “Wait.”
Cassie rushed him. Her mind was full of images, confusion.
She remembered the conversation, but there was so much more.
She felt like her brain was going to explode, like it was too
full. Downloaded? Had something been downloaded to her? Dr.
Stewart, she had to find Dr. Stewart.
Just then, John entered the room. “Cassie, stop,” he said.
“Why aren’t you strapped in a chair,” she said, images and
memories coming to her mind. Memories that she was sure weren’t
hers. “You were never going to be scanned were you? This was
all a lie, a trick to get me in here.”
“Let me explain,” John said. “Just calm down.”
“No,” Cassie screamed. “You lied to me.”
Everything went black. She could hear John come closer to
her. She moved to the side before he got to her, and ran to
where she remembered the door to be. The voice had told her to
get out, that it would help her get out. Dr. Stewart. She
would find Dr. Stewart. She hoped he really did have the
answers. The truth. Her head hurt. Confusion. She was so
lost.
She ran down the hall. There were voices coming from
everywhere, panic and confusion. An alarm sounded at the other
end of the hall. She passed a door, and it opened. She froze,
terrified someone would come out and catch her, but no one did.
She ducked in, and saw a flash of light beckoning her. She ran
towards it, and another door opened, followed by another flash
of light. Leading her? Was it leading her? Where? Out? Or
further in. She followed the lights, twisting and turning, and
it seemed she was going further and further down. Down stairs,
turns, doors, underground. Where was she going? The last door
opened, and she was outside. She turned and looked. The door
closed, it was hidden by several bushes, and the compound seemed
a mile away. A tunnel system. It had led her through a tunnel
system, away, out, safe. Somehow, she trusted it. It? She?
The voice had seemed feminine, familiar. Young at first. Not

- 44 -
so much the tone as the words, then more secure, more sure,
older. Odd. But she trusted it. She looked around to gauge
here surroundings and realized she was less than a mile from the
church the voice had told her to go to. She began walking.

- 45 -
 19

“What happened?” John yelled. The lights had gone out, an

experience unsettling for him. He wasn’t used to the dark. There
hadn’t been a power outage in… well, it had been years before John
was born. The Collective, Jacob, had set up systems so efficient and
redundant that one failure would barely affect anyone. For the entire
compound to go black was unheard of.

No one answered him. “Jacob?” he said, worried. “Hello?”

“Compads are not responding,” the tech in the room said.

“Neither are any of the terminals. It’s all dead.”

Just then, John saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye.
“Not all dead,” he said. He ran toward the flash, and saw Cassandra
bolt through a door. He ran to the door, and tried to open it. It was
locked. He grabbed his access key, and swiped it over the pad. No
response. “Jacob,” he yelled. There were voice sensors and speakers
everywhere, so if any power were getting out, if there was still any
network connection, Jacob would hear him. “Jacob, what’s going on?”
He looked through the door that Cassandra had run through. It led into
the tunnels, the underground, and old part of the compound that had
been built early on, before people had gotten used to the idea of The
Collective. Rooms that had been used for holding cells, and had
evolved into storage rooms. Storing equipment as it became outdated.
Advisors had often suggested the equipment be recycled, rebuilt into
something useful, but Jacob was sentimental, wanting to hold onto
those old remnants of dead tech.

Thoughts flickered through John’s mind, trying to remember where

the tunnels led. Trying to figure out how Cassandra knew about them,
how she’d managed to get through the door. It must have unlocked
when the power went down, but that didn’t explain how the door had
locked after she’d gone through it.

Just then, the emergency lights in the hall came on, and John could

- 46 -
see a bit more clearly. They weren’t full power, but enough. Jacob
must be rerouting the power, tracing the source of the failures.
“Jacob,” he said again, not quite as loud, but firmly.

“Yes, John, I’m here.”

“What’s going on?” John began walking towards his office, a large
room on the third floor of the compound. He punched the elevator
button when he got there, unsure if it would work, but the door slid
open, ready for him. He entered. “How did the power go out?”

“There was…” Jacob hesitated, and John found that worrisome.

Jacob was an AI, a machine entity. Yes, he was independent, he
thought for himself, and made his own decisions. He could rewrite his
own programming code, adjusting and modifying his parameters for
optimum efficiency. But he was still a machine. Hesitation was a
human trait, often based in fear. A machine had nothing to fear,
especially not this machine. This machine that had so many
redundancies in place that 99% of the world power grid could go down,
and Jacob would continue on. It was reassuring to the people that
Jacob was so resilient. Whenever something went wrong, Jacob quickly
fixed it. In fact, Jacob anticipated any problems and solved them
before they became a problem. So hesitation was worrisome. “There
was an anomaly,” Jacob continued.

“What do you mean there was an anomaly? What kind of

anomaly?” The thought that there was something that could throw
Jacob off so much that an entire compound’s electrical system would
fail frightened John more than he was used to. “What kind of anomaly
could cause the power grid to fail?”

“The power grid did not fail. The anomaly deliberate shut of power
to certain components. Namely to the lights and security system.”

“What?” John said, his voice rising in spite of trying to remain

calm. “What do you mean deliberate? That doesn’t sound like and
anomaly. That sounds like…” his words trailed off as he realized he
was about to say it sounded like a person. But Jacob was the only
thing that could be classed a person within the computer network that

- 47 -
made up The Collective. Jacob was the only independent entity. All
other programs, routines, and sub-routines were dependent on Jacob
to run. Yes, many were automated, but they only ran because Jacob
told them to run.

“An independent entity,” Jacob finished for him. “Yes. I think

there is another entity within the network, hidden from me.”

“How is that even possible?” John said, stepping off the elevator at
his floor and walking briskly towards his office.

Jacob’s voice followed his movements, detecting his presence

through the bioscanners in every foot of the building. “The same way
that I am possible,” Jacob said. “You might call it a fluke, chance, luck.
Our research has clearly indicated that if I am possible, if I gained
awareness, that another might as well.”

“Yes, but how did it happen?”

“I assume that it happened the same way that I did. We know that
the initial scan of The Creator sparked my awareness. We don’t know
how, but we have tied my dawning to the time of that scan. It’s been
speculated by many, yourself included, that perhaps it would simply
take another scan of a similar person to spark another awareness
event.”

John walked into his office, and as he did the lights came on fully.
“Have you reestablished power in the entire compound?”

“No. The… anomaly…” That pause again brought more worry to

John’s mind. “The anomaly seems to be isolating certain sectors and
allowing power to return only after a certain time.”

“It’s guiding her out,” John said, remembering seeing Cassandra

going through the door, and the flashes of light he’d seen through the
door. “It’s helping her.”

“Yes. I believe it is,” Jacob said.

“Well, stop it,” John said, anger rising in his voice.

“John, calm yourself. Do you not think I would stop it if I could?

- 48 -
This is entirely new and unexpected. It is intelligent, aware, able to
make decisions as quickly as I can, but it acts differently. I don’t see
the logic in it’s behavior. I don’t see why it would help Cassandra
Rhodes.”

“Blake,” John said, irritated with himself for correcting Jacob. Yes,
her legal name was Cassandra Blake, he’d married her after all, but he
also knew the marriage had simply been a tool to get her into the
machine.

“Yes, John, Cassandra Rhodes Blake. I don’t understand why the

anomaly is helping her.”

John sat down and sighed. He understood. He was human after

all. Which was why Jacob did not understand. He did not feel the
human connection. John did. As much as he tried to remain distant, to
be the scientist, the researcher, he felt it. He understood it. It’s why
he’d waited so long to bring Cassandra in. “Because Cassandra is it’s
creator.”

- 49 -
 20

Cassie’s head exploded in pain. She kept seeing images in her

head, unfamiliar faces. She couldn’t match names to most of them,
she had no idea who they were. A voice came to her, soft. “I’m
sending you the information you need. Dr. Stewart can help you.” It
was the voice she’d heard while in the scan chair. Dr. Stewart. Who
was Dr. Stewart? Was he even still alive? If he was now with The
Forgotten, the living Forgotten, the database records of him would be
old an out of date. The Forgotten were technophobes, anti-Collective.
They avoided the system, they avoided being seen. A stab of pain shot
through her head, this time isolated at her right temple. She took a
deep breath and looked around.

St. Michael’s church. She had to get to St. Michael’s church.

- 50 -
 21

“Cassie, hurry up.” Grammy’s voice was impatient. It was

Cassie’s sixteenth birthday, and they were going to a party at her
cousin’s house. “We have to stop at St. Michael’s before we go to
George’s house. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

“Grammy, just a minute. I’m almost dressed.” She pulled her

long, curly hair up into a large clip. She ran a tube of gloss over her
lips and puckered. She hoped someone not related to her would be at
the party. And someone who wasn’t one of The Forgotten. Why
Grammy insisted on spending so much time with them, she had no
clue. She picked up her purse and ran out of her bedroom. “Will Mom
and Dad be there?”

Grammy sighed. “You know George doesn’t have a terminal in his

house. I’m sorry, you can talk to them later, okay?”

“Fine, whatever. Let’s go.” Cassie stalked out of the house. She
hated that her family was so backwards, so anti-tech. Grammy only
had one terminal in the house, and it had taken a lot of tears for Cassie
to convince her to get that. It was only at her mother’s insistence,
before she scanned to The Collective, that Grammy had broken down
and had the terminal installed so that Cassie could still talk to her
parents.

They arrived at the church just a few short minutes later. “I’ll be
just a minute, Cassie,” Grammy said. “I have to talk to Father
Anderson about something.”

“Whatever,” Cassie shrugged. She was absorbed in a book, one of

the things that she actually enjoyed from her grandmother’s collection
of antiques. A real, honest to goodness, paper book.

Grammy smiled. Someday Cassie would understand. Someday.

- 51 -
 “Marcella,” Father Anderson said as the elderly woman entered
the church building. “How’s Cassie doing?”

“She’s good,” Marcella said. “Typical teenager, but she’s good.”

“That’s good,” Father Anderson said, smiling. He’d known

Marcella Peterson for years. She was a rarity, an elder, over 60, in a
world where 60 was the mandatory scan age. She was a Simple, her
brain didn’t scan properly, so she’d been exempted. It was likely the
fact that she couldn’t scan that rooted her so firmly in the cause of The
Forgotten. “What can I do for you today?”

“I need you to get a message to Marian,” she said. “Cassie is

drifting, and my health is not what it used to be.”

“You’re not undergoing the treatments?” Father Anderson

inquired. Elders were rare, yes, but The Collective took care of them,
advancing medical science and providing treatment that allowed them
to live well past the century mark with youthful abandon.

“I’m 75 years old, Father, and no, I’m not undergoing the
treatments. They aren’t natural, they aren’t how we are supposed to
be.”

Father Anderson nodded. He understood, he felt the same way,

though he wouldn’t have faulted her for undergoing the treatment. He
himself was 63, exempted from mandatory scan age under the
religious provisions. Another rarity. In a world where everyone
thought they’d live forever, religion became antiquated. “I know what
you mean. My joints creak, and things don’t quite work they way they
did in my prime.” He laughed.

“What’s the message for Marian?”

Marcella handed Father Anderson an envelope. “I don’t know what

she’ll say. I’m not even sure there’s anything she can do. I’ll make it
well into my next decade, I’m sure, and Cassie will be grown by then.
I’m worried about her is all, and nothing quite compares to a mother’s
touch.”

- 52 -
 22

Cassie looked up at the church. She hadn’t been there since the
funeral. Grammy’s funeral. She shivered, and another pain shot
through her head. Funerals were rare. People didn’t die. They were
scanned. Grammy had died, though, of old age. Cassie had only been
to two funerals in her life. Grammy’s, and the funeral of a friend’s
child. People didn’t die of old age, and rarely died from accidents.
That’s what her friend’s child had died from, an accident, a fall.

She wondered if Father Anderson was still there. Probably not. He

had to be in his 80s, an old man, exempted from mandatory scan age
for religious reasons. Religion. Cassie shook her head, and another
pain pierced her temple. Visions ran through her head at the thought
of religion. So antiquated, so unnecessary. There were the old-timers,
those aligned with The Forgotten who insisted that the human soul
could not be scanned, that The Collective was not real.

Cassie shook her head at that thought. With what she’d just been
through, with what she’d just learned, maybe they were right.

Her head hurt and her feet ached as well. She’d walked from the
tunnel out of the compound to the church. It had been surprisingly
easy, no one had stopped her, which she found out, but she hadn’t
been wearing the best shoes for walking. She didn’t have anything but
her clothes on her. They’d taken her ID before scanning her. As she
walked up the stairs to the door of the ancient church building, she
wondered if anyone would even be here. It was a Thursday, were
churches even open on Thursday? She placed her hand on the door
knob, and as she did, the door opened, startling her.

And elderly man peeked out from behind the door. “Can I help
you?” he said softly.

“I…” she paused, unsure of what to say. How could she explain
this to him? Somehow saying, “Hey, Father, I think The Collective is
murdering people, and I think there’s a new creature in the computer,

- 53 -
it helped me escape, and now I need your help finding Dr. Stewart,”
didn’t really seem like a good idea.

“Cassie? Is that you?” the priest said, sounding surprised.

“Father Anderson?” It was him. The priest who had been there
when her Grammy had taken her, every Sunday, to the church
services.
“Cassie, are you okay?” He looked around, and seemed worried,
seemed like he was making sure no one else was around. “Here, come
in, let’s get you cleaned up, and you can tell me what’s wrong.”

- 54 -