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Castles Made of Sand

He could not run.  His legs were literally locked.  As a child, he was told this type of control with The Connector was illegal.  Beads of sweat rolled down his brow as testament to his tremendous physical effort to move, which yielded no result.  Slowly, two men appeared out of a side alley and approached him.  Without saying a word, one of them placed himself behind him, while the other was positioned in front.  As the two men began to walk, his legs suddenly unlocked and walked him in a single-file line with them, back into the alley.

Rodrigo Suarez was 22.  He was a social activist involved in many human rights protests held in what was now modern day Madrid.  How could they have known?  Rodrigo had spent an unfathomable amount of points of every type to insure that his location and thoughts remained private.  Being anonymous was costly.  He couldn't change the fact that The Connector was part of his brain and nervous system.  He was, after all, born with it.  He had tried his hardest to keep his secrets from the system, but to no avail.  Maybe the corporations did, in fact, know everything.  He didn't want to believe it, but as he took each step, his illusions melted away in horror and he began to accept the fact that his freedom never existed.

The alley was long, narrow, and smelled of urine.  For some reason, he couldn't think properly.  It was as if they had disconnected him from the Outernet, but somehow they still had control.  Every knowledge point his brain could muster disappeared like a sand-castle in a storm. If you were to look him in the face, you would never notice the immense suffering behind his eyes.  He couldn't figure out if it had been betrayal, or if it had all been a set-up from the beginning.  How could he?  There was a constant buzzing noise in his mind as if a flood of random information kept streaming through, making his thoughts disperse.

Suddenly a voice rang out in his head. "You didn't think we had forgotten did you?"  The question was obviously rhetorical since they were currently monitoring every passing thought and fancy of Rodrigo's brain.  Besides that, the only questions with impact any more were the rhetorical ones.  The man in front was sallow and lanky.  His shoulders were hunched and his gait was long, giving him a comical appearance that was cancelled out by his serious frown, dark blazer and sinister looking sun-glasses.  The alley took a sharp turn to the left and then to the right again as they passed some inner-block buildings.  Rodrigo could smell everything!  This was a shock to him as he had been using the latest service for blocking odorous nuisance.  There was a distinct smell of dried piss and something that died further up the alley that made him want to wretch, but it was impossible.  Are they torturing me? Rodrigo thought, walking in the dark alley, still in a single-file line, stomach tittering at the point of disposal.  He heard a faint chuckle from the man behind him.

"We're almost there asshole, just a couple more minutes and your suffering will be over." this voice apparently belonging to the wide-waisted one.  The man in back never opened his mouth, this message was delivered directly into Rodrigo's mind.  So they did know that they were torturing him by blocking his Connector's security configuration and shutting down all of his running Services.  The need to vomit stayed at it's tipping point and caused all of the pain of vomiting, but with none of the release.  Rodrigo could feel the stomach acid trying to climb up his esophagus.  He couldn't call out or message anyone as if all of his outgoing communications had also been blocked.

Finally, an excruciating three minutes later, they got to their destination.  They were deep into a labyrinth of forgotten alleys beneath the superstructures of the city in what seemed to be a dead end.  People never walked down here, much less to many places.  Rodrigo was one of the rare citizens that actually liked to travel by foot, despite it's obvious lack of efficiency and overall awkwardness.  His back was to the wall and he was now facing the stout man and his lanky companion who were standing a couple of meters away.  They're going to kill me! he thought.  At that, the lanky man looked Rodrigo in the eye and Rodrigo began to vomit unceasingly.  A nuclear explosion somewhere in his stomach seemed to be fueling the heaving unforgivably.  After about two more minutes and some dry heaving, Rodrigo, vomit covered and kneeling looked up at the lanky man "Are you going to kill me?"  The lanky man stared at him for a moment and replied "Did you like our little walk my friend?  I would say that if you give us what we want, no harm no foul."

"What do you want from me?" Rodrigo's message deeply tinted with fear and anger.

"There is an encrypted sector you have stored in there.  We want all of it."

The stout man reached into one of his jacket pockets and pulled out a small black sphere decorated with tiny glowing-blue tunnels which dotted the surface.  Rodrigo had heard about these, the stout man didn't even have to ask him because all of Rodrigo's inner-thoughts were currently being monitored.  Rodrigo tried not to think anything, but his thoughts were flowing now with immense speed and bandwidth.  Before he could even think a thought, it seemed that it was already sucked out of him.  He felt as if his brain were Niagra Falls and it was falling horizontally into the black sphere.  In the din of the cascade, his own thoughts were like small salmon trying to jump upstream and failing horribly.

He couldn't fight it nor escape it.  He could feel his arms wavering, his hands trying to hold him up from the pool of vomit he was kneeling in.  His Connector was running hot and it felt like the back of his neck near the base of his skull was on fire.  All he could do was stare down at his hands.  He couldn't even cry because quite a few of his natural functions were still blocked.  It only took seconds, but to Rodrigo it felt like his mind was caught in an eternal loop.  Darkness slowly creeped into the corner of his vision.  His last thoughts were:  Is this it?  Am I really dying?  What the fuck are they doing to me?  Where is..

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