The Life of the Mind (The End of All Things, #1)

by John Scalzi

I’m Rafe Daquin, and I’m a brain in a box.

“She was definitely wearing her ‘please shut the hell up,’ face,” Wilson said, to me. “Trust me, I have seen it many times.”

This isn’t the romance of space. This is you and space in a nice, comfortable rut.

When this was happening I had two thoughts. The first thought, which if I’m truthful about it took up most of my brain, was Whaaaaaa, because first I was airborne, and then I smacked into the wall.

Whaaaaaa was now going, Oh shit we’re all gonna die, we’re dead we’re dead we’re so fucking dead. And then the lights went out. All of this took maybe a second. The good news is I peed before going to sleep.

I’m trying to think of the best way to describe it. Try this. Imagine a migraine, on top of a hangover, while sitting in a kindergarten of thirty screaming children, who are all taking turns stabbing you in the eye with an ice pick. Times six. That was the good part of my headache.

Then I realized I couldn’t taste my mouth. Don’t look at me like that, because even though I can’t see you I know you’re looking at me like that.

If God or gods existed, and this was all they put together for eternal life, I wasn’t very impressed with their user experience.

Don’t get too excited, that other part of my brain said. You’re a brain in a box now. And they can see everything you do. They’re probably looking at you thinking all this right now. You’re depressing, I said to that other part of my brain. At least I’m not talking to myself, it said back. And anyway you know I’m right.

They assumed they had the upper hand in dealing with me. Again, fair enough. I was a brain in a box and they could kill me or torture me any time they wanted. That’s a pretty good definition of having the upper hand.

I’m not a heroic hacker with magic code. I was a brain in a box.

It actually took a couple of weeks. And during all that time I waited for the moment where Control, or whoever, looked at the Chandler’s system and found evidence of me wandering around in it, making changes and trying to get into places where I shouldn’t. I waited for the moment they found it, and the moment they decided to punish me for it. But they didn’t. I’m not going to lie. Part of me was annoyed that they didn’t. Because that’s some lax security. All of it was lax.

What I did with those two weeks: blue pill. No, I don’t know where the phrase comes from. It’s been used for a long time. Look it up.

Which made me feel like the luckiest guy in the universe, until I remembered I was still a brain in a box.

It’s not exactly surprising that staying sane is useful when trying to hit performance markers.

The goal wasn’t to destroy all the frigates. The goal was to make them expend as much of their firepower on me as possible so that when three other ships skipped in to attack them, they wouldn’t have the defenses to survive. Basically I was bait in the scenario. It wasn’t the only scenario that I’d been bait for, recently. Let’s just say I wasn’t loving the pattern to the simulations I was seeing.

Ever heard of “monologuing”? The thing where the captured hero escapes death by getting the villain to talk just long enough to break free? Well, this wasn’t that, because I was still a brain in a box and likely to die the first time I was sent on a mission. But it was something close. And Ocampo had no problem talking and then talking some more.