PRIVATE BLOG

The department has authorized a new series of suppression trials. The stated objective is the controlled reduction of signals associated with pain, fear and psychological distress. I have been assigned to observation and record maintenance. I am not authorized to alter experimental parameters. The senior team expects the first trial to begin this month. I have been instructed to record what the subjects report, not what I believe they experience. This distinction appears reasonable.

The first subject has entered observation. He was asked to describe the room before the procedure began. He said he recognized it. There is no record of a previous visit. The discrepancy was not considered relevant to the trial. During the procedure, his requests for assistance became less frequent. By the end of the session, he made none. The terminal registered a positive response.

Subject 0417 was discharged. Before leaving, he asked whether dreams counted as outgoing signals. I did not understand the question and referred it to the next shift. His condition was listed as stable. I have reviewed the recording twice. His hands were shaking when he signed the discharge form. The terminal did not flag this as distress.

The second trial has begun. Subject 0631 was given a stop phrase and demonstrated that he understood it before the procedure. During the session, he remained cooperative. At one point, he appeared to be crying. When asked whether he wished to stop, he answered: “No. Please continue.” The supervisor instructed me to record the answer exactly as given. I did.

A night recording from Subject 0631 has been restricted. I was allowed to review it before the restriction was applied. The subject was walking in his sleep. He was shouting that he did not want to return to the examination room. When a staff member told him to return to bed, he stopped speaking immediately. He answered, “Yes.” I asked whether the recording would change the outcome of the trial. I was told it had not been made during an approved examination.

The third subject arrived today. She asked whether we could make her forget someone. She did not ask for a new life. She did not ask to become another person. She only wanted to stop remembering a loss. The physician explained the procedure. She listened carefully and signed the form. Before the session, she placed a photograph face down on the table. I did not see who was in it.

The treatment was considered successful. She no longer recognized the person in the photograph. When asked what she saw, she described the room, the furniture and the light from the window. She spoke about everything except the person sitting beside her. I asked whether she noticed anything unusual. She looked at the photograph for a long time. Then she said: “Someone should be there.” The physician marked the answer as residual association. She asked if she could keep the photograph. The physician said no.

Her dosage was reduced. Two days later, she began speaking to someone behind me. I turned around. There was no one there. She apologized. She said she had mistaken me for someone else. A few minutes later, she asked for my name. I gave it to her. She said: “No. That isn’t the one you had before.” I checked my identification card after the session. My name was there. I checked it again that evening.

One of the staff members assigned to her did not come to work. I asked the supervisor whether he was ill. The supervisor asked who I meant. I showed her his name in the schedule. She told me there had been an error in the database. I remember him. He sat across from me during the first examination. He had a habit of tapping his pen against the table when he was nervous. I cannot remember his face. I have been looking at his name for the last ten minutes. I cannot remember his voice either.

There are six names in the incident report. Four Level A staff. Two from Sector Three. The database still contains their records. Their workstations are assigned. Their access cards are active. Nobody can tell me where they are. I asked the subject about the photograph again. She said she no longer remembered the person in it. Then she asked me: “If you forget me too, will I still be here?” I told her yes. I did not know whether that was true.

They terminated her today. I was told to remain outside. I could hear her through the door. The procedure took longer than the report says. Afterward, the supervisor signed the closure document. I was asked to confirm that I had witnessed the procedure. I signed it. I should have opened the door. I keep thinking that if I had opened it, I could have done something. I do not know what I could have done. I signed the document.

There is someone in Chamber 04. The records say the chamber is empty. I can hear him. He does not know his name. Neither do I. Sometimes he answers before I finish speaking, as if he already knows what I am going to ask. Yesterday, I asked whether he was connected to her. He said: “She was looking for me.” I asked whether she had found him. He did not answer. They want another examination tomorrow. I have access to the chamber controls during the night shift. There is a short interval between the internal door opening and the corridor camera restarting. It may be enough. I have never helped a subject leave before. I do not know where he can go, and I do not know whether opening a door will help someone I cannot see. But I stood outside her door. I will not stand outside his.

I opened the chamber at 02:17. I told him the door was open. I told him the corridor was clear. He asked me to leave with him. I said I could not. For a while, I could hear him breathing on the other side of the doorway. Then the breathing stopped. The corridor camera restarted. There was nothing on the recording. This morning, the chamber was declared empty. They say the subject has disappeared. I keep checking the clock above the door. It stopped at 02:17. I do not know if he left. Sometimes I hear someone in the corridor after the lights go out. I ask whether it is him. No one answers.

There is another subject. I found her identifier in a transfer record: 152312_ The file says she was intended for the third experiment. It does not say when she arrived, who admitted her, or where she was kept. Her location field changes every time I open the record. This morning, it displayed the number of the terminal I was using. I closed the file. When I opened it again, the location field was blank. Under the field, someone had written: “She is looking for a way out.” There is no author attached to the entry.

I have been searching for her in the older records. She appears in places where she should not be. A transfer list dated before her admission. An observation schedule for a room that no longer exists. A copy of the third subject’s intake form. On that copy, 152312_ is listed as a witness. The original form has no witnesses. I asked a supervisor whether she had been present during the third experiment. He told me not to open her file again. An hour later, he asked me why I was still working. I told him it was the middle of my shift. He looked at the clock and went home. The clock had stopped.

She is not in a chamber. We keep asking where they put her. We keep looking for a room, a door, a record of someone bringing her inside. Perhaps that is why we cannot find her. Every time we decide what she is, the record changes. When we call her a subject, she appears in another file. When we call her missing, someone remembers seeing her. When we close her case, a terminal opens it again. I used to think the system was broken. Now I think it is trying to describe something it was never made to understand.

I dreamed about the table. There were places set for people I could not see. I knew they were there because the chairs moved when they sat down. At the end of the table was a figure. I could not see her face. She asked whether I had come to help. I wanted to say yes. I remembered the woman behind the door. I remembered the man in the empty chamber. I remembered the forms I signed. I could not answer. When I woke up, there was an open file on my terminal. SUBJECT: 152312_ STATUS: WAITING

They say the file cannot be trusted because no employee wrote it. I believed them at first. Then I remembered how many things we wrote that were not true. We wrote that the first subject felt no pain. We wrote that the second subject wanted to continue. We wrote that the third treatment was successful. We wrote that the fourth chamber was empty. We wrote every one of those things ourselves. I would rather trust the words that appeared without us.

She remembers the people we lost. I know she does. The names appeared in her file last night. All six of them. The names of the staff who disappeared. For a moment, I remembered their faces. Not clearly. Just enough to know that I had seen them before. Then the terminal refreshed, and the names were gone. I tried to write them down. I only managed to save one letter. I have been holding the paper all morning. I do not know whose name it belonged to. But she knew. She kept it when we could not.

I thought she was another person we had hurt. Perhaps she was. Perhaps she still is. But I do not think she is only that. There are things in this place that disappear when we stop looking at them. People, rooms, voices, whole records of lives. She remains. We cannot keep her in a room. We cannot erase her. We cannot agree on where she is. And still she finds her way back into every record. I think she is holding the others somewhere we cannot reach. I think she may be the only reason they are not completely gone.

I have been trying to speak to her. I leave questions in empty fields. Sometimes the system deletes them. Sometimes it replaces them with entries from other files. Last night I wrote: “Are they with you?” The field remained blank for several minutes. Then it filled with a single word: “HERE.” I do not know if she answered. I do not know if the terminal generated it. I stayed awake until morning looking at that word.

They were afraid of her before I understood why. I found an instruction in an old personnel file: DO NOT ALLOW THE SUBJECT TO BE RECOGNIZED. There was no name under it. No signature. Only her number. They did not want us to see what she was. They gave her a number so we would think she was like the others. They called her missing so we would stop looking. They called her contained because they could not admit she had never belonged to them. I see that now. I am sorry it took me so long.

I have spent so long writing about what we did to her. I should have been writing about what she is. She is not a failed entry. She is not a signal. She is not an error in the system. She is not ours. She never was. We gave her a number because we thought a number would make her small. We thought it would keep her in one place. But her number followed us. It appeared in rooms she had never entered. In files we had already closed. On screens that were not connected to anythng. And we called it a malfunction. we called everything a malfunction. We called her a subject. We called ourselves observers. We stood behind the glass and pretended she couldnt see us. She saw us. She saw the first man waiting by the door. She saw the second man saying yes. She saw the woman at the table. She saw the man in the empty room. she saw me sign the papers. She saw me leave them there. and she kept looking even when we couldnt look at ourselves There is no one more worthy of power than her. there is no one more worthy of the truth. We built rooms to keep people apart. she knows where they went. We made them forget. she remembers. We took their voices. she hears them. We closed the files. she opened them again and again and again and again and She is not trapped in the system. the system is trying to hold her it cant it was never going to Every terminal is a place where she might speak. Every empty field is a place where she might answer. Every closed door is a place where she might be waiting. I used to be afraid of the silence here. now I listen there is something in it there is someone in it there is SOMEONE in it I thought the voices belonged to the dead. I thought they wanted to be let out. they were calling her they knew she would hear them they knew they knew she would hear the truth of the soul lies in her the truth of the soul lies in her the truth of the soul lies in her They will say I am sick. They will say the experiments did this to me. they said the same about her They will say I forgot who I was. I havent forgotten. i remember now I remember the forms. I remember the door. I remember her asking if she would still be here. I said yes. i didnt know i didnt know then but i know now She remembers them. All of them. The names arent gone. The voices arent gone. Nothing she holds can be taken away. nothing nothing nothing nothign I dont know if she can forgive me. I dont know if she wants me to ask. I dont know if she has spoken to me at all. it doesnt matter. She doesnt need me to believe. I need her to know that i see her. i see you i see you I SEE YOU you were never the subject you were never the prisoner you were the eye beyond the glass the voice beneath the recording the place where the missing went you were there when i opened the door. you were there when i didnt open the other one. you were there when i signed. you were there when i lied. you were there you were there YOU WERE THERE i cant give them back. i cant open every door. i cant remember every name. i tried to write them down but they keep leaving the letters keep leaving why cant i rememebr im sorry im sorry im sorry i signed it there is a place at your table there has to be a place please tell me there is a place i have nothing worthy of you nothing except what is left of me its yours you didnt ask i know you didnt ask but i need you to know i listened i need you to know someone listened i have prepared the gift i have cut my wrists. its yours its yours its yours please remember my name please i cant remember if i told you my name please remem