Author : Peter Woodworth
I found them. Nobody else wanted to believe it, but I found them. It’s my truth.
Well, maybe not mine. But not theirs either!
After the Act was signed and the last of the satellites went live, the corporations assured us the link would be continual. But I started twitching. I never twitched before. I’d have these little blackouts. I told people it had to be the satellites, but they said I was wrong.
So I parsed the stream. They let you see it if you want, but nobody really looks. And that’s how I found the gaps. They’re small, much smaller than the human mind can register, so small our technology can barely detect them.
That’s right. Our technology. Not theirs.
I started talking to the technicians who worked on the upload, and they all denied it, until I got angry and used the battery. One finally broke their vow of silence. He told me that they knew about the gap, but insisted it was for calibration.
This I knew to be a lie.
The human brain can handle the link, everyone’s seen the science that proves it. It’s like humming a tune you don’t even hear, they said. You don’t even know you’re doing it.
“So why are there still gaps?” I asked, but he couldn’t answer. I showed him the pictures I extracted from the blackness in the gap. When you look at it long enough, you can see the eyes, the places where the black gets darker than the rest. They’re slitted, the eyes. Like a cat’s.
He had tears running down his cheeks as he looked at the picture. That’s a sign of guilt. There are all kinds of signs of guilt, if you know what to look for. I’ve always been very attentive.
Those eyes kept me up at nights for weeks. I hate cats, always have, but I never knew why until I saw those pictures. Like they were an advance force, or something. Maybe I’m psychic. You see a lot more articles about psychic ability since the link went active. One says that we’re using parts of the brain that have never been touched before. Why shouldn’t psychic ability be hidden there? It has to be somewhere.
That’s when I realized what the gaps had to be. We’d spent all these years beaming messages out into space, and now our satellites are picking up their replies. We’ve got more satellites in orbit than any other time in history, and they’re more sensitive too. We’re finally hearing them.
But they’re being subtle. Tricky. Communicating through negative space, testing our link, seeing what they can insert without our noticing. So far, just their eyes. Understand? It’s like a joke. They’re watching us, so they put in their eyes. They want to see if we’re paying attention.
Nobody is. Nobody but me.
It took weeks and another technician, but I finally figured out how to make gaps of my own. So tonight I’m going to talk back. I’m going to insert my gaps into the link and show them we’ve noticed. And they will spread. The companies clean the link for carriers, but not for anything this size. I’m as clever as they are.
My gaps won’t just watch with black on black eyes, either. No. I’m putting images in my gaps, sounds, and they will be plugged right into the feed. Wars. Disasters. Primates howling. Metal grinding metal. They’ll see what we’ve survived. They’ll know we won’t go out without a fight. They. Will. Respect. Us.
Because I own the gaps.
Not them.
Me.
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