I stood at the edge of the labyrinth. The one I’d designed myself. At the entrance was a tessellated floor, a pattern easy to remember: eight square tiles alternating black and white, arranged around a central red square. Repeated.
The voice of the brain scan, warm and female, began.
“Black … white … black … white.”
I focused on the voice as it spoke my thoughts, using each word it uttered as a meditative cue. My aim was to create such an entrenched feedback that I would slip into a self-induced trance. A good practitioner could shut down an interrogation scan within minutes.
They knew what I was doing and immediately counteracted. By periodically introducing their own words into the computer they could knock me off balance.
“Branch,” said the woman’s voice, coaxingly. My mind couldn’t help but grab hold of it. Associative words sprouted, I tried to keep them innocuous.
“Leaf … green …sunlight.”
I strove to keep the words above ground, large and unspecific, but they were quick to respond.
“Root,” said the voice, and I struggled to get back to the labyrinth.
“Black … white … root … earth … black … deep … buried …” went the voice, persistently.
The maze disintegrated and they had my secret.
You have a real gift with this form Simon. Strange and intriguing, verges on a kind of surrealist poetry.
Thanks, Gopal. I am very much enjoying writing in this style.