Clean Energy Sources

“Now,” said the admin­is­tra­tor while  open­ing the door to the lab, “we have a prac­ti­cal exper­i­ment in the devel­op­ment of clean energy sources for the future. This is Dr. Roland Jef­fers, head of the project. Dr. Jef­fers, would you show our vis­i­tors your results?”

With the admin­is­tra­tor were two official-looking peo­ple. The man wore a dark blue suit; clean-cut, clean-shaven, grey­ing a bit at the tem­ples. The woman was also middle-aged but quite beau­ti­ful, brunette hair pulled back, blue eyes that took in every­thing in the room: the con­trol con­sole, the man in the plex­i­glass cham­ber with the wires that led from the con­sole to his head and chest, and the small toy mon­key on a stainless-steel table, also con­nected to the con­sole by another long set of wires.

Jef­fers began. “My exper­i­ments have to do with devel­op­ing forms of renew­able energy for the future, specif­i­cally com­ing from bio­log­i­cal sources. In this case, we have the gen­tle­man in the cham­ber hooked up to my device, which stim­u­lates the mem­ory cen­ters of the brain. The energy gen­er­ated by the sub­ject is cap­tured and trans­mit­ted, either for use or for storage.”

Jef­fers flicked his eyes to the admin­is­tra­tor with a ques­tion, the admin­is­tra­tor nod­ded. Jef­fers turned a cen­tral knob on the con­sole about half-way. The results were imme­di­ate; the man in the cham­ber began to smile dream­ily and the toy mon­key chat­tered and clapped its cym­bals together at a mod­er­ate pace. After about thirty sec­onds, Jef­fers turned the device back off, and the mon­key stopped.

‘What you just wit­nessed was the device’s abil­ity to har­vest clean emo­tional energy from a happy emo­tional response. It is also pos­si­ble to trig­ger other emo­tions for more or less inten­sity, depend­ing on the quan­tity of energy desired.”

The woman asked, “The sub­ject vol­un­teered for this?” She looked both intrigued and repulsed by the results.

Jef­fers smiled. “The sub­jects have been told that they will be going under a new form of ther­apy. We hook them up to our device and induce mem­o­ries that are emo­tion­ally rel­e­vant to the energy we want to cap­ture. As you might expect, the more dif­fi­cult and com­plex emotions…anger, betrayal, and despair pro­duce the strongest and most effi­cient energy.”

The man who looked like he worked for a branch of the gov­ern­ment asked, “What is the most powerful?”

“Regret. With­out a doubt. Regret is the most powerful.”

The gov­ern­ment man nod­ded. The woman in the sharp suit asked, “Don’t you have any eth­i­cal qualms about using peo­ple this way?”

Dr. Jef­fers shook his head. “No. You have to understand…these peo­ple are already destroy­ing them­selves. We find them in bars, wan­der­ing through gro­cery stores, sit­ting at play­ground watch­ing their kids, in cubi­cles unable to work but unable to do any­thing else. They are already in pain. We are sim­ply using that pain for the bet­ter­ment of society.”

The woman nod­ded. “And does this actu­ally help them?”

Jef­fers cleared his throat. “In a man­ner of speak­ing. The brain can only han­dle so much. After a while, it reduces the capa­bil­ity to feel in order to pro­tect itself. In many ways, we are sim­ply accel­er­at­ing the process an indi­vid­ual would go through naturally.”

The admin­is­tra­tor smiled, “Well, now,”  he said, clap­ping his own hands together, remind­ing Jef­fers of the chat­ter­ing mon­key. ” This is good work, and you can see how it will pay off in the long run.” The gov­ern­ment man nod­ded, the woman in the suit pursed her lips but nod­ded after a moment.

“Excel­lent,” the admin­is­tra­tor said. “Let’s take a look at the other labs, shall we?” With that, he ush­ered the offi­cial vis­i­tors out.

After the door closed, Jef­fers released a long breath he did real­ized he was hold­ing. He sighed and looked at the man in cham­ber with the elec­trodes attached to his head and heart.

“You poor bas­tard,” he said, and twisted the knob all the way to the right. The mon­key on the table began to chat­ter away faster than before.

In the cham­ber, the man began to cry.

Christo­pher T. Miller

Christo­pher T. Miller is a soft­ware devel­oper by trade and a writer by neces­sity. He is one of the co-founders of Podiobooks.com and is the Over­lord of The Secret Lair. He has not yet been eaten by a grue.

Tags: fiction