Whisper Voices in her Head

Eris, Whisper to her Sisters, rarely left the comforting glow of her computer monitors. With all the technology at her command, she never had to leave the server room. But today was her prescribed day outside. Her Sisters, ever with Whisper’s best in mind, made her go out during the day at least once a month. Today was that day. 

“Whisper, damnit.” Blast was panting when she caught up with Whisper. 

“The faster you walk doesn’t mean we go back faster. Slow down, enjoy the scenery”. Blast waved her hand around the street. Tech trash covered the streets of the slums. The gutters had green coolant running like little neon rivers down the sides of the streets. There wasn’t much scenery to speak of. 

“I hate it out here Blast. I can’t tell the voices in my head from these flesh bags out here.” Whisper might be the name her Sisters call her by. But it was more than a name. Whisper heard voices in her hear that often whispered to her like a high-tech data highway in her brain. No one knew where it came from. 

Turn left, down that alley. Second conduit cover. Pull it open. Now. Now. Now. 

“Whisper, what are you doing? What is that?” Blast stared at Whisper when she caught up. She found Whisper standing there holding some piece of tech she had never seen before. 

Don’t tell her. Not yet. Not till we know. Not till we try. 

“Try what?” Eris whispered to the object in her hand. It was black and made of an ancient plastic that Whisper hadn’t seen in her lifetime. It had slats on one side, as if it let sound out. Along one side there was a column of buttons. The largest button had PTT stamped on the side. Whisper needed to get back to her computer right now. 

“Try? What are you talking about now? Or should I say what are your voices talking about?” Blast asked, still as confused as ever. She took one look at Whispers face and knew. 

“Let’s go.” Blast grabbed Whispers hand, and they went back from where they came. Going down each slum street with confidence. No one in the slums would dare rob a Sister of Kaos. 

As the Sister took each turn, they went through a very coordinated act that would unlock their hideout’s door. First, Blast tossed a piece of trash into a trash receptor. When the machine chimed it received the piece of trash, Blast quickly kicked the machine. Just then, the machine started with a series of blinking lights, then stopped. 

Three streets later, Whisper got a juice from a vending machine. Instead of putting in the exact amount, she put in 420 credits and pressed the juice button twice. She grabbed the juice and tossed it at Blast. 

“Here, you know I hate that shit. You know it’s not made from real fruit.” Whisper made a face that only Blast could see behind her hood. 

“I know Rhett said she was going to change that for you but our guy at the vending company was killed in an off-world cargo delivery. We’re having a hard time finding his replacement.” Blast cracked the bottle open and took a long pull. Despite not being made from real fruit, she still enjoyed the juice. 

As Whisper and Blast turned down the alley that lead to their door, they each tossed a credit into the cup a small girl was holding. 

“Many thanks Sisters,” the little girl squeaked and stared at the ground. She was a Lady in training. She was learning how to she could earn her place in the Sister of Kaos. Sammy must have been up to trouble again if she was on the corner counting people again. Whisper would see if she could find a place for her. 

Whisper waited at the door. “Where’s your key?” Blast asked, annoyed. She pulled her standard key card out and held it to the pad. The door chimed and both the Sisters walked in. 

The room they walked into was small. There was nothing of interest in the room. There was a workbench on the left wall. It looked like Rhett was there last cleaning Nightshade. The smell of gun oil was still in the air. She must have just left. On the right wall was a neat row of utility backpacks. The bags were empty, of course. The SoK would never leave proper equipment where anyone would find it. The backpacks just made it look like someone worked out of this room regularly. 

Blast and Whisper walked to the back wall where there was a shelf with off world knick knacks. The Sisters looked into two robot toy faces. The toy’s eyes lit up as it scanned each Sister’s eyes. 

The back wall faded away and opened up into the SoK hide out. 

“Shit, put these on. Sorry, one of the new Ladies on my team failed their exam today and there is still air born contaminants floating around. Whisp, when you get a few can you see about tweaking the air system to filter out a specific chemical? I’ll send you the chemical compound that needs to be filtered.” Bella hurried as she shoved micro-filter face masks in the Sisters faces. 

Let them die. We must try our new toy. Now, Now. Now, 

“Sure Bella. What did Sammy do this time? We saw her on the corner on our way in.” The voices in Whisper’s head were adamant about using whatever was in her pocket. But with the safety of her Sisters, there would be no compromise.  

Whisper walked over to her terminal and plopped down in the well-worn chair. As soon as her back hit the chair, she could feel the tension drain. This is where the world made sense to her. She immediately started tapping on a keyboard. In seconds there was a loud whoosh and the air moved. 

“There Bella, you should be good to go. I need a few minutes to work on some time sensitive data. I’ll be unreachable unless it’s an emergency.” She hurriedly said into the air. She had her com-system wired directly into her brain. All she had to do was think who she wanted to talk to and the com-system sent the message. 

Whisper made quick work of the air problem. There were very few people who worked in Bella’s lab. There was only one Lady who was smart enough to be testing something this dangerous. Whisper hacked Jade’s personal data stream and pulled out her latest projects. She found all the projects encrypted, but only one project folder had an encryption she didn’t recognize. Whisper made and maintained all the encryptions for the SoK.  She guessed Jade worried Marie would hack her and steal her project data. Part of the training in the Sister of Kaos was other students could “cheat” within reason. A student could hack a rival student's emails to gain a competitive edge but couldn’t kill off a rival student. Life in SoK was chaotic, and this was a way to ensure that students got used to living in a certain level of chaos.  

With the encrypted folder found, Whisper wrote a program that read all the data in the folder and translated everything into binomial chemical signatures. As the binomial chemical signatures linked to the air ventilation and life support systems, the host programs took over. The host programs would automatically find and filter out any chemicals or air born particles that would harm the Sister or their known allergies. 

Now. Now. Now. 

Whisper reached into her pocket and retrieved the small black box. She sat it on her workbench and just stared at it. She’d seen nothing like it before. On the back there was a kind of fastener. When she pushed on it, a small box popped out. The box was empty except for 4 slots, each had a small spring on alternating sides.

She jumped up from her chair. Whisper had seen something like this before in an ancient holo book she found. She pulled her holo book off the shelf and start swiping through the pages. Third from the end, Ancient Power; Batteries of Life. She clicked on the title and started reading. It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. A picture of a child’s toy from 1999 that used an AA battery to power. AA batteries changed over ancient history. Once being made of zinc, manganese, potassium, graphite and later upgrading to lithium. Whisper thought she still had some lithium batteries lying around. She wondered if they even worked. Rhett gave them to her as a gift once because they looked like something she would like. Little did Rhett know Whisper was going to need them. 

The second her hands touched the batteries, voices exploded in her head.

Those are it! Put them in! No, we don’t know what will happen. What if she uses it. There will be consequences. Now. Now. Now. Stop. Do it. 

Whisper grabbed her head, fell to the floor, and started rocking back and forth. Rarely did all her voices crowd her brain all at once. The Sisters helped Whisper decipher reality from her voices and she learned to manage it. This she couldn’t manage, though. 

Put them in. Twist the knob. PTT

There it was again. The PTT. Whisper focused on that bit of information and could get off the floor. With the batteries in hand, she slid each one into the slots with the springs. She matched the + and – symbols on the batteries to the slots. So, things never changed, even after thousands of years. 

At one end of the object, there was one knob and an antenna. Whisper twisted the knob and felt a click just before a small red light came on. She was so surprised the batteries worked, she almost dropped it all on the floor. This was some kind of tech from a home planet she’d never seen before. That was okay because she knew tech and knew she would sort this out one. 

On the front bottom of the tech were letters that Whisper recognized. They didn’t make a word; she knew, though. Baofeng.

PTT PTT PTT

She remembered seeing those letters somewhere else, too. Whisper turned the tech over in her hand and saw the large button on the side. PTT. She pressed it. 

Small static escaped from the slats on the front, but went away just as soon as she heard it. Whisper depressed the button again. There was the static again, gone in an instant. 

“Hello? Is anyone out there?”

Whisper turned left and right to check her room. Nothing. No one. She logged into the security video feeds and found Rhett, Blast and Bella all in the common room. They pointed at a large star map projected on the wall. There were girls all sitting on the floor, looking up with interest. Whisper counted all Sisters and Ladies accounted for. 

“Hey, I won’t bite.” 

Whispered stared at the tech in her hand. She tried to figure out if this was a hallucination of her voices or was it real? She knew she should go get Blast or Rhett, anyone at this point. But since the voice started talking from the tech, the voices in her head stopped. Whisper wanted to enjoy the privacy of her mind just a little longer. After checking on her Sisters one more time to be sure they were okay, she didn’t think this tech was dangerous enough to involve them.

“Maybe this is just the universe’s way of telling me I need to talk to someone. I can’t be considered crazy if I think I’m talking to someone instead of just talking to myself, right?”

Whisper stared, trying to figure out where the accent came from. It wasn’t from any planet she could think of. She hit the record button on her desktop so she could research the accent later. She wanted to know everything she could about the strange voice that stopped the voices in her head. 

“See, today is the anniversary of my son’s death. One year ago today, he was taken from me in a horrible accident. He worked in pharmaceuticals. My son, he was one of the good guys. He found major companies to help fund an organization that would pay for life save medications if you couldn’t afford it. There are people here who need something as simple as insulin here and can’t afford $700 a month for it. Can you imagine dying because you can’t afford something as simple as insulin?”

Whisper jolted. She knew the medication. But even in the slums where Whisper lived, insulin was free for anyone who needed it. The Interplanetary Government provided all lifesaving meds for free to anyone who showed up. It was part of a universal health program for humans when Earth died and their people had to be taken in by the rest of the planets. Whisper wondered, not for the first time, who was this voice? What was this tech?

There was a pause. Like he was waiting for Whisper to respond. 

“Maybe first I should introduce myself. I’m Clyde Brown; Dr. Brown too. You can call me Cly if you want. All my friends do.” Clyde laughed. “Am I going crazy after all?”

There was another long pause. Whisper wondered if the batteries had died. She didn’t know what she was going to do if they did. She needed to find sooner rather than later. 

“Well nice to meet you anyway. I hope you’ll indulge a father a little longer.” Whisper heard something in the background then. She wasn’t sure, but it sounded like paper shuffling. Long ago, people banned the use of paper. It created too much trash. Not to mention, people had deemed paper obsolete decades before banning it. The more listened, the more she learned about the voice. She sat the tech down on her desk and started researching data streams with the information she had now. Dr. Clyde Brown, diabetic son, deceased. She knew it wasn’t much to go on. 

“You’ll have to excuse the noise. I’m trying to get my charts for later. Where was I? Oh yes, my son. Well, as it turns out my son suffered from schizophrenia later in his life and I was unaware. I am in amazement at the strength it must have taken my son to manage it all by himself. If I’m honest, I’m hurt that he wouldn’t confide in me. His wife says that he said he never wanted to me a patient to me only ever my son. I’m a physiologist who specializes in schizophrenia. Some even say I’m leading authority on it. But it doesn’t feel that way. Don’t worry the universe’s joke isn’t lost on me. I just didn’t find it funny.”

Whisper never heard of schizophrenia before. A quick search found out all she needed to know, though. They didn’t have a word for it now. Schizophrenia died when Earth died. Like much of the human culture. In 3424, humans could pay a lot of money to hear voices in their minds if they wanted. Whisper didn’t pay for her voices. They were natural. Hearing voices in their heads was not considered a disability by people, as they saw it as a natural human evolution. 

Clyde was crying now. “I’m cleaning out his things from my garage and I found this two-way radio. He loved walkie talkies, and he always said the Baofeng was the best.” Sniffling, Whisper still heard the clink of glass in the background. A drink sounded like a good idea. 

Whisper got up and asked the iFood to make her a drink. She had something nostalgic, a Tom Collins. 

After a quick search, Whisper figured out a Baofeng was a two-way radio. Radio frequencies became obsolete on her planet 300 years ago. How was this happening? She uploaded the user manual from a data stream when Clyde came back. 

“He heard a vice say to jump out of a window and he jumped out of his office window 15 stories up.”

Whispers fingers stilled on the keys, and she turned to look at the radio. She wasn’t sure she heard him right. His son heard a voice and did what it said. He paid the ultimate price for it. Whisper thought of all the times she tried doing the same things. She knew she was lucky. She had her Sisters to keep her tethered in reality. Because Whisper had that kind of support system, she knew it was the only reason she could survive. She imaged her life without her Sisters. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Yeah. Do you ever wonder if you’re being punished and don’t know why?” Clyde left another long pause. 

PTT, push to talk. Whisper picked up the radio and pressed the bottom labeled PTT. 

“Yes. Every day.” Her voice was just barely a whisper but she knew he heard her. 

There was another long pause and Whisper got worried the batteries were dying again. Whisper rolled her chair to the door and yelled to Maxine, her protégé, that was always lurking.

“I want all the AA batteries on this planet. Yesterday.” She slammed the door. Whisper was confident Max would get her every AA battery on this planet or kill anyone who got in her way. Whisper trained her well.  

“Do you want to talk about it?” Clyde’s voice was firm and calm again. It was as if he found his purpose. Whisper could tell that Dr. Brown was a kind doctor. 

“Yes, when I talk to you the voices in my head stop talking.” The words were out of Whisper’s mouth before she realized she thought about them. 

So started Whisper’s first psychiatry session and Dr. Brown’s first alien patient.