Windsor's Operation

Disclaimer: this story includes topics of sexual violence and harm to self and others. Reader's discretion is advised.

I’m often intrigued by the enigma of the infinitely connected series of two-dimensional polygons or three-dimensional polyhedrons known as fractals. More specifically, I find their regressive and progressive potential schema, which extends indefinitely towards both voids of human cognitive understanding in regard to the limits of absolute minimums and maximums, interesting in their limitations when representing a product on both the temporal and hierarchal scales. For no matter how long one gazes at such a series, even with unique color gradients distributed across ratio points on the schematic, it will inevitably reveal its deepest truth: it is devoid of any change.

           Windsor had a saying: you’re either a murderer or you’re not. He often boiled moral standards to absolutes as many people seem to when holding their actions up to scrutiny, but what I find most puzzling is the nature of the evil being weighed against the good. Murder is an evil thing, but all one has to do to be “good” in this scenario is not kill anyone. In a sense, people can rationalize omission of heinous acts as the pinnacle of righteousness. Well, maybe if you’re an egotistical narcissist.

           Omar had this fascination with Christopher Nolan’s feature film Inception and wanted to make a machine with similar capabilities. Namely, he wanted to transmute the electrical stimuli of neurons into data sets and represent them as visual information through pixelation.

Or… okay I suppose I’ve been imprudently tumultuous in my diction and unfocused in my topics. Loud, but ineffective as it were. I am trying to communicate a point, however, although how do I put it in a way that is understandable and streamlined? Can I use bullet points? Let’s see:

·      The fractal analogy: people are often creatures of habit and exhibit patterns that realistically never change. This also seems consistent with life in general as reproduction, power struggles, wars, families, and the like operate on a cyclical pattern.

·      My philosophical representation of morality: Windsor is a psychopath. That one is pretty simple.

·      And lastly the crux of why any of this even matters in the first place: Omar wanted to look into Windsor’s brain and convert his thoughts onto a three-dimensional television after he saw Inception for the millionth time.

And by three-dimensional television I mean virtual reality. Why though? I mean yes, Windsor was an odd member of our society. He didn’t fit in, and he regularly belittled people from his lack of empathy. But we, as a group, were a bit more honest than delving into the mind of an… acquaintance? Can I call him that? Um… sure, an acquaintance without his consent. Even if it was for research purposes. Yet our organization wasn’t interested in “research” as it were.

Perhaps before I unveil our endeavors into Windsor’s cognition I should enlighten you as to who we were, what we primarily did, and why Windsor was of particular interest to us. We were known as Poliron. Like politicians that sway neurons. It’s stupid, I know. Regardless, we operated solely on the neurological level and communicate cognitively. We’ve done many operations that deal with changes in cognition through various procedures in the ethos by convincing the mind to commit to an alteration. Windsor just happened to be our last subject. Or rather, his brain. See we didn’t actually bother with the host. We’d rather not have had staying power in the minds of those whom we wished to influence, we just wanted the desired change. In Windsor’s case, he was going to be the focal point of a series of incredibly catastrophic events that we wanted to eliminate at all costs. More specifically, we were going to make him an intermediary for a deal involving three of the worlds’ most extremist nuclear and political superpowers. Ironically enough, given the circumstances, our organization actually desired for that deal to close.

Windsor Fabian Kamistan was the leader of the Black Trade Intermarket Coalition, an organization with immense power in both resources and liquid assets. As both the voice for black deals and trade settlements between opposing sides, he could start or end a war with but the snap of his finger. The only issue with Windsor was that when it came to nuclear resources, he was far too restrictive in his settlements. Knowing the dangers of nuclear power he often funneled immense amounts of resources into his own network for development and research, keeping him and his organization on a higher playing field than any of his individual clients. That, however, was where problems started immerging. As his network of nuclear resources started to outweigh his need for other black market delicacies, his need to be fair and equal with all those proprietaries began to diminish, only fueling his egotism. He started leveraging his now massive nuclear arsenal against his competition and clients. If those clients got smart and joined forces, be them as antagonistic toward the others as they were, they could overwhelm and defeat Windsor’s market. Yet then with access to his resources would immediately begin a bloodbath for those resources and start a world war that would only end in the annihilation of the planet.

To be clear, the black market and its treatment of human life was disgusting. Poliron did not side with nor approve of any of the actions or practices of the Black Trade Intermarket Coalition. They were detestable to us. Yet, the fractal of life, the importance of our and our families’ well-being as well as our world’s survival, and the nuance of our version of righteousness that ignored consent and only considered the worst possible evils avoidable if we trekked on this path into Windsor’s mind was enough for us to ignore the convictions of partaking in any lesser evils along the way.

. . .

I suppose I need to explain how Omar and our team designed the program and machine we used to operate it. In a virtual space, ideas that would otherwise be intangible can be represented as tangle objects. For example, we could make you remember that really exciting first date with that cute girl you’re now in a relationship with by representing your cognition of that moment or event with a coffee mug. Or an elephant. Or a worn shoe. Literally it doesn’t matter what the object is, because whatever association you would have or would not have had beforehand with that thing, becomes replaced with the cognition we altered. I hope that is simple enough to understand, because now it gets a lot more complicated. A lot.

It was easy enough, once we found the cognition, to replace it with a simple visual, but that alone wasn’t enough to illicit a change of action or grow a conscience or anything like that for someone with Windsor’s disposition: a dangerous psychopath having far too much power at too high a risk of being taken, abused, and ultimately becoming a catalyst for the destruction of the planet like I mentioned before. No, in order for Windsor to have a real change like we needed him to have, he would have to undergo an irregularly cruel, horrifyingly and unimaginably traumatic experience that would force him, yes, force him to change his actions. And this… experience didn’t have a happy ending for Windsor… and also many other people.

To initiate that kind of trauma though, we had to basically kill him. Or rather uproot and destroy his entire perception of reality. For him, everything would become nothing in an instant. What I mean by that is that for Windsor, he would exist in a state of complete mental abyss, but he would still be conscious. The fabric of reality would be replaced with void. The way we did that was by representing his entire cognitive function as a four-dimensional overlay. The reason that is significant is because people cannot perceive four dimensions unless there is a temporal element associated with it. As you may have guessed, we deprived his mind of that temporal crutch. So to him, every association and interpretation of visual, auditory, and sensory information as a past memory or then present experience became as though it did not and had never existed. It's hard to describe the level terror he felt. He was aware of past and present, memories and reality, but he couldn’t perceive, recall, or understand any of it. And emotionally, deprivation of all that is can only result in terror in its most extreme state. When the terror become absolute. Even something as simple as breathing became unknowable to Windsor…

. . .

“Omar, we’re losing him! A few more minutes and he may never be able to come back!”

“He deserves this though! Think about all the lives he’s taken. All those families he’s destroyed. All those little girls he…”

“Enough!! Omar, you put that cognition in there now! We need him to be able to make rational decisions. We don’t have time for this! I know the murders, Micah, Velma, Misha, Helena… how he violated those children… Addy, Maria… Winona. I know, Omar. But his suffering isn’t why we’re doing this. We can worry about justice once all this is over. Please, Omar. Put that cognition in there.”

“…………………….”

. . .

           The object Omar chose was a tengu. A demon. And the cognition it represented was Windsor himself. Once Omar actualized that in his mind… in the nothingness, in the void, in the abyss, Windsor only saw himself: an incarnate evil. We thought it would make him repent but…

 He killed everyone.

The Black Trade Intermarket Coalition, and the thirteen-some-odd-million people who were in its hub, filled with its gargantuan mass of nuclear weapons were detonated and obliterated everyone in an instant…

           Th-the ish-sh-ssue… sorry…

Ahem, the issue was that once Windsor had come to after Omar disengaged the machine, he was a shell of his former self. What we failed to consider when we designed the operation was that the cognition we replaced in Windsor’s mind became the only cognition in Windsor’s mind, even after we shut off the machine. The process of virtually eliminating all other cognitions in his mind made him…

Completely. Utterly. Evil.

Whether or not Windsor felt immense guilt and horror for what he had become or a sense of duty to carry out his new purpose we will never know. All I can say is that the blood of him and everyone else who perished in the firestorm was on our hands. On my hands.

And it still is 57 years later.