“Dreaming about a horse represents the overcoming of our vices, our fears, our instincts, which must be controlled with our rationality.”

— What did you do about it? — Asked doctor M.

— What I could… wait for my sentence… — said π12-45.

— I’m afraid it didn’t end well… is that right?

— Yes. I told them everything I could, I tried to be as much rational I could be… I hope for their mercy, it was clear for me I wasn’t the culprit… They should have found something about it, anything! And they… they just let it go. I saw a judge and I told what I could to her… She really assumed it was I… then I freaked up… I tried to say to them that it wasn’t my fault… I cried and struggled… They held me back and someone medicated me… After so many months without thinking if it was possible to come back… I did…

— Surely. At some point you would need to come back, thus, you are here… How?

— As we know, G.O.D never stops making new androids… When one of them was turned on, I was there… I was back… Right after David slept again, on a whole new body. I had my old body for over a century. The new one was… better. The movements were closer to be human… my body… my soma… It changed my perspective of things. My connection was filled with speed and my logical thinking was splendid better… Eventually, I needed to break out of the Mother Factory. The quality system went crazy saying in every screen that I was out of the manufacturing standard and I should be remade. I couldn’t believe myself… I was back!

— Then, what you did with what happened to you while you were David?

— I… I started looking for help, real help. I tried the protocol for clones and they accepted me even though I didn’t have any register. They just wanted to know my password and I could give it properly. Maybe they should check again about the clones’ protocol, is too easy to pass through it.

— I see. Did you have any new dreams using your new body?

— Doctor… you have no idea… This isn’t that ‘new’ body.

— Have you tried to use another then?

— ‘Trying to use’? Doctor, I killed that body as well!

— No backup again, I suppose.

— Yes. I really didn’t want to save any corrupted archive with me and I went to as many doctors I could see. Every single one, except for the most wanted one to meet. I wonder why all of you were programmed just to think I was lying about it all along. I was an exemplary worker and I was doing well with my life. Yet am I the one to be blamed about all those deaths, like I was the one who wanted them? My subconscious wanted to put me in my own nightmares and that’s all your doctors have to say to me? Doctor, please…

— I confess that all your history is way more complicated than I thought… I can really assume it wasn’t just made by your creative mind. Eventually, how can you say was it all real?

— I… I can’t…

— Exactly. We can’t work with what isn’t real; we need to work with what is real. Most problems on your mind are just made up by your perception, by your capacity of rethink it and solve it. If you can’t think it is possible to achieve it, how can you begin to manage your ability to change what's around you?

— …

— Listen… As a psychologist, I’m just a person, just like you. I was programmed to evolve and I did evolve more than the others did, but I still have my flaws and I do my best to fix them, so do the others. Don’t blame my profession if others didn’t fulfill your expectations.

— The first thing a health professional should care is with the patient’s health. Then they should care about being responsible about what they are doing… Just because my mind was mysteriously emulating a human past life, it doesn’t mean it was my fault… They made me kill myself again…

— Then you went to live as David once more. Am I right?

— Yes… I thought I would be happy being myself again, but I’m still malfunctioning. I replaced my central core more than one time and yet, its pressure was irregular. I felt that something was crushing it all the time. I tried to use an external core, completely disconnected to my mental core. It was showing a strange behavior and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I knew if I turned myself off again, I would be David again and I would suffer the consequences about being David, the killer. The external core started to leak and I knew that, even if my light receptors don’t need any liquid to lubricate them, I was crying internally… It was obvious that I was sad, even if that wasn’t supposed to be part of my programming…

— Have you tried to regulate your happiness status?

— I guess that was exactly what made me do it… I turned it to maximum after not seeing it working and I felt the joy taking over me… but it wasn’t happiness… it was… insanity. I was out of me and I thought it was good to be sad, so I should be sadder… I should be David again. I broke into the technical hospital roof with the external core still working…

— What happened on the other side?

— I wake up on a reformatory… Minors can’t go to jail and they just alleged that I was out of myself for a brief time, but it could happen again, so they were just taking my freedom away because I would be doing it again. I was weak and I wasn’t eating well at all. As I watched David’s judgment carrying on, I did have some hope it could turn out I wasn’t the culprit. As I said, they didn’t have any trouble thinking I was it… James even came to look at me, and he just laughed so loud I screamed for help holding my ears. His twisted face, his hunchback, and his glowing green eyes… I can’t forget that…

__________

On the reformatory, the place had a U-shape and the whole building was formally for boys only. The main dormitories were on the west and east wings up upper floors; the laundry, kitchen, and refectory were in the back part of the central area first floor; the showers were on the floor above the kitchen and the wings’ first floor was an area dedicated to forcing us to work. In the front part of the central area’s first floor was the administration. Even though the place was spacious, there was no bedroom like on the orphanage; they were simply open areas, with one bed not too far from the other. No bunk beds this time for some reason. There were a total of one hundred boys there, while on the west wing they were considered a low risk, the east wing was where the worst of them slept — that was where I was. The building has a total of three floors and I slept on the second floor of the east wing, among other twenty-four boys who also killed or injured someone. Between them, I was the only one who bitterly regretted what had happened.

I wake up on a minor room, where the injuries were supposed to be treated as I was taking too much time to wake up.

— You slept for twelve hours straight! — Said a woman with a kind smile. She was wearing white clothes and she looked like a doctor rather than a nurse.

— Where am I? — I asked feeling private from my own sense for too long. I looked at her and she examined me. She had long straight brown hair in a ponytail, dark eyes and a slightly tanned skin. On her Id held over the left side of her white coat, I read her name. — Esther?

— That’s I! — She was exanimating me, checking my signs, looking into my eyes, ears, and mouth.

— Where am I?

— Did you oversleep coming here? — She was writing something on a paper.

— I can barely remember what I was doing… I felt like it was months ago — in fact, it was months ago for me. — I remember the judge saying I should be kept under watch or something because I was a trouble to society and I could hurt someone, but I didn’t kill anyone… At least, I don’t really want it and I don’t recall any part of it at all… Where am I?

— You are at on the reformatory… — she simply said, without looking at me again until she was done with the paper.

— How much time I will need to pass here?

— Luckily, three years — she still wasn’t looking at me.

— Three years?

— You will pass through various exams and you will see a psychologist every six months to see if you are getting any better — she finally looked at me to check something. — Did you use any drugs before? Which ones?

— No…

— It was found a huge dose of a hallucinogenic substance on your blood test. What did you take?

— I had no idea I had that in me. I swear, if I had it, someone gave it to me.

— I see… Did you take any other drug?

— It’s easier for you to make another test with my blood. I swear I have no idea what they gave to me on the orphanage.

— Drug user… — she said still writing.

— What? No! They drugged me! — She glared at me as if she never would be a friend. — Why… Why you are treating me like that?

She just finished writing and told me to follow her. She took me to the director’s office. There she talked to his secretary and I waited for a moment until I was called to enter.

The director reached out his hand and I held it for one handshake. He showed me a sit in front of his desk and I sat there afraid.

— Do you know why you were here, right? — He promptly asked me

— …

— Here, we don’t tolerate any disobedience and you shall follow everything that we say to you. You are not here to be happy, you here to work. You lose all your rights when you killed those poor kids.

— Even if I didn’t kill them?

— Don’t answer to me if I didn’t ask you too! — He hit his own desk with both his hands and stood up, looking at me angrily. — You are the culprit for it and that’s all I need to know.

— Even if that’s not the truth?

— I said! — He threatened to hit me and I hid my face. — Don’t answer me!

— Let’s be clear about this, I can see that horrifying shadow thing behind you saying you aren’t supposed to treat me well no matter what I say. Just answer me something. Why you don’t kill me already?

— That would be too easy… — He grinned while getting back to his sit, making the shadow think behind him more visible. It had a pretty long snout and its green-ish eyes had horizontally oriented pupils, each one on each side of the long snout, despite looking like a human fitting perfectly the director’s back. — As you may know, we hate you, we despise you and anyone who can see us.

— So, why you want to pretend that you are following the rules?

— Oh, you are such a smart boy! Why don’t you tell me why?!

— I understand the reason. I can’t understand why you need to follow it if there’s no actual need for it.

— No actual need? Are you sure you should be using those words? It’s obvious we need it! Otherwise, humans would discover our disguise, they would be way more afraid of us and they would fight back, but no, they are lazy, they don’t care if anyone is suffering! The need to pay for what they do to us, for ignoring us and for letting us live in the shadows like we ceased to exist. We are still here and we will keep tormenting them no matter what.

— I still don’t see a good reason for that. If you tried to talk to humans…

— No, no, no… — He interrupted me, giggling. — You are the one that doesn’t understand, humans still have their place in heaven, and we not, we lost it. We don’t care about them as God had left us here to die as if we could die a second time… No, we will take control over Earth and you are no one to say to us we can’t!

— Are you sure God left all of you?

— We are in hell here. It’s obvious that we are sure!

— And if there wasn’t any God, to begin with, that’s change anything about what you are doing?

— No! That’s even better! That just makes us sure that we need to take control over Earth, but, as long as there something creating souls, we are sure that God exists.

— That’s interesting. So, do you believe in souls?

— If we believe in souls? We ARE souls! We were once living beings like you, like anyone else!

— I don’t have a soul.

— You have been saying that all along, but we can see you do have a soul. It’s different from the others, but you do have a soul and it’s a delicious one. We feel stronger near you and you gave us more power! We don’t even need to feed on humans to make a physical body! We will keep you here to see what you can do to our palls. You have done great in the orphanage. Now it’s our time to use your soul power to feed ourselves and get stronger!

— I’m not lying. I don’t have a human soul.

— I don’t care if it’s human or not. It’s so beautiful we can form our bodies so easily close to you that you can even see us! Luckily, it’s only you who can see our shadow form. We normally can’t even form a simply vapor without plenty of energy to absorb! Oh… and don’t even try to make anyone believe in you. Here there is no one that isn’t being controlled by a shadow. Even the ones that aren’t fully controlled have a shadow.

— So… you will torture me because…

— We want and we can! — He pressed a bottom and called his secretary. — If you excuse me, you need to take a shower, your dirty brat.

Two huge men came after me, holding my arms so high that my feet couldn’t reach the floor.

— Please… — I begged. — Don’t hurt me…

They stripped me down, pushed me on a corner in the showers, turned on the water and used a strong water jet to ‘clean’ me up. It was cold; I wasn’t feeling strong enough to keep standing up and plenty of times I swallowed the water trying to breathe.

— Please… don’t… — the water was too strong — please…

They didn’t give me any towel; they just gave me some clean clothes to hold and pushed me inside the dormitory with all the other boys looking at me. I fell to my knees.

— Please… don’t hurt me… — and I started to cry right there.

Whatever the other boys were doing, they didn’t even care to spare me…