Title: The Sonoran Institute
Author: BedHead
Chapter 2 — Integration
Janet was carefully placed into the wheelchair by the nurses. There was no need for any restraint; her whole body flopped like overcooked pasta, completely out of her control. She looked up at her captors through eyes she could barely focus. What had happened? How did they know? What were they going to do?
“Take her to the Director,” ordered a matronly woman, apparently in charge.
“Yes, ma’am.” One of the other nurses pushed Janet’s wheelchair into a nearby office-like room marked “DIRECTOR”, then stood at attention beside her charge. Janet’s head lolled to the side, her muscles now completely disabled, but she was still fully conscious and able to see what was happening in front of her.
The Director, a tall woman with short white hair, turned towards Janet—and Janet would have gasped had she been able. The director’s eyes were a dark purple in the iris, and her pupils were horizontal, not round, in a strange elongated “w” shape. Something was very, very wrong. Was she hallucinating?
“Hello, Suzie. Yes, we know who you are.”
But who—or what—are you? Janet thought. She couldn’t speak, of course—in fact, she was starting to drool. The attending nurse noticed and tenderly wiped it away from her chin.
“I’m sure you have noticed my eyes. My dear, I am an alien. You might call us ‘The Sonorans’. This is one of the forms we take to blend in on this world, to some degree. Of course,” she chuckled in a somewhat inhuman manner, “we have to wear contact lenses and sunglasses when we go outside!”
“You are a very determined woman, Suzie—or for now, we know you prefer ‘Janet’. We have watched you as you applied to this facility, pretending to be someone else. We are familiar with your alias, with your previous work, and even with the DMV office director you bribed with your body. We know of your interest in what happens here. We tracked your preparations. We admire your resourcefulness in finding and exploiting apparent chinks in our security. Bravo!”
Janet winced internally at the use of “apparent”. Apparently, she’d fallen into a trap, and a big one at that. Bad Janet! She pushed the whole “aliens” concept out of her mind for now: she’d come back to that, for sure. The woman didn’t sound sarcastic in her delivery though; was this genuine praise?
“Such drive and curiosity should be rewarded, don’t you think?”
That was definitely a trap.
“Let me show you what we saw.”
The Director swivelled a monitor on her desk so Janet could see it. She watched as high-quality security camera footage showed her checking in; sabotaging her first keycard... wait, they had a camera in her room? Disconcerted, she was shown the card switch she’d done on Johanssen, her infiltration of the fourth floor in disguise, and even her dodge into Johanssen’s closet. Apparently, her room was not the only one with a camera.
Janet couldn’t make any response, but inside her mind she was screaming in frustration, and not a little fear. They knew everything. They had seen her coming. They had let her come: To what end?
“You are doubtless wondering what we want. We run this facility to make connections with the powerful and influential women in this country: Permanent connections. We have found that the Homo Sapiens female mind aligns well with our own thought processes. It is much easier to connect to and influence subtly than the male mind. Do you not agree?” She gestured upwards, presumably at the rest of the Institute. “Is it not more pleasing to you to be surrounded only by women? To know that they understand you, that they think in a similar way, that you share an unspoken language?
“Our staff are connected to us as well. We normally create that connection a few months after they start here. Of course, sometimes circumstances force us to speed up that timetable.” She looked meaningfully at the door behind Janet.
Janet heard a familiar voice outside the room.
“What are you doing? Let me go!”
At a nod from the Director, the nurse turned her wheelchair around and opened the door. She saw Jo, her aestheticienne from yesterday, strapped to a gurney but fighting like a wildcat to be free, escorted by two nurses.
“You can’t do this!”
She looked to the side and her eyes met Janet’s.
“Janet! What are they doing? Help me, please!”
Janet could only watch, mute, as Jo’s nurses impassively pushed the gurney further down the corridor. The door was shut, muting Jo’s protests. Janet felt guilty; no doubt she was responsible for Jo’s early abduction.
“Think of us as scouts, Janet. We have been here for many years, observing, building our resources, and then connecting to the power structures in your society. We will be here for many years to come, before the next wave arrives. We prepare the way for them; and you, like the others will assist us in this. In fact, you will want to, and need to, assist us.”
She turned to the nurse. “Take her to be wrapped, then to the Questioner.” She smiled at Janet; it was a very alien smile. “I will see you later.”
The nurse nodded, and wheeled Janet back into the corridor, and two doors further down.
In the next room were three more nurses, and a broad table which was covered with a complex mesh-like material. The nurses efficiently stripped the clothes from the unresisting Janet, and placed her nude body on top of the mesh.
One nurse donned a mask and gloves, and produced a catheter. She carefully introduced it into Janet’s urethra, and fastened it into place. Satisfied with its location, she nodded at the others who proceeded to place a number of 2-inch adhesive metal disks at strategic places on Janet’s body. Janet could only lie there wondering what was going on, and be absurdly relieved that the increasing pressure in her bladder had been removed. She was briefly shocked when a finger invaded her butt; it was followed by some kind of soft plug that expanded once inside.
The nurses wrapped her in several layers of the mesh; Janet saw that it had finger-wide tubes running across it, for some reason. After a while she was covered from her toes to her collarbone.
The masked nurse approached with a swab which she used to sterilize an area on Janet’s neck. She then slid in a needle, painfully plumbing it into a vein, and installed a venous port which she taped in place.
The last layer on the table was a silvery insulated material. The nurses folded it loosely over Janet’s body and sealed it like a sleeping bag. One of them then took a small machine and connected it to the side of the side of the bag. The bag hissed and promptly contracted, progressively immobilizing Janet’s body until just before the point where it would have made breathing difficult.
The final step was more mesh and more of the silver material wrapped around Janet’s head, similarly contracted to keep her hair from her face.
Janet lay there in her cocoon, wondering why they were doing this and what would happen next. She didn’t have to wait long, though; her attending nurse from before had replaced the wheelchair with a gurney. The nurses lifted the cocooned Janet onto the gurney, and fixed her in place with two mesh straps.
“Don’t you look lovely, Janet?” cooed one of the nurses, apparently sincerely. “The Questioner is waiting for you. She will help you Connect with your mind.”
Her attending nurse took the gurney further down the corridor to another room. There a second white-haired, purple-irised woman—alien!—was waiting with another nurse. The alien didn’t stand on ceremony.
“I am the Questioner. You will tell me everything.”
Good luck, thought Janet. Even had she been willing, her tongue and vocal cords were still a long way from working. “Grunt once for yes, twice for no!” she giggled to herself internally, half-hysterically. It certainly beat thinking about what awaited her. She had once faced down a Belorussian gangster who had threatened to put out his cigar in her eye unless she told him what he wanted to know, but back then she had been wearing a wire, and the FBI team had been waiting just outside. She still remembered the feeling of relief as black-clad agents had swung through the window, laser-dot sights lining up on the Belorussian—who had, satisfyingly, pissed himself.
No-one was coming for her this time. The gentleness of the nurses somehow just made the situation worse. She would have welcomed the Belorussian back, at this point.
The two nurses eased her gurney into a recess at the back of the room, until something clicked and held the gurney steady. They then raised the back of the gurney so that Janet was in a half-sitting position, with a better view of the Questioner.
The new nurse moved some complicated equipment over Janet’s head, settling it around her and placing a metal band across her forehead and temple. Taking a syringe filled with a purple liquid, she injected it into Janet’s venous port. She adjusted a couple of screens above Janet and stepped back to allow the Questioner to take center stage. This felt ominous. Janet tried to take deep breaths, but her body still wasn’t complying.
The Questioner pressed a button and Janet felt a hum around her head. The purple liquid, or something else, was making her head spin. There was a redness around the edge of her vision.
“Tell me about your investigation.”
Janet couldn’t help but think back to her discussion with Joe, her presentation about the senators, her aim to discover what had happened with DynaDyne. Of course, nothing came out of her mouth.
The Questioner was scanning the screens above Janet’s head. “And what of your previous assignments?”
Again, Janet’s brain reflexively jumped back in time to her various undercover roles, remembering all the details. She was vaguely aware of the Questioner nodding, asking follow-up questions, but was all like a dream. There was no sense of time, no sense of speaking, just the questions and the memories. She was regressed further and further, back to her time as a cub reporter, back to college, back to her time on the JV cheer squad at high school...
She came back to reality to find the nurse removing the equipment from around her head. The Questioner was regarding her, apparently pleased. Sensation had returned to Janet’s face, and she experimentally flexed her jaw.
“Very good. There is much of interest inside your mind. We will talk again, my dear, but there is something we must do first.
“Nurse, take her to the Implanter.”
Janet’s nurse took her back outside, to a door on the other side of the corridor. It opened onto a small anteroom, with double doors off to the side. In the room were two other gurneys, with the occupants similarly cocooned and placed in a half-sitting position like Jo. One was a much older woman, whose face Janet vaguely thought she knew; she had a dreamy and unfocused look.
The other occupant was Jo, whose face was awake and full of terror, but whose mouth had been covered by medical tape. Clearly, she had been too noisy for someone’s liking.
The nurse positioned Janet between the two other women. “They’ll come for you soon. I will see you later, once you’re one of Us.” She patted Janet’s cheek and left.
That, too, was very ominous.
Janet tried out her voice. It was husky, but she could make it work. “Jo! Are you OK?”
Jo nodded with a quiet “mmm!". Janet quickly realized that this would be a mostly one-sided conversation.
“They took me for questioning—it was weird but didn’t hurt. Did they do that with you?”
A shake of the head from Jo.
“They said this is the Implanter or something? That doesn’t sound good.”
Jo nodded and the look in her eyes gave emphasis to the agreement.
Janet looked at the other woman. “Hey, I’m Janet. Who are you?”
The woman continued to stare at the wall, not reacting to Janet. She was apparently blissed-out on something.
Janet considered asking Jo who the woman was, but realized that it would quickly become a game of 20 Questions, and at this stage she was too tired and frightened to try. She did an experimental flex of her arms, and confirmed that the cocoon was way too strong to break. She would have been surprised had it been any other way.
The double doors opened, and two nurses entered. They did a quick check of the older woman, then took the gurney back through the doors.
Janet was wondering how much longer they would be waiting when one of the nurses returned, carrying two syringes. She first went to inject Jo, and then followed with Janet.
“Just a little something to relax you.” She looked at Jo’s face. “If I take this off, you’ll stay quiet, won’t you dear?”
Jo paused, then nodded defeatedly. The nurse carefully removed the tape.
“We’ll come for you in a short while, my dears.”
The two of them lay quiet for a moment after the nurse left.
“Sorry, Jo. I think this is my fault. Journalist. Investigation.”
“It’s okay. What do you think they’re going to do?” whispered Jo.
“I don’t know.” The drug was starting to make it hard for Janet to think, or care.
“This wrap is so tight, I can’t move.”
“Me neither.”
“They put a catheter in me. And stuck something in my butt.”
“M’too.”
“I’m afraid.”
“M’too.”
“Sl’py.”
“Mmm”
They both floated off into a dream-like state, vaguely aware of each other but unable to connect.
At some point Janet realized that the Director was standing at the foot of her gurney, her alien eyes regarding Janet’s face. The two nurses from earlier stood behind her.
“You are very fortunate,” she observed. “Few have been able to observe the implantation process. You will be privileged to do so. Perhaps in the future we will ask you to write about it, to educate your species.”
She turned to the nurses. “Place them together. That one "—she pointed at Jo—“first.”
The nurses came forward, checking the pupil response and carotid pulses of the two girls. Once satisfied, they wheeled their gurneys through the double doors. In the next room a large white table with a circular edge took up most of the space, flush along two of the walls. Two moulded recesses were sited along the arc, each with its own LCD monitors and various wires.
The nurses carefully lifted first Jo and then Janet into the recesses, placed toe-to-toe. Each recess was padded, and the head end was elevated, so Jo and Janet were facing each other and able to see each other without straining. It was comfortable, almost relaxing, unless you thought about what was likely coming.
“Her eyes,” muttered Jo. Something about the Director’s appearance had registered with her drugged brain.
“Al’n,” confirmed Janet, unhelpfully.
The nurses busied themselves connecting wires and tubes to ports on each girl’s cocoon. Janet felt the cocoon start to go cold inside.
“Cold...”
“Yeah...” confirmed Jo vaguely.
There was a loud hum, and the table started to rotate. Janet could see that Jo was being carried towards the wall, but a small arch had opened there, lit with a strong purple light. First Jo’s head then her body disappeared into it, then it was Janet’s turn. The focus of the purple glare moved slowly up her body until it crossed her face, and blinded her.
Once her eyes had recovered from the dazzling purple light, Janet realized that she was in a huge room, bright with white light. Looking around she could see that they were on only a small fraction of the table; the whole thing was a circle which was maybe forty feet across. Around the edge, recesses held other cocooned women, and there was a cluster of scarlet-clad nurses standing by each one.
The table stopped, and a woman dressed in a white gown, cap and mask stepped up to them. Her eyes left no doubt—it was the Director.
“Welcome to Implant. Here we connect you to Us. You will no longer be yourself, we will be Ourself.”
She indicated further around the table.
“The implant process requires that you be conscious, but do not be concerned—there is no pain.”
Two masked nurses approached them. Each placed an oxygen mask over their patient, waited for a short time, gave an injection into the girl’s venous port, then stood to the side.
“We do, however, have to ensure that you do not move at all.”
A cold feeling like the injection in the lift started to spread out across Janet, but much stronger and faster. She felt all her muscles freeze and her bladder spasmed. However, this time she started to find it hard to make herself breathe. She panicked inside, but could not move a finger or vocalize a plea for help.
Her nurse, however, had been expecting this: she removed the oxygen mask, inserted a metal instrument into Janet’s mouth and moved her unresisting jaw forward. With dexterity she inserted a tube down Janet’s airway, inflated a cuff to seal it, and connected the tube to a valve.
Before her oxygen levels fell too low, Janet heard a machine hiss, and air started to pump into her lungs as she was mechanically ventilated. The nurse inspected the monitor next to Janet and, satisfied, tied the tube and valve in place. She withdrew, and Janet could see that Jo had undergone the same process: paralyzed and ventilated, staring unmoving at her.
The nurses connected additional tubes to their caps, and Janet’s head started to feel the same chill as her body.
The Director leaned over Janet.
“All is proceeding as I planned.” She locked eyes with Janet, who briefly felt like she was sinking into those alien pupils.
The Director stepped back, and the table rotated again. This brought them to another group of nurses, with a different alien directing them.
“I am the Implanter.” It was hard to differentiate her from the Director behind the mask, though the patterns of her irises were subtly different.
Janet could only watch as a complex piece of machinery descended from the ceiling above Jo, and the nurses adjusted it into their desired position. A nurse carefully dripped some liquid into Jo’s unblinking eyes, then moved to do the same for Janet. The relief from what had been increasingly dry eyes was briefly wonderful.
“Frontal lobe,” announced the Implanter, and pressed a switch.
There was a green laser flash above Jo’s head, and a sound like a sizzle. Jo remained immobile, but a hole about the size of a 1-cent piece appeared in her forehead.
The Implanter used a long, delicate pair of tweezers to remove from a tube something that looked like a tangle of ultra-fine platinum threads. She carefully, inhumanly precisely, placed it into the new hole. She followed up with a white plastic-like plug to re-seal the hole. The laser flashed again, quickly. The nurses repositioned the machinery to point to the left side of Jo’s head, just in front of the ear.
“Temporal lobe.” Another flash. Janet couldn’t see this location as well as the other one, but the Implanter followed the same process of placing the threads, a plug, and using the laser to re-seal it.
A nurse carefully taped something over the two insertion sites, and shone a light in Jo’s eyes. Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she gave a nod to the Implanter.
The table rotated again, this time just enough to bring Janet next to the Implanter and under the machinery. Terrified but impotent, she stared straight ahead. Another drip of liquid in each of her eyes. Masked faces leaned over her, impassive. Would there be anesthesia? She hadn’t seen them give anything to Jo.
“Frontal lobe.” There was a flash and a transient feeling of heat.
She saw the tangle of platinum threads up close now, as the Implanter carefully inserted it above her sightline. Nothing happened for a moment, then there was another flash—but this was inside her mind, a half second which was a cross between agony and ecstasy, and her vision blacked out. Then she was back, and the Implanter was just finishing inserting the plug. Another quick flash of green light and heat, and it was over.
They repeated the process on the left side of her head; this time, the inside-mind flash made her forget completely who she was, and what was happening to her, for a while. By the time her memories and perception recovered, the table was rotating again towards a new position.
Here were two nurses holding lipstick-sized devices in their hands. One took Jo, the other Janet, and they carefully played the device—emitting a strong blue light—over the insertion sites. Janet felt warmth from the device, and warmth returning to her head and body; it was pleasant, and made her sleepy. Her eyelids were starting to flicker again, to her relief. For ten minutes or so she semi-dozed.
Finally the paralysis drug wore off, and her gag reflex returned. She started to involuntarily cough to try to expel the invader in her airway. Again, the nurse was expecting this, and deftly deflated the airway device’s inflatable cuff before removing the tube. Janet coughed a couple of times, but was relieved that she was able to breathe again by herself. The nurse returned to her ministrations on the insertion sites. Jo followed Janet in the same manner a few minutes later.
Another rotation, and the Director was waiting for them, accompanied by a single nurse.
“The procedure is complete. Now it is time for you to change, to grow. To connect. To become one with Us.”
She leaned over Jo, and the nurse pressed a small device to the side of Jo’s head where the second device had been inserted.
“You will keep the Institute’s secrets. You will continue to serve and delight Our guests.”
“I will,” confirmed Jo in a monotone.
“You will assist Us in bringing selected guests for implantation.”
“I will.”
“You will serve in the implantation process.”
“I will.”
The Director seemed satisfied, and moved to Janet. Janet wanted to twist her head away as the nurse pressed the device to her head, but was unable. There was a click, and her brain filled with a hum.
“You will keep the Institute’s secrets. You will not report of what you have seen unless We ask you to.”
“I will.” Of course she would.
“You will complete your treatments here. You will perfect your body.”
“I will.”
“You will submit to Questioning as We require.”
“I will.”
“You will assist Us in selecting and bringing new guests here.”
“I will.”
The device clicked off and the hum subsided. Janet lay still, filled with a sense of peace.
“The nurses will take you back to your rooms. I will see you again, Janet.” The Director left.
The final rotation of the table brought Jo and Janet back to where they had first been loaded onto the table. Two nurses moved their cocoons back onto gurneys, and Janet was the first one they took out, back to the room where she had been wrapped. Now the process was reversed; they cut off the covers and mesh; removed the catheter, rear plug and venous port, and detached the metallic sensors. Janet had full control of her body, but remained obediently lying where she had been placed.
“Let’s get you dressed, my dear.” An older nurse helped Janet into the normal vest, shorts and robe, and guided her off the table. Janet was still unsteady, feeling the lingering effects of the paralysis.
The nurse walked her back to the elevator, and back up to the fourth floor. There she stopped in front of room 405, next to Johanssen’s 403.
“This is your new room, reflecting your status.” She tapped a keycard to unlock it, and guided Janet inside. Janet saw that her bag and toiletries had already been moved.
The nurse patted the bed covers. “Into bed, my dear.”
She removed Janet’s robe and tucked her under the soft sheets.
“Sleep, and dream beautiful things.” She pressed gently on Janet’s temples, long enough to see her eyes glaze, then turned off the light and left.
Janet obediently dropped in to a deep pit of sleep.