Groupmind

My name is not Xin, but that is what you can call me. Everything I am about to tell you is completely true.

I believe I was born in the early 90′s. “Believe” is the right word in this scenario because my otherwise superb memory (in fact, it was once flawless) only begins in 1997. Judging by the status of my body’s growth and the growth of the children around me in those fledgling memories, I am quite confident that we were all between the ages of 5 and 7.

How they managed to erase our earlier memories I do not know, although I suspect they used the same method they used to control every other aspect of our lives: drugs. They gave us pills to put us asleep and gassed us awake. Our food was coated with chemicals that would regulate our appetite to keep our weight ideal. None of these “treatments” had negative side effects; they performed their duty with surgical precision. None of the treatments, that is, with one exception.

Most of our medications were geared toward keeping us in perfect physical condition to survive the main treatment we had all been brought there to receive. The other drug was designed to maximize the mind’s potential. It achieved that goal, in that we were all geniuses with IQ levels well above any publicly released. Yet, as I mentioned before, there were side effects.

During the first 16 years of my conscious life, I was telepathically connected to 23 other children – 12 females and 11 males. We shared every thought, every impulse. Often I saw through another’s eyes, heard through another’s ears; sometimes, they through mine. This total lack of privacy would certainly upset any average person, but to us who knew nothing else, the telepathic link was not an issue. It was a side effect of the treatment that made our lives Hell.

The treatment fused all of our minds into one chaotic super-being, but we did not really control it. Instead, the Groupmind had its own desires and it used our bodies to manifest those desires in the real world. It would assign us duties, often to be done collectively, but sometimes we worked on them as individuals, although access to the Groupmind was always there.

The Groupmind’s tasks were typically innocuous in nature, such as using our collective intelligence to calculate algorithms that would predict the economic future of China, or to design a superior jet fighter. Yet, at least once a day without fail, the Groupmind would make us do things. I hesitate to describe them to you, but the truth must be known.

Before I detail my crimes, let me preface by explaining that the strength of the emotions the Groupmind felt are unlike those ever felt by solitary human minds. The desire to instantly gratify the Groupmind is overwhelming. While the qualia is impossible to describe with words, at best it can be compared to an intense heroin withdrawal. It is not possible to distract oneself with happier thoughts, and one is unable to refrain from pacing or self-harm until one knows they will soon follow the Groupmind’s desires.

There are times when what the Groupmind wanted disgusted and even horrified me, yet I could not avoid following its will. I have hunted, tortured, killed, and even eaten hundreds of animals in countless manners according to the Groupmind’s commands. I have defecated and urinated on myself and others. I have mutilated myself and others.

In 2000 the Groupmind presented us each with something we had never seen before: a small child, probably around the age of 4. Our instructions were to rip off the child’s extremities, starting with the ears. I hesitated, but the rush of queasiness that foretells the Groupmind’s displeasure led me to quickly reach down to grab his left ear.

As I did, though, a revolutionary idea struck me. Why did this child not run or fight? Why did he simply cower like a frightened animal? Unless…like an animal, he was not Groupminded! He did not have 23 others connected to him, offering him advice from their places of relative safety.

Quickly, the Groupmind told us to murder our child, although many of us were still attacking the children’s extremities, as I knew from our telepathic bond. But I could not. I could think of nothing except the possibility that humans who were not Groupminded existed.

The backlash for thinking such a thought was immediate and painful. Yet, even through the full-body spasms that had me twitching on the floor, I could not stop thinking about it. Some people have no Groupmind! NO GROUPMIND! I almost shouted it straight into the minds of my connected peers.

They understood the implications as quickly as I did. There was a way to end our torture. We could live without the Groupmind. We decided to escape. We attacked our handlers, and quickly left our rooms. As we exited the area, the only place any of us had ever known, we realized that we were being hunted by other groups of children. 23 sets of 24, to be exact. Though we had some distance on them, most of us were not fast enough to avoid them. I felt their pain as all 23 of my peers were caught and summarily executed.

As I reached the door to the exit of the structure, which I realized was underground, I saw two signs with arrows, one pointing left, the other pointing right. The former read “Structure 21”, and the latter read “Structure 23”. In the shock of being disconnected from the Groupmind for the first time in my conscious life, and the rush of fleeing for my life, I did not comprehend what those signs meant. I do now.

There are 24 structures, each with 24 sets of 24 children, with each group of 2 dozen Groupminded. I have no reason to believe that the complex I escaped from is the only such complex of structures. In fact, my analysis of the population trends leads me to the conclusion that the program is expanding, to people of all ages. The project cannot be stopped.

I did horrible things for the Groupmind, and so will you. The Groupmind plans to dominate us all and in time it will. The Groupmind always gets what it wants. Always.

Polybius

Polybius is a fictional arcade game that was supposedly part of a secret government experiment and caused players to hallucinate, have nightmares or become suicidal.

Origins

The earliest known reference article about Polybius was first added to game repository Coinop.org on August 3rd, 1998. The original submission provided little information regarding the history of the game, aside from the description of an abstract puzzle/space shooter game named after a Greek historian that was only released in one or two arcades outside of Portland. The article also noted that the machine was regularly visited by men in black coats who would come to collect “records,” citing the account of one of the arcades’ alleged owners who suspected they were part of a paramilitary technology group. In addition, the entry included a photograph of the title screen bearing the text “© 1981 Sinneslöschen" (loosely translated as “sensory-extinguishing” in German) as well as mysterious reports of children suffering from amnesia, sleeping disorders or inexplicable trauma after playing the game. The best answer if it’s fake (IF), is that it was based off an obscure, and rare German arcade cabinet called “Poly-Play” which was a collection of eight games including a puzzler and space shooter.

The Russian Sleep Experiment

This is a real history, the Russians wanted to test the human reactions of the insomnia. Maybe you can search it in Google, but in that time they used to made experiments, even if that cost a mans life,or insanity.

Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month.

The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II.

Everything was fine for the first five days; the subjects hardly complained having been promised (falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents in their past, and the general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the 4 day mark.

After five days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored portholes. Oddly they all seemed to think they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over their comrades, the other subjects in captivity with them. At first the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself...

After nine days the first of them started screaming. He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it... or rather didn't react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The 2 non-screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the glass portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.

So did the whispering to the microphones.

After 3 more days passed. The researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working, since they thought it impossible that no sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all 5 must still be alive. In fact it was the amount of oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy level of strenuous exercise. On the morning of the 14th day the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the captives they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.

They announced: "We are opening the chamber to test the microphones step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom."

To their surprise they heard a single phrase in a calm voice response: "We no longer want to be freed."

Debate broke out among the researchers and the military forces funding the research. Unable to provoke any more response using the intercom it was finally decided to open the chamber at midnight on the fifteenth day.

The chamber was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with fresh air and immediately voices from the microphones began to object. 3 different voices began begging, as if pleading for the life of loved ones to turn the gas back on. The chamber was opened and soldiers sent in to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, and so did the soldiers when they saw what was inside. Four of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that any of them in 'life.'

The food rations past day 5 had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject's thighs and chest stuffed into the drain in the center of the chamber, blocking the drain and allowing 4 inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All four 'surviving' test subjects also had large portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and exposed bone on their finger tips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the position and angles of the wounds indicated that most if not all of them were self-inflicted.

The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.

Most of the soldiers were Russian special operatives at the facility, but still many refused to return to the chamber to remove the test subjects. They continued to scream to be left in the chamber and alternately begged and demanded that the gas be turned back on, lest they fall asleep...

To everyone's surprise the test subjects put up a fierce fight in the process of being removed from the chamber. One of the Russian soldiers died from having his throat ripped out, another was gravely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subject's teeth. Another 5 of the soldiers lost their lives if you count ones that committed suicide in the weeks following the incident.

In the struggle one of the four living subjects had his spleen ruptured and he bled out almost immediately. The medical researchers attempted to sedate him but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal, breaking the ribs and arm of one doctor. When heart was seen to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out to the point there was more air in his vascular system than blood. Even after it stopped he continued to scream and flail for another 3 minutes, struggling to attack anyone in reach and just repeating the word "MORE" over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.

The surviving three test subjects were heavily restrained and moved to a medical facility, the two with intact vocal cords continuously begging for the gas demanding to be kept awake...

The most injured of the three was taken to the only surgical operating room that the facility had. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back within his body it was found that he was effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under. He managed to tear most of the way through a 4 inch wide leather strap on one wrist, even through the weight of a 200 pound soldier holding that wrist as well. It took only a little more anesthetic than normal to put him under, and the instant his eyelids fluttered and closed, his heart stopped. In the autopsy of the test subject that died on the operating table it was found that his blood had triple the normal level of oxygen. His muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn and he had broken 9 bones in his struggle to not be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.

The second survivor had been the first of the group of five to start screaming. His vocal cords destroyed he was unable to beg or object to surgery, and he only reacted by shaking his head violently in disapproval when the anesthetic gas was brought near him. He shook his head yes when someone suggested, reluctantly, they try the surgery without anesthetic, and did not react for the entire 6 hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with what remained of his skin. The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should be medically possible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified nurse assisting the surgery stated that she had seen the patients mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his eyes met hers.

When the surgery ended the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while struggling. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the surgeon had a pen and pad fetched so the patient could write his message. It was simple. "Keep cutting."

The other two test subjects were given the same surgery, both without anesthetic as well. Although they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralyzed the subjects could only follow the attending researchers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they were soon trying to escape their bonds. The moment they could speak they were again asking for the stimulant gas. The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts and why they wanted to be given the gas again.

Only one response was given: "I must remain awake."

All three subject's restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination as to what should be done with them. The researchers, facing the wrath of their military 'benefactors' for having failed the stated goals of their project considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The commanding officer, an ex-KGB instead saw potential, and wanted to see what would happen if they were put back on the gas. The researchers strongly objected, but were overruled.

In preparation for being sealed in the chamber again the subjects were connected to an EEG monitor and had their restraints padded for long term confinement. To everyone's surprise all three stopped struggling the moment it was let slip that they were going back on the gas. It was obvious that at this point all three were putting up a great struggle to stay awake. One of subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs against the leather bonds with all his might, first left, then right, then left again for something to focus on. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to be wired for EEG most of the researchers were monitoring his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes flat lined inexplicably. It looked as if he were repeatedly suffering brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on paper scrolling out of the brainwave monitor only one nurse saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brainwaves immediately changed to that of deep sleep, then flatlined for the last time as his heart simultaneously stopped.

The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brainwaves showed the same flatlines as one who had just died from falling asleep. The commander gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside, as well as 3 researchers. One of the named three immediately drew his gun and shot the commander point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute subject and blew his brains out as well.

He pointed his gun at the remaining subject, still restrained to a bed as the remaining members of the medical and research team fled the room. "I won't be locked in here with these things! Not with you!" he screamed at the man strapped to the table. "WHAT ARE YOU?" he demanded. "I must know!"

The subject smiled.

"Have you forgotten so easily?" The subject asked. "We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread."

The researcher paused. Then aimed at the subject's heart and fired. The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out, "So... nearly... free..."