The Awakening - Chapter Nine

What about free will? The man who was interrogating Philip asked. Doesn’t everybody have the right to decide what they want to do with their lives? Philip responded by saying that free will didn’t exist. It was an illusion that the mind made up to believe that it was special from other living things. Philip explained that everybody did whatever their mind was wired to do and if their mind was rewired, they would do something else. Will had nothing to do with it. So what was wrong with changing everybody’s will so that they wanted to help people?

Philip sat in his cell. He was nervous all the time now. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him. When his mind was clear, he didn’t care what happened to him. He knew what his purpose was. Now his mind was cloudy. He was unsure. All he wanted to do was help people and now he felt like he was being sacrificed as a pawn in a game much larger than he had ever imagined.

The interrogations continued but they seemed to have no purpose. The questions didn’t make sense. It seemed like some twisted game that he was forced to participate in. Philip was losing hope that he would ever be free again.

During one of the interrogations, the man interrogating Philip told him that they had located a huge processing facility that was making this substance. They told Philip that the facility had been destroyed by agents. They also told Philip that thousands of people had been detained and given the antidote. Soon this conspiracy that threatens all mankind will be eliminated. Philip didn’t know if what the agent had said was true or not. Philip didn’t know what kind of reaction the agent was expecting. Philip didn’t care about the cause anymore. He just wanted his old life back.

Philip went back to his cell and he waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. He was just waiting for something to happen. Then something happened. He was released. He was blindfolded and driven back to his home and left there. He didn’t know how long he had been gone. He didn’t know what had happened while he was away. He didn’t even know if his job was still waiting for him. He went to bed. It felt good to be in his own bed again. He slept for a long time. When he woke up he was hungry. He went to a local diner to eat.

The people that were in the diner seemed to act strange. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not. They all looked at him like he was from another planet. It made him nervous. He ate his meal and then went to his job. The detention facility was still there. The staff was still there but there were no detainees. He was called into the director’s office. The director asked him where he had been.

He explained all the things that had happened to him. He told her how he was put through mental stress and that he did not reveal anything. He said that they told him that thousands of people had been rounded up and that there was something that would reverse the effects of the substance that they all had taken. The director told Philip that everything was ok. The operation was successful. Everybody on the whole planet was awake now except for him.