They Put a Microchip in my Brain to Cure Me from my Illness. My New Affliction is Far Worse...

The key was in my hand and the lock was right there, but it just wouldn’t go in the stupid hole. My fingers were trembling in that awful, familiar way again and I willed them to stop but that only made it worse.

From behind me, I heard the impatient shuffling of feet and the woman standing there cleared her throat, her hands full of groceries, the same as my own.

What is he doing? I imagined her thinking to herself. Why is this old man taking so long?

The tremors were bad today, but then I hadn’t taken my medication yet and it was probably overdue. It was always overdue by the time I got around to it.

Finally, with one hand gripping the other, straining with the weight of the bags, I got the key into the little slot and turned it to the left, shaking worse than ever. I turned the knob and held the door open for the woman behind me who went quickly past. She looked at the ground and didn’t even acknowledge me.

Rude. But that's how it was these days. People decided at some point recently there was no sense bothering with niceties anymore. Let's just look at our phones and ignore each other.

Sorry, I'm bitter. But I'm old so I'm allowed to be.

I got up to my apartment and went inside. I dropped the heavy bags by the door and shook my fingers to try and recirculate blood back to the parts of my hand cut off from oxygen by the heavy bag handles. Heading straight for the medicine cabinet, I grabbed the orange-tinted bottle of pills. Opening it, I saw it was getting low. Only a half dozen of the ovaloid yellow pills remained. A couple day’s worth.

I popped one in my mouth and dry-swallowed it, then proceeded to slowly and shakily make myself a sandwich for lunch. The tremors got marginally better as the sunshine-yellow pills dissolved and did their duty - releasing dopamine into my deprived mind. I was about to take a bite of my disheveled sandwich when the phone rang.

Mark, the screen said, showing a picture of my smiling son.

“Hello,” I said, answering it on the final ring before the voicemail picked up. They just didn’t make the damn buttons big enough these days.

“Hey, dad. How are you doing?”

That was always the first question nowadays. The implication was just beneath the surface. I was doing worse. I was always doing worse.

“Fine. How ‘bout you?”

“Good. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about something. Can I come by tomorrow for breakfast? You can make us your world-famous crepes?”

I hesitated, feeling oddly suspicious.

“Sure, sounds good,” I replied, ignoring that paranoid thought. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Mark was watching me carefully as I poured the pancake batter into the pan, my hand trembling. I was spilling it all over the burner and onto the surface of the stove accidentally.

“Sorry,” I said, not sure why I was apologizing to him. “It gets worse sometimes when I think about it a lot, or when somebody is watching me, or if I feel rushed.”

He looked away.

“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.”

None of the crepes had turned out so far. They were too thick or too thin or I had messed up when flipping them causing them to tear. It had never felt so difficult to make pancakes before.

“Here, let me take over for you for a minute. Why don’t you sit down and relax?”

He wasn’t asking, I realized as he took the spatula from me and led me over to where he had been sitting at the kitchen table. His laptop was open and facing me as I sat in the chair.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Look and see what that says,” he told me, beginning to pour the batter into the pan and doing it like a pro. It looked so easy, but he didn’t have my old dopamine-deprived brain and trembling hands.

I put on my reading glasses and pulled the laptop closer. It was a video, so I hit play.

“What is this?”

“Just watch it, you’ll see.”

Health Integration Technology - Brought to you by Proteon Corporation, read the title.

A woman’s smiling face appeared. It zoomed out slowly and revealed she was wearing a white lab coat and standing in a laboratory.

"Welcome to the future! Welcome to Proteon!"

“As you may know, Parkinson’s Disease is a progressive neurological condition which affects approximately four million people worldwide. Patients begin to notice symptoms gradually - a tremor in the hands eventually developing into shaky limbs, difficulty walking, slurred speech, and stiffness.”

That all sounded familiar. By now I could safely tick off all those boxes.

“But with Proteon’s new Health Integration Technology - you won’t experience any of those symptoms!”

What was this, some kind of joke? I would have been told by my doctor if there was a treatment for this illness that was so effective. I assumed this was some experimental treatment, or worse, a money grab.

“It’s worth a try, dad. I called the company and signed you up for the trial, if you’re interested.”

The video kept playing and I watched, growing increasingly fascinated.

“...that’s when Proteon’s patented technology kicks in, dopamine production is stimulated in the brain. This corrects the abnormal brain activity resulting in improved motor functions, speech, and reduced stiffness. Sign up for the free trial today!”

Something about the video was oddly persuasive, despite my initial concerns. I was overwhelmed with a desire to go through with the appointment.

I had missed the part about them implanting a chip in my brain - that I learned about the next day. Still, I went through with it. God help me, I went through with it.

“You’ll feel a slight pinch. Then maybe a bit of light-headedness for a minute or two. All completely normal. After that we’ll synch you up to the system and you’ll be good to go!”

The woman had perfectly straight black hair done up in a ponytail, she was wearing safety goggles on her forehead and an overly enthusiastic smile was beaming at me from across the room. I was sitting in a chair, my arms strapped down to the rests as if to prevent my escape.

“Are these really necessary?” I asked, looking down at my wrists.

“Yes. I assure you, all totally normal. All part of the procedure. There is a… Tendency among participants to... Well, there’s no kind way of putting it - there’s a reflex which we’ve noticed among previous subjects. They make every effort to extract the device for the first few seconds after implantation. Self-destructive behaviours, you know. Tearing the skin and causing bleeding. Rupturing of blood vessels and things like that.”

“Sorry, what? Are you saying I’m going to want to tear the microchip out of my own skull?”

“Only for the first few minutes. Don’t worry, the sensation passes after that.”

“Is it painful?” I was suddenly becoming more afraid with each passing second. She could tell, I sensed, and was trying to look casual as she fiddled on the computer in front of her and did her final preparations, her fingers moving lightning fast over her keyboard.

“Like I said, just a slight pinch. Okay, Mr. Grayson, we’re all set. The procedure will begin in three, two, one…”

“Wait! Hold on, I’m not sure I want to!”

But it was too late. She pressed a key on the panel in front of her and the sound of whirring machinery could be heard from behind me. I struggled in the chair, pulling on the straps which held my wrists in place.

“Hold still, Mr. Grayson. These machines are very sensitive. We wouldn’t want the chip to be implanted in the wrong place. That would cause all sorts of problems.”

Her calm passivity was rattling me badly and I felt beads of sweat rolling down the sides of my face as I tried to stay calm and stay still.

“No more speaking.”

She was standing in front of me now as something settled into place behind the back of my head. Then I felt a pinch.

To call it that was a vast understatement. It hurt more than anything I have ever felt in my life. As if several dozen mechanical bees had stung me all in the same place and then someone had hit it with a hammer.

The feeling of something burrowing, like an insect, began to be felt from the back of my scalp, travelling down towards my spine.

“Ah, there’s that itch,” the woman said, looking at my startled expression. “No scratching now.”

She put her fingers on my leg and made them crawl up my thigh like a spider.

All I wanted to do was to scratch the back of my head, to tear the flesh off my scalp and pull that probing insectile thing out from under my skin. It was itching like mad, the worst itch I had ever felt. I believed at that moment if I didn’t scratch it I would die.

My hands and wrists were squirming desperately to get free from the bonds holding me in place. Time seemed to stretch on forever as the woman went behind me and watched the thing’s progress. I could feel it burrowing and probing around beneath the skin, digging around beneath my flesh like a Bug’s Bunny cartoon.

Finally it settled in place and I relaxed slightly.

"There we go," she whispered in my ear. "Now the real fun can start."

The sharp pinch returned, the maddening itch growing in intensity tenfold, then a hundred, a thousand.

Unable to stand it for one second longer, my mind snapped like a dry twig and the world went black.

When I woke up, my hands were reaching for the back of my head and I was screaming, a piercing, high-pitched, child-like scream that I hadn’t known myself capable of.

There was a thick, sturdy bandage on the back of my head which was adhered with super-sticky tape to my shaved scalp. I tried to rip it off but couldn’t. The itch was gone now, but the memory of it made it feel like it was still there. And I could remember that feeling of something burrowing beneath my skin and hated it, needed it out.

I finally got a corner of the bandage off and it began to peel away.

“DAD! STOP!” Mark was running towards my bed with his hands outstretched, a worried look on his face. “Oh, dad! They said you really lost it in there, that you were hallucinating and that you tried to… That you… Well, it just wasn’t pretty, let’s put it that way and-”

I cut him off and started yelling at him.

“What the hell did you sign me up for!? I wasn’t hallucinating, I know exactly what happened back there! They put some sort of bug inside of me! A creature! It was crawling around under my skin - it’s still there for all I know! GET IT OUT OF ME!”

“Where do you think you are right now?” a woman who I hadn’t noticed before asked from the corner where she had been hiding, just outside of my peripheral vision. She had a cup of medication in her hand and approached with a smile on her face, holding it out to me.

“I’m at home, in my bedroom,” I started to say, then looked around. The items in the room were familiar but the space itself was not.

“Wait… That’s not right. Who is she Mark? Why is she in my bedroom?”

My son was quiet for a few moments before speaking. He looked nervous, like he was being watched. Which I suppose he was.

“You’re in the hospital, dad. It’s a private one. Owned by Proteon Corp. They said something went wrong during the procedure. You were moving around too much and the chip went in somewhere it shouldn’t have. That’s why you’re having these visions, these vivid hallucinations.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “I know what happened.”

That was when I saw her again. The woman from the procedure. The sadistic bitch who had done this to me. She was standing there in the doorway, smiling at me. Her too-straight ponytail mocking me. Her outfit was too crisp and too perfect. Like a robot.

“HER! IT WAS HER! GET HER OUT OF HERE, PLEASE!”

My son looked mortified.

“Dad, stop! Please! I’m so sorry, Doctor.”

He walked over to her and I could see immediately what was going on before he said another word. Taking her hand in his own, he brought her over to stand at the bedside. When he looked in her eyes she appeared sad and as if my words had cut her badly. Like she was hurt and needed comforting. When he looked away, the cold, calculating look returned instantly.

“Dad, this is the doctor who has been taking care of you here for the past six weeks. You should thank her, not yell at her like that!”

My heart was hammering in my chest and the machines at the bedside were beeping at higher and higher speeds. I could feel it in my temples and in my jugular. I was gripping the bed sheets so tightly my fingers were turning white.

“GET HER OUT! AND GET THIS THING OUT OF ME! PLEASE! I DIDN’T WANT THIS!”

That was when I felt it moving around again back there, beneath the bandages and under the scalp at the base of my skull. It was feeling restless, whatever it was. Waking up from a nap.

And that meant I was going back to sleep.

Whatever it was, it was in control. My eyelids began to grow heavy and my limbs felt numb and not my own.

“Maybe you should go,'' said the nurse. “It’s been a big day for him.”

In the darkening vision beneath my eyelids I could see my son looking at me, his face full of worry and concern.

“Okay. I’ll go. It’s weird. That’s the first time he’s really looked like himself since the procedure.”

“These things take time. Don’t worry, all the costs are covered while he’s staying here. We’ll keep him for as long as it takes.”

The doctor winked at me and closed the door as the world turned black once again. The last thing I saw was her wink at me.

I wake up every six weeks or so. What happens in between is anyone’s guess. I certainly don’t know what they’re doing with my body while I’m out.

The thing at the back of my skull is multiplying too, making me wonder if I’m an incubator as well as a test subject. Quietly growing these THINGS inside of me which burrow and feed beneath my flesh.

Last time I looked in a mirror I barely recognized myself. They’re eating me alive, whatever they are.

But according to my son I’ve never looked better. The staff here say I’ll be out any day.

They say that every time I wake up for a little while.

I’ve got to get this out there. Before they do this to anyone else.

Please, listen to me. This is real. THEY ARE REAL. Whatever they are - aliens, interdimensional invaders, demons - they're real.

And they’re multiplying.

TCC