Before I Forget Nexis Pas Copyright 2007 by the author nexispas@yahoo.co.uk
The images flash slowly on the screen, each coming into focus and then fading away to be replaced by the next one. Cycling over and over. I watch the screen every day for hours. I don't know how many hours. It's very relaxing, the images and the music are so very relaxing. Sometimes there is a voice in the background, but I don't pay much attention to what it is saying.
The programme wasn't the same at the beginning. That much I remember. I was having trouble sleeping, and someone I used to exchange messages with recommended the website to me. I don't remember his name now. Chris, something like that. It's not important now. At first it was just the words Relax', Breathe deeply', and the like over images of a wood fire, waves, birds drifting in the air, wonderful soft colours. There was a gentle, throbbing music in the background. It shifted slowly from chord to chord. It was almost like listening to the rhythm of a heart beating. Over and over, the same sequence of chords and images and words. And it did help. I began to sleep much better. One night I stayed out late at a party. When I got home, I went right to bed. But I couldn't get to sleep. After a restless hour when my brain refused to stop working, I gave up and turned on the computer. I logged on to the site. As the familiar music started and the images began to fade in and out, my body and mind relaxed.
That experience made me think that perhaps I was becoming addicted to the programme. But I needed to sleep, and it seemed to be the only way I could get a full night's sleep. And I felt so much better about life in general after a few weeks of listening. I had been discouraged about my new job. The boss was so demanding at first. Nothing I did satisfied him. Plus I was having difficulty meeting people and making friends in the city, but all of that seemed to vanish. I realised that I liked my job and the people I worked with. And when the website sent me an email and asked me to participate in a survey of the sleep programme, I met Christopher. He is a manager in the company that runs the website, and he was the person who interviewed me.
It's hard to say what makes a person attractive. Christopher isn't the most handsome person in the world, and at first I didn't even think of him as a potential date. But he was just so sympathetic and understanding, I found myself opening up to him. He was so easy to talk to, right from the beginning. He has this wonderful soft voice, and it just seemed so natural to discuss things with him, even stuff that I used to find hard to talk about, like being gay and lonely. After the interview, he invited me to have a cup of coffee with him at a place near his office.
We talked for hours. I felt so euphoric and relaxed. I've never felt as comfortable with anyone else. Two days later Christopher sent me an email asking if I would serve as a beta tester for some new programmes the company was developing. I felt so proud when he told me that I was one of the most skilled subjects he had ever met.
I had to take a preliminary test at the company offices. Christopher had me lie on a reclining chair. It was quite comfortable. It seemed designed for my body and provided firm support but in a relaxing way. Christopher attached electrodes to various places on my head and hands with sticky tape. Then he put a pair of goggles over my eyes. The music from the sleep programme began to play in the background. A succession of images appeared before my eyes. Some of the images appeared over and over; others were shown only once. I gave up trying to make sense of the progression. Sometimes I thought I heard a word being spoken, but the voice was never loud enough for me to make the word out. Toward the end, there was a recurring image of Christopher nude. At least I think it was Christopher. The face was rather indistinct, and the body was better than I expected. I was surprised to find that the test had lasted almost four hours. I would have guessed that it took only a half hour.
When Christopher took the goggles off my face and pulled the electrodes away, his fingers touched my face and body. His touch was like an electric shock passing through my body. I was both relaxed and stimulated by it. He used a cotton pad to wipe off the remainder of the adhesive from my face and body. There was some sort of cleanser on the cotton pads, and the brief feeling of cold wetness on my skin was followed by warmth as it evaporated. It was strangely arousing, especially when he touched my nipples and my genitals. When I think back on the test, I don't remember undressing. But I must have, because I definitely remember the electrodes touching my naked skin all over my body. And I remember Christopher removing them gently, even the ones inserted inside me. My whole body felt as if it were being caressed. Then he smiled at me, and an enormous feeling of well-being and pleasure swept through me. He really has the most beautiful eyes.
`You did very well. I am pleased.' He gently stroked my lips with his thumb. Then he bent over and kissed me. The tip of his tongue brushed my lips and eased between them. Christopher just flowed into me and took over. He was what my body and mind had always wanted, had been waiting for, hoping for. The perfect lover.
Afterward, I felt totally drained. I couldn't move at all. I had had sex before, but this was different. Much more intense. It was as if my skin had become ultra sensitive. And Christopher was so skilled. He knew exactly where to touch me and how to touch me to make me feel so good. It felt as if a hundred pairs of hands were gliding over my body. We were lying on a beach. And the music from the sleep file was playing in the background, over the sound of the waves foaming up on the beach and then receding. The sand shaped itself to our bodies, warm beneath us. Just the two of us, as Christopher stroked my body and murmured in my ear. I closed my eyes and felt so at peace there with Christopher.
When I woke up the next morning (I think it was the next morning), I was in my apartment at the Institute. It was the first day of my new job working in the Testing Division. I must have quit my previous job and moved out of my old apartment, because I was definitely working for the Institute and living in my new apartment now. But I don't remember. Those first few days with Christopher were so wonderful I couldn't think about anything but him. I remember being taken to an office on one of the upper floors at the Institute and signing some papers. I think that was the first time I met the Major. Maybe it was later. But other than that, I spent the entire time with Christopher.
Christopher is head of the Testing Division at the Institute. I get to spend most of my days with him. In the morning, he puts the electrodes on me and has me watch the programmes. In the afternoon, Christopher and the Major test me while I play games at the computer. I'm getting rather good at them. My dexterity and accuracy have improved enormously since I started. I regularly kill hundreds of aliens or marauding hordes.
At first I was just playing video games on the computer. But after a while, the Major asked me to try some sim-games. Some of them are so realistic. When I put the helmet on, it's like being in a real situation and holding a real gun that I fire at the targets. I wasn't used to the weight and the recoil of the gun at first, but the Major showed me how to hold it and aim it. He even took me to a shooting range and taught me how to shoot at targets. He's a nice man. Not as nice as Christopher, of course, but he's been enormously patient with me in training me about guns and shooting. He knows everything and he's teaching me everything he knows. I had never handled a gun before, and now I am getting quite proficient at shooting them, all kinds of them, although the night scopes gave me a bit of trouble at first. It took a while for me to learn to hit the target. That watery green light confused me.
Of course, it's easier to shoot when we're playing the games than it is at the target range. There is one simulation Christopher and the Major had me play until I got it right. It is late at night, and I am dressed all in black, even wearing a black ski mask. I peer over the top of a parapet of a roof and watch a man in his flat in the building across the street. I am holding a heavy rifle with a silencer. The man smokes, and he often steps out onto his balcony to enjoy his cigar. For a second as he slides open the glass door, he is perfectly framed in the doorway. That's when I shoot him. It's very important to shoot him just at that point before he steps out onto the balcony, because that way the force of the bullet pushes him back into the room. If I were to shoot him while he was standing on the balcony, he might fall over the railing or drop his cigar onto the street below. That might attract attention and prevent me from getting away unobserved.
I didn't like that game very much at first. But as I got better at it, Christopher rewarded me. The rewards were very nice. The Major told me that he was very pleased with my progress, and that made me feel very good. It's important to me that the Major be pleased with my progress.
Not all the testing takes place at the Institute. Sometimes, Christopher and the Major take me on fieldtrips. The first time the three of us went out, it was late at night and we played the man on the balcony game. The two of them had me put on this dark close-fitting suit. It was like a black leotard for the entire body, even my head. I climbed the stairs to the roof. The building appeared to be deserted, but I made no noise. No one would have known I was there. The gun was already waiting by the parapet. I watched the man in the flat opposite the building and waited my chance to shoot him. He was sitting in a chair and reading what appeared to be a report. For what seemed like an hour, he sat there and turned the pages. Once he got up and disappeared from view. He came back a few minutes later holding a glass of something. He stretched and then checked his watch.
I knew my moment was approaching when he took a cigar out of the humidor. It was the same scene I had witnessed hundreds of times over. He went through the ritual of preparing the cigar and then picked up the box of matches he used. I lifted the rifle to my shoulder and found him in the crosshairs of the scope. When he slid open the door to the balcony, I shot him in the forehead. He fell back into the room, just as he was supposed to. I put the gun down and then walked down the stairs to the car where the Major and Christopher were waiting for me.
It was quite late when we got back to the Institute and I went straight to bed. The next day the Major told me that I had scored 100 percent on the game. He had me talk about the experience to a group of his colleagues. I told them what I could remember. They seemed happy with what I said. One of them even remarked that I looked so young and innocent that no one would suspect me. After that, Christopher sent me to the testing laboratory to play games. When he and the Major came back later, they were quite pleased. I got an extra reward that night. It was also the last time I had to play that game. So I guess I passed the test.
The games got more complex after that. There was a lot more training involved. I had to play the programme for weeks before I got everything right. Then as a reward, I was sent on a vacation to an island in the Caribbean. Christopher and the Major didn't come along with me on that trip. They arranged for a young woman to accompany me and take care of things. It was funny because the people on the plane and at the hotel thought we were newlyweds. She told me not to worry and just play along. Let them think what they wanted. The hotel was a lot like the game I had been playing for weeks. We had the honeymoon suite. There was a balcony overlooking the patio and pool. In the game there was someone in the suite beneath ours that I had to kill. I waited until late that night and then when it was quite dark, I climbed down a rope to the balcony beneath ours. I had to be careful to wait until the guard patrolling the grounds of the hotel had moved out of sight. I didn't have to shoot anyone that time--just substitute a bottle of water I had brought with me for the one next to the bed and then take the other one away. It was quite easy. I was dressed all in black again, and a shadow would have made more noise than I did. The man in the bed didn't even know I had been there.
The next day we took a boat trip around the island. We were gone all day. Unfortunately when we got back, we found out that some important man had died. The people on the island were quite upset, and there were all sorts of rumours about how the man had died. I didn't understand much of it since I didn't speak the language, but there was an uproar. The British consul on the island advised all of us to leave because there was a danger of unrest. All foreigners were being sent away. So we went to another island. And it was very nice because Christopher and the Major met us at the airport. The young woman left us at that point, and I got to spend the rest of my vacation with Christopher, which was very nice indeed. We had a lot of fun together, swimming and boating. Plus the nights were incredible. Christopher is the perfect lover.
I know the Major and his colleagues were very pleased with my progress. Now they have me playing a new game, and I'm learning Russian. At least I think it's Russian, some Slavic language anyway. In the game, the other people aren't supposed to know that I understand this language. So I never speak it. I just spy on them and listen to what they are saying. The game takes place in this complicated city, and it's very dangerous. It's dark and cold and there are a lot of people around that I have to deceive. I have to pretend to be a tourist, just an ordinary tourist. It's really important that I be the tourist I'm pretending to be, so that no one suspects that I'm not a tourist. So I have to be convinced that I really am a tourist in case anyone interrogates me or gives me truth serum or a lie detector test. I don't quite understand this game. I mean, I am a tourist. I don't have to pretend to be one. But I'm still at the beginning stages, and I haven't found out how the game ends yet. Maybe it will all make sense eventually. The Major says he is satisfied with how my training is coming along.
Today the Major asked me to write down everything I remember. Sometimes I don't remember things very well. The Major wants to write as much as I can remember before I forget. And Christopher is waiting for me to finish so that he can reward me. So this is all for now.