Cerania 14 awoke to an imperious buzz in her ear from her headset. She rose from the couch in the security dormitory and extended her antennae from her head, rubbing her right cheek where she had a pain from sleeping on her headset. It had been irrevocably attached to her head, as the antennae had, when her implant had been installed on joining the spaceport security staff, but she still wished that the scientists would produce a throat microphone rather than work on this device that Pleris 6 wanted.
A curious device that was! It was a hut of some kind which had tubes at one end. For what purpose, she had no idea, and if she had it would have been censored and 'removed' from her memory.
A security staff had no privacy.
'The scientists have their priorities, Cerania 14,' said a voice through her earpiece, 'and your thoughts are monitored for a reason. You agreed to that when you joined us, so stop moaning.' Then the voice changed from scold to patron. 'It is your turn to guard the 'hut' this morning.'
'Thank you, Arelia 12,' Cerania mumbled into her microphone, twisting the microphone arm back into position after its night-treatment, 'and good morning to you, too!'
'Why, thank you, Cerania!' Arelia replied, voice now bright and friendly. 'Good morning! And I thought you 14's had no feelings.'
'You live and learn,' Cerania thought.
'Certainly,' Arelia affirmed, indicating that she was still monitoring Cerania's thoughts.
Cerania washed herself, then put on her uniform, her boots and her gun-belt, checked her gun, loaded it and stowed it in its holster on her hip. Then, to her surprise, a thought crossed her mind.
The purpose of the security brain implant was simple. Security staff were often party to important projects and plans in the seventh chamber complex and the spaceport, things that could be leaked to various people who were looking for damaging evidence that would remove the whole complex from the credibility of the Federations' Science Department, thus closing down many projects. Projects such as shape changing devices, successful in experiments in the first and second chambers, mind-suggestion gases which were tested extensively in the second and fourth chambers and so on. The way in which these 'tests' were conducted, however, caused concern among many powerful humanitarians and conservationists, hence the implant on all class 3 security staff, better known as 14's. It limited the memory of a 14 to basic identity, immediate command and movement, and also sent a constant relay of all generated thoughts back to Security Control where it was monitored for censurable data. Thoughts deemed to be 'classified secret' were 'removed' from a 14's memory, the process being painless and often unnoticeable. Class 2's or 12's were not subject to this, since they were used to the monitoring of the 14's, but 12's only left the Security Control building either dead or as 14's; not very good ones, since they were deformed at induction using the security departments' shape changer (an early non-reversing type, which moulded the legs into a stump which fitted neatly into a position on the control panel, where all their needs were attended to, within limits, and from which they seldom stirred). Class 1's or 10's were the control workers, usually in the political liason office or project monitoring section, and were not subject to any control other than by their superiors' orders, but tens were rare and tended to be demoted eights (scientific assistants) or promoted twelves.
Another side effect of the 14's implant was to remove all initiative and personal memory, even of family, which was why Cerania could not even remember her own name, until now.
'Cerania Calrida-daughter! I remember!' she thought. 'My father was Cal... what was I thinking of? I can't remember again. Arelia must have removed it.'
'Your past is forbidden to you,' Arelia 12 said via the headset. 'Attend to your duties.'
'Why is it?' Cerania asked.
'Cerania, did you just ask me an unbidden question?' Arelia said coldly.
'I did.'
'Then I suggest that you go to the Security Health station in room 149s and have your implant checked. I thought that something may have been wrong.'
'But not before?'
'No,' Arelia replied absently, 'I was only moulded onto your console three days ago. I never noticed...' Her voice changed to one of amazement. 'Your memory! It just came up on your console! What are you thinking?'
'Can't you read?' Cerania replied. 'I just remembered what I use that wooden thing above my bed for. It's a lute. I remember now; I was a musician. A student, Cerania Nineteen. I remember the questors coming, Laneta 2, Perria 3, Forrel 3, Sepria who did not wish to be known be a number, Deniur 4, the mutants Alita and Sessa. I remember the music. Then the coming of Piper Minissa. I remember seeing the controller, Marini 1, and talking to her! Then we played tunes together, late into the night. Oh no! I remember Pleris 6 killing Marini! I remember sadness! That is why.... I was forced....'
'Attention, Cerania 14,' sounded a voice from her earpiece. 'Your orders are to eject the intruder in sector 14, experimental room.'
The voice was not Arelia's, but Cerania could not go against the order since the implant still controlled part of her mind, even if the memory was released. She went quickly, remembering more and more as she went, finally reaching Pleris' experimental 'hut' and entering.
Arelia bounded down the stairs as fast as her hands and deformed stump could take her, then up into a vacant aircar, and out to sector 14, where Pleris had sent Cerania 14. Knowing that she was unable to fight Pleris by herself, she had set out to warn Cerania directly Pleris had removed her from her console position, pausing only to hear the command. The car screeched over the ground until the hut came into view, with a crumpled figure in the doorway.
Cerania had died instantly. One hole from the device that had killed her was centred neatly in her forehead. Blood, congealing in streams and pools on and around the body caked Arelia's hands as she turned it over.
'A neat job?' Pleris said from behind Arelia. 'The tubes house pinpoint high intensity cutting beams which only need a microsecond to work. She had no time to even draw a breath to scream. She was dangerous for me. That implant cannot be repaired, so when it turned faulty, it meant that her circumstances of joining the SC returned to her, making her dangerous and me unsafe. Only she knew about the way in which Marini died.'
'Except that now I know,' Arelia put in.
'Quite.'