Still Not a Moron

Flashback - a fic

“John Wheatley, you have been picked for the Aperture Science Personality Construct Project.” A lab boy told him.

“Uhm… Wh-What exactly does that mean?” The Englishman bit his lip. The scientist from before smirked evilly. This made John’s heart race and his stomach flip with fear. He explained to John what was going to happen. John got up and tried to run, but was tackled by two security guards.

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John was dragged into a sterile white room, in the center was a table equipped with restraints for the arms, legs, waist, head, and chest. Along where the back would lay were what looked to be many plugs, except instead of prongs were sharp barbs. Wires littered the room, presumably to hook into someone to steal their consciousness to power the small metal ball on an adjacent table.

He struggled and bit and scratched viciously at his captors as the guards and several of the larger scientists fought to put the restraints around him. “I don’t want this! Listen to me! I don’t want this!” As they tightened the large main restraints at the waist and chest, he cried out from the pain of uncountable barbs stabbing into my spine. After that, it was no problem to strap down his limbs and the one strap over his forehead; his nerves were no longer under his control, except for his optic nerves. His eyes darted back and forth across his range of vision.

The scientists circled him, hooking all sorts of cords into his flesh, his body flinching automatically at the pain of it. His eyes flicked to his right. All manner of monitors and keyboards and disk drives littered the wall, and had at least ten scientist monitoring various readings they were getting from both John and the ball. The three other scientists, observers, took notes on their clipboards.

“Are we ready?” asked the stern scientist that fetched John from his cubicle. The lanky man knew somewhere there was a room full of Aperture employees watching eagerly, waiting for the results of this new test, hoping desperately for success. Murmurs of assent came from the employees at the monitors. John felt my stomach plummet, as though facing a huge drop. “Start the procedure.” For the briefest moment, nothing happened

Then he was hit with the most pain he’d ever felt in his life. His back tried to arch off the table he was strapped to, but the restraints held firm. A horrible scream was wrenched from his throat after several moments of his body constricting against the electricity.

John slowly started to lose his fight, his frantic movements slowing and his screaming fading to a moan and then slow, shallow breathing. Then even that stopped as darkness ate at the edges of his vision. Then everything went black.