Rules of Conflict by Kristine Smith Page A

flashed in his eyes like
the patterns. Faces. Gold. White. The gold ones spoke. He couldn’t understand
the words. “The ones who put it there.”
    Pimentel continued to write, the scratch of his stylus filling the
small room. “Were you implanted against your will?”
    “Yes.”
    “You felt paralyzed? Not in control?”
    “Ye—” Sam could feel it again. The clench of anger that told him
he was being maneuvered “Have I told you this before?”
    Pimentel shook his head. “No, this is new. For the past few
months, you’ve been insisting you’re a xenogeologist. You showed me papers
you’d written, books you’d had published.” He pocketed his stylus and rocked
back in his seat. “You had taken those papers and books from the SIB Archives,
Sam. They weren’t yours.”
    “No, I—”
    “Sam, the e-scan didn’t reveal a Service augmentation. It only
confirmed what we’ve known for months. You have a tumor, in your thalamus,
that’s affecting your memory. It causes you to forget events that really
happened, and to substitute fabrications to fill in the gaps.”
    “A tumor?” Sam poked the back of his head, then let his hand fall
back into his lap. Silly. It wasn’t as though he could feel the thing if he
probed long enough.
    Pimentel nodded. “It hasn’t increased in size over time, but we
need to remove it.”
    “I’ll die.”
    “If we take the tumor out , why would you die?”
    “They—they told me I’d die, if anyone took it out.”
    “No, you won’t, Sam.”
    “Yes, I will!” I know. “This . . . tumor—it’s
not hurting me, it’s not affecting my life, my work.”
    “Sam, it is starting to interfere with your ability to do
your job.” Pimentel stood and walked to his desk. “You’ve built a reputation
over the years as a first-class archivist. But now you’re losing papers,
forgetting where you filed them, making up stories that they were stolen.” He
leaned against the desk as though he needed the support. “You need treatment.”
    Sam stared down at the floor. Dull grey lyno, flecked with white.
He recalled seeing a stone that resembled it. Holding it in his hand. The where
escaped him, however. The when.
    “Sam, you don’t state the names of any family or friends in the
Emergency Notification block in your chart.”
    “There is no one.”
    “No one you can talk to? No one you feel you can trust?”
    “No.”
    Pimentel returned to his seat. “Do you know what a ward of the
Commonwealth is?”
    The clench returned, stronger this time. “It means I’m supposed to
trust a member of the government to take care of me.”
    “No, to help you take care of yourself. And it isn’t just
one person. It’s a committee. In your case, it would consist of an impartial
civilian official, a Service adjudicator, and a medical representative.”
Pimentel smiled. “Most likely me, as your attending physician.”
    “No.” Sam slid off the examining table. His feet struck the lyno
that reminded him of stone. “I’ve trusted members of the government to take
care of me before. That proved a mistake.”
    “When, Sam?”
    “I don’t remember.” Don’t ask me what I remember. Ask me what I
know.

    He waited until after midnight to return to the SIB.
Odergaard had left a note requesting Sam stop by to see him before start of
shift later that day. That didn’t bode well. If previous events repeated, that
meant another document had turned up missing.
    Sam sat at his desk, head in hands. Pimentel had made him promise
to consider the wardship, and he had said he would. Anything to get out of that
place.
    No one cuts into my head. Ever. He left the cubicle maze of
the doc tech bullpen and walked down the hall to the vend alcove. He bought a
cup of tea, striking the beverage dispenser with a timed series of thumps the
techs had discovered made it disgorge an extra mouthful into the cup. Since he
was the alcove’s only visitor, he had his pick of tables. He chose one in the
corner,