The First Volunteer
2020 Words
The email arrived on a Tuesday morning.
Marcus was drinking coffee on the porch. The roses were full now, heavy with blooms. Claire was inside, making breakfast. The world was quiet.
Then his phone pinged.
“My name is Sarah. I want to be erased. I’ve already paid. Don’t try to stop me.”
Marcus read it three times. Then he called Kay.
“I got a strange email.”
“Everyone gets strange emails.”
“This one says someone wants to be erased voluntarily.”
Kay was silent for a moment. “Forward it to me.”
He did.
Ten minutes later, she called back. “It’s real. The payment cleared through a crypto wallet. The buyer used a dark web marketplace.”
“Who is Sarah?”
“I don’t know yet. The email was sent through a proxy. But I’m tracing it.”
“How long?”
“Hours. Maybe days.”
Marcus hung up. He stared at the garden.
Claire came out with a plate of eggs. “What’s wrong?”
He showed her the email.
She read it. Her face went pale.
“Someone wants to be erased?”
“Someone paid for it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
---
Kay called back at noon.
“I found her. Sarah Mitchell. Twenty-nine years old. Lives in Baltimore. Works as a software engineer. No criminal record. No family. No close friends.”
“Why would she want to erase herself?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
Marcus looked at Claire. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
“You stay here. Keep the garden alive.”
She almost smiled. “The garden will be fine. You won’t.”
“I’ll try.”
---
The drive to Baltimore took three hours.
Marcus met Kay at a coffee shop near Sarah’s apartment. Kay had a tablet with her, open to Sarah’s social media.
“She’s isolated,” Kay said. “No posts in six months. No likes. No comments. She’s been ghosting her own life.”
“Maybe she’s already been erased.”
“No. The procedure is scheduled for tomorrow. A clinic in Delaware. I have the address.”
“Then we get there first.”
---
Sarah Mitchell lived in a small apartment on the third floor.
Marcus knocked. No answer.
He knocked again. “Sarah. My name is Marcus Cole. I need to talk to you.”
A voice from inside. “Go away.”
“I know about the procedure. I know you paid for it. I know you think you want this.”
Silence.
“I’ve seen what erasure does to people. The ones who didn’t choose it. The ones who were taken. They spend years trying to remember who they were.”
“I know who I am,” Sarah said through the door. “That’s the problem.”
“Then open the door and talk to me.”
A long pause. Then the lock clicked.
---
Sarah was thin. Pale. Dark circles under her eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.
Marcus sat on her couch. Kay stood by the door.
“Why do you want to erase yourself?” Marcus asked.
“Because I’m tired. Of being me. Of remembering. Of the pain.”
“What pain?”
Sarah pulled up her sleeve. Scars. Old and new.
“Depression. Anxiety. PTSD. I’ve tried every medication. Every therapy. Every doctor. Nothing works.”
“Erasure isn’t a cure. It’s a deletion.”
“I know. That’s why I want it.”
Marcus leaned forward. “You won’t be a new person. You’ll be no one. A blank slate. You won’t remember the pain, but you won’t remember the joy either. You won’t remember anything.”
“That sounds like peace.”
“It sounds like death.”
Sarah shook her head. “It’s not death. It’s oblivion. And I’ve been trying to find oblivion for years.”
Marcus looked at Kay. Kay’s face was unreadable.
“Where did you find the clinic?” Marcus asked.
“The dark web. A forum for people like me. People who want to disappear.”
“Who runs the clinic?”
“I don’t know. They use a pseudonym. ‘The Clean Slate.’ ”
Marcus pulled out his phone. He sent a message to Ashworth.
“Know anything about a clinic called The Clean Slate?”
The reply came in seconds. “Rumors. Never confirmed. Based in Delaware. Run by a former Aegis technician. They offer voluntary erasure. High prices. High discretion.”
“Can you get me in?”
“As a client? Yes. As yourself? No. They’d recognize you.”
“Then I need a new face.”
---
Marcus called Elena Volkov.
She was in a secure facility outside Washington, working on the counter-measure.
“I need a favor.”
“I’m in prison.”
“You’re in protective custody. There’s a difference.”
Elena sighed. “What do you need?”
“I need to look like someone else. Just for a day. Enough to fool facial recognition.”
“That’s not my area. I’m a neurologist, not a plastic surgeon.”
“But you know people who are.”
A pause. “There’s a doctor in Philadelphia. He owes me. He can do temporary prosthetics. But it’s expensive.”
“Money isn’t a problem.”
“When do you need it?”
“Tomorrow.”
Elena gave him the name and address.
Marcus hung up.
Kay looked at him. “You’re going undercover?”
“I’m going to stop a clinic that’s erasing people who don’t know what they’re losing.”
“And Sarah?”
Marcus looked at her. She was sitting on the couch, hugging her knees.
“We take her with us.”
---
The doctor in Philadelphia was a man named Viktor.
He worked out of a basement clinic. Medical license revoked years ago. But his work was good.
He fitted Marcus with a prosthetic mask. Thin silicone. Changed his bone structure, his skin tone, his age.
“You look like a different person,” Kay said.
“I feel like a different person.”
Viktor handed him a mirror. Marcus didn’t recognize himself.
“The mask lasts twenty-four hours,” Viktor said. “After that, it starts to degrade. You don’t want to be wearing it when that happens.”
Marcus nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just don’t tell anyone where you got it.”
---
The clinic was in a converted warehouse outside Wilmington.
Marcus arrived at 9:00 AM. He was using the name “John Harris.” Kay had created a fake identity, complete with a crypto payment and a medical history.
Sarah was with him. She had agreed to come, but she wasn’t happy.
“I still want the procedure,” she said.
“Wait until you see what it really looks like. Then decide.”
The clinic’s entrance was nondescript. A steel door. A buzzer.
Marcus pressed.
A voice: “Name?”
“John Harris. I have an appointment.”
The door clicked open.
---
Inside, the clinic was clean. White walls. Fluorescent lights. A receptionist behind a glass window.
“Fill out these forms.”
Marcus sat in a plastic chair. Sarah sat beside him.
The forms asked for medical history. Mental health history. A waiver releasing the clinic from all liability.
Marcus wrote false answers.
A door opened. A man in a white coat stepped out.
“Mr. Harris?”
Marcus stood. “Yes.”
“Follow me.”
---
The procedure room was small.
A chair. A helmet with wires. A computer.
The man in the white coat introduced himself as Dr. Miller.
“The procedure is simple. We target the areas of the brain associated with memory. A few hours of stimulation, and your memories begin to fade. Within a week, you won’t remember anything before today.”
“No side effects?”
“Some patients report headaches. Dizziness. Temporary confusion. But nothing permanent.”
Marcus looked at the helmet. “Can I see the source code?”
Dr. Miller’s smile faded. “That’s proprietary.”
“I’m a software engineer. I want to know what’s going into my head.”
“I’m sorry. That’s not possible.”
Marcus pulled off the prosthetic mask.
Dr. Miller’s face went white.
“You’re Marcus Cole.”
“And you’re using stolen Aegis technology to erase people who don’t know what they’re losing.”
“They’re volunteers. They signed forms.”
“They’re desperate. There’s a difference.”
Sarah stepped into the room. She looked at the chair. The helmet. The wires.
“Is this what it looks like?”
Dr. Miller nodded. “It’s painless. Humane.”
“It looks like a torture device.”
Marcus turned to her. “This is what erasure looks like. A chair. A machine. A stranger pressing buttons. You don’t wake up as someone new. You wake up as no one.”
Sarah stared at the helmet.
Then she started to cry.
---
FBI agents arrived twenty minutes later.
Agent Reyes led the raid. Dr. Miller was arrested. The equipment was seized. The records were copied.
Sarah sat in the waiting room, holding a cup of coffee.
Marcus sat beside her.
“I was going to let them erase me,” she said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t think about what it would be like. The machine. The wires. The stranger.”
“Desperate people don’t think. They just want the pain to stop.”
Sarah looked at him. “What do I do now?”
“You get help. Real help. Therapy. Medication. People who care.”
“I don’t have people who care.”
“You do now.”
Marcus gave her Kay’s number. “Call her. She’ll find you a doctor. A good one.”
Sarah took the number. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just stay alive.”
---
Marcus walked out of the clinic.
Kay was waiting by the car. “The records show forty-three clients. People who paid to be erased. Some are still waiting. Some have already had the procedure.”
“Where are the ones who were erased?”
“The clinic placed them in group homes. Assisted living facilities. They don’t remember their names. Their families. Their lives.”
“We need to find them. Cure them.”
“That’s thousands of people, Marcus. We can’t save them all.”
“Then we save as many as we can.”
---
The drive back to the farmhouse was quiet.
Marcus thought about Sarah. About the others. About the people who wanted to disappear because the world had been too cruel.
Claire was waiting on the porch.
“You found her?”
“We found her. She’s safe.”
“And the clinic?”
“Shut down. The doctor arrested.”
Claire took his hand. “But there are others.”
“There are always others.”
They walked into the house.
The garden was blooming.
But the world outside was still dark.
---
That night, Marcus received a message from Ashworth.
“The Clean Slate was one of a dozen clinics. The technology is spreading faster than we can contain it. You need to decide: are you going to chase every clinic, or are you going to cut off the head?”
Marcus typed back: “What’s the head?”
“The source. The person who leaked the code in the first place. It wasn’t Elena Volkov. It was someone else. Someone inside the government. Someone who wanted the technology to spread.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’m close. Give me a week.”
Marcus put the phone down.
Claire was asleep beside him.
He stared at the ceiling.
Someone inside the government had leaked the code. Someone who wanted memory erasure to become a commodity.
The war had just gotten bigger.
- Writer
