The Theta Patient

The Theta Patient

A Theta Timeline
Short

Chris Dietzel

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidence.

THE THETA PATIENT, Copyright 2015 by Chris
Dietzel. All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Watch The
World End Publishing.

Cover Design: Levente Szabo

Cover Text: Matt Butterweck

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Also by Chris Dietzel

Dystopian

The Theta Timeline

The Theta Prophecy

A Quiet End of the World

The Man Who Watched The World End

A Different Alchemy

The Hauntings Of Playing God

The Last Teacher

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

About the
Author

“
You have nothing to fear, if you
have nothing to hide.”

Joseph Goebbels – During Nazi
Germany

“
No one should be against our mass
surveillance unless they have something to hide.”

Various leaders – During the rise of the
Tyranny

There was never enough time in the
day. Dr. Bradburn knew this better than anyone.

Being in charge of the largest
mental hospital in the state, there was simply too much work for
one person to do. Each morning, he had the daily staff meetings.
These were supposed to be routine. No longer than thirty minutes.
But after discussing issues from the previous night, patients who
were having problems, and any missing staff members—assumed to have
done something the Tyranny didn’t agree with and likely never to be
seen or heard from again—they lasted at least an hour or two every
day.

Just three days prior, his head
nurse hadn’t shown up for work. Calls to the man’s home went
unanswered. Most likely, he was in a secret prison or else dead in
a ditch, a single blast in the back of his head. Bradburn didn’t
agree with the harshness of the penalties brought down by the
Tyranny, but he went along with it for two reasons. The first was
that the Tyranny’s leaders were adamant that everything they did
was to keep the public safe. Each time they took someone away, it
turned out that individual had been some kind of a threat. The
second reason Bradburn accepted missing friends and coworkers was
because he knew that if you didn’t give the Tyranny a reason to
take issue with you, you could live your life in peace and quiet.
The people who were being tortured or were already dead, no matter
how nice they had seemed, were partially to blame for what happened
to them because if they hadn’t said or done something the Tyranny
didn’t like, they would have been left alone.

Of course, none of this was
discussed during the daily staff meetings that took so long because
neither he nor anyone on his staff wanted to make it sound like
they were complaining about another disappearance—that could be
construed as disagreeing with the Tyranny.

If the morning meetings and the
vanishing staff members were the only inconvenience each day, he
would have at least had a chance of getting his work done. But
there were also the rounds and all the peculiarities that came with
them. Many of his patients became unsettled when the Tyranny’s
AeroCams came hovering over the facility grounds. These were men
and women who needed to be sedated just to get through ordinary
days. When they saw little flying cameras inspecting what they were
doing, some patients began scratching at their arms or faces.
Others began to yell.

The Tyranny’s cameras saw
everything, but they understood nothing. Each time the tiny remote
controlled robots captured one of his patients panicking at the
sight of an AeroCam, Bradburn’s hospital was promptly visited by
men in suits who, even after having it explained to them that the
patient was mentally ill, demanded to question the individual
themselves before accepting Bradburn’s story.

As if the visits from the Tyranny
and the intrusion of their AeroCams wasn’t enough, Bradburn also
had to deal with the family members of each patient who wanted to
see their relative. Each person’s name had to be entered into two
databases. One for his facility’s records. Another maintained by
the Tyranny as part of their database to track everywhere people
went and everything they did.

Nothing was simple. Everything
took much more time than he remembered it taking when he first
became a doctor.

“
Dr. Bradburn,” his secretary
said, moving alongside him, matching his brisk pace down the
hallway.

The bottom of her shoes clacked
against the linoleum floor, each clack echoing amongst the
otherwise empty and sterile hallway.

He waved his hand toward her as if
deflecting her words. “No time right now, Cindy. Sorry.”

Then there was the paperwork.
Paperwork for every imaginable and unimaginable aspect of running a
psychiatric hospital. His running joke—a joke he only told to his
wife out of respect for the establishment he ran—was that the load
of papers he had to sign each day was as crazy as some of the
people in his care. Dietary reports. Physical fitness reports.
Sanitation reports. Complaints. Certification renewals. That didn’t
include all of the papers he had to submit to the Tyranny.
Employees who hadn’t shown up for work (even though they most
likely hadn’t shown up because they were already in one of the
Tyranny’s secret prisons). Logs of anything his patients had said
or done that could be construed as being anti-Tyranny.

It was never-ending. Most of the
paperwork was completed by his staff. All he had to do was initial
each page and provide his signature at the very end. It sounded
simple enough, but he had to sign hundreds of documents each week.
And, not wanting to sign something without reading at least part of
it first, he found the task burdensome and a drain on his
time.

“
Dr. Bradburn,” his secretary said
again, following him on his way back to his office.

“
Sorry, Cindy. I’m
busy.”

It didn’t help things that three
new patients had been brought in the previous night. His facility
usually had no more than three new patients each month. He didn’t
have the time or the staff necessary to get them in-processed in a
timely manner. He barely had enough time to sit with each man, read
through their charts, get a sense of how lucid each one was, and
begin thinking about how best to help them.

There was no use hoping he would be home in
time to eat dinner with his family. It was already a lost cause.
That was the thought that made him shake his head in frustration as
he rushed into his office to drop one stack of patient folders and
pick up another.

“
Dr. Bradburn?” a man’s voice
said.

The doctor only noticed the
individual in the black suit once he looked up from the documents
in his hand. The man was already sitting in a chair opposite of
where Dr. Bradburn usually sat. He offered a rehearsed smile but
didn’t bother to stand or extend his hand.

“
Who”—the doctor started, but was
immediately interrupted.

“
I’m from the Tyranny, doctor. We
need to have a talk.”

Moving toward his seat,
Bradburn looked back at his secretary. She was standing in the
doorway, her eyes squinting, an expression he recognized as
her
I-tried-to-tell-you
face. The man’s presence, the fact that he didn’t
bother giving his name, made Bradburn’s secretary all the more
uneasy. An effect that rubbed off on the doctor.

The man in the black suit turned,
saw the secretary still standing there, and said, “That’ll be all.
Please close the door.”

She backed away and did as she was
told.

With his office door closed and a
man from the Tyranny sitting across from him, the air in Bradburn’s
chest sank down to his gut. Suddenly, having enough time in the day
was the least of his worries.

“
Doctor?”

“
Yes?”

The Tyranny’s agent leaned forward
slightly, propping his elbows on the end of Bradburn’s desk, giving
the doctor a better view of his expensive watch and of the blaster
that was holstered to his hip.

The two men were almost complete opposites.
Whereas Bradburn’s hair was grey and thinning, the man from the
Tyranny had black hair that was slicked to the side. Bradburn
looked as though the only exercise he got came from walking from
one appointment to another. The agent looked as though a
significant portion of each day was spent in a gym. And while
Bradburn’s natural disposition was to smile and shrug his
shoulders, the agent’s unflinching eye and solid jaw made him look
as if he never found humor in anything.

“
Something very serious and
disturbing has come to the Tyranny’s attention,” the man
said.

Outside, an AeroCam hovered by
Bradburn’s window before moving to a different part of the facility
grounds. Bradburn hoped it was just one of the usual cameras that
were always recording what went on in and around the hospital. If
the Tyranny had sent more of the flying robots to accompany the man
in the dark suit, something very serious must have happened
indeed.

The agent looked at Bradburn’s
eyes, squinting slightly as he tried to get a sense of the man
whose office he was in.

All around the office were diplomas and awards
from various academic and professional organizations. Mixed in with
these were photographs of Dr. Bradburn with his wife and two
children. One, a photo of them all bundled in thick clothes,
smiling at a ski resort. Another, a picture of them in swimsuits,
perfectly clear blue water behind them.

“
Does that concern you, doctor?
That something extremely serious has happened? Maybe even a threat
to our national safety.”

Bradburn nodded his head but he
didn’t dare speak. After all, anything he said could be used
against him, even if he wasn’t guilty of anything.

The agent continued, “As you know,
there are Thinkers hiding in every corner. Men and women who second
guess our laws and our leaders and who would love nothing better
than to see a world without the Tyranny.” And then, giving a snide
chuckle, “If you can imagine something that
preposterous.”

When Bradburn took a deep breath,
forcing his lips to remain shut so he couldn’t ask any of the
questions that were racing through his head, the agent said, “I
know. It’s very disturbing. We must do everything we can to catch
these Thinkers as soon as possible.”

Bradburn let out the air in his
lungs. The Tyranny wasn’t there for him. None of his staff nor any
of the patients’ families had given the Tyranny an anonymous tip
against him just so he’d be taken away. It happened all the time,
but he was sure that as long as he kept his chin down and went
about his business, things would work out for the best.

Relieved, he was finally able to
say, “Of course, of course.”

“
I’m glad to see you’re on our
side,” the agent said, leaning back in his chair. “Then you’ll be
as disturbed as I was at the report I was sent today.”

Another AeroCam flew past
Bradburn’s window.

“
What news? What’s
happening?”

The agent stared directly at Dr.
Bradburn, not blinking. “One of your new patients is a Thinker. A
threat to our very way of life.”