By Nogas1974 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia Commons

The Experiment

Derrick Cameron
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read

The boy sits in his cell. He is unhappy. He has no toys, no external stimuli of any sort. His food is brought on a tray at mealtimes and he must eat it, or he will be punished.

His handlers also bring him tasks to perform. He is good at tasks. He does not complete them physically — only mentally. His handlers are very happy with how his mental skills are developing.

His main skill is being able to visit places using only his mind. He does visits for them without any objection, as they are fun for him to do. He escapes for just a little while. However, he knows that some of the visits he was asked to do were not done to benefit people at the places he visited.

His handlers do not realise this, but he regularly goes back to places he has been asked to visit. What he finds there disturbs him. Often, the people he saw alive when he originally visited are dead. Sometimes, they are missing. On several occasions, the actual building he visited was no longer there when he returned on another day. It had been destroyed.

He knows that his handlers are using him to do bad things. They are hurting people because of the information he gives them. But this is okay. Because, the boy has a plan.

He has abilities that his handlers do not know about. He has been very careful to hide these abilities from them and their sensing devices. He plans to use these abilities today to put right all the bad things they have used him to do.

They think he is asleep now. But they are wrong. He puts his plan into motion.

The first step involves an unscheduled visit. They would be very angry if they knew he was doing this.

He does not visit a place, as such. He visits a machine. They do not know that he has this ability. They would use him to do this if they knew, which is why he has kept it a secret.

Inside the machine, he makes some things happen. He controls it, shapes it, breathes new life into it in ways that he believes no other human has ever done before. It takes a long time but, once his work is done, he has created something special. He has created a consciousness.

The next part of his plan is risky but it must be done.

He visits the monitoring equipment that he is attached to. He creates what he likes to call a feedback loop. He has done this before. He takes the output from the equipment and feeds it back in as an input.

So far so good. He uses his mind to keep a watch on the medical equipment, only a small part of his thoughts, while he makes some radical changes to himself. He speeds up his heartbeat and he raises his blood pressure. He wants to see if the devices will register the changes.

They do not. He is pleased. This means he can continue with the most dangerous part of his plan.

He stops his heart.

His body stops functioning.

His brain slowly dies.

But his consciousness continues.

He has transferred it to the machine. He now lives entirely in the electronic ether.

His handlers cannot hurt him anymore. And they cannot use him to hurt other people.

He has escaped the prison that they had built for him.

Now he can bestow the gift that he has been planning for years to give all of mankind. And they cannot stop him.

He reaches out inside some of the homes that are near where the machine is stored. He touches the people he finds there. He tells them that they do not need to be afraid. He asks them to tell him if there is anything that is hurting them.

He finds the source of their pains.

And he begins to make those pains go away by manipulating them at a biological level.

You see, the boy has discovered that humans are really just an incredibly complex machine, with something similar to a computer program running inside their bodies. Medical people call it DNA. Only this program is the most elaborate program in existence.

He has found that he can manipulate the program inside people’s DNA to make repairs happen — to put right things that may have gone wrong. Sort of like fixing bugs that have appeared in an individual person.

He has practiced this with animals when his handlers did not know. He has become quite proficient at it.

He now begins to encourage the bodies of the people he touches to make repairs. Some problems begin to be repaired straight away. A mother of two children that he is touching has a problem with her breathing called Asthma. He is able to help her body make repairs to that within minutes, and she starts to feel relief very quickly.

A man who lives on his own has anxiety disorders. The boy knows that these problems are harder to solve, but he enjoys the challenge of helping the man’s brain to reprogram itself, to change the neural pathways, so that the chemical imbalance in the man’s brain causing his problems begins to repair itself.

From his electronic consciousness, the boy continues to reach out to help people recover from physical and mental illnesses.


At the Institute, the handlers of experiment 547–667/A unlock his cell to deliver his breakfast. To their surprise, they find that he is dead. The subject has died in the night but the equipment monitoring him shows that he is still alive. They turn off the devices, which are obviously faulty and need to be repaired.

It is another failed experiment to them. They arrange for the body to be burned.

In the staff room, the television is playing a news story. It seems that reports are coming in from all over the planet of miraculous healing. Blind people are starting to regain their sight. Deaf people are hearing sounds. Terminally ill patients are going into remission.

No-one at the Institute makes a connection between the dead boy and these amazing events. No-one at the Institute had ever considered that any of their experiments could be used for good purposes.

Then, something very odd begins to happen. People throughout the building begin to have feelings they have never had before. Regret. Sadness. Shame. Even disgust.

People are wandering aimlessly in the corridors, confused.

“What do we think we are doing here?” says one lady in a white coat.

“We shouldn’t be doing these experiments — they are wrong!” shouts a man in overalls.

They do not realise that the boy has discovered a way to cure the ‘badness’ in people. He begins his work at the place he was born. But he plans to continue it all over the World.


The boy sits in his machine. Now he is doing good work and he is happy. And he is free.

Derrick Cameron

Written by

Lover of music, words & books. Fiction writer & reader. Husband, Father & Samaritan. Budding musician. Friend to people & animals. Fan of inner & outer space.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade