(mine)
There once was a time, I was sure, when things were different. However, no records of it were kept. Our classes did not discuss the primitives from whom we were descended. It was often rumored that they had fought themselves to near extinction, inflicting terrible pain on each other. These rumors never lasted long. Even as my mind wandered in that direction, I felt the familiar gagging rise up the back of my throat, choking my consciousness, diverting my thoughts to more pressing physical needs. I struggled to remember, to hold onto this realization, as I stopped breathing and the blackness washed over me.
I woke up in my own bed. As with every time the System enforces, I knew I had done something wrong. As I lay there, trying to decipher what that might be, I felt the tingling of my constricting windpipe. Another region where my thoughts must not go. I sighed and dressed for work, knowing that my job as a System technician will be sufficiently distracting to prevent another enforcement. I felt the lump in my throat where, when I was five, correction officers had me "locked". It was linked to a small chip imbedded in the back of my head. When the System detected that my thoughts were impure, the lock would close up. It was a common occurrence; people falling to the ground, clutching at their throats. None of us gave it any regard; it was a minor annoyance, having to walk around these gasping forms.
That night, I began to wonder again. Night time was a good time for this sort of reflection as the System was overburdened, sorting through all the semi-conscious thinking that precedes sleep. I have often managed a few distinct thoughts before the enforcement. Tonight was a good night.
The history of the System was well documented. We all had to learn it in school. The Founder, Dr. Joseph Karl, had taken surviving primitives under his charge and developed the System to ensure that no one would think of horrors again. Again. That was a funny word. I suddenly realized, that thoughts like that must have been possible once. Before the system, there had been a time when people could think what they wanted. They could have feelings of jealousy, lust and anger, and with those feelings, love, passion and desire. Most importantly curiosity, a vague word that I had only heard described as the ultimate crime, was actually celebrated. People did not have to repress their own mental wandering just to breathe. It was almost a fantasy, an incomprehensible world onto which I could only glimpse at.
With a start, I realized that I had been lost in this thought for over five minutes. And yet, the lock around my throat was still open; I was still breathing. Almost timidly, I pondered this unusual failure, prepared at any second to feel it shut off. Was it some technical error? Did one of my coworkers fail to replace a vital chip? Had I found some way to shield my thoughts from the receptors?
It was another five minutes before they burst in my door: three men in labcoats who stood by my bed, holding a twisted machine they attached wordlessly to my head. I didn't scream; I was too curious for that. I merely looked on in silence, processing this new occurrence. The men said nothing as they turned it on.
They were too kind to kill me. It was much worse. Instead, I felt, no saw, my thoughts disappear as my mind was wiped. And yet, I was incapable of sorrow as they scattered, unrecoverable.