• “553721.” When the nurse in the plain white uniform calls my number, I’m positive that, my life is over. Well, my life won’t be over completely. But for the next few years; death will be a very good simile for my way of life.
    Getting up out of the chair I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants and try to swallow down my fear with one big gulp. My feet probably won’t make it into the room. But if I pass out, I may be spared a few more minutes of light, happiness, and just pure living. I, however, reject the idea on behalf of my bravery and strength.
    If I’m going down like this, I’ll do it with pride.
    As I walk the stares are numerous. I wasn’t the only one in the waiting room today. Sitting in perfectly aligned plastic chairs sit three others, all exactly the same age as me. The girl is trembling, her body quaking as if it were cold. The boy next to her rests his hand on hers for comfort, they’ll both need it desperately. On the far side of the room sits another boy, who looks much older than sixteen. With huge arms crossed firmly over his chest he gives me a nod and blinks three times. I return the gesture. We teenagers have developed our own silent language for this event. Three blinks means “until awakening, my friend.”
    Walking for the door, a man comes out escorted by a nurse. His skin is white as milk, his brown eyes are sunken in and dressed with dark circles. His bones protrude outward so far that you’re afraid his skin will tear off and there is a large bloody patch over his forehead. It’s as if his legs no longer remember how to work as the nurse helps him stumble across the floor. His five years have ended, but mine are just beginning.
    Staring at me blankly, his eyes completely dead and, he too, blinks three times. I only blink twice, giving him a traditional welcome back. It’s reassuring, to see someone come out almost completely normal, he will be able to do everything again. But for now he can barely walk and needs time to heal. It reminds me that once I wake up, everything will return to normality.
    The nurse pulls me into the door and keeps her focus straight forward, pretending that she can see through everything in front of her. I’m horrified at the fact that she acts as if she doesn’t care. There are hundreds of people in here, lying flat and motionless, giving their five years of contribution.
    Halfway across the room I see my best friend, stiff as a board, being treated like a science experiment. His blonde locks are thick over his eyes, the way they were yesterday when he left. Right before he left… he asked me that as soon as this was all over if I would marry him. I agreed. I hope that the chance will still be ours in five years.
    I choke back the tears at the sight of him. I try to imagine that he’s sleeping. It would be an easy thought. But the wire running into his skull, stealing what is rightfully his, is making that difficult.
    “553721,” my attention pulls away from the pack of human lab rats with wires running through their heads and tubes spiraling up their arms. “Are you ready to begin?”
    I shake my head yes, doing my best to shake off the nerves that are stuck to me like glue. I lie. I’m not ready. I never will be. But I have no choice. Rejection means death. I am far more afraid of death. I wish I wasn’t.
    People have tried running from their fate, but it is always pointless. The tracking chips implanted in our shoulder blades always know our location. And removing the chips, is far too dangerous. Escape is impossible. Unless death counts as escape.
    The nurse motions me to lie down on a cot and get comfortable. Lying down the mattress is thicker than expected, I seem to drown in it. With an overly happy smile she pulls a wool blanket up to my chest. I lay my arms on top and tucks me in like a child. I do feel comfortable, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll be in a strange coma for the next five years, I won’t feel it.
    All preparations have been made for this day. This is the first time that I’m not hungry, and that I’ve been given enough to eat. That I’ve taken a warm shower. My once long black hair has been cut short so that when I wake up its not incredibly long.
    Those are three positives I can think of. Because making sure there won’t be any electrical blackouts, may not be a positive at the moment.
    That’s what I’m doing. I’m powering a city. Everyone in this room is powering a city. But we are powering it with our minds, the electrical impulses given off by our brains. It’s the only way to get electrical power now. We lack natural resources, including sunlight due to an over-production of garbage floating around the globe. We need to spare all of our water for bathing and drinking. Wind is even a miracle.
    That’s why the government passed the Human Power Law. It states that every eligible boy and girl, from the ages of sixteen to twenty-one, must be sent into a state of a coma and have their brain waves harvested for clean natural energy. And since the brain wave levels are so weak and low, it takes at least five people to turn on a light bulb. Powering a city takes hundreds, maybe thousands.
    There is a quick stab into my arm as I look up at the nurse, who gives a shrug and a half smile. “Morphine drip. I’ll hook you up to the hydration and nutrient drips when the procedure is over.” I swallow hard thinking of what will happen to me during the procedure. She then hooks a an oxygen tube up to my nose and my lungs immediately fill will with air. She can see than I’m trembling and immediately pats the back of my hand as calmly as possible.
    “Hello, 553721.” My eyes pan up to see a man with a friendly smile and a white lab coat. He’s jotting down notes on a clip board before setting it down on a cart that the nurse wheels up to him. “I’m 896247. I’ll be your engineer.” He is a doctor, I remind myself. This man knows what he is doing. His title just is not doctor or surgeon. It’s engineer. I have to trust him enough that I’ll be alive.
    He snaps on a pair of white latex gloves, wriggling his fingers through. “Are you ready?” This time I shake my head no. I feel as if I may be sick. Chuckling he turns on the light over my head. “It will be just fine, sweetheart.” Leaning down he taps against my forehead a couple times. “Can you feel that?”
    “No,” I mutter weakly, trying to hold down my lunch. “Not at all.”
    “Perfect, let’s begin.” I try not to cry, I try not to scream. I try to be brave so that back at home the oven will work and my mother can cook dinner from our measly rations. So that there is a light for my father to read bedtime stories to my little sister. So that the nursing home caring for my grandmother will always be heated. So that the hospital will be able to care for my sick baby brother.
    I need to be brave for them.
    “Close your eyes sweetheart,” the engineer says trying to make his voice honey smooth, “it will all be over before you know it.”
    I lay my dark lashes against my skin. My breath is a mixture of fast and slow. I’m so scared that I’m hyperventilating, but I try to keep myself calm with slow easy breaths in between. The world is completely dark and my sense of feeling is gone. Everything is a soft tingle that comes and goes like the daytime bus.
    I want to open my eyes, but I wonder what I will see in my last waking minutes before I sleep for the next five years. I’d just like to see, so I coax my eyes open slightly. Just the one engineer is working, the nurse is at his left, handing over strange looking metal tools. He doesn’t seem to take notice of me looking at him. He pulls a white sticky thing off a device that mimics a suction cup and flicks the needle on the back of it once. “Ok, 553721, there will be a tingling sensation near your temples.”
    Within a few seconds I can feel it, light like the touch of a feather. But it’s also painful because I can’t tell what just happened to me. All I can guess is that what ever the needle was on the back of the suction cup, just went into my head. Again I feel it on the other side.
    I want to scratch at them, but I hold my hands steady knowing that they are useless against anything right now. He looks down at me, seeing that my eyes are fully open. “You’re a very brave girl, to have your eyes open.”
    “I’m too scared to be blinded,” I choke out. I don’t feel brave. I feel like a coward for wishing I had ran. Wishing that I had abandoned everyone.
    “You’ll feel some pressure against your forehead.” A drill goes off in a constant whizzing noise that makes me feel sick again. I can feel the pressure. Its not against my head, though. It’s in my head. The drill is pushing through my skull making that tiny path way for my consciousness to flow out of. How is it not killing me right now?
    The drill stops and there is an almost chill against the front of my mind. “This is it, sweetheart.” The engineer slides a long, thin wire out. The tiny metal clamp on one end is hooked to a huge generator, the other one will enter my head and steal me away. I still don’t close my eyes. I want to, but I can’t.
    I try thinking of the positives again. I try thinking of my baby brother, able to breathe because my brain is making his machine run. Thinking of my sister going to bed with sweet dreams. Warm food on my family’s plates. My grandmother staying safe and sound for the rest of her years. Schools teaching children. Doctors saving lives. Emergency teams. Mothers holding their newborns.
    I am powering their lives.
    I am a coward for not running. But what I would be running away from, is lots of good innocent people. I won’t abandon them. My brain waves will eventually get there. Even if they have to power horrible places like government buildings that make our unfair laws. Or the courthouses that send the innocent to prison. My brain waves will wind up somewhere good.
    All I hope is that whoever is living by my light, is very thankful. That they know that the light is coming from some innocent kid in a coma at the power center. That they can’t visit their family, can’t go to school, can’t be with their friends. And that they care.
    The engineer gives me big eyes, am I ready? I don’t respond.
    He moves in at me as time slows. I take in the last look of everything. Nothing will be the same anymore. I watch as the crying girl walks in looking at the boy who squeezed her hand for one last comfort. I look at my best friend, hoping that the years pass fast. And the older looking boy; he still refuses to show any emotion. But he does stare back at me. I wait for him to blink. But instead he raises his hand and holds it against his forehead in a salute. Weakly I raise my hand up one more time for the next five years. He’s a coward too. He didn’t run. Because he has something to stay for. That is what makes him brave.
    As I let the tears run from my eyes, despite the fact that I cannot feel them against my face, I allow the copper wire to come at me. It’s a venomous snake. But I’m not afraid of it.
    There are much worse things to fear.
    What feels like a volt of electricity jolts through my body. My arms feel disconnected, like the way phone numbers are. I can’t reach them. My legs are gone too. I try to focus on by heart of which keeps beating steadily like a drum. I try to recall everything. But I’m forgetting. My eyes are burning out, like lighting a piece of paper on fire.
    The lights in my eyes go out and everything is gone. The power center, the girl, the two boys, my best friend. It’s gone. But I am not.
    Instead I am the breathing machine for the little baby crying for his mother in the hospital crib. I am his last hope.
    And for now, I’m his life.