Sar Sobrun knew that he needed to go back to spying on the children, but he needed help. It was time to reveal that he had created a huge problem, before the humans started believing the children.
Sar went straight to the leader of the elves, Alerakshar. The guards would not believe Sar until he used his magic to summon an orb of light with video-like footage of the day before, at the house of Avicenna and her daughters, Joplin and Akita.
“Believe me now?” Sar taunted the guards after they had watched the video of Sar’s memory of the day before.
“Come with us,” said the skinnier of the two.
“We believe you, but please don’t let anyone know. If anyone who’s not from the government finds out, we’ll be in big trouble,” whispered the fatter one.
After going through more metal detectors and sensors than he could count, Sar arrived in a small room with a huge computer.
“What does that do?” said Sar.
“Let’s just say, nobody’s secrets are safe in their head anymore,” said the fat guard, who had revealed his name to be Savakt.
“But we’ll grant you privacy, only the government officials that need to know and you will know what’s in your head,” said Skyda, the skinny guard.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sar halted in place, “You’re going to look in my head and see all my secrets?”
“Yes, if you want to put it that way, but your secrets are safe. Not even we get to know what’s inside,” Skyda knocked on Sar’s head, “in your noggin.”
“We only do this so if you forget something, it won’t be left out. We’re trying to save the country, not get you arrested for lying.”
“Ok, what do I need to do?” Sar was strangely comforted by the guards. They seemed to be a lot nicer than he had imagined guards were.
“Just sit down in that chair. The computer will do the rest. It’s painless, don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing,” Savakt pointed at a chair which looked like it was from a sci-fi movie. It was sleek and metallic, and when Sar sat down, it automatically scanned his body and determined blood type, age, hair color, eye color, and even the amount of magic he had used during each hour in the last week.
Sar settled into the chair as a screen lowered itself down in front of his face and started to display the contents of his mind. The guards had vacated the room, leaving him to sit by himself, letting the computer scan his mind and show it to him. Messages started to scroll across the bottom of the screen:
The mind machine has enough hard drive space, processor power, and ram to download the entire human internet, spell check it, and store it in under an hour. However, we try to keep our mind machine doing what it was made for. Your mind has been 10% scanned. The mind machine keeps your thoughts so secure that if every human computer in the world tried to decode our cyphers for a whole year, constantly brute-forcing it, they would have a chance of stealing your data equivalent to that of every single fish in the ocean dying all at once of old age. Your mind has been 22.4% scanned. The mind of an elf has a storage capacity equal to about five thousand times that of a human. Your mind has been 31.9% scanned. The mind machine has completed the scan of your conscious memories and will now scan your subconscious memories. These messages will now stop appearing, and we will allow you to view lost memories.
Sar was impressed. He would have thought the messages scrolling across the screen were lies, had he not seen his memories appearing like web pages on a human computer. One last message appeared exactly 42 minutes and 36.4 seconds after the scanner had switched to lost memories:
Alerakshar will speak to you now. He has sent some guards to escort you to him.
Sar used his mind to accept the invitation, and the screen slid away into the ceiling. Savakt and Skyda returned to the room and walked with Sar through an endless maze of corridors and security checkpoints. Finally, they arrived in Alerakshar’s throne room.
