Page 1
"No!"
I woke up screaming, my skin damp with sweat.
In the dream, it had happened all over again. Mum and Dad standing in the doorway of our house in Seattle. Bull, our dog, barking wildly. Men in black suits and dark glasses gripping my parents' arms while two more pulled me towards a van. The door slamming. A dark cloth over my head. Then nothing.
A peaceful Sunday had turned into the worst day of our lives, just like a scene from a movie. Except this was real.
I made myself breathe and look around.
The room was white. Not soft white, but a harsh, glaring white, as if every colour in the world had been scrubbed away. There was one window, a long dark mirror. I knew what it was: an observation window. They could see me, but I couldn't see them. I felt small and exposed, like a bug under a magnifying glass.
The door was made of polished steel, wide enough to wheel a hospital bed through. It had no handle on the inside. It could only be opened from the other side.
Think, Jake. Think.
What did they want? Whatever it was, I would give it to them, if it meant I could go home. But I was only twelve, and my heart was beating so fast it hurt.
Page 2
I lay back on the narrow bed. The white sheet was cold against my arms, and goosebumps prickled all over my skin. I closed my eyes and tried to work out how I had ended up here.
Was it the detention at school last week? The way I had shouted at Mum over a video game? My friends teasing me about my secret crush on Jenny?
Then I gasped.
My posts.
It had all started a year ago, on our family holiday up north. There was an old stone well in the town, the kind people made wishes into. I had been sitting too close to the edge, and I slipped and fell in. The rescue was quick, but after that day, something in me changed.
I began to have dreams that came true.
I dreamt of a bushfire near Midland and posted about it. Two days later, the fire came. I dreamt of a three-car accident at the intersection near our house on Christmas Day, and it happened. Then my classmate Josh's car accident, right outside his home.
People started calling it my "superpower". My followers doubled, then tripled. For a while, it felt exciting.
Now, lying in the white room, I understood that my superpower might be the very thing that had trapped me.
Page 3
The door hissed open just as I was about to bury my face in my hands.
A man stepped in, wearing a doctor's coat and black-rimmed glasses. He was pushing a trolley with a laptop on top.
"Jake," he said, in a voice that was calm and smooth and cold. "We believe you can help save humanity. There is something very special about your brain. We would like to record your brain waves and upload them into our artificial intelligence, so that it can learn to predict the future the way you do. Will you cooperate?"
His face told me it wasn't really a question.
I nodded slowly. Then I added quickly, "Only if you promise to send me home when it's done."
He smiled. "Of course," he said. "I promise."
But his smile never reached his eyes.
Page 4
He asked me to lie down and, without a word of warning, shaved a patch of my hair. He hadn't even asked. That was when the cold feeling began to creep through my chest. I wasn't sure I would ever leave this place.
He fixed dozens of small sensors to my head, each one attached to a thin wire, and switched on the computer.
"Could I please see the screen too?" I asked.
He ignored me completely.
The laptop was turned towards him, but I could see faint reflections in his glasses. I tried to look calm and cooperative while I watched from the corner of my eye.
Four letters glowed in the reflection.
SCOF.
My breath caught. The Science Committee of the Future. I had seen them on the news: the group that had caused a huge uproar when they announced their plan to merge humans and machines.
In that moment, I knew. I wasn't going home.
Page 5
A strange tingling spread across my scalp, then down my neck and through my whole body, cold as ice water.
"Connection established," announced a robotic voice. "Connection successful."
My eyes widened. Suddenly, everything was bright and sharp and clear. I could hear the hum of every machine in the building. I could feel the thoughts of the computer racing alongside mine. It was as if my twelve-year-old brain had been joined to the greatest intelligence ever created.
The doctor looked delighted. He nodded towards the dark window, and from somewhere behind it came muffled cheering.
"Now," he said, leaning closer, his eyes hungry. "The very first prediction. For all mankind."
A slow smile spread across my face. I did not choose the words. They rose up from somewhere deep inside me, from the machine, or from me, or from both.
"This," I said, "will be the end of humanity. And it is only the beginning."
The End