Dude.  Seriously nice one!  I knew what was going on
by the second paragraph of the story (aided by the
title and the preface), but then, I've almost been
there myself.  (No wires, but reviewing a story that
you're ready to type in once you get to a keyboard has
sometimes not been that different.)

The word wrapping was a bit off - see my quoted text
for how it appeared to my email client.  This doesn't
matter as much for super-short works like this, but
you'll want to double-check that for next time.

--- "W. Suika Roberts" <ssfr@mac.com> wrote:

         "Out!" I tell it.  It doesn't listen,
continuing to run soft, 
slimey
fingers over my mind, over _me_. "Out!  Out! OUT!" I
yell, as loudly as 
I can,
pushing, twisting, trying to bite, to grab, to get
rid of this thing 
that's
inside my _head_!

Later on, when Gendo read Ritsuko's report that the
Eva was jealous Rei spent more of her attention
reading than on the test at hand, he would sigh, shake
his head, and remind his chief scientist not to write
up reports immediately after a social night with
Misato.

         Suddenly it's gone, in a reasuring rush of
acceleration as the 
plug
ejects.

It looked like you either wanted another comma after
"acceleration", or did not want the comma that is
here.

         *DONG*  I jerk upward, that isn't supposed
to happen, I think, 
as
*DONG* the side of the plug reaches out and slams

I know there are no formal rules for this, but when
inserting sound effects, I find it's better to be
consistent with the spacing.  For instance, here, one
space after the effect.  (If the first one were a
sentence by itself, then perhaps the "double space
after a sentence" rule would come into play, but
without any normal text, it seems to be attached to
"I jerk upward".)

                 Since I was quiet and, apparently,
studious, my 
teachers let
                 me get away with it.

---

Yomiko had never before had such mixed feelings about
an assignment.

On one hand, she had been assigned to find stories.
Books!  Well, okay, they were mostly electronic, and
her superiors wanted electronic copies, but they had
no problem if she wished to print them out and read
them.  True, the mechanical monotone font of a printed
page took something from the author's unique
handwritten style; the "hand" of her home printer was
not even as varied, and did not tell the same tales,
as the many different types of papers, inks, and other
things that varied with publishing house.  To Yomiko,
how a book was made was at least comparable in
importance to what words were printed on it.  But even
so, the patterns of text - as unique to each author as
a fingerprint, if one knew how to read them - were
trivial for her to identify, and so the voices of a
thousand authors still sang in her mind as she
devoured their output.  This was what she lived for,
and her ear-to-ear grin easily reflected it when she
did not let herself consider what the stories were
intended for.

When she did think about it, her grin shrank to a
pouting frown, almost smaller than her tiny nose.  It
was so...so..."perverted" did not even begin to
describe it!  A complete and total perversion of what
literacy was all about - yes, that was a start.  Books
were meant to be enjoyed, to enlighten and entertain
the reader.  But distracting masses of people into
"reading" what was uploaded into them as an addiction,
to the point where they would be unable to notice or
care what was being done with their bodies beyond a
bestial, almost subliminal level, their braincomps
sparing just enough neural circuitry to process what
they were told and obey, so they would become
unthinking slaves so far as the rest of the world was
concerned...

The simple reaction would have been to strike out
against reading, now that someone had figured a way to
turn it into a weapon.  But the very thought had made
Yomiko vomit for the first time in her life.  Once she
had cleaned up the bathroom and her mouth, she quickly
thought of a better strategy.

There was more raw content out there than the ones who
had given her this assignment could possibly dream of.
And she knew, from her studies of the system, that the
"suppressed" higher mind could fight its way out and
take control of its body if it wanted to.  The stories
she found - enough text to last a lifetime - were
supposed to be one key to making sure it never did.
But there was no way her supervisors would actually
read most of what she sent them.  Perhaps they would
scan the first month or so worth of content - fine,
they would have docile slaves for a month.  Two, to be
safe.  But starting with month three, the mind would
be fed stories hinting that something was wrong.
Start with simple "mind in a box" scenarios, mix in
some slave uprisings and defeated government
conspiracies, and then...

She froze as she read the latest search result.  It
seemed to describe exactly what she was doing.

"Yomiko had never before had such mixed feelings about
an assignment."

"This was what she lived for"

"When she did think about it"

"But the very thought had made Yomiko vomit for the
first time in her life."

...since when was her life someone else's fiction?
And yet it was too perfect.  A little message, from
her to the victims.  A little clue, and a little hope.

Keep reading.  The next story will tell you exactly
what's been done to you, and how to override it.
- The Paper

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