Psion Gamma by Jacob Gowans

there, please save me. He’s going to hurt me.
    “So you’ve made your choice. Good. A little courage never hurt anyone.” Stripe smiled as though he’d made a private joke to which only he knew the punch line.
    Stripe stood up and flipped a switch on the wall. The helmet hanging ominously above descended until it was level with Sammy’s chest. He put it on Sammy’s head, snuffing out all the light. There was a loud sound, like metal scraping tile, followed by something heavy dropping into Sammy’s lap.
    “Lean forward and throw up in this. I don’t like cleaning up messes.”
    The blackness inside the helmet was replaced by a kaleidoscope of images and movements. It reminded Sammy of going to a holo-laser show in a dome theater and thinking he was flying even when he wasn’t moving at all. He picked up speed, traveling through a dimension of spirals and wormholes. He tried to close his eyes, but when he did a painful shock nipped his ear. His whole body convulsed as his eyes reopened. The Aegis snorted softly nearby, unseen.
    As minutes passed, the movements became faster and faster until his eyes could just barely keep up with the swift changes in direction, jerking him around until his brain spun inside his skull. His mind, plunged into such disorientation, could no longer tell if he was sitting in a chair, hanging upside down, or twirling madly in space.
    When his vertigo reached a critical point, he lurched forward and vomited into whatever sat in front of him. His eyes involuntarily closed, shocking him even more than the first time. He retched again and again until he heaved nothing but air and sound. The swirling and turning continued. Every so often Sammy believed he could withstand the pain of the shock just to keep himself sane. But each time he tried to close his eyes the voltage increased, and it hurt too badly to resist.
    When Sammy finally lost all concept of spatial and time orientation, the helmet turned off and retracted back to the ceiling. He closed his eyes and heaved several more times, still feeling as though he were zipping every direction at once.
    “That was fun!” Stripe said. His voice was like glass in Sammy’s ears, thundering through and trying to shatter him. “Now I’m going to give you a tiny taste of what you can expect tomorrow if you decide to continue this silly farce. Your homework will be to think about this next experience every time you consider withholding information from me.”
    Sammy cracked his eyes open to see what the man could possibly be preparing to do. The world was spinning and in the middle of it Stripe stood using a small knife to break the seal on what looked like a tube of toothpaste. With protective gloves covering his hands, Stripe squeezed a small dollop of white cream onto his fingertip, and held the glistening droplet up for Sammy to see.
    Sammy could only see a spinning ball of light.
    “Do you want to tell me what your name is now?”
    “No.” He didn’t remember screaming while the helmet had been over him, but the sound that came from his throat was a hoarse whisper.
    “Could you at least tell me whether or not it’s Muhammad, John, or Michael? Because I could eliminate an appreciable chunk of the male population . . .”
    Sammy said nothing, keeping his focus on not retching.
    “Did you know that there are only three connections between your skin and the sensory area of your brain? So when I do this—” he touched the glistening finger to the back of Sammy’s left hand, “—you feel the change in pressure, temperature, and a slight wetness almost immediately.”
    The spot the man touched felt wet and cold on Sammy’s skin.
    Stripe continued very calmly, speaking as though he were sharing a great secret with his captive. It dawned on Sammy that this was a man who his father, Samuel Sr., would have described as being in love with his own voice.
    “I’ve made the sensation of pain a special study for myself. It’s so wonderful. It