trans_channel | PSA: this is your brain on Yeerks

My name is Jake. I'm here to tell you that there is a Yeerk among you. His name is Iniss 335, and his host is Tom Berenson. My brother.

I'm new to this ship, but not to the war against the Yeerk invasion. I'm told that some of you are sympathetic to the Yeerks, that you pity them, and I understand.

I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong. I can't make that call for you. But you know what the Yeerks are. You know how they control a host so completely, so perfectly, that you can't tell who around you is free and who's helpless in his own mind. The one you don't know is Tom, who has been imprisoned for more than three years. Imagine being unable to move a single muscle, voice a single thought, imagine your body a tool for your captor, used to enslave everyone you care about. Imagine that your thoughts are no longer your own, that someone else can rifle through them at will, and does: uses your knowledge to fool your friends, find their weaknesses, and your every fantasy to shame you.

I know that my brother is strong, but I also know that he is suffering, and I would like that suffering to stop. If you still feel that all creatures have a right to live as they choose, then so be it. But I hope you won't mistake Iniss for the victim here.

If you see Tom, I would appreciate any information.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's a...

Ax is like that. Was he involved in the last Yeerk incident?

Figures.

I think so, but he was trying to protect that particular Yeerk. I don't think he would feel the same way about any other ones, especially if its infesting your brother.

No, he normally doesn't feel that way at all, at least the last time I saw him. Still, it sounds like you know why that Yeerk was so unusual. Care to tell me about it? Was it part of the Peace Movement?

This Yeerk surrendered itself willingly: it didn't want to die or to harm anyone else. The Yeerk's fate was decided in trial. I forget about the specifics, it was right before I was brought here, but in any case, its punishment was to be jailed forever on the ship instead of being killed. Some of us didn't think that the Yeerk should be imprisoned, but killed, because of the threat imposed on the ship. I admit a lot of its gotten hazy in memory now, but I was frightened for someone on the ship, and the possibility of being controlled like that. So I tried to capture the Yeerk.

Ax was for imprisoning it forever. I feel like in the end, he knew what the price of just killing it would cost him.

He was right.

Dealing with Yeerks makes it hard to think rationally, it's true. Was Ax able to save it?

Turned out we were never dealing with a real Yeerk in the first place. The real one had been smuggled: the fake was to catch the people that were going after it. Ax was probably happy with those results, although a few people were shot at.

I doubt Ax was pleased that the rest of you got into trouble, but if it was a Yeerk that met Ax's approval, I'm glad it wasn't harmed. Where is it now? And where did the fake one come from? The ship itself...?

It was probably a good thing it wasn't, not that I approved of the way things went down: people got shot, and we basically were tricked so that we could be found out and put in the brig.

The fake was something the Security team had put into place to sniff out those trying to kill teh Yeerk. It's imprisoned on teh ship now. Hopefully STILL imprisoned.

I'm sorry you got in trouble for it. Whose idea in security was that anyway? Do they do that kind of thing a lot?

...Imprisoned? You mean it's just... locked away somewhere?

Parts of it I wish were handled better...but I'm at fault for what I did. Killing should be the last option I consider. I needed to remember that.

I'm not sure who's, and I would hope they don't do that a lot, or I would be very suspicious of security. As it is, their lack of trust to teenagers makes me not trust them a whole lot, evem if they're trying to do what's best for the crew.

Yeah. Not a lot of us were all that comfortable with that idea. Let's just hope the other Yeerks don't find out.

...maybe we should have remembered that as well.

I'm not sure I trust them myself, especially hearing stories like this. Then again, it turns out one of the members is someone I really respect, so I'm not sure what to think.

You think they'd try to rescue it?

It's not a bad lesson to earn. Better you don't have to the hard way, right?

Well. They're certainly good people, and they do their best for the crew. I respect them as well. It doesn't mean I have to like everything they do, or even how go about things.

At this point, anything's possible. For now, that Yeerk is contained, and most people have forgotten about it.

Not the hard way, but... it could have been easier. Maybe I should have talked to you sooner.

I'd like to believe that they're all good people as well. What makes you so sure?

I'll do my best to keep it that way.

I wish it had been, and that I'd talked to people more before I acted. I'm not so mad about how things went though: I got to meet a lot of really good people in the brig.

I've seen them on missions besides this one. They do the best that they can to make sure that the safety of the crew is in their interests. It's a hard thing to do when there's so many people from different worlds. We even lost a person that risked his life to help us.

Good. It was always kinda a concern of mine that someone would release it.

PSA: this is your brain on Yeerks

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