He knew what it was supposed to be. It had come down to four things in his mind: cold, pain, fear, and a numb so deep that the cold and pain and fear couldn't pierce it. And when the numb settled in, that was when it was over and his programming was complete.
So he had expected pain. When he moved his head back as requested, he expected the technician to use something of a portable edition of the chair. He hadn't expected being touched. He certainly hadn't been expecting something without pain. But it was certainly something--something warm, tingly, and painless and that wasn't being programmed. Was it?
The warmth didn't recede but scents began to filter in. Food scents. And sounds--voices, and something else. Music. He found that he was standing, at a table. There was a scrawny boy across from him and something about him seemed familiar; he knew this boy. But it didn't matter. He was holding a knife. He knew what came next: he would lift the knife and plunge it through the boy's throat.
"Go on, Buck, carve the turkey," the boy said. "We don't have all day. I'm hungry."
Someone else's voice lifted behind him into song. You better watch out, you better not cry. You better not pout, I'm telling you why--Santa Claus is comin' to town.
"You're hungry? How do you think I feel?" The voice that spoke was his. He knew that voice. He couldn't remember having ever said those words. "I've been in that kitchen watching this thing all day."
He lifted the knife and didn't plunge it into the boy's throat. He began slicing meat off the turkey on the table, and each slice made him more and more uncomfortable until he was finally able to break free just as a right hand that was definitely his own handed a piece of turkey across the table and into the hand of the scrawny boy.
Agent Barnes came back into himself in the living room. He blinked a couple of times to clear his vision. Buck. Was he Buck? Was that his name? No. The boy was mistaken. Maybe the turkey had been poisoned. He flexed his hands into fists and then relaxed them again. There was a time and a place for silence; this was not it. If the programming was not functioning, it was his job to say something.