The Department of Corrections, Book One

A white, unmarked, commercial-grade DOC van with tinted windows, driverless, pulled out of Loading Dock A and turned right. Speedily paralleling other loading docks with shut, weathered-metal overhead doors like unrolled scrolls of rust and their overflowing green dumpsters that smelled of putrescent cardboard boxes (right side), all while simultaneously paralleling a humid wall of dense, mosquitoey palmetto forest (left side). Steering wheel turning by itself, gas and brake pedals working unmanned, the cloaked van drove from behind the large grocery store, through the crowded strip mall’s side (and newly tarred) parking lot, and merged (right) into the polluted, noisy traffic of the congested highway’s ebb and flow that ran perpendicular to the hidden probation office.

The van’s GPS and advanced Karpian State technologies, and the surface world’s red-light cameras and Google Maps, guiding it to its destination smoother than if a human being were driving. The human commuters unaware of what secret weapon traveled beside them, what hidden (in plain sight) technological nightmare was navigating their roads.

Arriving downtown, the driverless and passenger-less van parallel parked alongside a circular public park having a small lake with a spouting water fountain as its focal point. Spanish moss hung from the Southern Live Oak trees like the ghosts of lynched Negroes. A hint of orange blossom floated in the thick humid air. Moments from the towering skyscrapers and bustling, peasant-like surface workers toiling for their meager paychecks as if their lives depended upon them, the van’s roof slid open.

Inside the van, a small, airplane-like drone was mounted on a south-aiming steel rod. The rod raised up 45 degrees to face the bruised (indigo-colored) sky, then rotated 45 degrees east. The facial-rec-targeting Patriot drone was silently launched into America’s now godless firmament.

Patiently circling the unaware pedestrians below like a hungry turkey vulture that smelled death, scanning every subhuman face, the drone’s eye-in-the-sky locked in on Ray Toole’s death-pale face after twenty minutes of searching the Saturday morning crowd of anonymous bourgeoisie scurrying to their capitalistic offices: a mandatory seven day work week now the law for civilians (the surface world workforce unaware they were being forced to meet the Karpian State’s production quotas). The DOC’s stealthy drone then initiated a digital launch countdown sequence: Five . . . Four . . . Three . . .

Back at the van, three Victory “kill” missiles, each tracking Ray Toole’s constantly updating facial-rec coordinates, launched from inside of the empty van. Seconds (that passed like aeons) later, a crescendo of destruction, “BOOM! . . . BOOM!! . . . BOOM!!!” Guiltless Ray Toole was incinerated, twelve innocent bystanders were also killed, including multiple injured, and there was major structural damage to the entrance of Ray Toole’s ablaze, high-rise workplace.

ITOD (innocents time of death): 9:05 am EST.

COD (cause of death): (3) VKMs (Victory “kill” missiles).

The murderous Patriot drone weaved around the tall office buildings, its escaping reflection streaking across massive, mirror-like windows; it returned to the van, crash landing back inside of the van. The opening in the van’s roof slid shut; then instead of exploding (self-destructing to destroy the evidence of a failed mission), the driverless van drove back to Loading Dock A. Impound Officer Grohowski’s secret mission, to terminate the agitator Ray Toole, successfully accomplished: his monthly bonuses now safe.

Surface World - The Grohowski Residence. Saturday Morning. Ten O’clock.

The breaking news on Channel 6 reported the death of Ray Toole, and many other innocent bystanders killed during the latest terrorist attack on American soil. A “. . . Red Level Terror Alert’s dire warnings . . .” scrolled across the bottom of the gigantic television set like a terrorist’s bloody poem regulating a nation’s emotion. The terror index repeated and repeated . . . notifying the mindless masses how much fear to feel.

“O-my-God! Al! We were just talking about Ray! . . . Now he’s DEAD!” screamed Karin, shocked, staring at the dead bodies, the wandering injured, and the infernal flames. The gigantic television set now her window to hell: usually her window to a lost world with no purpose, no hope, only decadence and hedonism.

What a dumb bitch! Al rolled his eyes. He was staring at the gigantic television set, at the carnage, but his thoughts were on a shiny bass boat.

Outside: the rising sun blazed down; the southern live oaks, Spanish moss, date palms, and colorful hibiscus were swaying in a gentle breeze that smelled of orange blossoms; the twins were laughing, splashing about in a chilly kidney-shaped pool like two fat manatees playing in a Florida spring.

Al and Karin had been watching some imbecilic, weekly-occurring reality television show created by the government: another entertaining yet mindless distraction for the technologically-influenced/manipulated masses that was specifically designed to: consume their citizens’ (consumers) leisure time; keep their citizens’ (mindless masses) unknowing propagandized minds happy and away from real thinking; and to blind their citizens (for-profit slaves) from the realization that their freedoms and rights were being stripped away from them episode by episode—touchdown by touchdown—commercial by commercial. To keep their citizens from seeing that America “the land of the free” has become America “the land of zero tolerance”—aka LUI (living under the illusion). To keep their citizens willingly trapped within a “box”—like addicted lab rats—they failed to realize was being monitored and manipulated by addictive, outdated, double-edged, government-controlled technologies: televisions and radios mass brainwashing every citizen with biased programming, news, commercials, propaganda, and subliminal messages; cell phones a GPS tracking device and eavesdropping device revealing every citizen’s personal apps, videos, photos, contacts, e-mails, text messages, phone calls, and current location; computers: the government’s judas hole in the private door of every citizen’s mind and in the front door of every citizen’s home, revealing every citizen’s: personal apps, videos, photos, contacts, e-mails, instant messages, Internet phone calls, current location, social media, Internet searches, favorite porn sites (sexual orientation), online purchases of books (threat level), movies, music, games, etc.; every home’s Trojan Horse-like appliances and electronics spying on every occupant; every vehicle’s built-in electronics tracking/watching/listening to every driver and every passenger; and every citizen’s credit, debit, gas, and grocery store customer reward cards tracking their every move and their every cash/cashless purchase while creating their consumer marketing/health insurance profiles: not priceless. Every government employee and corporate technician working around or in our citizens’ vehicles, homes, and places of employment—just extra eyes and ears spying on and reporting on every citizen for our paranoid, undemocratic government and our greedy, un-American American corporations. The list of their invasive methodologies and technologies and their violations . . . endless.

A mindless generation unable to define liberty. A commercialized generation whose scope of knowledge (Google replacing reason), history (being rewritten online), and truth (1+1=3) is limited to what information the single entity of Big Government and Big Business allow on America’s regulated search engines: the free-will-less masses’ media-controlled minds now unable to think for themselves; unable to think beyond the limited reach and half-truths of a search engine (Google searches = thinking inside of the Karpian State’s “box”). Godless, materialistic, narcissistic, altruistic, unproductive, and ordinary generations being born into a technologically-manipulated world (its history rewritten online; its vocabulary banned from print dictionaries, online government-censored dictionaries only; its words redefined daily, losing their meaning—or banned, illegal to utter): leaving no true reference for comparison to comprehend the freedoms and rights the mindless masses have unknowingly sacrificed; leaving no true reference to identify the lies they are being told.

“Alexio . . . ?”

“Terrible. . . . Just terrible,” said Al to Karin, but thinking:

Gotcha, Toole! . . . How’s that for an injustice, you fuckin’ agitator?

“. . . witnesses reported seeing a small, plane-like drone in the sunny, southeastern sky moments before the explosions . . .” The patriotic reporter reporting half-truths, posing prettily, and pretending empathy. The same horrific audio and video endlessly repeating—looping ad infinitum. The “. . . Red Level Terror Alert . . .” still scrolling across the bottom of the gigantic television set like a terrorist’s bloody poem regulating a nation’s emotion. The terror index repeated and repeated . . . notifying the mindless masses how much fear to feel.

“Damn terrorists!” said Karin, crying. Her fear an installed conditioned reflex.

“Yep . . .” Al stared at the gigantic television set, at his handiwork, thinking:

The surface government will act fast, while the nation is still scared, the partisan Karpian media adding to the fear factor, probably have to modify or eradicate some more of We the Peoples Constitution, and keep chipping away at laissez-faire capitalism, all in the guise of Homeland Security versus terrorism. The doublespeaking politicians will pass the new laws fast, while every citizen is still scared, signing away their hard earned freedoms and rights from under their unsuspecting noses, something under normal circumstances the American citizen would have never tolerated. Fear: a government’s optimum tool of mass (emotional) manipulation.

Karin, still crying, violently discharged her nose like a military-issued weapon into a crumpled tissue. Never questioning how the authorities had positively identified Ray Toole’s incinerated body, and notified his family, all within an hour of the still unfolding event. Something that legally must be done before the media can release a victim’s name to the public.

“He‘ll be remembered as a true ‘American Hero,’ new laws will be passed in his name, for our protection.” Al was trying to comfort his terrified wife, who was currently absorbed in some female reporter’s adrenalin-releasing political propaganda: informing (deceiving) the citizens (the mindless masses) which enemy country (scapegoat) was now attacking our American freedoms (illusion).

“. . . American Hero . . . new laws . . . for our protection . . .” Karin bleated, her star-spangled eyes still staring at the gigantic television set in shock.

The female reporter repetitively asking millions of emotional viewers:

“Should we declare war on this terrorist country, who unprovoked, attacked us first?” Flames whorled behind her like departed souls enraged.

Karin’s mind now filled with hero worship, and soldier and combat glorification.

Al looked at his now sobbing wife without really seeing her, wondering:

Did the Patriot drone use neural oscillation, facial—Toole’s non-smiling DMV photo, retinal, voice, heartbeat, biometric, or DNA-scent identification to launch and guide the three Victory “kill” missiles? Each person’s unique, like a fingerprint.

Then, Al had a profound, nontechnical thought:

Which is more terrifying to the average surface citizen? An American government secretly governing under Dr. Franz Karp’s/the DOC’s authority, that would order a covert drone attack to kill an American citizen on American soil based on a telephone call from someone like me, just so I could protect my monthly bonuses, then have the deceptive surface media direct the blame at someone else? An American government utilizing each new, double-edged, sharper-on-the-government’s-side technology as a secret weapon, illegally spying against and manipulating its unaware citizens (every piece of technology now a two-way peephole)? Or, a foreign terrorist who kills American citizens/civilians/infidels on American soil, in the name of radical Allah, as a declaration of protest against the political and economic policies of a warmongering nation whose actions affect the rest of the world adversely?

Al’s thoughts undecided, suddenly uncaring, they wandered back to the shiny bass boat.