The Department of Corrections, Book One

“ ’My totalitarian Mother,

my benevolent State.

My totalitarian State,

my benevolent Mother.

One the same,

controlling with malevolent,

deceit and pain.

My totalitarian . . .’ ”

When Dr. Sinclair Burgess finished reading a poem from The Corrections Manifesto, he asked the last question from the State’s, standardized, DOC Intelligence-Quotient Test for Impounds - Fifth Edition/Revised (DOC-IQTI-V-R):

“First impressions?! Quickly, quickly, without thinking!”

“Anger! . . . Rage! . . . Revolution!” Malyj blurted. He was hot, sweating, the interrogation cell’s lights now on high—each an inferno.

“Good! Good! . . . Why?!” Dr. Burgess was gargling his words like sputum. His thin wisps of lightning-bolt-blond hair were standing on end with static electricity, his brainy head looked like a Tesla coil discharging millions of volts. His glassy eyes vacuum tubes glowing with excited electrons, his orbital gaze emitting photons through thick prescription lenses.

“I don’t want anyone, or any government, telling me how to think, feel, speak, act, or look! I refuse to be a pawn!”

“Yesth! Yesth!” Dr. Burgess took a white handkerchief from a pocket in his white lab coat and excitedly dabbed the sticky-white, sour-cream-like spittle from around his thin, borscht-red lips; then he blotted the boiling, chai-colored perspiration from his massive forehead; finally, he adjusted the steamy spectacles on his long, narrow nose. “There is no ’I’ or ’me,’ only WE . . . the State, but go on, please—please, continue.” His chiseled, alabaster face flushed under the hot lights.

“Fuck you!” Malyj was mentally and physically exhausted from hours of intense questioning. Said irritated, “First impressions?! Quickly, quickly, without thinking!”

“Fascinating. Fascinating.” Dr. Burgess paused a moment to admire E30541s spirit. . . . “If you refuse to continue to voluntarily answer my questions, I will have VIL-EN initiate StimCor . . . stimulation for correction . . . a lie detector with a bite.” He dabbed his thin lips again, effeminately.

“Go to hell!” His goggles weighty, filled with heavy Karpian propaganda.

“But Equality 30541, we are already in hell, the fifth level of hell.” Holding his white handkerchief by two manicured fingertips, he gestured effetely at the unclean IntCell; then he quickly blotted his perspiring forehead again, like some dainty, eighteenth-century Frenchman. “Tell me, Equality 30541, how does someone like you, who doesn’t count: HIV positive, an alcoholic and heroin addict, highly educated—but having no job, no income, no home, no family, no friends, no citizenship, no freedom, a criminal lost in “the system” with no civil rights, an economic drain on society, who would have nothing if it weren’t for the generosity of the benevolent State, the benevolent Mother; how does someone like you possess an IQ off-the-charts: an individual outlier far from the parabolic curve, the highest quotient in a quadrant crammed with collective genius?”

“Shut up!” Craving water, but too proud to ask for any. “I’m your State’s worst nightmare, an intellectual trapped within a wild motherfuckin’ animal’s body!” His goggled, godawful, bloodshot eyes framed by rusted metal clamps now kicking in-and-out of their forced-open sockets like two unbridled animals trying to escape their orbits. His hairy nostrils violently flaring and neighing. His breathing of the recycled, decades-old artificial air, erratic and angry. His heart a stampede of panicked beats. His naked body rippling like a panicked horse’s muscles.

“And I . . . am your . . . ‘worst nightmare,’ a social engineer who will break you, tame you, make you conform,” said cold, emotionless, “or, like a wild motherfuckin’ animal, cull you.”

Malyj stared at the effeminate madman horrified; then screamed:

“I will die before I conform!”

“What a waste. What a waste. . . . We’ll neutralize your ego first, the broken spirit will follow, standard procedure before recycling, and we’ve already caged this ‘wild motherfuckin’ animal’s body’ you boast of.” Taking off his spectacles, he arrogantly held them up to a fiery light, looking through them as if posing for his bronze statue, waiting for the steam to evaporate from the bifocal lenses. “VIL-EN!”

“Yes, Dr. Burgess,” her mechanical voice soothed from the rusty speakers in the waterlogged concrete ceiling.

“Please, once again, initiate remote RBMS (reverse brain mapping scan) for Equality 30541: StimCor (stimulation for correction). If he refuses to answer any of my questions, or any region of his brain scan lights up indicating a lie, please stimulate—no, firebomb—the pain centers of his brain. Raise to level three conditioning. Let’s fry his brains like scrapple.”

“Yes, Dr. Burgess,” said the artificial intelligence.

Once again, Malyj felt a strange electromagnetic sensation within his skull, like his brain was vibrating, like his frontal lobes were searing on a bug zapper. He thought he could hear and smell and taste his terrified brains cooking.

“What isth your name?” Dr. Burgess, lisping, asked the first question under StimCor.

“Sasha Malyj!” said defiantly, his spooked hazel-eyes still kicking in-and-out of their equine sockets.

“Wrong!”

“Aaaarrrggghhh!” Malyj screamed out in pain, rearing wildly.

“Violation! False identification uttered! Violation!” VIL-EN’s mechanical voice boomed from the rusty speakers in the waterlogged concrete ceiling: powdered rust rained down. “StimCor level three conditioning administered—three-second burst!”

“Name?”

“Sasha Malyj!”

“Wrong!”

“Aaaarrrggghhh!” Another three-second burst of pain fried Malyj’s frontal lobes.

“Violation! False identification uttered! Violation!” More powdered rust rained down.

“Name?!” Dr. Burgess spat the word into the electrified air of Interrogation Cell A.

“Eight- to ten-years-ago . . .”

“Wrong!” The word gargled, every letter juggled by phlegm.

“Aaaarrrggghhh!” More unbearable pain zapping! Malyj’s frontal lobes.

“Lie detected!” VIL-EN’s mechanical voice boomed from the rusty speakers in the waterlogged concrete ceiling.

This torturous process repeated until Sasha Malyj referred to himself as Equality 30541. On the urine-weathered concrete floor, directly beneath him, a puddle of yellow piss—its shape like his crime scene outline.

“VIL-EN! Please dim the lights again, total darkness, and drop the temperature to 20 degrees Fahrenheit for this next question. Let’s make this stubborn asshole suffer.”

“Yes, Dr. Burgess,” VIL-EN’s tone a sardonic smile. She adjusted the technologically-induced stressors.

The effeminate madman asked E30541 a second question under StimCor:

“Have you noticed certain things down here, things that have been done to you, things that previously you thought to be technologically impossible?”

“Yee-ye-yesss—” E30541 said cautiously, anticipating pain, but the torture remained absent. He was naked, trembling cold.

“No lie detected,” VIL-EN’s mechanical voice soothed from the rusty speakers in the waterlogged concrete ceiling.

“Good. Good. Above, in the surface world, it isth 2010, the past. Underground, here in ‘HELL’—deep inside of Mother’s nuclear-powered womb, it isth the equivalent of 2110, the present. Your imagined future isth now. Thanks to a deceptive daylight savings time and a Karpian-manipulated surface media.” Dr. Burgess adjusted his spectacles around intelligent, pale-blue eyes, studying Equality 30541s reaction from within the humming darkness. “We must eliminate the undesirable, the unproductive, the unprofitable, and the genetically, physically, and intellectually inferior from the overpopulated surface population, to conserve finite surface resources, by secretly infecting them with our population-control virus. The PopCon virus. What you would call HIV/AIDS. Then, we must keep the remainder of the surface population behind the times, working 24/7, consuming, paying taxes, happy, entertained, and mindlessly distracted by outdated, double-edged technologies they believe to be cutting edge but in reality are monitoring their every move and manipulating their thoughts, feelings, speech, actions, and appearance. Keep them believing their double-edged technologies are only—for their convenience. Asymmetric technological warfare creating a new social organism with a new social ethic where the individual does not exist, for the political and economic security of the collective State.” The effeminate madman rubbed his numb hands together, then blew into them trying to warm them; a Siberian frost was forming on his spectacles’ thick lenses like blinding cataracts; the cold interrogation cell’s temperature was dropping rapidly.

Pausing to clear his frostbitten throat; Dr. Burgess expounded on some of his theories:

“You are nothing, the State isth everything. The individualist must die, sacrifice itself for the Mother. Individualism to Collectivism.”

Then, Dr. Burgess asked Equality 30541 a third question under StimCor:

“Are you familiar with the philosophy of ultra Karpism? Capitalism to Socialism to Communism to Karpism.”

“Yes. Not by name, only by concept. An extrapolation of Marxist theory.”

The IntCell now so cold it burned their skin. It smelled and tasted of stale ice. Their breath visible, bone white, crackling in midair until fading away into the darkness. A neon-orange cursor was flashing inside E30541s goggle’s right lens like a dying ember.

“No lie detected,” VIL-EN’s mechanical voice soothed from the rusty speakers in the now frozen concrete ceiling.

“Of course you are. Of course you are. A rare, Grade-A +++ surface dweller. You tested beyond genius, albeit a: diseased, addicted, criminal, paranoid, antisocial, heretical, egotistical, selfish, individualistic, ‘wild motherfuckin’ animal’ type of genius,” Dr. Burgess mocked his naked and frozen, vertically-caged political prisoner. “Such intelligence and spirit not integrated with the State, must be aborted. The Mother must control everything, especially the mind, everything isth conceived in the mind. Karpism isth afraid of what it cannot control, cannot profit from.” Pausing for a moment:

“Friends of the State (F-State) are allowed to live, and enemies of the State (E-State) will be . . .”

High up on the gray-painted concrete block wall, a large bronze disc with the Karpian State’s symbol hammered into it: a double-headed eagle, wings outstretched, holding the scales of equality perfectly balanced—one in each talon. On its chest, a shield, having an equal symbol (=) superimposed over a Roman numeral one (I). Held in both beaks, a long, serpentine banner with “The Department of Corrections” inscribed across it. Inside its jeweled crown, the word “WE.” Beneath this imagery, the overshadowed planet Earth surrounded by the trembling heavens.

Underneath the bronze disc, a silvery, horizontal mirror about twelve feet wide and six feet high, E30541s naked and violently shivering reflection strapped down inside it. A trick mirror, for behind it stood a flock of spectacled, white-coated, clipboard-holding PsychIntTecs (psychiatric intern technicians) watching and listening and scribbling down illegible notes within a hidden observation room; just sheep looking up, admiring their mentor, studying his reeducation techniques from inside Observation Room A-101.

“VIL-EN! Please set the lights to high again, strobe mode, maintain the temperature, and let’s broadcast the subliminal-message-filled Muzak on maximum volume as background filler for this next question. Also, vary the StimCor, alternating between the pain and pleasure centers of E30541s brain, thirty-second intervals, level five conditioning.”

“Yes, Dr. Burgess.” She adjusted the technologically-induced stressors. “Neg-Ref (negative reinforcement) and Pos+Ref (positive reinforcement) SM (scramble mode) activated.”

“Technician Dnarnya! Please join me inside of IntCell A,” blurted Dr. Burgess, facing E30541, his back to the wall mirror.

A moment passed, then one of his white-coated flock entered the IntCell: a young, female PsychIntTec (psychiatric intern technician) carrying a shiny stainless-steel tray containing: one large hypodermic syringe having a long, glistening needle and one small, rubber-plugged glass vial half-filled with a clear liquid narcotic.

“Please give the subject his dose of chemical persuasion,” the Doctor of Social Engineering said to the pliable intern; which she did, injecting E30541s right arm. “My students, your lesson for today: the State’s past, present, and future will always believe their methods, their technologies, are the most advanced and the most invasive to date. But, as far as cost-effective thought accessing and behavior modifying methodologies, alcohol and narcotics will always remain unrivaled—except for fear. Fear is a government’s optimum tool of manipulation, individual and mass manipulation, and it is gratis. Psychological and/or physical fear, followed by an offer of ‘hope’ for capitulation, ‘The’ time-tested equation/solution.”

Dr. Burgess paused a moment, studying Equality 30541. The IntCell’s artificial environment—currently employing overstimulation, and the liquid narcotic’s vivid hallucinations, were making the vertical impound squirm against his restraints like a heretic burning at the stake. His imagined suffering was horrible to witness. Smirking, the effeminate Doctor asked E30541:

“What isth your name?”

The fiery, stroboscopic lights burned Malyj’s retinas like flickering suns burning through two frames of exposed film. The 20 degrees Fahrenheit temperature froze his bone marrow hard and heavy as ice. The loud, staticky, disjointed, subliminal-message-filled Muzak created multiple migraine headaches as painful as a right eye being gouged out by a splintery nightstick—over and over again. The StimCor’s systematic surges of pain then pleasure repeating, repeated conflicted emotions: he cried and laughed, cried and laughed, cried and laughed until he was physically ill. The powerful mind-altering drug was making him see things that weren’t there, hear things that weren’t there, feel things that weren’t there; confusing him, torturing him.

“I can’t remember. I—I can’t . . .”

The bronze disc’s double-headed eagle faded in-and-out of focus like it was pecking at his mind’s eye, eventually melting into a colorful tie-dye pattern that ultimately swirled whitengray like bird droppings. Avian sounds in his mind’s ear. His eyes felt plucked at.

Then remembering, he mumbled “. . . Sasha Bogod Malyj . . .” and passed out.

Dr. Burgess screamed infuriated—“No! No! Your name is Equality 30541!”—startling his white-coated students who were watching and listening and scribbling notes wildly across their metallic clipboards from behind the trick mirror.

Malyj was now hanging lifeless from the cold stainless-steel chimera. His naked reflection floating in the silvery mirror, drowned in its illusory depths. His eyes bloodshot-red and moloko-white bobbers forced wide open by rusted metal clamps. Inside his Karpian goggle’s, neon-orange text was scrolling across his right lens unseen:

. . . WE MUST KEEP THE MINDLESS SURFACE MASSES IGNORANT OF, FROM RECOGNIZING, ALL FORMS OF PROPAGANDA. WE MUST KEEP THE MINDLESS SURFACE MASSES CONTROLLED, THINKING AND ACTING IN WAYS THAT WILL BENEFIT THE KARPIAN STATE, BY SUPPRESSING REASON AND HARNESSING EMOTION. WE MUST KEEP THE MINDLESS SURFACE MASSES EMOTIONAL, EMOTIONAL AS A PRISON RIOT. WE MUST . . .