The Department of Corrections, Book One

About six hours ago, after returning his dinner tray, E30541 had relocated his makeshift bed beside E121867s makeshift bed. They now faced each other, engulfed in the weighty darkness of lights out, both pretending to be asleep on the panopticon’s frozen concrete floor. They could see VIL-EN through the circular section of bulletproof-glass corridor making her ghost-like rounds in POD C; her see-through hologram like a dim nightlight eerily floating above a hundred “slumbering” impounds. The fat, night-shift POD guard, stationed above the circular section of bulletproof-glass corridor and encircled by a bulletproof-glass watchtower, was reading a thin novel by the light of his many flickering monitors. The tiny, black mechanical drones looked like sleeping flies on the curving glass; their foil-thin wings spread apart, lethargically fluttering, like they were stuck dreaming on transparent flypaper. The invisible pressure from the FreeWorld above, pressing down upon them, making their ears “POP!” like blaring gunshots inside hollow heads. A skin-crawling feeling—like every second you were being watched and listened to. They whispered guardedly—like secret prison lovers, over the barely audible Muzak, every soothing note loaded with Karpian hypnopedia (sleep-teaching):

“What were you impounded for?” Sylvia Black questioned softly, studying him from behind protruding goggles. Her drugged bones moaning as if tortured.

Malyj’s drugged mind juggling words until it grasped the right ones. “Violation of probation.”

“Weren’t we all,” she whispered in a sharp undertone, her groggy head gesturing toward the sea of goggled and drugged impounds surrounding them, every last one pretending to be asleep on the panopticon’s frozen concrete floor. Their Karpian goggles resembled handcuffs securing bloodshot eyes; their faces imprisoned expressions.

“Seriously . . .” His heart clenched into a pounding fist.

“Seriously,” she murmured.

“I only had one month of supervision left, and I swear, I never violated . . .”

“We’re all innocent.”

“I believe it, considering what just happened to me.”

“What?” she whispered curiously.

“. . . A DNA sample,”

“A catch-22 violation . . .”

“or! (interrupting a little too loud), a ‘failed’ urinalysis. I—I don’t know which.”

“They set you up.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s how they get us, lie about our urinalysis, especially if you have any history of alcohol or drug abuse.”

“I have been clean since 2006.”

“I told you . . . we’re all innocent,” she paused, looked over her left shoulder, checking to see if VIL-EN or the POD guard was listening. “Let me guess. . . . You have a record and were on parole, maybe probation. . . . You’re lawyer-less, unemployed, uninsured, homeless, and have no one who will miss you. . . . You’re off the grid.”

“How did you know?” Malyj whispered, amazed.

“Every impound shares the same story, including me,” she paused again, again looking over her left shoulder nervously. “You’ve never heard the rumors, the conspiracy theories about this place? They spread like a contagium across the mean streets and homeless camps. Tales of thousands reporting to the DOC, any office—A, B, or C, never to be seen again, their ‘absconder’ wanted posters the only tangible evidence they ever existed.”

“No?!—never heard the rumors—the conspiracy theories. I tend to avoid people. I like to be left alone. I have been burned by humans too many times in the past. No trust left.” He gazed into her street-smart, slate-gray eyes for a moment (just two tortured orbs floating in a neon-orange glow within her Karpian goggles), then pleaded “Tell me about these rumors, these conspiracy theories!” in a terrified whisper.

“They say . . .” Her eyes jerked aside, shocked; his eyes followed her horrified glance.

VIL-EN quickly approached the couple. They closed their eyes pretending to be asleep, waiting for the hologram’s phosphorescent glow to pass over them as if they were marked with lamb’s blood.

VIL-EN eventually left POD A; she was now illuminating POD B.

“We have to escape. Escape to the surface world, escape to freedom, escape to warn . . .” E30541 said, panicking, comprehending every surface citizen’s freedom was in jeopardy.

The fat, uniformednarmed POD guard stirred, put his thin novel down (a damp, mangled 1984 paperback he found in a Communal Lounge trash receptacle), stood up, and yanking on his belt—struggled to pull his pants up under his huge gut (currently stuffed with greasy, fried Communal Lounge chicken). Hunched over awkwardly and squinting (a violent bout of diarrhea knocking at his back door), he studied the flickering night-vision monitors. He was looking for any violation among the sea of glowing, infrared eyes that would justify shooting an “Orange” (flawed impound) in the head.

“I’ll tell you all about the DOC’s suspected deceptions and atrocities once this obese lookout goes back to reading his book,” she whispered as if she wanted to scream.

Malyj’s goggles flashed a neon-orange message: ECONOKARPISM: THE CURE FOR CAPITALISM. FOR A BETTER YOU, A BETTER SOCIETY, A BETTER WORLD. A color image of four-million, black-clad corrected impounds marching in unison across an unfree society appeared for only a split second. Then, a mind-whisper only he could hear: EconoKarpism.

They waited in silence, waited for the POD guard to pull his fat, greasy face from the flickering monitors—which never happened. They both fell asleep waiting, their first day as flawed impounds had worn them out.

Hypnopedia, sleep-teaching, dripped from the waterlogged concrete ceiling’s rusted speakers like liquid musical notes, flooding the sleeping impounds’ preconditioned minds with suggestions from the Karpian State:

“. . . You willingly accept the State’s restrictions on your thoughts, feelings,

speech, actions, appearance, privacies, and access to information—for your own

protection. . . . You willingly accept . . .”

Surface World - The Grohowski Residence. Eleven PM. A Parallel Bedtime Story.

Officer Alexio Grohowski was relaxing in his patriotically-decorated living room: four dark-brown paneled walls covered in pricey framed portraits of the Founding Fathers and a replica of the U.S. Constitution—its Bill of Rights now null and void; heavy red-velvet drapes drawn shut over every window, blocking out the surface world’s night; and one table lamp on, its small circle of light surrounded by darkness. Alexio was engulfed in a brown-leather couch and watching a gigantic, flat-screen television set: the vibrating surround sound massaging his privileged body. Still digesting his surf ‘n’ turf dinner, he halfway watched The Eleven O’clock Local News on Channel 6 while casually flipping through a worn-out bass boat brochure. A stiff human marionette warned the gullible public about the DOC’s latest absconder. Sasha Malyj’s ugly, long-haired mugshot was projected beside the pompous female reporter’s beautiful, short-haired headshot. Grohowski looked up, smirked at E30541s awful mugshot, then his designer eyeglasses sank like two rectangular anchors, pulling his scarred bald head back down into his bass boat brochure. The dark, patriotic place smelled of freshly baked apple pie.

“Alexio, honey,” Karin, Al’s gullible wife, asked from inside of the well-lit, red, white, and blue kitchen, “was he another one of your cases?” She was pouring two glasses of ice-cold milk—to go with their dessert of two already plated slices of hot apple pie.

Looking up from his dream bass boat, he cast his scarred bald head toward the well-lit kitchen. “Yes, dear. He failed to report today. I had no choice but to violate him, then classify him as an absconder, a dangerous and wanted fugitive. For the safety of society. For your protection.” Then thinking truthfully, evilly: For my pocketbook, you dumb bitch!

Exiting the well-lit kitchen, a tall, thin, homely woman entered the dark living room chatting away: “Ginny’s husband, you know Ray, the one who was arrested as a ‘government whistleblower’ and barely survived five years of federal prison? He says it’s all d-i-s-i-n-f-o-r-m-a-t-i-o-n.” She whispered, slowly spelled out the lengthy word disinformation: their nine-year-old twin girls (Karpian Youth Party members) were supposed to be sleeping, but have been known to eavesdrop on them for the State. “He claims the news reports’ lie at the request of the Department of Corrections. Says the freedom of our American press and media currently ranks forty-fifth in the world and is rapidly declining—and is heavily regulated and censored by the government, and by the DOC, to maintain the illusion of ideal freedom. Something the brainwashed American citizen is unaware of, still believing their country is the freest in the world, still believing they live in the land of the free.” Her head tossed nonstop as she spoke, making the apricot-colored bun atop of her head jerk about violently like a death-row inmate frying in the electric chair. “Anyway, he says he’s personally looking into the whereabouts of all of the DOC’s so-called ‘wanted absconders.’ ” The orangish freckles on her pale face glowing, each like a lit cigarette’s fiery ash—or a firefly’s luminescent ass.

“Really?!” Al’s pockmarked face drained of all color, becoming pitted and pale as the surface of the moon, like someone had just threatened his astronomical impound bonuses.

“Really.” Karin set a glass of ice-cold milk and a plate of hot apple pie on the recently polished coffee table, directly in front of her Alexio. Then the homemaker, who suffers from OCD, adjusted an Uncle Sam knickknack on the same wooden coffee table: because everything had to be positioned just so.

“What’s his full name again?!” Engulfed in the brown-leather couch and panicking like a turtle stuck on its back trying to right itself: his neck craning awkwardly; his arms and legs flailing wildly like a retard slinging nunchuks. He accidently kicked over the creepy Uncle Sam knickknack.

“Ray Toole.” She immediately repositioned the finger-pointing knickknack. . . . “Remember, he was the one about a month ago ranting and raving about his theory of ‘DoubleLaw.’ How today’s law, since 9/11, has one interpretation for arresting the citizen while maximizing the number of counts tacked on to a single alleged offense; and one interpretation for justifying law enforcements unjust actions—like warrantless surveillance and wiretapping, wrongful arrests, sexual assaults, beatings, shootings, and murders against the unarmed citizen—while minimizing their counts per infraction, if not discounting their infractions all together.” Squinting into the darkness, her denim-blue eyes scanned the living room for asymmetry as two dishpan hands repeatedly smoothed a wrinkled white apron down the front of her starched lemon-yellow dress. “Particularly citing cases where a citizen and someone in government or law enforcement had committed the exact same offense, yet the courts produced diametrical sentences.” She tidied a pile of bass fishing magazines on a polished end table. . . . “Something about the wording of the actual law, how the ‘and’s’ and ‘or’s’ are interpreted per case. He claimed all you had to do was pay close attention to the news. A nation of reporters, talking heads, spewing government-scripted, word-for-word reports and you would see these censored injustices reported daily, see the censored cover-ups.” She fluffed a small Stars-and-Stripes-patterned couch pillow. . . . “He claimed the United States is using economic persuasion and technological oppression for corporate and government profit, monetary and control, against its patriotic citizens. Claimed human beings were forced to conform to technology—not technology forced to conform to human beings. Claimed Americans are too fat, too comfortable, too happy, and too entertained to even notice—let alone care.” Patting Al’s bumpy bald head with a dish soap chapped hand, she kissed him on a pockmarked cheek bulging with chunky apple pie. “How could you forget him?—all that ranting and raving. He really disliked you, because you work for ‘The System.’ . . . Remember, he made a drunken fool out of himself at the clubhouse that night? Screaming about civil servants, police officers, law enforcement, having morphed into a deadly militarized police force against the disarmed civilian . . .”

“O-yeah!” interrupting his loquacious wife through a mouthful of her homemade apple pie. “Ray Toole,” he repeated aloud, pretending to remember, making a mental note for a CitTerm (citizen termination) as if Ray Toole possessed zero human rights.

Karin smiled, her bleached white teeth glowing in the dark, believing she finally got through to her thickheaded Alexio.

“Ignore him, dear, he’s just a paranoid kook. Probably considers himself a sovereign individual.” Al was growing increasingly irritated with his wife quoting Ray Toole’s dangerous words. Thinking: I should schedule you for a CitTerm, just to shut you the fuck up!

“A paranoid kook . . . A sovereign individual . . .” Karin said, confused.

“You do know that the media and the DOC do! work closely together, and that ‘we’ would never! report anything that wasn’t true? . . . Right, dear?”

“. . . Of course, honey, everyone knows that if it’s on the news it’s got to be true. You’re the good guys.” Her pink-painted lips puckered, pulling her freckled face into a proud expression; suddenly she scurried around, straightening up the patriotically-decorated living room. Her ice-cold glass of milk getting warm, her slice of hot apple pie getting cold, both forgotten in the colorful red, white, and blue kitchen.

Grohowski smirked, sank back down into the comfortable brown-leather couch like a bald-headed turtle settling into its shell for the night. Surrounded by the dark-brown paneled room’s patriotic portraits, amended documents, creepy knickknacks, red-velvet drapes, and his homely wife’s OCD touches, he went back to studying the bass boat brochure under the table lamp’s small circle of light and the dim, staticky light projected into the darkness from the gigantic, flat-screen television set. “Bring me a beer, dear, in one of those frosty, ice-cold glass mugs. To help me fall asleep.” The human marionette’s makeup was as thick as a clown’s, she gestured awkwardly as if pulled by invisible puppet strings, like each wooden gesture held some subliminal message. The pompous female reporter’s propagandized news story rambled on and on and on:

“. . . the uninsured, the unemployed, and the homeless are committing ’crimes against the economy’ by being a financial burden on the healthy, hard-working, tax-paying citizen. They are sick, unproductive, and an eyesore: impeding profit. The number-one threat to our country’s for-profit corporations, the number-one threat to our country’s for-profit government . . .”

Grohowski knew he had to liquidate Ray Toole, an agitator, and soon. He would call in a drone strike against Toole, terminate an American citizen on American soil, first thing in the morning. Practicing on gullible, expendable civilians, how the Karpian State-manipulated American government trains for terrorist activity, trains for the approaching Surface War.

“Sprinkle some salt in my beer, dear, you know how I like it,” he yelled to his wife who was already in their red, white, and blue kitchen; her mouth full of cold apple pie and humming “God Bless America.”

“. . . Here you are, dear, just like you like it.” Karin handed Al a frosty beer mug then floated back into the well-lit kitchen, still humming “God Bless America,” still proud to be married to a true American Hero.

I’ll have the mindless media report his death as a terrorist attack, Grohowski thought while slurping salty foam from the top of his frosty beer mug; actively plotting against an innocent man (for expressing dangerous thoughts) while wearing his silk pajamas and cozy, fur-lined slippers. He was still sitting in front of the gigantic, flat-screen television set with surround sound (purchased with a portion of last January’s impound bonus), still half watching the human marionette on the local news, still half staring at a picture of this month’s bonus: his dream bass boat. The rogue not caring who he had to lie to, wrongly violate, impound, recycle, and kill to maintain his astronomical bonuses, to maintain his comfortable lifestyle.