The Department of Corrections, Book One

The light slowly increased as if on a dimmer switch, eventually consuming the darkness. Palmetto bugs scattered, but found no shadow. The Muzak suddenly blared, still teaching, a depressing remake loaded with subliminal messages conditioned the captive minds. The heavily graffiti-keyed steel cell door clanked! then slid open, rasping along its rusted steel tracks. It was the well-read and well-fed POD guard’s shift change (with book in hand, he sprinted to the closest unisex restroom); a husky, mannish female POD guard took his place above within the circular observation room full of weapons and flickering monitors. The sleeping drones awakened, randomly flying away from the curving bulletproof glass—leaving their rusty mechanical dreams behind, then buzzing throughout the POD, each chaotically searching out its E-numbered target (flawed impound). VIL-EN’s sexy hologram materialized, she was already scanning the panopticon’s drugged impounds for violations. Murmuring voices, coughs, footsteps, flushing toilets, running sinks, and spraying showers—echoed: soft, muffled sounds slowly filling up two curving stories of cold, empty space. A skeleton-thin female in a white nurse’s uniform (nicknamed “Bones”) pushed a stainless-steel MedCart in front of POD A’s open access door, but remained inside of the circular, bulletproof-glass corridor; five armed processing officers—each asshole to be addressed as “Boss”—lingered behind her. It was 4:00 am deep inside the subterranean, poured-concrete, supermax wasteland. The flawed impounds’ day had begun.

“Line up for your meds,” cracked the bony nurse’s brittle voice. “In front of the MedCart—NOW!” There was a shift in the POD’s marrow-soft sounds.

An orange-clad line of drowsy, Karpian-goggled impounds formed at the open, graffiti-keyed steel cell door, then slowly wrapped itself around the entire lower perimeter of POD A’s curving concrete geometry. One by one to the nurse’s MedCart; every flawed impound swallowed their yellow NanoPill and any other personal medications. Each swallow was followed by VIL-EN’s loud synthesized voice roll calling an E-number, verifying whose sedated NanoPill had just been properly ingested. Loud, concurring, alphanumeric echos like depth charges concussed the submerged POD.

Afterward, the flawed impounds wandered the POD aimlessly, shuffling unchained, searching for their bedrolls: their physical, mental, and spiritual strength drained from their imprisoned, sensory deprived, drugged flesh; their hundred, hopeless, Karpian-goggled faces tinged with a sickly, brainwashing, neon-orange light.

“Equality 30541! Equality 121867! Equality 112731! . . . FRONT AND CENTER!” screamed the bony nurse, screamed the pharmacological jailer.

The three drooling impounds, slowly, shuffled and staggered back to the shiny MedCart. The three were injected with a drug the system has dubbed “Kallosomacain,” an allusion to two drugs mentioned in two popular surface world dystopian novels. So powerful the difficult to pronounce drug—Bogonarkodenotikos-19-66.67®, the flawed impounds required no handcuffs and no shackles, and barked commands were reduced to gentle suggestions: a temporary liquid-lobotomy creating blind obeyers—not rebellious thinkers.

“Follow me, and please, no talking.” The ninety-pound nurse now controlled the three flawed impounds with only her faint voice (if the Kallosomacain were any stronger, she could have controlled them with her thoughts). Mindlessly, as if pulled by invisible puppet strings, they followed the nurse’s bone-thin white-blur up the murky corridor toward the secondary elevators; all thoughts of resistance, of escape, were temporarily repressed, replaced with a warmntingling hissing silence.

The remainder of the flawed, orange-clad impounds left behind in POD A, hungrily awaited the corrected, black-clad impounds and their stainless-steel ChowCarts: the “Blacks” were in charge of delivering the “Oranges” their breakfast trays while under the supervision of the “Greens” (uniformednarmed processing officers).

Malyj’s goggles flashed a neon-orange message: JESUS, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE WORD OF GOD HAVE BEEN PROVEN FALSE—SYSTEMATICALLY ERADICATED. THESE FALSE TEACHINGS HAD DISCRIMINATED AGAINST THE IMMORAL. THE STATE’S LAWS HAVE MADE THE IMMORAL MORAL AND THE MORAL IMMORAL—IN THE NAME OF PROFIT. THE IMMORAL ARE NOW PROTECTED BY STATE LAW. THE MORAL, THE CHRISTIANS, ARE NOW DISCRIMINATORS—CRIMINALS. YOU DESIRE TO BE IMMORAL. A color image of thousands of Bibles aflame, a fiery mound of seditious/subversive literature, a banned book burning, appeared for only a split second. Then, a mind-whisper only he could hear: There is nothing left for you to worship—except the Almighty Karpian State.

Deep inside of Malyj’s drugged mind, an enraged thought as heavy as a shadow escaped the hissing silence: BULL FUCKIN’ SHIT! Fuck your Almighty Karpian State!