Inside the Bubble
A short story
By
Paul Pilkington
Copyright 2014 Paul Pilkington
www.paulpilkington.com
Also by Paul Pilkington
The One You Love (Emma Holden trilogy, book 1)
The One You Fear (Emma Holden trilogy, book 2)
The One You Trust (Emma Holden trilogy, book 3)
Someone to Save You
*******PLAYBACK OF AUDIO FILE 1******
*******START OF VOICE ACTIVATED TRANSMISSION*******
I pray that this message is heard. Excuse me if my speech is hard to decipher. My name is John Laman. I am a thirty-three year old scientist, and a convicted criminal. But I am innocent of the crimes that they say I committed. I know it sounds like an especially bad cliché, but it is the truth. I am telling you this now while I still can, because in a matter of minutes my mind will be elsewhere.
I am speaking to you from the Headquarters of Scientifica Enterprises. I am in solitary confinement. Not the kind you see in old black and white films, the tin room with no windows and baking temperatures. This prison is different. My prison is the Bubble.
Imagine what it’s like to wake up, entombed in a plastic coffin, six feet under - struggling for breath, clawing and snapping nails in the panic to escape the stale, dead air. Imagine this situation. Imagine being in this living tomb, with room only to move your head from left to right and limited fresh air.
This is how I feel in the Bubble.
My brainchild.
The Bubble has been heralded as the greatest advancement in criminal-behaviour therapy in history. It consists of state of the art materials, previously only used in space. The Bubble is a self-contained prison and rehabilitation centre all rolled into one. Twenty or more tubes run from a multitude of machines and containers into the Bubble. A team of operators watch over the process whereby psychotropic drugs, electric currents and audio-visual signals enter the Bubble, and in turn, my body, infesting my thoughts, my dreams and my nightmares.
How do I know so much about this? The sad truth is that I know the Bubble better than anyone. Not only have I experienced its delights first hand (I’ve been in here for what I calculate to be three months, although without a wrist watch counting the seconds is somewhat problematic). I also designed the thing. I watched this develop for six years, little knowing that I would also be its test pilot. Ironic eh? The reason you can hear this is because, unknown to those who are watching and eating donuts just a few metres away, I know that the Bubble contains a recording device. A link to the outside world. My words are now being digitally recorded on a hard drive linked to my own home computer.
I admit it. I included the bug so that I could hear what the first prisoner was saying.
Every single word, every breath, every scream.
I wanted to know exactly what the Bubble would do to a human. We tested the Bubble on animals, of course, but the Bubble was designed for humans. Sure, chimpanzees are close to human, but it wasn’t quite the same. We needed to know exactly what it would do to a person. I voiced the idea of having a microphone but the human rights and civil liberty campaigners thwarted that plan. So, I did it anyway, but in secret. Little did I know that it would prove to be my own hi-tech message in a bottle.
Robinson Crusoe would be jealous.
I didn’t kill anyone. I swear it. I may live to tell my tale outside of this place, but I doubt it. If this machine doesn’t kill me, I think that I might. This is what we call the ‘Calm Time’ – a period of ten minutes each day when the drugs, the voices, the images stop. This is the only time of the day when my brain and senses are free from bombardment. The drugs that flow down the tubes and course through my body are designed to produce effects similar to LSD. This heightens the effect of the audio and visual images being pumped into the Bubble, designed to teach me the error of my ways. The problem is, that I can’t tell what is coming from the outside, and what is coming from inside my head. I never knew the human brain could be so imaginative.
Think of your worst nightmare. The one that wakes you from sleep in an instant. The one that soaks the sheets and excites the pulse into overdrive. I live that nightmare every single hour of the day. I see no natural light, only artificial ones, created by the push of a button. Blues, greens, reds, swirling round my field of vision in a kaleidoscope of colour. But not only lights. Faces, hideous faces, tortured faces, which speak to me, and tell me that I am a murderer. At the moment I can tell you that these are either, a product of drug-induced psychosis, or a creation from outside of the Bubble. In a few minutes however these visions will be real to me. Horrifically real.
They said that I murdered my wife and children. They decided that it was me who took the gun and fired the three fatal shots, splattering blood over the beige carpet. How they decided that I was capable of such a crime is still beyond my comprehension. I arrived at my house to find the horrendous scene of my family slaughtered. I can’t remember much after that. I must have instinctively picked up the gun, and my shoes became caked in sticky blood. I dialled the police, but they were already there, bursting through the half open door and grabbing me from behind. I slammed into the carpet and closed my eyes tight as the ‘cuffs were applied.
The trial was straightforward. I lost. My wife’s family spat at me from the public gallery as I was led down towards the waiting police van. The irony of the judge’s decision to send me to the Bubble was not lost on the press and public.
Man invents machine, machine re-invents man.
The Bubble is designed to re-invent me. To make me a new man. At least that was the plan. Maybe the reason my consciousness fills with horror at the sights and sounds of the Bubble is because I did not commit the crime to which it refers. I did not need to be re-invented. I did not ask to be re-invented. Maybe this is a punishment that I deserve, not for the murders I allegedly committed, but for the creation of this machine in the first place.
I receive food and water via tubes that run straight into my body. There is no chewing or swallowing necessary as I lye statuesque in my private space. My waste products exit from tubes connected to my intestinal system. My body is fully connected to the Bubble and is no more than another component of the machine. We are one; like a child in her mother’s womb. Except that when I am expelled from here, I fear there will be no life.
My arms and legs are tethered tight to the Bubble’s side with reinforced grips which I wear like hi-tech jewellery. The grips serve two main purposes. They contain equipment which monitors my pulse and other vital life signs every second of the day. And they stop me from trying to kill myself. Several months ago a dog which was incarcerated in here chewed through a main artery in order to end its pain. I’m not sure why they bother with me though; my teeth aren’t sharp enough.
The irony of the Bubble, which has since come to my obvious attention, is that although it is designed as a machine to change people for the better, its effect must surely be the opposite. There is no social contact here to enable an individual to develop. I now realise that social contact and rehabilitation must go hand in hand.
You may wonder why I dedicated the best part of a decade designing this machine. The Bubble project took over my life. My wife and children came a distant second to it. And now it has swallowed me whole, like Jonah.
But I really did believe that I was working for good. I believed that the Bubble would solve the current problem of our exploding prison population. It would offer the ultimate solution. Personalised rehabilitation in months rather than years. No longer would prisoners have to be execu
ted simply to make room for the next intake. Disposed of like yesterday’s rubbish.
I truly hope that the government rethinks its strategy of mass execution. Their behaviour is breeding violence and contempt among the people. Our streets are no longer safe. And something must be done.
But now I know that the Bubble is not the answer.
‘MURDERER!’
It is starting again already. If you have just heard that last remark then you’ll know it wasn’t merely a product of my drug-influenced imagination.
‘All you need is love…All you need is love.’
The Bubble uses repetition as one of its rehabilitation techniques. It is an unsophisticated, but effective method of mental torture. Yesterday the phrase ‘all you need is love’ was repeated four hundred and forty-one times. The day before last
Inside The Bubble: a short story Page 1