by Billy Dering
“German, Scandinavian, and American Indian- Cherokee.”
“That’s cool that you are part American Indian. I actually can see that heritage in your cheekbones. They are strong and pronounced,” she said as she caressed his face. “Tell me about your family.”
“In a nutshell, I’m the middle child of three brothers, my parents have been married for 25 years, which I know is quite unusual, and…I only recently stopped attending church every Sunday.”
“Is religion no longer a part of your life?” she asked.
“No, it still is. I am a firm believer in God, but now don’t belong to one particular church.”
She looked at him with wide eyes. “Same here. When I was growing up, me and my dad went over bible passages almost every weekend at home. He said we didn’t need to go to church to be close to God.”
He nodded as another puffy cloud crossed the sky and swallowed the moon.
“So,” Sara started as she sat upright and turned to face him. “I guess I should ask, are you dating anyone right now?”
“Nobody. Since my last girlfriend, I’ve shelled up a little. I need to stop being so critical of myself, especially the things I wish I could change.”
“If you look hard enough for a negative in anything, you’re going to find it. You should see yourself from my perspective. You’d be pretty impressed,” she whispered.
He responded by initiating a passionate kiss. Having arrived on cloud nine, Kid tried to sound nonchalant, but he was desperately hoping for the right answer. “How about you? Someone as beautiful as you must be seeing somebody.”
“Only three guys right now. But you are already in second place,” she tried to put forth a serious expression, but seeing him with his mouth agape made her laugh. “Yeah, right. Actually, I last dated a guy a couple of months ago. He seemed real nice at first, but it wasn’t long before his true colors came through.”
“So you’re single?” Kid asked.
“That depends,” she ran her fingers through her hair, “on you.”
He was trying to play it cool, but was having a hard time masking his happiness. A grin came to his face as he spoke. “Then I would say, you are not single.”
She smiled and kissed him, clearly accepting.
Checking the clock on her mobile device, Sara inhaled sharply. “Where did the time go! I wish I didn’t have to leave, but I’m already going to be late. I told my dad I would be home by 11:00 p.m.”
Kid drove her back to the diner. She got out of the car and went around to the driver’s window. Leaning in, she kissed him goodbye.
“What are you doing for the rest of this weekend?” he asked.
“Tomorrow I’m spending the day with my Dad. We have to go shopping for some things for the house. How about Sunday? Are you free?”
“The only thing I was going to do that day is get my disposable camera, since I’m home,” he said. “I left it at a cabin in the woods a few months ago after taking some great pictures.”
“Cabin?” Her interest seemed piqued.
“Yeah, me and my friends have a cabin in the woods a little south of here, good old Ironside.”
“You built your own cabin in the woods? That’s pretty wild.”
“We didn’t build it. When we were in high school my friend Jess found it, way out in the middle of the Pine Barrens. It’s over 100 years old.”
“What makes you think this camera will still be there a few months later?”
“I guarantee nobody has been there since we were out there last. That cabin is like a needle in a haystack. You should see Jess’s map. You wouldn’t believe how many turns you have to make through the trails. Hey, do you want to take a ride out there with me on Sunday?”
“Sure, I’d like to see this infamous cabin. Call me.” She looked up and huffed, “And maybe this time you actually will.”
He went to speak, but sputtered, “Hey, wait…” prompting her to chuckle.
As she turned to leave, Kid grabbed her hand, pulled her back and kissed her. “You realize you are going to be really late getting home?”
“Worth it,” Sara said as she walked away.
He did meet her that coming Sunday, and to Kid and Sara it would forever be known as simply, ‘the day at the cabin.’
Chapter 14
December 28, 2044
Wednesday, Morning
New Jersey coast, Utopia Project
Ship Number One
Two days after the event
Now awake on Utopia Project Ship Number One, Sara was startled as her door slid open and breakfast was brought in. She sat at her table and looked at a bowl of what appeared to be a creamy wheat concoction, pancakes, and toast. As she fully awakened, she realized she was too nervous to eat anything.
Taking a sip of coffee, she winced. “Piss water,” as her father would always say. She also liked her coffee strong.
As she picked at her food, she watched the program on the monitor. It was showing cities and natural wonders throughout the world. Rome, the Grand Canyon, London, and then the scene changed to Times Square in New York City. It dawned on her that there were no human beings in any of the scenes.
A short while later, her door opened and Elder-1 stepped in with his hands behind his back. He said just one word, “Come.”
They walked up the spiral staircase for many floors, and then entered a windowless room that resembled a dentist’s office. There was a reclining chair and several mechanical instruments, monitoring devices, and capped syringes. Elder-76 was waiting.
“Please, sit,” she instructed and pointed at the chair, which had shiny metal buttons in neat rows lining the seat, seatback and armrests.
Sara felt her heart pounding in her chest. “This looks like a torture room.”
“It’s not,” Elder-76 said in her hypnotic voice. “Here we administer positive and negative conditioning, from euphoria to excruciating pain. If used for negative conditioning alone, then our members would become afraid of this room. We can only imagine how problematic and counterproductive that would be.”
As she reluctantly sat in the chair, Elder-76 strapped down her arms, legs and head and whispered, “Relax,” which only made Sara more uptight.
The lights were dimmed and a large screen came to life and moved toward her. The screen went from the floor to the ceiling, and wrapped around the chair on each side, encompassing even her peripheral field of vision. The person in the video was defying authority by spitting at a uniformed officer and throwing rocks at him. A sudden and painful electric shock ran through her body. Sara shrieked and tried to look away. With her head strapped in place, she tried to turn her eyes down, but the screen was still in her field of vision.
She closed her eyes and was rocked by an even stronger shock. This one lasted a full second. She moaned in pain and was shaking.
“Every time you close your eyes, the video will pause and you will be shocked for a full second.” Elder-1 sounded sadistic. “It would be wise to watch the screen, or the session will only be longer and more painful.”
Unable to move her head or shut her eyes, she could not escape the images on the video screen. She felt sick and tried with all her might to shake free. Again she closed her eyes and a shock rammed through her body. A blood-curdling cry erupted from her throat and she felt like she was spitting flames.
For a full hour Sara endured a conditioning program to ingrain respect for authority, observance of their society’s rules, and discomfort with being alone. The next program called for the desensitization of common pleasant and unpleasant emotions.
The most bizarre and frightening part of the conditioning program, called ‘word conditioning,’ was left for the end. She was stuck with a needle as Elder-1 snapped the word, “Ion!”
Sara tried to maintain focus, but suddenly her mind was floating, as if she had left her body. She went limp like a wet noodle and slumped in her chair. As hard as she tried, she could not move her limbs. Were it not for the str
aps being tight, she would have slid to the floor.
Next thing she knew, Sara was looking around in a daze, with people and instruments starting to come into focus. “What happened?”
“You were in an extreme meditative state,” Elder-1 answered.
“It felt like being under twilight anesthesia, but just for a few seconds.” She continued to peer around the room, reconnecting with the real world.
“You were out longer than a few seconds.”
“Couldn’t have been much more,” she said with a little too much confidence. The smirk on Elder-1’s face was nothing short of condescending. “How long?” she asked.
“A full 15 minutes.”
A short while later Sara had to meet with Elder-76 and three of her psychologists. After undergoing a battery of psychological tests she had seen enough words, shapes and pictures, and had answered enough questions, to make her dizzy. Between that and the morning conditioning she had a headache.
After being escorted to her room by just Elder-76, Sara dropped down onto her bed and an involuntary moan escaped her throat. The first morning on the ship was far more physically exhausting and disorienting than she ever could have imagined. But at least she was still alive, and had not yet been impregnated.
“Are we exhausted?” Elder-76 asked.
“Kind of.” Sara did not want to give them the satisfaction of seeing the toll it had taken on her.
Elder-76’s voice was borderline compassionate as she said, “Don’t worry, all of our members go through the same conditioning regimen. The results have been ideal, although for them it starts right after birth and requires fewer repetitions.”
Sitting upright, Sara asked, “What was that drug you injected at the end there?”
“A proprietary narcotic, but do not worry. Narcotics are only used for so long to send a person out and bring them back. Inevitably that person will slip in and out of a deep meditative state just by hearing the specific trigger words, verbalized in specific tones. That is why we refer to it as word conditioning. We have a trigger word to send one out, and a separate trigger word to bring them back.”
“You do that to offspring, while their brains are just developing?”
“No. We should have clarified that. The word conditioning does not start until a member reaches the age of 12, and continues every month for the rest of their lives.”
“Why would you need any word conditioning at that point? We imagine that by the age of 12, everyone does what they’re told around here,” Sara noted facetiously. She would not have been so sarcastic with Elder-1.
“The deep meditative state with the word conditioning serves to clear the mind entirely and is quite therapeutic,” she said in her bewitching voice. “But there is another purpose, which is simply to reinforce the conditioning process. It is for calibration. Like training dogs, conditioning and training must be regularly reinforced as not to lose the effect. Even if you don’t re-condition a dog for every trick, it is advisable that one regularly reinforces conditioning in general.”
“Like dogs?” She raised her eyebrows.
“It is the same principle, but it is true that everyone conforms to the expectations and rules of our society, so it would not be used for punishment.” Elder-76 paused and then seemed to have a recollection. “Actually, there was one time, the only time we can recall in the last ten years when it was used for something other than routine conditioning. One of our male members had a slight mental disorder, or we had a failure in the conditioning process, which we did not identify early on. He became quite attached to one of the female members, and assaulted another male member during a sexual activity period. When we went to remove him, he resisted violently, so we had to use the word conditioning to put him in a deep meditative state. We decided to pull him out and try conditioning him again.”
“You had to pull him out of that meditative state? You mean someone doesn’t come out of it on their own?”
“No, we must stop it and bring them back. Otherwise, they will be lost in meditative space for eternity and never return to reality. Soon after, their body just shuts down and they die and there is nothing we can do about it. We learned that the hard way early on. But for this particular maladjusted member, after medical and psychological testing, we developed a conditioning program to cure him of his afflictions—his attachment to one person and his propensity for violence. Since then he has been perfectly conforming.”
“We could see violence and hostility being a problem, but an attachment to one person is considered an affliction?” She looked taken aback.
Elder-76 nodded. “Very much so.”
Sara contemplated for a moment. “What if one of your members gets mad at another? Can’t they just yell that word, Ion?”
Smiling, Elder-76 shook her head and her white hair swayed. “No. Besides the fact that you don’t see anger from our members, they are unable to say words that start with the sound…” She pointed at the corner of her eye.
“Sorry,” Sara said, realizing she had slipped and used a long ‘I.’ Thank God Elder-1 wasn’t there. “So how many more of these conditioning sessions do we have to go through?”
“For you, about 60. Every day for two months and then on a monthly basis thereafter. It takes twice as long for those not conditioned from birth. For you, the specific techniques are a little different than the ones used for those who were raised on the ships, but please do not worry. The results will be the same and you will find the ultimate peace. With some conditioning techniques, notably the word conditioning, you could be almost 100 percent conditioned after just a handful of sessions.”
With this last sentence, Sara shuddered. She felt a sense of dread at the thought of not having control of her own body, or mind, as if she were a zombie. After just a handful of sessions? she repeated in her mind. That quick? We have to get off these ships before it’s too late.
Sara noticed a hand touching the opaque glass from the outside. She heard a scratching sound as a palm ran over the rough surface, and then the door quickly opened. She was caught staring.
Elder-1 entered and said, “You look inquisitive. You are wondering why we frosted the glass on your window?”
Sara nodded.
“We need to limit any potential interaction with our members. We cannot risk you corrupting them.”
“Corrupting them?” Sara asked, she feared too abruptly. “Sorry, Sir. How so?”
“Because you are too different,” Elder-1 answered. “You are a product of the old society, a society that thrived on stress and conflict. That does not exist here. Utopia only exists when we lead stress-free lives. People in the old society grew up conditioned with expectations and perceived needs that could not be addressed without stress to themselves or others. People in the old world so often felt inadequate, unfulfilled, undesirable, or exactly the opposite. But as long as people valued wealth, land, and material possessions, they would always strive to have more than everyone else. As long as people believed in different religions, or that races were not equal, they would always fight for supremacy over those different from themselves. Here, we do not stress over any of these things because we have no regard for them.”
Sara was careful with her words. “We,” she pointed at herself, “have no regard for much of that either, but how are you able to keep your people completely isolated from these things?” Sara was convinced that this was not possible in any society.
“They were raised on our ships, without any interaction with the outside world, other than the fully trained elders, and we must keep it that way. That is why we cannot have you interacting with them. Since birth, our offspring have been isolated, and have been conditioned to a different set of societal values and norms. All of their basic needs are fulfilled, and without real stress. Our members just perform their regularly assigned, but important, duties on the ships. They don’t have the socially defined bars that existed in the old world.”
“Aren’t you basically doing the
same thing, but just re-establishing the socially defined bar?” Although she was horrified, Sara found herself oddly curious.
“Maybe so, but it is a greatly lowered bar,” he held up his open hands, “and it is met every day by all. The needs we have established do not require, or create, real stress for the bar to be reached. The members still feel challenged, but none of them ever feel worthless, inadequate, or lack self-esteem. And why not? Because they simply do not compete with each other and are not attached to each other. Remember, the bar seems low to you, but it is not to them. It is all they know. It is what they’ve grown up with.”
Sara was careful that her tone was not flippant as she asked, “People’s real needs can be met with this ‘greatly lowered bar’?”
Elder-76 jumped in and answered, with a voice much softer than Elder-1’s, “Yes, they can, and that is why our members feel fulfilled, and are so much at peace. People’s real needs are quite simple, and can be broken down into two areas; mental and physical. The need for mental stimulation is more than provided for here, through many activities and brain challenges with varying levels of complexity. Physical needs are provided for through exercise, games and regularly scheduled group sexual activities. To eliminate attachments and competition between individuals, we always rotate partners for both mental and physical activities, and people interact in groups.”
“Why do you eliminate attachments between individuals? If you never give them a chance to choose partners, they will never know the beauty and fulfillment of some attachments.” She was thinking of Kid.
Elder-1 shook his head. “One big problem in many cultures in the old world…”
He really despised the old world. She sensed another rant coming.
“… was the formal tying together of two individuals. After the early phases of a relationship, which often included heavy physical stimulation, couples were left with primarily companionship. For the sake of this companionship and vows that were sworn to, people would often not seek physical stimulation from others when they really did need and require it. This caused nothing but unhappiness and frustration. Here, companionship and physical stimulation are separated, yet both are enhanced. The members have fulfilling companionship through their interactions with others every day, and separately they have stimulating physical activities. To avoid the common pitfalls of attachments between individuals, we routinely change the member groupings for all activities. That way, they come to rely on the system to meet their needs, and not any other specific members.”