JeVon took another sip of coffee and sat down at the workstation. Twenty-eight video monitors were positioned around him, set in a loose curve...
Four showed the outside grounds. Nothing happening there. Same with the views of two empty hallways, the rec room and the intake pod.
Most of the others were aimed the inmates. Suffering.
He looked from screen to screen, and a smile crept over his face. Finally, he reached out and turned on the recorder.
"Re-ed center 319... March 6, 2012, oh-nine-hundred. Franklin reporting. All inmates are sleeping. No signs of anxiety or improper activity."
He clicked the button again, to turn the microphone off. Edelstein was cumming - again! - and Alatorre was being drilled so hard that he couldn't stop rocking violently from side to side. The effort didn't seem to be helping him deal with all those brushes.
JeVon watched him, chuckling softly. As he dug a joint out of his shirt pocket, his eyes scanned the monitors... and he pressed another button.
Mason appeared on one of the large screens. He was arching. At least a dozen gloves were really sticking it to him.
Lighting up, JeVon leaned back and enjoyed the show.
He was the clinical director of Reeducation Center 319. The pay was nothing special - but the fringe benefits were unbelievable...
There was no way he'd expected to land this job. Not with his piss-poor evaluations. The clinical advisor had never really liked him, and JeVon was rapidly deciding he'd picked the wrong major. But these places were sprouting up like weeds, and it turned out he was a perfect fit. He followed regulations, and he didn't improvise. His boss, in St. Louis, liked him. And she was almost three hundred miles away.
So JeVon - straight out of college - was managing a staff of five. Two cooks, one woman who managed to turn doing the laundry into a full-time job, a maintenance-and-security guy and an assistant director.
Everyone who had been working at the place when it opened ten months ago was still there. Hell, they weren't crazy. This was the deal of a lifetime.
The whole setup was perfect. Ever since "seditious attitudes" had been declared to be unpatriotic in '09, there were hundreds of re-ed centers like this. Automated. And this one had extra "helpers." JeVon knew about at least four other facilities with this kind of volunteer staff. His boss was clueless about 'em.
If everybody was careful, the higher-ups would never find out.
Most of his staff was in on it. So was Tayla, the younger cook. They basically let the invisible fuckers run the show, covering for 'em when necessary... Hell, they hardly had to do any work at all. In the mornings Sakishi walked around with his tool belt on, and then he went home. Gomez was the only other one who was allowed to observe the inmates, and he liked weed even more than JeVon did.
And yet the place ran like clockwork. He and Gomez were supposed to keep the inmates clean - and their cells - which had sounded like the only part of the job that really sucked. But all that was being taken care of too. It was excellent. All JeVon had to do was keep the reports going out to St. Louis, and the requisition forms... Respond to memos. Shit like that.
His boss was responsible for overseeing eighteen centers like 319. She'd postponed the annual walkthrough until next fiscal year - which probably meant early '11. He was on his own.
At least until then, the inmates would keep on laughing their guts out.
Life was good.
After watching Mason laugh for awhile, he sighed and pulled up the day-plan.
Two updates to regulatory manuals, and three memos. He sent off the acknowledgements - and in less than a minute, he was done with any official communication for the day. Next week there were three employee evaluations to send off, but they were already done - vague and meaningless, which was what it took for them to be approved and filed away. JeVon hadn't written them. He didn't fill out the material requisitions anymore, either... but the deliveries kept coming. Discretionary funds were used for cases of oil, big sacks of feathers, lots of restraints which showed up every week like clockwork, wicked-looking toys - and new inmates, of course.
Flagged in one Homeland database or another, there was always another man brought in the day after one of'em left. They weren't mentally ill, and they weren't criminals - yet. They just needed to become enlightened and patriotically correct.
That could take a long time.
Since they weren't dangerous - and there were so many of them - it was decided they could be overseen by computers... and a director who barely got it together enough to earn a four-year degree in public sociology. The inmates' contact with staff and each other was minimized, so they'd concentrate on all the new information they were being given.
At re-ed center 319, that was taken to a new extreme. They would see JeVon - once, when they were shown to their room - and no one else. After that, the real "staff" took control of their ass.
The welfare reports were due by April 1. JeVon scowled at the screen - why was that always being added to his task list? They were already done. All he had to do was add the digital signature and send them off at the right time. As if the helpers couldn't sign the damn things themselves, anytime they wanted, just like everything else...
Hell, they were meaningless anyway. The inmate is in perfect physical health, showing considerable progress, and so on. Hundreds of reports, arriving at St. Louis to be checked in and forgotten. They bored JeVon, and he knew his boss thought they were a joke - but the rules had to be followed.
Nothing else to do... except greet the new arrival.
JeVon chuckled out loud.
O'Bannon had left two days ago. Sound asleep, drooling. They were always like that when he helped carry 'em out to the transport van. Those drivers had come to expect it. But thirty-four days of "reeducation" had made O'Bannon a changed man. He had learned the importance of being a good citizen. The benefits of civic duty had been made clear - and, of course, he'd be monitored carefully. Any unpatriotic behavior, such as telling anyone the wild "dreams" he'd had during reeducation, was a guaranteed way to get more of the same. Probably right there in 319 again. They all kept their mouths shut, and acted like model citizens from then on...
But JeVon had seen five exceptionally ticklish inmates be hauled back in for advanced "enlightenment". And there was always the cellar.
Iversen would be arriving at fourteen-hundred.
His room was empty and waiting.
JeVon watched the breakfast trays pop out of the service chutes, and stood up. He had himself a toke as he looked at the screens again. Nodding to himself, he went to his apartment - only he and Gomez lived on the grounds, which was just another perk as far as he was concerned - and took a nap. The "auxiliary staff" would feed the inmates and wake him up right before the new guy got there.
Iversen sat in the back of the secure-car, looking scared.
JeVon hated him on sight. Jock. Clear blue eyes, and straight teeth. Not an ounce of fat on him. Women had probably been drawn to him like flies. Despite the light blonde hair which almost touched his shoulders, Iversen looked like a choirboy...
A worried boy scout, right now - looking over his shoulder as the big door rolled down.
The driver got out. He carried a cardboard box over to a doctor or something, a black guy with a lab coat on. They seemed cheerful enough, to Iversen. Maybe the place wouldn't be too bad...
He had no idea why he'd been tagged. Nobody told him what he was supposed to have done wrong, and he's racked his brain trying to think of something. But it was happening more and more often. One or two people a month were picked up - but the cops who had come to get him had said it could be nothing more than a three-day deal, like a really dull seminar... if he cooperated. He was anxious to go along, because if he didn't get back to school in a week he'd have to wait until next spring to take some of his classes again, and graduation would be another year away...
Play along, his dad had said. Cooperate. You can't fight city hall. Do whatever they tell you - or it could get really ugly.
The doctor-type signed a wireless tablet, and the driver came back over. He pulled Iversen's duffle bag out of the back - but at least he set it down gently on the concrete floor.
Then, finally, he opened the door to the passenger compartment.
"Out," the guy said. He wasn't much older than Iversen, and he didn't seem like an asshole or anything. Just doing his job. "Get it over with."
Iversen nodded, and climbed out.
JeVon opened the door, and gestured...
With a last look at his duffle bag, the fucker walked right into the trap.
When the intake pod was sealed, he opened the garage door and listened for the car to leave.
"Do you speak English?," JeVon said quietly.
"Yes."
"I'm Dr. Adams," JeVon lied. "I run this place. Your personal property will be inspected and cataloged, of course..." The inmate finally nodded. "Everything you need to know will be answered when you're in your room. You will be continuously monitored. There are stunners trained on you at all times - on both of us. You understand what they can do?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
JeVon waved his hand, and the inner door unlocked. He opened it and stood back. "I am going to emphasize only two things, and every other question will be answered during the awareness training," he said, walking behind Iversen and well out of his reach. The pretty boy was alert, looking at the closed doors as he walked past 'em... but he wasn't all tense and ready to do something stupid, so JeVon relaxed a little. "One - you have not been indicted or sentenced, so there is no requirement that you stay here for any set length of time." And no limit on it either, he thought spitefully. "Despite whatever you have heard, about these places, some men have left this facility and been returned to their homes after only seventy-two hours." That was true - and only because of a complete lack of tactile responsiveness, in one case, while the other guy had a bad heart murmur.
"Two," JeVon said gruffly, "I am the director of this center, but I am here in an administrative capacity. That means your awareness training is being run by computers. They'll personalize and evaluate everything. They're watching all the time, so they're totally aware of what you need, at every moment, to get the most out of the reeducation program. Do you understand?"
"Uh... yeah," Iversen said. He looked baffled, though.
"Stop walking." To their right, a door clicked. Iversen looked back at him - nervously. Good.
JeVon folded his arms. "The nearest door is yours. The one that just clicked. Go inside. Use the bathroom, if you need to. Food is in the little kitchen unit... In five minutes, the TV will turn on and an orientation video will begin."
Iversen nodded again, and walked inside.
The door closed with a nice, solid sound.
He saw a widescreen monitor, first - and then a plain wooden table. Iversen hadn't expected to see either of the items which sat there. Waiting. One was an open pack of cigarettes, which had been outlawed over a year ago.
The other thing was a black-and-white feather.
It had to be a test, so he didn't even stare at them.
The monitor clicked on...
Silently, the sedation gas valve opened.
Not four minutes into the boring orientation video, his head lolled...
A cabinet opened. Six black gloves floated out. One carried a blindfold.
He wasn't quite asleep, but the drug left plenty of room for doubt. That was intentional. Inmates had no way of knowing at first that the wild things - which "couldn't" really happen to them - were anything more than dreams. By the time they knew better, the magical hands tending to them had already mapped out a mind-bending plan for personal reconstruction.
With the blindfold on, Iversen was half-carried to the bed and undressed. Cuffs and straps were laid out, all ready to go - but for now the gloves just spread his limbs and pinned each one down.
The feather came to life and levitated directly to his right foot.
JeVon laughed as the initial survey numbers came in. How did they find guys this sensitive? Setting 'em up, so the cops would haul 'em right in for endless fuckin' reeducation. With ribs and armpits this touchy, Iversen wouldn't see daylight until next year.
On his computer screen, another window opened...
The inmate's file.
Aliases begain to appear, one character after another. One of them was followed by a star -
"Uh-oh," JeVon laughed. "You're a goner."
In the appropriate comments field, the letters started racing across the screen. That alias was used by a man suspected of principal involvement in Knotted Snake, an anarchist group believed to be directly responsible for the firebombing of three agency offices and a border checkpoint. Automatic indefinite hold - a neutralized person of interest.
"There it is," JeVon whispered to the screen. Oh, they had unbelievable plans for this stud. A permanent flag like that in his file, well...
Marks and tattoos - the word "None" disappeared, letter by letter... and was replaced. Green snake tattoo wrapping around left forearm. Red snake tattoo wrapping around right forearm. Burning US flag, right shoulder. Words FUCK THE SYSTEM, left shoulder. Fire and flame motif across shoulder blades. Mural of skulls, guns, knives and fire across chest and abdomen. Anarchy symbol, left calf. Gloved fists in fighting posture emerging from large grey clouds, right calf. Cartoon of angry barbarian with horned helmet and cigar in mouth, left side of neck. Word FREE on knuckles of left hand. Word FIRE on knuckles of right hand.
Turn out the lights, JeVon thought. They'd only gone this far with three other guys. Iversen was in for the ride of his life, alright.
The suspect displays a pathological obsession with the overthrow of the federal government - that's what they typed in the "initial assessment summary" field. JeVon whistled, chuckling to himself.
Iversen had the weirdest dream. Laughing, and giggling -
He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. Did he get undressed? Totally naked, and here of all places. It seemed like he's remember doing something like that. He looked around the dimly lit room and sighed, easing back down.
He heard a click.
The sound wasn't familiar to him... but a small flame hovered over the table.
There were more things on it. The most pressing concern was the lighter - that's what it was - and the cigarette that was held next to it.
"Hey!" he said -
Hands grabbed his arms, pinning him to the mattress. He couldn't see them. That was scary.
As he struggled to get free, the gloves by the table went ahead and got the cigarette burning, turning it slowly over the tip of the flame. Just gloves. What the hell was going on?
The lighter went out, and the cigarette was set down in the ashtray which now sat there...
The monitor powered up.
"Infraction," it said. Pre-recorded voice -
A no-smoking symbol appeared.
"Wait a minute," he snapped, getting pissed off.
"Illegal activity," the voice announced smoothly. "Tobacco use."
"It wasn't me!" he yelled, trying to pull his arms loose.
"Three-day extension -"
"No!"
The monitor went blank again.
At the table, a glove moved. Picking up something else -
"I didn't... do it," he protested. "They - uh - it isn't fair!"
"Don't light that," Iversen yelled. "Help. Help me, somebody, I'm being... framed -"
The joint was lit, and moved slowly back and forth. The sensors picked up the scent.
Another "No" symbol, with a joint inside.
"Illegal activity."
"I didn't do it!"
"Cannabis use. Seven-day extension. Additional."
"No!," Iversen shouted at the monitor.
One glove pinched the coal off the joint - saving it for later, obviously - and the other brought the cigarette toward him.
"Aw no, no, no..."
The monitor went dark.
They've got you now, JeVon thought. Nothing in the world could override those extensions. Every cigarette would lengthen his stay.
He loved how they used the computers to lend authority to what they liked best. Not many inmates figured out that the real training had been cancelled by the phantoms in their room. And now they had weeks and weeks to play with Iversen, introducing him to his new, shady life. All they had to do - well, all they had to have JeVon do - was transmit the revised inmate record.
By the time he did that, he was thrilled to see that the cuffs were already on the new stud. Straps were being pulled tight, by no visible means... The boy scout didn't want to smoke, huh?
Six more gloves cruised out of the cabinet and over to their new toy. One of them carried a bottle of oil.
It wasn't until he discovered that his pack was empty that JeVon glanced at the clock. Three hours? Really?
The gloves had just started back in - for the sixth time. Iversen was fuckin' extraordinary. Even by the standards of what JeVon had seen before, the kid was so incredibly wild and ticklish that it was almost too hard to watch...
But naturally JeVon got over that during the first hour. It was the perfect combination of artist and material. He was demonstrating why they'd soundproofed all of the rooms so heavily - because when somebody like Iversen was discovered, the sadistic helpers sure didn't want anybody coming around to investigate.
He'd end up in the cellar. No doubt about it.
The wailing, squealing laughter was hypnotic. JeVon knew, as the new guy didn't, that he was in for a night he'd never forget. Followed by another. A hundred more, like this - and the helpers would continually learn how to make it ache a little bit more. If he thought this blitz was hard to take, well - damn.
His feet were obviously so ticklish that he couldn't scream hard enough.
Every day was going to be more excruciating than the last. When the brushes started, he actually began to vibrate like he was being shocked or something. His nipples, and his knees - one or the other - were so pathetically sensitive that he stopped laughing abruptly when they were handled. But his mouth hung open. Looking around himself, Iversen seemed to be searching for anyone or anything that might give him something to hold onto.
The fingers were raking up and down his sides in a phenomenally effective way. Brushes covered his gut - and that was one skittish navel, there - and did barbarically methodical things to the soft, ticklish wrinkles on his soles...
Over the next few weeks, JeVon is fascinated by the change.
Tattoos wrap around taut muscle - just empty outlines at first, growing together into a wild assortment of shapes and objects, colors dulled enough to look like they've been there for years, lines fuzzy, confirming the forged record of Iversen's outlaw past.
When he's not delirious, he's made to sit at the table for hours, wearing gloves. Getting cigarettes and lighting them, sucking hard, punching them out, reaching for another one. A cocky style, tough and rebellious... and his hands are shown what to do. A hundred times, two hundred - and there's always beer or whiskey close by, sometimes forced down him if he resists the natural urge to soothe his dry throat.
Sometimes when the gloves peel off his hands, he doesn't promptly help himself to a smoke - so hours of tickling are in order. Howling, screaming torture. Pitiless stimulation. By then, he's obedient and ready to smoke some more.
The marijuana is brought to him next, of course.
When he knows his way around a joint, as from years of mindless experience, Iversen will move on to that first cigar.
The extensions keep ratcheting up his total number of days to an utterly meaningless number. Every cigarette or joint lit is noted. Used against him.
When he's not prolonging his reeducation with more smoke or eating a meal, nearly every other waking minute is filled with the kind of stimulation which absolutely requires hard restraints. A dream, a fantasy, full afternoons and nights of arousal and contact which is adjusted and tuned for maximum effect.
It seems like there's just enough hours in a day to make him suffer and smoke much as the helpers would like.
All of the monitors change to the same image - the cellar hallway.
Here he comes. Hands cuffed behind him, taking an angry drag, Iversen is being marched to his permanent cell...
These four months have made an incredible change in him. It's so much more than the tattoos. His eyes look so dangerous. Now this, JeVon thinks, is just the kind of vicious animal you want locked up for good. Away from society.
Iversen now looks every bit as sinister and incorrigible as his file says he is. The cigarette sits just right between his lips, as much a part of him now as his nose or his tats. He doesn't even seem to be aware he's tugging on it - hell, he's even past looking around at the surroundings. It's a cellar, with a few doors, and he knows exactly why the fuck the helpers are hiding him away.
JeVon - the only one on earth who knows where he is - is allowed to watch one brooding, tattooed felon enter the dark dungeon, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. Then the thick door swings in, with several locks turning and clicking just as soon as it stops moving -
Iversen's file appears onscreen.
The letters that now appear are telling JeVon that the kid was transferred to a long-term facility three months ago. Further down on the screen, it says that Iversen was accidentially released because of an error in the paperwork. Extremely dangerous, subject to arrest on sight... and still at large.
"That's funny," he says to himself. "I could've sworn I just saw him get shoved into the tickling dungeon from hell."
The monitors switched back to displaying what they usually did. Already, JeVon was sure, the secret door to the cellar was disguised again. There wasn't even a sublevel on the blueprints -
He used to think that an inspection would bring an end to the fun of the invisible helpers. But the more he learned about government workers - well, there was little chance his boss or anyone else would even learn there was a cellar. If the "upstairs" inmates were cleaned up and all of the feathers were hidden away, there wasn't much of a chance that anyone except him and Gomez would know what was going on right now, below his feet - no doubt as thoroughly as Iversen and the others there could stand. The secret would be kept - exhaustive tickling being unleashed until an hour before the inspector arrived, and would certainly continue only minutes after his boss or any other visitors left the grounds.
All that remains now is burning Iversen's personal effects. His duffle bag is sitting in the closet of his old room, still packed. JeVon grabs it.
Turning to go, he sees a pack of cigarettes on the table. So he gets himself one...
Before he's done exhaling - maybe two steps from the damn hallway - the door closes in his face.
"Infraction," a calm voice says.
"What?," he says, grinning nervously. "Hey."
"Illegal activity," the voice announced smoothly. "Tobacco use."
"Director override... uh, seven-eight-beta-three," JeVon barks, relieved that he remembered the current code.
"Invalid."
"Why? You better open this door, dammit. Now!"
"Mister Gomez is the interim director of Reeducation Center 319."
Gloves were coming. They brought leather restraints in his direction - oh, fuck, was that a hood?
"No no no no. No!"
"Chronic use of mind-altering substances is unpatriotic," the recorded voice said.
A glove raced ahead of the rest and grabbed his left wrist. "No. I'm the director. Stop - help! Gomez -"
"Full detoxification and assessment is mandated by the 'Clean Living Act of 2010.'"
Not that. It couldn't be - not him! More and more hands clamped around his arms, then his calves.
"But... No. Not an indefinite," he wailed, being pulled toward the bed. Extensions weren't even counted, during detox. An open-ended sentence -
The TV screen changes.
"No," he whispers. "No. I won't tell. You know me!"
But they're not taking any chances. Until the transfer can be made - to a very secret cell somewhere - the staff is going to make sure JeVon can't tell anybody anything. And there's no doubt in his mind about what he'll be doing, right in here, long after the asshole was moved. Weeks... No, who was he kidding? Months.
Gomez wouldn't dare do anything to stop it - not that he'd ever bother to look at the monitors.
Iversen's photo - a shot of the way he looked that first day, before they'd even tickled him at all - is blocked from JeVon's view by the hood being tugged over his face.
11jul05