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📖 Weekly Short Story

The Only Punishment by Ville V. Kokko

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The floor of the room was white, but three of the walls and the ceiling were light blue. His own bland pajamas were light green.

It was probably supposed to be calming, but it only angered Rats. He knew what this was—a fregging brainwashing facility, that’s what. It didn’t matter how nice they were trying to be. It was just a part of it.

He glanced angrily at the glass wall. It was the only window in the room, made of thick and unbreakable glass, and it showed nothing but a garden, so overgrown it looked more like a forest. Of course, this was supposed to be a nice view. Pretty trees and flowers and a pretty little fregging stream. It was so fregging blatant that he wondered how stupid the Authorities could be. Admittedly, he’d spent a lot of time staring at it while he was in his cell, but that was only because there was nothing else to do. The room was almost bare, with a bunk and a table and a side door to a small bathroom—and the big, unmovable door that led outside.

Of course, even Rats himself admitted it was in some ways better than where he used to live. But he’d still choose his old hole any day. It may have been stinky and loud and no bigger than this cell—but it was his. And he knew he wasn’t going to walk out brainwashed to be a nice little fregging sheep when he went there.

Of course, Rats knew he could have been a better person. Nobody was perfect, and especially not in the slums. You couldn’t afford it. But he was a good person, he knew that, as much as he could be. He stood up for his mates and helped people in need when he could afford to. He kept his word and his honor.

At one point, he’d even told it to them, when a couple of them were escorting him to one of their stupid, ineffective brainwashing sessions. He tried his best, he’d told them. The “crimes” they’d arrested him for, they had no idea what was really happening. Sure, he’d been violent, probably even killed someone—so what? They’d attacked first, and not just once. Of course, if you just came swooping to the scene in your fregging flying car at that moment, it would look like he was attacking, but it really wasn’t like that. And if these guys were allowed to punish you for wrongdoing, why couldn’t the people on the streets bust some heads too? Rats would never have hurt someone who didn’t deserve it. And he lived down there, in the slums in the ruins—he knew what was going on and he had the right. These guys just came from somewhere outside and started kidnapping and brainwashing people.

Rats had seen what the victims became like, and they were too bad even for pity—he despised them. Like that tweet who ran the Charity Church. Of course, Rats had nothing against helping people, but he was such a fregging eunuch. Besides, he helped everyone equally, the zips and tooks as well as decent White people. Rats could even have understood staying outside the gangs and helping everyone regardless, but feeding the pests was only going to end up bad for everyone. Every time you helped a zip, you might as well be kicking a real person in the face.

But no, these high-and-mighty Authorities thought they knew everything better and made you love everyone equally. They’d never been ganged up on by the tooks or listen to yet another sobbing woman having been raped by the zips. They were “tolerant,” which meant they only thought it was a crime if White people did it.

And the worst crime of all—wasn’t that just what they were doing? Brainwashing good people to be like them? Truth be told, Rats feared nothing as much as it working on him. So far, it was having no effect at all, but he sensed vaguely that there was going to be more. And everyone knew it worked on almost anyone.

Everyone also knew that if it didn’t, they’d just kill you. He was hoping they’d kill him.

Rats stared morosely out of the window. There were colorful birds in the trees. That almost cheered him up.

Some guards opened the door to bring in food. He’d tried fighting his way past them once, but it had been no use. He didn’t even remember what happened other than that he’d been out cold almost immediately and woken up later with his meal neatly laid out and getting cold. The food was good, he had to admit, but he still ate grudgingly and left some over.

He took a nap, knowing that soon after lunch, it would be brainwashing time again. Sure enough, he was awoken by the sound of the door opening again.

“Hello,” Jeremy said and stepped inside, flanked by a couple of guards. They also said hello, and one of them picked up his plate. Jeremy sounded friendly enough, and the two guards sounded business-like, but of course Rats wasn’t fooled.

Jeremy was Rats’ personal brainwasher. He was tall and stout and wore a mustache he could have done without, though Rats wasn’t about to give him any fregging fashion tips. He must have been specifically trained to be pleasant; Rats sometimes found it hard to hate him, even knowing what he did. He even seemed a little sorry that they were doing this to Rats, although he’d also expressed a firm opinion that Rats had done wrong.

“You come to take me in for brainwashing?” Rats said sarcastically. He sensed that, carefully though Jeremy hid his feelings, calling it that was one thing that got to him.

Jeremy looked down at him inscrutably. “Actually, yes. Today we do what you would call the brainwashing.”

It was an instinctive reaction. Rage and despair exploded Rats from where he was sitting on the bed and out toward his tormentors. He might have torn out Jeremy’s throat.

But of course, he got nowhere. One of the guards pulled out some fancy techno weapon and pointed and clicked him into unconsciousness.

When Rats woke up, he found that he was tethered to a wheelchair. He also found that he was drugged somehow, because the thought of raging in despair died as soon as it was born. His head was fuzzy and there was an odd sense of pleasure. So, he had to contend himself with a quiet, nagging sense of despair.

“Aw, hell,” he muttered, leaning his head back on a pillow.

“I’m sorry about this.”

Rats turned his head to the side and saw Jeremy, walking by him. And he saw that they were just about to walk past a door—room 3B, where all the previous brainwashing sessions had taken place.

So this was really it. It was going to be something different—the part where they broke you.

Idly, he wondered what all the other sessions had been about. He’d thought it had been ridiculous. They’d put this cap with all the wires on his head, and he’d been so furious and terrified they’d had to drug him like this at first, but then they’d done almost nothing. They’d just given him... history lessons. Things he didn’t care about and barely paid attention to, though the device had forcibly input it in his brain and he’d noticed bits of it had stuck.

It was about the history of the City, and how the Authorities had come to be there. A lot of stuff about how it had once been a great, wealthy city where life had been much better, but then there had been a civil war and a collapse... And then the Authorities had come and they just had to do something. So they started a police force, and they started applying the dreaded Punishment. They didn’t want to, but, the brain-movies said, they couldn’t leave things as they were...

There had been more to it—whole three sessions of history—but this seemed to have been the point. And, as the drug’s effect began to weaken, Rats realized something about this was starting to terrify him. Something that his brain had been working out on his own, while he wasn’t looking, from all the stuff shoved into it. He could feel the dull terror before he was able to articulate the thought in his mind.

They really believed in it. They really believed they had to do this. They really wanted to help. That was why they were so fregging apologetic all the time; they even knew what they were doing was bad, but they thought they had to do it.

Thinking all this only took a few seconds. “It doesn’t matter, you know,” Rats heard himself saying.

“Pardon?”

Rats waved a hand, though it was a very small wave since his wrist was restrained. “Doesn’t matter what you’re all doing this for, Jeremy. It’s still fregging brainwashing. It’s just wrong. You can’t do that to me, period. Doesn’t matter what your reasons.”

Jeremy sighed. “I know what you mean. But you’re also wrong—it’s not at all as bad as you think. And you do have a choice, in the end. And no, we won’t kill you if you don’t do as we want.”

“Like freg you won’t.”

“Of course, I also know all of these are things real brainwashers would tell you beforehand. All I can say is, wait and see.”

“Wait until I’m brainwashed and see?”

“I know, I know...”

“Because I can’t make a choice after that, can I? You’ve... already made it for me.”

“I know. It’s not really... but there’s no point in talking about this. And even though it’s not like you imagine, we still think it might be a bad thing, because it’s still too much like brainwashing. But we’ve also seen the alternative. And really, in some ways it’s a lot like if you were simply educated the right way when you were little...”

Rats laughed hollowly. His head was starting to clear, although there was liable to be a migraine. Still, he didn’t feel like fighting now.

“I hope I’ll die. I’d rather. And in a sense, maybe I will, anyway, if there’s nothing left but your zombie slave.”

Jeremy didn’t reply. Instead, he opened a door: Room A1.

“We’re here.”

Rats was past despair and fear. He didn’t struggle. This was going to be the end for him anyway; all he wanted to do now was to guilt Jeremy, to somehow show him that he was wrong and Rats was right. To somehow show this nice man that he was killing him.

The thought that Jeremy was killing him out of kindness was almost scarier than the same thought about the Authorities, because Jeremy had a face, was a man. Rats found himself for the first time less afraid of what would happen to him and more spiritually terrified at the state of humankind. Atrocities done for good intentions, how did you cope with that? They were walking around doing evil things and they thought they were good. He’d met hypocrites and idiots before, of course, but this was all so... so philosophical.

As in Room 3B, there was a chair with restraints in front of a monitor, with ominous technothingies hanging over it and on its sides. Rats let himself be attached without opposition, with only a shiver.

The complicated plastic harness on his head was even more complicated this time. It took minutes for Jeremy and some others to put it on. Finally, they told him to relax. A big text saying “TESTING” solidified slowly into his view. It wasn’t on the monitor but seemingly hovering in the air and move with his eyes. This, too, was familiar.

“Need some adjustments at 36 and 42,” someone said out of sight. Someone fiddled with the probes atop his skull. TESTING came up again, looking just the same in his opinion, but this time they deemed everything to be working all right.

At least the clamps on his head were comfortable. He could even move his neck a little and lean on a kind of pillow. It would still get uncomfortable, he knew this from experience, but only after several minutes.

Then he began to see auras and his head swam. He could feel his hair standing up from the electricity. It was beginning.

Rats blacked out very briefly, and when he came back to, his mind was floating in a fuzzy imaginary space that mostly concealed the reality around him. He remembered where he was but couldn’t really see or feel or hear it. Nor smell. Instead, a familiar smell rose up; something mildly unpleasant but familiar, a smell whose origin he didn’t know and that he had barely noticed before. A smell from his home streets.

It felt almost as if he was there again. They were raising up his memories, or feeding him a new version of them—who knew. He had a vague sense at first of just being there, superficially skipping through all kinds of familiar scenarios. Then the show began.