Cease and Desist

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his “room.”

The prison had been constructed in 2077, and it had been designed by John Berkel.

This was the same John Berkel who’d been responsible for the monstrosity that was New York’s new Conspiratorial Sanitarium which had also been known as “Cs” (pronounced “cease”), the first sister of these new establishments, and- being the first of the two- had finalized its construction and was fully occupied by the end of 2062.

Berkel had a unique style that made him extremely popular amongst the elite of reformed prison systems in the United States, and his reputation had spread to every civilized spot of land on earth.

Unlike the reinforced-steeled criminal universities about the globe with their newly established, state-of-the-art medicinal distribution systems and their radically redesigned reeducation approaches, Berkel’s prisons resembled the penitentiaries of the Pennsylvania model established back in the Quaker days of America’s 1700s. The cells- which were later dubbed his “rooms”- were hard, cold and made of stone, furnished only with a bucket and a mat. A pamphlet, squares of toilet paper, food and water were delivered and then taken away twice throughout the day, everyday until the subjects receiving them were deemed “potential” and moved.

A slot at the bottom of the cell door was one of only two openings to anywhere outside those four walls. The other could be located on the opposing wall. This was one square inch in diameter nearing the top of the wall and led to the outside world.

John Berkel had studied the psychological effects a prison could have on its inmates, and among depression, self-condemnation, boredom, and anxiety, there was a common and, perhaps, inherent feeling of guilt.

A prisoner who felt guilt- whether motivated by the nature of their crime or the presence of a moral upbringing- was certain to be on a path of redemption, and by 2050, it was widely accepted that all humans were redeemable. “They weren’t criminals,” the extensive studies had shown, “but only lacked proper guidance.”

These occupants weren’t referred to as prisoners, but only “misguided” or, conversely, “potential.”

The “misguided” were kept in the cells, and the “potentials” were kept where the public eye could see them; where the media were allowed to demonstrate the effectiveness of rehabilitation.

However, being stripped of a “criminal” title posed a problem in what the newly reformed prison system had hoped to accomplish in their radical approach. Without the occupants accepting guilt, they were statistically less likely to seek redemption or find motivation to change their learned and destructive behaviors.

“Their environment, in the event of meeting the minimal requirement for survival,” Berkel had said to Congress during a closed session, “constructs a strictly mental concept of guilt while remaining physically health-conscious. The occupants will understand only by self-reflection that they alone are responsible for their current unfavorable conditions, and in this regard, they will adhere to guidelines for becoming a societal ‘potential.’”

He’d made a highly compelling argument. Reducing someone to their own consciousness could be deemed neither “cruel” nor “unusual.” The “misguided” could “only and ever be, first and foremost, guided by themselves.”

Berkel’s newly operational Decorum Systemic “D-Syst” (or “Desist”) was established in Los Angeles, California. Popularized by the success of New York’s “Cs”, it was enthusiastically funded and its construction streamlined. It was rapidly populated after opening its doors, and Jennifer found herself amongst the first of its occupants when she was deemed “misguided” in 2078.

Jennifer was seized when she’d stepped off the porch to receive the weekly Essentials delivery, and without a word to her family, seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.

Worse yet, while she protested and pled with her unknown captors, she was unaware that vanishing might have been preferable to where she was being taken, and as soon as the van had stopped, she was led, blindfolded, through corridors that loudly echoed with every step. She was guided to a room and restrained onto a contraption that resembled a cross.

Once the blindfold was removed, Jennifer saw to her left a seated stenographer and, to her right, a hooded man of considerable girth holding a lethal-looking whip that possessed eight leather strands with each end holding sharp, metallic trinkets resembling Arizona goat-heads the size of marbles.

“Please,” Jennifer began. “My husband and children-“

Before she could speak further, a searing pain across her backside tore from her any thought she’d hoped to express, and a deafening ringing seized her ears. The air was drained effortlessly from her lungs and tears immediately began falling from her eyes.

She’d never in her life experienced anything quite as jarring and horrendous as that very moment. She wasn’t quite certain what had happened right away. The strike had been so quick and the entirety of her eyesight had turned blistering white.

As the ringing began to silence, she could pick up what the stenographer was saying.

“‘-refusing portions of our Essentials is a Liberty they’ve no right to dictate.’ Thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” the hooded man repeated.

“‘Where their blessings upon us are received with gratefulness, our partaking of their portions could, at their mercy, lead us to gluttony and greed.’ Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four,” the hooded man repeated.

Jennifer recognized the words. Those were her words; her mission statement; her plea to the public.

She’d sent it on a massive scale in hopes of being received empathetically and stir some common sense into the community.

She’d been careful to maintain words that wouldn’t upset the establishment, but could only now assume she’d missed something; misspoken.

“Final count of four-thousand, six-hundred and thirty-four words,” the stenographer concluded.

“Four-thousand, six-hundred and thirty-four words,” the hooded man repeated.

It’d taken only two more strikes before she mercifully lost consciousness. The pain had seized her entire being- horror invaded her every thought- and she shut down.

She was being taken to his “room,” where she’d learn speech alone was a punishable offense, and she would otherwise advance in the program with her silence.

When she’d been younger, she understood the world to a conceivable degree, and had even learned to enjoy it as she grew into a pleasant, well-mannered young lady, but now- after she was dumped on her mat and locked away, what little had made sense of the world came to lose all meaning entirely.

Everything she’d had was gone. In here, she had no identity, no familiarity, no family, and at times, she felt even God had come to abandon her to such a cruel fate.

She didn’t move from her spot on the mat, because time ceased to exist as well, and frankly, there was nowhere to go. She wouldn’t count how often the slot was opened and then closed, open and then closed, distributing her food, water, toilet-paper, and a pamphlet; all which she’d ignored for days, but one could only guess.

They’d joked- she and her husband and their friends- how many times?

“They’ll haul you away to Berkel’s Room if you keep talking that malarkey!”

“They’ll take you in the night! ‘Where did Jennifer go?’ Oh- she lost all potential, that one!”

They’d laugh at the expense of those conspiracy-theorists who’d meticulously been relieved from the grips of their paranoia through the program, because the entire rollout of the program had been immensely transparent down to live coverage of the construction of the buildings that would house the “misguided” and “potentials” alike.

They were beautiful, upscale condominiums with community gardens and music. The facilities possessed long, Greek-styled corridors that circled a large recreation yard. They provided reeducation services employing the country’s most highly-trained and regarded professionals of their respective fields. The inhabitants sported white robes and received tranquility in an experience some protested mimicked more of a vacation or spa than any rehabilitation center the public had ever seen.

They’d heard tales of the “rooms,” but they’d been certain it was folklore; drivel from a dying Resistance.

The Resistance had been a turbulent albeit short-lived “militia” dismantled at their earliest sign of terrorism, and at the capture and reeducation of their “misguided” leader, they’d seemingly disassembled and vanished into obscurity. All they’d concerned themselves with was… themselves. The entire idea of a peaceful, pleasant society had always hung in the balance at the whim of such narcissistic rabble-rousers. They said they’d been fighting for everyone’s rights, but the world knew their sort only fought for the right to be offensive.

She’d agreed with the concept of restricting certain liberties for the advancement of mankind, but couldn’t quite conceive the position she was currently in. The fabric of reality had been torn wide open and she was mentally grasping at whatever memories she could obtain to have anything to hold onto. Her entire life had collapsed into a state of crippling vertigo with no handrail for balance.

One political party leaned heavily into the newly applied methods of handling the “misguided” outcasts of society. They believed, inherently, we were born to serve one another, and in the service of others, they would find peace, joy, and love. So, as they saw it, it was essential to our well-being as a nation to do our part in caring for one another or be, otherwise, deemed “misguided.” A “misguided” would be a weakness for the overall impenetrable goodness this society had all the potential to adhere by and be rewarded for.

The opposing party agreed with their sentiments, but insisted it was the free-will of the people that would allow them to love one another; that morality and behavior ought not be governed, but explored with the liberty they had been granted right to by God since the dawn of mankind.

And this was heavily debated in Congress since the long-shot repeal and revision of the country’s first amendment in 2049.

The states ultimately and unanimously agreed that the tongue was, indeed, the most harmful muscle in the human body, and could be considered lethal.

During litigation, it’d been brought to the Supreme Court’s attention that the precedence had been set in 2019; case in point, docket number SCJ-12502; Michelle Carters, Petitioner v the State of Massachusetts in-where the coercion of action to an outside force could and should be punished as the instigator in such matters.

Words were weapons when wielded wrongly.

The world tends to pay attention when tyrants demonstrate their ability to turn entire nations into instruments of death and destruction, and the lives that history could’ve spared by choking those words off from their source were astronomically numerous. Atom bombs hadn’t claimed as many lives since their conception, so there was certainly something to say about the lethal nature of the human tongue.

Redefining just what “freedom” meant was an imminent undertaking; that it did, indeed, have a price; the cost of which would be required of every one of its recipients by methods demonstrated time and again throughout the passing of time: sacrifice.

• • • •

Jennifer didn’t know if she’d been sleeping, but in a moment that seemingly willed itself, she felt alert and wanted to stand from her mat. It’d seemed like it could’ve been months since they last seized her and punished her; months since she’d had to be taken for medical treatment.

She stood immediately to her feet, but as she did so, her legs popped and ached under her own deteriorating weight, yet she brought herself fully tall and, since being brought to his “room,” took in her surroundings.

There wasn’t a lot to take in, and a general, uneasy feeling of helplessness began to seep into her heart. A knot rose in her throat, but she wouldn’t allow the tears begging for release to fall from her eyes. She swallowed hard and lifted her gaze to the smallest window nearly out of reach at the top of the wall.

She could see sunlight peaking through.

Somewhere out in the world, it was just daytime, and the gears remained to turn uninterrupted in their clocks; striking the minutes away despite her not being anywhere in space or time to experience them.

Her breathing became labored as she stacked her mat on top of her overturned bucket and stood atop of them on her tiptoes near the window.

She could see a glimpse… the wind rocking the tops of trees… the clouds crossing the sky… she could see a glimpse of the world she’d so abruptly been abducted from… but if she was being honest with herself, the outside world seemed unknown to her and just as foreign, if not more so, than the walls that dominated the world currently to her back.

She stepped down when her toes began to ache, and she sat on the floor with her back to the wall, curling her knees up into her arms, and she began to cry.

Her whimpers were silent, but this time she let the tears fall as numerous as they cared to be. She shook and trembled, casting her blurry sight back and forth across her cell.

She thought about her husband and what he might be making of her disappearance, and this made her clasp a hand over her mouth to catch an escaping cry. She thought about her children and only wept with greater urgency.

She couldn’t really be here and thought this was most certainly a dream, but when she ran her fingers along her back, she could feel the treacherous lines of scarring that ran like trails on a map from the tops of her legs to her neck.

She removed her fingers from the scars at once and tried to put her mind elsewhere, but found there was nowhere else for it to go, and without even realizing, had returned to stroking her wounds.

After no time, she saw the sunlight had been replaced by a void in the window, and she automatically began sorting and smoothing her mat out across the floor, placing the bucket away from her in the corner, and lying down on her stomach with her arms underneath her head, which was facing the window.

Just between a state of consciousness and dreamscape, she began to hear a very distant tapping.

*tap* (pause) *tap tap* (pause) *tap tap tap* (pause)

She tried to count them, but would confuse which number she was on and would never be certain of the count. She’d gotten to, one could only assume, twenty-two before she drifted into a deep sleep and forgot about them altogether.

Her dream had been strange and rather horrifying, and she wasn’t certain if there was meaning in it.

She was in the room with the cross where they’d first taken her. This time, she wasn’t bound, but standing freely in the center of the room, and she felt no determination to escape. She felt a tranquility in her that was a welcomed change from the anxiety that had eaten steadily upon her spirit since her arrival. Rather, she looked to the stenographer to her left who appeared to be talking at an incredible rate, but instead of producing words, the stenographer’s mouth was producing the sound of clacking keys on a typewriter. The noise grew unbearably loud as the stenographer turned to face Jennifer, staring at her with a look of ever intensifying warning and angst, speaking so rapidly in that noise that it looked as though the chin were vibrating loose from the stenographer’s face.

Jennifer tore her eyes from the ghastly vision to her left to see who was standing to her right, and it was, as she’d predicted, the hooded man tasked with striking her.

He held, rather than the whip, a copy of an Essentials pamphlet, which fell gently from his hands and floated like a feather to the floor.

When the pamphlet hit the concrete, it rippled like a pebble hitting the glass surface of a pond. Jennifer found this to be rather beautiful, and she lifted her gaze to see the man removing his hood.

He’d grabbed it from the bottom and began pulling it up over his chin, which rather appeared to be missing, and just as he lifted it further up to the bottom of his nose, the clacking came at an alarming volume from a void where the mouth should’ve been.

Jennifer, gripped in fear, turned to run, but her body wouldn’t cooperate at the speed she’d hoped it would. Her limbs moved at the pace of a sloth and her legs fought back at her every ounce of strength to get away.

All she had to do was make it to the door, but whatever had plagued her movement had evidently been ineffective to the hooded man, who advanced on her with ease, now holding a taser he placed with gentle pressure on her throat, and just as he pulled the switch…

She woke with a start as if electricity had shocked her from the dream. In fact, she could still feel its current pulsating through her skin.

Her eyes shot to the window, and she could see a dim light peaking through. She’d be able to determine soon whether the sun was rising or sinking, but she couldn’t determine just why that mattered; why anything should matter.

But that’s when she heard the tapping again seemingly as distant as it’d been before.

*tap* (pause) *tap tap* and on it went until it’d reached a number right around twenty-five or twenty-six; Jennifer couldn’t be sure.

She couldn’t focus for the life of her, and she would lose the count every time.

She decided she needed to eat something to help keep her sharp. She’d felt blanketed in a daze since her arrival, and nothing had seemed quite real.

*tap* (pause) *tap tap* (pause) *tap tap tap* (pause)

Jennifer scrambled for the bucket, overturning it once again, and stacking her mat on the top, and she stood high on her toes, which were still aching from the last time she’d committed to this exercise.

*tap tap tap tap tap tap tap*

“It’s the alphabet,” Jennifer thought. “Is someone trying to communicate with me?”

*tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap* (pause)

In that moment, Jennifer’s heart paused as well, and she held her breath in anticipation.

*tap* (pause)

“Twenty-six!” Jennifer screamed with glee.

Immediately behind her, the door swung open and two masked guards seized Jennifer by the arms, pulling her from atop her makeshift tower, and dragged her into the corridor.

“No! Pleeeease!” she cried! “I didn’t mean to!”

“Shhhhhhhh,” one of the guards quietly hissed in her ear.

This caught the attention of the guard who’d seized her right arm, who seemed to glare through the faceless mask at their comrade.

“I won’t do it again!” Jennifer pleaded.

The guard to her left tightened his grip and pulled her ear close to his mouth.

“Shhhh!…. ShhShhShhh!”

Jennifer clasped her eyes shut and went limp. Hope evaded her and she knew where she was being taken.

“‘Twenty-six.’ One,” the stenographer said.

“One,” the hooded man repeated.

Jennifer’s tears fell in large drops to the cold floor. Her body had succumbed to fairly violent convulsions under the tyranny of her sobs, but she was secured to the cross-like contraption that held her up.

“‘No; please; I didn’t mean to.’ Six,” the stenographer said.

“Six,” the hooded man repeated.

After months of receiving her initial punishment, she wouldn’t lose consciousness until the fourth or fifth hit, but they never became less painful; they never drew smaller breaths from her weakening frame; and they always drained a significant amount of blood from her body. They’d administer as many as they could before tending to the wounds and replacing the “misguided” back to their cell. It would go on that way until the punishment was carried out in full.

Jennifer winced through the pain as an involuntary spasm had jolted her awake. If she had come to understand anything of her experience thus far, it was that she was most certainly in hell, but it was easier to just be in hell than to burn in hell.

Did she have any other choice than to choose between the two?

She pushed herself up off her side into sitting upright with her back to the wall. The fresh bandages on her back pulled at the edges of her skin, but she’d learn to mentally block the itching that often followed, and automatically, with little effort, she expressed her gratefulness for them in a mental prayer.

She had been conditioning herself to find thankfulness for anything she was able, so it’d become a regular practice, but as she did so this time, she stopped herself.

Had she conditioned herself to do this, or had they influenced her to find gratefulness in such poor conditions?

Had it been her upbringing? Her grandfather had raised her to pray, be thankful, forgive others and treat them like she’d want to be treated, and the like, but then- how would they know that?

Jennifer shook her head. Since she’d been brought to this place- this hell- to rot- she’d felt hopelessness and self-pity. She’d folded up, shut down, and had become a victim in every sense; unable to waft the clouds of darkness that seemed to have blanketed her entire being.

The slot at the bottom of her door swung open and she received food, water, toilet-paper, and a pamphlet- in that order- before the slot was closed and secured again.

Her eyes fell on the pamphlet and she kept them there for a few, long moments, and for the first time since arriving to “D-Syst,” she began to feel an anger boiling up inside of her.

She wanted to bite, punch, kick, and scream, but what would come to fruition of these urges? She’d only just come to, what she could only assume was, the last of her most recent punishment, and the wounds were still healing.

Was there ever a moment in her life when her back hadn’t twitched constantly with pain?

Her eyes met the pamphlet again, and this time, she bent down, retrieved it, and opened it to its first page.

It read: “A civil society remains civil through the mercy of its civilians. People’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety is rightfully considered misplaced and a potentially grave threat to all mankind.”

She’d believed the idea at a time when she still had the choice to do so. It was easy to understand how society could progress no further without the participation of every individual, and that obtaining a sort of utopia was a conceivable objective if everyone could work together to achieve it. If certain individuals couldn’t grasp that concept, they’d be “treated,” they’d been told, but not “punished.” They weren’t “criminals,” after all, but just “misguided.”

She crumbled the pamphlet up into a ball and threw it at the wall with the window where it tapped off and fell to the floor.

And then she heard it again.

*tap* (pause) *tap tap* (pause)

She held her breath as she watched the balled up pamphlet setting motionless on the ground. Then, she sprang into action, smoothing out the pamphlet and then winding it into a cylindrical wand of sorts, and then grabbing the bucket, pointing its open end toward the window.

Then, she began tapping the bottom of the bucket with her makeshift, paper stick.

*tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap*

(Pause)

*tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap*

(Pause)

The tapping that’d started earlier had ceased, and she perked her ears; listening desperately and with great anticipation.

*tap tap tap tap tap…*

She counted until she reached a letter, and when the tapping would stop, she’d repeat that letter to herself until the tapping started again, and she’d be back to counting whilst keeping the letter on repeat in her mind.

She had eaten every morsel of food while she sat and counted and repeated. She wanted to remain as sharp as she could as to not mistake a single letter.

“W… W… W… 3, 4, 5… (pause)… W-E… W-E… 1 (pause)… W-E-A… W-E-A… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…” and so on.

Perhaps this was another “misguided” much longer kept and at the end of their mental rope.

As equally likely was there were no taps occurring at all and it was Jennifer who had, in fact, began her inevitable descent into madness.

But then again, how could her mind account for the message she’d been receiving?

“W-E-A-R-E-T-H-E-R-E-…”

Her grandfather had taken on raising Jennifer when her own parents had disappeared without a trace. This was over a decade before children were raised in the earth-pods, which gave them proper nutrition and kept them engaged and educated through virtual reality until they were of sound mental-fortitude to join society.

This freed the parental-units of the household to work in their offices often located on opposite ends of the home.

In Jennifer’s upbringing, she was allowed to roam fairly independently, although her grandfather kept her on as tight a leash for as long as he could.

He would take her for walks in the afternoon and they would talk about Jennifer’s dreams and ambitions. These had taken the form of “astronaut” and “boxer” early on; influences from where her grandfather could only guess at but were always, nevertheless, met by his approval.

After some time, these sights became set on “astrology” and “marijuana,” and while her grandfather hadn’t necessarily disapproved, his encouragement had come to lack the zest it’d once held not long ago.

One day he asked her, “What’re ya after, kiddo?”

Jennifer had been rather deep in thought as they strolled together. Their outings had become fewer and fewer over the years, and they’d just about dropped off altogether when she’d moved in with her fiancé.

She had taken an interest in politics, but the entire climate of the nation seemed to reach a level of divorce in ideologies that any hope for reconciliation was almost nonexistent.

For the first time in over ten years, she was thinking about her parents that afternoon; about their disappearance and their cold case file that remained unattended.

“I want to change the world,” Jennifer said. She stopped walking and her grandfather slowly turned to face her. “I don’t,” she continued, but was choked off by a sob that had caught her unexpectedly. She grew angry at her own throat for betraying her words. “I don’t want people to see the world the way I see it.” She looked her grandfather in the eyes, and she saw the crow’s feet deepen at their edges in a ceremony of empathy.

“Jennifer,” he said gently.

“Grandpa!” she interrupted. “I can’t ask any questions? I can’t study what I’d like? WHERE IS MY MOM? WHERE’S DAD?!”

Her grandfather seized her in his arms and said, “Shhhh!…. ShhShhShhh!”

“Jennifer,” he began, “when you were a baby… you used to squeeze your mother’s finger so hard, it would hurt her.” Jennifer was weeping openly into her grandfather’s chest. “And you wouldn’t let go. She would show your strength to everyone who’d pay attention. She told them you had the strength of a true fighter. She called you her little ‘Guerrera;’ her Warrior. She and your father loved you so very much. That is really all there is to know. You’re a fighter- a ‘Guerrera.’ You will see them again. Shhhh. ShhShhShhh.”

Tears rolled from Jennifer’s eyes as she found herself trembling, holding her mat in a clump against her chest, quietly sounding out the message she’d received:

“W-E-A-R-E-T-H-E-R-E-S-I-S-T-A-N-C-E-I-N-F-I-L-T-R-A-T-I-O-N-C-O-M-P-L-E-T-E-S-T-A-N-D-B-Y-M-Y-L-I-T-T-L-E-G-U-E-R-R-E-R-A”