The Strange and Mundane World of Molly Cule

Thirty Days of Text – Day 10 – Timing

September 14, 2009 at 1:10 am (Short Stories, Thirty Days of Text, Writing) (Short Stories, Thirty Days of Text, sci-fi, timing, torture, dystopic, dystopia, oppression, workplace training)

I’m going to use a “get out of jail free” card for the 9th as I was writing other non-thirty-days-of-text things, but here’s a nice little nibblet  for the tenth.

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The Trainee

“It’s all about timing,” my instructor said as we watched the simulation screen. The simply rendered figure paced around in circles in its cell, its movements becoming more agitated and erratic. I went to activate another hallucination, but my trainer held me back. “Just wait,” he said. “Watch.”

The simulation dropped to its knees, screaming and thumping its fists on the floor. Its face – unremarkable, with the minimum amount of features required to display sufficient emotion for instructional purposes – contorted in anguish. I looked over at my instructor, wondering why it wasn’t time to send another barrage of mental imagery at the simulacrum – as far as I could see, it was at breaking point and it was time to make a decisive move.

“Not yet,” he said. The figure on the screen exhausted itself and stopped screaming. Curled on the floor, it appeared to be crying itself to sleep When its sobs had calmed down and its breathing had returned to normal, my trainer patted me on the shoulder. “Right, send another lot and watch what happens. We’ve had some new dissidents brought in overnight, so this afternoon you can watch the real thing . . . ”