Beyond Your Heaven, Beyond Your Hell.
Beyond Your Heaven , Beyond Your Hell. - By : outmate 220,674,122.
Beyond your Heaven beyond your Hell.
“So where’s that?”
Ever thought that perhaps you, me, us, are already beyond them both?
We are alive, and well, and kicking – well some of us are, and that’s great – considering…
“Considering what?”
Considering our position.
“What’s wrong with our position?”
You have not wondered have you?
“Wondered what?”
About your position. That you are alive. Have you wondered why?
“Everyone wonders why they are alive.”
And?
“No one really knows.”
Exactly. But supposing I gave you a possible explanation why we are alive?
“OK, 220,674,122, tell me.”
I don’t think you are going to like it. I certainly don’t. Some things in life are sent to try us. And believe me, we have been tried.
That’s the first giggle. The second giggle is you are going to be tried even more.
“What the hell are you talking about?
Do you honestly think your time on this earth starts with a sperm, one of thousands, randomly wriggling it’s way into an egg – an egg that becomes you?
“That’s exactly how it starts.”
That is the explanation presented to us by other outmates with a medical bent. But think a bit deeper. Supposing the sperm wasn’t just random but specially selected to start your time.
“What time?”
I’ll come to it – and talking about time, it is an extremely complicated happening, you will never get your head around it. Einstein did his best but didn’t get very far. As you can only recognise time whilst you are alive, it probably did not affect you before and will not affect you again once you leave, so don’t worry about it.
And talking about heads, they don’t exist either, as will be explained later. In fact, talk about anything that exists in your existence and you come to the same adverb. Why? Why am I on this earth? Why am I alive? What is the meaning of life? That is closely followed by the dreaded question, what happens when I die? Some wonder where they came from, but usually the agony is – where am I are going?
But that should be the least of your worries, lets try concentrating on the present, because, the answer of why you are here is not, I think, a happy one.
You have been naughty. In fact more than naughty, you have been double naughty and now you are… Wait for it…
A Criminal!
“How dare you! I am justice of the peace, a successful father of a wonderful family, a dedicated nurse, a faithful nun, the prime minister of a country, etc, etc…”
Don’t care.
We are all convicts. And some of us are more criminal than others, the longer your sentence – the more serious your crime!
You see, dear old mother earth can be looked upon as not a dear, or old, or a mother. So how about seeing it slightly differently?
Like as a prison? And we are all in it! And, for yet another giggle, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. You could leave – like throwing yourself under a train, but you won’t, you are too frightened. You could swallow poison, but you won’t, because you haven’t got the guts. You could hang yourself, but you won’t because you haven’t finished your sentence.
Get it?
Your sentence is your lifetime.
You could try escape. But to where? You are on a planet. You have no idea where you came from. And prisoners are incarcerated in a cell. And you are in a cell. Only in Roundearth, the cell is called a body. Have you ever tried to escape from your body? It’s impossible.
That’s how tight Roundearth security is. You can’t escape, you don’t know where you came from but there is one thing you do know, very, very well – you are suffering.
OK, that’s normal. You are serving a sentence in a prison.
Think about it.
A prison for the Universe.
An impossibility.
Of course it is.
The varied forms of life throughout the Universe would require a myriad of different foods, energy sources, and life support systems that could not be contained on one planet.
The physical sizes, habits, and demands of those sentenced for punishment would be so different that a universal prison could not possibly cope with the problems presented.
The politics and cultures associated with the treatment of all the social and intellectual levels of criminals amassed in the prison from different sources would cause unrest and tension.
And the transportation of large numbers of criminals to a single destination would test any security systems to the utmost, to say nothing of a huge and demanding reception and distribution area.
Also the idea of using Roundearth prison as an experimental laboratory would draw fury from the rulers of their nationals transported there.
But as we know Earth, or using it’s official term, Roundearth Prison, exists – otherwise you would not be reading this.
You might be a trusted, law abiding person, family loving, healthy minded, a forward looking citizen… the descriptive adjectives for your excellence could fill this page, but one of them I have to correct.
It is the word citizen. Sorry, you are not a citizen – you are a convict, or in Roundearth terms – an outmate. outmate is spelt with a small o because we do not warrant a capital letter. We are just not worth it.
Read on if you wish, but if the reason for your existence or life on this planet is a subject that would worry you, then close these pages.
You see, one of the problems explaining the whole idea of life on Earth, sorry, Roundearth, to outmates is that at times it verges on Science Fiction.
But you know the Universe, or what we are told is the Universe, is there, endless pinpoints of stars and planets that stretch for eternity, as of course they have to. You certainly know Earth is here – you are standing on it!
So let’s give Science Fiction a rest for a while, in fact let’s do the same for science, astronomy, astrology, fortune telling, magic, religion, and all the other beliefs created by other convicts, sorry, outmates.
And look at a different picture. The reason why you are on earth and what you are doing here.
Why am I suggesting this? More to the point, how come am I allowed to?
Is it to help you?
Is it to ease you fear of your final moment? To relax you as the blackness rushes in?
But you are here to be punished for you crime – the unknown is a terrific fear builder and dying (returning from whence you came) for some outmates is the ultimate fear.
But why create Roundearth? It must have taken a long time and an immense amount of effort and research.
Why bother?
So think a little laterally. Think what an opportunity the prison offers. Criminals, secured and punished. Unlimited opportunity to experiment on outmates, and with animals and with plants. Yes, animals, and plants are experiments, or the result of experiments conducted in the prison.
From amoebas to antelopes, wasps to whales, fleas to elephants whatever lives that is not an outmate must surely be or is the result of, or a continuing, experiment.
The theory of evolution explains and satisfies. The theory of evolution was created by an outmate.
Good!
Now everyone in the prison is happy to live alongside the animals, insects, fish, and birds etc. The theory therefore making it so much easier for the experiments to continue unhindered.
Once the experiment on a species is completed, is the animal or insect is left in the prison? Could be, some animals give a plus to the facility by being used for transport or energy for the outmates. Some are domesticated for this purpose, some can not adapt to the conditions, the experiment fails and they become extinct, whilst others become pets forming close relationships with the outmates, another opportunity to implant the punishment of sorrow on the outmate when the pet is ‘removed’.
Animals it seems, they roam as they wish, if they can wish. Once the experimenters finish their work with the animal it is left to roam until it dies. But as part of the experiment must be procreation, otherwise the prison would be animal less, one assumes that the animals now present in the prison are ongoing experiments.
I would think reasons and subjects for experiments are not the concern of the prison. Permission to add to the prison’s population probably granted elsewhere.
But right now I have to answer the question you are already asking yourself.
If this is a prison, how did I get hear?
Strange isn’t it? The majority of outmates worry themselves sick about where they will go when their sentence ends, but few worry about where they came from.
So let’s settle your arrival. And think about this as you read it.
We are talking about all the criminals from the universe, every shape, size and weight of beings. How on earth (forgive the pun) does each totally different being end up in the prison, all looking as if they were the same species?
Here is a concrete and accepted example of an arrival on Roundearth and the answer to that last question.
The Arrival
Being pushed forward was a new sensation, it was unpleasant. His suspended comfort was ending. For the first time he experienced dislike.
Being turned, downward and again forward, he resented. The walls, muscular strong, that had supported him for nine months were contracting, the fluid in which he had safely floated, was vanishing, down the canal into which he was being impelled.
Struggling, hands and legs grabbing and kicking brought no respite.The pressure was relentless. He was slipping, headfirst, it was horrible. What remained of his comfort fluid was now his enemy. Making his skin slippery, the walls slippery, he could not grip, could not stop his slide downward.
The contractions, more urgent and stronger, pressed him harder and further. For the first time fear, another new experience introduced itself. The aperture to which he was being forced into was too small, to small for his head. Impossible to pass through.
Everywhere contractions squeezed and now more violently, the pressure was enveloping, the discomfort increased to pain, then to agony. Another sensation upping his fear to yet another emotion – panic.
He was rammed hard and irreversibly against the opening – and there he stuck.
He screamed, but small sounds do not penetrate liquid and engulfing flesh. The pressure could not relent, his head, soft and pliable, was being squeezed and squeezed.
Slowly, agonising slowly, his head gorged through the opening, impossibly his agony increased, he screamed, into the dark, again.
Then it was not dark.
The vice that had clamped around his head moved up to his shoulder’s, then to his waist and then his legs, then it was gone.
He had arrived, he had been born. He was somewhere.
He was in Roundearth.
Something touched his body. His fear leapt to attention, he screamed again.
And the nurse thought it was his first cry.
His eyes flicked open.
It was the signal.
It was the beginning and it was the end. It was the beginning of his sentence and the end of his memory, of his existence. His crime, his trial, his sentence, his life, his part of the universe, everything he knew or could remember, vanished.
The light flooding his sightless new eyes triggered the last link on. His programme, perfect and infallible was in control.
He was an outmate, in Roundearth prison
His sentence had begun – and with a bump. The careless nurse nudged the doorway with his head. The pain made his head ring, he did not like it , this time he did cry – loudly
He would have another sixty nine years of crying – loudly.
But now he was empty. His brain, a massive storage system, primed to respond to stimulus from his programme, his body already growing to the blueprint, his character ready to be released on prompts. His sentence was planned to the last detail. The moments of physical, mental and emotional pain and distress that were his punishments were lined up and waiting.
Time would bring him to them.
Time.
There are no clocks in the universe. But they are a necessary creation on Roundearth. As is wind, rain, sunshine, and a thousand other elements necessary for the prison to function. And they are all waiting. To punish Roland as they punish the rest of us outmates.
But time is the King.
As well as controlling, time is also a measure. An hour of pain, a day of dreading, a week of distress. Nine months to agony, a year before your execution.
Or for those awarded a more severe punishment. Ten years of success, fifteen years of reward, fifty years of happiness.
For his mother, limp with perspiration and fatigue it was her third punishment by pain in her short life. Her rape, by which Roland had been implanted in Roundearth prison, had been the first.
For the second, she had shared the pain of birth with her son, linking their programmes for life, for better or for worse. And the third agony, of which memory was not required, had been her own birth.
Right now she was elated.
She had a son!
She thought she had made him. The father and the cruel act that had created the infant, was buried at the back of her memory, swamped by her new joy. But the scene would return as the boy grew and resembled and acted like that soldier in the cellar where she had been hiding.
This is how Roundearth prison works. Terror, fear, and physical pain are for sharing.
And time is the common denominator that enables the outmates to syncronise their programmes to the next stage of their sentences.
Terror and fear are the basic punishments, usually over quickly, except for the psychological after games.
There is one punishment, awarded for only the most serious of crimes, that shrinks the effects of physical and psychological tortures almost into insignificance.
Maybe it is in Roland’s sentence, maybe not, no one could know.
OK?
Now you know.
How we get here, all of us. Perhaps not by a rape but we all come down that same canal.
Multiply that by the prison population of seven point five three billion outmates and you have your answer to the question. ‘The physical sizes, habits, and demands of those sentenced for punishment would be so different that a universal prison could not possibly cope with the problems presented’.
No?
You still don’t get it?
You still do not understand how a huge variety of different beings can enter Roundearth?
OK. Let’s go back to the first few paragraphs of this book.
No don’t bother, here’s a copy
The various forms of life throughout the Universe would require a myriad of different foods, energy sources, and life support systems that could not be contained on one planet.
The physical sizes, habits, and demands of those sentenced for punishment are so varied that a universal prison could not possibly cope with the problems presented.
The politics associated with the treatment of all the social and crime levels of criminals transported to the same prison from different sources would cause unrest and complaints.
And the transportation of large numbers of criminals to a single destination would test any security systems to the utmost, to say nothing of a huge and demanding reception and distribution area.
Also the idea of using Roundearth prison as an experimental laboratory would draw fury from the rulers of their nationals transported there.
With those huge problems the prison can’t possibly exist.
Oh, but it does.
So who solved all those problems?
The Experimenters – that’s who.
Their prize?
A planet, on which to hold unlimited experiments with no recourse to any of the nationals being used in the experiments, caused their creativity to soar to astronomical (another bloody pun) heights.
They could manipulate, test, modify the criminals in their charge along with all the life, material and objects in the prison.
But to succeed, they had to find a particularly novel solution to solve the main question.
How to accommodate and equally treat the kaleidoscope of life of the universe?
Yet succeed they did.
How?
Supposing the material part of the criminal was left behind and only their existence transported to Roundearth? Leave the chassis behind and just take the motor. In that way every outmate is reduced to the same form and level.
Brilliant!
That’s the answer to the arrival. Every criminal is reduced to an outmate, or to use Roundearth slang – a human being.
Outmates
We know outmates are prisoners, but there are many types of prisoners. For instance outmates of different colours.
So what colour of an outmate are you?
Black, white, yellow, brown?
And your hair?
White, black, brown, blond?
The accepted explanation for different coloured outmates is that some outmates arrive in the prison nearer the energy source. Their cells are darker to reduce the effects of radiation. Others arrive further away with their cells lighter, and some arrive in between, a colour a mix between the two. That is an explanation created by outmates for outmates, and we all seem quite happy with it.
But we are in a punishment prison. And different colours are great labels. Label an outmate and you have a contrast.
Black and white are contrasts, and as you will find shortly, contrast is a great punisher.
What better way to cause problems?
Mixing colours creates an edge, a difference that achieves some wonderful tensions. Wars, dissent, fear, jealousy, arrogance, racism, the list goes on, and most of it is negative.
So the experiment of different colouring in the prison must be looked upon as a success.
Surely, it would be better if all outmates were the same? One size, one colour, one character?
There would be no arguments, no envy, no snobbery, no disobedience, etc, etc.
But stopping possible tensions is not what is wanted in the prison. It removes the opportunities for stress, experiments, and punishment. And we all here to be punished. outmates not only vary in colour, they very in size.
Don’t we all wish some part of our body was different? It’s the case of the other guy’s grass is always greener. Every outmate is concerned by their body at some time.
Which is normal, as worry is from niggling, to a paralysing punishment.
Short outmates would love to be tall, men worry about going bald, women are always watching their weight, some hate their noses, others think they have ugly hands.
For some, their bodies are boring and they decorate it with tattoos. Piercing, hanging jewellery, dying hair, painting faces, and altering the size and shape of appendages attracts many more.
As our sentences draw to close our bodies degenerate. Yet another automatic punishment.
An ever losing battle to remain young, from refusing to recognise age, to hours spent on the operating table, hoping a plastic surgeon will restore youth to time scarred features cannot be classed as fun.
We now know how a new arrival joins the prison population. A natural, accepted, and obvious happening. But think how difficult it must have been to think the process up.
The amount of chemical, physical, and logistical creativity necessary, to say nothing of the plumbing required.
All necessary for the outmate to feel at ease. And for the arriving outmate to remember nothing. Do you remember being born? Of course not, your memory wasn’t switched on!
It is imperative an outmate never discovers they are in a prison. So how could new arrivals appear without arousing suspicion?
The birth process is brilliant. The delivering outmate not only provides the entry to the prison, it is also a punishment at the same time. The pain of giving birth, the fear for nine months of the impending pain and the upheaval of the outmates routine for many years to come.
It seems it is no good inquisitive outmates trying to find the source of the arrival. They get as far as an egg and a wriggly then the birth path ends.
Trying to find something that does not exist physically or mentally without the correct tools is impossible. And I don’t think those tools are available in Roundearth Prison.
Roundearth is round and big and there are outmates on almost every part of it. So what part of the prison do you occupy? The cold North? The blistering Equator? Or in a temperate zone?
Does it take a really serious crime to sentence an outmate to the freezing north or boiling equator?
That’s an obvious thought, but surly there are two or three further reasons for a prison with such contrasting (that word again!) temperatures.
Supposing something huge went wrong within the prison? Like a nuclear war fried the planet and there was a danger of large doses of radiation emanating into the universe. Would it not be prudent to have the ability to control such an event?
By moving the prison nearer the energy source, the colossal amount of water in the ice in North and South poles would be an effective douser when it melted. Reducing the transmission of radiation, extinguishing fires and limiting damage. Roundearth would be in ruins and all outmates sentences cut short but that would not be the prison’s concern.
Another advantage of the different temperature would aid experiments. Take two outmates, inject each with a virus of some sort, and then deliver one to the freezer and the other to the oven and record the result. An experiment that may have been thought up somewhere in the universe to save or improve a situation of some importance in that somewhere.
outmates cannot know they are taking part in an experiment. That diseases attack, microbes infect, accidents break, fevers envelop, habits form, opinions judge, love flares, hate erupts , desire explodes, violence descends, deceit shocks, etc,etc,etc, is all accepted by outmates as being part of living. But could they be more experiments, or the results of experiments that have been terminated?
Sure, all those elements punish the outmate but the outmate could be punished continually by just one bad infection or disease. So why so many?
Could it be because were are being continually experimented upon? Hence the reason for so many different diseases and afflictions?
A concrete argument that supports this idea is new and more powerful viruses that seem to arrive at regular intervals.
Think about it.
Contrast
The prison, it seems, is built on it even though contrast is not something concrete.
It could not work without it. Personal contrasts are experienced by outmates, local contrasts are seen by outmates, General contrasts apply to the weather, geographical contrast is applied to everything in the prison.
And if we didn’t have contrast?
Could fear frighten you if you have not experienced serenity? And could serenity be serene without having faced fear?
We all know what contrast does – it contrasts!
Black contrasts with white. Kindness contrasts with cruelty, your beliefs maybe contrast with what you are reading now.
But make no mistake, contrast is cruel. It is the torturer supreme.
It is in your everyday life. Just catching the train to work brings relief from just missing it and the consequences.
Being successful in business and living the luxury life and then loosing it. The contrast of failure with success sends outmates into depression, or crime that leads to more misery.
It may be use delicately or ferociously, either way it is highly effective.
An outmate works hard and diligently, overcomes all obstacles and achieves it’s goals. It’s success is tasted and appreciated and accepted, then a mistake, or rising insecurity, or simple bad luck (doesn’t exist!) destroys all.
The outmate crashes back to where it started, either begins the long slog again or lives in depression of what was lost. Either path is a painful punishment.
The beauty of contrast as a punishment is its malleability. The sudden contrast that brings instant anguish, fear, or fury. Or the slow contrast, revealed as the outmate experiences a situation resolving in a manner different from the one anticipated.
Like you fall in love, get married, and as time passes your emotions, outlook, respect and just about everything you loved about your partner turns to disgust. But you have children, a mortgage and all the trappings you thought so important that have to be maintained and paid for.
You are trapped in a life in complete contrast to the life before you married. Contrast has performed again.
Contrast works in other ways. There is not a work of art or literature that could work without contrast.
Read that last sentence again.
I will rewrite it. There is not a work of art or literature that could function without it.
Now that reads better. I have changed two words, function, and, it.
Mainly to avoid repeating myself, but also the words contrast with each in a complimentary way.
Now it is getting complicated, complimenting is not contrasting, it is almost the opposite yet it worked in that sentence. But opposites are contrasts as well and so we have gone around in a circle.
OK – I can hear you thinking.
“What a contrived load of crap he’s just written!”
Believe me it is not. It is the first instance of a barrier you are going to run into throughout this book. It is a vital part of the working of the prison.
But the explanation does not belong in the outmates chapter so we will meet it later.
Now, contrast needs something to work, something to start it and that something sits twenty nine lines back.
See the word?
Emotions.
And for emotions to slam in there has to be something to ignite them. Let’s call them prompts.
And what provides prompts?
Contrast.
Ever get the feeling you are a bit imprisoned by situations like that? Well that’s the intention. Read the next bit – it’s even more captivating.
The Cell
Prisoners are locked away in a cell right?
But we are not locked up, I have never been incarcerated. I can move freely, all over the prison.
So where are the cells in Roundearth? And who is in them?
Guess.
Yep, it’s you!
You are in a cell as you read this book. And I am in my cell writing it.
Or, if you want to use an outmate term – you are in your body.
Our private, personal, prison. Mobile, secure, controllable.
Tailored from arrival to grow, evolve, and mature by a blueprint of genes responsible for guiding the cell for the duration of our sentence.
So what is your cell made from? Lets keep it simple and investigate your outside wall, you covering, the physical thing that imprisons you, ie, your skin.
So what is your skin made from? Cells. So what are your cells made from? Each cell is the result of thousands of chemical reactions. Like what? I could start talking about microtubules an microfilaments and atoms which is taking us to microscopic size pieces of the your cell, which is exactly where I want to go.
Why?
Because other outmates are trying to find out the basic material that forms your skin.
But they cannot, because each time they find the smallest part, it leads them to another smaller part. Is there a part so small it cannot reflect light and therefore cannot be seen? Now that’s a real problem for those doing the looking.
But at the moment they haven’t quite got to the really smallest part.
And the point is will they ever?
Don’t think so.
It seems we are allowed to discover so much about ourselves and then a barrier is planted between us and what we are trying to discover.
It is a bit like in the last chapter with words taking us around in a circle. Now we can latch this problem to similar one that concerns another group of outmates. This is a much bigger problem than a piece of skin or a few words and does not belong in the cell section of this book, but be aware, we shall run smack into it later.
But your cell has not only physical properties. It has five senses that scan a range of experiences.
Taste for pleasure and poison.
Hearing for happiness and horror
Touch for tenderness and terror.
Seeing for surprise and suspicion
Smell for disgust and delight.
Any of these senses can be connected to a range of emotions.
And these emotions can produce an even greater number of responses. Now it’s getting complicated, because responses produce more emotion and thats another never-ending circle.
Let’s take fear.
I have chosen this emotion as it is quite basic.
A roaring lion attacks an outmate.
The outmate uses it’s sense of sight, sees the animal and the emotion of fear leaps into action.
Fight or flight? Is the response from the outmate.
I have not resolved what happens because it is not necessary. The point of the exercise is to show how well thought out the punishment path works.
In addition to a kaleidoscope of mental responses necessary to subject the outmate to psychological punishment, it is necessary for the cell to possesses another penalising structure.
Memory.
Many emotions could not work without it.
No part of the cell may be touched without there being a response. A soft touch elicits a soft response. Savage blows request savage pain. The organs that service the cell can malfunction to selected levels, inducing instant or periodic pain. Memory ensures these sufferings will be remembered. This can lead to yet another anticipatory emotion – dread.
We outmates are bombarded throughout our sentence by punishments. But we have to be able to receive these retributions. Hence the list at the start of this chapter. But even these senses can be used for punishment. outmates can loose or have a malfunction of any one of them.
The result is a discomfort to say the least, and for some a sentence changing moment.
So we are in our cells looking out. Through our eyes we see everything we need to see and thinking about what we have seen establishes reality for us.
But does it?
What about if we are actually seeing nothing, but simply acknowledging what appears in front of us. For instance if our eyes are not eyes at all but screens requiring us to react to the information implanted on them?
Why do we only have eyes in the front of our cell? If the creator or creators of the cell are so clever why don’t we have eyes all the way around our heads?
A pair of hands and arms are fine, but we could do so much more with a couple more pairs.
Doubling or trebling various parts of our cell would make us much more versatile and efficient. Supposing we had four sex organs! We could have our own private orgy!
Come to that, supposing we were all bisexual? There would be no need for ‘coupling’. And how about two heads? Surely that would make us twice as intelligent?
But all that would defeat the reason why we are in prison.
We are not here to be competent, we are here serving a sentence. No eyes at the back means a weak spot, a worry, then fear, like you are being followed, or attacked from behind. Being double sexed removes relationships, good and bad and the torrent of emotions that glue people together to keep the torrent of relationships intact. For good or bad.
Our cells, designed the way they are, allows for a harvest of discomforts, problems, fears and all the joys of a prison sentence.
We could be in our cell anywhere in the universe. Right now I think (ha) I am writing a book and you think you are reading it.
That is what is supposed to happen and so it is happening.
We cannot prove otherwise. Yet another example of the total security of Roundearth prison.
Prison cells have a bed, chair, desk, etc. Ours cell are furnished rather differently.
We have our punishment safely etched into our programmes all arranged and ready to go. A prepared positioning to ensure we are in the right place at the right time. And the mechanisms and organs necessary to enable us to carry our punishments around with us.
We live in a highly technical piece of kit that has to perform many functions, like move, work, play, etc. These are the minor requirements. The most important is to feel, record and remember pain.
I started this book describing how astonished I was by the construction of a flower.
But when I see, feel, hear, the processes of my cell, the construction of a flower, though beautiful, is quite a basic immovable object.
I, we, all of us are a highly designed, astonishing, complicated, collection of cells within a cell.
Able to accommodate every facet of our sentence.
Without fail.
Thought
Ever thought about thought?
Think about it.
We think all the time.
You can’t stop.
You’ll see what I mean if you try not to think.
Try and get rid of every thought in your head.
You will have to close your eyes, if you are seeing something you won’t stop thinking about it.
Now you are hearing the sounds around you, so cover your ears with your hands.
The moment your hands cover your ears they produce further sounds that you are now thinking about.
If you were in a blacked out soundproof box, you would still hear something – your heart pumping, and I don’t recommend you stop that!
I think (ha) it is impossible to stop thinking.
In fact I think we are not allowed to stop thinking.
Because thinking seems to be the cabling in our cell, the wi-fi, the bluetooth, the transmission, that connects everything to everything.
When you see something, you think about it, when you hear something you think about it, in fact you think about everything.
You think about what you have to do, what you have done, what you would like to do, what you would not like to do…etc.
Possibly you think when you are asleep. How else could you create dreams?
You think of the past, you think of the present and you think of the future.
Strange isn’t it? You are a prisoner and yet there seems to be no restriction on your thinking.
Surely it would be much safer for the powers that be to restrict your thoughts?
Make it impossible for you to think subversively?
Not necessarily.
You never think of escaping do you? Why should you? You don’t know you are in a prison.
You never think of attacking your jailer because you don’t have one.
So, as there is no danger, why not let us outmates think freely? It is a huge opportunity for further experimentation.
We will be able to create, discover, invent, improve, throughout our sentence. Material that may be of use elsewhere.
We can ruin, destroy, disfigure, obliterate. Situations that may be of use elsewhere also.
And so isn’t Roundearth Prison a contributor to the well being of the universe?
You don’t think you think about putting one foot in front of the other when you walk.
You don’t think you think about pulling your hand away from a hot flame.
You don’t think you think about catching the bus every morning at eight o’clock.
But you do, you simply do not acknowledge the thoughts because they are automatic responses.
But you certainly think if someone hits you, or shouts at you, or you loose something. This thinking is connecting your responses on an immediate level.
Thinking connects you to your emotions, it takes you to the emotion you require, and then to any sub emotion.
Thinking is a necessary component in the punishment chain. How else could you worry about anything? And worry is a great punisher.
Thinking also has a positive side. It connects you to your emotions of delight, happiness, your sense of danger, and all the other goodies.
But then it connects you to the nasties as well and our old enemy, contrast.
You can’t win.
But then you are not supposed to.
And of course we try to think how other outmates think. Will they, won’t they, do the right thing? Did they really think of that?
Is that what they think of me? Don’t even think it!
The list of us trying to get into other outmates thoughts is long and useless. There’s only one outmate who know what that outmate is thinking, and that is the outmate itself.
To repeat myself, thinking is connected to everything, including our memory. When you read a new word and establish its meaning, you think differently, speak differently, react differently whenever you use it.
Wow! That’s pretty powerful!
But maybe it’s not just words that prompt a thinking change. What about experiences? And relationships, and illnesses, other outmates, accidents, punishments, and surprises?
Now you can realise just how important, necessary, and wonderful the process is.
So how does the thinking process actually work?
l have scanned the internet, dug deep into reference libraries, goggled through medical journals and have been unable to find an explanation.
Sure there are thousands of words explaining cellar change and linkage in our brains. The difference between positive and negative thinking and other information that purports to explain the process. In fact information that seems to be available to satisfy most questions.
But not the one I asked. How does thinking work?
There is a vague mention of electrical pulses playing a part.
Hold on!
Now that is yet another giggle.
What is electricity?
Do you know?
I don’t,
I can switch it on, I can use it.
I can see and feel it’s effects.
But there the trail ends.
I find it amazing that we can benefit hugely from the results of the work of something that to date we cannot prove it’s existence.
And, if the scientist outmates are right, we use that something every second of our sentences in our cell.
But that should not come as a surprise to you by now, should it?
One of the more disturbing aspects of thoughts is that we do not choose them. They just appear in our awareness. Does this mean a thought is a connection to our control programme?
So perhaps we are not totally free thinkers. If we had boundless thoughts, there is no end to the mischief we could get up to.
“I’m hungry!” Something we all say at some time.
Is it a feeling or a command? Sure, we felt hungry, but was the feeling the result of an order to feel hungry? And what part of our cell did the order emanate from? Our stomach, calling for food? Our muscles needing energy? Or did our stomach call our brain asking it to ask our awareness to get us to start eating?
I don’t know, and neither it seems, does anyone else.
At some point our thinking can run out.
This happens when we are faced with a problem, situation or an action that appears to have no solution.
The natural reaction is to switch to other thoughts and the annoyance is forgotten for the moment. This again is necessary as there are always other thoughts lining up for our attention.
And are our thoughts real? As we are the only being having the thought, and the thought is not known outside our awareness or is something solid, probably they are not.
There is a happier side to thoughts. Unless we recognise and attend, or take action because of them, we forget them.
Now that is very interesting thought (ha). In fact it is more than just a though (ha). What would happen if they didn’t vanish because we hadn’t act upon them? I reckon before our first birthday our heads would go pop. Or it would fall off with the weight of unused thoughts. If thoughts have weight.
I have also tried to discover how many thoughts you can have at the same time. Again my search produced a haze of contradictory answers.
Zen insists it is impossible to have more than one though at a time. Other instances recorded mathematicians solving three different calculations at once and a man answering two telephones, writing on a pad, and driving a car whilst terrifying his passenger.
So we have to say that thinking joins the list as another of the great forbiddens and therefore increases the security of the prison.
Yes, thinking certainly makes us think.
Language
Language is the audible side of our thoughts. The noise we make to communicate with other outmates. Words are the carriers of language and the problem is, where did words come from?
Who invented words? Shakespeare apparently invented over 1600 words and the Phoenicians before him contributed quite a few, also greek and latin threw in a number as well.
The history of our language is well documented. But there is an intruder in those explanations.
Time.
We are taught language, and the origins of language at school. A necessary education to carry us around the prison and to meet our punishments.
But trying to find the origins of our language is a protracted and contorted task, shrouded by time.
No, is simple word that was first uttered by a young man who was about to pick up a hornets nest but was stopped by his uncle. This happened in 1000,000BC.
Oh yeah?
And who took the video? I cannot find a convincing answer to where the word no came from. But I can find dozens of conflicting explanations.
I can also find the same confusion for the origins of dozens of words.
After reading about the the young man and the word no I continued my search.
No came from Proto – German. Another notion is that perhaps it originated from Latin, but then there was an insistence that it started in French. Four different origins.
Then I tried the word ‘hurry’. First it was invented by Shakespeare, Then it arrived in the 16th century of uncertain origin while Middle High German contributed the word. But, not according to Middle English, who claimed ownership. That search resulted in dismay.
So let’s check on ‘dismay’. Now that is an Anglo French word. No it is not, it is Old High German, hold on! Middle England is the owner. But the dispute is joined by Anglo Norman and Vulgar Latin.
When you research the origin of words there is a repetition of other words you run into, they are the adverbs, such as perhaps, or probably.
Could have, loaned, borrowed from, unverified are other remarks that pepper your search for the birth of words.
Is this another of the prison’s barriers?
Then time comes into it again.
Is the history of our language real? Does the history of our language exist?
It’s very strange that Shakespeare threw 1600 words into the language, (words that only he knew the meaning of) without e-mailing everyone a dictionary first.
It must have been very confusing watching one of his plays performed in undiscovered dialogue.
The reading and writing we are taught in schools has been passed down by previous generations. Previous generations of outmates.
When these outmates started talking an intelligible language is difficult to discover. If, as outmate history suggest, it began about six hundred years ago then time does shroud many details.
But we are serving our sentences now, we are communicating now. I speak the way my parents, among others, taught me to speak and I cannot find a concrete piece of information that tells me where my language came from.
Could it be that time is being used as a block to prevent us from discovering something we should not discover?
Language is just here, as it was for my parents and their parents and so on.
We also have different languages throughout the prison. Great for arousing arouse suspicion, confusion, frustration and isolation among outmates.
If, as we are told our language originated somewhere around the Mediterranean why aren’t the other nations, like Greece, Turkey, France, Tunisia, etc. not speaking in English? Or why do we not speak any of their languages?
Or could the reason for different tongues be a question of logistics?
Differences between nations open the opportunity to have wars. Language opens these differences. During wars many sentences are completed. Could that not be a necessary happening, to overcome the situation when a large number of sentences are nearing their end? Violent storms, massive floods, famines, earthquakes, fires, plagues, and many other disasters seem to occur a regular intervals through out the prison, ending vast numbers of sentences, add wars to this list and it seems an almost natural occurrence.
I have tried to find the reason why we speak different languages, there are some 7000 in the prison. There is a multitude of explanations and among all the fluff there are several honest answers. We don’t just don’t know why.
Electricity, thinking, and now language. The list of doors slamming shut is getting longer.
Ever get the feeling you are locked up?
Which came first the hen or the egg?
This is the question we ask our children. Just for a bit of fun as we know there is no answer. Sure, there are lots of explanations about birds with chicken characteristics mating but the same question is unanswered. Where did the near chicken come from?
You can expand the question – Trees use up stored up oxygen and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere .,OK but where did the oxygen come from, the carbon dioxide and the tree?
The deeper you check into the origins of animals and plants the more one realises that a curtain descends at some point, blocking any further advance.
Yet another forbidden to join thinking, electricity and language.
So we assume virtually everything in the prison is some sort of experiment the origin of which we are not allowed to know. And they have not finished arriving.
New diseases and viruses are constantly appearing in or around us. Attacking outmates and plants, these are contained or eventually eradicated by the ingenuity of members of the prison population.
So is the success of the experiment transmitted elsewhere other than in the prison? And if so how?
With all the different activity in the jail, the flow of information would require a huge network of receivers and transmitters. These would be obvious and might hint at the presence of the prison.
But maybe they are here.
Something so natural we see every day and accept them for what they are, totally unsuspecting their real job.
How about trees?
They look down on us, are high enough to see each other and have all the necessary attributes to be a reception tower.
The slender branches offer bouquets of leaves, but suppose these leaves not only receive sunlight to function but also information?
OK, the leaves fall in the winter, but not on all trees. Then think roots. Perhaps they are transmitters, propagating their information through the earth.
Yeah, root transmission does sound a bit stupid. But so does being unable to find which came first, the hen or the egg?
We know how radio ,TV, wifi, bluetooth, radar, sound etc are transmitted and received thanks to outmate Marconi. It is not inconceivable to think there may be other forms of distance transmission that we have yet to get to grips with, like light.
To date, transmission by light is restricted to morse code on flashing lanterns, lasers, and fibreglass cabling. But maybe light is being used already in ways we will never access, it could be the IT of the prison and certainly not for our ears or eyes.
I started this chapter with the title ‘Which Came first The Hen Or The Egg’. Lets now ask, which came first in the prison, the man or the woman?
It is a reasonable and intelligent question, one that we all should have been given the answer to.
Try researching it. Try googling it, The answers range from pathetic to stupid, to astounding to hilarious. But none offer a convincing explanation.
Oh yeah, there human fossils, there’s Adam and Eve, there’s amoebas crawling out of the sea and turning into Marylin Munroe. But nothing you can shake hands with and say hello to.
Which came first, the bees or the honey? And according to historians the invention of the wheel claimed first to be in 12000BC and again in various decades down to 3500BC. And created from cavement to Mesopotainians. So confusion masks the actual origins by using history.
One, two, three, four; electricity, thinking, language, now hens and eggs and men and women, etc. The unknown list is getting longer. The longer it gets and the more we are forbidden to know accentuates the increase in the feeling we are indeed in a prison!
I shall not add further to this list as by now you have the idea that the origin of everything we take for granted that was not created by other outmates is neatly clouded – by time.
Time
One of the most insidious punishment that exists in Roundearth. Time is relentless, unstoppable, and inevitable.
Time is showdown, when thoughts explode into action, sometimes a slow, sometimes a streaking build to horror, desire, pleasure or despair. We are all servants of time. It carries us through our contrasts. Ensuring we arrive at our despair, hope, happiness, and all the other hates and joys.
It forebodes horror, the preceding minutes increase the victims fear before being dragged into the torture chamber, or presents a split second of terror watching the enemy pulling the trigger.
It also allows an explosion of exhilaration, buoying the victor to the podium,
Time ravages our cell, increasing age increases pain as cells die, leaving sagging skin, creaking limbs, and a choice of horror memories.
It also brings us to our sentence end. We all know our time will finish. For some it will be a pleasure, for others a terror, but for us all, a moment unknown. A little cherry on the cake of worry for us to carry throughout our sentence.
Time exists on earth, but there are no clocks in the universe, and it is a subject that has tormented outmates for generations.
Time is related to space so the experts declare. Who or what occupies the space we have just left when time moved us on?
It was this concept that occupied outmate Einstein for many years. He insisted that time speeds up or slows down and is not constant as promised by clocks, time also bends and acts as gravity he foretold.
This theory has been backed up by the invention of GPS. The satellites providing the service have clocks that are adjusted to compensate when they speed up in space. Astronauts, when they arrive back on earth are younger than their counterparts who remain in the prison.
So where do all these complicated results take an outmate?
Nowhere.
For us time still forebodes or excites, no matter what outmate Einstein calculated.
It is a concept however that could start the experimenters boggling. outmates had created the concept. Time does not exist in the universe. It is a necessary reference in Roundearth Prison.
For time to work it has to have a starting and finishing moments. The interval between is what we outmates call time. And it is used in some form or other throughout the prison.
What would fascinate the experimenters is the possibility of using time to double or treble the use of Roundearth.
The prison population exists at a precise second and remains in that second and then moves into the next second. It stays, locked by it’s own creation in the same band of time.
Surely, they reason, when time moves on another time is created, perhaps now just a void.
So why not fill it with another prison population? These two populations can never meet as they do not exist at the same time. The material objects, fields, forest, cities, oceans, countries, etc will have have moved forward also and so the opportunity to establish a completely new prison exists.
It is difficult to imagine the entire planet along with Roundearth prison reverting to it’s original state. For the Experimenters it could be a challenge. If, before it was chosen as a prison, it was just an empty lump of rock. Why cannot the whole experience be repeated, but at a different time?
The problem is, we will never know, even when or if it has been completed. Who knows, maybe there is another outmate sitting next to you right now? But one that you can never contact and who can never contact you, so I wouldn’t worry.
History exists because of time. History is the label placed on a period between a starting and finishing point some time back. It is another outmate creation.
But does it exist?
We read about history, there are thousands, millions even, of artefacts scattered about the prison. Which brings forward the question, does anything exist?
There is a theory that states that the vase of flowers I was just looking at was there only when I looked at it and disappeared when I looked away. If you apply that thinking to everything around you it means nothing exists until you become involved with it in some way.
So when, for instance you go to see the Pyramids in Egypt, you make a decision to see something you have been informed about.
But is it true?
Sure the pyramids are there, but are the tales (history) told about them correct?
We can touch a pyramid because it is there at that moment. So we are happy with the situation. So the pyramid is real but what about their history?
The problem is that everything we know about them has been reported by other outmates, but we know there a certain limits placed upon this knowledge (electricity, thinking, security etc) so is this limit extended to what we call history?
Henry the Eight had seven wives. So history tells us.
But they have all gone, we can’t see them, so did they ever exist?
OK, there’s books, pages, and piles of parchments allegedly written at that time to record the events but these could be just prison stock. Kept in museums to give us outmates a sense of the past. And there is no way we can check because time has moved us on.
So what is the reason for history, why do we need a sense of the past?
It reassures us. It gives a sense of settled security, that we are part of something that has happened and is happening and makes us feel necessary and therefore can be tampered with as another form of punishment.
Also events that happened a hundred years ago allow us to be grateful about how life (sentences) has improved.
Our detachment from history is complete, knowing past events cannot touch us.
The present cannot exist without the past, the future cannot exist without the present, the past cannot exist without the future. Think about it, each segment of time propping up the next, an unfathomable problem.
Yet another unbroken circle to keep us occupied.
Food
All this thinking requires energy, and electricity if the theories of our brain processes are to function. We get this energy from what we outmates call food. We all know what food is.
It is available virtually everywhere in the prison in different forms and the source is usually renewable. This removes the need for deliveries of the stuff to keep the prison working.
It is not only necessary nourishment, it is a wonderful stress creator. The creativity of outmates makes it enticing, causing us to overeat and labour ourselves with extra weight. This puts a strain on our cell that can cause persistent pain, discomfort, and self deprecation.
The cultivation, catching, rearing, collecting of food and the preparation, distributing, and sharing of it are all tasks that can be stressful, difficult and dangerous but absolutely necessary.
When we are hungry we have to eat. This not something we just think of, it is a command. We stop at intervals and take on more energy. If we did not do so we would die and our sentence would end. This cannot happen and so the complicated system continues.
It would be much more efficient for our energy intake to be confined to a few pills a day.
There would be no need for herds of cattle, vast prairies, fishing fleets, supermarkets, plastic bags, and all the paraphernalia that goes with gorging ourselves.
But that’s not prison thinking.
Bad food produces sickness, herds of cattle can get disease and the farmer can go bust, fishing boats can sink, supermarkets cause financial hardship among smaller shops and plastic bags have become the symbol of the pollution of contemporary society. Problems all around!
Now that’s prison thinking.
It is also very strange that often the food the attracts us the most is not good for us, resulting in family disputes or worse.
And the three big F’s do their bit in loading on the stress.
Famine, fires, and floods do a good job in reducing outmate’s cells to their skeletons.
To add to stress, some food is poisonous. Now that is not very nice.
Why?
Perhaps you have not been very nice, thats why you are in prison and the compliment is being returned. Also poisoning an outmate is a seemingly natural sentence ender. Also outmates have found antidotes to most poisons. Free research and successful solutions that may have outwitted others in the universe. Also the ingenuity of chefs in the prison manipulate and change food to excite the appetite to dizzy heights, surely that does not go unnoticed in the ether.
The also’s continue on levels we have yet to attain, and the changes of taste and appearance of food seem never ending, like discoveries, inventions, and creations.
The more we see, experience, and feel about our prison the more the invisible walls rise higher. Which of course, they have to.
Security
Escaping from you cell, escaping from the prison are the first thoughts of any prisoner.
With the exception of the outmates of Roundearth Prison. outmates do not know they are prisoners so that security risk does not occur.
Security on Roundearth is much more personal, it concerns you from a different perspective
For your sentence to continue uninterrupted it is essential you never find out the truth of your incarceration. Imagine what would happen if you did!
No, that we can’t imagine, that part of our programme does not exist. But there is also another reason. It does not belong in the security chapter but I shall mention it briefly and get back to it later.
We outmates are here for punishment. Wouldn’t it be a terrific punishment for us when our sentences finish, our programmes remain with us when we leave? This has consequences for when we return from whence we came, but, as I said, more of that later.
It might be thought that giving freedom of though to outmates would reduce physical prison security.
outmates could, perhaps, with their freedom of thought, invent ways to escape from Roundearth.
Which of course they have!
Trips to the moon, space stations, hardware being fired to distant planets, etc. All proof that outmates have left Roundearth Prison.
Can this be considered a threat?
Don’t think so.
In the cell chapter I spoke of a huge problem outmates were having finding the smallest microwhatever of matter and that would lead to a much heftier problem we would come to later.
Well now we have come to that problem.
If we cannot find the smallest molecule, we have a similar problem only on a more gigantic scale.
And outmates leaving Roundearth are part of it. It is all concerned with the exploration of space and outmates endeavours to find the origin of life.
Unfortunately they are faced with same problem as those of us trying to find the smallest molecule. Only they keep finding more and more planets and galaxies.
And the point is will they every find the end of the universe?
Don’t think so.
Why not?
Because they are not supposed to.
Ever thought why the sky is blue during the day and black at night?
Black is easy, The sun has gone.
Blue is explained by scientific outmates. They state blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Roundearth’s atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colour because it travels as shorter, smaller wavelengths. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.
Great, easy to understand – but why blue? Why not forget colours. Leave the sky transparent.
But no, we have blue sky during the day, black sky during the night.
Can you guess whats happening?
Has it occurred to you how strange this is?
We never see beyond a blue or black surround to Roundearth.
OK, there are satellites and telescopes in orbit around Roundearth. Placed there by Outmates. And what do they see?
Nothing much.
Just black space, stars, and planets. And more stars and planets, and more stars and planets.
Which I assume, is exactly all they are supposed to see.
So we have some outmates digging deeper into our skin cells and other outmates looking out to space trying to find answers to the questions – what are we made of and where did we come from?
What happens when the skin diggers come to a piece of matter so small it cannot reflect light? It exists but can never be seen.
What happens when the astronomer outmates reach that part of space too far away for light to travel back?
Nothing happens. Nothing is supposed to happen.
Obviously, whilst some Outmates would gaze upwards, there would be some who’s curiosity would encourage them to dig into Roundearth’s surface. The molten centre of the planet had not been modified when Earth was chosen for the project, and so digging into the planet would soon terminate.
That is why Roundearth is a totally secure Prison.
Could there be yet another aspect of security? More subtle than the physical barriers mentioned?
One that ninety nine per cent of outmates are oblivious too?
It is your electric light, or the effort it takes to lift something heavy as opposed to when you pick up some that weighs less, or the knowledge that you can walk easily on the pavement.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
It’s force.
According to the outmates who state they know what they are talking about, there are only four forces in the universe.
Strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, and the force of gravity.
“So what’s that got do with the security of the prison?”
What would happen if outmates found out how to control these forces? They could lift anything, electrocute anyone, fly around as they wished. They would no longer be wea little characters being able to lift barely a hundred kilos, and glued most of the time to the prison floor.
It could cause havoc in the prison.
“So how do you stop them getting theses powers?”
You can’t see, hold, or store, force, electricity (for long), or gravity. So how will you ever know what it is?
Which is a pretty cunning way to stop the bloody outmates getting the upper hand by making it impossible for them to discover what theses forces are.
At the start of this book I gave you an entertaining (or boring) description of how we possibly arrive in the prison, here’s another one that I bet has occurred somewhere in this penitentiary.
A Question Of Black And Blue.
Professor Griffiths (sentence 67 years) had made a decision. It was based on a phrase he had once heard that was attributed to an outmate of some fame in the field of psychology.
He stopped on the path, shoved his hands in his pockets, and took a last look at the end of the telescope pointing out of the roof of his observatory.
Slowly he raised the index figure of his right hand and made an indecent gesture at his beloved building.
It did not help the drag of disappointment that was sucking him into a god-almighty depression.
‘To keep repeating the same actions and expect a different result can only be classed as madness’.
He turned and continued the slow walk to his house, the reality of the phrase eating away a lifetime of his beliefs..
The professor seldom drank alcohol but this evening his wife’s eyebrows almost left her forehead such was the shock of seeing her husband upend almost the contents of a bottle of whisky into a beer glass and treating her to three gigantic, noisy, gulps.
“Goodnight”.
The professor turned and climbed the staircase to their bedroom before the effects of Scotland’s principal export could kidnap the use of his legs.
This evening he had made a startling discovery.
No, this evening he had made an almighty discovery.
No, no, this evening he had made an unbelievable belief of his beliefs.
The reflection in his telescope had been an accident. The cuff of his jacket had touched the button that moved the instrument in a lateral direction. True it had only moved a millimeter before he had snatched his arm away and bent into the eye piece to guide back the lens to its original position.
The lens was ablaze with light where there should not be light.
He checked his charts, his computer data, his eyesight. He stood up and then sat down.
He was an amateur.
Amateurs did not discover new milky ways. But he had. How he had never spotted it before he could not understand.
Even more remarkable was, according to the data library, that no one else had discovered his Milky Way either.
The professor had spent many happy and wonderous years behind his telescope but now logic, intelligence, and common sense had shattered his passion for the stars.
It was flutter.
Just flutter.
His observatory, apart from his expensive telescope, was packed with data., astronomical data on computers, keys, and discs, a lifetime of the stuff. And it was just flutter.
Now it meant nothing to him.
This data was collected, created, and discovered not only by himself but many other colleagues hooked on the stars. And that was his problem.
What were they collecting, creating and discovering?
For some it was attempting to find the origins of life on earth, for others it was the creation of the universe. Life on other planets, water on Mars, extraterrestrial intelligence, other civilisations attempting to contact but their progress was not impressive.
Discovering the new galaxy had taught him their progress would never be impressive.
His telescope could not compete with the much larger and more efficient models possessed by the professionals. But he had seen enough to realise that finding new stars and planets was simply a prelude to finding more and more, and more stars and planets.
‘To keep repeating the same actions and expect a different result can only be classed as stupidity’.
So he stopped.
Relationships
Something we all have at some time and like everything in Roundearth, near perfection, pleasure, and well being are the usual introduction we have at the start of the relationship.
Then our old mate contrast eases in and the closeness doesn’t seem such a great idea and another punishment is under way.
Of course this happening is not for everyone. Some relationships last happily to the end of our sentence, but that foretells a different punishment that we shall come to later.
So how real are our relationships? Is the person we are attached to really what they seem? Could it not be your companion is really a guide, steering you through your sentence?
Making suggestions, offering ideas, persuasions, commands?
That unconsciously you follow?
But maybe you also perform the same service for your partner, so perhaps you are fulfilling the same function without realising it.
A lot of our actions follow on from our thoughts. But quite a number are prompts or commands from other outmates. This seems natural, it would be very repetitious if we only responded to our own thoughts. But we are in prison, who cares if our sentence is repetitive?
But the point is, a two way system of communication is much more effective. It offers a kaleidoscope of stresses! Arguments, nagging, lying, cheating, promises, fights, invitations… in fact the whole gamut of the intercourse of outmates.
The more relationships an outmate has the more opportunities for problems and stress and the route to use more extreme emotions on the outmate.
Relationships are vital – to the prison. Without them it would not work.
They create networks, thinking is limited to the cell, relationships ignite action. They expand the prison, housing is required, towns and cities are built, countries grow, all because of relationships. And as these dwellings complete so the network can transmit all the information and punishment planned for the outmates.
Probably relationships could be classed as the number one source for an outmate’s chastisment.
Inevitably it is personal, close up, psychological, sensitive , and very wounding. Isn’t that a better picture than the narrow choice of punishments a non-comunicative outmate would face?
Relationships are also necessary as we know to ignite an arrival. And the coupling to achieve this is a big game changer, almost as big as when the new arrival arrives.
Outlooks change, values change, habits can vanish. Sensitive new areas are established. The old established and comfortable bubble has burst and emotions take on a new angle. Bewilderment and puzzlement and a feeling of being lost, euphoria, delight, anticipation, the emotions a new relationship releases are boundless.
Relationships are something in the prison that cannot be avoided. Short and sharp, long and loving, the sort of relationships we have are varied in intensity and time, always there with the fuse to our emotions about to be lit.
They not only cuddle together with emotions, thinking, and music, but with just about every action we are capable of. They can make us, break us, twist us, punish us (ha ha), worry us, frighten us, control us, incite jealously, rage, love, hate, pity sorrow…I’ll stop there, you’ve got the message.
A relationship can also bind outmates together, creating not only all the inevitable joys, sorrows and surprises but also generating one of the main currencies of the prison – shock.
There is nothing like a good shock to cause lasting agitation to outmates.
Without them our sentences would be very bland and much to peaceful for the prison, we might be able to relax!
However like most happenings in the prison, relationships are far more destructive than first perceived.
Like things.
We have relationships with things. Gardens, cars, pets, money, and more. What happens when one of these is damaged, destroyed, killed, or stolen? Your relationship with your closest outmates change. You become mad, shattered, worried and your closest becomes mad shattered and worried because you are mad shattered and worried. Then his or her closest becomes worried because his or her closest is worried and so so relationships could be looked upon as a sort of virus, spreading angst around you.
Beloved celebrities help by dying. Fans find their relationship with their idol gone. The result is an outcrying of sorrow on an national or international scale and that is big plus for the prison – relationships travel. There are few that rest with just two outmates. The moment a relationship commences others are involved, either just by complimenting or by criticising. The compliments or criticisms are transmitted to others and the scale of effect depends on the stature of the relationship.
Look at Hitler and the result of his relationship with the German people. Think differently, like of Lady Diana and her relationship with the British nation. Totally different relationships but nevertheless, far reaching.
So relationships are vital to the smooth running of the prison, they glue outmates together, they explode and cause ripples of consternation in a wide circle. Relationships ruin, relationships create, they amuse, they interest, they excite, they bore, they exasperate, in fact they ignite just about every emotion we are capable of.
They also have another advantage. The effect of punishment, however severe, reduces in most cases, by the passing of time.
Relationships reduce this effect.
Supposing a partner is an habitual criminal. The stress caused can continue for years even, flaring up at each new transgression. Wearing down the innocent partner to unplumbed lows.
A partner had passed away but the effect of the relationship continues. Sometimes bad, blaming oneself for the way you treated the lost one. Or bad in another sense, because of the opportunities missed to improve the relationship. Or what you should have said but did not, and now it is too late.
Yep, relationships are a great complication, to add to all the others we prisoners are subjected to.
Music
Music of some sort emanates from every part of the prison. It is an important addition to communication within the penitentiary.
It performs something that speech cannot do as effectively.
It fires personal emotions within outmates in a way speech does not.
Dancing close with a partner on the dance floor to dreamy music, listening to a tune that incites memories, or working to a rhythm or a beat invokes responses far stronger, especially when entwined with words, than just talking alone.
Music entertains and binds, personally, nationally and internationally.
It would be difficult to get many hundreds of thousands of outmates singing, waving and dancing in a stadium with a speech.
Music brings pleasure and relaxation to millions, it creates idols and hero’s and geniuses. It inspires it’s composers and thrills it’s listeners. We remember songs often for longer than sentences, it is entwined deeply in the vast majority of outmates at some time during their sentence
Without music, most entertainment could not function and the advertising industry would be far less effective.
But we are in prison here, if music is so pleasurable why allow it to exist in a correctional institute.
We could say that music provides a contrast. The pleasure of music is simply a primer before the punishment.
The singer or musician who has conquered their audience only to crash quickly to oblivion, to disgrace, or death is a regular scenario. But a subject as gigantic as music cannot exist for such a lame or tiny reason.
Because music has a very special function in the prison.
To understand it’s purpose, we have to remove it.
Think of a world without without crochets, quavers, rock, Beethoven, instruments, loudspeakers and the infinite talent and paraphernalia that makes up the music industry.
There would be very big gap.
No more humming to yourself, no more singing, the rockers would have nothing to rock to, and Ravel would have silently starved to death.
Discussion, anticipation, delight, satisfaction and discovery would be greatly diminished. You can’t dance without rhythm, instruments would not exist, the musical rich and famous would probably be working in Macdonalds, concert halls and festivals would be unknown, and the only rolling stones would be tumbling down a deserted hillside.
Get it? Music, the special function of the prison??
No?
True, our sentences would be a lot more miserable without music, but we don’t deserve the luxury of twelve bar blues, etc, so why are they here?
Think your reaction to music at some time during your sentence. It was perhaps emotional, sad, buoyant, deflating, inspiring or even furious.
Got now?
No?
What about oil?
Could the music industry and it’s music not be the lubricant of Roundearth prison?
Easing and sliding it’s way into and around the sentences of outmates? Steering them towards another smack in the face?
Listening, watching or being involved with a piece of music in concert or on disc can take an outmate on a trip far from their quotidian. But then they music ends and they have to comeback, to come down. To what?
A time that is very inferior to the joy and pleasure they have appreciated before.
Yep, that’s right, contrast again. And music helps it hugely to work more effectively.
Music fires memories and the longer your sentence the more music plays it’s part. It is excellent at igniting mental pictures of times past, some delighting, some tormenting, but they all agitate.
It changes with fashion, infuriating some, delighting others, with some tunes terrifying whole nations. It is a powerful influence on outmates and a key device in the prison.
It is both personal and public, it can be shared apart or together, it can change mood, it can menace, it can create fortunes or bankruptcy, it can persuade, exercise, mesmerise, astound, uplift, I could continue but we all know there is not much music cannot do psychologically.
And that makes it one of the most important tools in the prison.
Emotions
Emotions are, if you like, the currency of the prison? We offer, exchange, deceive, gamble, profit, lie, attract, amuse, entertain, disgust, share, react and just about everything else with them.
They translate into body language when we laugh, cry, shiver, dispute, etc, and into physical movement when we run, jump, hop, skip, and all the other signals we use to express ourselves to other outmates.
Language and music are not the only communicators. Emotions are on the top shelf with them. An outmate laughing can infect the whole room, theatre or cinema.
We receive transmissions and prompts to our emotions all the time, consciously and subconsciously. And not only from other outmates. Animals, the weather, temperature, our immediate surroundings, colours, smells, sights and sounds ensure our emotions are not allowed to rest.
They are linked to our thinking and to other emotions. A favourite mix could start with a small worry, your emotion of imagination then amplifies it to an anxiety, your intelligence then pops in to offer alternative scenarios that might nudge in fear.
We don’t learn emotions. We are taught to read, write, drive, walk, etc, but fear, suspicion, happiness, anxiety, etc, are just in us. They are part of our programme in various doses. Some of us react very lightly to fear, others become hysterical (another emotion!). But they are linked, like thinking is, to our awareness.
But what is awareness? It seems to be the centre of our existence. It is our ability to know, perceive, to recognise… the adjectives to describe awareness pour out of dictionaries, but as usual, no-one really knows what it actually is, only what it reacts to.
The problem is, awareness is just a word we outmates use and accept, but the more you think (ha) about it the more complicated and confusing the thinking becomes.
Try this for a giggle.
How much are we actually aware of? Are we aware of everything that is happening around us all the time but only select one happening? And why do we select that one scene?
Or is our awareness just one of vision or experience? We don’t know, no one knows.
Are you getting the same feeling and thoughts that you had about the micromatter of our cells and the never-ending stars and planets of the universe?
‘Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.’
That announcement seems to be the latest on who we are, and the nearest I can get to finding out what awareness really is.
But it is just words, a description presented by outmates. It does not tell us what awareness is. Sure, it tells what is happening. But we know what is happening, we are trying to find out what awareness is.
And that brings up one hell of a problem does it not?
Do you get it?
We have arrived at the highest invisible wall of the prison.
A moment when it dawns just how tightly we are incarcerated in Roundearth.
The problems is just ten lines back at the start of the sentence.
It’s just words.
That’s all we have. To communicate, to ride on through our sentence. Even if I found out what awareness was how could I describe it? OK, so Shakespeare created over a thousand words in the English language but they all relate to conceivable emotions, subjects, or objects. We are trying to find out how something actually exists that is in our brains (we think, we don’t even know that) and no one seems to have words for it.
And that can be very limiting. But then that’s the idea isn’t it?
Like being unable to tell us what awareness is!
The prison provides many punishments but our emotions add to the list. We punish ourselves emotionally and other outmates also. And like thinking, we are generally in some sort of emotional state.
If you take a tally of your punishments for a day, it seems emotions are always near the top of the list. And thinking even deeper it becomes obvious that without emotions most punishments would not have much effect.
You have to have the emotion of fear to be able to feel it, jealously would not exist without it’s key emotion and that goes for a multitude of other feelings.
But are they feelings? How concrete is envy for instance? It only exists within the outmate feeling it.
If I wish ferociously I had my neighbour’s car, I am the only one suffering, my neighbour isn’t, my partner isn’t, my kids aren’t, and neither is the car.
Attach this last paragraph to other emotions you feel and one realises that emotions are totally private. You are the only one feeling them.
OK, if you are in a concert with eighty thousand others, all singing the same song it might seems you are sharing the same emotions, but are you?
Are you enjoying the music or are you enjoying the sound? Is it the performance? The atmosphere? The talent of the musicians, the vocals, the lighting plot, or all of it? And at the same time as those around you?
Here’s a little form for you.
Thinking + emotions = action.
Take hope, I don’t intend to chapterise each of the emotions we outmates carry, you know them as well as I do, but there are one or two which are so efficiently designed and think linked, I am sure you will appreciate their value.
Let’s give hope a twirl. It is based on the future. And has the power to lift, elevate, soar, terrify, and sadden outmates to dizzy heights. You can hope for anything and you can hope things don’t happen. I’m pretty sure there is not an emotion or a state of mind we experience that it is not connected to.
Try and find one, I couldn’t.
C’mon you really have to admire the design of our punishment system. The interaction is endless. Hoping connects to indecision, despair, anticipation, dread, excitement, worry, etc, to mention just a few.
These lead to a mass of other emotions. Take worry from the list.
We hope someone will visit us. Now hope is connected to worry, will our house please the visitor, will they arrive on time, will they like the food we have prepared, will, will, will, you can worry yourselves into a panic. And that’s another emotion you have just been connected to, which in turn is connected to a dozen more.
Hope is the aperitif to a punishment. It is a necessary component, a hook, a bait, to lead you into a more positive, or happy scenario.
Without hope, contrast cannot work. You hope earnestly for something or someone. Sometimes your hope is dashed before you can attain your desire. And that’s a punishment. In another scene you achieve your hoped for goal. Then the punishment eventually arrives with contrast.
Sometimes the goal you fought for is not at all that you expected.
Hope is linked to our imagination. As it is used to perpetuate a desire, we have to imagine what that desire is before we can hope to have it or for it to happen.
This is all getting a bit too psychological, as it has to.
Just look at the following sentence.
John hoped she would come, but she was late, she had forgotten him, he was unimportant, her interest had been a deceit, she had no intention of meeting him.
Hope, worry, disappointment, doubt, hurt, and sadness are six emotions John experienced in about thirty seconds.
And that is the speed and variety that can be hurled at us but with just one emotional starter – hope.
But don’t worry, we are built to endure this. Otherwise we would be able to escape punishment.
Emotions are with us all the time, I don’t think we can stop having emotions.
WHAT! WHAT. WHAT. WHAT!
What did I just write?
Did you read that?
So we can’t stop thinking, we can’t stop hearing, we can’t stop breathing, we can’t stop seeing, it seems there is not much we can stop. That leaves us open to all sorts of prompts and commands.
So there is no escaping emotional punishment.
In fact, there is no escaping anything!
Sentences
The problem with our sentence is we do not know when it will end.
It could be sudden, it could be protracted. There is no way of knowing. A permanent puzzle for some, a worry for others, and a terror for the rest.
“You don’t know where you came from and you don’t know where you are are going.” Not an explanation, but a bit of a soother, usually explained to children when they ask the question you cannot answer.
It is possible you have served a previous sentence in Roundearth prison. If you have you, will have no cognisance of that – maybe. Unless we remember our experiences after we leave the can.
I don’t know, but I have thought up a terrific punishment that may await some of us when your chest explodes and you drop forever.
Let’s say you have been successful plus during your time in Roundearth. Made a fortune, had a wonderful family, discovered a life saving cure, became a public idol, anything that made you a hero. And, during that time you had few problems, luck was always with you. You did not want to die. You did not want to leave the glitter and fame, but you have a sentence that is due to end.
Imagine if the memories of your success stayed with you after you left.
What a hit!
You go back to your place in the universe brimming with misery. Thinking of the outmates and the pleasures that were torn away from you. Memories that wound on for eternity and you can never return to!
Here’s a bit of an illustration.
The Ultimate sentence
There has to be one in every prison. This scenario I should imagine would be just about the punishment supreme.
The doctor’s facial expression was grave, but his eyes did not match the sadness transmitted by his body language. The clasped hands, the slight bow of his head, even the lowered voice, were, Walter established, practiced medical theatricals, well rehearsed by a doctor well rehearsed in telling patients their terminal fate.
94 years was a good age. But for Walter it was too soon. He still had much to do, he was too young to die. His life had been productive and useful, both for himself and many of those he had met on the way. To die now would be inconvenient, he had made promises to several people and organisations that he would now be unable to fulfil and that was upsetting. He never broke his word and always kept his promises.
The clatter of activity in the corridor prefaced the opening of the door of his private room.
A head he had not seen before was forced through the opening with the eyes halting their scan on the doctor.
The doc knew his place and the drill. With a pat of his hand on the arm of his patient, he turned, picked his notes and left the room.
The head retreated with the doctor as Walter pulled himself upright in readiness for his visitor.
The man, emanating authority and oscillating somewhere between sixty and seventy strode in, kissed Walter on the forehead and then stood back, his gaze never leaving the old man’s face.
‘You look better.’
‘Thank you Prime Minister,’ smiled Walter. ‘But I’m not. I fear I am sinking.’
Yes, it was impossible, he could not die yet. The foundation he was creating was far from finished, a complicated project that was becoming more intricate at each stage.
His mind, practiced and primed for immediate and intense concentration had gripped the problematic project instantly.
The man he had called Prime Minister, the hospital room and everything in it faded. Memories cue in quickly in the aged, they have so many.
Walter was already in his board room, two years back, huddled with his army of solicitors. His vast investments, his properties, money, and other assets were to be sold.
His six children, all almost as successful as himself, had no need to be burdened with the fruits of his lifetime of achievement. Via his future foundation, his wealth would be used to ease the lot of those less fortunate than himself.
Yes, he considered he had been most fortunate. Perfect health for ninety four years, an adorable wife, six children who could not be bettered. The explosive success of finishing every project he had created…his mind raced the relay of his life, each memory handing him on to the next.
The Prime Minister had spoken twice to his father in the last five minutes and received no reply. This was happening more and more often. His visits, back to his past were also taking longer, one day he would not come back, he would die amongst his memories. Which, the Prime Minister mused, would be a wonderful manner for his father to pass away.
At his last visit, a week ago, he had been marked by the deterioration, both physical and mental in the patient.
It is a fact, the doctor had stated, the more active patients have been during their life, at the end, degeneration appears to arrive quickly.
Whilst the Prime Minister accepted the sadness of the condition of his father, his principal emotion was admiration. It seemed his father had had the luck of ten people. Add in his talent for always choosing the road to success, his brilliant timing to amplify that success, and a character that invariably left both friends and enemies biting their bottom lips with the same emotion he was now feeling.
Many thousands had work, many more had comfortable retirement, many a hospital, care home or hostel now stood in a space that would have been empty but for his father’s energy.
The Prime Minister, tried to think and act like his father, as did his brothers and sisters, and he had no illusions it was one of the reasons he had just been chosen to commence his third term leading the country.
The knock on the door, with just the face of an aide publicising the next of his problems on her face, snapped the prime minister’s meditation.
The Prime Minister kissed his father on the forehead again, the glazed look in his father’s eyes cancelled any words he might have spoken. With a final lowering of his eyes at the door he re-entered his daily bedlam.
Walter had left the boardroom and re-entered the joy of falling in love.
Why she stood out from the other girls he could not fathom, she was not pretty, she was far more than that. He quickly dropped his search of trying to discover what made her so attractive, to plot his approach.
He remembered she had smiled. So he smiled.
Why did she turn and face him? A smile is soundless yet she had turned as if he called her.
So he smiled again. Without hesitation his smile was returned. They were together, they were one – instantly.
Hands outstretched he walked towards her, her smile warmed to that special smile of someone suddenly in love, it was moment he knew he would remember for the rest of his life.
They would touch hands and be still for a long moment, then he would slip his hand around her waist and in a very gentlemanly and proper manner would glide her onto the dance floor.
But…he had stopped. He had not wanted to but he could not move forward. … her expression had changed, the tenderness had tensed into concern.
Bugger!
He pushed forward but his feet were nailed to the floor. She reached towards him her concern mounting to panic.
His battle to get to her was exhausting him, frustration exploded, he could not move because he was dying, he was leaving ….. his children, his family, everything he valued, loved and adored.
No!
He wouldn’t!
He would fight.
He had always fought, he would not lose his life, his achievement, his passions, his loved ones.
The explosion of frustration released the scream. It cut into every wing of the sanctuary. People ran but it was too late, Walter was dead. He had finished his sentence, the harshest and most cruel on Roundearth.
He had seen success, he had felt triumph, floated on happiness, reaped the rewards of giving and kindness, shared dramas with his children. His incarceration on Roundearth had been a staircase of mounting achievements – and he would remember every detail.
He would remember.
He would know
That this was his punishment.
Every excruciating detail.
For the rest of his existence.
Would torture him for eternity.
He had had the mortal pleasure now he would have eternal agony. He could never go back.
He had died twenty seconds after his son had left. The scream had hastened the body guards to push the Prime Minister into the armoured car.
Soon the Prime Minister would have the news, and the twenty seconds would become a dagger, that would turn incessantly in his brain.
But then the Prime Minister had been sentenced to the same punishment as his father.
Walter would not be returned at the end of his sentence on Roundearth.
His punishment would continue. He would become an observer, able to see the continuation of what he had achieved during his lifetime/sentence. Able to see and feel emotionally, but unable to contact. He would see his children making mistakes, contacting physical and mental diseases, being attacked, having accidents, making disastrous relationships.
Events that could have happened to himself but for his acute intelligence that saved him many times.
Now he was helpless, unable to aid but able to feel – a torture for eternity.
***
That definitely ain’t much fun. But it’s good publicity for the prison and might reduce universal crime.
Suspicion
An emotion of distrust of others or situations or things. It could be looked upon as a safety accessory, switching on doubt that causes one to pause before one commits to something or someone.
But we don’t need safety, whatever is gong to happen to us during our sentence will happen. So why do we have this emotion?
Perhaps we are being used? Are we are being used to punish? Looking upon something or someone with suspicion causes unease in the other party, or distrust, or nervousness, or panic, or, or, or.
The emotions it ignites are inevitably negative and that causes stress. And the prison loves stress. The outmate subjected to stress has to react to the demand that caused the stress, and that opens the wardrobe of their emotions.
Develop that idea a bit further and another picture of the prison pops up.
The prison provides it own food and energy, and now with one emotion it can add to the punishment system.
Include also the emotions of anger, jealously, greed, ambition, and a couple of dozen others, and you have a self propelling punishment chain with the prisoners doing all the work!
I skimmed over emotions in an earlier chapter but suspicion took me down another vein of the prison.
I started to write this book because of my emotion of suspicion.
I looked at a flower, at the delicate construction, the wonderful colour, and the perfect balance achieved and, from that moment, distrusted every explanation for my existence that had been explained or taught to me.
And here I am now, after giving you all the ideas and explanations that I think are the reason for our existence still unable to quantify who I am.
I think I am in prison. I know my number is 220,674,122 because I gave it to me for the purpose of writhing this book and, I know I am locked in my cell, I know plenty of other outmates, I know plenty of places in the prison, I know how to do plenty of tasks and make things, but at one point my knowings come to a halt. I cannot know any further. But I also know I would have another barrier to cross to get my me.
Because I have the emotion of suspicion, even when I discover the reason for my existence, will I believe it?
Terrific, so suspicion not only punishes, it locks me away from finding out who I am. That’s pretty efficient – and depressing.
There’s that link again, one emotion, it seems is not enough to finish a punishment. So we must have a pretty big stock of emotions of varying depth.
But do we?
Think about it.
We cry when we feel sorrow, when we laugh, when we are in pain. We cringe when we are embarrassed, frightened, or expecting a blow.
These are mental emotions turning physical so you would think by thinking inwardly, you would reasonably expect to find the source of your emotions.
If you try to think deeply about your emotions, and I mean really deeply, weather we have one emotion that different triggers result in different results, or weather we have many emotions that portray many results a strange thing happens.
Well it did for me.
So try it. Try to discover, by thinking about an emotion you posses, the answer.
But beware, it can become very strange.
What happens?
You go around in a mental circle. Yet I persevered, with unpleasant results.
I refused to allow sidetracking thoughts or subjects to interfere with my main thought. Very quickly I began to perspire, this was follow by a feeling of debilitating fatigue, dizziness, and a feeling of nausea. And I found it impossible to think further.
I was surprised, I had never caved in mentally before and I could not believe my physical reaction, and, so a few days, later I tried again.
The result was the same, I finished feeling really bad.
To continue repeating the same actions and expect a different result we know is stupidity. So I backed off.
I certainly did, and quite simply could not, come to a conclusion.
And that pretty well proves the position we are in. We are imprisoned by the inability to find out who we are and how we work.
And here am I thinking we are in a physical prison in Roundearth, when the likelihood is that we are in a mental prison, restrained by a limit on our thinking.
So that removes a number of problems. There is absolutely no point in even thinking about the really important aspects of our existence because we are blocked, banned, or restricted from getting anywhere near the truth of the core of Roundearth Prison.
And that is a bit of a revelation.
Energy
Wow this is a biggy.
The more you think about energy the more you discover what an amazing place our prison is.
Apparently our brains use twenty per cent of the energy of our cell. OK, so where do we store that energy, where is our fuel tank?
It is kept in the fat in our body. And in the fat of animal’s bodies?
“So I can take a slice of fatty bacon, attach two wires to it and get electrical energy flowing?”
Er…not quite.
“So I can drop a slice of the stuff into the fuel tank of my car and drive away?”
No.
“But if there is energy in fat why can’t we use it?”
Because there is another, opposing, scientific ‘fact’.
“Tell me outmate 220,674,122”
Energy does not exist, it is not an entity. It is a process. A transition from one something to another.
“That seems very vague.”
You should know by now, when you get down to the nitty gritty, everything in the prison is vague.
Have you noticed how energy seems to be limitless? Of course it has to be in the prison, otherwise nothing would work.
First it was wood, then it was coal, then it was oil, then it was electricity, then it was nuclear power, then it was solar power, then it was hydrogen, and then it was wind that provided energy . What next I wonder?
Do not all these sources of energy point to something?
Could it be we are surrounded by energy? If this is the case perhaps when we touch things we pick up energy, or maybe the opposite, we transfer energy to other outmates or things?
Why not the idea that when we breathe we take in energy or when we run we generate energy for ourselves and when we tire of excercise we are not as we think exhausted, but simply full up with energy?
One thing is certain, nothing tantalises more than the unknown and energy is unknown.
Perhaps it is not necessary to generate energy. Maybe we are absorbing it all the time from heat, from light, from movement?
Without knowing what it actually is, it is difficult to understand the functions of energy. Batteries are supposed to store electrical energy, but do they? Until a load is applied the battery does no work. So where is the energy it is supposed to hold? It seems energy needs a task to be able to perform.
So the non entity that keeps us alive remains unknown, and is an unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling nonentity. Which is just what the prison wants.
I would suspect it is imperative the prison never runs out of energy. This is why we have so many sources available.
It is quite probable, no energy = no prison, and that cannot be allowed to happen – not yet anyway. But that is another point I shall get to later.
And energy has another energy. It has value, and anything considered valuable in the prison has to be protected or fought for. The means conflict and stress and pain and problems.
So we are back where we started, where it seems everything in Roundearth is anchored to angst. But what else should we expect after the crimes we have committed?
Surely there is another side to energy, as there seems to be another side to everything within the prison and that’s negative energy – does it exist?
When we feel tired are we using negative energy? When I researched this idea I could only find references to the universe and black holes which seemed a bit extravagant for my little question.
But apparently many physicists think negative energy does exist and to an extent of being exactly equal to our usual positive energy.
For them, this validities the statement therefore that energy cannot exist! It cancels itself out.
I also ran into dark energy and anti energy, and the statement energy cannot be created or destroyed – more unsolved puzzles. So it seems finding the source of energy is as elusive as the quest to grab a handful electricity, and thinking your way to the bottom of thinking.
There is also a problem with the word energy. Such as, is the energy used to move my arm the same energy used to power my car?
If we take the idea energy does not exist and is a process of transition, then yes it is the same energy. If we take the idea that energy is stored in fat, then no, it is not the same energy, right?
So what, when we utter the word energy, are we talking about?
We don’t know, and this is not limited to the word energy. Try researching the word light, you’ll soon being trotting down the well worn path to confusion! So the language we use to describe things, is in many cases, just a cosy noise we make to stay in our bubble of experience.
And this wallops in another delight of the prison. We are probably kept secure by a limit on our thinking but now it is obvious that our languages are also perfect limiters.
Like the word energy, it has many meanings, and yet all those different meanings dilute it just a pacifier. It gives a name to something that according to some experts does not exist!
So we are quite happy, describing our level of energy, or the amount of energy used, or lack of energy, etc. The words pacifies us, making it less likely we shall dig further into something we are obviously barred from.
And language also performs another great trick, it keeps us performing on the thin skin of civilisation within the prison.
But that is for later.
This chapter was all about the fun of being of being imprisoned by a just word!
So the next time you make a movement, remember you are using energy, a noun that describes…what?
Sleep
One of the most important aspects of our time in the prison. Why do we sleep?
We sleep to re-energise our brains.
Our cells rebuild themselves during sleep.
Our brain dumps useless memories.
Sleep rejuvenates and grows muscle, it synthesises hormones and repairs tissue.
The information on what happens during sleep is plentiful.
But all this could be done whilst we are awake, so the answer to why do we sleep is – no one knows for sure.
Our brain dumping useless memories is intrquing. Who decides which of our memories are useless? I can’t remember having done so.
And sleep rejuvenates and grows muscles – with what?
Our cells rebuild our cell during sleep.
So where are the used bits in the morning? There are absolutely no old pieces of me anywhere when I wake up.
OK, I feel refreshed from a good nights sleep. But I feel refreshed after a shower, a swim, a good rest. And why do we sleep at night? I can sleep at any time. I suppose at night most others are sleeping so there is less noise to wake one up.
But the reason we sleep must be pretty important. Sleep deprivation can lead to the end of you sentence.
So let’s look at sleep from a different angle. Whatever the reason for sleep it is absolutely essential and we are switched off for it to happen. We are unconscious and paralysed.
Going to sleep could be like ending your sentence. I can say that in total security as no outmate has ever returned from the end of their sentence so I cannot be argued with.
I mentioned at the start of this epic, only the motor entered the prison and the chassis was left behind.
Well our cells are left behind when we sleep. Where does our motor go?
Do we have a prison visit? Don’t think so, not every night.
Maybe we go to lessons and Roundearth is a reform school.
Maybe our crime was political and we are subjected to re-education.
When we sleep we are switched off. That we know for certain, all our senses stop, and when you look at someone sleeping, they look exactly the same as when they are awake except their eyes are closed.
We are obviously gone, disconnected, or parked even.
I like the idea of just being parked. It opens up a wave of possibilities. While our entity stays behind, our motor or whatever you like to call us, me, or you, could get up to all sorts of adventures.
There is so much we don’t know about us, we maybe have the ability to communicate on a level unknown in the prison, move at the speed of light, and have powers that are not allowed in the jail, so we have to clank our way around when we are conscious, using the tools we are allowed.
So are we still in prison when we sleep? Sure we can wake up instantly when something disturbs us but that would be no problem if we had these unknown powers.We could be back from where we had been in less than a millisecond. Switched back on and ready to go without a flicker in our consciousness. The barrier, that was there when we fell asleep, back up again.
So we don’t know where we came from we don’t know where we go when our sentence ends and we are switched off virtually every twenty-four hours. We don’t know what energy is, we are limited in our thinking and our language is a barrier.
Those are pretty tight controls we are subjected to.
Lets take the rebuilding our cells when we sleep idea. OK, we wake bright and ready for another day of our sentence.
But supposing our cells are not rebuilt, supposing we are recharged, like a battery. Isn’t it strange we go to bed tired and a few hours later wake up refreshed. Without eating or drinking or doing anything to revitalise ourselves? Could it be that during the time we are switched off we are being switched on in a way we cannot imagine?
There is a strange side to sleep that doesn’t quite fit the explanations of those who study and explain sleep.
You go to sleep tired, exhausted even, with every bit of energy (ha) drained out of you. Eight hours later you wake refreshed, ready to take on another day in the prison.
Now this happens to everyone in general.
But why?
Why are we so full of beans on getting out of bed?
We haven’t eaten or drank or taken in nourishment for eight hours.
Where has all the vitality come from?
Could it be that when we are asleep we take on energy from another source. If that is right, why do we bother to eat and drink?
Why doesn’t our mystery energy make dining obsolete?
Eating and drinking demand many huge industries. Huge industries, beside providing food also provide stress, trouble, accidents, etc, etc, all lifeblood of the prison.
That could be one answer, but a more realistic idea would be that the nourishment we eat is necessary for the wellbeing of our cell, for it to remain strong and healthy and our sleeping download of energy powers thinking, emotions, and things not physical.
So how do we ‘load’ this energy whilst we sleep? Watching someone sleeping does not look as if they are ‘loading’ anything.
But you can’t see energy. It might be all around us, we do not know the technique for latching onto this energy.
But the idea of picking up energy whilst we sleep is flawed.
If that was the case why bother to sleep? There could be another thought.
It seems it is vital for us to sleep. We need to be switched off, out of the way, unconscious for a period, out of this world.
How about the idea every outmate is switched off at the same time? Throughout the whole prison?
You can’t say no to that because you do not know what is going on whilst you sleep. The whole prison could have come to halt.
“What a load of rubbish!” You yell. “What about someone watching someone else sleeping. What about pilots flying aircraft, what about an outmate giving birth?”
Read again what I have just written.
The whole prison could have come to a halt.
The fact that some outmates are awake and some asleep is immaterial. Everything has stopped until you wake again.
Try looking from a different angle. Let’s reverse a few thoughts.
Assume that when we are serving our sentence, ie when we are awake, we are in fact asleep, and we are dreaming. When we sleep, that is when we return to whatever we are in the universe (if there is such a thing).
Our sentence is just a dream we have been sentenced to. Which is why we have to return every day (earth time) to our dream. This would explain why we are refreshed when we ‘wake’, having picked up the necessary to get refreshed!
I used the word necessary in the last sentence because we have arrived at the moment where the word energy no longer works.
Electrical, magnetic, thermal, heat, etc, are all nouns that describe energy.
Let’s replace it with the word force.
We pick up some sort of force when we sleep sounds much more realistic and mystic.
Outmates sleep together in pairs or in dormitories en masse. So how is it possible for us to pick anything up without being seen?Remember we can’t see energy or force. Also remember we only know about ten per cent of how our brain functions, so an efficient force collector could be at work inside our head every time we sleep without our knowledge.
Terrific, but that could work whilst we are awake as well so again, why do we sleep?
There might be a danger if we were allowed to witness this force we collect. Then use it to damage the prison in some way.
Also discovering this mystery force might give us strengths that would to be good for us, or too good for us.
Perhaps a better line of investigation would be more rewarding. We know we are switched off during sleep. But where is the switch? We also know we have no idea how ninety per cent of our brain works. So that would be two things for sleep researchers to look for, the force pick up and the on off switch. But then that would only lead to more mystery. Who connects the force pickup and who presses the switch?
Now all these suggestions seem far fetched and ridiculous and out of the box thinking.
But finding solutions to the mysteries of the cell we live in will, like most times, never succeed if you just keep your head stuck in the box.
Apparently we have cells in our eyes the are sensitive to light and wake us up when it becomes daylight. But daylight is another source of energy.
Could it not be that the mysterious energy that we cannot see could be daylight?
And our brains are collecting energy from daylight all the time? This could be the reason we have to be switched off to sleep regularly. And the feeling tired effect in fact is just the opposite to what we believe.
We are not tired at all. It is the off switch being turned on because we are saturated with energy and need to ’sleep it off’!
Of course all this is just imaginative guessing and somewhat tantalising because none of us outmates can say it’s right or wrong.
So open the box marked ‘Mysteries’ and pop in sleep with all the others.
But then think logically, If we knew the answers to all these questions it wouldn’t be much of a prison – would it.
The Daily struggle.
A piece of toast slips off your plate and onto the floor. You know it will land buttered side up.
Your boss has blamed you for something that was not your fault. You are comfortable in bed, the alarm goes off and now because you have to get up, you feel three times more comfortable.
You are going to play a sport, all week the weather has been perfect but the day you can play it pours with rain. It is strange how the TV breaks down just as the climax of the programme you are watching approaches.
None of these incidents are more than a trifle annoying compared to what could befall you.
They are steady drip of irritations which seem to happen far more often than a series of more pleasant occurrences.
Count the number of positive items in the next news bulletin you see or hear and compare them to the number of problems or disasters in the same programme. Usually the negatives win.
It seems that in most outmate’s lives each day, problems are solved or created. We seemed doomed to be shouldering some sort of burden incessantly and there is no way of stopping them.
We are locked in our cell with our thoughts stabbing us.
In fact prisoners in an earth prison seem to have less problems than those grappling with the world outside. Their lives are ordered by prison discipline
But we are built to withstand the pressures, well most of us are, perhaps nervous breakdowns, burn outs, and other stress disorders are for those sentenced to them.
To balance these penalties we have a protective shield.
Our sense of safety always ensures the ability to overcome these pumellings and continue our sentence to the next attack.
Sometimes our cell behaves badly and throws in more plusses for our discomfort.
An organ plays up, like a kidney develops a stone, painful and worrying. The things that can fail or disfunction in our cells is almost endless.
Surely, the way some parts of our cell are constructed, like the components that never seem to fail regularly, the strong bits like bones, nails, etc. It would have been possible in the design to make everything unbreakable.
But then we could serve our sentences worry and pain free.
But this would result in an holiday camp existence. And that ain’t the point of the exercise!
Of course some days are not a struggle, everything we do clicks in nicely
Take golf, I chose this game as it is probably the most mentally demanding of popular sports and so the most maddening. On Monday you play a round out of the text book, every part of your game is almost perfect. On Saturday you stride out to the first tee a foot above the ground on confidence. But by the third hole your confidence has vaporised, by the eight you are frightened to go anywhere near the ball, if you can find it, and on twelfth you wish you could dive into the hole and disappear for ever because you are playing so badly.
You haven’t changed anything. You are still swinging the same but the results are laughable. You hurl your clubs in the car, slam down the boot and probably get a ticket for speeding on the way home.
What caused this collapse from golf Heaven to golf Hell?
“Yeah, OK, we know, it’s contrast again.”
But is it.
“Alright then, it’s our programme, we are just obeying, it.”
Could be more.
“Like?”
You cherish your golf, it’s import to you that you play well. But. You have crashed and you don’t know why. So it will gnaw at you, for days, weeks, even months. You will play a little better next time but it might be months for you to attain another text book round. Then the scenario might repeat again.
“I don’t play golf.”
That’s not the point. Substitute golf for rugby, football, cricket, baseball, housework, knitting, or whatever.
“And?”
Throwing yourself into a pastime or hobby is setting yourself up. Priming yourself for happy/ despair contrast and a bit more.
Because you care, in varying degrees of passion, about your recreation, the disappointment can continue for months.
Such as this season your football team is getting uncomfortably near the relegation zone, a favourite rugby player is badly injured and you won’t see him playing for months or you can’t find the correct wool for you knitting.
The beauty of this punishment is that it hovers in the background, waiting for you to relax and then surfacing, proving that short sharp punishments do have longer, stronger, relations.
One short sharp punishment that has the ability to morph into a longer stronger aggro is that quicksilver act of becoming different. ie, to change.
Results are not always what you expected. And often more problems emerge than are solved. This makes you reluctant to change which in turns becomes a niggle because you have not dared to change.
This leads to feeling of almost cowardice. You didn’t grab the problem and shake hell out of it.
And so the daily struggle continues.
And your co-outmates add to the annoyance. The are late for an appointment, or they don’t turn up, or they do and bring a list of problems with them.
You discover your partner has done something you do not approve of. Do you tackle them, creating a dispute or do you shut up, creating your own private tension?
We all have habits. Habits are a great way of causing stress.Their repetitive nature can drive a fellow outmate nuts, yet departing from a habit can cause concern
And you imagination goes negative. Problems that may not happen are anticipated, igniting a panic over nothing. But this is your sentence, that’s what you are here for.
To have a sentence without worry, problems, sadness or accidents is something every outmate desires – and can never attain.
Clever innit?
Figures (just to stop you wondering)
In a Roundearth year, on average, 131million outmates arrive. With sentences ranging from a few Roundearth days to many years, it seems inevitable that many sentences will end at the same time. This is no problem.
By reducing the level of the water on the planet and revealing larger expanses of land, the prison is able to accommodate the extra outmates.
This process has been continuing for some time according to history, relics and the fossils discovered repeatedly archaeologists, give proof. Although this process is now reversing, a possible reason is included in a later chapter.
But a sudden million outmates finishing their sentences simultaneously could be a very different problem.
Mass repatriations would become necessary. 55.3 million ‘deaths’ per year is the repatriation average in the prison according to the latest statistics.
Whilst the creation of violent weather systems such as storms, tsunamies, tornadoes, floods etc, can repatriate large numbers of inmates en mass, shorter sentences between 18 to 40 Roundearth years require a different solution.
18 to 40 year olds are considered in the prison as the prime years of an outmate, dying naturally in large numbers at this age could be looked upon with suspicion by other outmates.
So how about war? A few years of war can move many thousands of outmates over a very short period.
The outmates can be streamed easier. A soldier outmate, joining an army could be programmed to be ‘killed’ in a particular battle along with dozens of others. There is also a punishment bonus with a war – grief and hardship – a shared sadness for the families and friends.
Epidemics could also be seen as an efficient repatriation process. We all know how new viruses appear from time to time that contaminate virtually the entire prison.
There are also the apparently self inflicted catastrophes. Dams that burst drowning thousands, hyper powerful bombs that obliterate cities and everything and everybody within them.
So the prison system is well equipped to handle large numbers of outmates leaving simultaneously.
The prison is equipped to handle anything.
ain.
Clever innit?
All sorts
Snakes bite, delivering venom. The big cats tear with their claws and bite with their teeth. Hedgehogs roll into a ball. Skunks spray a stink, octopi eject ink, birds fly off, cats hiss, pythons strangle, bees sting, What a list and variety of animal defences. And there are dozens more.
Why?
Why should not all animals have the same defence. Why should they not all spit poison?
Come to that why aren’t all animals the same?
An awful lot of the animals and insects that roam the prison seem to be of little use to us outmates, such as wasps, mosquitoes, rats etc.
But maybe animals are nothing to do with us. Imagine if there were no animals. The prison would have a food problem, and if we are to believe history, a transport problem.
OK, that accounts for horses and everything we outmates eat. But there are thousands of species of animals, birds and fish.
Why are they in prison?
Are they outmates locked in completely different cells to ours?
I have a better idea.
Supposing they are experiments, placed in Roundearth because it is an ideal test area?
Many species become extinct – failed experiments?
Or have they been removed from whence they came?
Many species expand and multiply – successful experiments? Possibly, when the animal’s research capabilities reach an end the subject is left in the prison.
And many species arriving and departing may arouse suspicion among outmates.
And the successful experiments multiply and multiply – why shouldn’t they? They were created to do just this. But too much of a good thing can cause problems.
The African Driver ant lays three to four million eggs every twenty five days. This must be considered a very successful experiment. So why is the prison not knee deep in Driver Ants?
Because they have natural predators that keep the numbers down.
A question is begging.
Were the predator experiments introduced for that reason? In fact the whole animal experimental kingdom seems to controlled in this way, so it could be a logical thought.
All this animal behaviour seems perfectly natural, the balance between outmates and the experimental population is perfectly balanced.
Everything to us outmates is natural. Even the unexpected, like an earthquake or a tzanami can be explained away after the initial shock. Your partner has been unfaithful. The revelation almost destroys you. Within a few days or weeks the hurt becomes blunted and you struggle back to life.
It seems we always return to what we think (ha) is normal. We feel safe in the ‘normal’. And this is necessary. How else could punishment be applied?
Take someone out of their bubble and they are uneasy, suspicious, excited, pleased, or frightened. And set up for their punishment programme.
A word in that last sentence causes me a problem. It’s the word programme.
No matter how complicated, programmes, as we know them, all have the same aim. To deliver a solution. I have mentioned that I though we are programmed but the word doesn’t quite fit. We are not en route to a solution.
Programmes require an exact path. The path our sentences take zigzags all over the place. Take us out of normal and we are, in some way, disturbed. Stress jumps forward beckoning panic to follow and here we go again – another punishment.
It doesn’t seem to me that that little scene is a programme. But I cannot find a word that comes near the controlled/uncontrolled state we are in.
So I have created one – untrolled – the definition is to live in a controlled yet uncontrolled state.
This situation seems annoying, OK, try and do something about it.
This means we are encased in our sentence path but break out of it’s control either deliberately or by accident. Incidents then occur.
Might these incidents, and the resolution we come to, be of interest to the source that created our untrolling?
It would explain why our sentences sometime seem to streak off at right angles to what we expect. And invariably, after the incident, we return to our controlled state, usually with relief.
Are our meetings and relationships with other outmates untrolled? Do we meet by accident? Is bumping into someone an accident or an untrolledation?
Does it really matter?
It happens, we react, and our sentence continues.
And there will be a satisfactory reason available for you.
In fact, if you think(ha) about it, there is virtually nothing that does not have a logical explanation.
Why?
Because explanations could be the bars of your cell. They answer your queries and suspicions satisfactorily. You cannot go further, you cannot get past them.
We are not talking here about solid objects you can touch. There is nothing physical about thoughts. But in a prison they still have to be contained and explanations do it admirably.
If we assume programmes are created to lead to solutions, getting rid of the word programme means we also get rid of the solution. Now that fits nicely.
Does a prison sentence have a solution? It has an ending but that is not the same thing. In Roundearth prison when the sentence ends the punishments stop.
The prisons outmates create seems much more civilised. The main punishment in their prison is being shut away from their normal sentence. In fact when an outmate is locked up a whole host of punishments they are normally exposed to vanish.
So an earth prison could be looked upon as the opposite to the Roundearth prison!
This chapter is entitled All Sorts and is intended to be a general look at the situation we are in.
So far we have covered many aspects of our internment but one seems to have slipped by.
Information.
We are bombarded by it.
With telephones, television, radio, newspapers, teachers, friends, hammering words, pictures, in our direction at virtually every waking moment. And we accept it.
Why?
Because information is the grease that smooths the application of punishments towards the outmate.
A lot of your troubles and problems start with information.
Someone has told a lie about you – that is upsetting.
You saw a terrible scene on Television. You heard of a disaster on the news. A neighbour has just told you their nearest and dearest has walked out.
The stream of nasties is never ending.
But Contrast arises. You look forward to seeing your favourite team in action this evening. The news informs you a cure has been found for a contagious disease, a phone call confirms a relative has won a fortune.
Without information all these scenes would be stillborn.
Stillborn – that’s an awful word to use, it can only present tragedy.
Information s carried by words and even though our languages are restrictive, words in the pen of modern day torturers – journalists – can be used to create havoc in an outmate. And that’s good, because this is a prison not a holiday camp.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Wow!
Nowadays we have millions of pens and doesn’t the rollercoaster ride of our emotions prove it.
Words are very efficient tool for the prison. Just a few in the right order and you have a punishment ready to go.
This applies to every level of outmate, the very intelligent to the very stupid. We all know words and there is very little defence against them.
You can ignore some of the people most of the time or you can ignore most of the people some of the time, but you can’t ignore all the people all the time. And that’s why information has tentacles, and they writhe into all our cells.
A Sentence Ending
Outmate Gregory was running, seriously, for the first time for five years. But his body did not want to. It dragged heavy, his legs, pumping like pistons, were fighting to stop, yet the bus was coming.
The stop was two hundred meters away. He felt ridiculous, a sixty two year old man, gasping and stumbling forward. His knees were jerking up and down, he wasn’t striding, he was bobbing stupidly, like a fisherman’s float. He had forgotten how to run.
The bus stop, a hundred and fifty meters of agony away wouldn’t come closer, the throb of the bus’s diesel engine was closing him down. He couldn’t breath, his lungs battled for more oxygen, pain streaked across his shoulders.
A hundred meters! The bus swept past. He staggered sideways in the whosh of hot draught and diesel fumes.
Had the driver seen him? Would he wait? The question added energy to his screaming muscles, he had to catch that bus, no bus, no money.
His thudding heart, and his gasping lungs could not go on. Twenty meters and the bus idled at the stop. Ten meters! His hand stretched to grip the handrail.
But the bang exploded.
An artery burst.
The dark red cloud flooded Gregory’s chest. His breathing choked, his legs died, he toppled forward, the pain as his face collapsed inwards against the pavement started his scream, a scream that never finished. Jagged pieces of his skull cut through the delicate tissues of his brain.
Gregory was dead.
His pain was over.
His sentence finished.
He was leaving Roundearth.
His sentence of sixty two years reflected his crime, whatever that was. Roundearth never knew why outmates were sentenced.
Roundearth existed for punishment.
Gregory would now return to it’s former self. It would remember the time and events it had served on Roundearth with horror.
The excruciating pain after the accident, the debilitating effect of the illnesses, the slow turn of the emotional screws.
And it was good. That is why Roundearth is working. That Gregory would communicate these memories and crime in the universe would listen and perhaps hesitate a little more.
The Gregory sentence of sixty-two years was long but by no means the most severe. The longer the sentence did not relate to the severity of the crime.
The Gregory sentence was far from the most punishing, that was reserved for only the most heinous of crimes.
Work
Running a prison is complicated, time consuming, and stressful. Roundearth Prison it seems, manages to avoid these problems brilliantly.
Because Roundearth Prison is run by it’s outmates. They work to keep themselves imprisoned.
A self generating supply of skills that ensures the prison functions smoothly and efficiently.
It has to be this way.
Do outmates choose the work they do? Or has it been prearranged? It would seem so.
The prison has every conceivable talent and skill available throughout it’s establishment. So logic tell us these tradesman, artists, inventors, scientists, doctors, etc, are prepared and delivered as needed.
Perhaps a scientist was a scientist before it committed it’s crime and seems to have a talent for it’s work? Or perhaps the scientist outmate is not a criminal at all and is in Rounearth prison on a training exercise and totally unaware, like the rest of outmates, the reason for being on earth.
Perhaps universities have among their outmates, students from the universe in the prison to learn and gain experience to export at the end of their visit. But of course untrolled in the same way as all other outmates.
If we assume for the moment that history actually exists, and go back through the revolutions of the last three hundred years or so, we are confronted by major shifts in the prison. Were the agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions untrolled or were they created by our freethinking fellow outmates?
And, why did they or why were they, allowed to happen? These revolutions certainly made our lives, sorry, sentences, easier to bear.
But we exist to be punished, not pampered.
But then think about it. Have all the industrial and technological revolutions really improved our lot?
OK, the peasant in the fields, knee deep in mud under blazing sun, or in stinging rain, freezing wind, thick snow would say yes.
But would the Finance Trader on life support in hospital after yet another heart, attack agree?
I am writing this book on a computer that is connected to the internet. Research, and answers to all my questions are a keystroke away.
For Charles Dickens, research and answers were hours of searching in reference libraries (if they existed) and reading volumes of books.
But I have a difficulty that did not exist in his day. I have so many answers, most of them differing, and googles of go ogling research, I have information overload, and spend hours sifting the wheat from the chaff.
Obviously medical science has raced forward brilliantly. The treatment of disease and malfunctions of the cell were crude and painful in the past.
Nowadays a jab or a pill cures most ills. But maybe the psychological stress is more intense?
Now we know what diseases we can catch, what the treatment is, if any, and what the results are likely to be.
Years ago, we just caught the disease and were in ignorance of ninety percent of the treatment, if any, and the result. So whilst the pain is reduced, knowing the end result can sometime be far more upsetting.
The point I am making is, it seems in the prison, whatever action, invention or discovery is made. There always seems be a further action or invention or discovery required to solve a problem the last discovery revealed.
Bit like never-ending galaxies, or microscopic cells?
All this activity is labeled work by we outmates, and work is far more than being just an employment in the prison.
It has several functions. Work enables the prison to function physically.
Work has a huge psychological effect upon outmates.
Work is an excellent creator of problems.
Work is an excellent vehicle for communication.
Work can build or destroy confidence.
Work probably fires more emotions than any other trigger in the prison.
Work is a stage on which many dramas are performed.
Without work, outmates would have difficulties serving their sentences.
Removing work from an outmate is an effective punishment as giving work to an outmate.
Usually the outmates reward for work is money. And wow, what a reward. Having money changes most outmates situations and can bring far more problems than not having any.
Are you getting the idea here? The subject of work reveals better than most, examples of problems outmates are glued to in the prison.
There cannot be any answers to the questions that have surfaced throughout this book. There cannot be any answers because by now, the ingenuity of outmates would have found them. I have offered possibilities, but that is all they are.
And I am pretty sure that no matter how hard we work on these problems, all we will find are more problems – because that’s the way the prison operates.
The End?
So everything works, those responsible for the prison are content, the experimenters are content, the universal prison system is satisfactory.
But is it?
So why are the number of new outmate arrivals reducing? The
population of the prison has been dropping since the 1970’s (Earth time). Why have wildfires increased dramatically? Why have flooding levels increased? Why have average temperatures climbed? Why are there so few new species of animals being found?
At this moment outmates are convinced it is the result of their
activities within the prison.
Climate change it is called. Maybe the increasing violence of the weather, volcanoes, tsunamis, etc, are due in some way to the behaviour of the outmates.
But maybe not.
Supposing a decision has been taken? We have supposed Roundearth itself is an experiment. A sample for something bigger.
And the something bigger has started?
And now the decommissioning has begun? The mistakes made have been learned, and note taken of the advantages gained and there really is no further use or anything more to gain from the prison.
Except to study the destruction of the place?
Increase water levels and terrify outmates? Heighten temperatures to wild fire level.
Cause confusion with violent weather situations. Damage does not matter.
The prison is closing.
And all done with the outmates blaming themselves for the catastrophe. Security to the end.
Or, maybe a change of use is envisaged? And the clearing of the site has begun. The diminishing number of arrivals could portend there is already a new prison elsewhere and those outmates remaining in Roundearth are unknowingly preparing Roundearth for its next life.
A staging post?
A holiday camp?
A warehouse?
A museum?
Why not? Outmates have done exactly the same thing with some of their penitentiaries.
Mentioning penitentiaries elicits a bit of a giggle. Roundearth is the only place in the universe where a prisoner can be a prisoner two times over at the same time!
Remember the chapter on time? The experimenters bubbling with the idea of installing another prison in a second time shift?
Maybe they have.
But then we wouldn’t know anything about it would we?
The End
OK, So I know you are waiting for an answer to a question I asked at the beginning of the book.
Why am I allowed to tell this story?
If it is imperative to hide from outmates the fact they are imprisoned, how come I have been allowed to write this book?
Am I a chosen one to reveal the top level secret?
Don’t think so. I don’t feel particularly chosen.
So what purpose does it serve to advertise that we are all in a Prison?
Is there no answer to this question, it is just another circle of words to chase around in?
No, don’t think so, there are already thousands of these circles to annoy and upset outmates.
Is it, to repeat myself, a reassurance when the blackness comes that you are not really finished?
Don’t think so, don’t forget the punishment angle.
So why was this book written?
I have to assume I am programmed, the same as yourself. So the book has appeared, and you have read it.
And you are wondering.
Don’t ask me, I’m just the oily rag here, the dodo whose head has been used to present the idea.
But it is a bit of a giggle, when you think, that after reading this book, religion, science, astronomy and all the other activities and beliefs of outmates, will be looked upon with just a bit more than a jaundiced eye. Isn’t that enough to elicit more trouble, strife, arguments?
Shall I go on?
Don’t think so.
Have a nice day.