Rehab Read online

Rehab

  Rehab

  By Marcus Bryan

  Copyright 2013 Marcus Bryan

  Table of Contents

  Part I

  Part II

  I

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Dr Landsmann?’

  ‘Come in,’ she called. The door opened, and into the small office stepped a man wearing a three-piece suit, a tie and well-buffed shoes. A red visitor’s badge with the initials H.M.P.S. printed on it was clipped to his lapel, somewhat marring his otherwise perfectly-maintained appearance.

  ‘Mr Carrington, I presume?’

  Carrington nodded and offered his hand. Landsmann shook it.

  ‘Did you get through security okay?’ Landsmann asked. Again, Carrington nodded. ‘It tends to take a while, I’m afraid; even for men of your standing.’

  ‘Best to err on the side of caution,’ said Carrington.

  ‘Most definitely. It’s an unfortunate downside of working on such a ground-breaking project; they always attract the most controversy.’

  ‘Look at stem-cell research,’ Carrington suggested. ‘It might have been better for everyone if that had been kept away from the public until the results were available.’ Landsmann nodded distractedly, gathering up a stack of documents and attaching them to a clipboard.

  ‘Can I get you any coffee before we start the tour?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Carrington replied. With her back to him, Landsmann stirred three heaped plastic spoons of sugar into her own beverage and allowed herself to frown. Hearing a person turn down coffee had a curiously irritating effect on her; it implied that they didn’t work hard enough.

  ‘After you,’ she said, motioning towards the door with her forehead because her hands were taken up by paperwork and her steaming polystyrene cup. Carrington held it open and allowed Dr Landsmann to go past him.

  ‘So,’ Landsmann started, as she led the government inspector down the maze of corridors, ‘I suppose the first question I should ask you is this: Are you aware of what we do here?’

  ‘You rehabilitate prisoners; specifically those convicted of violent or sexual offences,’ Carrington replied, as if from a cue-card. The research scientist smiled at him.

  ‘Okay; perhaps that one was a touch obvious. What I meant to ask was, are you aware of how we do what we do?’

  ‘To a certain extent. I’ve read some research papers published by your colleagues. I even managed to understand a paragraph or two.’ He glanced at Landsmann to see if she’d laughed at his little joke. It did not appear that she had. ‘It might be better if I heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.’

  ‘The simplest way of explaining our procedure is that we wipe away the test subject’s old, criminal personality - delete it, I suppose you could say - and replace it with a new, law-abiding one.’

  Carrington raised his eyebrows. Landsmann continued:

  ‘You see, the human mind works by taking a vast array of experience derived from the senses and abstracting it into a series of general rules about how the external universe operates. On Earth, we observe that all objects fall downwards, and we gain an intuitive understanding of gravity. Though as very young children we may have believed that objects grew larger as we approached them and smaller as they moved away from us, repeated experience brought us to an understanding of perspective. So it is with everything. As a mind matures, these abstractions blend together to form things like memories, prejudices, morals, belief systems. These things, in turn, combine to form what we would call a “personality”, or a “self”. Everyone is subject to this process, and we cannot choose which experiences play a part in the creation of our inner selves. And, as with everything in life, some people are luckier than others.’

  The pair came to a heavy steel door, which had the words sector a: isolation chambers 1-14 stamped on it. Underneath, a laminated chart was attached, showing which test subjects were currently housed inside. Landsmann tossed her empty cup into a bin, but she didn’t lead Carrington through the door just yet. Instead, she softly rapped on the steel with the knuckle of her index finger.

  ‘The people you are about to see are victims, Mr Carrington. Factors over which they had no control made them into what they are; or rather what they were, before they came to this facility.’

  ‘And what were they?’ inquired her companion, somewhat contemptuously.

  ‘Rapists. Murderers. People willing to hurt others for their own personal gain, and who have shown no desire to change.’ Once more, the doctor allowed herself to smile. ‘But don’t hold it against them. I mean, it’s their circumstances that made them commit their crimes; every person in the penal system was born as sweet and innocent as a cartoon princess.’

  ‘So they never had any choice?’ Carrington asked, leaning against the wall, staring at Dr Landsmann. At that moment, the bolt beside them clanked open, and the heavy door swung forwards. A heavy-set man in a white lab coat squeezed himself through the narrow opening.

  ‘Hey, Barney,’ said Landsmann, with a cheerful grin. The man did not acknowledge the greeting for a few seconds. He kept his shoulder to her, and held the suited man with a lingering gaze. It was only when the doctor told him not to worry about closing the door behind him that he turned and gave her a little smile in return. He quickly went on his way.

  ‘So they never had any choice?’ asked Carrington.

  ‘We’re not saying they never had any choice,’ replied Landsmann, with a hint of condescension. ‘What we’re saying is that circumstances tend to swing the odds in one direction or the other. To take an example; could you, in all honesty, pretend that you would be in the position you’re in today if you had grown up in poverty, or been a victim of domestic abuse, or neglect, or indoctrination?’

  The man in the three-piece suit opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

  ‘It doesn’t even have to be something quite so blatant,’ Landsmann continued. ‘A few years ago I was working as a prison psychiatrist, and I’d been treating this man who was doing a twelve-year sentence for attempted murder. After a few months of interviews, it turned out that a lot of his anger had stemmed from the fact that he was a foot shorter than all his friends at secondary school.’

  ‘So-’

  ‘It’s very rarely a single cause like that, though,’ she interrupted. ‘Traditional rehabilitation is a very inexact science, Mr Carrington. Before this project, people like me were given the unenviable task of untangling all of a patient’s beliefs, their convictions, even their unconscious desires - all of which had been built up through years upon years of experience - and then trying to build something better from whatever we had left. What we have been developing in this facility is a method of rehabilitation that first strips away all of the subject’s previous experiences, in their entirety. We’re left with what Locke might have called the “blank slate”, onto which we may then project experiences of our own creation, and build a character which can return, safely, into society.’

  ‘And what is this method?’ asked Carrington.

  ‘That,’ answered Landsmann, ‘is better seen than heard.’ With these words she broke eye contact with Carrington and turned to look through the open doorframe, into Sector A. The government inspector followed her implied order, and began to walk in the direction from which Barney had just come.

  Carrington suddenly jumped as he passed the first observation window, flattening himself against the opposite wall. Landsmann walked after him, but she didn’t increase her pace, and neither did she seem particularly concerned about her visitor’s well-being.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, as a bead of sweat trickled down the side of Carrington’s head. ‘They like to stand facing the walls; it’s just bad luck that this one’s set up shop in front of th
e observation window.’

  ‘Can he see us?’ Carrington asked, inching closer the glass and peering into the blank eyes of the boy who was standing, stock-still, behind it. His cell was painted completely white, including the floor, and there did not seem to even be a bed for him to sleep on.

  ‘No,’ Landsmann replied. ‘The process wouldn’t work if our subjects were allowed any kind of sensory input. He’s completely in the dark; it’s only thanks to the twin wonders of science and technology that we can see him in there, whilst keeping the room completely black from his own perspective.’ She said this with a kind of pride, as though she herself had taken a part in developing the technology of which she spoke.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Without any raw data with which to form new memories, the subject’s old ones quickly begin to fall away. Scarily quickly, if we provide assistance.’

  ‘What kind of assistance?’

  Landsmann tilted her head, and stared dreamily into the uppermost corner of the room.

  ‘I once interviewed a woman who had lived through famine during her childhood…’

  Carrington stamped his foot.

  ‘I’d like a straight answer, Ms. Landsmann, if that’s quite alright,’ he ordered brusquely. The doctor ignored him.

  ‘…She told me that she would wake up in the morning, hoping her sister had died during the night, so there would be one less person she would have to share her food with. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? As an