America the Poor: A Wanderers Tale, Vol Two

Chapter 32: Strange experiments on the Ward

Jeff and I sat through these jokes that were called classes, and we learned more about each other. In a way we became kindred spirits. Both smart, both resistant, defiant, both wishing to be gone, and neither willing to succumb to vegatative states and just accept our lots in life for that time period. We both longed for an immediate escape, and were both articulate enough to fully state this to any that would listen. This was a rare trait in that dark place.

The mind was the battlefield, we few aware boys were the real soldiers, the others were mere cannon fodder, and the doctors, staff and state were a powerful unsympathetic and implacable enemy. They had the power, the weapons, and the might, and the battle was surely lost before it ever began. A few of us resisted, and we fought the battles for our young minds,, but it would have been far easier if we had not engaged in these useless and futile skirmishes. Worms could put up a greater fight than any resistance we could ever provide. We were clay, many willing, and I was not.

The drugs they put friend Jeff on were far milder than anything that was deemed needed for myself.

Perhaps the various kinds of medications, as well as the allotted amounts were somehow dependent upon the crimes of the patient? I never determined this, so this was pure speculation on my part, based on what I saw throughout my tragic imprisonment there. The staff were bound by rules never to disclose the treatments anyone was on, including my own. It was all at the ultimate discretion of the Gods of that place, the psychiatrists, the ones doing their schoolboy fumblings in our minds ultimately. Who was bold enough to question the Gods? Not many, and not one of the staff, since they didn't have prestigious sounding degrees after their names, and not one of them was called "Doctor", as if paying tribute to a deity.

They were mere staff, peons really, just bodies, reactions, training and necessary muscles, nothing more. They couldn't even have a real say, even if they saw and somehow objected to our "treatments". Without the credentials, what we say doesn't seem to matter within the system around us. When they noticed an injustice, or felt simple empathy, a few acted secretly, fearing judgements and/or repercussions from the deities, the Doctors obviously. Very few, if any, acted publicly on these feelings. We were the state sponsored sad young guinea pigs, the Doctors were the ones who created the experiments, and the staff were reduced to mere handlers.

They could watch, observe, and participate to a degree, but their opinions counted for almost nothing. Our journey was our own, dictated by the Gods above us all, and none were allowed to interfere.

My 14th birthday came and went, and I got a single cupcake with a candle, and they wouldn't even allow me to touch the candle, just blow it out, since fire was considered very dangerous. Not a single person decided to come and visit me on my 14th birthday, and I wasn't surprised at all. Besides the cupcake (chocolate, luckily my favorite at least) I would have nothing at all. In confinement, life's milestones seem utterly meaningless. What's the point of celebrating a single day, let alone a year?

What was their endgame? What did these Demi-Gods hope to accomplish by their medicinal decisions? What were they trying to really do to us? Their own lives would always remain unaffected, since they were behind the most powerful shields of modern society, they "knew what they were doing", since they had their powerful well-earned and expensive degrees. They were as close to academic Gods as humans could possibly get. They knew us far better than any of us could ever know ourselves apparently. We needed to shut up and obey without question, since they were the "authorities", obviously.

Who could know better than the degreed experts obviously? Anything we ever knew about our own makeup and nature counted for absolutely nothing, we were less than peasants, we were primitives, even unto the workings of our own minds.