Lucifer's Cage Part 1 2/2

Lucifer's Cage

Chapter 10

"You've been doing a great job with your prisoners and patients over the past few months, Johnny-boy, but I'm having trouble with an inmate, and I was hoping you might have some ideas. Inmate 14424, Harvey Wallace, his sentence is already halfway through, but we still haven't made any progress. No matter what sim we put him in, he eventually begs for death. Frequent switching of sims carries the possibility of complications, and we are worried that his current state is a result of that. But we have no choice. No lesson seems to stick. Despite our best efforts, when Inmate 14424 is offered the same choice that landed him here, he makes the same decision. In some sims, his actions have been far worse than those performed in the real world. What is there to do then? How do we serve him a punishment that will rehabilitate him? If only we could understand what makes him tick. He is highly anti-social and does not confide in our employees who enter the sim. So, you see our dilemma. Any ideas?"

John stares at a piece of yellow paper on the table in front of him. As the director spoke, he had been jotting notes and writing ideas. One by one, John crosses out his thoughts. Finally, among the scribbles, notes and scratches, John stares at one remaining word. Author.

"I have something. Let me bounce it off of you, and maybe we can refine it into something useful," John mumbles without lifting his eyes from his notes.

Clearing his throat, John looks up. He hesitantly continues, "What if we start him from scratch and have all his teachers praise his creative writing ability. Let's give him a ton of positive feedback for his skills; maybe girls really like him for his writing, or he earns a lot of money selling his work. Anything to make him believe that he is an outstanding author. Then, it all drys up. His ideas fall short; nothing merits the attention or praise of his earlier works. At the same time, we start introducing the idea of Lucifer's Cage, emphasizing criminal correction. Maybe he reads something related to LC, or someone can say something about it in passing. At the same time, we have Dante's Inferno get his attention, hopefully resulting in him writing something related to the punishments in Dante's story. We keep prodding until he eventually puts on his writing hat and begins to work. If all this works out and he begins writing specific punishments for specific crimes, then we have the exact crime he committed become the talk of the town. But, of course, someone else will carry it out, so he will likely write a punishment about how he would correct that person using Lucifer's Cage."

John's eyes dropped while sharing his strategy, so he lifts his gaze to see a big smile on his boss's face. "Straight from the horse's mouth, I love it! You honestly amaze me; where do your ideas come from? Have him write his own punishment and how he would help himself see the error in his ways. I'll have the engineers restart him immediately and begin positively reinforcing his writing abilities. We'll have that man believing he is an amazing author in no time. I'd like you to oversee the process to ensure it runs smoothly."

Adger's phone beeps, and looking down, he says, "I've got to run; emergency on the seventh floor." He nods his head at John, stands and begins walking to the door. As Adger exits, John can hear him chuckle and say, "Make him write his own sim, genius."

Chapter 11

"How much I love you, you couldn't imagine," I declare as I hopelessly long for you for the thousandth time. The what ifs, the damn what ifs. Millions of possibilities for how it could all go wrong, yet only one person I wish to share my love with.

If only I could tear off this mask and show you how I feel for even a second. Swing the gate wide open, let you walk through the walls I built to separate us. But, alas, my fear is too great to ever reveal my adoration.

My dreams are decorated with my desperate desires. The idea of laying under a tree with you is enough to raise my pulse to a thundering roar. The thought of running away from the world together is enough to birth tears of regret.