Amidst Our Broken World

Chapter 4 (Part 2) - The Scientist

We made our way wordlessly to Owens' office. His was much bigger than Doctor Ellis' had been. I was guessing he was one of the head scientists as well.

He plopped himself down on his armchair behind his desk, and gestured to the chair in front of me. "Please, sit."

Begrudgingly, I did so, keeping my accusing eyes fixed on his face. I was not trying to be a part of an unethical experiment.

He let out a sigh. "You know, most of our orderlies go through a training that you've been exempt from, what with you being Brenner's niece... and also being a psychology major."

I sucked in a breath of irritation at his weaselling around his main point. "I don't care. I need to talk to Doctor Brenner so I can le--"

"They go through lots of conditioning." The doctor cut me off. "Some are as simple as performing tasks for rewards, some are just observational, and some require a little shock or other kinds of pain." He smiled as if he was glad to see me understand his reference to the usage of fear conditioning. "But all of these lead to one thing. Obedience."

The curiosity burned inside me, eager to be quenched.

Owens read me like a book. "Ask the question."

I gritted my teeth. "Why?"

"Yes. 'Why?' Why indeed do we need to condition our orderlies when they help us with such simple work, as you said, transporting machines and tools that doctors need to use?"

He leaned back in his chair. "What you've seen and done today is nowhere near the extent of what we have orderlies for. Obedience must be kept on both sides. One of those sides is the obedience of our orderlies to our scientists. The other side is the obedience of our subjects to our scientists through orderlies."

Like a spark ignites a flame, his words prompted me to rise in anger. "Are you saying you train your assistants to hit the kids?" 

"We refrain from using such violence. Not only does it create a mess, but it also isn't quite effective." He answered calmly. "Which is why we prefer to use shock therapy." He put an emphasis on the word "therapy." As if that made electrocuting children acceptable.

I slammed my hands on the table. "'Therapy' my ass. Physical abuse is physical abuse. I'm calling the police."

As I began to head towards the door, he said something that stopped me right in my tracks: "Oh, but we are the police."

I turned slowly. "What...?"

"Or at least, the police are us, in a way." Seeing the confused look on my face, he went on to explain, "Hawkins Lab is government sanctioned. By the CIA."

The world around me began to wobble. The CIA? Government sanctioned? Underground experiments? What a bullshit excuse.

"I don't believe you," I said stubbornly. "Why would our government support kidnapping children or any of your other unethical treatment towards your 'subjects'?"

Owens looked at me as if the answer to my question was staring me right in my face. "Why else? For the sake of our country. Haven't you heard of the Cold War?"

It took me a second to put two and two together. "You're trying to make these kids into military weapons? Soldiers on the battlefield?"

"Not just soldiers. Some of them can see things, hear things. No matter the distance. Without getting caught."

I struggled for the words to convey my objection. "But they're still children--"

"And there are millions of children out there, who don't have these powers to protect themselves. Who need our subjects' protection," he countered.

"That doesn't warrant unethical violations towards your subjects. Or even towards your own 'orderlies' as you call them," I spat angrily.

Owens' expression suddenly softened. "Well that's where you come in. It appears that having mindless orderlies as we do now, who do nothing but obey their orders and have zero compassion for the subjects, may not be the best assistants for both our scientists and our subjects. You see, with young children especially, inappropriate dosages of punishment may actually discourage them from both behaviors we want to erase and those we want reinforced. But with merely conditioned orderlies, they are unable to gauge these dosages properly since they only see things and act upon it.

"Which is why we need you." He looked at me earnestly. "Someone who has knowledge in the behavioral psyche. Someone who can nudge our subjects in the right direction."

I shook my head at him. "Why me? There's tons of other people out there who study psychology. Human psychology. So why me?"

"Confidentiality."

I couldn't stop a sarcastic laugh from escaping through my lips. "Okay, Mister Police CIA Government, whatever you are. What do you think is stopping me from running out of here and contacting the The Hawkins Post?"

Owens shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe your uncle. Perhaps you'd want to know why he's been involved in this, or actually, why he started this study. Don't you want to see what we've accomplished? To see our potential for keeping our country safe? To have a part in beating the Russians in this war?"

"Yeah, right." I rolled my eyes at the audacity and pushed his door open.

Before it closed, I could still hear him say those words: "He wanted you to be a part of his vision--"

The door slammed shut.

I strode quickly towards the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. As the door began to rise, I spotted the two black shoes, then the long white slacks, and then his white button-up, identical to mine. Before I came to terms to who I knew deep down it was, he stepped into the lift in a flash and plunged the needle into my neck.

A blur of his pretty face was the last thing I saw.