Trust The Sytem

II

"Erin Donne," the robotic voice droned. I stepped forward and a machine scanned me down with a metal detector. Don't worry your pretty little heads off, Readers, our phone are made purely of plastic. When they--no, it pronounced me clear, I was herded off to my "room". It was more like a cell in a mental institution. I'll explain later how I know what one looks like. We had one white bed with white sheets, white blankets, and white pillows. The walls and floor were the same white as everything else and we had a single, small white dresser to hold our seven white uniforms, eight white pajama sets, two white dresses, fourteen white socks, and military-style white combat boots. The robot closed the door behind me and I took my white pen and notebook off the dresser. I sat on the edge of my bed and began to write:

Day 347;
Subject 509, or as I call him, John, showed good signs today. He told me that the voices in his head have lowered to only a whisper and that he would be willing to stay on the medication for another year. I shook his hand and told him that there were still 18 more test days left but that we will surely consider him for future studies. But there was something different in his eyes today....the light he had always had was gone. I don't expect it to be a medical problem; just a ethical one. Like the System care about ethics, though. Final Conclusion: Cure for Schizophrenia is so far a success.

I closed the notebook and returned it to the dresser. That's how I know what a mental institution looks like. We kids that belong to the System are "gifted" as they call it and not fit to be among the quote unquote "common folk of the world". There are colorless Units like ours all over the country working on the same thing: a cure for mental illness. And that includes everything from depression and anxiety all the way to Truman's Syndrome  and Schizophrenia. My subject's name is John, a diagnosed Schizophrenic. He came to us when all other treatments refused to work. From the little interaction I had with the other kids here, John was doing the best. I had developed a strong bond with John over the Test Year and I'll be sad to see him go. Be it by death or by cure. I lay in bed, letting all this run through my head. The first buzzer made me jump but then I tuned in to the regular rhythm.

one; one long; one; one
one; one long
one; one; one long
one long; one
one long; one; one
one; one long; one
one long; one; one long; one long

That was the order of buzzes that spelled out "L-A-U-N-D-R-Y" in Morse Code. I sighed and got up, undressing. I stood naked in the cold room, waiting for Robo-Maid to come by. Robo-Maid was the nickname we gave to the android that collected our laundry at 6:00pm and 6:00am every day. Not for the first time, I wished aloud that the System would have the decency to turn off the air when it hit fifty degrees. With an electric zap, the door to my cell opened and I handed Robo-Maid my clothes. In return, it gave me a white bra and white panties. It waited for me to put them on and dress into my nightgown before leaving and locking the door behind it. I tip-toed across the freezing tile floor and curled into a ball on my bed, hugging the thin blanket and sheet around me like a cocoon. The lights went out an hour later and the soft hum of the AC unit lulled me into sleep's warm arms.