126 - ALPHA PLUS THEORY.

[buywithme]

[There's a slight rustle of pages, before Prefect speaks, and the first thing he says... doesn't sound very Prefectish.]

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

[Pause.]

I don't know how I can talk about what circumstances it might be all right to kill people under. I haven't successfully killed anyone on the Barge, but during the time that I served the Factory I initiated the paperwork for thirteen hundred and seventy two people to be discontinued.

[He's quiet for a moment, then speaks.]

To be killed. I don't know what the exact proceedure was, and at the time there wasn't any reason why I should think on it too much, but if I had, the understanding that I would have come to was that I was arranging for them to be murdered.

Maybe that's why it seems strange to hear people talking about how the atmosphere on the Barge devalues life, because for me, being here did the exact opposite. Even though, Comrades, I went through hell here. Even though I died, even though I was tortured, and even though it was ignored by the wardens who were here at the time, being here still made life seem more valuable. It put what I'd done into perspective.

I think some of the things here happen because people are desperate, and because they're scared, and because life here is hard, but I think most of the things that happen here, just happen because we're evil, and because we never cared about who we hurt.

[There's another pause, another rustle of pages, then:]

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

[HM.]

I found a book of quotes about not killing each other in the library.

Comments

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Prefect, if you're just going to talk to me in quotes, I'm done. Even I have the graciousness to add context to Party maxims.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

All right, Comrade. I don't think what I did for the Factory made me strong, I think it made me disgusting.

[Pause]

And I think what makes you weak isn't being without the Party, it's being so deliberately blind to the fact that what you did when you were a part of it was wrong, because it's so much more comfortable not to have to exist on your own.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Then you're weak. Morality, and ideas of it, are weaknesses. You should only be concerned with power and control, comrade.

...

don't try and analyse me, comrade.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

No, Comrade, these things don't become true just because you want them to be true! Being obsessed with power and control doesn't make you strong, it just makes you desperate. It just means that you need something to prop yourself up with because there's nothing else there.

You started this conversation, Comrade. I'm just having it with you.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

I can make anything true I want to be true, comrade. Power and control are the only ends there are to anything. Everything else is just a weakness to distract you, something to get in your way.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Comrade if you could actually make anything you wanted true, then we'd all be living under the rule of the Party by now. You're using the idea that you want power and to hurt and control people, to distract yourself from the fact that you could actually have a bearable life here if you just let yourself.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

I am just an individual, only the Party can make anything the truth it wants it to be.

I don't want to bear this place, comrade, I don't want to bear my individuality, because I can be better than that. I can be so much better, and if you've abandoned the fact you can be so much better, then so be it, comrade.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

You're right, Comrade, you could be so much better than this, but the Party wouldn't be what made you it.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Oh, they've got you good, haven't they, Prefect?

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Yes, Comrade. They got me, I got me, you got me, the people back home who killed me got me, the invisible collective, Comrade.

And do you know something, Comrade? I don't think that the Party, or the Factory could change me back anymore.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Then you underestimate the power of re-education. Of the tools which I, and the Party, would have had at our disposal, comrade.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

I don't mean this as a slight, Comrade, but I don't think you could possibly reduce someone to what I was when I first came here. You'd have to literally erase everything about me other than the Factory.

Perhaps you would have been able to get me going through the mental motions of being that person again, but I don't think I'd ever be the same, and I don't think that there'd be any possibility that it could last.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

I have done it before, comrade. Make no mistake, I have.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

I don't know, Comrade. From what I read of your book...

... The Party wasn't old enough to have people like me in it. That's why I find it difficult to imagine that you had a basis for comparison.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

But as far as I'm concerned, comrade, ideologically, it's possible. As we treated the Party as if it had existed in eternity.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

But it hadn't.

I bet if you thought extremely hard about it, you could remember things that happened before you were in the Party, and you've been quite brainwashed, Comrade. However, for me? Before I came here? There was literally nothing before the Factory. I could think and think and think, and I'd never be able to recall a time when I wasn't an Alpha Plus.

If you brainwashed me, even if you brainwashed me very well, now, I always think that the memories of being here would be somewhere in my head, and the memories of having feelings that weren't Factory prescribed would be somewhere in my head, and maybe if I thought hard, or maybe by accident, somehow, I'd remember them again one day.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

I can, comrade. A little of it, anyway, comrade. I was about... ten, maybe? When the Revolution happened. I remember my father's part in it.

How do you reconcile that with things like your inmate's ability, comrade?

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

I think that Barron's power just... uses the parts of your mind that forget things, to hide your real memories, and make new ones. I don't think he really gets rid of the old ones, people just don't know to look for them anymore.

It's like he gives you amnesia. If you know you have amnesia, you try and remember things, and eventually maybe you do, but because he puts something else there instead, people don't try to remember them correctly.

He can't actually take away what's happened to you.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

But all of reality is a perception, comrade. If you don't believe it's happened, has it?

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

That doesn't make sense, Comrade. If all of reality was perception, then no one would ever be wrong about anything, because reality would be what they perceived.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Or everyone would be wrong and a collective perception would be right, comrade.

[buywithme.livejournal.com]

Except, Comrade that if you all thought back, you'd all know that it wasn't.

[equalsfive.livejournal.com]

Or you'd all mistrust your individual memories, and think you'd just imagined it.