Reeducation (Flush After Reading)

Cirice’s capture was cemented. She was forced to live in the headquarters and never leave. If she did, there was bodycam footage of her killing her parents that would give her a death sentence. Of course, the video was conveniently framed to leave out the threatening guns pointing at her. It was this condition that kept her in the organization. Using this video, executing her for turning against PlunderCorp at any moment would also be fair game in a court of law.

As for her living conditions, they weren’t great. Her room consisted of a cot with the cheapest pad imaginable serving as a mattress and a computer that she highly suspected contained a keylogger or was otherwise being monitored. There was no paint on any of the walls, the floor was a bland tile, and the OLED light on the ceiling was too bright and poorly installed, causing it to noticeably buzz while it was on and occasionally flicker. Cirice didn’t know it, but the moment she entered the headquarters was the last time she would see the sun for quite a while.

This was considered one of the “nicer” rooms, though. At the very least it was clean and had something resembling a bed. Many of the poorer children who were sold into this lifestyle were not afforded this luxury. However, all of them had a computer with a working internet connection. Cirice believed that this was for surveillance purposes, but made a conscious decision to pretend to be oblivious of it. The camera on the monitor made this difficult, but Cirice pretended she never noticed it.

Every day starting the next day, the children would be rounded up and brought to classrooms. They would learn reading from propaganda materials, history through the lens of the United World of America, and math. Included was also a mandatory physical fitness class, and a student’s choice of elective. These electives, however, were only physical sports designed to make them better soldiers. Top placing students in competitions of the elective would be given rewards: either a small amount of money or the ability to go into town for an hour with a tracking device attached around their leg above the knee. After several months of this, Cirice began to make friends and network, creating a group that could communicate using their computers.

Networking with people was easy, but communicating freely within this system was rather difficult. After all, they couldn’t rely on the computers. Any information they could receive through them could also be changed. Cirice chose the elective track, running the 1600m. As she got better, she could win money and run to stores that were farther away, giving her more of a selection on how to use it. She ended up running to an art supplies store around 5 miles away. With paints and canvases, she could make art to decorate her room. Really, these were only a smokescreen for what she really wanted: paper and sketching pencils. With these supplies she could tear small pieces of paper and create brief notes to pass to her friends.

—

Flush After Reading

The computers are rigged so that PlunderCorp can watch what we send to each other or search on the internet. Be very careful using them.

—

Her friends would read these notes whenever they next went to the bathroom and flush them after reading them. It was a simple system, but it was effective in communicating many details of their situation that the others were missing. After all, they were sold when they were very young, so they were shielded from the knowledge of what was actually going on. This method of passing notes quickly destroyed any semblance of evidence. Usually the notes were just one or two sentences. With this system, the frequency and duration of people’s bathroom trips remained consistent. Cirice made sure to only share this kind of information with her closest friends.

—

Flush After Reading

You were taken from your parents before you could remember anything. They made me kill mine so that I have nobody to run to.

—

Sometimes the notes were about her previous personal life outside of the headquarters, but often they corrected details about the history taught in class. Because of their brevity, they were often rather blunt. PlunderCorp’s efforts of reeducation had failed against Cirice, but her acting talents showed otherwise. Among the paintings she made, many were pieces of PlunderCorp propaganda that administrators eventually asked to hang throughout the halls of the school section. Other pieces included landscapes with no discernable message behind them.

Gradually, this group grew. Now there were seven, mostly women, who were willing to work together to dismantle PlunderCorp. They all used an old, obscure technology called “email” to message each other. Of course, these were just to catch up with what they were doing day to day and were nothing serious. The innocuous nature of these messages served to “throw PlunderCorp off the scent”.

After they were fully grown, they were taken to a place where they could observe the goings on of PlunderCorp in the field. One of their main tactics was to use the idea of magic in more primitive peoples to convince them into an unconditional surrender. This often worked, instilling both great fear and loyalty into those that they were invading. The entire grade went into an expedition to the dark ages. Some got motion sickness as they went through the portal. When they all were there, they watched as people got into SCOP mech suits and tossed grenades, catching them in their launchers that were designed to look like staffs.

“This is the SCOP E-3000, the third generation of our exoskeleton suits. These are equipped with a powerful grenade launcher that can fire extremely far away. The grenades are SCOP G-2000s, they’re magnetically attracted to the end of the staff to make loading really easy. Before they were upgraded, it was a little messy.”

The students were silent.

“What? Okay I was just joking, these are G-1000s. We planned this functionality in advance, no worries!”

The humor didn’t fully translate to a group who had just graduated the equivalent of high school and watched multiple people be reduced to a fine red mist with a single explosion, but they seemed relieved that many of their compatriots hadn’t died because of a flashy design decision.

“Anyways, now that we have shown them our power, we can make them work for us. All the way back to Machiavelli, it’s been shown that fear is a great tactic in leadership.”

“Leadership, or slavery?”

The words from Cirice’s mouth barely caught the instructor’s ear.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing important.”

“If it wasn’t important, Cirice, why don’t you share it with the class?”

“I just said ‘That shit was funny’.”

“Uh huh, I’m sure you did.”

After a couple of chuckles from the students, they continued to watch the complete subjugation of a people.

“When they’re done with their work for the day, they attach the bags of what they harvested to this chain and let it go up into the portal. This is how we get everything here.”

Cirice raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“I heard that some people try to escape using the chain, what stops that?”

The instructor laughed.

“The ride’s really bumpy and the chain’s really slippery. No matter how strong you are, nobody can make it all the way up by just holding on. Speaking of which, are you kids ready to head back?”

Most were. Others were recovering from their motion sickness earlier. To get back, they had to attach themselves to the hooks using these metal loops that the instructor brought. They attached to you around your waist like a belt and simply hoisted you up. The system was simple, too simple. It was hard to believe that that was the only reason people couldn’t escape. Upon reentering the building, Vanessa, one of Cirice’s close friends, passed her a note. Cirice was surprised because usually this was just a one-way sort of deal.

—

Flush After Reading

At first I thought you were just a conspiracy theorist, but holy shit.

—

They knew they had to do something. Fortunately, an opportunity very quickly presented itself: job shadowing. While everyone had to experience what would happen in the field to truly grasp the mission and tactics of PlunderCorp, everyone had to select a second job to shadow so that they could potentially be recruited for something more valuable than cannon fodder. Cirice was conveniently at the top of her math class and chose to shadow Dr. Simon in the math lab. Vanessa chose to shadow the security team during the same time. Their plan was communicated back and forth through a series of short notes.