He felt like he was running, but he was really just crawling on the ground. Profusely sweating from pain and a tormenting terror. The sun drowned the streets with nauseating and punishing heat. Even though the sky was in a constant thunderstorm, perpetually emitting a monstrous sound that shattered his ear drums with which clap, It felt too bright to see. The industrial wasteland around him looked as if it were one living organism that was alive and panting; breathing heavily, and engulfing him with each inhale. The organism breathed as if every breath was it’s last chance to stay alive; desperately throbbing under the murderous, suffocating sun. The deeper each breath, the more his flesh began to merge with the boiling tar of the street. His eyes felt like they were burning, trapped his inside of his blistering eye sockets. All he could taste was his own salty perspiration, mixing and fusing with whatever inhabited the atmosphere (it was most certainly not air) and becoming thick and slimy in between his flesh and the burning road, the substance infested his lungs and his throat, he felt dozens of knives being shoved down his throat and becoming longer and sharper with each breath, spreading disease into his bloodstream so that every inch of his body was viral and contributing to his perpetual agony, which was only growing; and the only thing he was sure of was the endlessness of this pain, if there was blood flowing out of him then it was endless, the comfort of death was not a possibility.
What were these massive pillars; these structures of metal and cement that were spread out throughout the seemingly boundless valley beyond the one road he was dragging himself down? They had been looming in his vision for what seemed like the eternity he had been suffering in this place, but his soul was disintegrating and he had didn’t have enough energy to do anything but endure the nightmarish torment. The second the presence of these structures became known to him, the higher the pain began to escalate. Their ominous image now burned his vision, confirming the absolute and overwhelming desolate nature of this nightmare. He felt as if his brain were being tugged down to his stomach with every pull of his body forward. Where was he going? There was no solace in company, he was more alone then anyone has ever been, stranded in a realm of perpetual and overpowering pain and emptiness which was occupied by nothing other than his expiring body scraping against the sweltering black tar upon the solitary road amidst the desert of sizzling gray sand. Just him, the punishing industrial terrain, and the eternal wrath of unnatural forces torturing him throughout every second of his existence.
He awoke drowned in darkness. “You will not be able to open your eyes for another two minutes and thirty-six seconds. You are on penitentiary craft number 667-F2. You have just completed your psycho-torment sentence and are eligible to meet with head warden David Burkowitz to be evaluated on whether you may or may not be permitted the opportunity to leave the penitentiary craft and return to your housing planet.” He heard the deep, mechanical and ominous voice say. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, but his body no longer felt his own to direct. When he obtained the strength to open his eyes he did it effortlessly, but he saw nothing but a barely-translucent red mist engulfing rows and rows of pristine white pods which were each holding a person. Before him was a cyborg wearing a black latex cat suit, seven-inch black pumps and a gas mask. She immediately stabbed him in the chest with a red laser, and he once again lost control of his body. She pushed a few buttons on the monitor screen on top of his pod, and the titanium door opened. She led him out of the pod and began to walk him down the row of pods, but he began to feel overwhelmingly faint. He was losing consciousness again.
He woke up sitting in a rectangular stone slab, in the middle of a large room. The walls were a fluorescent black, and before him sat a slender old man, sitting in a steel chair. He was wearing a black jumpsuit, had a grey beard and green eyes. He sat with his legs crossed, his hands crossed resting on his leg. The old man stared deep into his presence, but nothing but pure lethargy could be detected from his gaze. They sat in silence for a long time.
“So, I don’t believe you’ll stealing anymore mini-crafts from planet-owned dealerships, correct?”
The prisoner stared at him, emptily.
“Was this stimulation effective, Mr. Redding?” Now he had words hovering across from him, he was scanning through the documents and reports of his life and offenses.
“That wasn’t a stimulation. No way. I can feel the calluses. My skin is still peeling from the burn.”
David Burkowitz rolled his eyes and responded while staring hardly off into one of the corners of the room.
“This is penitentiary craft 667-F2 and that was a stimulation, psycho-torment. You’re a repeated offender and have displayed feelings of apathy and incredulity towards the Way; and you have been stealing mini-crafts.”
“Why psycho-torment?” desperately uttered the prisoner. “Why? aren’t those for murderers? thought-criminals and rebels? I took a couple mini-crafts, I didn’t steal them from nobody, just the dealership, they didn’t belong to no one yet, I took them and I sold them. I don’t even want them. We can’t afford mini-crafts but we don’t want them, we’re fine with automobiles. But I....how could....” Then he fell to the floor, violently convulsing for several seconds before gaining control again. He crawled back on top of the cement altar.
David Burkowitz lifted the point of his laser pointer from the prisoners chest, which had clearly caused the sudden convulsions. “You are a repeated offender. That’s all, Mr. Redding. Your crimes do not deserve a complex sentence, you were given what the Way has deemed an appropriate sentence relative to your crimes.”
“How long? How long was I there? How many days? How many months?”
“You are not permitted to know that information, Mr. Redding. If you continue to be overtly inquisitive, I can throw you right back.”
“You’re the warden! you can’t just throw me back in, I have to be sentenced again!”
“Mr. Redding, I’m afraid we are right now in a galaxy undetectable by the Milky Way galaxy, where the Way headquarters is located as I’m sure you know, so frankly I am free to do whatever I please with you. But enough threats. Are you through stealing mini-crafts or not, Mr. Redding? frankly, I have more interesting criminals to evaluate.”
“What do mini-crafts have to do with pure hell? that was unspeakable hell! That was...do you just....do you just throw every criminal into such a nightmare world? just anyone who breaks the law? People who steal cars and people who kill other people, we all get the same damn treatment?”
“Of course not, Mr. Redding. There are ten levels of the program. You were only on level ten, level one being the most effectively nightmarish.”
“How could you just....how could you just treat them all the same way...the same way, the same hell! I stole some mini-crafts, for goddsakes!”
“Do you expect the Way to taper the nature of treatment accordingly to each criminals specific crime? This is 2046, Mr. Redding. Although your argument does not even deserve recognition, nor justification, in this age we do not have the means to supply such a personalized treatment plan. This method works just fine, Mr. Redding, just fine. If you don’t shape up, we throw you back in until you do. It’s a simple way of treating a simple situation, which is all it is at the heart of each crime, Mr. Redding. It is nothing but an individual breaking the law.”
“But I can’t...I still can’t see anything but those pillars....that grey, sweltering sand, melting all over me...” Mr. Redding touched his arms with his fingertips gently, as if his skin were still boiling. He stared wide-eyed at the ground as he spoke, visions of the nightmare swimming in his eyes. He was rolling back into it, it was always there now, it was a fact. That realm morphed into a net which will always follow him, a second of inattentiveness in this world will send him sliding back down into that unspeakable hell. How could they think that this hell would only be triggered by the thought of stealing another mini-craft? It haunted his entire being, not just the weak desire to steal mini-crafts for money, a second of seclusion and he was in that hell again. It was like poisoning an ocean to kill a shark.
He did what he couldn’t do in the Hell program. He screamed. He screamed and cried and rubbed the imaginary sweat and melting tar off his face, he tried to take off his jumpsuit in a frenzy of overwhelming heat. Then he was paralyzed, he looked up at David Burkowitz and he was once again holding up the laser pointer to him, He must have put it on the higher setting like the cyborg had done to him before.
“Mr. Redding, I’m afraid you’re not ready for society. You are clearly more of a serious criminal then we thought, you have no control over your actions, which are clearly capable of being quite violent. Worst of all, Mr. Redding, you hold yourself at no regard. I believe you were informed by the fem-cyborg security guard that this was your chance to redeem yourself, considering you are a fairly small-time criminal you had an easier chance of being released than more serious offenders; but you blew it by allowing yourself to completely lose composure and control in the face of a commander, who politely went out of his way to explain the nature of the treatment you experienced, when I could have just thrown you back in for your obnoxious attitude. But I’ve seen worse men then you, Mr. Redding, and I’m no monster. Instead of sending you to level nine, I hereby sentence you back to level ten.” A cyborg guard came in, and once again lead him back to the pod room. It took him longer to lose consciousness now, he could gaze down the corridor at the mockingly bright door that led to the pod room, but tears blinded his sight.
