The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [161]
We were told there were whole lobotomy collectives where former subversives now knew nothing but good-natured labor for the benefit of all. But the truth proved far different. I went with Sarge once, when I was but a month in the smock, to interrogate a guard at one of these collectives, and we discovered no model labor farm. The actions of all were blunted and stammering. The laborers would rake the same patch of ground countless times and witlessly fill in holes they’d just dug. They cared not whether they were clothed or naked and relieved themselves at will. Sarge wouldn’t stop commenting on what he thought was the indolence of the lobotomized, their group sloth. Shock-work whistles meant nothing to them, he said, and it seemed impossible to engender any notion of Juche spirit. He said, “Even children know how to step to the wheel!”
But it was the slack faces of the braincut you never forget—the babies in the jars on display in the Glories of Science Museum have more life. That trip proved to me that the system was broken, and I knew one day I’d play a role in fixing it. Then along came the autopilot, developed by a deep-bunker think tank, and I jumped at the chance to field-test it.
The autopilot is a hands-free piece of electronic wizardry. It’s not some brutal application of electricity like one of the Pubyok’s car batteries. The autopilot works in concert with the mind, measuring brain output, responding to alpha waves. Every consciousness has an electrical signature, and the autopilot’s algorithm learns to read that script. Think of its probing as a conversation with the mind, imagine it in a dance with identity. Yes, picture a pencil and an eraser engaged in a beautiful dance across the page. The pencil’s tip bursts with expression—squiggles, figures, words—filling the page, as the eraser measures, takes note, follows in the pencil’s footsteps, leaving only blankness in its wake. The pencil’s next seizure of scribbles is perhaps more intense and desperate, but shorter lived, and the eraser follows again. They continue in lockstep this way, the self and the state, coming closer to one another until finally the pencil and the eraser are almost one, moving in sympathy, the line disappearing even as it’s laid down, the words unwritten before the letters are formed, and finally there is only white. The electricity often gives male subjects tremendous erections, so I’m not convinced the experience is all bad. I looked at the empty blue chair next to the nurse—to catch up, I’d probably have to start doing two at a time.
But back to my nurse. She was in a deep cycle now. The convulsions had hiked her gown again, and I hesitated before pulling it back down. Before me was her secret nest. I leaned over and inhaled deeply, breathing in—crackling bright—the ozone scent that rose from her. Then I loosened her restraints and turned out the light.
WHEN Commander Ga arrived at the site of the artificial Texas, a morning mist hung in the air. The landscape was rolling and tree-covered, so the area’s watchtowers and surface-to-air-missile ramps couldn’t be seen. They were downstream from Pyongyang, and though you could not see the Taedong River, you could smell it in every breath, swollen and green. It had been raining recently, an early monsoon off the Yellow Sea, and with the mud and dripping willow trees, it seemed a far cry from the desert of Texas.
He parked the Mustang and stepped out. There was no sign of the Dear Leader