Renewal Wing by Bec Bec
Summary: 'The Centre is a wonderful scientific enterprise...' It is all they believe. 'We are a friend to the common man...' It is all they know.
Categories: Indefinite Timeline Characters: Other Centre Character
Genres: General
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 728 Read: 1688 Published: 22/08/05 Updated: 22/08/05
Chapter 1 by Bec Bec
Disclaimer: The Centre isn't mine. Renewal Wing doesn't belong to me (well, the "story" does... but not the "place").

Summary: "The Centre is a wonderful scientific enterprise..." It is all they believe. "We are a friend to the common man..." It is all they know.

Renewal Wing

By Bec-Bec

Approximately 4 meters past the entrance to Renewal Wing, the Epsilon re-education process begins. People are ushered in and out of this section routinely on the hour. They arrive at two p.m. for an eye appointment and leave at 3 p.m. with a re-written memory. It is simple and efficient.

Another set of double doors, down the corridor at approximately 50 meters, lead to the Delta re-education area. Where the Epsilon area resembles the well-kept interior offices of private practitioners--with plush carpeting and ficus trees in wicker baskets--the Delta area appears much like the interior of a test lab.

Delta patients require the erasure of an entire day's worth of memories. This is a longer process and patients are held for a period of six to eight hours. They arrive every two hours, like clockwork. An in-depth physical leads to six hours of "testing" and the creation of a new day. They leave feeling refreshed. Success has been achieved.

Nineteen doors down the hallway, divided unevenly on the left and right, is corridor 12--the Gamma re-education facilities. The doors lining the walls of this new corridor lead into comfy rooms resembling upper-class hotel suites. "Patients" believe the Centre is providing them housing for a few days while they work on important projects. When they leave three days later, they've had one week of their lives replaced. This covers up any information that lingers from a past project. No one is any the wiser.

Five days later when Bill is questioned about the Scope project, all he can reply with is: "Scope is a mouthwash, not a project."

100 meters down the hall, the Beta ward begins. This area has high security and requires thumbprint scanning to be entered. It has been breached in the past. We are improving the barriers.

Beta re-education is more intensive than the Epsilon, Delta, and Gamma processes that precede it. A Beta patient requires the replacement of entire months or even years. These patients know things that they should not. Thus, heavy security is necessary, and restraints are often used. The patients are generally unwilling to receive treatment. We sway them.

Alpha patients remain in Renewal Wing for life. They are kept under maximum security at the back of Renewal Wing. It is unsafe to allow them near the outside world.

On occasion, Alpha patients have become psychotic and delusional, more from the captivity than anything else. The entrapment of a innocent mind leads to the greatest madness--or the hardest fight. They all break eventually.

The specific treatments of the Epsilon and Delta wings allow quick results, and those sections close at 7 p.m.

At eleven p.m., the intercoms in the Gamma, Beta, and Alpha wards click on.

"We are a friend to the common man when all other institutions have failed..."

The whispering of the Centre's mission statement plays throughout the night, weaving its way into the drugged minds of our patients, coiling around their brains.

"The Centre would never intentionally harm innocent civilians..."

It is a slow brainwashing technique. It is generally successful.

"I am proud to work for the Centre..."

In time, the words become an intrinsic part of a patient's mind.

"The Centre is a wonderful scientific enterprise..."

It is all they believe.

"We are a friend to the common man..."

It is all they know.

Fin

Note: The idea for this story came from the episode "Crazy." Fennigor appears to have been brainwashed when he refutes Miss Parker's negative statements about the Centre by replying with part of the Centre's mission statement. The rest of this story is roughly based on ideas from Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" about a futuristic society where the caste system is decided from birth using a number of techniques, including "hypnopaedia" or "sleep-teaching." I highly suggest the novel.
This story archived at http://www.pretendercentre.com/missingpieces/viewstory.php?sid=3861