Roger A. Beaumont - SKINNERIAN BOX [ss]

Memo Routing Slip

January 15, 2015

TO: Curator, Museum of Progress and Consolidated Archives, Federation of Military States

FROM: Commanding Officer, 519th Engineer Regiment

SUBJECT: Notes Attached, found in the masonry of San Jaime Detention and Correction Center during remodeling, 12 January 2015, 1317 GMT; cross-check with on-site manual entry records indicates author probably Professor Jose-Antonio Sanchez-Orsini, late Minister of Re-education, Province of Central American States, in custody in Cell 207 in 1993.

April 30, 1993. First day in bush. Tired. Hard to write. Conditioning paid off in march to camp. Still a city boy. Wonder if Maria has found me gone. And if she cares.

May 7. We're relatively safe in cave cache now. Wish I could write all impressions of the country. I thought I was well traveled. I've seen several continents, from highways and airplanes, and most of the big cities. I have never really been in nature before, and there is a certain sauce added by the danger. There is rich flavor to the wind, the trees and plants in these upland woods. City people see the world narrow and flat. I cringe at the thought of how many years of my life I must have spent in libraries, offices, night clubs. My comrades call me "Professor," but any one of them is better schooled for this kind of life.

May 9. We are at seventy-five hundred feet, and there are fewer of us than yesterday. Four of our most experienced were taken while on reconnaissance against the military railway spur. One was a very old salt. He took my night class in Introductory Popular Culture; a good friend and irreplaceable loss. Our grief matched by anxiety of losing a field-wise ex-guerrilla who could have taught us much, and perhaps saved us.

May 15. Marched down toward San Jaime. Hiking down isn't much better than up. Uses new muscles. Brushed with Nicaraguan Special Forces auxiliaries. We lost two and they ... ? It is more dangerous down at this altitude. If they bring up their wholly-armored helicopters, we have had it. We now hold classes in the clearings near our camp. Everyone teaches the others his skills - explosives, medicine, military tactics, weapons, living from nature. It is hard to pay attention with lack of regular sleep, but we must prepare for more losses of men with special skills. Wish I hadn't spent so much time reading revolutionary theory and ideology and learned more instead about electronics, fieldcraft, weapons and medicine.

May 22. Our raid on the San Jaime armory was a success. We lost only three. Fifteen men joined us from the town and three from the garrison. We now all have either automatic weapons or lasers and three cases of thimble grenades. Best of all, we took a radio compatible with the other groups that rose with us. There are eight in all, and it's good to know that the Federation is being stung by more than one gnat. All report good progress. We can communicate with little fear of detection. The messages are prerecorded and transmitted at high speed. Message transmission time is only a tenth of a second. They slow it down on the other end by playing it at a lower speed. The frequency shifts and transmission times are preset by a certain changing reference. I can't write anything about that ...

June 1. Have been on the move in the Upper Plains along the Jemez River. Several towns have risen and our successes have led to a whole series of popular insurrections and sabotage. We also had our first scrape with armored helicopters. A pitched battle, not a short clash. Four hours of being pinned down and being stung by the dirt clods from near misses. In spite of the loss of twenty men, we have grown to almost a hundred and fifty and are dividing into groups. Great exhilaration when one of our teams used a captured antitank rocket against a helicopter. That sent them on their way. Still, I hope that our pulling back to higher terrain keeps them away. Those old American models can't fly over seventy-five hundred feet or maneuver.

June 10. Our worst week. Rains began and a laser from a satellite began to crisscross our area. We have stopped building fires to cook and keep warm and we hide under shallow caves. When it gets dry again, we can move. If it weren't for the rains, the lasers would burn down the whole country. It's eerie with the woods crackling all around you when they cut loose with them.

June 13. We're in a friendly village. Found myself shaking at the sight of women. Fresh air and exercise get the old engine running. Had to promise to leave the girls alone to keep the villagers happy. But it's easy to see why the country people look down on town rats. I've never been in such fine condition. A real country boy.

June 20. Something's gone wrong. Last week, our radio contacts with other groups began to dry up. Just don't come on the air. Except one, in France. Said they were being hunted on the ground by units that seemed to know them by name and every cranny they hid things in. Our electronics man is concerned. Thinks their radio-detection is getting better, or that they can pick up our receiver when it's on. We may have to dump it. Maybe they've broken our transposition code.

June 30. On the run for two weeks. Moving higher all the time. Somebody always right behind. Seem to want us alive. No sleep. Eat on the march. Two ambushes failed. Five have fallen out.

July 1. We stood and fought last night in a valley that one of our men knew well. A good ambush. They fell back. Got a little sleep. But only forty of us left. Many sick, weak. France off the air. Left radio. Worst thing so far. One of their dead was one of our men captured on the first operation. Miserable traitor. Waiting. Satellite laser worked us over last night. Like a great razor blade, slicing, slicing. My birthday. Probably last. All for nothing. "Just like Guevara," one of my comrades said. A Cold War guerrilla, Guevara, an amateur with big dreams hunted to death by professionals. That's us. God, I hope they come soon.

July 9. There's a loudspeaker outside now. It's Luiz Romero-Dominguez. Can't believe it. Ortez a traitor, yes. But not Luiz. How could he? What can they have done to him? Old hands talk of expert torturers. I wish they'd shut up.

August 1. (I think.) Am in cell 273 of San Jaime Military Prison. They used gas at the end. I woke up in an armored helicopter, manacled. The guards were not Central American. They are from Federation's International Contingent. A Gurkha and a German. Very friendly. When they brought us here we had a decent meal, with wine. Cell is clean and has a mattress. Had diary in boot. They took all metal and plastic, belt and bootlaces. They seem very confident. I'll hide diary in the hollow cot leg or in the wall...

Am back after a physical. No interrogation at all. Just a very long eye exam. They used many pictures of contemporary scenes - including pictures of people in the movement, perhaps to soften us up. I didn't say a thing. But I am afraid of what may come next. I meant to die in the last attack, but the gas ruined my chance. I keep thinking of Winston Smith in Orwell's "1984" and how he broke under threat of his deepest fear. What is my deepest fear? I have no doubt they'll find out. Nothing else would have broken Luiz.

August 3. More excellent meals, courtesy. Another eye exam. More pictures of food, statues, girls. Perhaps I need glasses. They haven't asked me a thing. I try to keep calm. Every time the interviewer's voice raises I begin to sweat a little. But still no rough stuff. When? I can barely hold my hand steady to write.

August 5. Have had two days with a briefing officer. A young fellow, trim, relaxed. British or Australian, I think. We just chat. Strange feeling I am being watched. Or we are. No mirror in room, or pictures. But feeling is strong. Still no coercion. No discussion of any of my activities. No real menace, but am still tense about his pitch of voice. I cannot see what they are up to. This place is more a hospital than a prison. Perhaps, like the old Soviets, they see political discontent as a form of mental illness.

August 9. Have just returned from what they call Personality Contingency Reprofiling. I was in a small room in a trailer, a cubicle, with a bed and straps. They only use the straps the first time. They gave me a shot of something. I felt relaxed. I would think angry thoughts, fear and the like, but they didn't produce the usual sensation of pain, of physical reaction. My guts didn't tighten and I stopped sweating. Different than being drunk. My mind clear. The briefing officer told me all about himself, after it was over. His unit, the Eleventh Personality Reprofiling Unit, is stationed in Georgetown, and has many volunteers. They are sent all over, whenever local dissidence or rebellion gets out of hand. He said they are developing sociometric sampling methods to detect such trouble in advance of an outbreak. He loves his work, and they let him and his men use the modules on a limited basis. He's only allowed two years in the PRU. Many volunteer, honors graduates of Sandhurst, West Point, the Suvorov, Duntroon and so on. They came in, he said, on a special Nordatlas transport that carries the team and its equipment in special pods in place of its fuselage freight module. The pods are lifting bodies and are dropped in from fifty thousand feet. They were the ones who reconditioned Luiz, and captured us through the use of dormene gas. The lieutenant told me that the eye tests analyzed my involuntary pupil dilation and that my responses went into a computer which then analyzed my areas of greatest pleasure sensitivity. He said it's impossible to fake. That was why our discussions were freewheeling. They don't care about our unit, since it's virtually wiped out anyway.

In the actual reprofiling process they put a helmet on, over your face, about five minutes after the shot. First there are music and colors, then images of women, and pictures of dreams and experiences, like pinata shards. You can pick out what you like and actually experience it, over and over again, in three-dimensional, full-color, tactile reality, with smell and taste.

When I came out the first time, the lieutenant was smiling, and asked if I wanted to go back. I did. Oh, yes, I did. But I was able to fight the urge to go back, the first time. On the third day, I went all the way to their limit, three times. There were more women in the last session. Like the pipe dreams of Harun al Raschid. But real and detailed unlike any dream. The lieutenant did not ask me what I had sought in the module. He said that many people became obsessed with food, and that there were relatively few Napoleons. Most who sought violence wanted it on a man-to-man or woman-to-woman or man-to-woman or woman-to-man basis. No one can stand up to more than three times in the module, the lieutenant insists, and everybody "comes around" by the second day's sessions. He calls it the ultimate weapon in law enforcement, since nobody gets hurt, and everybody gets what he wants.

I asked him if it bothered him to play God. He laughed at that, said that what he was doing was just what everybody tried to do to everybody else, husbands and wives, teachers and pupils, salesmen and customers. The world's not perfect and politics is very wasteful, he said, always stirring up malcontents. Bread and circuses, I murmured and he smiled at that. Yes, perhaps, he said, but in this case, the PRU lets everybody pick his own flavor of bread and the acts in the show.

I said that I felt as if I had been made into an addict, and the lieutenant compared the desire that "patients" or "clients" - he used the words interchangeably - felt for repeated "sessions" with a socially constructive form of hunger. I asked him then if other rebels, guerrillas or whatever wouldn't take our place, especially when they saw us unharmed. Our changing sides might make them madder. He waved that aside, pointing out that plans were afoot for getting the whole civilian population on the PRU "session schedule" over the next decade. Besides, the lieutenant insisted, revolutions are the invention of highly motivated troublemakers, usually an elite playing against another elite, using the baser resentments of the mob as a ladder to power. He cited the French and Russian Revolutions as examples, with tiny cadres carrying the ball. People may grumble, but they just want to get along, to live a safe, orderly life. So, the lieutenant said, he just helps to prune back the cadres, until happiness is available for everybody. He thinks that giving up a little freedom for a nice payoff is fair exchange for a world order that will bring real world peace. While political idealists are always talking as if paradise is just around the corner, the PRUs are really going to deliver the goods.

August 10. 1 have just re-read the diary. It seems as though it was written by someone else, someone who didn't understand. I am so ashamed. I undertook blind violence against a kind and enlightened world order, that has shown me a dazzling world which I cannot describe. They'll let me go back, any time I want. I have a special card that will let me go to regular sessions, and they'll help me get a job. It's a beautiful world now. I understand at last about Luiz, and how much he understood the Federation, I will be proud to help them build an orderly and happy world.

August 12. Last entry. 1 wrote the bilge of August 10 because I know that someone has read the diary and put it back in the wall. What I said was partly true. They do have control of paradise. They don't use pain or fear; they use pleasure. But you can't go to paradise except on their terms. And I want to go back. I try to fight, and I will try to fight it. But I want to go. It was like so many of the things I read about and chatted about in the faculty lounge. The philosophical arguments about Pavlov, Watson and Skinner were just dry exercises. But we're in a Skinnerian Box, in a maze built by men without any concern for academic niceties. Faust lives and he is king. God help us ...