waterman
TMF Regular
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2006
- Messages
- 218
- Points
- 43
Her sentence begins promptly at ten o’clock.
Breakfast with piping hot coffee is served by the house’s automated systems for us.
Replenishing fluids are delivered directly into her mouth through an automated feeder.
The suit she wears automatically cleanses all bodily waste, keeping her perpetually clean and intact, even healing any sores that the forced confinement to the “pleasure chair” might cause her body.
I have no idea how long she’s been here. When I began my period of “reeducation through public service,” I was only told that the Guest is always kept inside the “Giggle Room.” When I asked why the room was named that, they said the Guest was always laughing inside. And when I asked why she was laughing, they replied: “You.”
I don’t know if anyone will ever read these notes. But they’ve given me paper and pen to pass the time, so I might as well make use of it. My name wouldn’t tell you much anyway, especially since legally it no longer exists. After my sentence, I was given a new name: Perseverance.
I don’t like it much, but it’s still better than my colleague’s: Ingenuity.
Apparently, some clerk at the Grand Ministry has a sense of humor. No wonder they want to laugh. After all the Brexit mess, the country fell into an unprecedented recession. The Grand Minister had proposed a hardline approach to cure the recession and social unrest, but the nation went a different way. Now, well, that’s a whole different story when it comes to rehabilitative punishments.
People talk about political opponents disappearing, yet the Government has always officially rejected the idea of violence. “A smile on every citizen’s face” is our leader’s motto.
For the past three months, every day, we’ve been responsible for generating a fair share of laughter from the mysterious Guest of the Giggle Room. I can’t bring myself to feel pity for her, mostly because I don’t even know what she looks like. Her body is wrapped in a tight-fitting suit of violet natural fibers, and a helmet shaped like a purple cat with an ugly grin painted on its face has been placed over her head.
“Misssss! It’s time for your mediciiiine!”
Sometimes I can’t stand Ingenuity’s shrill voice and her saccharine manner. She actually believes that the Grand Ministry wants to redeem a poor soul. She tells me one ridiculous theory after another, convinced that somehow the Guest’s laughter is being converted into some miraculous medicine, and that the Guest is a volunteer enduring this ordeal for the good of humanity.
“Well, beautiful, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish,” I tell her instead. I’m not interested in socializing; I’m here to do my job. The suit covers all her features, yet leaves her skin extraordinarily sensitive, as she painfully discovers when I start to trace the arch of her right foot, followed immediately by the left.
At first, she always tries to resist, curling her toes, hoping it’s all a dream, but the harsh reality wakes her quickly.
My colleague and I have long nails precisely for this purpose. I attack the surface of her soles with avid precision, scraping those tender areas meticulously.
“Ghighighi… snn… ihihihihih!”
She begins to twitter as she tries to resist, to preserve a dignity that’s been ripped from her. But when I see her toes twitching up and down, I know her sensitivity is betraying her.
I move my nails along the soles, up and down. By now, I’ve gained some practice.
She can’t stand it; she moves her feet as much as the sturdy restraints of her comfortable chair allow, yet they remain taut against the bindings.
“Gh aahahahaah! Oh no ohohohoh! gahaha gasp AHAHAAH!”
No doubt about it, I’ve mastered tickling by now—or maybe it’s just this poor wretch suffering in exactly the right way. Ingenuity, for her part, still has a ways to go.
There’s no aggression in her movements; she pinches the Guest’s hips with a certain gentleness, almost as if she were a spiritual counselor guiding her charge toward healing.
“Well done, miss, that’s it, you’ll feel better after a good laugh. Coochi Coochi Coo!”
“AHAHAHAAHA gasp gasp GRAND GRIN! GRAND GRIN ihihihih!”
For a moment, I think I misheard. In the midst of laughter, amidst the gasps, she tried to say something. A name? A plea for help?
“Hey, Ingenuity, stop for a second, did you hear what she said?”
“Perseverance, we’re in the middle of work. We can’t stop now,” she replies, nodding toward the camera recording our actions.
We switch places; she continues to titillate the feet with her gentle, sensitive touch, while I move to the armpits. But I’m curious, I’m not going all in yet, and as she giggles, she manages to whisper to me:
“Sta aha ah aha ah room 101! One uhuhuhu oh-one!”
What is she trying to tell me? I can’t afford to appear hesitant, so I begin to tickle her armpit with a single finger, right in the hollow—a simple but effective technique. She writhes and forgets every cryptic message she tried to pass to me, too busy expelling her lungs in laughter.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I was bracing myself for threats, pleas for help from the prisoner… the Guest, as we must call her… but not a message in code.
Grand Grin… Room 101…
Does Room 101 refer to the Giggle Room? Or…
Enough, I can’t sleep. Ingenuity, on the other hand, had drifted into the sleep of the righteous. Lucky her, with a clear conscience.
I decided to give it a try. I went to the emergency communication room we can use to contact the outside in cases of dire necessity.
Let’s see what happens. At worst, I’d feign a temporary illness that had triggered the alert.
“Citizen. State the source of the problem,” commanded the virtual assistant, shaped like a cat, appearing on the console.
“Well, I… uh… ROOM 101.”
I don’t know what passed through my mind at that moment, nor what I expected to achieve.
I was about to make up an excuse when the avatar flickered slightly, reconstructing itself moments later in a slightly darker form.
“Protocol %GR1N% activated, execute requested command,” intoned the electronic voice.
But what was happening?
“Le… let’s see… GRAND GRIN.”
A numerical sequence appeared on the screen for a few seconds, then the screen went dark. Oh god, what had I done?
I was about to get up and return to my post when a video began playing on the screen.
A woman in her thirties, short black hair, eyes of a strange violet hue. She wears a lab coat: a scientist?
“I am recording my identity for this documentation. I am Dr. Myra Cole-Tempest, professor of emotional physics at Grinnerville University. My field specializes in the existence of energy forms arranged on vibrational frequencies different from the ordinary world. Since ancient times, humans have been fascinated by the mystery of laughter. None of us can go through life without it.
And what if it were possible to transform laughter into a form of clean, inexhaustible energy? In the course of my studies, I discovered how to ‘bottle’ the laughter produced by the human body and convert its sound vibrations into storable energy. The problem was finding enough of it…”
A cut. The setting changes. Now it’s inside a house. The woman seems desperate, afraid.
“I should have guessed, when the Government gets involved… I pointed out that my research is bound by ethical constraints, but they refused to listen… Powergreen has established a commercial partnership to exploit my discovery for energy, and political prisoners are disappearing across the United Kingdom… I’m on the Blacklist… I designed the ‘Grin House’ and I might become its first resident…”
The video stops. I wait a few minutes, but the system seems to have reset to its normal configuration. I return to my room and try to sleep. I try.
I had believed, somehow, that I was serving justice. A prisoner, a criminal like me… not a scientist, a dissident bound and tortured… whom I had tortured…
What… what am I supposed to do?
*
The next day, we resume. I can’t help but watch the sensors on the ceiling with suspicion and fear. Vampires hungry for forcibly extracted laughter. But I don’t let any expression betray me; the camera continues its work.
An idea comes to me. While Ingenuity continues tormenting the poor woman’s feet, I position myself behind her and begin tickling her armpits. Everything has to look normal, but it’s not easy to communicate with someone writhing and giggling.
“Myra, I know everything. I saw the recording. How can we get out of here?”
She seems to understand, and despite the tickling, manages to respond intelligibly.
“Pa ahahah password gasp… ah ah wait… GELOS RULES ehehehih!”
“All right. Tonight.”
She keeps laughing and laughing, but perhaps this time it’s genuine happiness.
*
That woman is a genius. Embedding emergency commands known only to her within the house’s automated system, ensuring us a way out.
I’ve left Ingenuity in her room. She seems utterly devoted to the cause—I doubt she’d believe me. Then again, if she feels so at ease here, she can stay and do this job forever.
Lights off, cameras off, alarms down.
I enter the Giggle Room through the manual hatch. With the servomechanisms offline, it’s child’s play to free her from that infernal chair.
I remove the cat-shaped helmet, revealing a hollowed face—she looks ten years older than in the recordings, yet her violet eyes still shine with vitality.
“Oh God, oh God, thank you… I… I couldn’t take it anymore…”
She’s on the verge of tears, desperate to let it all out, but there’s no time for that now, and we can’t risk waking my colleague.
I cover her mouth and point to the exit.
The exit. I never thought I’d cross it again before the end of my sentence.
The manual lock clicks open. Fresh air brushes my face.
And lights flash upon us.
A dozen armed men in dark uniforms. Patrols of the Grand Ministry. And standing before them—Ingenuity.
“Perseverance, Perseverance dear… the State takes care of you, gives you a mission, and this is how you repay it? Naughty girl.”
“Ingenuity, they’ve brainwashed you. They’re not who you think they are. They—”
I try to reason with her, but all I get are a dozen hands lunging at me. Cold cuffs on my wrists. The strangled cry of Myra Cole. Failure.
*
Now the Giggle Room has a new tenant.
They’ve patched me up, fixed me. A court-appointed lawyer informs me that my sentence should have been life imprisonment, but Ingenuity—who had discovered my plot by spying on me—interceded on my behalf, claiming I’d been “manipulated by a dangerous conspirator,” and volunteered to oversee my rehabilitation.
The Government approved, of course.
As long as there’s profit to be made, as long as dissent can be silenced, everything’s fine.
Now I’m wrapped in this cursed purple suit, a second skin laid bare to the merciless tickling of my colleague and tormentor.
“We’ll be spending some time together, you and I. You’ll see—I’ll make you understand why you’re wrong. I’ll take care of you. But first, let’s have some laughs! Let’s have fun!”
I clench my teeth, summon every shred of strength that made me tough—but it’s useless. In the end, I have to give in.
Laughter bursts out of me like a river breaking its banks.
“AHAHAHAHAHA! NOHOHOHOHOOHOH!”
But every giggle, every gasp, is the fuel that feeds my resistance.
While we fled, Myra Cole told me about other subroutines hidden deep within the Grin House—ones no one else knows, ones that will survive even a system overhaul.
Enjoy yourself while you can, Ingenuity. Because soon, it might be you strapped to this chair.
