3The alarm wakes Locke up early, blaring the usual praises of Uncle Sam and the United States. He doesn't wish to wake up, but he knows that he inevitably has to.
"School of course is a luxury," he thinks as he does every morning, "a boon, a gift provided by Uncle Sam and this great country."
As usual, he walks over to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, washes his face, and throws on a fresh pair of clothing, in exactly the same order as every other child in the United States. As usual, he rides a yellow school bus to Miramonte: one of the top high schools in the province of California, singing the praises of patriotism all the way to campus. And, of course, at usual, he takes the same seven classes as he always does:
Psychology
AP U.S. History
English 4
Journalism
Public Speaking
Ethics and Samism
Government
Just your average day at high school.
In Psychology he is preached to about the dangers of depression, schizophrenia, autism, and individualism: the diseases of the mind that plagued America up till the 20th century, when the first Cleasing occurred and those with unorthodox thoughts were wiped clean with neural reconstruction so that they could rejoin society.
"Of course nowadays, we often do not have to resort to such drastic measure to eradicate unorthodoxy," Fitzgerald, the Psych preacher drones to his class, "but we instead regularly test everyone's unorthodoxy with neuroscanners before they leave their homes…"
He points up to a glinting metallic eye on the ceiling of the doorway to the classroom.
"…or any other building." He ends with a sigh.
Locke began to raise his hand to ask how the scanner worked, but then stopped himself. It was, he remembered, school policy not to ask questions. In fact ten percent of his grade depended on his strict silence during the preacher's lesson. In elementary school this had caused some trouble for children since they couldn't go to the bathroom without appearing rude, but eventually, they learned to go earlier or, more often than not, hold it in.
Next came AP U.S. History with Vandierdonck, who was currently lecturing on the Great Riots of the 1960s which, coincidentally, Mr. Fitzgerald had participated in during his days as a student at UC Berkeley. As every child had learned in their middle school American Studies class, the Great Riots had stemmed from the largest outbreak of individualism that America had ever seen. Dissidents from all the fifty states banded together to rebel against the newly formed Samist government created by the original Uncle Sam in the 1940s. Many preachers, including Vandierdonck, blamed the riots into the country to infect faithful American Samist Solidarity. Inevitably though, Uncle Sam and the people were able to quell the insurrection and successfully cure the individualists in the first Cleansing.
As Vandierdonck expounded on his own experiences during that time period, Locke's mind wandered and he stared at the posters of Uncle Sam all around the room. All of them were exactly the same picture of the revered revolutionist: the famous pose that every American student had studied in their Ethics and Samism class.
"Notice the fearless look in his eyes. See how it penetrates into the soul of the viewer," Mrs. Maguire had babbled to the class enthusiastically, "His posture: firm like the backbone of the country he leads, his beard and lined face: full of the wisdom imparted to him by the Founding Fathers, and his brow: firmly set like the determination of his people. He is pointing at us, children, because he knows that together we can do anything."
How many hours had Maguire made her class analyze that picture? Countless, that was for sure. Locke's ten fifteen page essays on the poster could attest to that. Just when you thought you couldn't find any other feature to extol, Maguire pried some other meaning from the minutest detail of the picture. Locke had written about his hair, the furrow in his brow, his hat, and had even spent an entire paper expounding on the significance of his nose.
It didn't help that Locke didn't particularly enjoy writing. After all, not only did he have to deal with Maguire's papers but also Heard's essays, which were near impossible to get a decent grade on. Even though they read the same literature as the other English classes in the school, even though they studied the same concepts put forth in Uncle Sam's Quotations on the American Way of Life, Heard was always able to find traces of illogical and incorrect arguments and ways of thinking in his classes' papers. But then again, how could they avoid it? There was always more than one way to think about the saying, "One nation, under Sam, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.", even if he had explained the meaning a thousand times. What was he to expect when he left everyone to write their own papers?
Before long, it was fourth period. Journalism was Locke's favorite part of the day because he didn't really have to endure a long, boring lecture. All it entailed was interviewing various students and preachers around the school and writing news stories on how magnificent Miramonte was and how devoted it was to the Samists ideals. On rare occasions, there were rumors of Islamic individualists who were attempting to terrorize the citizenry into letting them practice one of the Three Great Unorthodoxies: Religion, which sometimes piqued Locke's interest, especially after September 11th. Overall though, the class was just as dull as all the others, but it wasn't nearly as difficult to get a decent grade in.
"It's not rocket science people!" Mrs. Schimbor yelled at them day after day, "All you have to do is just obey the basic rules of grammar, remember to spell check, pay attention to detail, and for Sam's sake, never, ever put your name on your article. Your work does not belong to you, but to the United States and its people."
However, although Locke liked his journalism class, he could never quite get rid of the nagging feeling that there was something wrong with the whole thing. Maybe it was the fact that it got so boring quoting students saying "Uncle Sam inspired me to study eight hours a day after school" over and over again or hearing teachers constantly talk about what Uncle Sam meant to their teaching and role in education. Or maybe it had something to do with how all the opinion articles he ever wrote were soundly rejected if he didn't mention Uncle Sam without the words "good". "excellent", "magnificent" or some other flattering adjective. Or maybe, just maybe, it was what happened to those that chose to use some not so savory words when describing their great leader...
"Our government provides psychological facilities not only out of necessity, but out of kindness." Miss Schumacher, the government teacher had briefly summarized to the class before showing her usual documentary, "It is a social service that few other countries provide and, as a result, the level of unorthodoxy in the U.S. is one of the lowest in the world. Ever since the first Cleansing, we've taken steps to insure that a major epidemic of individualism would not be repeated and that the populace of this country would not be disturbed by such ideas like "protest", "religion", and other such sick thoughts. Usually we are able to catch the beginnings of such symptoms with neuroscanners before the illness becomes serious, but sometimes the onset is sudden and severe psychological care is needed. Those that do not respond to therapy undergo neural reconstruction and often become so well-reformed that they are able to take on government jobs."
Locke fell asleep somewhere around that point, and only woke up when the bell signaled the end of school. Schumacher's videos always lulled him to sleep. It wasn't necessarily because they were dull in themselves, but because he had heard everything they had to say a million times over. No matter what he heard or saw on that television, he always felt like it was all recycled and cliché. He usually tried to pay attention to the documentaries as best he could though, as he had a sneaking suspicion that Schumacher calibrated the neuroscanners to tell when any of them weren't really paying attention to whatever she chose to feed them on the screen. Personally, Locke preferred to read as it allowed him some small measure of solitude, which was a rare thing to enjoy these days.
In fact, Locke had recently come upon a very unusual book, an old book dating back from before the 21st century during the Great Riots. He found it underneath a pile of Samist pamphlets and magazines in Mr. Fitzgerald's room in a locked filing cabinet covered in cobweb and dust bunnies: left to rot until Locke came along and took it home. Of course, such a thing shouldn't exist, and if it did, it would be downright illegal. Any pre-Samist literature was considered dangerous and infectious, but Locke couldn't decide what to do with the thing. The constant drilling of his preachers into his head had told him to throw the thing away, to not think about the past and to accept the present completely without question.
"And yet," Locke thought when he got home and turned the book over and over in his hands, "I can't help but wonder what this book might say. Could it really be that different from what I'm taught in school? Was there something that Uncle Sam's Compendium of American History couldn't tell them? And how could anyone except Uncle Sam have the authority and the wisdom to write about history?"
But despite his curiosity, Locke was terrified that if he opened the book, he would be considered "infected" and have to undergo all the strange and unusual treatments at San Quentin. Even though they tried to keep what went on under wraps, there were always rumors of doctors performing lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and giving drugs that were said to make a grown man writhe in pain and scream for his mother.
Locke was by no means brave in any extraordinary sense, or defiant in the very least. But he was curious. Curious to see what a world outside his own was like, beyond the constant presence of Uncle Sam and the neuroscanners. He was curious about what was like to be free.
But should he open the book?
Could he even bring himself to do it?
There were no certainties for stepping out of the box, no guarantee that he wouldn't be led away to the madhouse for reading this illicit book. But, nevertheless, a part of him didn't care and wanted so badly to break out of the shell that Miramonte had built around him. He wanted the choice to find out what was beyond Samism and to make up his own mind about things.
And so, not knowing what he would find, he carefully opnened the book and read three simple words, which prefaced the end of a long darkness of lies and misinformation, but heralded the coming of a new Enlightenment:
Mentis est libertas.
Thought is freedom.