AUTOMATION

BY MASTER CHRIS
chris_mc_v@hotmail.com

[ part 1 ]

The pendulum had swung too far to the left to be maintained. The bleeding-heart liberals had helped erode parent’s authority over children for over 50 years. It had probably started with the teachings of Doctor Spock and his insistence that children should not be spanked but instead ‘reasoned with’. The erosion had continued with the invention of the ‘teenager’ category of children to be followed years later with ‘young adults’ and the final straw: “tweens”. Each denomination only served to further remove these individuals from being children. A steady lowering of the age of consent and then the age of majority had helped grease a slippery slope. With each ‘empowerment’ of young people, their behaviour only worsened. Delinquency ruled until finally, reason prevailed.

The conservative movement had been able to capture the attention of the populace largely on its commitment to return the discipline of children to the old fashion methods.

The election had been carried with a landslide and a second term had followed the first. In a few short years, the right-wing conservatives had undone almost 50 years of a pendulum swing to the left and had moved it all the way to the right.

When the ‘Good Child Law’ had been introduced, bringing back corporal discipline, there had been a general outcry that such discipline was unfair. Challenges were raised citing old court judgments which reminded everyone that one of the problems of corporal discipline was the difficulty in ensuring that everyone would receive equal treatment given that each parent might spank differently. For several years there was an impasse until ultimately, technology was able to resolve the debate. The Automated Punishment Centers or APC’s were a combination of robotics and artificial intelligence. They were designed to mete out punishment in equal measure depending on the offence and thus remove the last restriction to corporal punishment.

The APCs were now in their third generation and the thinking of how children should be punished had advanced accordingly. The Good Child Law had also eliminated all the various categories of children in one fell swoop. The law of majority had been universally raised to 22 years and that left only two categories of people: either children or adults. There were no more teenagers, tweens, young adults or any other kind of child. Children from the age of 4 years to 21 years and 364 days, were brought to the APC by their parents or other guardian authority and punishment could be extensive. Small-scale APCs were available in virtually every school but it was the public APCs which carried the most extensive options of punishment and thus were most frequented.

Both corporal punishment and psychological punishments were used at the APC. A mix of humiliation and discomfort had turned out to be the most effective combination in correcting a child’s behaviour and the introduction of the APCs was directly correlated to the latest reduction in child delinquency problems.

From the guardian’s perspective, the system was quite simple. A child would typically be brought to the APC by a parent although other guardians such as police officers or teachers had APC privileges. Once in the center, the parent would register in the main lobby for one of the multiple units that were always available. The APC had numerous levels of punishment and an extensive menu of possible offences which would generate a suggested punishment. The parent could select a preset punishment, simply identify an offence and select a punishment level or create a customized punishment from the various options. The APC would then determine the appropriate punishment selections from the extensive possibilities. The machine would consider numerous factors in determining what punishment to deliver. These included the number of times the child had already been punished, what punishments had been most effective, the age and sex of the child, the weight and size of the child and even their psychological profile. None of this would be revealed to the child themselves. They would only know that they were in for a punishment of a certain level. The child would enter through a door which would lock behind them. This was called the Preparation Room. The child would be instructed by the APC voice to disrobe completely. All clothing was to be removed. Up until the age of 9, the child could be accompanied in this area by their guardian who would help the child disrobe. Even watches and jewelry were to be removed, leaving the child in a vulnerable frame of mind even before the punishment had begun.

Once they were completely nude, the child would have to stand in a punishment frame. The frame was a key element of the robotic system. It was a mechanized frame that stood up vertically like a huge door frame. The child would be instructed by the APC to stand with their feet apart in separate yellow circles and to raise their hands to grasp yellow handles above their head. Laser scanners read the exact size of the child as they approached the frame allowing it to automatically size itself to any size child so they would always be able to stand in the frame and reach the handles.

At the moment the hands grasped the handles and the feet were properly placed, the APC moved into action with stunning speed. Wide loops attached to bars from the frame slid immediately up the legs from the feet to just above the knees. Additional loops slid down from the hands to the wrists and up from the feet to the ankles. Once the loops were properly placed, they inflated, grasping the child in a firm, soft yet inescapable bound. This all happened in less time than the child could react. As soon as the loops were secured, a long padded bar swung into place at the small of the back from one side of the frame to the other and in front, a second bar swung into place in front at hip level to provide additional support for the infinite number of positions that might be required.

With the child thus restrained, the frame could twist, turn, rotate and change shape and the child would change positions helplessly, their hands, feet and knees following along the frame no matter how much they might resist.

Once the child was bound to the punishment frame, sequencing was automatic and the child was helpless to take further action until the punishment was complete. The frame itself would move to the next stop in the punishment cycle carrying the punished child inside it usually in the vertical spread-eagled position. From the preparation room, the frame had three doors through which it could move. If the offence was relatively minor, the parent might have requested a private punishment. In this case, the frame would turn 90 degrees to the left and move through a large door to a closed private room. The parent could elect to accompany the child and observe the punishment that had been decided by the APC. Aside from the parent, the child would be unobserved and the punishment would then proceed immediately. Once the punishment was complete, the frame would turn the child and move to place them facing a blank wall where they would serve ‘corner time’ with their nose touching the wall until the APC decided it was time to release them.

There were two other doors in the preparation room through which the punishment frame could move. One door led to a public punishment area and was feared by any child who would be sent there. The public area was completely open to a gallery where any observer could observe the naked child’s punishment in its entirety. The gallery was always packed with both adults and other children. Virtually any child could expect some of their schoolmates and friends to be in attendance as observing punishments in the APC gallery was often encouraged by other parents as an object lesson in obedience.

The APC system had determined that the embarrassment of being observed while completely naked by strangers and other peers was an intensely positive factor in reducing recidivism and thus public punishments were quite common. For the children, the idea of being punished was terrible enough but knowing that your friends and neighbors would be able to see you completely nude and see you crying like a baby once the punishment started was even worse. There was only one thing punished children feared worse than a public punishment and that was the addition of “extras” when a punishment occurred.

If an offense was significantly serious or if the child resisted their punishment in any way, the APC could invoke “extra” punishment. In this case, the punishment frame would take a 90 degree turn to the right prior to any other punishment and the child would be wheeled into a private room where intense additional punishment would be meted out. In this room, the child was typically alone with the robotic arms and devices of the APC and its artificial intelligence brain. The APC had many options to choose from. Each extra punishment was designed to focus on either physical discomfort or psychological discomfort or both. Some options included punishment of the genitalia or breasts, soap washing for bad language, removal of all pubic hair, rectal or anal punishment and more. With the embarrassment associated with sexual function amongst most adolescents, even forced orgasm could be found in the APC’s repertory.