A year later in Tangier I heard she was dead.
B E N W A Y
So I am assigned to engage the services of Doctor
Benway for Islam Inc.
Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the
Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and
continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, co
operatives, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the
invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind
that hygienic facade: Benway is a manipulator and
coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases
of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not
seen Benway since his precipitate departure from An
nexia, where his assignment had been T.D.- Total
Demoralization. Benway's first act was to abolish con
centration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain
limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.
"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On
the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physi
cal violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to
anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or
rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The
subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a de
liberate attack of an antihuman enemy on his personal
identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any
treatment he receives because there is something (never
specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of
the control addicts must be decently covered by an
arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject
cannot contact his enemy direct."
Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for
and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio
of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in
the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be
in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in a bathing
suit or pyjamas, sometimes stark naked except for a
badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each
paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the
citizen was required to show the properly entered
stamps of the last inspection. The Examiner, when he
stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp
the cards of a few. The others were then subject to
arrest because their cards were not properly stamped.
Arrest meant "provisional detention"; that is, the pris
oner would be released if and when his Affidavit of
Explanation, properly signed and stamped, was ap
proved by the Assistant Arbiter of Explanations. Since
this official hardly ever came to his o%office, and the
A%fidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person,
the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around
in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.
Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old
pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required.
The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a
frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines.
All benches were removed from the city, all fountains
turned off, all flowers and trees destroyed. Huge electric
buzzers on the top of every apartment house (every
one lived in apartments) rang the quarter hour. Often
the vibrations would throw people out of bed. Search
lights played over the town all night (no one was
permitted to use shades, curtains, shutters or blinds).
No one ever looked at anyone else because of the
strict law against importuning, with or without verbal
approach, anyone for any purpose, sexual or otherwise.
All cafes and bars were closed. Liquor could only be
obtained with a special permit, and the liquor so ob
tained could not be sold or given or in any way trans
ferred to anyone else, and the presence of anyone else
in the room was considered prima facie evidence of
conspiracy to transfer liquor.
No one was permitted to bolt his door, and the police
had pass keys to every room in the city. Accompanied
by a mentalist they rush into someone's quarters and
start "looking for it."
The mentalist guides them to whatever the man
wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a hand
kerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol.
And they always submitted the suspect to the most
humiliating search of his naked person on which they
make sneering and derogatory comments. Many a latent
homosexual was carried out in a straitjacket when
they planted vaseline in his ass. Or they pounce on any
object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree.
"And what is this supposed to be for?"
"It's a pen wiper."
"A pen wiper, he says."
"I've heard everything now."
"I guess this is all we need. Come on, you."
After a few months of this the citizens cowered in
corners like neurotic cats.
Of course the Annexia police processed suspected
agents, saboteurs and political deviants on an assembly
line basis. As regards the interrogation of suspects, Ben
way has this to say:
"While in general I avoid the use of torturetorture
locates the opponent and mobilizes resistancethe
threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the
appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the
interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be em
ployed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is
far enough along with the treatment to accept punish
ment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms
of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The
Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at
any time are clamped against the subject's teeth; and
he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to
put certain connections in certain sockets in response to
bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the
drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are
gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an
hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down
like an overloaded thinking machine.
"The study of thinking machines teaches us more
about the brain than we can learn by introspective
methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the
form of gadgets. Ever pop coke in the mainline? It hits
you right in the brain, activating connections of pure
pleasure. The pleasure of morphine is in the viscera.
You listen down into yourself after a shot. But C is
electricity through the brain, and the C yen is of the
brain alone, a need without body and without feeling.
The Ccharged brain is a berserk pinball machine, flash-
ing blue and pink lights in electric orgasm. C pleasure
could be felt by a thinking machine, the first stirrings
of hideous insect life. The craving for C lasts only a
few hours, as long as the C channels are stimulated. Of
course the effect of C could be produced by an electric
current activating the C channels....
"So after a bit the channels wear out like veins, and
the addict has to find new ones. A vein will come back
in time, and by adroit vein rotation a junky can piece
out the odds if he don't become an oil burner. But brain
cells don't come back once they're gone, and when the
addict runs out of brain cells he is in a terrible fucking
position.
"Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty
iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked
idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their
speech centers are destroyed - except for the crackle of
sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply
electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of
burning Flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of
children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire
and built a fire between his legs and stand watching
with bestial curiosity as the Flames lick his thighs. His
flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.
"I digress as usual. Pending more precise knowledge
of brain electronics, drugs remain an essential tool of
the interrogator in his assault on the subject's personal
identity. The barbiturates are, of course, virtually use
less. That is, anyone who can be broken down by such
means would succumb to the puerile methods used in
an American precinct. Scopolamine is often effective in
dissolving resistance, but it impairs the memory: an
agent might be prepared to reveal his secrets but quite
unable to remember them, or cover story and secret life
info might be inextricably garbled. Mescaline, harma
line, LSD6, bufotenine, muscarine successful in many
cases. Bulbocapnine induces a state approximating
schizophrenic catatonia... instances of automatic obe
dience have been observed. Bulbocapnine is a back
brain depressant probably putting out of action the
centers of motion in the hypothalamus. Other drugs that
have produced experimental schizophrenia - mescaline,
harmaline, LSD6 - are backbrain stimulants. In schizo-
phrenia the backbrain is alternately stimulated and
depressed. Catatonia is often followed by a period of
excitement and motor activity during which the nut
rushes through the wards giving everyone a bad time.
Deteriorated schizos sometimes refuse to move at all
and spend their lives in bed. A disturbance of the regu
latory function of the hypothalamus is indicated as the
'cause' (causal thinking never yields accurate description
of metabolic process - limitations of existing language)
of schizophrenia. Alternate doses of LSD6 and bulbo
capnine - the bulbocapnine potientiated with curare
give the highest yield of automatic obedience.
"There are other procedures. The subject can be re
duced to deep depression by administering large doses
of benzedrine for several days. Psychosis can be induced
by continual large doses of cocaine or demerol or by the
abrupt withdrawal of barbiturates after prolonged ad
ministration. He can be addicted by dihydrooxy-heroin
and subjected to withdrawal (this compound should be
five times as addicting as heroin, and the withdrawal
proportionately severe ).
"There are various 'psychological methods,' compul
sory psychoanalysis, for example. The subject is re
quested to freeassociate for one hour every day (in
cases where time is not of the essence). 'Now, now. Let's
not be negative, boy. Poppa call nasty man. Take baby
walkabout switchboard.'
"The case of a female agent who forgot her real iden
tity and merged with her cover story - she is still a
fricoteuse in Annexia - put me onto another gimmick. An
agent is trained to deny his agent identity by asserting
his cover story. So why not use psychic jiujitsu and go
along with him? Suggest that his cover story is his iden
tity and that he has no other. His agent identity becomes
unconscious, that is, out of his control; and you can dig
it with drugs and hypnosis. You can make a square
heterosexual citizen queer with this angle... that is, rein
force and second his rejection of normally latent homo
sexual trends - at the same time depriving him of cunt
and subjecting him to homosexual stimulation. Then drugs,
hypnosis, and -" Benway flipped a limp wrist.
"Many subjects are vulnerable to sexual humiliation.
Nakedness, stimulation with aphrodisiacs, constant su
pervision to embarrass subject and prevent relief of mas
turbation (erections during sleep automatically turn on
an enormous vibrating electric buzzer that throws the
subject out of bed into cold water, thus reducing the
incidence of wet dreams to a minimum). Kicks to hyp
notize a priest and tell him he is about to consummate
a hypostatic union with the Lamb - then steer a randy
old sheep up his ass. After that the Interrogator can
gain complete hypnotic control - the subject will come
at his whistle, shit on the floor if he but say Open
Sesame. Needless to say, the sex humiliation angle is
contraindicated for overt homosexuals. ( I mean let's
keep our eye on the ball here and remember the old
party line... never know who's listening in.) I recall
this one kid, I condition to shit at sight of me. Then I
wash his ass and screw him. It was real tasty. And he
was a lovely fellah too. And some times a subject will
burst into boyish tears because he can't keep from
ejaculate when you screw him. Well, as you can plainly
see, the possibilities are endless like meandering paths
in a great big beautiful garden. I was just scratching
that lovely surface when I am purged by Party Poops.
...Well, 'son cosas de la vida.' "
I reach Freeland, which is clean and dull]1 my God.
Benway is directing the R.C., Reconditioning Center.
I drop around, and "What happened to so and so'?" sets
in like: "Sidi Idriss 'The Nark' Smithers crooned to the
Senders for a longevity serum. No fool like an old queen."
"Lester Stroganoff Smuunn - 'El Hassein' turned him-
self into a Latah trying to perfect A.O.P., Automatic
Obedience Processing. A martyr to the industry..."
( Latah is a condition occurring in South East Asia.
Otherwise sane, Latahs compulsively imitate every mo
tion once their attention is attracted by snapping the
fingers or calling sharply. A form of compulsive in
voluntary hypnosis. They sometimes injure themselves
trying to imitate the motions of several people at once. )