Prisoner 1141183891920

A short piece that I have contributed to the latest Acorn bulletin on the Winter Oak site…

by Paul Cudenec

Hey, you there! Prisoner 1141183891920! How dare you dream of a life outside your cell?

You were born in here, like your parents and your grandparents before you, and you’ll die here too, locked up and locked down at His Majesty’s Pleasure. For ever.

You’ve never known anything else and we’re telling you now that there’s nothing else to know, so stop filling your head with those stupid anarchist fairytales.

There is no world beyond this inclusive and innovative institution. There never has been and there never will be.

That’s why we are proud to provide a climate-friendly window-free environment – it’s a daily reminder that our reality is the only one.

You need this place. You are totally dependent on us.

Look at you! You do nothing for yourself. You sit there all day, lazily chained to that huge metal ball.

Your water is brought right to you, with the medication already nicely mixed in!

Your insect-based gruel is thrown lovingly at your feet by the Care Team officers!

Your mattress, blanket and all-purpose bucket are all lent to you at very competitive rates of interest!

We even send someone to hose you down and save you from your own wretched filth, once a year without exception!

How do you think you could ever cope outside this prison, if indeed an outside even existed?

Do you think food grows on trees? Or that drinking water just spurts out of the ground?

Fool!

You’d soon be dying of starvation, thirst and also of boredom, without ClinkTV24 to compulsorily fill your mind.

How do you think you would get your weekly vaccine boosters without the JailJab Squad at your beck and call?

Do you really think you could live a decent and happy life without the electricity that lights your cell day and night, that powers our safety-ensuring Smart Surveillance System, and that is discharged regularly and benevolently into your brain by our Equitable Educational Experts and their award-winning Corrective Impact Prods?

Your utopian delusions are an infantile disorder, Prisoner 1141183891920!

Freedom can never exist, you naive numbskull!

Or maybe you’re not as stupid as you look. Maybe you’re too bright to really believe in all that childish anarcho-nonsense.

Yes, that could well be it! Deep down, you don’t want to leave the prison, because you know it’s impossible – you want to run it!

All this talk about liberty is just a cover for your own selfish ambition!

You’re just like us, really, aren’t you? You want to be us, you want our power.

So, on top of everything else, you’re a hypocrite, Prisoner 1141183891920!

You’re a liar, a fraud, a would-be tyrant hiding behind a thin facade of ridiculous idealism and prisonphobic hate speech!

Fact-checkers confirm that your disinformation and deceit represent a clear and present danger to the sustainability of the Global Narrative.

You are therefore cancelled.

Security. Servility. Silence.

[Audio version]