The Gambetta Process

"Trudy, how wonderful of you to stop by," Andrew Farrington greeted his late wife. "You're looking lovely as ever."

"Why thank you, Andy," she smiled. "I came over to see if you wanted to go on a picnic."

"A picnic? Why that sounds like just the ticket. What did you pack for us?"

"Oh, all your favorites, of course," she assured him. "Frankenberry with sliced peaches and Peking Duck. I even remembered the erasers, in case you make a mistake."

"Hot doggity dig!" Andrew beamed. "Should we go to the park or have it right here in the basement?"

"I think the park would be the best place," she told him. "Which one should we choose, Central or Yosemite?"

"You know," Andrew decided, "I think the best park in all the land is that empty lot behind Schneider's Grocery. They got mousetraps and a monkey bar, as I recall."

"Wonderful, let's go there."

As they bounded off on their pogo sticks, which covered several city blocks at a bounce, they were surprised to see they had been joined by Suzy and Stephie, their little girls.

"Oh, my, what's this?" Andrew marveled. "I haven't seen you little ladies since you were all grown up."

"Please let us come along," Suzy implored him. "We love you so much."

"We love picnics too," Stephie chimed in.

"Now that's more like it," Andrew said with a satisfied smile.

The next thing he knew, they had all landed in front of a hamburger stand marked "Schneider's Grocery" in neon lights, except now the sign read "Schneider's Grokery."

"What a funny way to spell Old Man Schneider," Suzy giggled.

"Are you sure he's still alive?" Colonel Snelling asked the lab technician.

"Yes sir, alive as you and me," the tech replied. "The monitors don't lie."

"Then why isn't he struggling? He can't still be asleep. Nobody sleeps that long."

"Well, that's the thing," the technician tried to explain. "Our equipment shows he's been dreaming, but, unlike your normal dream, this one looks like it's been going on and on. Least I think it's all the same dream."

"You mean to tell me," the colonel snarled, "that son-of-a-bitch doesn't even know he's been buried alive?"

Before they caught him spying for the radicals (And, make no mistake, he had been spying.), Andrew Farrington had been part of a select group of agents the guerrilla army had furnished with the Gambetta Process. It was a form of unusually deep and effective trance, developed by Kyle Gambetta, an out-of-work programmer-turned-exile.

The test subject would be allowed to fall asleep naturally, while hooked up to a number of monitors. From them, the observers could tell, not only when the subject was dreaming, but when the dream was a pleasant one.

Once the subject was in that state, Gambetta would begin the process that, at the mention of the signal word, would take the subject to sweet oblivion for the rest of his life, regardless of what went on in the real world.

Gambetta was careful to pick a word the subject would never use in normal conversation, but which would spring into the subject's consciousness under the stimulus of extreme fear. To be sure, it was a risky undertaking. For his test subjects, he had to find people who were not severely affected by what he considered the irrational phobias, such as snakes, clowns or spiders. If an agent put himself in a permanent dream state at the sight of a rat or a Ferris wheel, it would be all over for him and his effectiveness to the movement.

That there was a movement at all came about several years earlier, as the rich got ever richer, while middle-class people slipped into poverty and the poor into desperation. Thanks to their able and adroit manipulation of the media, the leaders were able to assure, then convince most of the disenfranchised of the nation that the present state of affairs was the right and patriotic way they should be. Any who disagreed were traitors and dangerous radicals.

In the second decade of the new millennium, the downtrodden of many ill-governed, seemingly backward nations began demanding their rights. Vocal protest, sometimes successful, often not, had escalated into violence as, one by one, the tin-pot oligarchies that ruled those people came to their respective ends, at first with genteel exile for the rulers, later with their severed heads on display outside their former palaces.

It soon began to dawn on the people of the supposedly-civilized world that they too were becoming a powerless rabble. By fits and starts, resistance movements began, then grew. By the time they had become a significant factor, the powerful interests in those nations began to crack down, harder and harder, on the challenges to their way of life.

Open warfare sprung up within the wealthy nations, and it became uglier and uglier. Tactics that had been viewed with terror and alarm at the start of the twenty-first century were now considered coddling the enemy. If the government forces captured you, spilling your secrets was no longer an option to avoid torture: it was the difference between bad torture and really horrible torture.

As a result, too many willing people were ready to drop out of the movement. It was to give their soldiers, their agents and eventually, they hoped, all their members a means of escape from the torture that Gambetta had developed his process of hypnosis. Because it took over its subject so completely, no one in the government forces had yet caught on.

They chose Andrew as one of the early test subjects, because he, more than so many in the movement, seemed ready for the challenge. The Security Patrol had killed his wife and all the other volunteers in the makeshift hospital with one well-placed "smart bomb." His daughters had been rounded up in a radical cell on their college campus and turned over to the none-too-gentle care of a Sanctioned Overlord, to be placed in the government's punitive white slavery program. They did not prosper.

Andrew Farrington turned out to be a skilled agent. Feeling he had nothing left to live for, he took one desperate chance after another. While he stayed at liberty, he was able to provide the radicals with intelligence that resulted in a number of horrendous massacres.

But, as he probably knew would happen sooner or later, he got caught.

"What have you got to say for yourself, you miserable puke?" the colonel taunted him.

Andrew glared at him. He had meant to say "Heil Hitler" in defiance of his captors, but, for some reason, it came out differently.

"Heil Schicklgruber!" he yelled.

The next thing he knew, he was helping Trudy spread the parachute over the picnic table, while the girls began unpacking the hamper.