him under toxic scum. It’s fine for Stan to use names like that, it’s within the family, and it’s not that he approves of whatever it is Con is probably doing, but. Is this the kind of rumour Con’s been hearing? That Positron is hardcore repressive on the subject of sticky fingers? One strike and you’re out?
He’d like to phone Conor, talk to him some more. See what he knows about this place really. But he can’t do that without a phone. Wait and see, he tells himself. Give the place a chance.
Ed opens his arms like a TV preacher: his voice gets louder. Then it occurred to the planners of Positron, he says – and this was brilliant – that if prisons were scaled out and handled rationally, they could be win-win viable economic units. So many jobs could be spawned by them: construction jobs, maintenance jobs, cleaning jobs, guard jobs. Hospital jobs, uniform-sewing jobs, shoemaking jobs, jobs in agriculture, if there was a farm attached: an ever-flowing cornucopia of jobs. Medium-size towns with large penitentiaries could maintain themselves, and the people inside such towns could live in middle-class comfort. And if every citizen were either a guard or a prisoner, the result would be full employment: half would be prisoners, the other half would be engaged in the business of tending the prisoners in some way or other. Or tending those who tended them.
And since it was unrealistic to expect certified criminality from 50 percent of the population, the fair thing would be for everyone to take turns: one month in, one month out. Think of the savings, with every dwelling serving two sets of residents! It was time-share taken to its logical conclusion.
Hence the twin town of Consilience/Positron. Of which they are now all such an important part! Ed smiles, the welcoming, open, inclusive smile of a born salesman. It all makes sense!
Stan wants to ask about the profit margin, and about whether this thing is a private venture. It has to be. Someone’s got the lucrative infrastructure and supply contracts, walls don’t build themselves, and the security systems are top grade, from what he’s been able to observe at the gateway. But he stops himself: this doesn’t feel like the right moment to ask, because now a great big CONSILIENCE has come up on the screen:
CONSILIENCE = CONS + RESILIENCE. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE!
A Meaningful Life
Stan has to admit that the PR team and the branders have done well; Ed obviously thinks so too. Positron Project had changed the name of the pre-existing prison, he tells them, because “The Upstate Correctional Institute” was dingy and boring. They’d came up with “Positron,” which technically means the antimatter counterpart of the electron, but few out there would know that, would they? As a word, it just sounded very, well, positive. And positivity was what was needed to solve our current problems. Even the most cynical – said Ed – even the most jaundiced would have to admit that. Then they’d brought in some top designers to consult on an overall look and feel. The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. And that’s one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick that box?
When the new name and the new aesthetic were launched, Positron hit a popular nerve. Credible stratagem, said the online news bloggers. At last, a vision! Even the depressives among them said why not try it, since nothing else had worked. People were starved for hope, ready to swallow anything uplifting.
After they’d run the first TV ads, the number of online applications was overwhelming. And no wonder: there were so many advantages. Who wouldn’t rather eat well three times a day, and have a shower with more than a cupful of water, and wear clean clothes and sleep in a comfortable bed devoid of bedbugs? Not to mention the inspiring sense of a shared
He’d like to phone Conor, talk to him some more. See what he knows about this place really. But he can’t do that without a phone. Wait and see, he tells himself. Give the place a chance.
Ed opens his arms like a TV preacher: his voice gets louder. Then it occurred to the planners of Positron, he says – and this was brilliant – that if prisons were scaled out and handled rationally, they could be win-win viable economic units. So many jobs could be spawned by them: construction jobs, maintenance jobs, cleaning jobs, guard jobs. Hospital jobs, uniform-sewing jobs, shoemaking jobs, jobs in agriculture, if there was a farm attached: an ever-flowing cornucopia of jobs. Medium-size towns with large penitentiaries could maintain themselves, and the people inside such towns could live in middle-class comfort. And if every citizen were either a guard or a prisoner, the result would be full employment: half would be prisoners, the other half would be engaged in the business of tending the prisoners in some way or other. Or tending those who tended them.
And since it was unrealistic to expect certified criminality from 50 percent of the population, the fair thing would be for everyone to take turns: one month in, one month out. Think of the savings, with every dwelling serving two sets of residents! It was time-share taken to its logical conclusion.
Hence the twin town of Consilience/Positron. Of which they are now all such an important part! Ed smiles, the welcoming, open, inclusive smile of a born salesman. It all makes sense!
Stan wants to ask about the profit margin, and about whether this thing is a private venture. It has to be. Someone’s got the lucrative infrastructure and supply contracts, walls don’t build themselves, and the security systems are top grade, from what he’s been able to observe at the gateway. But he stops himself: this doesn’t feel like the right moment to ask, because now a great big CONSILIENCE has come up on the screen:
CONSILIENCE = CONS + RESILIENCE. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE!
A Meaningful Life
Stan has to admit that the PR team and the branders have done well; Ed obviously thinks so too. Positron Project had changed the name of the pre-existing prison, he tells them, because “The Upstate Correctional Institute” was dingy and boring. They’d came up with “Positron,” which technically means the antimatter counterpart of the electron, but few out there would know that, would they? As a word, it just sounded very, well, positive. And positivity was what was needed to solve our current problems. Even the most cynical – said Ed – even the most jaundiced would have to admit that. Then they’d brought in some top designers to consult on an overall look and feel. The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. And that’s one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick that box?
When the new name and the new aesthetic were launched, Positron hit a popular nerve. Credible stratagem, said the online news bloggers. At last, a vision! Even the depressives among them said why not try it, since nothing else had worked. People were starved for hope, ready to swallow anything uplifting.
After they’d run the first TV ads, the number of online applications was overwhelming. And no wonder: there were so many advantages. Who wouldn’t rather eat well three times a day, and have a shower with more than a cupful of water, and wear clean clothes and sleep in a comfortable bed devoid of bedbugs? Not to mention the inspiring sense of a shared
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