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“Okay, honey. But be careful. Don’t go alone, no matter what.”
“I promise,” she nodded with a weak smile. “Promise me you’ll find these people.” The four older men stared at her, feeling her pain.
“We promise.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“We need to get the rat back from her,” said the man.
“We can’t! She won’t let him go. In order to keep him alive, we’ve had to give her extra rations. She’s not hurting him. She’s actually enjoying his company.”
“That’s the point, you idiot! I don’t want her to befriend him or enjoy his company. We need her to be afraid of him.”
“Then you’re going to have to find another rat or another girl.”
Pushing back from the table, he stared down into the maze of rooms below. They were all dark but had tinted glass ceilings, allowing him to observe from above. Each room was completely soundproof except for the sound they chose to pipe in that day. Everything was controlled by him and his team. Sight, sound, smell, all of it.
Finding out that they’d been tattooed with something that claimed they were a ‘possession’ already put the subjects in a place of vulnerability and fear. It was his intent. They needed to feel fear. But this girl was different. This girl wasn’t fearful of anything. Not yet, anyway.
“Number six is being shown the sensitizing photos,” said the man.
He walked to the other side of the room, looking down into another group of rooms. In the room with number six, a television was being played, showing different things that could create fear in a human. The young man was wearing a cap with electrodes attached to his skull. His hands were tied to a chair, and he was ordered to not move, or he would be electrocuted.
There was no electricity to the chair, however there was sound being piped into the room that sounded like the hum of power lines. Every once in a while, he would hear a zap, making him believe he’d been electrocuted.
The television flashed rats, bats, snakes, spiders, alligators, and other random images. Sometimes, it was something random, like fruit or mosquitoes. Other times, the images were far more graphic. Falling off a cliff, climbing a building and your rope being cut, or one that always seemed to elicit reactions, holding onto a wire, hovering above a tank of sharks.
He watched the data come back into the room as the young man was shown the images. Alligators were definitely cause for reaction, but apparently, so were lizards. It didn’t matter if it was an iguana or a monitor. This young man did not like lizards.
He smiled at the sharp points of brain activity when he was shown the images. The images of the lizards became more and more intense, alive, coming at the screen, and he squirmed, screaming for them to stop. When it was done, his heart rate was dangerously high, his pulse racing, his entire body perspiring.
“Give him a break for a day,” said the man to his cohort. “Then let the geckos into the room. If he doesn’t react, send in the iguanas.”
“Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ashley and Doc listened to the professor as he gave them the details of sensory deprivation, stimulation, and torture.
“Sensory deprivationorperceptual isolationis deliberate. It’s the reduction or removal ofstimulifrom one or more of the senses. Sometimes, just doing something as simple as a blindfold or hood can cause the reactions you’re seeking. Many children will experience fear or disorientation when blindfolded for a game of tag or blind man’s bluff. Earmuffs can cut off sound, and other more complicated devices can cut off smell, touch, taste, or even the ability to sense heat.
“There can be a good side to this. It has been used in variousalternative medicinesand inpsychologicalexperiments. How it usually works is that when the brain is deprived of sensation, it will attempt to restore sensation in the form ofhallucinations. This is usually done to study drugs or the hallucinations themselves.”
“This all seems cruel at best, professor,” said Ashley.
“I agree. It’s not something I’m a part of, but I do study why people do it. Short-term sensory deprivation is often relaxing. For instance, during yoga or meditation, when they remove all sound from the room or make it very warm but somehow convince you that it’s for your own good.
“The problem is when there is extended or forced sensory deprivation. This can result in extremes. Anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts. Nothing is rational any longer. Nothing. Patients often feel depressed, suicidal, and sometimes, refuse to speak or communicate in any way at all.”
“Can you tell me about the Ganzfeld effect?” asked Doc.
“Someone has done their homework,” smiled the older man. “This involves perceptual deprivation. It is a constant form of stimulus. Always the same. Never wavering. It can have the same effects as those we already spoke of, but it’s quite cruel for the patient. Imagine constant sounds of crickets if you’re fearful of crickets. Or constant flashing light if you are light sensitive. Patients in the early 1900s were often treated with this type of stimuli and never recovered.”
“I was in the military,” said Doc. “I know that some of these techniques were developed by the armed forces.”
“They were indeed, with the blessings of NATO, I might add. Since that time, it’s been determined that many of these are inhuman and degrading, but it doesn’t mean everyone has stopped.
“Sensory deprivation has been used to support arguments by philosophers on how our minds work. In many instances, professionals have used these horrible studies to claim they are studying alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, and much more. I am not in favor of any of these techniques, but I can tell you that several are still used today.
