The Clink

11Nov09

Victorvale Penitentiary was a privately owned and operated minimum security prison. A place where those who need a little more than a wrist-slapping and some social scorn were sent for a few weeks of being out of the public eye where the constant scrutiny of the press and their peers could not force their character to waiver or their behavior to twist.

It was also a place where an escaped group of scientists fleeing from the Great War found a sympathetic hear in the form of Madame Kaminski who used contacts to sneak them in and install labs. It was here that the three doctors of scientific disciplines as broad and deep as the entire science department at Harvard got back to work doing what they did best; turning the fabric of people inside out to answer questions that need not be asked to find answers that were not to be uttered.

Germaine Lavinson was the proto-physicist and geologist and botanist.

Mikhel Gorbolav Gavinson was the psychologist and biologist.

Sandra Kirkwood Fleuer was the physiologist, the doctor of medicines, and the anthropologist.

Victorvale was located about a days drive from The City to the northwest. Here the forests had not yet succumb to the beast of progress an the air winnowed back into a breathable, low-calorie substance that purified the mind and froze the lungs. A mountains region it was not, but there was something about the location of the lakes to the north and the canopy of trees that gave the valley of Victorvale a sudden and stark temperature drop from places only a few miles away. It was a valley of secrets and seclusion before it became a retreat. Before it became a captive set of lab rats.

Here the Exiled worked at their task. The great thing about using socialites as test subjects is how remarkably pliable they were to invasive and innovative techniques. How poorly they fought when taken in the night. How quickly they gave in and became infatuated with their captors.

Sadly, though their weak wills allowed for a quick acquiescence to experiments and tests it also continually provided a series of predictable and lackluster results. So it became necessary within only two years to gather a more diverse set of subjects. And fearing the outside world and how it would react to the work, as they had done in the old countries. As they had done in the villages and towns across Eastern Europe where they began their work and were forced to leave by a small, well-armed minds.

It took little time to brainwash and reprogram the socialites. Converting them from self-absorbed and self-obsessed mindless consumers whose only goals were to obtain more wealth and status through influence without effort to kidnappers and sleeper agents that could spring up and conduct fringe experiments in their lavish homes with little scrutiny from the law and only mild scrutiny from their peers, many of whom became agents themselves, was not just a simple task but a nearly redundant one.

But nothing is perfect or sacrosanct in a place with as many eyes and ears as The City. Rumors of kidnappings, of strange and ungodly things being done in the basements of the rich of a camp in the wilderness in a cold valley where devils tortured the innocent became a common story to keep children in, to explain the deaths and disappearances of the homeless. A truth that became a legend that served its creators as well as any experiment.

Which was interesting data for The Exiled. Interesting indeed.

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Tags: Germaine Lavinson, Madame Kaminski, Mikhel Gorbolav Gavinson, Sandra Kirkwood Fleuer, The Exiled, Victorvale Penitentiary