AUTOMATION

BY MASTER CHRIS

Part 1

The pendulum had swung too far to the left to be maintained. The
bleeding-heart liberals had helped erode parent's authority over
children for over 50 years. It had probably started with the
teachings of Doctor Spock and his insistence that children should
not be spanked but instead 'reasoned with'. The erosion had
continued with the invention of the 'teenager' category of
children to be followed years later with 'young adults' and the
final straw: "tweens". Each denomination only served to further
remove these individuals from being children. A steady lowering
of the age of consent and then the age of majority had helped
grease a slippery slope. With each 'empowerment' of young people,
their behaviour only worsened. Delinquency ruled until finally,
reason prevailed.

The conservative movement had been able to capture the attention
of the populace largely on its commitment to return the
discipline of children to the old fashion methods.

The election had been carried with a landslide and a second term
had followed the first. In a few short years, the right-wing
conservatives had undone almost 50 years of a pendulum swing to
the left and had moved it all the way to the right.

When the 'Good Child Law' had been introduced, bringing back
corporal discipline, there had been a general outcry that such
discipline was unfair. Challenges were raised citing old court
judgments which reminded everyone that one of the problems of
corporal discipline was the difficulty in ensuring that everyone
would receive equal treatment given that each parent might spank
differently. For several years there was an impasse until
ultimately, technology was able to resolve the debate. The
Automated Punishment Centers or APC's were a combination of
robotics and artificial intelligence. They were designed to mete
out punishment in equal measure depending on the offence and thus
remove the last restriction to corporal punishment.

The APCs were now in their third generation and the thinking of
how children should be punished had advanced accordingly. The
Good Child Law had also eliminated all the various categories of
children in one fell swoop. The law of majority had been
universally raised to 22 years and that left only two categories
of people: either children or adults. There were no more
teenagers, tweens, young adults or any other kind of child.
Children from the age of 4 years to 21 years and 364 days, were
brought to the APC by their parents or other guardian authority
and punishment could be extensive. Small-scale APCs were
available in virtually every school but it was the public APCs
which carried the most extensive options of punishment and thus
were most frequented.

Both corporal punishment and psychological punishments were used
at the APC. A mix of humiliation and discomfort had turned out to
be the most effective combination in correcting a child's
behaviour and the introduction of the APCs was directly
correlated to the latest reduction in child delinquency problems.

From the guardian's perspective, the system was quite simple. A
child would typically be brought to the APC by a parent although
other guardians such as police officers or teachers had APC
privileges. Once in the center, the parent would register in the
main lobby for one of the multiple units that were always
available. The APC had numerous levels of punishment and an
extensive menu of possible offences which would generate a
suggested punishment. The parent could select a preset
punishment, simply identify an offence and select a punishment
level or create a customized punishment from the various options.
The APC would then determine the appropriate punishment
selections from the extensive possibilities. The machine would
consider numerous factors in determining what punishment to
deliver. These included the number of times the child had already
been punished, what punishments had been most effective, the age
and sex of the child, the weight and size of the child and even
their psychological profile. None of this would be revealed to
the child themselves. They would only know that they were in for
a punishment of a certain level. The child would enter through a
door which would lock behind them. This was called the
Preparation Room. The child would be instructed by the APC voice
to disrobe completely. All clothing was to be removed. Up until
the age of 9, the child could be accompanied in this area by
their guardian who would help the child disrobe. Even watches and
jewelry were to be removed, leaving the child in a vulnerable
frame of mind even before the punishment had begun.

Once they were completely nude, the child would have to stand in
a punishment frame. The frame was a key element of the robotic
system. It was a mechanized frame that stood up vertically like a
huge door frame. The child would be instructed by the APC to
stand with their feet apart in separate yellow circles and to
raise their hands to grasp yellow handles above their head. Laser
scanners read the exact size of the child as they approached the
frame allowing it to automatically size itself to any size child
so they would always be able to stand in the frame and reach the
handles.

At the moment the hands grasped the handles and the feet were
properly placed, the APC moved into action with stunning speed.
Wide loops attached to bars from the frame slid immediately up
the legs from the feet to just above the knees. Additional loops
slid down from the hands to the wrists and up from the feet to
the ankles. Once the loops were properly placed, they inflated,
grasping the child in a firm, soft yet inescapable bound. This
all happened in less time than the child could react. As soon as
the loops were secured, a long padded bar swung into place at the
small of the back from one side of the frame to the other and in
front, a second bar swung into place in front at hip level to
provide additional support for the infinite number of positions
that might be required.

With the child thus restrained, the frame could twist, turn,
rotate and change shape and the child would change positions
helplessly, their hands, feet and knees following along the frame
no matter how much they might resist.

Once the child was bound to the punishment frame, sequencing was
automatic and the child was helpless to take further action until
the punishment was complete. The frame itself would move to the
next stop in the punishment cycle carrying the punished child
inside it usually in the vertical spread-eagled position. From
the preparation room, the frame had three doors through which it
could move. If the offence was relatively minor, the parent might
have requested a private punishment. In this case, the frame
would turn 90 degrees to the left and move through a large door
to a closed private room. The parent could elect to accompany the
child and observe the punishment that had been decided by the
APC. Aside from the parent, the child would be unobserved and the
punishment would then proceed immediately. Once the punishment
was complete, the frame would turn the child and move to place
them facing a blank wall where they would serve 'corner time'
with their nose touching the wall until the APC decided it was
time to release them.

There were two other doors in the preparation room through which
the punishment frame could move. One door led to a public
punishment area and was feared by any child who would be sent
there. The public area was completely open to a gallery where any
observer could observe the naked child's punishment in its
entirety. The gallery was always packed with both adults and
other children. Virtually any child could expect some of their
schoolmates and friends to be in attendance as observing
punishments in the APC gallery was often encouraged by other
parents as an object lesson in obedience.

The APC system had determined that the embarrassment of being
observed while completely naked by strangers and other peers was
an intensely positive factor in reducing recidivism and thus
public punishments were quite common. For the children, the idea
of being punished was terrible enough but knowing that your
friends and neighbors would be able to see you completely nude
and see you crying like a baby once the punishment started was
even worse. There was only one thing punished children feared
worse than a public punishment and that was the addition of
"extras" when a punishment occurred.

If an offense was significantly serious or if the child resisted
their punishment in any way, the APC could invoke "extra"
punishment. In this case, the punishment frame would take a 90
degree turn to the right prior to any other punishment and the
child would be wheeled into a private room where intense
additional punishment would be meted out. In this room, the child
was typically alone with the robotic arms and devices of the APC
and its artificial intelligence brain. The APC had many options
to choose from. Each extra punishment was designed to focus on
either physical discomfort or psychological discomfort or both.
Some options included punishment of the genitalia or breasts,
soap washing for bad language, removal of all pubic hair, rectal
or anal punishment and more. With the embarrassment associated
with sexual function amongst most adolescents, even forced orgasm
could be found in the APC's repertory.