On the first Monday morning after the orientation training, John did not go to the gym; instead he directly headed to his new office cubicle after he arrived at the K Corp building. In addition to the backpack that he had carried to work in the past month, John also brought an extra bag. Last Friday, John came to his cubicle with Steve, and found it much more comfortable than the small cube in the training class. At least he would have a relatively private space for himself. So he decided to bring some conveniences including books and snacks to his new cubicle.
John’s cubicle was head-to-head with Alice’s one that was closer to the entry of the office. Thus John needed to pass Alice’s cubicle to get to his own. When John arrived at the office, no one was there yet, which made him a bit relieved. His feelings were ambivalent before he came to the office since he learned that Jane had told Alice what he had in his mind about her. On one hand, he had the desire to see Alice in the office, but on the other hand he was also scared of seeing her.
Last Friday after talked to Steve, the only time that John and Alice met with each other was at the table of drinks during that HR party. When John saw Alice was refilling her cup of drink at that table, he walked to the table trying to have some words with her. As he got there, Alice just finished refilling her cup and turned around. Both of them were then facing to each other.
“Hi,” John greeted her first.
“Hi,” Alice responded with a smile.
John was about to say something, but did not find any word to say. He just stood there looked at her. When their eyes hit with each other, Alice turned her eyes away and left to social with others. After that moment, Alice seemed very busy to chat with different people, and John did not get a proper chance to talk to her. He even did not notice when she left the party.
During the whole weekend John was hesitating whether he should give her a phone call or send her a text, but he did none of them. Meanwhile, he was also hoping that Alice might call him or send him a text, but he did not receive what he wanted either. This morning, on his way to the company, John had gone through several different plots of how to talk to Alice in the office once he saw her. So he was disappointed when he found that the office was empty, but meanwhile he also had the feeling of temporary relief.
John walked around the corner to his own cubicle. He turned on his computer and then started to organize of his cubicle. When he was putting the stuff he brought to the office into the drawers, the phone on his desk started to ring.
John quickly glanced at the screen, and saw the name of Steve.
“Good morning, Steve,” John answered the phone promptly.
“Good morning. Have you read the email I sent to you this morning?”
“Not yet. I just came in.”
“Okay. Read it and then come to my office in half an hour,” Steve said.
“Sure. I will do it right away,” John responded.
After he hung up the phone, John quickly checked the email sent by Steve. It was a simple email, with a subject of “The Prison Project”, and cc to Jane. In the email, Steve was saying that he and Jane had decided to put John in charge of the first project of their group, which was to help selling the IB system to the Iron Prison.
John was excited by the email even though he had no idea what and where the Iron Prison was. He logged off his computer and walked out of his office. He needed to have a quick breakfast before going to meet with Steve.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve had not changed his office, even though there was a rumor that his office would move to the next door of the CEO office.
John came to the HR floor after his breakfast. He knocked the door of Steve’s office.
“Come in.”
John opened the door and entered the office.
“Hi! Steve.”
“Please have a seat.”
John grabbed one of the chairs in front of Steve’s desk and sat down facing to Steve across the desk.
“Jane was supposed to join us, but she has an important meeting this morning so that she would not come.”
From Steve’s opening remarks, John was reaffirmed what he guessed after he read Steve’s email that he would directly work for Steve in this new project.
“Did you read the email?” Steve asked.
“Yes,” John replied.
Then Steve handed him a pile of stapled documents. The top one was the contract between K Corp and the Iron Prison.
“These are copies of some documents of that Iron Prison project. You need to go through them later.”
“Sure.”
“The Prison has signed a contract with us. That would save the major trouble for you,” Steve said.
“Really?” John felt a great relief but then confused about what was left for him.
Steve continued to say, “Your job is to help the prison to set up the IB system.”
“But I don’t know much about the technical perspective of how to make the IB system work,” John expressed his concern.
“You don’t need to worry about the technical perspective. You will be the Project Manager. Mark and Ralph would take care of the technical part.”
“Who are Mark and Ralph?” John asked.
“They are consultants from F Corp. They would sit in the same office with you, so you will see them soon,” Steve responded.
“I see,” John said, and then asked, “Will those consultants from F Corp wear red hats when they work for us?”
“Yes,” Steve replied. “From now on, all consultants from F Corp to work for us under our strategic deal with them will wear the red hats in any K Corp premise, and following our rules.”
“That sounds good,” John replied. He didn’t say what was that good about, and Steve didn’t ask. That was good for both of them anyway.
“As you have found during the training, the use of IB system is not a trivial work but needs some training.” Steve looked John in the eye, “Some of you guys might have been willing to do it no matter what. But I would guess, most of your classmates did that for the incentive we have offered.”
“Most probably,” John believed the same.
“But for the prisoners, obviously we are not going to give the same incentive as we provide here.”
“Of course not,” John said. “But I thought it was for those prison guards.”
“The Iron Prison might want to do that later, but for now the main job is to have those prisoners to wear the red hats because the management team of the prison wants to know what is going on in the mind of those prisoners,” Steve explained.
What Steve just said triggered a sense of sourness in John’s heart. He felt himself just like a prisoner. But it just lasted for a fraction of a second, and he overcame the sour feeling by telling himself: “who cares about that?” What John really cared about at that moment was his income that was much higher than many experienced professionals in the world; besides, it was his turn to peek into others’ mind this time, why should he care about any negative implication of the new project?
Steve continued, “So you can see that the major challenge of the project is not the technical part, but is how to have the prisoners to comply with the requirement for working with the IB technology.”
“I guess that’s why F Corp needs us to help them,” John commented.
“Yes, you are absolutely right on this,” Steve said. “Now you will be in charge of this project. Mark and Ralph would work for you. You need to figure out a creative plan to have those prisoners to put and keep the hats on their heads.”
“I will try my best,” John said. “The only issue is that I don’t have much work experience. Do you really think that I will be okay for this job?” As a new graduate who just started his career, John was understandably not confident to work as a leader of a challenging project, even though he had been already excited that he could have that chance.
“Don’t worry. You will have all the support you need from us. Besides, don’t forget one important thing: this is a BMA project. The whole thing would be under the control of our members, and you will be taken care of by senior members for what you are doing. I figured that this type of project would be the best for you to grow in the industry,” Steve talked to John in a caring paternal tone.
“Thanks so much and I really appreciate it,” John was deeply moved by what Steve just said to him. “I am now going back to my office to study the documents and then write a plan for you.”
“No. You don’t need to write a plan right now. You could bring up some ideas later, and then we will discuss it together,” Steve said. “I want you to go to visit a company called SEESALL Limited Liability Company this morning. It is located about 50 miles west of our city, and it might take quite a while for you to get there. So you need to leave ASAP now. Nancy has made a reservation of a car service for you.”
“What am I supposed to do there?”
“That company actually owns the Iron Prison,” Steve said.
“The prison is not owned by the government?” John was a bit surprised.
“It has been quite a common practice of decades for the government to outsource prisons to private enterprises,” Steve explained.
“I see.”
“You go there to meet with their GM, named Harry King, to see what he might tell you, and we will talk about the plan after you come back. Take these documents with you and you can read them on your way to that company.”
“Sure.”
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It took about two hours for John to get to the compound of SEESALL. At the security desk of the main entrance, John showed his ID to the security guard and told his purpose of visit. The guard dialed a number and spoke to someone. Then he printed a visitor sticker tag for John.
Very soon a lady about 60 years old came out. She introduced herself to John as the secretary of Harry King, and her name was Sabrina.
Sabrina led John directly to King’s office.
“Hi John, I am glad to have you here!”
John felt flattered when King left his seat to greet him.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. King.”
“Call me Harry,” King said.
John briefed to Harry the purpose of his visit even though he knew Harry must have already known the reason of his visit. Meanwhile, Sabrina brought in two cups of coffee for them.
Harry picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Sam, would you come to my office? John from K Corp is here.”
Less than one minute, the guy named Sam appeared in Harry’s office. After a short introduction, Harry said to John, “Sam will give you a heads-up about the project. But before that he will take you to tour our central monitoring room. I am sorry that I cannot go with you guys because I am caught up with something here.”
Then he shook hands with John, “I am so glad that Steve sends you here. If you have any question about the project, just ask Sam. You will work with him for this project, and he knows everything about that prison.”
“Sure, I will. Thanks so much for all your support and help for this project.” John knew clearly that without the help from Harry and Sam, he would not be able to complete the project.
“No need to mention it. That will be our pleasure.”
John looked at the cup of coffee that Sabrina just brought to him. He was hesitating whether he should take it with him. Harry noticed John’s hesitation. “Take the coffee with you. You might be thirsty after long hours of travelling on the road.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
John took the cup of coffee with him because he did feel thirsty as Harry said.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The central monitoring room of SEESALL was located in the basement. There was an extra security gate at the entrance to that room, and one security guard sat behind the counter beside the gate. Sam asked John to show his visitor tag to the guard and then told the guard that he needed to take John to tour the monitoring room. The guard switched on the gate so that John could pass. Sam passed gate using his own badge.
When John entered the monitoring room, the first thing that came into his sight was the array of TV screens on the wall facing the entrance. It was a semicircular wall of about two stories high, and the radius of that semicircle was about 20 meters. The ground of the room was one floor below the level of the entrance. There were two side stairways connected the entrance level to the ground working area. The terrace at the entrance level was protected by elegantly carved dark wood balustrade. Sam did not take John to the working area. Instead, he led him to the balustrade and then both of them leaned against the handrail of it, from where they could overlook the whole ground area below them.
Between the wall of screens and the entrance terrace, there was a big rectangular working area with computers and various equipment sets on several rows of desks, and about 100 people working in that area.
John noticed something strange with those TV screens: some screens were showing continuously scrolling pictures, some were showing shaky pictures of very poor quality, while some others were showing normal events like recorded by ordinary real life CCTVs.
He pointed to some TV screens on the semicircular wall and asked Sam, “What are those TVs showing?”
“Those are real time videos recorded by people around the nation,” Sam answered, in a plain tone.
“Who are these people?” John was baffled.
“Ordinary people just like you and me,” Sam said while sounded like talking about something really trivial.
“How could that happen? Why are people like you and me sending live videos to you?” John sounded very confused.
“They are not,” Sam answered, still in a plain tone.
“Then what are on the screens here?” John questioned.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Some of them are from CCTVs around the nation,” Sam replied.
“So you invade into their CCTV systems?” John asked. “That sounds cool. I’ve seen that happened in movies.”
“But those only account for about half of the videos that are handled in this room,” Sam said.
“What do you mean?” John asked.
“Another half of the videos are recorded from their PC cameras or mobile phone cameras.” Sam still kept his plain tone just as if nothing they did was unusual.
“You hacked into their PCs and mobile phones?” John raised his voice a bit.
“Yeah! That’s how we obtained half of those videos, especially those messy ones.” Sam pointed to some of the TV screens.
John could not believe what he just heard. He also felt a bit irritated by the tone of Sam. In his mind, such kind of things should be treated at least as an extremely serious matter, if not as an unforgivable crime. How could’ve this guy talked about it like describing a kid’s play? John felt that Sam was deriding him.
“How did you get into their PCs or phones?” John’s voice was even louder.
Sam turned his head to look at John and then turned back to look forward at those TV screens again. “Just send some Trojans to their PCs and phones.”
“I guess you could only hack very limited PCs and phones, right?” John tried to lower his voice when he noticed a couple of persons in the working area looked up at them.
“No,” Sam replied. “Pretty much all the computers, as long as they are connected to the internet, and all the phones as long as they have phone numbers.”
“Including my phone?” John asked, but he did not raise his voice this time.
“Most probably,” Sam said.
Strangely, John found that he did not feel hurt by this answer, but felt kinda relieved instead. What he just heard from Sam confirmed his own enlightenment on the previous Friday after meeting with Steve: everyone in the world was watched by someone. So, what he lost by putting the red hat on his head (he did not wear it in SEESALL since it was not on the premise of K Corp) was nothing worth a cry. He actually felt more fortunate than most people, since he got double paid for his own sacrifice while most others didn’t even know what they were losing at every single moment. He looked Sam up and down from his side and said to himself, “I might be even luckier than this arrogant guy beside me. Who knows!”
“As far as I know about myself, I don’t make videos very often, either using my PC or mobile phone. So I guess you won’t be able to steal any info from me, right?” John was still concerned about how much of him had been stolen by SEESALL.
“The camera on your PC or mobile phone does not function in the way you might have thought,” Sam turned to look at John, and then turned back looking forward. He started to explain to John like a tech teacher giving a lesson to a student.
“Most people thought that only when they clicked a button on the screen of a PC or a mobile phone, the device would take a picture or record a video. But that’s not always true. What really matters is that a device, no matter a PC or a phone, has a camera and accordingly the software that supports taking pictures or recording videos.
As long as those two things are installed on the device, then our Trojanware could use the camera to record whatever in its field of vision without the awareness of the owner of that device at all.”
“Wow. That sounds awful,” John gasped in surprise. “But the precondition should be the device is not turned off, right?”
“That’s right. If the device is turned off, we cannot make videos or take pictures, although we might still be able to do something else as long as the battery is not taken off,” Sam said with a cunning smile.
John did not pay attention to the implication of what Sam just said since, to him, it’s impossible to do anything with the device as long as it is turned off. He continued to ask Sam along his own line of thought, “What if the device is not turned off but the camera is somehow covered by something?”
“If only the camera is covered but the device is not turned off, the mic would normally still work if it is not broken. So we could still collect the sound recorded by the device,” Sam responded.
“Wow, it sounds like the modern technologies help to plant tapping bugs in everyone’s life all the time,” John sighed.
“You can say that,” Sam agreed, and then added, “One thing you need to understand is that those TV screens that you are watching now are not the main things in this room. They are just used to assist human visual analyses or inspections when they are needed … The main magic playing power in this room is our software system that is automatically monitoring and processing the received data all the time behind the scenes. We have super cloud computing power to do big data processing. We also have a special AI system to do some advanced analyses on those sound data and images.”
“Amazing!” John was obviously impressed. Then he asked, “What if the device is not turned off but both camera and mic are somehow blocked, say, if it is put under a pillow?”
“Good question. We also take care of that scenario and treat it as if the device is turned off. What happens is that once our system receives a signal, it analyzes the signal to see if it contains any meaningful data…if not, then our system just discards it,” Sam said.
“That sounds great,” John complimented. “But then how could you collect all the phone numbers and all the online computer addresses?” John wanted to further satisfy his curiosity about what was happening before him.
“BMA provides all those to us. I don’t know how they got them and I don’t really care,” Sam said.
The mention of BMA reminded John that Sam was not deriding him but just treating him as a member of BMA, and what he said should not be taken as a big surprise for a member of BMA! He remembered the theory of inner circles that Steve told him on the previous Friday. Then he started to have a better appreciation of those two words, “inner circle”.
John looked around that central monitoring room and said, “Isn’t this an amazing inner circle?”
“What?” Sam looked at John with confusion.
“Oh. I mean, that semicircular wall looks amazing.”
“Yeah. It was made in a semicircular shape so that people on the ground floor could see the screens better,” Sam explained.
“Do they need to watch all those TV shows all the time?” John asked.
“Not really. They have the alert system to tell them if anything needs their attention,” Sam replied.
“I see.”
“As a matter of fact,” Sam stood straight and stretched his arms and then leaned on the handrail again, “What we are doing here became routines in some other countries many years ago, especially those autocratic countries.”
“I never knew that,” John was surprised by that news.
“But most of them were operated by their governments,” Sam said. “The major approach of monitoring in those countries is not hacking into personal PCs or phones, but putting almost every corner of their countries under the surveillance of CCTVs which are owned by the governments.”
“So they don’t need to hack into the CCTVs either,” John commented.
“You are right,” Sam said. “Our government knows that but has been restricted by the law to do the same.”
“So they outsource the business to you guys?”
“I cannot say that since, as I am aware, there is no any official contract between us and the government,” Sam said. “But what’s really going on between the SEESALL and the government or between BMA and the government is beyond what I am interested in. I only care about what I can do here.”
“Of course,” John concurred promptly. He did not want Sam to be impressed that he was nosy about something that he was not supposed to know, so he changed to another subject, “Why some screens only show scrolling pictures and some of them showing continuous events?”
“There are a few issues involved in that matter. But the most important reason is that we only have a few thousands of screens as you can count on that wall, but we are tracking hundreds of millions of devices across the nation. So we divide the number of the devices that we are actively tracking at the moment by the number of the screens on the wall that are used to display the tracked images. That’s why on many screens you only see scrolling images. When we need to check the videos of some specific devices, then we could fix a few screens on them, as you could see on some screens that are showing relatively stable pictures.”
“But since you cannot see the images when they are scrolling anyway, why don’t just play TV series shows which would be fun?” John asked.
“There some technical concerns behind that. The basic one is that they need some kind of feeling. Anyway, I don’t bother myself into that kind of technical details,” Sam twitched his mouth.
“Of course,” John concurred.
“Let’s go downstairs.” Sam drew himself up from the handrail and invited John to go to the working area of the monitoring room. “I will show you something that you would be interested.”
“Sure.”
They came down to the working area. Sam walked to a tall middle-aged lady. “Susan. Let me introduce you to John from the big consulting company K Corp.”
Then he said to John, “Susan is a group lead on this floor.”
Susan and John greeted each other.
“John came here for a project we outsource to them for that Iron Prison,” Sam said to Susan.
“Good to know that,” Susan said while looked at John.
“Now I think it might help him to know better about that Prison if we can show him all the videos we are tracking within that Prison,” Sam said.
“Have you talked to Harry about this? The Iron Prison is different from other places. Harry asked us to follow a special SOP for that place,” Susan said to Sam.
Sam just about to say something, Emily the secretary on the ground floor came over. She said to Susan, “Harry called this morning before you came when Paul was here. Harry said this is a BMA project, so we should just follow the standard procedure for BMA projects, no need to follow that special SOP.”
“So Paul already knew this before he left this morning?” Susan asked.
“Yes,” Emily answered and then left.
Sam told John, “Paul is the manager of this department.”
“Okay. Since this is a BMA project, then I guess we don’t need to follow that special SOP as Emily just mentioned.” Susan then asked Sam, “What do you need?”
“Could you please show all the tracked screens for that prison to John?” Sam requested.
“There might be hundreds of them.” Susan looked at Sam. “You want me to show them all?”
“Yeah. Just for a short time. John does not need to look into the details. Just let him to have a general idea,” Sam said.
“Sure.”
Susan then walked away to talk to a young guy. A few minutes later, about 500 screens in the center region of the semicircular wall were set to play videos recorded from the Iron Prison.
“Thanks. I will let you know when we are done,” Sam said to Susan.
“Oki-doki,” Susan replied and left Sam and John alone.
Sam led John to the semicircular court in front of the wall of screens.
“Theoretically speaking, most of these videos sent from the Iron Prison are not stolen from there, but legitimately collected,” Sam said.
“It’s because you own that Prison,” John commented.
“Exactly. But we are still not legally entitled to hack in the private mobile phones of the employees there,” Sam said.
“Do they know that their phones are hacked?” John asked.
“No. Whatever you see here today only stays among members of BMA. The reason you can enter this room is that you were sent here as a member of BMA by Steve, who is an acting senior member of BMA,” Sam said.
“Of course, I am aware of that, and I really appreciate that,” John said.
“So I guess there is no need for me to mention that nothing you see in this room could be mentioned to anyone outside BMA,” Sam said.
“Of course not,” John responded.
“So far, none of the employees of the Iron Prison is a member of BMA, not mentioning those prisoners.” Sam said to John with precaution, “So you should not even mention the existence of this room when you visit that prison.”
“Sure thing,” John promised promptly. He did so not just for showing respect to Sam, but more importantly because he felt a sense of responsibility, or a sense of honor, for being in the inner circle.
John could not make much sense out of the videos from the Iron Prison that Sam was showing to him. What he could be sure was that those in staff uniforms were employees of SEESALL and those in prisoner dresses were inmates.
“How many guards are working in the prison?” John asked.
“The total staff of the prison is 100 people, including security guards, medics, technicians, kitchen staff, dog handlers and handymen,” Sam said. “With the help of the system you guys are going to set up, we might further reduce the number of the security guards in the future.”
“I believe so,” John responded with confidence. “How many inmates do you have there?”
“A bit more than 600,” Sam replied.
“That’s a lot,” John said.
“But we also have another special squad that no one could look down upon,” Sam replied with a cunning smile.
“What kind of squad?” John asked.
“20 pure breed Caucasian dogs that could fight lions,” Sam replied. “Nobody could escape from them on that island.”
“That is scary,” John exclaimed.
“Sure.” Sam laughed, “Never try to make any trouble with those dogs.”
“By the way,” John asked, “how many computers that could be used for the prisoners at that place?”
“We have about 60 computers in two recreation rooms. The inmates could go there to use them at the scheduled time,” Sam said.
“But how could 600 people use 60 computers at the same time?” John asked.
“They don’t,” Sam said. “Only about 30 people can go to one of those two rooms at the same time. They have to take turns to do it. Those two rooms normally have four sessions each day and seven days a week. We have two sessions in the morning, one session in the afternoon, and another session in the evening. Every inmate would have at least one chance each week to visit a recreation room. But if someone does not behave right during the week, then he might be deprived of the privilege of using the recreation room at all for that week.”
“I see,” John’s face turned a bit grave. He finished his coffee and asked, “When would you like me to go to that prison and work on the project for which Steve sent me here.”
“We would like to see you guys to start it ASAP. Just let us know whenever your team is ready to go there, and we will arrange transportation for you,” Sam replied.
“Okay. I will talk to Steve when I go back to K Corp today. Probably tomorrow we might let you know our time schedule,” John said.
“Sounds great!” Sam said.
“I guess I should go back to K Corp now.”
“Okay. Let me walk you out.”
On their way leaving the working area of the monitoring room, Sam talked to Susan, and then all the screens resumed their previous pattern.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When John came back to K Corp, it was already past 6:00pm. But Steve was still in his office. John directly went to his office.
“Come in,” Steve answered when he heard John knocking his door.
“Hi Steve, I am back,” John greeted Steve.
“How was your trip?”
“It was great. I learned a lot from Sam,” John replied.
“He is their senior project manager…a very smart guy,” Steve said.
“I have no question about that,” John agreed with Steve.
“Tell me what you have learned from the trip.”
John recounted to Steve what he heard and saw in the SEESALL Company.
“Have you thought about how you are going to have the prisoners of the Iron Prison to wear the Red Hats?” Steve asked.
“On my way back, I reviewed all the info we have about this project and tried to connect all the knots to make a full workflow about the implementation of the whole project,” John replied. “But I found one point that might be a challenge.”
“What is that?” Steve asked.
“They only have 60 computers to be used by the inmates, but they have 600 inmates,” John replied.
“That is okay,” Steve said cheerfully. “I was just about to show you something.”
He stood and walked to the corner of the office and opened a package box. He took out a red hat, a small wireless transmission box, a headphone set, and a vest. He put those things on his desk in front of John.
“You don’t need computers to train those inmates.” He picked up the wireless transmission box, “what you need is to install one box like this for each inmate in the cell since they would stay in the cell for most of the time anyway.”
“But what if they walk out of the cell?” John asked.
Steve put down the box and picked up the vest. “Then let them wear this vest, which will act as that transmission box.”
“But it still does not help us with the issue of the shortage of computers,” John said.
“We don’t train them with computers as we did with you guys. They will be asked to work with the IB system in their cells with the red hats and headphones.” Steve picked up both the red hat and the headphone in his hands. “We will let them repeat the sentences that they will hear from the headphones, which will connect to the transmission boxes or the vests in the same way as the red hats, and the mic on the headphone set would record their pronunciations.”
“That will do!” John was cheered up. “Now I can put up a complete plan and show it to you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good,” Steve said. “You go back to put it in writing and give it to me tomorrow. I would show it to my boss in K Corp, as well as our partners in BMA and SEESALL. If everything goes fine, the earliest possible date for you and those consultants to go to the site of the prison could be next Monday.”
“Sam asked us to tell them the date to start once we decide it,” John told Steve.
“Let me handle that. While waiting for the feedback from our upper management and our partners in BMA and SEESALL, you need to work with the consultants to get all the hardware ready. I have talked to Jane, and she will give support to you for whatever supply you might need.”
“That will be great. Thanks for that,” John showed his gratefulness.
“Now you can leave. I will talk to you tomorrow.”
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One week later, Mark and Ralph, two consultants from F Corp working in Jane’s group, went to the Iron Prison to install the IB server in its computer center and the transmission boxes in its cells. Another week later, John came to SEESALL again, and from there he flew to the Skull Island, where the Iron Prison was located, with Sam.
After a brief meeting with Mark and Ralph, they came to meet with Dominic, the warden of the Prison, in a conference room. Dominic asked a handyman to bring some coffee, and then three of them sat down to discuss the plan for the IB system project of the Iron Prison.
“Before I came, my boss Steve had a chat with me, and he suggested that we start with the male inmates. Once we have made progress with the males and get hands on with the process, he would send Jane and Alice here to help us with the female inmates,” John said to Sam.
“That sounds good,” Sam said.
Dominic asked John, “How do you want to start?”
“Before we get to that point, we need first to be clear about how you guys could force the inmates to do what we demand them to do,” John replied.
Sam pointed to Dominic, “he is an expert on this.”
Dominic grinned and scratched his own head. “Basically what we could use is reward and punishment. Punishment is the main measure, but sometimes we might use a bit of reward.”
“What kind of punishment you could use?” John asked.
“It will depend on the situation,” Dominic replied.
“You won’t beat them up, right?” John asked.
Dominic and Sam looked at each other with a sly smile.
“The more precise term should be physical torture. Beating up is just one form of it,” Dominic grinned.
“But that would be the last resort for the extreme case I guess,” Sam explained. “They have many ways to have the inmates to comply with the orders.”
John’s curiosity was piqued. “What are they?”
“The main punishment would be the deprivation of freedom,” Dominic responded.
“They have already been deprived of freedom when they were put into jail,” John said.
“That fact would make many things that are basic to normal people become important freedoms to them,” Dominic responded. “For example, the freedom of going out to the yard at the designated time, the freedom of going to the recreation room, the freedom of looking outside the window, the freedom of having food, the freedom to walk around, or even the freedom to sleep.”
“You mean the rights,” John said.
“You may call it that way. But we call it freedom here since we determine what they can do here, not the so-called rights,” Dominic grinned and then added, “We can give them a bit more freedoms, and we can take away their remaining freedoms.”
“I see,” John said. “If we could force them to do what we demand, then this project would become a much easier job.”
“You bet,” Dominic said.
……
Starting from the first evening after John arrived at the Skull Island, those guards patrolling in the cell building could hear inmates from every cell on the male side shouting loudly from morning to evening as long as they were locked in the cells. Since all the inmates were wearing the headphones that John asked Dominic to distribute to them, they often did not realize how loudly they were repeating the sentences that they heard from the headphones. Although the guards were very annoyed by the noise, they did not make any fuss about it since they were all warned by Dominic not to disturb the training activity.
The training of the inmates to use the IB system progressed quite fast because those inmates didn’t have much else to think about, and thus were much focused. They were promised to get some extra treats if they could comply with the training requirements and keep the red hats on their heads all the time, except for the shower time; otherwise, if anyone was caught taking off the red hat when he was not taking a shower, that person would be punished accordingly.
Three weeks later, the collected data showed that everyone passed the training test. John asked Dominic to collect the headphones from the inmates. No objection from the inmates for that. The inmates already became tired of hearing those similar repeating sentences anyway.
But back to K Corp, Steve, as well as Jane and the IB server team were excited that they could see or even listen to what those inmates were thinking all the time.