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1961This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by Max Booth III | |
| Saturday, 19 July 2008 | |
1961
The screams of agony cease to an immediate halt and I flinch in surprise. What has happened? Why has he stopped crying? Were his threats of a heart condition more than just shrieks of lunacy? Could the Irishman possibly be dead?
I glance behind my shoulder like a scared puppy. I eyeball the large man in the white coat and mutter, "Is he alright?"
With his hands behind his back and his eyes staring straight into mine (almost in my brain it seems like) the White Coat simply says, "Please continue."
"Please continue? Aren't you going to go check if he's alright? What if he had a heart attack? He could be in there on the floor dead!" I exclaim.
"The experiment requires that you continue," says the White Coat, with no emotion at all.
"But can't you just get someone to check? Please? This is supposed to be a memory test, correct? Well, what good is a memory test if the Learner is dead?"
I get the same blank answer. "It is absolutely essential that you continue."
I turn back around in my seat and pull my hair out of frustration. I feel like screaming off the top of my lungs but I don't seem to have the energy to do so. I want to kick the chair out from under me and storm in the next room to see if the Learner is still alive, but I don't. I can't believe that I've followed along this far. It's too much. And just think, if I would have drawn the ‘Learner' slip, me and that guy would be the other way around. I would be the Learner and he would be the Teacher.
Just that little 45-vault electric shock sample hurt like a son of a *****. I can't even imagine how 300-vault electric shock feels like. It makes me cringe just to think about it, for I am the one who hit the button to shock him. I may have possibly killed this man.
But I can't be held responsible, can I? Oh, surely not. We both signed waivers and terms of agreement. This whole business here is legitimate. If anybody was going to prison it's most definitely gonna be the White Coat or whoever is in charge of this fiasco. Stan Pilgrim, I think his name his.
What an abnormal idea for such an experiment! Who in their right minds would conduct such a thing where if your memory fails you suffer by forms of lightning? I wonder how much electricity the human body can endure ...
Oh well, I guess it isn't my place to say what's wrong and what's right. The Irishman did sign up, after all. Same as me. He knew what he was getting into.
The White Coat's voice rings in my ears. "You have no other choice, you must go on."
I've been waiting for his answer way too long, I realize now. Time to punish him for his incompliance. My finger struggles toward the ominous red button on the gray rectangular table in front of me. This is it. Come on, your last chance, man. Just ******* answer. Come on!
I hear the White Coat tapping his combat boots furiously.
I close my eyes and push my finger forward, causing 450-volts of electricity shooting through the Learner's body.
"Again," the White Coat says.
"What?" I ask, tears crusting upon my eyes.
"Again I say!" he orders.
BUUZZZZZ!
Still, there is only one sound coming from the other room. The deadly buzzing of an electric current.
I look back over my shoulder at the White Coat. I stare at him as if he is my father and I am a troubled boy looking for approval. My face is so full of tears I can barely make out his head motioning for me to shock the Learner once again. I know I am just electrocuting a burnt corpse now, so why am I preceding? Why am I following this mysterious man's orders? I've never met any of these men until today but I'm listening to him as if he really is my father.
Why am I so obedient to this obvious cruel man?
I pound my fist infuriately into the button once more. The sound sweeps under my sanity and devours it whole. I fall backwards out of the chair and my head cracks solidly against the marble floor. I am laughing hysterically while the White Coat gives me a frightened look. The last thing I say before I pass out is; "It's finally good to see some color out of ya."
*********
I find out later that I had been terribly tricked. Turns out, the whole time I was never really electrocuting someone. All a hoax. A goddamn experiment pointed towards me. I was the lab rat. Not the Teacher, but the Learner. It was all some kind of test to see if we were followers of that Nazi war criminal that got arrested like five months ago, Adolf Eichmann. But that was somewhere in ******* Jerusalem! What did that have to do with me? Well, I admit I don't fully understand the experiment altogether, but don't you think they should have consulted with me beforehand? I was just an innocent bystander who had nothing to do with the Nazis. I turned the other way just from the mention of the word ‘swastika'. I'm not a war criminal. No way, sir. I try telling them that I'm not a bad guy. I'm no Nazi. I'm not crazy. No way, sir. Not crazy in the least bit. But they say that the patients at Revelation Insane Asylum don't have freedom of speech here. They say I'm a monster. They say after the experiment was over I completely snapped. A fuse exploded in my brain. They say I killed the White Coat. They say I killed a scientist, and killing scientists were frowned upon these days. *********
The following is a passage from the 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", written by Yale University Psychologist, Stanley Milgram:
"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation." Copyright 2008 Max Booth III |
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