Impressions on Iron Gates Chapter Two

Private Bonn is interrogated by the officer

The novel proceeds through telling the story while interleaving descriptions of the paramilitary organization and the post-societal-collapse world. We are invited into the headquarters of the organization, set within the architecture of an erstwhile penitentiary.

At first, it may come as heavy handed to explain so much of the world, so many technical details that, in the polished art of modern narrative, are seen as external to the story. The writer(s) of Iron Gates, however, make a point of instruction. This is an observation and a guess. It does not feel like you are being lectured, simply that you are given technical details that would not be out of place in the world-building of Asimov’s Foundation.

The shock troops are out at the beginning of one of their drills starting at 2:00 AM. The organization only uses jeeps and some of the smaller trucks. That is, vehicles capable of running on dubious fuel varieties. In the previous chapter, we were told how only privileged individuals may gain access to newly made, customized weapons. In this, we are informed only such individuals get tailor-made clothing.

On to the story.

Private Bonn is taken into an office marked with an insignia he cannot recognize. Behind the desk is an officer wearing a uniform without any distinctive insignia. Despite this, he seems to enjoy the perks of being high up in the hierarchy of any dictatorial organization. He also seems in control and to have plenty of authority.

He is confronted with a question that challenges his loyalty. He is questioned regarding his association with an individual. The narrator tells us Private Bonn is telling the truth. He does not know what the officer is talking about. The officer, on the other hand, insists on playing a patent disingenuous game of humiliation.

In the course of the session, Private Bonn is verbally humiliated, confused with slogans and patronizing hypnotic directives, sexually molested, his nose smashed beyond repair, stripped naked, hog-tied and take into the bowels of internal security.

The general idea is reminiscent of cult leader style manipulation. The approach combines shaming and the eliciting of pre-programmed loyalties and responsibilities. The kind that society at large uses to control individuals at the expense of their own sense of direction. The kind that countries like China still embrace as the heritage of culture, too. Humiliation of the individual, stripping away all sense of worth, to remake in the service of predatorial superiors, who were themselves abused, surviving and attaining positions of power only by surpassing others in cruelty to self and others.

The officer is barely in his forties. He is already bald, and his face is lined with stress.

He lives off the souls he extracts from bodies around him.

“Suggestion constitutes an excellent auxiliary of vicious and degenerate children, especially where there are habits of lying, cruelty, inveterate idleness or cowardice. … it is not necessary to hypnotise normal children… when however, children are addicted to theft and other vicious or repulsive habits, we ought to try to cure them by hypnotism.”

—Edgar Bérillon, First International Congress of Hypnotism, Paris, 1889.

Quoted by George Estabrooks