Droning

By Tcheser

 

The policy and the laws that enforced it had been in place for twenty years. Prior to its implementation society in the latter half of the twentieth century had nearly collapsed under the economic strain put upon it by its penal system. Toward the end of the millennium the imprisonment of nearly a tenth of its population for varying amounts of time nearly bankrupted the western nations who practiced such humane treatment of their law breakers.

 

There seemed to be no reasonable solution to the problem though. The governments found their only options seeming to be to let criminals go free or to just execute them. After trying variations of both they saw they needed a third choice. At the turn of the millennium a think tank of the most intelligent and innovative thinkers in America was finally formed and given a month in a isolated lodge to come up with a sound, feasible and cost effective solution. No one really held out great hopes and it looked like millions of hardened criminals would be killed and millions lesser lawbreakers would go free having never paid their debt to society.

 

The think tank however surprised everyone. They emerged from their isolation with a solution to the prison problem that was both simple and efficient. In short order they laid out their plans to Congress and everyone was suitably impressed with their ideas. So impressed in fact were the lawmakers that they called a special vote and sent the bill to the president the very next day. It was said that the strongly conservative President read the proposal just once before cheerfully signing it into law.

 

The tenets of the law were simple really. Truly horrible criminals and those guilty of felonious offenses that could not be reformed would no longer be imprisoned. They would be executed. The penalty for many lesser crimes would be reduced to a fine, though in many cases this was to be a very large fine. For any crime more serious then this but less serious then that of a violent or criminal felony the lawbreaker would face what the think tank called “Droning”. Those who could not pay their fine, showed particular disrespect or were deemed unlikely to learn a lesson from a fine were also given the punishment of Droning.

 

“Droning” as it was explained by the think tank was the act of forcing a citizen to take on the aspect and duties of a mindless servant of the state. Like a worker drone ant. This would allow the lawbreaker to remain a member of society while performing punitive services for the betterment of said society. The need for prisons was therefore negated as no one incarcerated. With no prisons to support the crippling cost that had so burdened the state was eliminated. As an added bonus there were no prisoners shut off from the world slowly becoming more and more antisocial until they could no longer live in polite society as there was in the old system.

 

Under this new system those serving Droning sentences were nominally free. The only real change was their occupation for the most part. All “Drones” as they came to be called were required to take on duties designated by officials from the former bureau of prisons. These duties ranged wildly but were all tasks that were decidedly undesirable or for one reason or another understaffed by law abiding citizens. To make it clear to civilians who was a Drone and who was not, the Drones were required to wear a special uniform. This was important for practical purposes but the designers also thought the humiliation factor it added would be a strong deterrent to many would be lawbreakers.

 

The system worked perfectly. It was hailed by most people as a brilliant move and the savior of western society by others. Everyone seemed to love the new program, everyone that is except for a small minority of people.

 

Jennifer Wells would have referred to those people as asinine. She supported the program from the start and thought it was an inspired move putting all the lazy good for nothing criminals to work. They had broken the law and deserved to be punished in a manner law abiding citizens like herself could benefit from. That’s what she thought. Then she ran that stop light.

 

She had been in a hurry and the light was pointless she rationalized. It was far too long and no had been coming anyway. Which perhaps it might have been, though mouthing off to the cop that pulled her over and telling him he was wrong and the light was stupid was a bad idea however. Yelling at the judge and telling him she was too rich to waste her time in his court and could she have her damn fine was a very bad idea. She could see this all clearly after she was sentenced to a month of Droning.

 

The judge decided that was the proper sentence for Jennifer as she was so wealthy a mere fine would mean very little to her. She might have gotten off with probation or a suspended sentence but her bad attitude sealed her fate and resulted in the rather long droning sentence she received.

 

The very day after her trial Jennifer had to begin her sentence. She told her fiancé she was taking a long trip to Europe. He thought that was odd, but so enamored with her and her father’s money he said he understood and wished her a good trip. Then she reported to the former bureau of prisons orientation seminar for the newly sentenced to Droning.

 

While there she learned the various rules and regulations she would have to adhere to and was told where and exactly what she would be doing for the next month. Now that it had actually happened to her, Jennifer decided she hated Droning and made no secret of it. She told every official she came across that this was all very unfair and that she should have just received a fine. This of course didn’t endear her to the officials one bit.

 

While she was there they also processed her and fitted her with her new uniform. As this was meant to instill some humiliation it wasn’t a lovely experience. Certainly nothing Jennifer was used to. She was generally fawned over as the beautiful and single young heiress that she was.  Her family was very rich after all and spent most of its time buying art and raising money for obscure charities. She was more then a bit spoiled. So she knew little if anything of practical matters and nothing about what a Drone actually went through.

 

She wasn’t at all prepared when the butch female attendants very swiftly and methodically stripped her of her fancy designer dress, heels and lingerie and she found herself suddenly standing before them totally naked. She was then seized by the arms and led onward. She shouted for them to unhand her and was quite offended when she was ignored. They simply paid her no attention and dragged her over to a concrete shower block and forced under the freezing spray. She screamed bloody murder as the merciless attendants then scrubbed her tender body rather roughly with what felt like brillo pads. It was torture and they scrubbed her body all over and got in every crevice with some terrible smelling lumpy soap. All her makeup and perfume were washed down the drain and when she was pulled back into the main processing area she looked more like a shivering drowned rat then one of the wealthiest most well bred women in high society.

 

Still the processing continued and she was strapped down in barber style chair. She struggled as nearly all future Drones did, but it was helpless. The attendants were far too strong and in case they needed them they had their cattle prods ready. She was subdued more quickly then most and a new attendant in surgical scrubs and plastic gloves entered the processing area and went straight to work on her.

 

Using a needle he took from a side table he bent her struggling head back and tattooed her. It was an unsightly tattoo straight across her forehead which bore her new ID number in large bold numerals. She received a similar marking across the outside of both forearms running from her wrist halfway to her elbow. She cursed the man and promised that she would make him pay. For this she was given a gag. An old rag one attendant found on the floor shoved deep in her offensive mouth.

 

Next Jennifer’s long blonde wavy hair was attended to. She cringed when the attendant brought out his hair kit. She was always getting compliments on her waist long Veronica Lake style hair and would never have cut it herself. Drones were to have short hair at all times however so it had to go. She wasn’t given a choice in the matter. Short hair would not interfere with her duties, distract her or cover up her tattoo. It had also been found that many Drones suffered from excessive pride. Taking their hair was shown to be a good way of beginning the rehabilitation process with them.

 

Jennifer thought the process was more akin to a sheep shearing then a proper haircut though. The attendant spent seemingly as little time as possible on it. With his buzzing instrument he simply shaved her head in even measured strokes sending long strands of her beautiful hair onto her lap and floor all around her. This took care of the bulk of her hair in less time then it takes to tell. The few spots he missed he corrected nearly as quickly and then went about shaving off both her elegant eyebrows. When that was done he rubbed some topical drug all over her scalp and over where her eyebrows were. This was a hair growth retardant. It had been proven to take at least three months before any visible hair growth would be found after its initial application.

 

That seemed excessive to Jennifer as her sentence was only one month, but that was the way it was to be. She was still bemoaning her hair loss as the attendants clipped off her long professionally manicured fingernails and stripped them of all traces of polish. She hadn’t had her nails clipped that short since she was a young child and they tingled oddly. Then she was issued her uniform. A uniform which she would wear at all times for a full month. The two female attendants helped her dress this first time as the male attendant left without a further word.

 

Everything she found she was to wear was ugly and uncomfortable. The grey cotton underwear was rather utilitarian and unremarkable, but not what she wore over it. She needed the help of both the attendants to pull on the taupe colored foundation garment. It was designed to cover her from her thighs to her neck and was very tight. She could still breathe with it on, but only with effort. The attendant told her she would get used to that though. What she doubted she would get used to however was what the foundation garment did to her body. Somehow it pushed and squeezed everything around in the most unflattering manner. Her perfect figure seemed horribly distorted. Her once svelte hips and thighs seemed wider then ever and her ass pushed downward like it was sagging. Then somehow her once full bosom seemed to have been crushed against her body so tightly that she appeared nearly flat while she appeared to have the beginnings of a small round belly.

 

She was given an equally unimpressive gown to put on over the horrible foundation garment. It was a dull green colored smock dress that came down to a little below her knees. It had a button collar that went all the way up her neck and long sleeves. It was cut to allow the most possible women to wear it apparently. There were in fact only two sizes. Small and Large. The small was very small. The large was for everyone from normal sized people to those who normally wore xxl sized clothes. Because of this it was very unflattering and along with what the foundation garment had done the normally willowy looking Jennifer looked quite dumpy. With the dress she wore a graying once white apron, thick scratchy cotton/wool black tights and plain flat black oxford style lace up shoes with heavy soles.

 

All of this was used and smelled despite having recently been industrially washed. The aroma of sweat and body odor was strong to Jennifer’s still delicate nostrils and she cringed visibly. When she saw herself in a mirror toward the end of processing she cringed again. She looked washed out and much older then she actually was. She looked nothing like her normal beautiful elegant rich self that men always lusted after and women wanted to emulate. She was now just another drably dressed frumpy looking Drone.

 

Done with processing she was given her assignment and sent to the subway. Drones were not allowed to drive. It was a further punishment and also relieved stress on the roads, the environment and made them all the more visible to all the civilians. As she walked she read her assignment and wailed. For at least the next week she was to clean the city streets and gutters from Fillmore St. to Pierce St. She couldn’t believe her foul luck. The section of the city specified was right in her neighborhood. All her neighbors would see her day in and day out looking like the horrible Drone she now was miserably cleaning the gutters of the street she once sped down in her convertible.

 

What was even worse though was that she had several enemies that lived on that street. Other young women of privilege and class who had come to despise Jennifer for everything she had and for blatantly flaunting her position before all of them. They would see her carrying out her sentence and laugh and make jokes at her expense. Then they would call the Bureau of Prisons and report that she wasn’t doing her assigned work. They would believe them as they were model citizens and she was just a Drone. She would receive an extension on her Droning sentence and most likely be sent to a less desirable assignment as a further punishment. That would turn out so bad that she would actually violate the terms of her sentence and receive further punitive sentencing and the cycle would go on and on. She would not be returning to high society she now realized. Her lot in life was now cast. She knew all of this because she had done the exact same thing to a rival not so long ago when she had been sentenced to Droning and graffiti removal around their neighborhood. All back when she thought Droning was a great idea.

 

She didn’t think it was such a great idea now.