[Lauchenoiria]

Click here for part 1 and part 2 from December 2020

Side Effects - Part 3

Emily Keller was not the same person who had cowered in fear two and a half years ago. The terrified nine-year-old Maximusian had turned in to a self-assured eleven-year-old Kerlian. She had even converted from Christianity to Secadualism. The girl who had once feared the Kerlian state would now sing its praises at the drop of a hat. What had prompted this change, however?

After the incident at the boys’ school of the village of Miina, Emily had begun to hang out with Amma more frequently. The pair became the closest of friends; the daughter of a Reformist politician and the daughter of an Aurora. They made an odd pair, but Emily’s name protected Amma, and Amma’s confidence made Emily braver. It was a perfect friendship, that both girls needed deeply.

That is, until they broke the law one time too many.

In May 2021, less than six months into their friendship, then-Councillor Carmen Robinson was arrested for treason. Emily’s mother was questioned; as were all Auroras. Then things went back to normal, such as they were. As the months passed, however, the trend towards reform began to reverse. Laws that had been loosened were tightened once more. The Restricted Region was closed… and then reopened in secret.

Amma had been wrong that Emily was safe from everything due to her mother’s former profession. After the Robinson revelation, the Council of Kerlile no longer quite trusted their ex-Auroras. So, on the evening in October 2021 when Emily and Amma, aged ten, decided to sneak out after curfew for no reason other than fun, things did not end as anticipated.

The local police of Miina had, of course, been keeping dossiers on the number of times they’d had to speak to the pair. This October night, they would push up against that magical unknown number of “too many times”. The pair were arrested. And sentenced to attend an Alternative Education Centre.

At first, Emily had been inconsolable. She was terrified in a way Amma could never hope to understand. Her formative years had not been spent in a country where the name “Kerlile” was synonymous with “torture”. Worse still, they would not allow Emily to see her mother before she was packed off to the nearest Centre in a city forty miles away. The girl had been sick numerous times before they arrived.

By the time she left seven months later, she was a loyal Kerlian. That was, after all, the purpose of alt-ed. As was Amma (though the latter was there for a whole thirteen months). It had not been as bad as Emily had expected. Amma and her brother had spoken the truth when they said it was basically a “boarding school with propaganda”. At least, the Juvenile version was.

The very fact of it being not as bad as Emily had imagined prepared her well for her eventual indoctrination. Her terror in the beginning made her perfectly obedient. It was a fateful combination; and Emily soon began to see Kerlile in a new light. Alt-Ed was not brainwashing, as it was commonly called. No, there is no such thing. Alt-Ed merely provided individuals with the knowledge they needed to fully evaluate the merits of the Kerlian Project, and understand the benefits of loyalty to the Matriarchy.

Amma had taken longer. She’d been wilfully resistant from day one, forcing those running the Centre to subject her to some of the punishments Emily feared so greatly. She was not tortured; they were not in the business of torturing ten-year-old girls (unless they were in Aurora training, but that doesn’t happen any longer). Although, that depends on one’s definition of torture. She was not tortured by the Kerlian definition of torture.

The boys’ school teacher who had been arrested in 2020 was later acquitted and went right back to her position mistreating the village’s young male population. Amma’s mother, the Reformist politician, was not arrested but is watched, consistently. And frequently harassed by police who perform searches on the Grant household practically weekly, making sure to break things in the process.

In December 2020, the future of the Matriarchy looked bright. That brightness has now faded. Now, little girls who once said “the reformists will win”, now say “long live the Matriarchy.”