Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 20:50:25 +0000 (UTC) From: Paul White <paultarheel@yahoo.com> Subject: Tri-Peaks Holding Co 2 PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO NIFTY - it has kept us entertained for nearly 20 years! http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html The Sex Lecture: Day Two Dr. Mechamp begins. "I'm fairly certain that this is going to be the most uncomfortable lecture during your entire training. However it is as necessary as all of the others, even though what it touches on is deeply personal and private. "This is in three pieces and I will keep them as brief as possible. I encourage you to ask questions in the open, but as always will be available in my rooms if there are things you want to discuss privately. So, the law, company policy, and sexuality. "The law with regards to male slaves is brief and clear. Since the male cannot become pregnant, laws concerning that topic are moot. Any man involved in starving a slave, beating one to death, or murder will face federal criminal investigation and charges if the investigation warrants. That said, you cannot rape a non-reproductive property by definition. "Company policy is based on productivity, physical health, and morale. There will be more on slave morale in a couple of days, but it is enough at this point to say that there is such a thing and keeping it high is something we strive for. In broad terms, sexual activity that does not negatively affect those items is permitted. "If productivity is not affected, then whether or not sexual activity occurs wouldn't even be noticed by management. "Sexual activity that causes physical harm will be dealt with in one of a couple of ways depending on who caused the injury – all injuries, and you will hear this often, must be reported as close to the time they are recognized as possible. If another slave did, then the company views that as an assault and the one who caused the damage is punished severely for a first offense and sent to one of our fort locations if it happens again. If an overseer causes physical harm, investigation follows and reprimand follows that, depending on severity and whether it is a first offense determines the level of reprimand which can include termination. "Morale can affect productivity and can make life for you easier or harder depending. Whether you allow, permit, or monitor sexual behavior among the slaves is generally going to be up to you or your group supervisor. The rule here is that whatever they do, so long as it does not affect production or cause injury, then it is the overseers' discretion. "Sexuality is the touchy topic, but ultimately shouldn't be. First to the property. Slaves have no sexuality; they can consider themselves whatever they like but from the free standpoint, their sexuality is like their opinions, we can't stop them from `having' them but we can stop them from making either known. Now to you. Your sexuality is your business. The company does not discriminate in anyway based on this aspect of your personality and does not tolerate any discrimination among you for that, or any other non-professional reason. "We do not question whether there is a sexual component to your choosing this profession. The company's personality assessments indicate you would be effective and that is the only thing that matters. To stress what you should already know, Tri-Peaks does not send females on-site for any reason, let alone for sex. Other companies engage in that, but our analysis indicated that the list of risks to production, morale, and safety is tremendous. So, to state the obvious, any sexual release on-site will be by hand or with another male. "You can choose to have a relationship with a peer. We handle any problems on a case by case basis, so the policy is just be mature about it and don't let it affect others or production. The exception is if you are put in a management position, you cannot use the position to force sex on anyone reporting to you. "And that segues to this: consider the slaves as reporting to you. You cannot order them to engage in sex with you or each other for your pleasure. Further, you cannot threaten them with punishment or preferential treatment and cannot withhold or change or add food. Punishment or preferential treatment destroys morale. Their diets are controlled and monitored and changes to it are likely to cause production problems, and will also affect morale. They are given this information also. Knowing they cannot be forced into sex has a calming effect and boosts morale and we have mountains of data to prove it. "So, you ask. If they decline, so be it. Nothing prevents you from asking again, but this is a judgment call because should it rise to the level that would be considered harassment in the free cities, that will likely affect, to sound like a parrot, morale. "Now, questions." "Jakob Stevens, would a shower be considered preferential treatment?" "Not if the whole crew gets one, otherwise yes. I assume you ask this based on the glib `slavery stinks' idea?" Nods. "I think you will find on-site that the smell is not as bad as you might imagine and if you are highly affected by body odor, this is not going to be a pleasant career. Allow me a little aside. It's funny to me that the `slavery stinks' statement is a joke when it could very easily be turned into an abolitionist slogan; I suppose it is a sign that you should not be concerned about job security." General laughter. "The company has a different take on this idea: that smell is the scent of money." "Joshua Evans. What about STDs?" "The risk that an STD shows up is from overseers. Processing separates out slaves with the incurable forms and treats the others. Once they under your supervision, they are disease free. When you take leave and return to the free cities, you will be tested and examined before returning to the crew. And that goes for more than just STDs by the way. If you show symptoms of a cold or a potentially infectious rash, you will be put on desk duty until cleared." "Alex Mann, what happens if a slave says yes then claims after that he was forced? "That's usually the first question by the way. Along with the message that they cannot be forced is the warning that if they falsely claim coercion, it is treated as if they physically assaulted an overseer. There are two ways to prevent this from happening or put a quick end to the inquiry: make sure another overseer sees the consent, or that another overseer witnesses the act. I'm not saying you have to do that, but the first question in the inquiry is whether there was a free witness. Otherwise, the first time an accusation occurs both overseer and slave are warned; if it happens again, the investigation will get more detailed. "Look, we know that regardless of your sexuality in the free cities, your age and extended periods in the territories will often lead to sex. The company decided to put a policy in place and then explain it to you rather than officially forbid it but turn a blind eye. That never worked for the military or other professions where males were separated from the broader population for long stretches, so we saw no reason to try the same thing. So we just advise maturity in general and an honor system among yourselves. If any of you think another overseer is taking advantage of his position, take it up with him first and handle it like adults. It is also far better for you to report any coercive behavior so it can be remedied before it has a chance to affect production." "Ian McColm, are they allowed to ask us?" "Yes. If you don't want to, then a simple no is all that is needed. You can only punish for that reason if a slave becomes a pest, not just because you might be offended." From the Journal of Alex Mann, Advanced Overseer Trainee, The Compound First day with whip. I remember my first time at bat in a real game. The pressure of expectation and something real on the line made it different from practice. It seemed heavier and felt as wrong in my hands as right. The first two swings were whiffs and my stress spiked and the bat felt almost impossibly dense. The third swing I connected with the sweet spot and everything felt smooth. It was a pop-out, but everything else about it was right on. Except for the heaviness, holding a whip and aiming it at a slave felt the same. I drew a little runt of a thing. Mr. A says that size don't really matter, just the condition of the skin. He said you don't hold back with any of the standard slaves, but the whips and techniques are different when dealing with the younger types. Still he showed us how to examine the skin to see if there was any indications that it was `papery'. Can't use a whip for that, just a strap but that if the skin is papery we have to use a kind of conditioner-lotion wherever the skin is like that. The runt's skin was fine for all of the tools Mr. A showed us. The first couple of swings hit pretty much where I wanted but not hard enough. The runt squealed a little and squirmed a little. By the fifth try he was screaming and doing the little hopping slaves that size always do. I kept my hand on his collar instead of the lead like most of the other guys did. It made me feel more in control that way. While we were waiting on our turn with the other posts he kept pouring the cold fear- sweat and was shaking. I decided to do the flogger with him on fours and he collapsed a couple of times, but recovered before I could scream at him. Even though I'm pretty sure I put way more into the swings than I did with the four foot (I decided to name my whip Zombie), he squealed and grunted but never screamed. It was only when we got to the cane that he really let go. He bucked against the hooks and cried but it was only when I truly accidentally hit his butthole that he started begging and even then it was closer to a whisper to nobody than to me and he didn't piss like so many of the others did. That might have been because of how much he sweated. Even after the cane, I was worried that I had been too soft but Mr. A said he had watched me and looked at the runt's skin and said I had done fine. `You just got a stoic slave instead of a screamer, it seems.' The runt kissed each of my boots and thanked me like they are supposed to but in a calm voice. Have to say that I found that very confusing and a little creepy. Second day whip practice Today was with the six foot, a heavy two foot braided, and the strap. The overall noise level was oh my god over the top. I had to remind myself a couple of times that one, the slaves deserve it because of their behavior, two, this is a necessary part of the work I will be doing, and three, it will be rare if ever that I'm in a place like this after training – or the shorter version: this isn't torture (at least for them, but might be for us). I drew a different one today, taller and broader – the runt was classified as medium capacity and this one was too but this one had to border on heavy. I need to ask about that. The lashes were harsher and he screamed and wiggled and begged and pissed. But I looked around for yesterday's runt and he was pretty much the same as yesterday. Got to say that I'm very glad this part is over. Mr. A says we will be doing stuff like it in the gym again, but nothing quite like the past two days. The sex lecture was today. It's a common topic for men wanting to be overseers to talk about. If anyone really questions sex as the motive why a man would want to be an overseer, they keep it to themselves. Overseers are viewed the same way that the slave pod women – we are necessary in order to keep the free cities operating. Overseers all agree that the work is too hard, the conditions too rough for fucking to be the main motive. Still I've heard what most of us have, that if you can't consider at least getting off in a slave's mouth then you won't last long in the job. I don't know if that's true for others, but I won't need to find out either because I have no trouble with the idea. But since the free cities are a buyer's market for men, the quiet question is why any not butt ugly straight man would want to be stationed in the middle of nowhere amid the stink of slaves. I know that I fit the most common reason that the shrinks say. I'm fine with chicks, but I don't want commitment or pressure. I prefer the company of men as company and realize that if I want to squirt in something other than a towel, it will probably be a slave. So, the shrinks say, I want to work closely with buddies without the pressure and competition that comes with dealing with chicks in the free cities. Though pussy is best, my desire to work with buds without all that sexual noise outweighs what the bros call tits and twats. We all say we might reconsider when our initial contract is up (2 years for me), but we also know that our reason for not renewing the contract will not be based on a girl or wanting to be in the free cities full time again, but most likely due to something we just don't like about the job itself. Sex, we agree, is no higher than third on the list of reasons to do this. The main reason is what it is for any stressful career: money. Like with the military, we are fed, housed, and clothed without spending a dime of our own money. We are in a location where we won't even have money because there will be nothing to spend it on and nowhere to spend it. So the money just sits and grows in our accounts. Handled well, just ten years in the territories usually translates to three to five hundred thousand. That would be enough to stop all but the sorriest puss-hound for a minute to consider what that means: a few hundred thousand at 31, maybe as much as a million at 35. And that's just the basics for any overseer. For advanced overseers with possible bonuses, that amount can just about double. Second is that the free cities look at us like they do soldiers. Soldiers protect the free cities. Overseers keep the engine going. They know each job is difficult and necessary for their comfort and we get some preferential treatment because of it. Hard to call that patriotism exactly but that's what the shrinks call it. The other big reason we do this is something I know Tri-Peaks keeps a very close eye on, and one of the biggest reasons I did all I could to make sure I was able to get on here. There is a power trip to making men do work they don't want to. I want to feel that, but I also want to know that I will learn how to use that best and that others around me will be doing the same thing. It's sort of the closest thing to being able to work with your hands available to us anymore. Holding Companies The new holding companies were required to be a cash only business in the beginning and then law solidified that permanently (they bore little resemblance to the holding companies that existed prior to the crises; it was just the name the Committee used and never went back to find a different one). Existing companies involved in heavy industry with locations in what would become the territories and cash on hand investors willing to form a holding company to buy teetering or in bankruptcy companies with the same criteria were the applicants most likely to be licensed. Without going into the fine grain, the company had to be debt-free and have enough cash to pay the base license fee, an augment fee that was based on the industry's relative profitability (precious and rare metal mining paying a higher fee than mining and quarries that paid a higher fee than agriculture and so on). They had to be able to pay for the full amount of their labor pool up front and prove they had the current cash on hand to make payroll for employees and maintenance of the labor pool for at least three years, obviously those with enough to maintain indefinitely were the first to be licensed. To prevent short term holding companies that would operate for three years then sell all assets, the government had to approve the sale of any asset (human or otherwise). After five years, this was changed so companies could buy or exchange assets without approval. Debt caused the crises. The migration would be expensive and chaotic (buyouts plus the mobilization of the military to ensure an orderly resettlement) could not be financed but paid for outright. That and they wanted no company owing human labor to fold under debt which would lead the members of the organization, free and slave, to fend for themselves was an unacceptable risk. Holding companies' primary business would be in providing the raw materials and foodstuffs to maintain the free cities. Manufacturing largely occurred elsewhere. A holding company could own territorial businesses and free city manufacturing businesses/factories, but the free city concerns had to operate debt free, a restriction that was not placed on businesses owned and operated exclusively in the free cities. In the event a holding company required liquidation, the government acquired all assets gratis. The board forfeit nearly all cash and any property except their primary residence. If not eligible for retirement benefits, they would be part of the general labor pool subject to the same rules of full forfeiture as everyone else. The government would maintain the operation until it could sell it off either in pieces or fully. A company requesting liquidation would be required to accept a quarter of the assessed value and half of that money would be paid out to the rank and file in the form of bonuses. The government would then treat the holdings the same as a forced liquidation. This was obviously meant to discourage quick profit seekers as well as encourage as much stability in the territories as possible. The initial industries: agriculture, mining, quarries, non-mechanized transport, inland fishing/fish- farming, timber, territorial maintenance and general services (to be detailed later), and oil and gas including pipeline maintenance (also covered in detail later). Only recently was another added, military support, again, details to follow Companies would produce the raw material and transport it to different locations near the free cities where it would be distributed, manufactured, and sold as if nothing had changed. How the company gathered the material and transported it was almost entirely their concern. The government provided rail transport throughout the territories, but getting the material to the locations using a combination of their own transport schemes and scheduling through the federal systems was, again, up to the companies. The Respect and Consideration Lecture: Day Three Dr. Mechamp begins. "The slave is not your property, he belongs to the company. Some of our competitors do not make this distinction, allowing the overseers to treat and mistreat slaves however they like, dealing with negative consequences after they have taken hold. Tri-Peaks does not hold this view. "You've heard me use morale more than almost any other word at this point. Psychologists say that slaves cannot be happy by our standards, but they can be at ease or calm. The calmer the situation, the higher the morale and the better the productivity. "What goes into creating acceptable levels of morale in a slave crew? The biggest elements are attention, consideration, and respect. "The more attention you pay to the details of a crew's general behavior, the better sense you will get of how it is working as a unit. So we use the word to apply to the larger picture of crew production. Slaves spend considerable amount of time watching you and trying to figure out how to make their lives easier based on your behavior. If they see that you are paying close attention to the crew as a whole, they are more likely to work together better than if you focused too much on certain individual slaves or don't adjust your behavior to meet changes in expected output. They know they can make life difficult for you and will sometimes rebel in small enough ways to cause more trouble for you no matter how much punishment you can dish out. They know who the troublemakers are and who the pressure-valves are – that is what we call the leader type slaves that the others look to to use those small rebellions to send you a message. If they see that you know the difference, they will police themselves. "Consideration is attention on the more minute level. The best example of this is how you react to injury. There is the work stopping injury and the work slowing variety. The stopping sort is usually obvious to all. Pulling the slave out for treatment and reconfiguring the crew around it is high profile so doesn't really play into this aspect. However, you will be working primarily with heavies and muscle strains and cramping, particularly in the hot months, are common. Being able to recognize real strains and cramps and adjusting to them is what we mean by consideration. For example, say it's July at three pm. You perceive a noticeable slowdown, but none of the slaves is injured and everything was normal after the lunch break. What you do here has a tremendous impact. If you react with the lash immediately, that will have the desired effect in the short term, and if the slowdown was just a momentum thing, then that will correct it. But if you notice that several slaves' legs are wobbly with small tremors indicating minor cramping, then turning to the lash immediately will have short term gain but longer term loss. Stopping to allow for stretching and more hydration sends the message that they will not have to try to speak to you to make you aware of the situation. "Another example is how you react to a snitch. Since there is no reward system, there really shouldn't even be such a thing, but new crews often have them and some new additions to existing crews sometimes try to curry favor by ratting. Know your crew and you will know whether to react only verbally or both physically and verbally to him. "Showing them you are watching them closely for physical condition breeds a physical trust. Showing you know how to respond to poor individual behavior in the crew breeds a psychological trust. "And trust leads to respect. They know their lives are defined by how much they work and that they will gain no more from working harder than from putting in the minimum. They know that you determine what is minimally acceptable and that the lash is what will tell them that they are failing to meet it. So force, pain, verbal prodding or humiliation while working and harsher punishments and humiliations after work is done for the day are their realities and motivators. If you use these very blunt but still very effective tools only enough to get what is needed, they will see this and realize you respect at least what they do. That leads to them respecting you. Psychologists call this slave-respect because from the slave's point of view, you have the authority to make their existence very uncomfortable so real respect is always mitigated by this understanding; however, it is better that you have that from them than not. "To summarize. They are paying close attention to you. The amount of attention and consideration you give them, the more they will respect you. This leads to a better morale and will require less physical energy from you to get the full measure out of them. "Mr. Perkins ... I think I finally have matched faces to names." "Why can't we use food as a motivator? Wouldn't they work harder if they knew that how much food they got depended on it?" "I will go into more detail on that tomorrow, but the short answer is a vehement no. We feed a slave so that he is ready at any time to burn the calories necessary for the output we require. Use the rationale that cutting rations for lowered output as an example. It spirals downward in a hurry because less food means less calories so even if you can beat enough labor out of him today, he will not return to full productivity the next day even on increased rations, so that means you will see either less output again leading you to cut rations and so on. That is a terror that damages the individual property and destroys crew morale. Mr. Johnson." "Consideration sounds a lot like weakness to me." "That's a statement looking for an argument I think. Take a moment to make that a question, please." "Sorry. Why is that not weakness?" "It can be if you are lax with it. Because output is set daily, you know how much is needed to meet it and have all the necessary tools to make the crew perform. You will hear this more in the coming days, but you are not rewarded by producing more output than requested. If you go over by a little, that's fine, but if you consistently go over your output, it triggers an inquiry. This method frees you from the stress of trying to outdo other crews thinking you get rewarded for it. We reward consistently hitting the output and are more suspicious of overproduction than the opposite. We don't tell the slaves that and its best that you don't either, but after a short while, they will understand the system. I mean if they are firing on all cylinders without a problem you may hit the output early several days in a row. Slaves will understand very quickly that you are stopping for the day while the sun is still bright. They will put two and two together and realize that you are driven by a set goal instead of as much as you can get. "Won't that just make them lazy?" Peter Johnson continues. "At the end of each day you report the output, when you began and finished, any injuries, and any work stopping punishments. If you finish early several days in a row, we will determine if the crew is outperforming the model and adjust upwards or if you are being too harsh and adjust your behavior. Our models are rarely off by more than a few percent a day, so if you finish early and half your crew has fresh lash marks, chances are you pushed harder than we want." "Sorry professor, but isn't more better for the company?" "No. The reason I lead this program is because the model I put together takes into consideration the long term physical condition of each class of slave based on the labor. `More' production is most likely going to indicate more physical stress than we want meaning more injury and earlier downward classification than we predict meaning lower return on investment. Good questions though. "Not to pick on you Mr. Johnson, because at least one person in every class asks those questions , but a lack of respect is a major reason for the Harlan tragedy and will be the major reason for whatever mini- Harlan that has yet to be discovered. "The law says a slave is human but not a person. And you have heard that your entire lives. Now you will be responsible for getting these humans to work largely against their will. They will be in the minimal clothing the conditions require, naked more often than not. They will be grimy and will smell for more days than not. Many will react to punishment in a way that would be shameful if a `man' behaved the same way with screaming and pleading. If you react to those conditions that we have created and start seeing a slave as less than human while `wearing human form' then the likely reaction is what psychologists now call the Harlan Effect. You will start to punish based on just how far from human you think they have fallen. It is fine if you want to think of them as livestock, so long as the livestock in question is work animals, not the feedlot variety. "I worded something strangely earlier on purpose. They will understand you respect `at least what they do'. The natural way for that sentence to end is `if not who they are.' That is entirely true in the free cities. Manage wage earners there and have no respect for who they are and the work you get out of them will reflect it. That soft requirement is not part of the equation here. Can you respect a slave? That is up to you individually but culturally the answer is no. Clean him up and put clothes on him and he looks just like you – please keep in mind that the amount and type of clothing and access to soap is something we control, so their nakedness and body odor is due to the conditions we created, not because they are different animals. Part of the Harlan Effect is `there but for the grace' facet. What makes you not only free, but able to make these males behave as you want and not on the other side of the whip? There are rational and real answers to that question, but when you see you are seriously outnumbered by them or grow too cocky in your notion of the chasm between free and slave a natural reaction is to over-react. Mr. Mann" "Does having a mix of former free and bred slaves make the crew harder to manage, meaning taking more energy than if they were segregated?" "Not that we've seen. Why do you think it would be?" "From my understanding, bred slaves never knowing any other life come with more desire to work so mixing them with former free would kind of demotivate them." "It might be possible in many more generations for the territories to be primarily bred slaves whose instincts are what you imply. But psychologists say that is still unlikely unless that society could exist without free men overseeing it. Nearly all mammals that form societies have some understanding of fairness. So yes the bred slaves learn labor through what we would tend to see as group games until they are bought and put to real labor under the real lash. They will see you as clothed and clean and wielding a whip. They will see that you don't work like they do or eat like they do. But that you look like they do. So it wouldn't take long for them to conclude that there is something `unfair' about it on their own even if segregated. They may never be able to put the feeling into words but the feeling is there and a rebellion can come with it. Mixing them is actually easier in the long run and they don't present any more problems when being added to a crew than any other kind of slave." The Productivity Lecture: Day Four Dr. Mechamp begins. "Today you meet your crew. I'm usually asked why this lecture is the last of the major ones instead of the first. Best answer is that having this knowledge freshest has a greater impact. "Food, feeding and rest schedule, and output maintenance. "Please take out the biscuits in the bags under your chairs. Some of you will have seen these before. The light brown one is about ninety percent protein. The green one is largely carbohydrates and fiber but also contains the necessary non-protein vitamin and mineral mix. Its texture is meant to keep the teeth healthy. They will need to eat the protein one first. Then they should eat half the second, be given water, finish the second, then water again. There is always a thirty minute rest after eating. The second biscuit expands in the stomach to make them feel full, but that isn't an illusion, they are full and pushing them back to work too soon will cause cramping and can be more dangerous on hot days. "The protein tastes a bit like pecans. The proteins have been broken down so they are absorbed very quickly and the possible allergens have been removed, so there has not been any allergic reaction reported. So enjoy." The men look around, sheepish. "I know it looks unappetizing but at worst you will find it bland. And this will be your lunch for the duration." "You've got to be kidding." Comes from multiple directions. "Not in the slightest. The best way for you to understand this part of the model is to participate in it." There is some minor grumbling. Then Peter Johnson mumbles, "Does that mean we participate in getting whipped too?" and the room goes silent. "Actually Mr. Johnson, that is possible." "What?!" "Everyone take a breath and eat. It isn't gross and it won't kill you." He watches twenty grim faces begin to nibble. This happens every time. They realize it is just a bland cookie and finish it soon enough. "Now, the second one is crunchy and mostly bland. Best to break it in half, then eat it. Then water, then the other half, then finish the water." This time there is more grousing. "Yes it is more pasty. I caution you not to eat it too fast or to swallow part of it whole. If you chew it a little longer it actually gets pretty sweet and will work its magic better on both teeth and stomach. Usually it takes ten minutes for them to finish this. Best not to rush because it will cause bloating and cramps." "Oh man, I really got to take a shit," Alex Mann stands. "Mr. Mann please sit you are not the only one feeling that right now and it will pass in a minute." Alex hovers. His insides are tumbling but actually being ordered to ignore what could turn out to be a very messy situation freezes him. He wants to say that he is still a free man and knows what his body is saying and to hell with you. But he takes a breath then takes his seat. "If you don't feel like that right now you will feel it in a moment. If it doesn't pass in about thirty seconds or so, then by all means go take care of it. But please try to relax. The first couple of times anyone eats the second biscuit the reaction is the same. After that the body adjusts to it. You aren't used to food actually expanding in your body. Since I would guess that most of you shat before class, you're not in danger of crapping your pants now. This is just how unaccustomed guts react." He lets the room calm and settle. "If you are feeling bloated now, that is also normal and will pass in a few minutes. The slower you eat the second portion the less bloated you will feel and after a couple of days you won't feel it at all. But once that has passed, I want you to get an good idea of how full you feel. You'll eat this at lunch with your crew and we will talk about how you felt throughout the day at the debrief. "There are some work details that require you eat something like this. Long heavy transport hauls usually have such tight deadline that mean you can't stop long enough to cook or prepare. But the packages you get will actually have a taste and you can pick from different kinds. "Having you eat with the crew will help you understand them better. Today through the rest of the week, you are going to feel like you've been run over because you are going to suddenly have total control over a crew of slaves and have a production quota to fill and you will have to use your natural intelligence and leadership to figure out the way to do it. We dispensed with the textbook long ago and determined this way works best. If after the end of the day you don't see a benefit to this way of doing lunch, let me know. This is usually the only part of the production model you ever experience and once this portion of your training is done you won't have to do it again. "The math behind the model is complicated and unnecessary here except as a broad concept. Our production quotas are based on the number of calories it will take. A body burns a predictable number of calories based on the body type, intensity of the labor, and the ambient perceived temperature (so humidity is factored in). So in a crew of between fifteen and twenty heavies that you will likely oversee when posted, we know the optimum number of calories they produce in a given time period, we set the quota based on that data rather than the other way around. How much food they get is based on the expected outcome plus about two to three percent more. "As I said, they don't want to do the labor we have bought them for. Now," Dr. Mechamp draws a triangle on the whiteboard. He starts shading the triangle, the top quarter being totally black and finally ending in an area of white. He puts two lines, one below the darkest part and another a few inches below that mark in an area that's about eighty percent shaded. "The white area is the amount of exertion is the typical for most professionals in the free cities. As you move up the triangle into the more shaded areas, that represents the amount of exertion for paid manual laborers and athletes and for the most part the amount of exertion you will use on a standard day. The area I marked off shows the amount of exertion required of all slaves." He draws an arrow to a section a bit below the lower line. "That marks the exertion level a trained slave will give with some of the better trained actually giving the amount we expect, but most will try to withhold this extra amount either because they think they are giving the all we require or from protest. Whatever the motive, this is what we require and the threat of and the actual use of the lash is how we get it. "The top of the triangle is the amount of exertion that is sometimes required of transport slaves and often required of trap ponies (but Tri-Peaks does not purchase slaves of this sort but just so you know). You will see just how maxed out the slaves are at the end of the day and you will also know they aren't faking. If you push slaves into this zone too often, no matter how much you feed them, the time to recover will be significant and production will be affected. Think of it like this: you are trained to run half marathons and have a consistent time that you can push if you need. Now suddenly you have to run several full marathons in a row. The next day you run a half marathon and you realize that your finish time is probably off by at least twenty-five percent. This is a situation we want to avoid, but if it is necessary, again the most common example is transport deadlines, then we factor in this recovery period in the production output for the subsequent days. "Not to pick on you Mr. Johnson but I would be saying this at this point anyway had you not made your comment, when I say that you might find yourself in a situation where as you put it `participate in getting whipped'. If you whip a slave while he is under load and cause an injury that was avoidable, you get a pass. Do it or something like it a second time and you are given the option of handing in your tag or taking a dozen stripes. If we think you are relying too heavily on the lash and it is affecting production, we'll let you know professionally. You won't be given such a stark choice for that. It has happened four times in the dozen years I've been involved with this. One quit, the other three took the stripes. Go ahead Mr. Johnson." "I'm really trying not to be an ass, it's just that so much of this seems like we're treating them like pets. But after they got the beating, weren't they useless with the slaves after that? I mean how effective can you be with the whip once that's happened to you?" "Mr. Alvarez would you like to answer that?" "You've seen me in action with the slaves for the last couple of days. You've seen other instructors doing the same. Have any of you noticed any difference in intensity?" Heads shake. "I took the lashes as the professor said, the others did not. That doesn't make me better or worse in any way that I understand, but I think you can tell that I am not any more `useless' than the others. I'm not sure it makes me any wiser, but some guys here say it probably does. I know that I made a punishable mistake, took the punishment and then picked up where I left off." After a break, Dr Mechamp covers slave sanitation. Dr Mechamp begins. "Sanitation is not fun topic or task but is more important to the health of your crew than almost anything else. And what is most relevant to the people in this room, it is just as important to your health. "Everyone, free and slave, in the territories is immunized against the food and waterborne hepatitises, typhus, typhoid, polio, and cholera among other things, but those are the debilitating or fatal diseases associated with poor sanitation. However no immunization is foolproof and there is always a possibility that a new variant of any of these pathogens can mutate and slip past even the best vaccines. "Instead of using the professional terms I would in an academic setting, I'll use the ones you all have probably used most of your lives. "Sanitation is the polite word for what we do with shit. Piss is usually, but not always, smelly but since it is sterile except for someone truly ill, the only real problem it has is the smell. "There are extremely few locations anywhere in the territories where slaves will use traditional facilities and not that many more where you will. Tri-Peaks has none in any of its labor sites, so the standard facilities are only in training locations like this, clinics and hospitals, and processing centers. Though it might or should be obvious, the reason is that plumbing and sewer lines are expensive to maintain and ultimately unnecessary in the territories. Also, and I will get to this more in a moment, anything like a septic system is more hazardous than just letting the slaves just shit wherever. "Which slave or kind of slave handles the territorial facilities will vary, but there will always be at least a minimum number of slaves dedicated to it at all times. Tri-peaks does not look at this function as punishment. I will stress that again, this company does not punish slaves by assigning them to sanitation duties. The reason is that it is too critical a responsibility to leave to a slave that might try to exercise some petty rebellion by not being as vigilant as the job requires. "As with who is responsible for it, how it is stored and moved will vary a bit from place to place. The most common type that Tri-Peaks uses is the one you have seen here. It is a simple wooden box with a hard plastic top that has a sliding mechanism to open it for the slave to empty his bowels. The slaves with the sanitation duties keep the tops clean at all times. There should be no flies in the latrine areas at all. Flies as a whole have largely been eradicated from the territories but we still have to take all precautions. If you have looked through the recommended punishment handbook you will notice that allowing pest around the latrine or food areas is among the heavily punished offenses. In other words, we consider risk to crew, and your, health as on a par with physical insubordination. "Inside the box is a hard rubber lined, double canvas bag with straps, sort of like a molded duffle. Once it is full, the slave zips it, and straps it onto his back and jogs to the power drop station. He will then pick up a cleaned and empty one, replacing the original. The power drop is likely a new concept for you, even the youth sight members. "If burying shit was good enough, then standard hand dug latrines would be the norm. Obviously, it isn't. On average based on the food we give them, slaves produce over 8 ounces of shit a day. So even a medium sized quarry of three thousand slaves will produce almost a ton of offal per day. The labor involved in just digging the holes large enough then filling them in is an incredible waste of energy and you run out of room for it quickly – that and if we did that, the flies would return within two years. "The drop site is a building where the shit is dumped into a generator. It takes very little fire to then ignite the methane in the shit. And a little aside here that I didn't mention when going over the slave food. There are a couple of special enzymes from alfalfa added to them that cause them to create a bit more methane than someone on a typical diet, so it produces a bit more fuel, if you will. That then powers the generator. It provides enough electricity to recharge the batteries used at any site. It heats the water and powers the pressure washers used to clean and decontaminate the containers. At large enough worksites it creates the necessary energy to heat the water for your showers. "It is a self contained sanitary system that requires almost no maintenance and means that many sites can exist with very little external power needed. Questions? Mr. Stephens." "I assume we don't have to use the same `facilities' as slaves, so where do we go?" "With one exception overseers have their own portable that is emptied daily but goes to the cleaning/contamination area instead of making a stop at the generator. The exception is for long haul transport but I want to cover that in a later lecture. Mr. Parker? "You only said they shit in the latrine area, what about piss?" "They are not to piss in the latrines since that will dilute and can breakdown some the methane. Piss, like I said, is sterile so there are a couple of options depending on location and your style. Some locations will have a spot where the slaves are expected to piss, so that removes your own style. But if there are no regulations then you can give the slaves breaks to piss or require that they piss while they work if they cannot hold it until food breaks. And yes slaves can learn to do that in fact. "What about accidents or if they get sick and get the runs?" "If the accident is just that, then one of the latrine slaves will fetch it and deposit it then cover the area with quicklime. In the case of diarrhea, the latrine slaves cover it with quicklime and the slave is taken to quarantine for observation and hydration and then sent to the closest clinic if the situation cannot be handled on site. Mr. Southern" "If there are only half a dozen boxes but say sixty slaves won't that lead to lines and wasted time?" "Whether you have paid attention to your own schedule, you will notice that you shit around the same time every day, barring illness typically. The same is true for slaves. We just train them to shit based on our needs. Further, since the food tends to create one large movement, they are able to finish shitting in no more than 60 seconds. Given that, you can have a full crew of slaves empty out in a couple of phases with a minimum of interruption." From the Journal of Alex Mann, Advanced Overseer Trainee, The Compound I get paired with Parker for the rest of the time. He's half a head taller than my 6 foot and with wider shoulders than me, but seemed more nervous. He had never been in Youth Sight so the punishment days were the closest he's come to a slave. That's really fucking close but no overseeing is actually involved. I don't doubt he will be good, but his nerves were still there. Yea like Dr M said, I do feel like I've been hit by a truck. Keeping my slaves on task and helping him (and honestly him helping me) keep his on task was maybe the toughest thing I've done so far, ever. Each team got a different task the same way, by opening an envelope. That's it. Our task itself is simple enough, but the logistics behind it are not. We have to make an oval trench 30 yards around, 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep with straight sides. Wooden slats will support the walls of the trench. Once that is done, a mixture of clay and dirt will be added along with water to create a mud-run. The slaves will run through that for a time, then the clay/dirt will be removed as will the slats and dirt will be added back, undoing the original work. First we needed a slave to man the shitbox so we decided that the slave would rotate from one on my team to one on his and so on. Since at this point with the bowels not synced, the slave would be chained to the box most of the day. Next we had the med-cap slaves mark the oval with the slats that will support the trench walls – since they are to be hammered down a full foot, they are exactly 4 feet in length. Then the heavies had to hammer rebar every few feet. The rebar is 5 feet long so we had the slaves measure out the necessary 3 foot distance on the rebar, using the only yardstick we had so that only 2 feet were above ground. Those were the guide sticks so we knew when the slaves had dug the correct distance. We were given only 2 wheel barrows which meant and means there will be some amount of `down time' while the barrows are in transit and back – this is true whether both are going at the same time or just one at a time. Down time is not allowed except for rest for food, so the slaves must be kept in motion. We alternated this between squats and running in place. The running meant the thighs must be parallel to the ground for each step and Parker made heavy use of the shorter slave whip for failures here. Once the oval was mapped, the med-caps broke up the ground with garden forks and the heavies filled the barrows. I followed the slaves pushing the barrows, whipping when needed to keep the pace. Parker stayed back and supervised the down time exercises. Tomorrow we will switch. It was mentally and physically exhausting. Keeping an eye on the whole mechanism and on the slaves' bodies while they worked at what seemed like a good pace meant no time for letting the mind wander. The biggest challenge was what Dr. M said it would be. The slaves didn't shit on any kind of schedule. Parker was a bit ill from the whole thing – he had never had to deal with it. I kept time and any slave that took longer than a minute was stopped. A couple kept going and were whipped while on hands and knees. Four others stopped but begged a little later to finish. We denied that and caned their asses while they lay flat on the ground. One of the smallest could not hold it. We made him bury the shit. Then we had the rest of the slaves watch as we put his head inside the shitbox and both of us whipping him at the same time. After that the slave at the shitbox ran off to the generator drop spot. When he came back, we bedded down our crew and headed off to dinner and to take our own dumps. PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO NIFTY - it has kept us entertained for nearly 20 years!