The sterile air of the public school corridor vibrated with the drone of young voices, a chorus meticulously orchestrated, utterly devoid of childish spontaneity. It was recitation hour, and from behind the closed doors of Classroom 3B, the mantra swelled and pulsed: “The Circle provides. The Circle protects. The Circle secures our future.” Each syllable was enunciated with chilling precision, hammered into their tender minds with relentless repetition, a verbal branding iron searing its mark upon their nascent consciousness. These were not just words; they were the foundational dogma of their young lives, planted deep before the first tendrils of independent thought could even sprout.
Cora stood a short distance from the doorway, her stomach a tight knot of apprehension and resentment. Inside that classroom, amidst the regimented rows of desks, sat her niece, Lily. Barely six years old, Lily was already being molded in the Circle’s image, her small hand pressed dutifully against her chest, her lips moving in perfect synchronicity with the collective pronouncements. The instructor, a woman draped in the monotonous gray of the Department of Faith, surveyed her charges with an almost predatory approval. Above her head, a banner stretched across the wall, emblazoned with the benevolent, yet somehow unsettling, visage of the Chairman. Beneath his eternally smiling countenance, three words were starkly printed: Truth. Order. Purity. This was the pabulum fed to the masses, the sum total of their state-sanctioned enlightenment.
The public schools, once hallowed halls of learning, places where questions were encouraged and debates flourished, had been surgically gutted, reduced to little more than indoctrination centers. Obedience was the core curriculum, loyalty the only virtue. From coast to desolate coast, the syllabus was uniform, rigidly dictated by the Department of Faith in concert with the Circle’s Ministry of Education. Science, once a realm of exploration and discovery, had been cynically rebranded as Natural Law, twisted and contorted into scripture-supported homilies about a preordained divine plan. History was no less perverted, rewritten to serve the state’s narrative, the textbooks thick with hagiographies glorifying the Chairman – ‘The Chosen Leader,’ they called him – and the divinely ordained genesis of the nation. Even mathematics had been subtly poisoned; while two plus two, in its immutable truth, stubbornly remained four, the entire discipline of economics had been banished from the curriculum. What need had the masses for understanding wealth creation when their destiny was solely to serve?
But this impoverished, intellectually starved existence was not the educational diet of the Chairman’s own progeny, nor those of his inner circle. For them, the private academies, the ‘real’ schools, offered a starkly different reality. Hidden behind layers of security, shielded by imposing gates and patrolled by vigilant guards, the Circle’s elite had constructed their own opulent sanctuaries of knowledge, rarefied environments where their children were meticulously groomed to rule. Within these exclusive enclaves, students were exposed to genuine history, unadulterated science, and the forbidden complexities of economics. They immersed themselves in military strategy, mastered the art of corporate raiding, and dissected the intricacies of global trade domination. They learned the nuanced craft of deception, how to manipulate public opinion, how to effortlessly exploit a compliant workforce. While the children of the working class were being systematically trained to obey, their future masters were being equally rigorously trained to command.
Cora had caught fleeting glimpses of these forbidden academies, fragmented video leaks surfacing briefly before being ruthlessly scrubbed from the internet, phantom images in a digital desert. She recalled seeing expansive libraries, brimming with forbidden texts; state-of-the-art technology that dwarfed anything available in the public sphere; and, most strikingly, real teachers – not mere instructors, but genuine educators who challenged their students, pushing them to critical thought, not crushing their spirits. She remembered images of the children of senators, corporate titans, and high-ranking generals engaged in vigorous debate classes, their rhetoric honed to a razor’s edge, preparing them for a future of unchallenged authority.
The chasm separating the two systems was not merely wide; it was a bottomless abyss. Public schools were factories, their sole purpose to churn out compliant laborers and unquestioning soldiers for the Circle’s vast machine. These students, Lily among them, would never possess property, never dictate their own destinies. They would be granted just enough rudimentary knowledge to be useful cogs in the societal mechanism, but never enough intellectual ammunition to question their predetermined place in the rigidly defined hierarchy. Loyalty was the highest virtue they would learn. Fear the most potent motivator. And above all, they would learn to venerate the Circle, to see it not as their oppressor, but as their benevolent benefactor.
Conversely, the private academies were not schools in the conventional sense, but rather strategic training grounds for the next generation of oligarchs. Their graduates were destined to inherit not just wealth, but absolute control – the vast businesses, the sprawling industries, the very apparatus of government itself. They would exist in a gilded cage, untouched by the gnawing pangs of hunger, oblivious to the soul-crushing silence of an empty account. They would wield power so immense, so pervasive, that it would remain utterly invisible to those over whom it was exercised, the enslaved masses below.
The most insidious irony of this carefully constructed system was the pervasive public illusion that the Circle itself actually despised private education, that they were champions of egalitarianism in learning. This elaborate charade was meticulously maintained through carefully orchestrated propaganda: endless speeches about equality of opportunity, sentimental pronouncements about restoring faith in ‘our’ schools, and sanctimonious warnings about protecting ‘our’ children from vaguely defined ‘corrupting influences.’ Periodically, to further solidify this deception, the Circle would theatrically shut down a progressive private school, one that still dared to cling to outdated notions of free thought or unfettered academic inquiry. The carefully crafted headlines would scream, “Chairman Strikes Down Elitist Institutions!” and the populace, ever eager to be deceived, would cheer, naively believing their leaders were valiantly fighting on their behalf.
But the true academies, the actual training grounds of the elite, remained untouched, flourishing in their cloistered exclusivity. Because the architects of this two-tiered system, the masters of this intricate deception, would never, under any circumstances, subject their own children to the soul-numbing, mind-deadening education reserved for slaves.
Cora’s fists clenched at her sides, the nails digging crescents into her palms. She glanced back through the classroom window at Lily, so small, so vulnerable, so utterly unaware of the insidious web being spun around her. A wave of helpless horror washed over Cora as she realized the chilling completeness of it all. Even a whispered word of dissent, shared in the supposed privacy of familial intimacy, might be reported by the child herself, so thoroughly had the indoctrination taken root. They had considered every contingency, every potential crack in their monolithic control.
Cora had deliberately avoided her sister’s house for months, a self-imposed exile driven by a visceral aversion. She knew what awaited her there: the chirping chorus of childish voices reciting catechisms they could not possibly comprehend, eyes wide with the unwavering, almost unnerving, faith that only the very young could possess. The last time she had dared to cross their threshold, her nephew, Samuel, had pulled her aside, his face etched with a seriousness far beyond his six years. “Auntie Cora,” he had asked, his voice unnervingly earnest, “do you love Jesus and the Chairman?”
The carefully rehearsed words, delivered with such unnerving expectation, had stopped Cora cold. It wasn’t the question itself, but the manner of its delivery – the tone devoid of childish innocence, the distinct lack of curiosity. It was a test, a loyalty probe delivered with chilling formality.
Now, standing in her sister’s meticulously ordered living room, the oppressive atmosphere solidified around her. The subtle changes in her once rebellious, once sarcastic, once undeniably normal older sister had been accumulating for years, insidious shifts Cora had tried to ignore. But now, the transformation was stark, undeniable. The house had been purged of any artifact that might hint at independent thought, scrubbed clean of anything that did not conform to the Circle’s rigid orthodoxy. The walls were barren, save for two carefully chosen items: a garish, mass-produced print of the Chairman embracing a saccharine, blond-haired Jesus bathed in an unconvincing golden glow, and an embroidered sampler proclaiming, in looping cursive: Faith. Family. Freedom.
Lily and Samuel sat cross-legged on the floor, diligently coloring within the thick, black lines of their state-issued activity books, their brows furrowed in concentration. Cora forced herself to look, steeling herself for the inevitable. She already knew what propaganda awaited her.
The page Samuel was laboriously filling showed the Chairman standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jesus, his hand placed in a disturbingly paternal manner upon the Son of God’s shoulder. The caption beneath, stark and declarative, demanded: “Who brings us salvation?” A small, blank box awaited the children’s dutifully inscribed answer.
Lily, meanwhile, was engrossed in a puzzle. The instructions, printed at the top of the page, chillingly read: “Circle the enemies of Christ.” The illustrations were stark, deliberately simplistic, yet unequivocally clear in their hateful intent: protesters bearing signs of dissent, a woman draped in a hijab, a brightly colored rainbow flag, a dark-skinned man clad in tattered rags.
A wave of nausea rolled through Cora, bile rising in her throat. Her sister, Sarah, entered the living room, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. “They just adore these books,” she chirped, a hollow laugh echoing in the sterile space. “It makes learning so much fun, don’t you think?”
Cora picked up one of the activity books, the cheap paper flimsy in her hand. The back cover was stamped with the ominous insignia of the Department of Faith and Education. Beneath it, in a chillingly ironic flourish, were the words: “A righteous mind is a free mind.”
Precisely at noon, a sharp, synthesized chime emanated from the omnipresent wall screen. The Pledge was about to commence. Samuel, with the abruptness of a marionette’s jerk, bolted upright, pressing his small hand to his chest. Lily, mimicking her older brother, scrambled to follow suit. Cora had witnessed this ritual before, had heard the robotic recitation echoing from schoolyards and blaring from public screens, but hearing it in the confined intimacy of a private home was profoundly different, acutely unsettling.
“I pledge my faith and loyalty to Jesus Christ, the one true Lord, and to His anointed servant, the Chairman, who brings righteousness and truth to our land. May my hands serve, my voice obey, and my heart remain pure. Amen.”
Sarah watched with an unsettling blend of pride and vacant piety, nodding along as her children intoned the words in flawless, unnervingly mechanical unison. Cora swallowed hard, the coffee suddenly tasting bitter in her mouth. “They… they have to say that?” she managed, her voice barely a whisper.
Sarah raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, her gaze unwavering. “They get to say it, Cora. It’s a privilege.”
Cora let out a silent, weary breath, the air escaping her lungs feeling heavy and leaden. “And what happens,” she pressed, the question hanging in the air like a shroud, “what happens if they don’t?”
Sarah smiled, a practiced, almost brittle expression that did not reach her eyes. It was not the smile of a zealot, not the grin of a person who consciously embraced cruelty. It was far more chilling; it was the smile of someone who had been broken down so thoroughly, so completely, that she genuinely, unequivocally believed this was the only path, the only acceptable reality.
“Why,” Sarah repeated, her voice laced with genuine bewilderment, “why wouldn’t they?”
Cora offered no answer. The unspoken truth hung heavy between them, a suffocating weight. The Chairman’s base, the bedrock of the Circle’s power, had fought with rabid ferocity against every government program designed to aid children. They had systematically slashed school funding, shuttered libraries, and derided school lunches as socialist ‘handouts.’ Social safety nets, those fragile threads meant to catch the vulnerable, had been demonized, labeled as ‘socialism,’ ‘wasteful,’ and ‘un-Christian.’
And yet, the moment the Department of Faith had floated the proposal of expanding state-sponsored religious education, these same voices, these champions of fiscal austerity, had clamored for tax increases to fund it. Not for the ‘greater good,’ of course – that treacherous phrase reeked of ‘communism’ – but for the ‘moral good.’
The elderly voters, the demographic that had cemented the Circle’s suffocating grip on power, harbored no sentimental attachment to social programs. They had long since raised their own children. The plight of younger generations was, to them, a distant abstraction, an inconvenient distraction from their own self-preservation. To them, public schools were a drain on resources, a needless expense, a burden imposed upon the ‘real’ citizens – the ones who truly mattered in their warped worldview.
But this… state-funded religious schools, designed to mold children into paragons of unquestioning obedience, enforced purity, and abject submission? That was an investment. A strategic deployment of resources with a clear, long-term return.
And so, while public schools in impoverished districts crumbled further into decay, while public libraries, once sanctuaries of knowledge, were systematically shuttered, while universities were stripped of accreditation and repurposed into seminaries churning out religious functionaries, the Circle erected gleaming ‘institutions of faith,’ temples of indoctrination where children were meticulously molded not into free-thinking citizens, but into perfect… servants.
Cora finished her lukewarm coffee in strained silence, the bitter liquid mirroring the taste in her mouth. She would not ignite the inevitable confrontation here, not now. Not when she was already walking on such precariously thin ice. Lily, oblivious to the silent tension hanging in the air, beamed at her, holding up her completed coloring page for inspection, a childish offering of innocence in a corrupted world. The Chairman and Jesus, side-by-side, twin halos hovering precariously above their carefully colored heads. Cora forced a smile, a hollow, brittle imitation, and offered a curt nod of approval.
She had never felt so utterly, profoundly alone.
Discover more from AJB Blog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
