The system wants every single person to be like all the others and only do what it wants them to do. One should always be evil and annoying. One may eat pills as much as one wants, and one never need smile or say anything fun to anyone but just listen and be where one is meant to be and go to bed on time and be awake and arrive at work when the system starts up. It doesn’t matter how you feel. Reykjavík is a ghost town. It’s inhabited by ghosts and robots.
No one is really in favor of this. But that’s just fine because the system does not want people to be human. That’s awkward for the system. It wants ghosts, living dead people who are like suitcases on a conveyor belt just waiting to be sent somewhere. If someone does something different than the others, the system turns against him, at first softly, with advice, and then with increasing hardness. At first, with corrections, and then with threats, and finally punishment. If you dare to be different, you get taken out. Get in line, dress like this, not strangely, don’t say this and don’t say that and preferably shut up. And above alclass="underline" learn these damn rules inside out! If you learn them, things won’t go badly. Or else you’ll never get a job unless it’s something depressing. You’ve no chance. We’ll close all the doors on your nose. Nobody will want to be your friend, and the only people who will want to marry you are ugly, stupid people like yourself. If you try any funny business, we’ll send you to jail. And you’ll never escape from there because we don’t want you back. We’ll stigmatize you, and you’ll never see kindness or joy in our eyes but only hardness and suspicion. The system is simply one, one totality. All deviations are faults. If something doesn’t match, it’s discarded. All deviation damages the regulatory system and confuses the organization. The system organizes all the disorder and deviations. The system is what everyone expects, and everything must be straightforward. We don’t want any variety. We don’t want change. All houses should be identical. All people should look alike. We don’t want punk. We want the Savanna Trio. Regular, calm music. We want to sleep. We want to watch stories on RÚV television about how it’s nice to live out in the country. Wouldn’t it be simply marvelous if Reykjavík didn’t exist and we all lived out in the country? Your existence is like a barking dog in our dream. Do what we tell you or you’ll be the worse for it. Sit! Stand! Shut up! Kumbayah! This is what’s fun. This is what’s right. Eurovision. “Little boxes on the riverbank, little boxes of dingalingading, all made from dingaling, and they’re all made just the same.” And we all want the same. The system is God. Those who worship God are acceptable to him and go to heaven, but those who deny him or don’t trust him go to hell. And hell is the darkness that surrounds you when we close our eyes to you.
I couldn’t say anything. Mom shook her head in submission and sighed.
“Phsh, I don’t know what the devil to do with you, then.”
A tone of defeat in her voice. Mom was a representative of the system, and this was a way to make me feel guilty. The system uses my parents to get the system’s large fists inside me and grab me by the guts and squeeze as needed. It puts slabs on my chest until I’m suffocating — but they’re clean and tidy slabs. The system knows that it can control people through their nervous systems. Pangs of conscience break you down from within. The system’s toxic warfare. Invisible, intangible, ubiquitous. Doesn’t leave fingerprints. Just a look. A tone of voice. A word. Ambiguous words. Sharp words. Judging words.
There was a kid with me at Rétto who was gay. At that time, the system did not accept gays. Disgusting gay devil! The system tried to crush out his homosexuality with all kinds of advice and action. Bullying, looks, contempt. There’s no place for you here! School, family, peers, and neighbors joined forces. Conscience pangs, mocking, contempt, violence, fear, intimidation, shame, and, finally, exclusion in hell. Rumor was that he hanged himself in the garage at home. The system breathed relief. Deviation deleted. He was faulty from the beginning. The parents had acquired a defective child who died in infancy. Yet in reality, he was drowned. No one did it. It just happened. The system saw to that. Robots and ghosts were able to continue their journey along the colorful conveyor belt. They didn’t have to worry about anything. They never needed to, since the system was pleased with them. They never lost any sleep. Relaxed, half-sleeping their way to heaven.
I was not on the way to heaven; that much I knew. Hell was my destination, calling on the Department of Psychiatry, unskilled labor, drugs, and Litla-Hraun, the prison. I had long been ready to take my first steps on the criminal path. That was the way to judgment. Everyone knew nothing would come out of me. I was a defective copy. My crime was to be different and to behave differently than required. Still, I wasn’t doing anything to anyone. I didn’t harm anyone, but I was still a threat. I was the punk song on the radio station that otherwise played elevator music for department stores. When people spoke, it was like they didn’t hear the words being said, but instead they went on like a pleasantly babbling stream. Was my curse to hear every word? From the outside, from the other point of view, I was like a zombie, but inside I felt like the carnival in Rio de Janeiro was taking place. My brain was like a nuclear power plant producing endless ideas and words. The words were three-dimensional, and under each word were sentences, new meanings, possibilities. The words swapped, merged, formed new sentences. The words played on the emotions like a harp. Each word had its own sentiment. Nothing was immutable, everything renewed and transformed continuously. But others didn’t see me with my eyes. They couldn’t. They just saw me with their eyes. They lived in prison, but I was outside. I was free, but they were closed off. It was impossible for me to step into prison and leave myself locked inside. And they could not understand that I didn’t want to step into prison because they saw the prison not as a prison but as a home. They were blind because they did not see.
I was sent to the school psychologist, who came to the school once a week to talk to students who were in trouble. I had never been before but had heard stories about him. Those who’d gone to him said he was insane, or at least close to it. The psychologist was a little guy with an enormously long beard. Friendly enough, he told me to sit.
“Well, how are you doing, Jón?” he asked, kindly.
I noticed that he had to look at a piece of paper to know what I was called.
“Fine,” I answered and wondered if I would now be sent back to the doctors at Dalbraut or whether I had grown too old to go there? Perhaps he would put me in ECT? Would I maybe be sent to the nuthouse, Klepp? I wonder whether you have to be a certain age to be accepted at Klepp?
“Fine, yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you feel you’re getting on well in school?”
I thought about it. I felt things were going rather well. The only problem I could see was the taunts I got from the kids. Most of the teachers left me alone. I was just waiting for the school system to give up on me so I could go and do what I wanted.