The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies, it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it. You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in your head is going to say, Work! Work! Exes always get good jobs because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might want to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head, Unlawful to strike someone except in self-defense.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him, the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain returned, and the mental voice whispered, Unlawful to curse.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and the voice, Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."