During the heights of the Cold War, a top US agent working behind Iron Curtain managed to get himself captured. The KGB agents who took him were determined to get their money's worth for the time and trouble spent bringing him in. He was taken to a euphemistically-named Debriefing Centre somewhere in the Urals and tortured extensively for months. His name (or code name, at any rate, the stuff I read wasn't entirely sure) was John G Franklin.
Franklin managed to resist his torture, somehow. Conventional methods (insofar as torture can ever be considered conventional) weren't going to do it. But the KGB didn't give up. Instead, they worked with what they knew of Franklin, or his working persona at least - that of a typical family business man. Using that, they devised a new approach.
They released him into a carefully monitered labyrinth, specially built under the Urals. It had no entrance or exit, just the appearance of such. Although there were places he could rest, feed or relieve himself, reaching them required significant feats of nearly-superhuman endurance. Constant white noise, undercut with sudden violent blasts of sound, was present in every chamber, along with harshly artificial overhead lighting.
Everywhere he looked, Franklin was presented with the reminders of freedom that he no longer enjoyed. Pictures of smiling, happy people in expensive clothes, eating and drinking impossibly luscious food. None of this was the masterstroke in the Russian plan, however. That was to harness explosives to Franklin's chest with thick and indestrucible webbing, explaining to him that entering the wrong room at the wrong time, or exposing the explosives to the 'wrong stimuli' would cause an instant and unpleasant death.
Unless, of course, he cooperated. Which he did after only two days.
It may not seem like a particularly remarkable form of torture to you now, in an age where waterboarding, sensory deprivation and so forth are more widely known. Which goes to show you how ahead of its time it was - the KGB's methods were so widely adopted and expanded upon that they're now universally acknowledged. The influences they've had on modern culture are far wider than previously accepted. Books, games, even architecture.
I myself have had firsthand experience of this. Only today, I went round Ullared's massive indoor retail outlet for seven straight hours with V in full-throated shopping frenzy mode and F in a pram.
If that place wasn't devised by insane torturers expressly trying to damage, if not entirely quash, the human spirit of any entering it, then I don't know insane torturers. An eternity of aisles crammed with a random assortment of things you think you might like but probably could be forced to admit you don't need, all at low low prices. Queues for everything! Queues for food, queues for changing rooms, queues for loos. Queues to get into the queues! My blood runs cold even now on thinking on it! Ahahahahahahahaaa!
Franklin, if you ever existed beyond a pointlessly long run-up to this venting of anguish after a long, long day, then my hat would be off to you. I called the KGB about six hours ago and offered to tell them everything. They were very politely confused in their rejection of my offer, but I think they're just being coy. I shall call them back now and try again.
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