I was in a small room in the former Cedars of Lebanon hospital, now Scientology's "Big Blue" complex in L.A., under 24-hour watch.

My friend (also routing out) and I were evidently corrupting the sixteen-year-old kid who'd been watching us, because from now on it was grownups only. But I was corrupting one of those, too, getting him to read Ayn Rand's philosophy books. I got away with it, because most Sea Org members don't know Ayn Rand from Abe Lincoln and have no idea how subversive her ideas can be in a totalitarian environment.

When we had the kid watching us, we used to have to go find him now and then, because he was kind of scatterbrained and would leave us on our own.

Back then, we were both staying in big dorm of mostly teenagers, and the running joke was that we'd better go find [the kid], because we were supposed to be watching him, and he'd got away from us again.

A lot of the kids in the dorm liked to skateboard. Predictably, one of the Commodore's Messenger teenybopper termagants, scenting fun, informed the dorm captain that skateboarding would no longer be permitted. So the kids all hid their skateboards, did an extra-special good job of cleaning the room, and waited for the little witches to be distracted by some other, equally life-threatening situation and forget all about their resolve to outlaw skating.

No sooner had that storm blown over than an investigation revealed that some of the younger kids were being "enturbulated" and otherwise negatively influenced by rap CDs they were listening to. Therefore, all "entheta" rap CDs would be confiscated, from everybody, of any age, enturbulated or not.

It wasn't clear who would judge what's "entheta" or by what criteria.

So--once again, all the CDs that could possibly be considered offensive by anybody went into hiding places, and the room was filled with soft hits, classical music, Yanni, whatever, and it was left playing on the CD player while the room was empty. Eventually, the Fun Police turned their attention to other pressing matters, and out came those nasty rap CDs again.

It's occurrences like these that give me hope for the future of Sea Org kids.

But that was earlier. By a year ago, my friend and I had been moved into our own private room, tiny but air conditioned and with its own bathroom, complete with shower.

We played an awful lot of Freecell and Minesweeper, and some cool games that come with Red Hat Linux. We watched the After Dark "Voyeur" screen saver for hours at a time, to see what weird things the people in the windows would do, and what monsters would chomp their heads off. We even did some work now and then, but that was tough for them to arrange because we had to be adequately watched by the right kind of people. We went to the canteen a lot. We took long walks with our security guard. We refrained from discussing with each other why we were leaving--that was sure to come up in our respective sec checks and lengthen them. We stayed in our beds sometimes half the day, because we couldn't get enough sleep to be considered sessionable otherwise. And the one thing we all agreed on was that we wanted to get done with the damn sec checks and get us the hell out of there, and let our watchers go back to their regular jobs.

With all that, I was going in session an average of an hour a day, which is out-tech (it's supposed to be at least 12 1/2 hours a week). I didn't really expect RTC to give a rat's ass about standard tech, but I wrote it up to them anyway, just in case. Nothing happened, just the usual sincere but unfulfilled promises. We were both being sec checked by the same Golden Age of Tech FPRD sec checker, who also got a constant stream of other hot potatoes that only she could audit.

If I hadn't had any bills to pay, I wouldn't have minded sitting there eating their food, taking their $46/week for almost no work, reading, taking walks, and playing computer games. I was due for a vacation, even if this wasn't my dream getaway and the 24-hour watch business was getting a bit old. But my keepers' largesse did not extend to covering my bills, my wife was no longer paying her half, and my patience was about worn through.

Every week was going to be my last, and this one was no exception. Alas, the truth was, I still had another 16 1/2 very long days to go.

But I can tell you one thing now:

THANK GOD I'M OUT!!!

-- Dang ARSCC(wdne) Mobile Unit I/C and SWAT Team Leader (Suppression, Woggery, ARC-Breaks, and 'Turbulation) by the grace of Xenu, amen dang_357 <at> skyenet <dot> net

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