The Institute

The Institute was a facility dedicated to the study of anomalous people that the Society may find "interesting". This included violators of the Age Ten Laws, which stated people could not seek out their biological family after their memories were erased at age 10.

## Creation of the Institute

In the early 1960s, an initiative was proposed by Amy Castillo, the Director of New Education Initiatives, for the abandoned former-government buildings in Washington DC. Michael Witten, the Chief Policy Administrator for the Society, had been excited to read it, but was horrified by the proposal instead, as it included no psychological or emotional support for child-bearers or children. Castillo was offering drugs and reprogramming in their place. There were schematics for machines that looked to Witten to be damaging and contrary to the supposed point of the facility. The plan also mentioned a huge security budget and a "re-educational" programme for both children and adults who violated the Age-10 rule.

When the proposal failed to get past Witten, Castillo decided to leave the Department of Child Development. In 1961 she took an executive position in the private sector, likely KR Development, which had recently opted out of a contract to build new schools and childhood centres and had Vishwathi Ramadoss on the Advisory Board. Witten wrote a letter asking Castillo to consider sending a revised version of her plan to the Governance Centre. He believed they could "refocus" the project into a more helpful rehabilitation initiative, rather than an institute that punished people for having emotions, but this offer was seemingly ignored.

At the same time, Dr. Miriam Gregory was putting together a proposal for a facility designed to help and study people who participated in the Repopulation Initiative and needed support after being separated from their children. Her early research had support and funding from the Societal Council, but when it came to actually building the facility, she was rejected on the grounds of there not being enough resources to spare. Miriam felt at a loss, but she by chance (or perhaps not) ran into her former colleague Rosemary, who suggested that they join forces on their projects in order to mitigate some costs. Rosemary claimed to have some connections that could facilitate the building of this institute and circumvent the Council altogether. Later investigation by Miriam suggested that New Orleans Minister for Fisheries Gareth Revere, and Secretary of Education for North America Bettina Chou had some part in funding or enabling the Institute. Much of the industrial equipment came from a company with seven Societal Council members on the board of directors, including Ekaterina Yelchin and Edith Marshall.

## In Operation

### Appearance and Location

Rosemary chose the location of the Institute not far from Baltimore, Maryland, although it was not in reasonable commuting distance from the city as she felt it was better to keep the site remote. The Institute was constructed in a clearing on a 150,000 acre plot of land in the Delmarva Peninsula, near the ruins of an abandoned pre-Reckoning village, as well as a highway.

The Institute itself was a large, white building, by the 80s shaped like a crescent moon made out of interconnected boxes. When it was first built in the 60s, it had a north wing, where Miriam had her offices, and a south wing, where there were cells for "high security prisoners." The north wing rooms were spacious and airy, with wide windows and large bathrooms, each with a reading nook and a desk, although they were not quite full suites. The rooms were painted soothing greenish-grey, and the beds were made with soft linen sheets. Because of the subjectivity of art, Miriam allowed participants to choose their own decor from a catalogue in the central hub. Miriam kept the patients' rooms strictly camera-free although the corridors were monitored. There were also other amenities at the Institute during Miriam's time there, including a tennis court, a small movie theatre, a swimming pool, a gym, and a library. About five years into the operation of the Institute, Rosemary took potential investors and contributors on tours around the facility and made sure to show off these amenities to present the Institute as more of a recovery resort than a prison. The garden in the Institute smelled of lavender and contained a fountain.

To the south was dense forest, the east mountains, and running from the mountains was a river that went to a harbour in the southwest. Beyond the trees were fields, and in the distance, a city (presumably Baltimore). It was surrounded by pine and maple trees, and there was a grove of cedar trees and a waterfall hiding a cave in the cliff which required a climb to get to. There was no clear path to the waterfall through the forest. Reaching it by car was impossible, and Miriam believed that traveling by foot it would take hours, or perhaps even a full day, while Hester Wells claimed it would take at least six hours to reach.

### Procedures

As Rosemary presented it to Miriam, the Institute would cover two avenues of study; psychology and physiology. Miriam would further develop and adapt the meditative technique she called the Watercolour Quiet, which was the basis of the procedure that erased children's memories at age ten, to help people whose memories had lapsed. Meanwhile, Rosemary would take brain scans, test heart rates, and otherwise try to determine how physiology correlated to behaviour. Although Miriam did not thoroughly question Rosemary at the time, she later discovered that she still had ties to the prison system, which she had worked in for many years, and most patients were procured by offering inmates "conditional early release" which would see them transferred to the Institute and put through corrective therapy.

Miriam introduced the idea of guided meditation cassettes which would allow participants to undertake portions of the therapy in isolation, which she believed would be more effective for adults who felt self-conscious or had problems with authority. In order to test this theory - which turned out to be correct, as far as she could tell - a new wing of the Institute with dedicated labs was constructed, and new hires were made for the recording and managing of the tapes.

Unbeknownst to Miriam until some years into the project, there was another dimension to the south wing of the Institute, beneath the high-security cells and small recreation area. There were three basement levels, accessible only by key-secured elevator and stocked with technology and equipment that included electric saws and industrial-sized drills. This was known colloquially by patients as "below" in the 70s, and it was known that people called to the south wing would return happy and quiet before being discharged or transferred. By the 80s, Dr. Gregory's euphemism, "carpentry", had been adopted. The official name for this area was the Extensive Studies Lab.

By the 80s, it had become standard to use the high-security cells for patients, and possibly only the south wing, as none of the north wing's rooms or amenities were mentioned by Hester. In each patient's room there was a bed, a chair, a shelf, a barred window, and a camera, which matched the description of Hilda Brownstead gave for her new room immediately before being taken through the Extensive Studies Lab Programme in the mid-70s. Standard patients were required to wear their designated smock and indoor slippers.

There was a classification system for patients, although the specifics of this are unknown. When taken to the Extensive Studies Lab, Oleta was a 'Class-L' patient. According to Hester, names were not used, for staff or patients. The Institute was staffed by security nurses and monitors. There was also armed security on staff at the Institute, carrying rifles. The stock was likely supplied by KR Development, which was a company believed to deal in illegal weapons.

## Public Awareness

Some people, such as Claudia Atieno and Archie McPherson, actively believed in the Institute's existence, and the involvement of Vishwathi Ramadoss, although they were regarded as conspiracy theorists in the early 70s and late 90s. However, despite not generally endorsing Claudia's conspiracy theories, Roimata Mangakāhia recognised the Institute as a real facility in 1980. Officially it was for "ensuring that society's new precepts aren't disrupted." Not much further was known to the public, according to her - although seemingly the public at large did not accept its existence at all. Roimata believed that there was reason to be "more than suspicious" that patients at the Institute came to significantly more harm during "recalibration" than whatever caused them to be admitted in the first place.

Although there was apparently no real proof, some people like the Pilot's friend Callie believed that the Institute did experiments on criminals, artists, miscreants, subversives, the poor, and children. Additionally, the Pilot believed that people who did not wish to give up their unborn children would be put through regimen to make them forget the pregnancy altogether.

While Archie believed that the Institute existed specifically to imprison and torture people, Hester Wells, who worked at the Institute for some time, claimed that they wanted to study these violators so that they could better understand human psychology and improve the technology that enabled the manipulation of memory and other brain functions. This was achieved through close observation of behaviour as well as physical and mental experimentation.

## Trivia

* The Institute's crescent moon shape is likely a reference to Thomas More's 'Utopia' in which the island Raphael studies is shaped like a crescent moon.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Season 3, Reel #10: June 21, 1961
2. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.255-58
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.266-67
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.306-07
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.292-94
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Season 1, Cassette #2: Anxiety, Stomach
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Season 1, Cassette #5: Focus, Nose
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Season 1, Cassette #4: Sadness, Lungs
9. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.281
10. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.283
11. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.288-9
12. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.299
13. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.329
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Season 1, Cassette #9: Loss, Hands
15. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.336
16. ↑ Season 2, Cassette #4: Bardo Museum (1975)
17. ↑ You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, p.309
18. ↑ Season 2, Cassette #8: Ohara Museum of Art (1980)
19. ↑ Black Box Cassette #3: MDW to YYZ
20. ↑ Utopia (book) - Wikipedia