Hey, everybody.

Hey, everybody. Hey everybody, it's Will and it's story time.

The Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote,

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Nelson Mandela told us the way a society treats its prisoners is a reflection of its soul.

One of the biggest lies set into the foundation of America is that we are the land of the free,

a nation of fair and impartially adjudicated laws that seeks not to punish,

but to rehabilitate the almost two million of our citizens we imprison.

Some of them in conditions so horrific, they shock the conscience. Let's imagine a future

together, one in which crime and punishment are handled quite differently from our present.

In this future, there is a prison dedicated to rehabilitation. Or so it seems. Let's take a closer look,

just beneath the surface, and see if we can find out what's really going on at the

Supermax.

Supermax, by Daniel H. Wilson, originally published in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 53.

A content warning, child death, animal cruelty, and animal death.

Gravel crunched as the mobile morgue drove itself away from the prison loading dock.

Spotting the vehicle, the facility supervisor began to jog toward the gatehouse.

Shoes slapping, he struggled to keep his shirt tucked in as he crossed the outer parking lot,

well beyond the automated gun turrets and perimeter fences. The gate guard watched his supervisor

approach with subdued amusement. Hey, panted the supervisor, nodding at the vehicle. These all the releases

for the week? The refrigerated truck stopped itself at the checkpoint and waited to exit. The guard nodded and slid a digital tablet over to his boss.

The supervisor glanced at a list of names and causes of death, scrawling a signature

...