Authors: D. W. Ulsterman
Tags: #Action & Adventure, #Dystopian, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #War & Military, #Genre Fiction, #Literature & Fiction
“Normalization program, beware any government that comes up with a name that sounds so innocent because that is when it is preparing to do something terrible to the people, and that is what that program was, something terrible. Something…evil.”
The doctor began walking again, more slowly though, as his story continued.
“My friend, she listened to this person tell her about the normalization program, how it would be providing a needed service to the community and be a pilot program to the rest of the country. He said she would be rewarded with significant funding from the federal government, all through the Obamacare program. She told him she would consider the proposal, but told me a short time later she had no intention of agreeing to it, she simply wanted the man gone from her office. Three weeks later she was paid another visit. This time it was two officials from the Chicago Health Authority. She was told then that her facility would begin initiating the normalization program by the end of the month, that a representative from Health and Human Services, the Obama administration, would be arriving to her office in two days to start the process. Staff would be provided her, funding, everything she would need would be made available at no cost to her. She sensed at this time she was not being asked to this – she was being told. They left her with a subtle threat that if she did not comply…her clinic would be shut down and in its place would be the same normalization program, regardless of whether she was there or not.”
“How could they do that?”
“They could do that because she did not own the actual building, she leased it from a property management company. And she made a call to them as soon as that last meeting with the Chicago Health Authority people took place, and was told if she did not comply with their request to initiate the normalization program, her lease would be terminated. The people behind making her go along with all of this, they had already coordinated with the property management firm. She started to realize they had been planning this long before they had first approached her about it. The next day she received a phone message from the state medical review board, there had been a complaint filed against her by a former employer. A serious allegation of wrongdoing that, if substantiated, would likely result in the revoking of her medical license. And within a few minutes of that call, she receives another call from someone who tells her they are with Health and Human Services. Just following up on the earlier proposal they told her, if she had made a decision. Then they indicated that if she accepted, her position would be ‘protected’…that she would be providing a service not only to the local community of Chicago, but to the administration of President Barack Obama, and that kind of service would be…well received.”
We stopped walking again as the sound of approaching thunder rumbled across the landscape.
“So she was being bribed, threatened – did she accept the deal?”
“Yes, she did. Now part of me judges her harshly for that. She should have known better. But, it also must have been very intimidating having these forces pushing on her…she could have lost her clinic, her license, everything. Now she was going through all this right before the government started coming after me too, the manpower that the administration was using to get the entire medical care system to comply quickly with their mandates must have been massive. Tens of thousands of operatives all over the country doing exactly the kind of thing being done to my friend, and soon after, to me too.
“By the end of the summer, the summer of 2013, her clinic was providing abortion services. The normalization program was underway in the city of Chicago. Within a few weeks she learned what the title really meant - normalization. You see, that would indicate taking something society deems abnormal, and making it acceptable. That was her job, providing the service, something that up to that point was abnormal, and helping to make it…normal. It was…it was late term abortions, taken to the very extreme. Mr. Neeson, what they had her doing, was an abomination. I need you to really grasp what I am telling you here. That wonderful pediatric clinic of hers was turned into a slaughter house. That is not a term I’m using to exaggerate the truth…that is what was happening in there. Several times a week, people would come in…and walk out. A life taken from them, and their souls ripped from them too. Most were minorities, the poor, recent immigrants, some were from prisons, the new re-education facilities that were just starting to crop up all over the country.”
“These were abortions, right? What was so different about these than what had been allowed in the United States since the 1970’s?”
The doctor shook his head, his eyes lowering to the ground.
“This wasn’t anything done, not legally anyways, in the United States. I told you, they took the concept of late term abortion…they took it to the very extreme. The clinic was performing post-birth executions. It was murdering human beings, infants. My friend, she was not involved in the procedures directly. She was not allowed inside the procedure rooms. They just wanted her name, her reputation.
“When was the last time you saw a young person who was disabled Mr. Neeson? Mentally disabled…physically disabled. Can you recall seeing a person under the age of ten with those qualities in recent years?”
I felt awareness coming down over me, a cold hard wind that gripped my heart, making breathing difficult. My stomach tightened, threatening sickness. The doctor looked at me with great sympathy, sensing I was realizing the truth that he had carried with him for so many years.
“No children who are abnormally short, or weak, or intellectually deficient are being allowed to exist. That clinic in Chicago, it was the epicenter for the removal of the undesirables Mr. Reese. A cleansing of a segment of the population that a government deemed too expensive to provide services to over the course of their lifetimes. Far better, far more efficient, to simply have that life snuffed out at a far cheaper cost. That was the essence of Obamacare - absolute and total control over nearly every aspect of life and death. A child born with a heart ailment? Kill it. A mental deficiency? Gone. How about severe asthma? Not worth the trouble – snuff it out.
Do you want to know the process Mr. Neeson, the procedure the government used to so easily take human life? To kill its own children? Thousands…tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Do you really wish to carry that knowledge with you?”
“Yes, please tell your story.”
“That Chicago clinic was the first. There are now at least two hundred across the nation, every major urban area, followed by expansion into the rural areas. Upon pregnancy, the Obamacare mandates, which were later reinforced by the New United Nations mandates…required genetic testing of parents within four weeks of pregnancy. People aren’t charged for the service…so they didn’t fight it. Not much anyways. The fetus is then tested as well at eight weeks, and again at 20 weeks. The results are placed into a basic matrix to determine likely post-birth outcomes. If there are factors indicated a greater than 55% chance of a negative outcome, the fetus was terminated and both parents were then placed under review for sterilization. That termination was mandatory, and the sterilization of the parents could be too if the review indicated that action. No exceptions. It was another form of the death panels. This was basically phase one of the normalization program. Phase two, that followed just a few years later.
“My friend, she began to piece together the program, peeked at patient files, transmissions from her clinic back to the Health and Human Services office in Washington D.C. As horrifying as phase one was, it was her discovery of phase two that…that was too much for her.
“Initially, as I said, we had genetic testing of the fetus at eight weeks, and twenty weeks…phase two then required an additional test at 34 weeks. Thirty-four weeks, Mr. Neeson, is a fully viable fetus capable, particularly given modern medical technology, it is a human life. Do you understand what I am saying? If at 34 there were any indications of what they simply labeled a ‘negative outcome’, the life was terminated. Phase two negative outcomes included more familiar medical challenges such as Down Syndrome, spina bifida, a cleft palate, or any congenital ailment. Other negative outcomes also included possible issues such as ADHD, Sickle Cell Anemia, Diabetes, PKU, or even a suggested genetic propensity toward violence.
“That was phase two of the normalization program. My friend, a few weeks before her death, learned of phase three…”
The doctor’s voice trailed off, replaced again by the sound of the approaching storm. A cold wind blew across the small clearing we stood in.
“What was phase three, Dr. Miller?”
“Phase three was, it is, a mandatory genetic test of the child, performed within the first four weeks following birth. Again, the same criteria are utilized, from possible medical challenges to possible developmental and or behavioral challenges. Challenges that the government deems cost prohibitive over the course of a lifetime.”
Dr. Lester Miller’s voice cracked, and I watched intently as tears began to form in the corners of his eyes. He raised himself up to his full six foot two inch height, his eyes staring into the abyss of a most painful memory.
“At my friend’s Chicago clinic, while phase one and phase two were openly underway, there was little public outcry, people just, as they so often did by then, they just went along with it. But phase three, that remained out of sight of the general public. The parents who were, who experienced phase three were required to sign a non-disclosure form. Refusal to sign, or to later be caught in violation of that form resulted in…in termination of their lives.”
“They were killed? The parents?”
“Yes, Mr. Neeson, they were killed. Just like their child was killed. Babies, weeks old, if the genetic test came back with a negative outcome, that infant was given a dose of pentobarbital followed quickly by another lethal dose of
potassium chloride
. Once again…all under the guise of what is best for society. In that Chicago clinic alone, by 2017, there were nearly twenty phase three terminations taking place every month. The medical executions of children authorized by those who were then transitioning the United States into full compliance as part of the New United Nations. Across the nation, it was likely hundreds, possibly thousands of similar executions being carried out. By then my own medical career had been pretty much wiped out by the authorities, but my friend was able to get word to me of what she discovered. I was in Spokane by then, like I told you. It was a letter of warning about what was being done, her regret at not being able to stop it…regret for letting herself be used, her words indicated she was going through some very serious emotional trauma. It wasn’t a message by someone who was coping, it was a message by someone no longer willing to live in a society that so easily killed the most innocent of its people. She included something in that message that…it haunts me every day. Every day I hear the phrase in my head…”Life unworthy of life”. That was the official file name for the normalization program. Life unworthy of life, the very term the Nazi’s used for their own termination program.
“The authorities found her body at home on her bed, looking as if she had simply fallen asleep. At least that’s what the media stories reported. She had self- administered an injection of two drugs. Pentobarbital and
potassium chloride
. The mayor of Chicago offered their condolences, remarked how much her service meant to the citizens of the city. Other dignitaries did the same. As for her clinic, they placed a plaque near its front door in her memory, as the normalization program that pushed her to take her own life continues.”
Another blast of cold wind brushed up against myself and the doctor.
“Let’s keep walking, Mr. Neeson, I don’t want to get so far lost in old memories I can’t find my way back.”
“After you were in Spokane, how did you end up here, Dr. Miller? In Dominatus?”
“I didn’t end up here directly from Spokane, I was in Grant County for awhile first.”
“Grant County…the encampment? The same one that was---“
“Yes, that one. The one the authorities destroyed and buried a few years back. When I got there, it was no more than forty or fifty people…by the time I left maybe about a hundred or so – same numbers we have here in Dominatus now. But when they came in and drone bombed them, it was several hundred at least. There were people coming in to there from Idaho, Oregon, parts of Canada, all trying to find a way to avoid the mandates. To have some taste of living in freedom. But the camp out there, Grant County, it was too exposed – easy pickings for the drones. Up here, the Old Man knew what he was doing when he set this place up. We have the weather, the winds, the electro-magnetic interference that Mother Nature gives us this far north…that really messes with the electronics in those drones, makes them much less reliable. And, Mac has set up quite a little defense system, monitors, anti-drone stations. Grant County didn’t have any of that.”
“So why did you leave there to come up here?”
“I knew they were too exposed there. A few others were talking about this place – Dominatus was more like a legend. People would tell stories about it, about the Old Man, about Mac, so I decided it was worth checking out. See if this place was real. Thankfully, it was. Mr. Meyer was delighted by my arrival, said they needed a doctor around here, so I had a job, a home, people I cared about. This place, in a way, it gave me my life back. And I know I’m not the only one who would say that. You’ve probably already heard others say something similar to that already.”