Fresh Start

Chapter 15
Secret Plans

As the days went by the campers became smaller and smaller, and even the resistant began to give into the mental programming. Rowan Belton watched their progress with great envy. Until he’d taken over this camp his life had been meaningless. Ever since he’d left school everything he’d done had been mundane, focused only on earning a living. Nothing lived up to the dreams of adult life he’d had as a boy. But then what could? A boy’s world was one of endless imagination, of battling pirates and space invaders, saving people from burning buildings and catching criminals all in one day.

Belton had eventually come to the realisation that kids were really the lucky ones. They didn’t know the disappointment, the crushing boredom of adulthood yet. He became obsessed with saving his son and daughter from such a terrible fate. But his wife wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t let him lock their children in stasis as perfect innocent little angels forever. His marriage fell apart and he was soon unhappy and all alone.

It was then, in his most desperate hour, that he understood what his real goal in life should be. He couldn’t help his own children, but he could help others. He could save as many as he could from the scourge of adulthood, the pain of growing up. It had taken five years after that day before he raised the money and earned the credentials necessary to open this camp, but it was worth the wait. Now he had the perfect opportunity to save as many little ones as possible.

When he awoke on the next to last day of the current camp session, he couldn’t help but smile to himself. This was the all important day of course. This was the day when he helped a few campers more than the others. Nobody else knew it, but Belton had tampered with the strength of the drug Dr Howe injected the campers with. The result was that each session several ended up younger, often much younger, than they were meant to be.

This gave him the excuse he needed to call in their mums and dads for adjustments themselves and that was when he did his most important work. That was when he convinced them they didn’t want their little angels to age one more day. That was when he convinced them to sign the papers authorising their children to be frozen at their current age, thereby saving them from ever having to grow up. Of course he couldn’t save every child, it would have immediately raised red flags if all his campers came out too young or age frozen. But from each batch he could save a few and that was enough.

He’d barely been able to keep a straight face the day a government agent came to speak to him a year ago and told him they wanted him to do exactly what he’d already been secretly doing. Apparently they were now out there telling all the camps to start pushing for kids to be age frozen. The overpopulation problem was getting bigger and the polls showed implementing a Chinese style one-child policy was political suicide. So removing as many potential future parents from the populace as possible was the new priority. Belton had been overjoyed of course, but had kept his cool and told the agent he’d do what he could for the good of the country.

Rising from his cosy bed Belton got dressed for the day. Pulling on his short-sleeve button-down shirt and khakis pants, then slipping on his socks and doing up the laces on his boots he kept thinking about how good it would be to save those lucky kids from this. Many would never have to worry about doing up their own laces. Mummy would do it for them on the rare occasions when they wore shoes. They’d never feel the little aches and pains that came with getting old, or have to face a wrinkled face in the mirror.

All dressed and ready to go, Belton took his watch from the bed stand and slipped it onto his wrist. They would be waking up right now of course, discovering they were smaller than they should be. Soon they’d be crying out for their counsellors and then he’d be called in to deal with the situation as he always did. There would be calls to parents and by afternoon there would be meetings and adjustments to be made. For Belton, it was like Christmas.