Blown for Good Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology (18 page)

“At ease!

“Ten Hut!

“At ease!

“Ten Hut!

“At ease!

“Ten Hut!

“At ease!

“Ten Hut!

“Right face.

“Left Face.

“About face.

“At ease.

“Ten Hut.

“Left face.

“At ease.

“Oh, my god! You guys are pathetic! Are you still asleep? You are horrible. Half of you don’t even know your left from right! You are sloppy. You look like crap. You look like you don’t care. You don’t care, we know that. You guys are losers. We are here to make you into winners and team members. When we are done, you will not still be here if you are a loser as we will weed out the deadwood and get rid of those who can’t make the grade.”

“Actually, is there anybody here that does not want to be here? Is there? Raise your hand if you do not want to be here right now. This is going to be rough. If you do not want to be here, then just raise your hand and you can leave.”

Everyone was looking around. Was anyone brave enough to raise their hand? I wish I had raised my hand. I didn’t though. Just then a few people raised their hands! People were actually raising their hands. Wow! I sure thought about it. I did not dare raise my hand. Nothing happened around there without giant strings attached.

“Good,” Mr. Byrnes continued. “You guys go ahead and go into the Hubbard Communications Office and we will make sure you guys are out of here right away.

“Anyone else think that they cannot make it here? This is it. This is your chance to get out now. You will get a one-way ticket out of here right now, with no questions asked.

“Okay, no more people. More of you will be leaving. We will find you and the weak will be sifted out of this group and gotten rid of. Only the tigers will survive this evolution.

“Ten Hut.

“Dismissed.”

By now it was 9:00
 a.m.
and we, the night shift guys, were stuck here. We were standing there talking to the day shift trying to figure out what we were going to do.

“Well you guys should at least stay all day because we had to stay all night,” Rosi said.

“Now, why would we do that?” I barked out.

“Well, we all had to stay here! Why should you guys not have to stay as well?” answered Rosi immediately, as though she had been planning this all along.

“Good. It’s decided, you guys are staying,” Rosi said, and walked away towards the building.

All three of us on the night shift crew stood there deciding what to do.

“Get into production! What are you guys doing still standing around here?” Greg Wilhere barked out at us.

We scurried off towards the building, not wanting to risk any trouble.

Since we were rarely on post at the same time as the day shift guys, we were not going to be able to do anything that would benefit us so we decided that we would do preps for our shift. There was the matter of competition between the day and night shifts. Even though we were only three people, we regularly out produced the day shift because we had a lot less distractions during the night shift. No phone calls, no hour-long musters, no executive inspections, no people coming in asking for stuff, overall we worked more and got more done. This always pissed off the day shift and they would generally leave stuff for us to do to try and load us up with more work.

Taking out the trash and doing the shredding was almost always left undone when the day shift crew ended. If the shredding was not regularly done, security could come by and assign whomever was responsible for this a condition of Enemy for violating the security regulations. If it was paper and had writing on it, it had to be shredded and could not be thrown away or leave the property for any reason.

So we did the shredding, got supplies in place for our shift and used the time to prepare to get more done later on that night. This was going to be a long shift.

At lunch muster, we were told about a new procedure that was being put back into place, “overboarding”. Mr. Byrnes read an order from Hubbard that covered the exact procedure for being thrown overboard.

Something about having oneself blindfolded and being thrown into the ocean, someone was even supposed to read a short passage as this was being done.

“We commit your sins to the depths. May you arise a better thetan!”

I was wondering if I was the only person in the mustered crowd who knew that we were about 100 miles to the nearest ocean. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind when Mr. Byrnes said that we would be doing all of the overboarding at the lake on the property.

The lake was a sludgy disgusting body of water about 200 yards from Building 36. On a hot day, you could sometimes smell the lake from far away. The dead birds and fish that floated in it could stir up quite an aroma. This is where we would now be thrown “overboard” if we upset a senior or did anything that was in violation of the many rules and regulations. Lovely. Things were really looking up.

After a few weeks, I was starting to buckle with all the new restrictions being enforced. I had been down to two Team Share cards and had not received any pay for almost two months. I was not sleeping much and not studying either. When we did have study time, it was more like two and a half hours of rest, as one would usually end up falling asleep in the course room for a majority of the time spent there.

Nodding off while sitting at my station checking the tapes as they came off the line was a regular occurrence. Since no one was ever around at night except the other guys on the night shift (who occasionally did the same), it was not that big of a deal.

One day, when I arrived at the base from my daily bus ride, I was told I needed to go straight to the tapes department. When I got there, people were crowded around my station.

“You are toast, mister!” Jason Bennick barked out as I walked in the door. “You violated the production line and you are going to be declared a suppressive person if I have anything to do with it.”

I sat down at my station attempting to figure out what they were talking about. I was shown several test results from the pancakes I had passed the night before. The test results were marked as “passed” by me, but two out of the 300 pancakes checked had a very slight frequency out of specification that I had not caught. The specification was +/- 2dB on the 20-20,000Hz frequencies and one frequency was about 1/10th of a decibel out of spec on two pancakes. I was being interrogated and yelled at by roughly four people at once who questioned why I had passed these on to be packaged. Jason Bennick was still yelling and screaming about getting me declared for my supposed attempt to sabotage production. I could see through his act a mile away. The last General Manager was taken off post for allowing the past crew to produce faulty cassettes. Jason was going to declare me a suppressive person and I would be the fall guy and everyone could go back to business as usual.

“There is no question about it. You violated the production line. You are going to be declared!”

I stood up and simply said, “Well if you are going to declare me, then I want to leave. I am out of here.”

I walked out and went to the Hubbard Communications Office. Jason Bennick followed close behind. As soon as I got there, Jason came in yelling, “This guy needs to be declared suppressive. He violated the production line in tapes! Get a declare issue drawn up right away!”

I sat down and said nothing while Jason explained everything to the HCO Area Secretary. She listened and when he was done, she said, “Okay, we will see what we need to do.”

Jason pointed to me and said, “YOU ARE A SUPPRESSIVE PERSON!” and then stormed out.

I could’ve cared less, I had already decided this was completely crazy and that I would get the hell out of here. I had no intention of sticking around.

The HCO Area Secretary looked at me and said, “What do you want to do?”

“I want to leave,” I said, “give me a Leaving Staff Routing Form.”

She reached into the desk and pulled out the exit form. She filled out my name and gave it to me. I looked it over.

It was a long list of all sorts of things I had to do before I would be allowed to leave. It had a list of people I was required to see, documents I had to sign, I had to be security checked, I had to write a list of my overts and withholds, the list went on and on. I did not care what it took, I wanted out of here. I was not interested in getting no pay, no respect and putting in over 100 hours of my time each week, being tortured and mentally abused the entire time.

Jason came marching back in. He went up to the HCO Area Secretary and started yelling at her. “You had better make sure that this guy gets declared a suppressive! He violated the production line documentation and COB said that no matter what, if anyone violated the production line – they get declared an SP.” He didn’t wait around for her response; he just walked right back out.

“I am out of here!” I got up as if to walk out and was grabbed by a security guard.

“No, you have to do the routing form in order to leave. You can’t just get up and walk out of here. You have to do it properly, per Hubbard policy,” the guard said. “Meanwhile, you are restricted to the base.”

The guard’s name was Jackson. He was actually the Security Chief. He told me to go to the Grounds Department and tell them I needed to be put to work while they sorted out what they were going to do with me.

I went to Grounds. A guy gave me a broom and told me to sweep up leaves on all the roads. I happily took the broom and swept leaves. My mind was reeling. All I could think about was how much I wanted to get the hell out of this place. I would go back to LA and get a job somewhere. Anything would be better than this. I would go live with my mom or even move to Nebraska and live with my dad, I didn’t care. Anything and anywhere would be better than this hellhole.

No one bothered me for the rest of the day. I swept leaves and at the end of the night I went to the main booth and asked where I was supposed to go. The guard slid the little window on the side of the booth open so I could talk to him.

“Where do I sleep?” I asked.

“Old Gilman’s House is packed. When you find a place, just tell us where it is so we know,” the guard said and slid the window closed before I could ask him anything else. I stood there looking in the booth as if to get him to open the window again. He just looked forward and pretended I wasn’t there. The guard’s name was Danny Dunagin. Danny was rude and came across like he did not care about you at all, this might have had something to do with the fact that he didn’t. I had only talked to him a few times before and every time, I got the impression that he was put here on earth to make enemies. He also walked like he had something stuck up in his backside and it just added to his whole persona.

I wandered around the base for about an hour before I came across a small camping trailer. It was maybe 10 feet long. It had a small table in it that was set up for auditing and had a small bench in the back that could be folded out into a bed. It stank like mildew and vitamins but after looking for a while, I realized that I was not going to find anything better.

I made my way back over to the main booth. Danny slid the window open.

“What?” he said as though I was taking him away from his important job of watching cars drive by.

“I found a small trailer by Old Gilman’s House that is empty, I’m going to sleep there,” I said sort of questioning if it was okay.

“Whatever.” Danny slid the window closed.

I don’t think he cared at all. As I walked back to the trailer I wondered if I even should have told him. He would probably tell somebody that I was here now and have me kicked out.

In the morning I woke up and headed over to the muster site. I lined up with the Hubbard Communications Office staff instead of with tapes. As soon as muster was over, I walked off and went back over to the garage and grabbed a broom. I went right back to sweeping leaves. No one bothered me and I did not have to report to anybody. I was just taking a break as far as I was concerned.

Good thing I was working outside all day, because I had not had a shower and was pretty ripe from working the whole day before and sleeping in my clothes at night. I didn’t shave that morning either. No one cared anyway. I had decided that I would do whatever I wanted until I got out of this place. No more rules. No more doing what I was told. I would just live by my own rules and get the hell out of here as fast as possible.

Jackson drove by on his security motorcycle and asked me if I still wanted to leave.

“As long as I am getting declared or sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force, I might as well leave,” I said.

“You know that if you leave and get declared, you can never talk to your sister or parents ever again?” Jackson said. “You can’t just go back to LA and live life like this never happened. You will have to go live somewhere else and never see your family again. Or at least not until you pay back your freeloader debt and get through all the steps to get undeclared.”

“I guess I don’t really have a choice then do I?” I said in apathy.

Jackson drove off and I thought about my situation for hours. If I tried to play nice, I would still be stuck here, but would be able to speak with my family. If I did ever get out of here, I would have to start over and find a place to live and somehow find a job to make a living. I could barely do that before with a few connections. Now I would have to somehow start my life over and make a living with no friends or family. That seemed like a daunting proposition. I thought that I sometimes wish I were dead.

My options were limited. I could go to the RPF and live a miserable existence there, but still get food and housing. I could play nice and try and stay here and live a slightly less miserable existence with food and some sort of housing. Or my last and final option was get the hell out of here, do whatever the hell I wanted to, never being able to talk with any of my friends or family ever again, owe these people several thousand dollars and most likely live like a bum, starving to death and without a roof over my head.