The Supervisor’s office was a plain, undecorated room at the end of the corridor. Victor had only been there once before and wasn’t happy to be back. He always got nervous meeting upper management, and the Supervisor was to him like a stern headmaster; approachable yet terrifying.

He entered after a knock. The Supervisor, sitting at his desk, did not look up from his paperwork.

“Take a seat” he said.

Victor sat down. The Supervisor was filling in some forms. He was a large man, with tired, sad eyes, and a leathery face, wrinkled with age.

“I hear you’ve been having some trouble with your cultures”

“Yes sir”

Besides a few small plants and what seemed to be a picture of his family, The Supervisor’s office was naked. A borrowed room, or an unloved one.

“I read your email, you say they’re aware already?” He lifted an eyebrow.

“Yes sir”

“This early? How long has it been?”

“Only a month sir”

“What was your procedure?” he said, sitting back into his chair.

Victor took a moment, then began.

“Well as you know after the last time I uh- messed it up, I had to flood them so I did and left a few colonies and then I ran the standard procedure for a while and then it was going well, and then a few days ago I gave them a war again just like it says in the spec”

“And then?”

“Well….they had another war straight after”

The Supervisor furrowed his brow. “That’s unusual”

“….and they became aware”

“How many?”

“A lot of them”

“Any awake?”

“Miniscule”

“Do they know about the plants?”

“A few…”

The supervisor frowned.

“Well you need to sort this out quick son, you can’t be failing again this early…eventually these will start to show on your record you know”

Victor gulped. He hated grad school.

“I’m not sure what to do now though, I don’t want to make it even worse”

The Supervisor sat and thought for a while. The silence made Victor anxious.

“Kill some of the colonies off, the ones causing the most trouble, and especially the aware ones”

“Okay…. Another war?”

He paused for a moment.

“No. Another war won’t work, you’ve got to do this one slowly”

“How?”

“How’s your Communism coming along?”

“Well I had to help them win the last war because the aware ones were dominating but now they’re having a lot of trouble infecting the rest of them”

“And Religion?”

“Strong, as usual”

The Supervisor huffed. “Too many mistakes Victor, if you don’t take action now I’m afraid it’ll have to be another re-do…”

The boy shifted his feet nervously. “I really want to avoid that again sir… is there nothing I can use to fix it?”

“Hmm, I’ll give you a few things to try, have you got something for notes?”

Victor scrambled in his bag but did not. The Supervisor handed him a sheet of paper.

“Okay so firstly you’ve got to establish your Communism throughout the rest of the cultures, use your plants-“

“Uh do you have a pen sorry” Victor chuckled nervously.

The Supervisor rolled his eyes and handed him a pen.

“As I was saying, you’ll lose control very quickly if you don’t get Communism hooked into your remaining cultures, but you’re going to have to sell it differently, they’re probably immune to current Communism by now so just use different masks to force it in”

“Like Liberalism?”

“Exactly, or socialism, social-justice, post-modernism, they all work. Create a fake left/right dichotomy, make them think “left” policies are equal in merit to “right” policies, which are really just survival policies”

“How?”

“Oh just paint the left policies as moral and altruistic and justifiable, even inevitable, right policies as oppressive and outdated.” He waved his hand dismissively.

“Okay”

“In fact you have to warp their morality entirely”

“How do I do that?”

“Oh that’s not difficult, have your plants got media control yet?”

“Almost”

“Well when they do, create new narratives and archetypes to subvert their morality and enforce it on the children through media and your schools; children are very easily moulded, so stop educating them on things that will awaken them, in fact your schools should be used as inhibitors by now anyway”

“Yes I’ve been doing that for a while”, Victor grinned.

“Good. Also you need to wash out your Religion”

Victor was puzzled. “Why would I do that?”

The Supervisor eyed him curiously. “Have you been keeping up with your reading Victor?”

The boy rubbed the back of his neck “Uhh no I’ve been pretty swamped recently you see I’m a bit behind”

“It’s very important you keep up with your reading….” The Supervisor said, tapping his knuckles on the desk “This field moves fast and you don’t want to keep making silly mistakes do you?”

“No sir”. The boy looked down.

“Well if you’d done your reading you’d have realised the new consensus is that Religion is only useful in the first few stages, and there are actually better methods of control at this stage, I suggest debt slavery, that one always works for me”

“Okay, but how do I wash out the Religion?”

“Once again, as always, media archetypes and narrative control, and hit the kids, kids are easily influenced and as you know they love to rebel, reframe the religion as oppressive and totalitarian and they will reject it very quickly. You can clean it away in as quickly as one generation with this method”

“I’ve always had trouble getting to the kids though, it seems the parents shield their kids too well” said Victor.

“That’s because you probably still have strong familial units … how many of your cultures are superorganising?”

“Superorganising…. Sir?”

The Supervisor frowned again, and leaned forward.

“Think Victor, this is undergraduate stuff, you should know this”

Victor said nothing. He just sweated.

The supervisor sighed “The Male and the Female become the….” He said rhythmically, as if reciting a nursery rhyme.

Victor paused, then it clicked… “the Family… and then the Village and the Clan and the Tribe and the Nation and then the uh-” he had forgotten.

“-the civilisation and so on” The Supervisor finished.

“So if you want to stop a colony from growing, where’s the best place to halt the Superorganism?”

“Right at the start.” Victor said.

“So attack the male and the female psyche, and halt the formation of the family, encourage individualism and subjectivism and you have complete control over the minds of the children, they will forget their duty and wander around lost, in fact they will begin to reject any kind of parental authority and guidance.”

“Attack the Male and Female psyche…” Victor wrote on his sheet. “How do I do that?”

“Oh that’s simple, for the Males you’ve just got to lower the Testosterone levels and starve them of Love. Your two wars probably did a lot of the work already, killing off most of the high T males, now you just have to make the remainder depressed and unloved”

“How though?”

“You attack the Male by attacking the Female; Males are very hard to control, but the Females can be manipulated very easily, and they are a great method of gaining indirect control over the Males. You should read up on the Feminism method, I’ll give you a brief outline though:

First, remove all sexual inhibitors from the Female, once you wash out Religion that’ll be most of it, but also inject some Sexual Revolution and Political Equality, and clean out the Shaming, which is the strongest female repressor, those are all you need really. Females are programmed to conform, so if you sell this all as in-group behaviour, they will all quickly comply to avoid ostracism, and enforce the new behaviours on each other.

Without any sexual inhibitors, well we all know how Females behave, they breed like mad, having diminished impulse control relative to the Males; and without control of the Females the Males will be starved for Intimacy and Love, and have no authority over their societal breeding. Leave the Females to choose breeding partners for the next generation and you’ll quickly find they are very bad at selective mating without the Males to guide them… quick way to weaken the stock…

And with the price of sex and breeding driven down, they’ll all just overindulge in Hedonistic Sex, one of the strongest Distractors… but you’ll need other Distractors too, what are you using at the moment?”

He took as moment as he caught up with his notes. “Uh, Sport, Alcohol, Entertainment Media”

“Good, up the Alcohol content, this should hit the older males hard. Introduce THC for the younger males, and makes sure to sell it as counterculture and rebellious, keep it illegal for a while, this will encourage them to do it more, and will significantly hinder their Testosterone and cognitive abilities. Oh, and flood them all with Pornography. This will cripple the young and old males alike, and will irreversibly stunt the younger ones. For the females, Promiscuity and unchecked Hypergamy are already good enough Growth-Inhibitors, but Consumerism and Social Media should tie up the loose ends”

“What about hard drugs? I heard they can be useful”

“Those are tricky. Stimulants and Opioids should be available at low concentrations, as they very effectively hinder growth, but can often be too damaging to productivity, so balance them carefully...you need your cultures to be obedient and distracted, but not entirely unproductive. Do not use Psychedelics though, they cause very quick awakening”

“Okay noted”

“Oh and one more thing, and I’ll give you this one for free because I think you need it… but don’t tell anyone else because I haven’t published the paper yet, I’m certain it works though”

“What is it?”

“No-fault divorce with alimony and child support as a follow up”

“No-fault divorce with alimony and child support as well… surely that’s a bitch too much sir?”

“Well no, not really. If you allow the women the freedom to divorce their husbands at will, with the right amount of Feminism, their Hypergamy will result in very short and unproductive marriages; fewer children, no parental control, and eventually, extreme male crippling. Productive and potentially powerful males can be very effectively and irreversibly crippled halfway through their lifespans with this method, and their energy transferred to their previous partners, who will squander and waste the energy. Follow up with alimony and child-support and the high-potential male will almost never be able to return to success again, effectively neutralising him as a threat. In general, marriage as an institution should be cleaned away entirely, it’s one of the quickest methods of Superorganising, or rather, you should co-opt it as an attack on the Males using this method”

Victor scribbled on the paper vigourosly.

“The end result of all this, should it be implemented correctly, is the complete and slow destruction of the host culture, without having to use violent means like wars or viruses. Destroy the Superorganism at its base unit, the Family, and it will never form.”

The boy continued to write “This is all very useful sir thank you”

“My pleasure, I just want to see you do well son. Anyway I think I’ve given you all the advice you need, off with you I have another meeting soon”

Victor jumped up. “Thank you sir, I will put all these into action immediately” he said, nodding his head furiously.

“Come back after a week and let me know how it all goes”. He smiled.

“Thanks sir, I will”. Victor stumbled out the room, sheet clutched in hand. The Supervisor returned to his paperwork.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A week later, the Supervisor heard a very sharp knock on his door. It was Victor, and he looked very distressed.

“Sit down, what’s the matter boy?” the Supervisor said.

Victor fell into the chair, “It’s all gone very, very wrong sir, they’re all aware and a lot of them are awake and they keep fighting each other and my plants are losing control and -”

“Slow down boy. From the beginning please”. He was marking an essay and did not look up.

“Well after I did what you said everything was actually going really well, I removed all the sex inhibitors and they all started breeding like mad and then I added TV Media which was a really powerful influencer and distractor and some of the cultures stopped superorganising entirely and some slowed down and some even began to reverse, well the ones that were causing trouble before-“

“And your plants?” asked the Supervisor.

“Well I finally managed to establish a permanent colony for them but the problem is everyone’s aware of them now and I don’t know what to do”

“They know about the plants? How many?”

“Way too many of them sir I don’t think I can reverse it at this point”

"Why didn't you come to me sooner?"

"Well you said come after a week and I didn't want to bother you so...."

The old man sighed.

“How did this happen Victor? Explain.”

“I’m not sure, they were all just partying and consuming for a while and I was starting to lose TV control so I gave them Internet to try and get a grip on the influence and the economy shot up massively afterwards and surveillance became much, much easier –“

The Supervisor looked up from his paperwork. “Wait, say that again”

“Uh say what”

“You gave them Internet?”

“Yeah a few days ago”

The man’s eyes widened. “Are you joking?”

“Uh-no”

“You haven’t done your reading Victor have you?”, there seemed to be something different in his voice.

The boy scratched the back of his head “haha no not really sorry”

“If you’d done your damn reading you’d have realised Internet was banned from our labs months ago… it causes very rapid awakening leading to irreversible ascension… where did you even get a hold of it??”

“Ascension?” Victor began to understand. So that’s what that smell was…

“Yes ascension Victor, ascension! My god.” Victor had never seen him so agitated. “How many did you give it to?”

“Uh” A cold sweat had formed on the back of his neck “… all of them”

“Holy sh-", the old man caught himself. “You damn idiot Victor do you realise what you’ve done?!” He stood up quickly.

Victor sat in the chair, paralysed, his heart beating against his chest.

The Supervisor pressed a button on his intercom. “Barb can you instruct security to begin quarantine procedures immediately”

There was a pause from the other side, a woman’s voice “…uh, okay...sure”.

The Supervisor grabbed his coat and hat and headed for the door. Victor remained in his seat, eyes wide, unable to process.

“Victor” said the man, standing by the open door.

“…yes, sir?”

“Get out of my office”