Hello from Wireworld
By The Cockroach, aka Alaric Hunt
Arbeit Macht Frei
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Entrance gate at Auschwitz
(Arbeit Macht Frei = Work makes you free)
(Photo Credit: Liaison Agency/Andy Hernandez)
Lies are the tools of the oppressor.
The building where I live has lies above
the door.1 Workhouse slogans paper the
boards.2 The agency3 specializes in lies.
Lies contain a different sort of power than
chains, bars, locks, and guns. A well-done
pretence includes plausible deniability free of
charge. Pretence serves a purpose; it secures
at least temporary cooperation from the
Volume I, Number 7
victim, and silences outside questions with a
good-seeming appearance.
The National Socialists wrote ‘Arbeit
Macht Frei’ above the gate at Auschwitz.
Of course work wouldn’t make you free
—it would only make you dead faster.4 But
the National Socialists knew to support their
actions with lies; they kept reciting lies along
the entire march to the gas chamber door.
My imagination serves me here: guards
with dogs, guns and whips; a crowd of naked
humans rushing through the gauntlet;
shouted promises of hot showers and water.
Murder walked naked alongside the victims,
unclothed by anything but these lies.
Lee Correctional Institution simply works
at a slower rhythm. At Treblinka the
commandant boasted: “Forty-five minutes
from door to door!” [That was from the
door of the railcar to the door of the gas
chamber.] At Lee the guards try to stretch
the process to 45 years; they know the truth
—kill the prisoner, kill the paycheck.
Truth is the tool of who?
Work does not set you free.
I call my home wireworld.5 I will live
here until the end of time. While I wait I
will search the world for truth.
 1
In 2016, the warden at Lee Correctional Institution changed the names of all of the buildings at the prison. At the time,
the agency said openly that this was meant to break connections with the past—a change of name could change reality. This
was after Ae Khingratsaiphon was murdered in Chesterfield Unit. (Well, call me George and set me free.)
More recently, at the beginning of 2018, the agency changed the names of the meals served to prisoners. (The food is still
the same.)
2
Classification provides a list of designated facility vacancies that, perversely, prisoners may not apply for. A designated
facility is a county camp that holds state prisoners in exchange for work. (Mostly this work is unpaid, or paid with extremely
low wages.)
An unnamed employer in the Low Country is hiring tailors and seamstresses for $10 an hour—the prisoner is directed to
apply to the Re-entry Coordinator.
The US Waffle Company is hiring—great opportunity!
Amazon posts a job offer (en espanol). (I suppose they would like Spanish-speakers.)
3
The South Carolina Department of Corrections performs a punitive function on behalf of the government of the State of
South Carolina—they are the proxy, or agent, of the government, in the same manner that the government is the agent of the
citizenry. They do what they’re told to do. Right? This is what you voted and paid taxes for.
4
The National Socialists called this Vernichtung durch Arbeit—destruction through work.
5
A wire is a strand of metal used to fasten something; more importantly, it’s twisted.
The world is the totality of existence, the thing or state that contains all other things.
What is wireworld? Try twisted existence.

I offer some more detailed definitions for examination:

wire [wīr] n 1. Strand of metal: metal in the form of thin flexible strands, or a single strand of it.
vt (past wired, past participle wired, present participle wir·ing, 3rd person present singular wires) 1. Fasten something with
wire: to use wire to fasten or secure something.
[Old English wīr “metal thread.” Ultimately from an Indo-European base meaning “to twist,” which is also the ancestor of
English withy and garland.]

world [wurld] n (plural worlds) 1. Planet Earth: the planet earth; 2. Earth and everything on it: the Earth, including all of its
inhabitants and the things upon it; 3. Human race: all of the human inhabitants of the Earth; 4. Society: human society; 5. Part
of Earth: a particular part of the Earth, considered in terms of time or space (the western world); 6. area of activity: a specified
area of human activity and the people involved n it (the world of fashion); 7. Universe: all the galaxies that are known or
thought to exist in space; 8. Domain: a sphere, realm, or domain (all these are Latinate terms of rulership); 9. Inhabited body:
an astronomical body considered to be inhabited, for example, a planet; 10. Everything in somebody’s life: all that relates to or
makes up the life of an individual; 11. Condition of existence: a condition or state of existence; 12. Great deal or amount: a
very large amount, degree, or distance; 13. Secular existence: secular life and its ways.
adj 1. Of the entire world: relating to the entire world; 2. Exerting influence globally: exerting influence over the whole of
the world; 3. Affecting the whole world: involving or affecting the whole of the Earth.
[Old English woruld “human existence, age, Earth.” Ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic compound meaning “age of
man” that is also the ancestor of English old and werewolf.]