Smile--It's the Law!

Every morning, 38-year-old Britta Mack removes the SmileLock device clamped on her face, logs into the government-monitored SafeSurf network, and begins her shift as a Subversive Expression Analyst for the Department of Homeland Security and Compliance (DHSC). Before she begins the day flagging potential subversives visiting the food distribution center, Britta is required by law to listen to President William V. Humbletack’s speech “Suicide is Treason”, an hour-long verbal tranquilizer punctuated with common Humbletack-isms like “history teaches us that the past is rarely in the future” and “at times like these, we must do what needs doing because eventually, something is bound to happen”.

Six months ago, President Humbletack delivered the speech on the state-run podcast PatriotVision, in which he rebranded the worst economical collapse in the history of the U.S. as the fault of “depressed, pessimistic, troublemakers” who didn’t believe in his Smile for Prosperity Initiative to Restore Health, Wealth, and Happiness to the United States of America. So, for the 152nd time, Britta Mack listens to a speech so insipid that it would force a discount ServiceDroid to push its internal “Hard Quit” button without bothering to logically process the decision:

“Unpatriotic gloom and doom is interfering with my Smile for Prosperity Initiative to Restore Health, Wealth, and Happiness to the United States of America. Projecting positivity at all times is my solution to ending the suicide epidemic and fallout from the Great Transitional Recession caused by my incompetent predecessor. From now on, suicide letters will be referred to as subversive manifestos written by angry dissidents who deliberately and maliciously want to impede our economic growth. It will also be forbidden for a suicide’s relatives to request a government-funded funeral. Instead, relatives of suicide subversives are welcome to utilize the Community Compost Initiative, a program that I, William V. Humbletack, created as a way to transform waste into nutrient-rich material for Population Sustenance Products.

Millions of scientists have determined that the root cause of ongoing inflation and unemployment is your critical attitude toward my government and the depression, anger, and hostility provoked by undue disparagement of my government. Therefore, I, President William V. Humbletack, intend to launch a massive mental health campaign built on a single premise: smiling at all times, when alone, asleep, or, yes, even when lying in a casket at your funeral, will recondition the brain, increase the production of “happiness” hormones in the body and restore prosperity for all times. Remember this: Happiness and prosperity are contagious—spread smiles with smiles!

From this day forward, I, President William V. Humbletack, will enact a nationwide law that makes suicide, dissident attitudes, and refusing to smile in public a federal offense punishable by 20 years in a Reconditioning Camp. There will be NO exceptions.

It is in the best interest of all citizens to be agreeable, patient, and appreciative of everything the Humbletack government is doing to restore wealth, health, and greatness to my country.

Britta Mack drinks the rest of her HydroPop (Obey your thirst--Compliance has never been so refreshing!) and begins working. Her task is simple: monitor everyone entering and leaving the food distribution center on Block 457, Section 888, in New York City. Through a grid of eight security feeds spread over the monitor, she watches automated doors open and close for 10 hours as thousands of people file in empty-handed and file out carrying shopping bags full of Glo-Meals, NutriPuffs, and Aeroloaves. AI-driven buses playing AI-generated renditions of “Happy Days Are Here Again” wait outside to transport people back to their government-issued one-room apartments.

Britta’s unblinking gaze ricochets spastically over the monitor with frantic precision. People stream endlessly through the glass doors of the food distribution center, smiling from ear to ear, teeth showing, eyebrows raised, greeting people with energetic nods and government-accepted greetings like “Things are getting better!” and “President Humbletack has our backs!” She scans every face entering and leaving the massive gray steel building, looking for active twitches, spasms, fleeting nostril flares, sudden eyebrow leaps, and nonsmiling faces. All nonsmiling or half-smiling faces must be grid-tagged and transmitted immediately to the DHSC, where noncompliant faces are identified via the National Facial Registry Index. Within minutes of receiving a transmission from one of thousands of Subversive Expression Analysts, the DHSC sends drones to capture the individual and transport them to the nearest camp. Britta has been told that drone talons sometimes malfunction and seize people by their heads, not their shoulders. Unfortunately, instances of children finding decapitated bodies due to drone malfunctions have lately been on the rise.

Her work day always ends at 6:00 pm. After showering and eating several GloNuts—neon-glazed, sleep-inducing doughnuts that stain her fingers purple and green—Britta slides into bed with her TruthPad to catch up on the news. The monotony of headlines works better to bore her into drowsiness than the GloNuts:

National Survey Reveals Record High Trust in Humbletack’s Prosperity Smile Initiative

Official Reports: Smiling Citizens Experience Unprecedented Financial Gains—Data Verified by Top Scientists at the Department of Homeland Security and Compliance

President Humbletack Declares Victory: Nationwide Decline in Sadness and Dissidence Leads to Zero Suicides and Plenty of Jobs!

World Leaders Applaud President Humbletack: Smiling Now Proven Pathway to Collective Security and Individual Wealth

Reaching for her SmileLock device, Britta considers the thousands of faces she analyzes daily, their bodies plodding into the food distribution center because of a 48% unemployment rate. She imagines a smirk on her face while adjusting the SmileLock to stretch her mouth into a smile all night. She picks up the tube of WeldWink adhesive to secure the SmileLock and panics when she feels how flat the tube is.

Britta’s been using four drops of WeldWink instead of two drops for weeks after the SmileLock developed a small crack on one of the side grips. The crack prevented the SmileLock from pulling her mouth horizontally enough to be accepted as a compliant smile by her apartment’s sensors. She squeezes out two drops—one for each mouth corner—but pushes too hard on the SmileLock, increasing the crack's size and decreasing the width of her sleep smile.

Now what? Staying awake all night so she can be sure the sensors detect a compliant smile is not how Britta wanted the day to end. Then, she suddenly remembers buying a roll of PatchItAll tape weeks ago when a malfunctioning GovDrone crashed onto the roof of her apartment. That damn thing made a big hole in the ceiling, fell through the hole and proceeded to stagger-scoot across the floor, repeating robotically “In Humbletack we trust! In Humbletack we trust!” until government workers came and took it away.

A tiny piece of PatchItAll tape would hold the broken SmileLock in place for one night. But, removing the SmileLock means removing the tape and several layers of skin, per the warning on the tape’s packaging: Do not let PatchItAll come in contact with human or animal skin. The permanent adhesive will remove the epidermis, the dermis, and the hypodermis. Severe skin damage or infection will result if PatchItAll is placed on the skin.

The consequences of sleeping without wearing the SmileLock make Britta nauseous and fearful. The apartment sensor would certainly detect noncompliance, and Humbletack’s cabal of sociopathic enforcement brutes would throw her in the back of a transport drone that screams “Alert! Alert! Another citizen removed for violating President Humbletack’s mandate! Extraction underway! Alert! Alert!” It's the rumors about reeducation camps that scare her the most, tales about Patriot Recalibration drills, where everyone bows and apologizes to a statue of Humbletack 100 times a day, and Trigger Phrase Conditioning, a brainwashing technique involving camp prisoners receiving food rewards for constantly repeating specific words or phrases, like “President Humbletack is the GOAT“ and “Smile for prosperity”.

Britta decides that having a one-inch hole dotting both sides of her mouth is preferable to having her brain pureed into a government-approved protein paste suitable for spreading on Humbletack bread—(You can taste patriotism in every slice!). She affixes the SmileLock device with two pieces of PatchItAll, checks to make sure her fake smile complies with the app installed on her TruthPad, and falls into a deep sleep.

Eight hours later, the apartment alarm jars Britta into sudden wakefulness. The PatchItAll must have worked! The built-in sensors did not detect a noncompliant smile on her face all night. Feeling refreshed, Britta sits up in bed, takes a deep breath to prepare for the pain of removing the SmileLock, and begins pulling the device off her mouth. Searing but tolerable heat radiates through her cheeks as she feels the SmileLock loosen. In fact, she is pleasantly surprised at how easily it comes off.

Britta blinks at the SmileLock device she’s now holding in front of her eyes. It takes her a moment to realize she’s staring at her lips detached from her face, hanging limply from the device, covered in blood and white, crusty pieces of PatchItAll. A weird noise wheezes weakly through the drafty aperture that was once her mouth, sounding more like a snake’s hiss than a human scream. Britta doesn’t know how long she has been sitting in bed, blood trickling down her face and neck, her detached lips grow paler and droopier, before two Compliance Officers from the Department of Homeland Security and Compliance barge into her apartment, screaming “DHSC Compliance Officers! It’s too late to smile!”

As the officers stick a bandage over her aperture and strap her into a large transport drone waiting outside her apartment building, Britta thinks: At least I don’t have to worry about smiling all the time anymore. I guess I survived long enough to fuck it all with PatchItAll…