The Smile Tank Diaries

I didn’t have a choice.

I know that sounds dramatic. Everyone says that when they’re trying to sound like a victim. But in my case, it was literally true. I was legally required to participate in the Personality Compliance Program.

Because I failed the Empathy Calibration Assessment. Twice.

I know what you’re thinking: How can someone fail empathy? Easy. They ask you to watch a video of a cartoon otter losing its job at a tech startup and record your “emotional reactions” while measuring your blood pressure and brow micro-twitches. I blinked at the wrong moment, apparently. And I laughed. Not because I’m heartless, but because the otter’s boss had a man bun and threw a latte at the wall. It was funny!

Apparently, that qualified as “psychopathic mirth” under the new Neural Citizenship Guidelines.

So they sent me to Personality Correction Facility 47A, otherwise known as The Smile Tank.

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about Smile Tanks: they’re just Walmarts with better branding. Same flickering lights. Same broken vending machines. Same feeling that your soul is slowly sliding out your butthole.

The guy who checked me in was named Kevin. Or at least, that’s what his name tag said. The name tag also said “Mood Architect (Level 3)” and featured a QR code linking to his approved Personality Playlist on Spotify.

“Welcome to 47A,” Kevin chirped, not blinking. “You’re gonna love it here.”

I said nothing. Partially because I was in shock, and partially because I’d read online that sarcastic tone modulation could be flagged as a Category 2 Compliance Risk.

Kevin handed me a jumpsuit that smelled like dryer sheets and melted Skittles. “Put this on. Then we’ll do your baseline Laughter Integration Scan.”

I blinked. “What if I’m not ready to laugh yet?”

He paused, then leaned closer, eyes glassy. “It’s not about you being ready. It’s about you being useful.”

My first roommate was a guy named Darren who claimed he used to be a real estate agent until he got flagged for Excessive Realism.

“I just told the clients there was a mold problem and their neighbors were weird,” he muttered on our first night. “Apparently I was supposed to say it had ‘earthy charm’ and that the neighbors were ‘quirky fun.’”

Darren hadn’t smiled in three weeks. He kept getting zapped by the Positive Reinforcement Halo strapped to his forehead.

Mine had a slow pulse. I’d already been zapped once for frowning at the cafeteria chili.

The facility was broken into three wings: Cheer Training, Delight Exposure, and Irony Suppression.

Cheer Training was basically an improv class taught by an AI that only knew how to reference 90s sitcoms. It kept calling me “Ross” and telling me to “pivot.”

Delight Exposure involved watching an endless loop of cloyingly upbeat commercials featuring toddlers doing taxes, dogs making NFTs, and elderly couples dancing in fields of consumer debt.

Irony Suppression was the worst. It involved being forced to speak only in earnest declarative statements for 72 hours. If you lapsed into sarcasm, the system played Coldplay at full volume until your ears gave in.

By week two, I began dreaming in hashtags.

Everything changed the day I met Shira.

She was a Mood Fugitive, a rare type of compliance dropout who’d managed to hack her own Sentiment Profile and sneak into the facility as an Emotional Sanitation Technician.

I met her in the break room. She was smuggling unsanctioned emotions in through the vending machine slot.

“You want some unfiltered grief?” she whispered, slipping me a packet labeled “Chili Lime Regret.”

I stared at it. “Is this… safe?”

“No. But it’s real.”

I tore it open and tasted it. It burned all the way down. For the first time in weeks, I felt something that wasn’t shaped by focus groups.

We started meeting every night behind the service lockers in Wing B. She taught me how to fake smile authentically, how to cry without raising my cortisol levels, how to slip jokes past the Sentiment Monitors using “empathy modifiers.”

We laughed. Real laughter. The kind that makes your ribs sore and your brain light up like a pinball machine.

Then, one night, she handed me a USB stick. It was shaped like a middle finger.

“What’s this?”

“A firmware patch for your Halo. It’ll give you 30 minutes of untraceable thought autonomy.”

I stared at it, terrified.

“Why would you do this for me?”

Shira shrugged. “Because you’re the only person here who didn’t pretend the chili was ‘umami-forward.’”

I didn’t have a choice.

That’s what I told myself when I uploaded the patch, hard-reset the Halo, and sprinted into the server room with a sack of legally frowned-upon emotions.

I dumped them all into the mainframe: unfiltered anxiety, confused arousal, sincere disappointment, and melancholy awe. The system choked. Screens flickered. The AI began quoting Seinfeld backward.

Sirens blared. Kevin burst in, now wearing a hat labeled “Joy Marshal.”

“What did you do!?”

I looked him dead in the eye. “I freed the feelings.”

They dragged me out of 47A in zip-ties made of biodegradable optimism. My Halo was fried. I was sentenced to 200 hours of Emotional Debriefing and reassignment as a government pet therapist.

But something strange started happening.

A week after the incident, half of the Smile Tanks across the country shut down. People started reporting side effects like “critical thinking” and “emotional dissonance.” The Personality Compliance Board rebranded itself as the Department of Interpretive Mood Navigation.

Shira disappeared. Some say she fled to a free-expression zone in the Arctic Circle. Others say she founded a commune for people who just wanted to feel… complicated.

As for me, I still laugh when I’m not supposed to. I still flinch when someone says “synergy.” And I still dream of vending machines that spit out unprocessed dread.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I miss the Smile Tank.

Not because it was good.

But because it was the only place I ever truly meant a laugh.