Self-criticism

Public confession had been the easy part: humiliation had long been the price of survival after political miscalculation or bad luck. He would survive it like his father and brother had. His father's career had even recovered, in time, to something close to its peak.

Never mind his current state. He would recover, too, and climb to an even higher place. That's what he told himself, aloud, again and again and again for hours. The same hours he was forced to watch a synthetic video of himself criticizing himself, renouncing his friends, pleading loyalty to those who had punished them all.

Party computational psychiatrists were, if not the best, the most experienced in the world. The video sounded not like others heard him but how he heard himself when he spoke. It was becoming difficult to distinguish between the voices. Sometimes he found himself saying to his family things the video had first said. His wife had already left him in everything but her physical presence; most painful was to see his son looking up to the video when he talked through him.

It was a reason to hate living. It was a reason to stay alive.

He told it to the video. The image paused as the AI pretended to consider his words before telling him he was lying to himself in a voice surer and stronger than the other one.