Strange News by  Bradley Zang

 Retro Temporal Testing Reported

It has been proposed that drug efficacy research in the future might best be tested through retro temporal testing on deathrow inmates.

The basic idea being if a person on deathrow will be executed in say 10 years. A formula can be communicated say from 50 years in the future to a chrono-crony working in a pharmaceutical company that oversees the Mental Observation Ward (MO) operating in that prison. (Chrono-cronies are people willing to do anything for a chance at being known as the first to invent something.

Some believed they communicate with the future through certain Websites set up in the future that also exist in the present)

 When the formula is added to the medication of the inmate, those in the future instantly know the results of the next 10 years, complete with detailed results of the autopsy.

Do Note: Chess in prisons is here to stay. Prison chess programs have been shown to reduce recidivism. ( It seems to have worked for Heidi Fleiss.)

 It may also be a way of finding the most intelligent subjects for Retro Temporal Testing.

Oh! One more, thing; Never Laugh after you win a game. IT GETS PEOPLE ANGRY.

 With this background let a man who wants only to be referred to as 7352 tell his story.

 " It was 1992, I was confined to a Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center in Baltimore, for embezzling money from a business I started. I hadn't played chess since my childhood but there is not a lot to do in prison. I believe I was chosen as a test subject for a new psychotropic medication developed to reduce anger, because, I was such a strong player in our prison chess club. I would have rejected their offer but they promised me extra conjugal visits with my wife Claudia, and, I missed her very much.

I was the strongest player, except for one man who was not allowed out of his cell on death row, to play other players.

 We only knew him as inmate 33444. About 20 of the chess players would play Prisoner 33444 at the same time. We were told he was playing blindfolded.

We would all call out our moves on twenty boards, to the guard, who would write them down and walk the corridor to the death row ward. He would then read the move to the prisoner who called out his moves.

We never got to see the man who always beat us.

I never got angry at losing a game unless my opponent laughed at me, but for some reason whenever I lost the simul I felt like someone was laughing.

After the simul games our group would meditate to get rid of the anger associated with losing and take our medication.

I never really had much of a problem with my anger, but, other members of our club started getting into minor skirmishes with other inmates; So, our chess club was suspended from meeting for a while.

 The next year they brought in an expert in transcendental meditation Yogi Master Fal allowing our group to play and meditate under his guidance.

 It worked; We all started to become model prisoners. We started playing simuls again this time no one had any problems but of coarse we still lost.

The yogi was even given permission to visit Prisoner 33444. Our Yogi Fal even got 33444 to meditate at the same time we did.

 It was wonderful, almost all the skirmishes stopped in the prison for over a month.

Our Yogi called it the Maharishi Effect. (Just a small percent of the people meditating could stop violence because we are all linked through a quantum-mechanical consciousness field in someway.)

Well there was one skirmish over a rumor in the cafeteria. Some prisoners claimed their wives were disguising themselves as other peoples wives and going on conjugal visits to the wrong prisoners, even prisoner barred from such visits, but it was just some yelling.

Then Yogi Fal told our group that 7000 of the finest meditators led by a mathematician name John Hagelin were coming to nearby Washington in June to try and use the meditation techniques we used, to suppress anger in the entire city of Washington DC area.

 He also told us since we were so close to DC (40 miles) we could join in. I remember for seven weeks we played the simul and meditated constantly. To everyone's surprise the murder rate in DC reached an all time high that summer.

Our chess club was suddenly closed for no reason and the meds were stopped.

Except for prisoner 33444, the members of our chess club were all soon released as ideal prisoners.

About nine years later we were told prisoner 33444 was executed.

When our paroles were up we started corresponding. I must tell you the chess seemed to have worked. None of us went back to jail. We all still played chess. We taught our children to play chess.

 We even had a reunion, during the reunion I noticed all the children were playing chess. I remember thinking how weird it was that all the kids had the same type of pug shaped nose.

One kid who was playing a blindfolded simul against all of the other kids turned to me and said "Those in the future think we can't hurt them. "

He won all the games. Please investigate?? "

This just in!!! There are reports from Sunday's Miami Herald that the Guantanamo Bay detainees are 'very good at chess' and want to start a club. Does this mean they can join the USCF for less than regular members can?