GWOT III - Why

GWOT III - Why

'The Refined Man' by Rudyard Kipling

"I was of delicate mind. I stepped aside for my needs,
Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar and killed . . .
How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged by his deeds.
I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed."

from "Epitaphs Of The War", courtesy https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57409/epitaphs-of-the-war


Gentle Reader, I have spent a substantial chunk of my life not thinking.

No, that's not quite right. I analyze, I problem solve, I take care of issues.

I avoid introspection. Especially personal introspection.

I don't like to think about who I am, what I do or how I got here. I especially don't like to think about the horrific POW camp that was my childhood - except that prisoners of war have rights, special training, full adult development, loyalty to their nation and the fellowship of comrades to help them endure horrific abuses.

I had a child's innate resilience.

Not enough.

Just not enough.

So I stumbled through my teenage years. Wandered through my young adulthood, picking up skills and learning now and again that there were ordinary people who were not monsters. Few. But enough.

I don't know how well I would do in a normal prison environment.

"Badges" i.e. former law enforcement, have a very tough time in prison.

No one gives a shit about security. Just a job, dumber than most.

I've dealt with lots of people from all walks of life. I could probably get along with screws, i.e. prison guards. I could definitely get along with my fellow inmates. I'd supervised very similar people as guards. I'd certainly worked alongside many as client employees in the private sector. Construction especially tends to be a revolving door between trade and jail.

I had yet to meet another Homeland detainee.

I had been taken from Site to this facility as the only detainee in the vehicle. Processed, rolled through cleared corridors, kept in solitary confinement since.

Normally a detainee is kept with anywhere from 1 or 2 to several hundred others. It's a matter of cost and efficiency. Cages are cheaper than cells. Even in cells, two or three deep is a lot cheaper than one cell per person. Buildings cost money. Prison guards cost money.

Tents are cheaper yet.

Cheapest of all, crematoriums. No need to feed the dead.

So this was not in any way a normal prison environment.

They thought I was a prisoner of value. This was costing Homeland a chunk of change.

Therefore what I had in my head was of value, or so Homeland thought.

I didn't have much in there. Less and less as the situation drove me crazier and crazier.

The one legitimate concern that Homeland would have, would be if someone was using Site or the contract security force or the client's militia, the Reaction Team, to support anti-American activity or the Resistance.

No.

We didn't tolerate such activity because we didn't want to expose our personnel to Homeland retaliation.

I'd ejected [Oliver Stone] from campus and let everyone think I'd murdered him. Artfully taken photos and a couple of guards who couldn't tell that the body they were carrying was still breathing certainly helped.

I liked the guy. But he would not shut up about his conspiracy theories, and sure enough, Homeland had come calling, asking for him by name. Fortunately, they'd believed me. More likely the informants among us they had asked.

I'd refused to harbor people of interest to Homeland.

Most importantly, the client and I had yeeted everyone who might be of future interest to Homeland, far far away. Buses to Colorado, a fraught with tension convoy to Utah. Falsified records and paperwork. The occasional individual, disappeared off campus to a new life.

Much of the leg work had been done by the Vice President of Human Resources.

Homeland wasn't interrogating her - she'd have broken like a cheap clay pot - because she'd been killed when they took the site over.

There was no point in asking me, I hadn't done the leg work. Planned the bus trips, run the convoys, looked over the paper, yes. But I didn't remember much of it for the same reason I didn't remember much of my childhood.

No amount of agony could force me to remember anything that I had never placed in memory to begin with.

Trying to get out of pain by volunteering new information was strictly a mug's game. They would hurt me a lot more along the way to verify the new information, and then thread would lead to thread, and they would just keep hurting me more until they thought they had everything.

Making up credible information is so difficult. I had not been given any chance to prepare. Otherwise I'd be tossing out names left and right, every one a suspected or actual Homeland operative.

I'd already been caught in one lie. I'd confessed that I was a Chinese espionage agent and that the name of my contact was Mr. Young. Egg Young, middle name Fu. Not my brightest moment. But I couldn't think of a Chinese name while screaming and my brain had fastened on a food dish instead.

What they were interested in, what all this screaming had been all about, is where those eight hundred odd yeet-ees had ended up.

I'd thought of that long ago.

I killed them all. Every one.

That was the story, the cover. The illusion.

I simply had to trust that our paperwork for the Colorado transferees would hold. I had to trust that our Utah executive knew what he was doing when he promised that he could launder the identities of three hundred people in such a way that Homeland would never find them. And then each of the individual escapees, such as [Oliver Stone]. A live Oliver would blow holes in my stories. And the man would not shut up until I'd disappeared him. I had literally bet my life that he'd managed to learn something.

I'd arranged to carefully not know anything about any details. Again, what I don't know, I can't be made to scream about.

The question I was asking myself was not a question Homeland was asking me.

It was a question that was the product of too much time to think.

Why?

Why had I worked so hard for all these people?

And why was I screaming now?

I could ask for pen and paper, use the hand that hadn't been ruined, and write it all out.

Homeland would probably be pleased enough to sidewalk me.

My troubles would be over.

No more screaming.

No more nothing. No more me.

There wasn't enough money to pay me to be silent, or to endure heavy torture. There had never been any fucking money. Just accounting entries, which I'd parlayed into a "business" doing more useful work for the Client.

There was no amount of money that would buy consistently high quality food. Chocolate. Tea. Coffee. Antibiotics. Even condoms.

All those items were few and far between, and the trickle Site was able to obtain, we put to highest and best use. Not luxuries.

So I wasn't properly speaking a mercenary.

I'd chosen to fight for this cause. Right place, right time. Just lucky I guess.

I had no prior military or governement service, so I wasn't getting drafted to China.

I had no experience managing programmers. So I wasn't getting a job with the Client even if they were dumb enough to lose me as their security lead.

I'd had two relevant job offers. One with a crime syndicate, one with Homeland.

The perks would be a lot better. Unlimited opportunities for inappropriate sex and nonconsensual violence. Or the other way around. Plus first crack at what luxuries were left in a continuing disaster zone.

I suppose I could have asked the Colonel for a job.

Gentle Reader. I'd vastly enjoy being a Dirty Merc. I had the skills, I had the ruthlessness. Plus more sex and violence with no silly questions about appropriateness or consent, then or later.

The Dirty Mercs and half a hundred rag tag bands like them did the dirty jobs Homeland didn't want to be caught doing, or didn't know how to do.

I hadn't tried. Not to go to China, not to get a job with the Client. Not to help smuggle shit, not to stack bodies. Especially not to be a licensed bandit on American soil.

I'd stuck with my profession. Protecting people.

Why?

Oh, there'd been some violence. At the end there, a little sex. The occasional tea bag from my personal business.

Consolation prizes all.

Not enough, for a sadist or a hedonist. I'd felt the call of both but committed to neither.

So the question of why was more ... personal. Philosophical. Shudder the thought, psychological.

In a way I'd already made my decision, long before my arrest.

Too late to change my mind.

Not without changing who I am and what I believe.

What did I believe?

Not much.

God? Nope.

Goodness of humanity? Oh hell no.

I believed in something I couldn't even put into words until Janine had said it in one of her lectures to her firefighters.

"On the worst day of their life, people call us to make it better."

I believed I could make it better.

Astonishing hubris. Arrogance. Taking on an aspect of divinity even.

My autohagiography.

Making. It. Better.

If I could save one life, it was worth the loss of my own.

I wasn't using it for much anyway.

If I could save a dozen lives? Sweet.

A hundred? Awesome.

But saving about eight hundred lives?

I could die happy. Die proud. Die arrogant.

A Chinese proverb, back in the days when one could say such things without being taken out back and shot.

"If you save a man's life, you are responsible for his future actions."

My variant.

If I can save someone's life, I have proven in that moment that I am better than them. Superior. I am the patron; they are the client. And whatever they have, for the rest of their days, they owe it to me.

Save eight hundred lives? Be superior to half a high school?

Fuck yeah.

Worth dying over?

Well, I'd already made that decision too.

Some people die for nothing.

Dying for being an asshole?

Challenge accepted.

Judge me by my deeds, not my reasons.

One of the very few poets whose work had ever spoken to my soul was Kipling.

I pay my price, to live with myself, on the terms that I have willed.

The cell door clicked open, the extraction team is waiting.

The debt collectors.