Globall War of Terror: Rendition
Dec. 23rd, 2017 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyRendition
Every workplace has one. That guy. The Oliver Stone guy. The crazy conspiracy theorist. Our workplace is no exception.
But his theory is obscene and cannot be tolerated. Free speech died with San Francisco. Beyond that, it endangers all of us. This site survives because we write code for the US military. If his theories come to the attention of Homeland, it's not a matter of just losing a contract. It's a matter of losing all our lives.
I've already learned that taking preemptive action is a necessity, not a luxury. I've also learned that the line between killing and murder is not as clear cut as a lawyer would make it seem.
He's been warned. He's been threatened with losing his job. But he's a good coder and he thinks that makes him immune. In the old days, the Constitutional days, he would be mostly right.
He is now dead wrong.
I have received an order that would have made me quit in disgust and contact the authorities before the Firecracker War. I agree with the logic and validity of the order, which makes me want to throw up always and forever.
I am very grateful that I do not wear a US flag on my uniform. Because either I would have to rip it off or it would catch fire. Maybe both.
Making matters worse, I like the guy. I have talked crazy theories with him many times. He has a wide and eclectic knowledge base, like my own, but is not afraid to riff from it. Reality is his play toy and I have been a pleased observer.
Now I am going to change his reality by abandoning observation for intervention.
He is coding late at night in his office. I have carefully arranged guard schedules and patrols to create a thirty minute hole. As far as anyone knows, I am asleep or in the Data Center complex. I'm not even in this building according to the cameras or the badge reader.
And all of a sudden I am rushing into his office and holding a soaked pad smelling of chemicals over his mouth and nose. He starts to fight, and collapses. I roll him onto a blanket and drag him down the hallway, into a corridor, through a door into a service tunnel. This part sucks, but he weighs close to what I do. I dose him again. I strap him down to a gurney. I wrap his eyes and shroud him with tarps. Dare I risk a third dose? Yes.
Three stretcher bearers silently enter the room. None of us speak. They know who I am, and I know who they are, but the illusion of anonymity serves still.
Lift and carry, down a side stairwell, into a storage room, through a hole cut in the wall, across the single loading dock to the back of an empty electric golf cart.
The stretcher bearers depart swiftly. They don't want to know. I don't want them to know.
I check his breathing carefully. Nope, didn't kill him.
Yet.
I start driving the golf cart into the moonlight, headlights out. My radio is on and plugged into my earpiece, but I have nothing to say. I am driving a path poorly monitored by cameras - the PTZ that normally covers this area has been moved, and the dispatcher assigned to that set of cameras inept.
We reach the path leading to the demo shed. I drag his body off the cart and sit behind him, pressing something against his neck.
I shake my head.
He starts to stir and I say quietly, conversationally, over and over again, "Don't scream. I have a knife."
After a few minutes he jerks spasmodically. Heard and understood.
"We can do this one of two ways. You can quietly walk with me, or I can cut your throat right here, right now. Feel free not to believe me, but I am trying hard not to kill you."
The moonlight gives him enough vision to look at my gear. He's thinking of going for my gun. But he's not finding my holster.
I am in trench killing gear. None of my gear is where it normally is. Some is unrecognizable. And the only holster that can hide a suppressed .22 semiautomatic pistol is an ancient Western style over flap holster not readily recognizable as such.
"This is because of San Francisco, isn't it," he says quietly. "I know the truth."
"Yes and no. We are all here because of San Francisco. I don't know the truth. But your truth is more corrosive than acid, more toxic than nerve agent, and more contagious than plague."
"The government did it. It was an inside job!" he hisses.
"And just what the fuck do you think Homeland is going to do when they hear that you say that? Do you think they will intern you? Do you know what half a helicopter ride is? Or do you think they will stop at you? They will interrogate all your contacts. They will 'cauterize the rot,' or have you been reading the propaganda?
"You mine the authorized news for data but you are missing the punch line. If you question the public truth, they will cut you out like a cancer. Then they will cut out all of us who did not prevent it. Starting with me.
"
Every workplace has one. That guy. The Oliver Stone guy. The crazy conspiracy theorist. Our workplace is no exception.
But his theory is obscene and cannot be tolerated. Free speech died with San Francisco. Beyond that, it endangers all of us. This site survives because we write code for the US military. If his theories come to the attention of Homeland, it's not a matter of just losing a contract. It's a matter of losing all our lives.
I've already learned that taking preemptive action is a necessity, not a luxury. I've also learned that the line between killing and murder is not as clear cut as a lawyer would make it seem.
He's been warned. He's been threatened with losing his job. But he's a good coder and he thinks that makes him immune. In the old days, the Constitutional days, he would be mostly right.
He is now dead wrong.
I have received an order that would have made me quit in disgust and contact the authorities before the Firecracker War. I agree with the logic and validity of the order, which makes me want to throw up always and forever.
I am very grateful that I do not wear a US flag on my uniform. Because either I would have to rip it off or it would catch fire. Maybe both.
Making matters worse, I like the guy. I have talked crazy theories with him many times. He has a wide and eclectic knowledge base, like my own, but is not afraid to riff from it. Reality is his play toy and I have been a pleased observer.
Now I am going to change his reality by abandoning observation for intervention.
He is coding late at night in his office. I have carefully arranged guard schedules and patrols to create a thirty minute hole. As far as anyone knows, I am asleep or in the Data Center complex. I'm not even in this building according to the cameras or the badge reader.
And all of a sudden I am rushing into his office and holding a soaked pad smelling of chemicals over his mouth and nose. He starts to fight, and collapses. I roll him onto a blanket and drag him down the hallway, into a corridor, through a door into a service tunnel. This part sucks, but he weighs close to what I do. I dose him again. I strap him down to a gurney. I wrap his eyes and shroud him with tarps. Dare I risk a third dose? Yes.
Three stretcher bearers silently enter the room. None of us speak. They know who I am, and I know who they are, but the illusion of anonymity serves still.
Lift and carry, down a side stairwell, into a storage room, through a hole cut in the wall, across the single loading dock to the back of an empty electric golf cart.
The stretcher bearers depart swiftly. They don't want to know. I don't want them to know.
I check his breathing carefully. Nope, didn't kill him.
Yet.
I start driving the golf cart into the moonlight, headlights out. My radio is on and plugged into my earpiece, but I have nothing to say. I am driving a path poorly monitored by cameras - the PTZ that normally covers this area has been moved, and the dispatcher assigned to that set of cameras inept.
We reach the path leading to the demo shed. I drag his body off the cart and sit behind him, pressing something against his neck.
I shake my head.
He starts to stir and I say quietly, conversationally, over and over again, "Don't scream. I have a knife."
After a few minutes he jerks spasmodically. Heard and understood.
"We can do this one of two ways. You can quietly walk with me, or I can cut your throat right here, right now. Feel free not to believe me, but I am trying hard not to kill you."
The moonlight gives him enough vision to look at my gear. He's thinking of going for my gun. But he's not finding my holster.
I am in trench killing gear. None of my gear is where it normally is. Some is unrecognizable. And the only holster that can hide a suppressed .22 semiautomatic pistol is an ancient Western style over flap holster not readily recognizable as such.
"This is because of San Francisco, isn't it," he says quietly. "I know the truth."
"Yes and no. We are all here because of San Francisco. I don't know the truth. But your truth is more corrosive than acid, more toxic than nerve agent, and more contagious than plague."
"The government did it. It was an inside job!" he hisses.
"And just what the fuck do you think Homeland is going to do when they hear that you say that? Do you think they will intern you? Do you know what half a helicopter ride is? Or do you think they will stop at you? They will interrogate all your contacts. They will 'cauterize the rot,' or have you been reading the propaganda?
"You mine the authorized news for data but you are missing the punch line. If you question the public truth, they will cut you out like a cancer. Then they will cut out all of us who did not prevent it. Starting with me.
"
no subject
Date: 2017-12-26 07:49 pm (UTC)Fortunately for him, the back of my knife rather than the edge is pressed to his throat, so he leans back before cutting open his own neck arteries.
"No, I really don't care. I am trying to keep just 3,000 people alive -- including you -- and you are making it a LOT more difficult! I personally have a fucking knife to your only throat, about to slit your gizzard like a chicken, and you are still talking theory! What are you going to do when a Homeland interrogator hooks up your nipples and testicles to a car battery and cranks the voltage until you tell him everything he wants to hear? My job is to keep you alive, and everyone you work with alive, and when you feel the clamps on your nuts it will be far too late!"
I coldly consider turning the knife around and finishing the job. I have a few buckets of shredded foliage nearby for blood clean up. Sectioning him for pieces disposal will be a new unpleasant experience to go with all the others.
"What I need from you, Mr. Oliver Stone, is to do what you are told so we can keep you alive. But your coworkers will think you are dead. Not killing you is a big risk to me ... so all you have to do to get me killed is send a brief anonymous E-mail.
"Do you want to avenge those millions?"
"Damn right," he growls.
"Then you have to live. And right now, for a time, you have to do what you are told and shut the fuck up. Can you do that?"
It takes effort to keep my knife hand from shaking, because I am very ready to provide negative (if brief) corrective feedback to a bad answer.
"Yes."
I sheathe the knife and stand him up. It is one of four knives on my person. I hate knives. But for silent killing they are the literal killer app.
"Walk with me, and listen, and try to understand."
As I walk him through the next leg of his departure from campus, I am selling him on the benefits of becoming a devout Mormon.
We have quite the walk ahead of us, and then he will have a longer bike ride.
Watsonville Ward has agreed to take a prisoner sight unseen, in exchange for present and future favors with staggering cost.
But they need him as much or more as he needs them.
His analysis is accurate and informed. I believe him. And the LDS needs to know that the America they joined at gunpoint a century and a half ago has been, to use a technical term, turned.
As in turned to the Dark Side. As in fascist. As in "one death is a tragedy, a million are a statistic."
I have no use for larger implications. I am a little person with a little job. But if I can sell a hopeless dream of turning the country around, I can save this one life.
That is my job.