GWOT III - A Reasonable, Informed Discussion

[drewkitty]

GWOT III - A Reasonable, Informed Discussion

I think Homeland has come up with a new strategy to break me down.

They're trying to bore me to death.

I've adapted to the kinder, gentler regime.

No torture, unless you count the unavoidable muscle cramps from being carefully, thoroughly chained to a table for eight hours a day.

Unlimited opportunity to read in my cell time, the one book I have been issued, a King James Bible.

Almost adequate nutrition. My gums have stopped hurting.

A day off from interrogation each week. I am left in my cell.

A couple of bonuses there.

I heard another prisoner being walked down the hallway. I have no idea who they might be or what gender they might be (except that it's binary, because Homeland executes anyone Heinlein called the 'in betweeners' and an educated person calls transgender or intersexed).

It's the closest to human interaction I've had with a non-Homeland employee since my arrest.

That afternoon after lunch (the usual singed would-be warmed burger), a guard propped open the slot in my cell door, rolled a television set on a cart up to the other side, said gruffly, "Here you go," and pressed PLAY on the DVD player.

It was a movie I had never seen before, _Jeremiah_.

The production quality was, well, pretty good for Biblical fiction.

The message was not one that I understood. The main character was basically suffering for his faith, called upon to deliver God's message and getting his ass beat for it, over and over again.

Much was made of the Covenant, the deal between God and his people.

I couldn't help but think of _The Empire Strikes Back_.

"I am castrating the deal. Pray I don't..."

Yeah, some covenant there. Note lack of capitalization.

When the movie ended, the TV was wheeled down the corridor.

I got to hear the movie again, as a distant echo. Meaning that there was likely another cell relatively nearby.

I didn't feel any sympathy for either the historical prophet or the actor playing him.

It did give me some puzzlement.

Homeland was not conducting itself in a charitable fashion, to put it bluntly.

So why the Bible as my only reading material, and now this very, ahem, spiritual movie?

An effort to confuse prisoners? Some devout guard or manager imposing their personal will using government tools?

My nightmares were especially awful that night, featuring shadowy figures beating the snot out of me.

The next day was a standard interrogation day.

The topic, however, was new.

"Let's talk about murder," my interrogator said cheerfully. "What is the difference between murder, homicide and mere killing?"

So there were a few issues here.

One of them is the ability to edit audio into different forms.

At first I'd tried to stick to the "Yes, no, I don't admit the charges" that is safest when being questioned by authority.

A lot of torture had made that untenable quickly.

Another issue is that I had been arrested for the murder of Homeland personnel.

Damned if I knew who.

I had been present for the killing of Alan Cartright. But I'd had no authority in the casual chain, I'd had to bully my way into the vehicle and was sitting in back when the Reaction Team manager ordered his driver - both Employees, and therefore beyond my control - to, and I quote, "Run him down."

He'd given orders that killed a number of Employees and contractors, and wounded numerous guards. After his death, his Cronies had killed two extremely valuable Employees out of the sheerest stupidity.

But Cartright, as far as I knew, was not a Homeland employee. He was a client Employee, and therefore could only be a Homeland agent in place at most. So killing him might be a crime, but it wasn't the "murder of Homeland personnel."

Now, of course, I was guilty as hell of murdering Homeland personnel. My first interrogator, with my bare hands.

The last issue of course is that this is not a philosophic discussion. My present interrogator was not looking to be educated by me, he was looking for clues into my psyche and my belief systems, to wrap me in my own words like a pretzel until I tore.

He was too careful to let me have a chance at killing him.

He was also too careful to actually tell me, out of the many people I'd killed in a year of securing Site, which one(s) might have been Homeland personnel.

This led us to [Oliver Stone].

I seized on this as an opportunity to change the subject.

I'd read a bad piece of science fiction in which the brave wise-cracking hero knew something Horrible and kept incriminating his interrogators by giving them the bad news, so that they would in turn know something Horrible.

I knew something really, really Horrible about the Firecracker War.

Despite my current respite, I knew that I really had nothing at all to lose.

I was going to die by torture in this building.

So I opened with a left hook.

"You know, I had to kill [Oliver Stone]. What he was saying was incredibly dangerous. I killed him because he was a threat to Site security, and to Homeland, and to America. But even if he wasn't any of those things, I'd still have had to kill him. Would you believe it? He claimed that America started the Firecracker War when we nuked San Francisco ourselves."

The interrogator blinked. For him that was a major tell.

"You folks showed me a movie about a Biblical prophet yesterday. The more I think about it, the more I realize that [Oliver] thought of himself as a prophet. He kept trying to buttonhole other Employees about his crazy theories. Even misused his printer privileges to make flyers until I caught him and the SLE revoked his print privileges. He Knew The Truth, you see, and he would simply not shut up about it. So I had to silence him the only way that sticks."

I paused, simulating musing about it.

"It's a shame, really, I liked the guy. And he might have been right."

The interrogator's face froze. I'd seen him simulate anger. I'd never seen him angry.

"That's treason. Actionable treason. A horrific accusation, insulting to every person killed in San Francisco and everyone who ever cared about them."

I shrugged.

"I'm dead anyway. Nothing I can say weighs anything compared to my decision to kill my first interrogator. There's no point to me not confessing, you have it all on video. So why would you be so offended at me thinking that maybe America did nuke San Francisco?"

He made a fist.

"I lost _friends_ in the City!"

"So did I. Plural. And a lot of people I knew also lost loved ones there. The atomic destruction of any city is a horrible thing, but nuking San Francisco? That's militarily insignificant. If you want military effects, nuke Oakland. The City By The Bay was a symbol of world peace, I mean the United Nations was literally founded there! So why the hell would China nuke it?"

He didn't say anything.

"Look, it's your job to listen to treason, and my neck is already in a noose a hundred times over. I can see why America would nuke San Francisco... to justify the Firecracker War. Make it retaliation and revenge instead of offensive action. A Pearl Harbor move, not an unprovoked attack. [Oliver] had lots of what he said was intel about the event."

Mildly, so mildly.

"Where is that intel now?"

"Shredded it. Took a sledge to his computer's drives. I remember bits and pieces. Something about depressed trajectory shots and permissive action links. How the detonation locations and heights were all wrong for a long range bird but correct for a short range MIRV. I'm not a nuclear geek so it's just words to me."

"So why destroy it?"

"Distraction to other Employees. As you said, actionable treason. I tried to do everything I could to keep the Site all-American and therefore keep Homeland away."

"Why so afraid of Homeland?"

"Haven't you sidewalked someone? Or at least seen it done?"

"Point," he admitted. "So your motive - for killing [Oliver], for shredding the data, for executing Homeward Bound as you understood it - was to protect the Site and its denizens from Homeland punitive actions? By doing them for us?"

"Exactly. As I told several Homeland representatives at various times prior to my arrest."

Long pause.

"You did?"

I recited approximate dates, times and descriptions of the various prior visits by Homeland to the Site, and our one visit to Homeland.

"Excuse me," he said briskly, and got up and out of the room.

He came back with a thick, thick dossier. Put it on the table slightly out of my reach.

"You know, I've only read snippets of your file. I figured anyone with a file this thick..."

"... there had to be a pony somewhere."

"I beg your pardon?"

"With all this horseshit, there's got to be a pony generating it. Thick file equals guilty suspect."

He nodded.

A silent hour followed. In that silent hour, not only did he read that file in front of me, but he took some notes as he read.

He didn't finish. But he stopped reading and looked up.

"You are an interesting person. Did you know you had a large FBI file prior to the War?"

I shrugged.

"I think I spoke to a Bureau agent maybe twice ever in my life. Once I was curious if they used dispatchers, so I went down to the local field office to ask about their support jobs. Turns out they don't, just call center operators. Another time, a client theft case took an organized crime turn and one of their task force folks interviewed me. Thought I might have been in on it. Apologized."

"Oh, your FBI file goes into your childhood."

Fuck me what?

"No need to be crude. You know of course that the FBI does - did - profiling. Watching out for future serial killers and enemy espionage agents. You were on three separate watch lists. Your awkward childhood - about which I know a lot thanks to your screaming nightmares. Your awful, awful choice of parentage. You know, like father, like son? And last but not least, you worked in sensitive places that had a lot of compromises."

I seized on the one part of that which didn't hurt to think about.

"Every high tech place in the Bay Area has been compromised up the literal yin-yang by Chinese intelligence, long before the Firecracker!"

"Correlation is not causation. But your name kept popping up. And as you know, coincidences have to be proven. If there had been any doubts about your arrest, your Fibbie-File cinched them."

Deep breath.

"I've gotten to know you rather well now. I needed the re-read though. Puts things into perspective. Your arrest was an error, you haven't knowingly done anything treasonous, you had no way to know that someone you killed was also working for Homeland as well as fucking your Site over, and last but sure as hell not least, if someone had been doing to me what that first asshole did to you, I'd have killed him with my bare hands too."

I dared not hope. That all sounded a lot like vindication. The kind of stuff you say before you let someone go.

But they weren't going to let me go.

I'd never expected fairness from the universe. Let alone from Homeland.

"Let's get you back to your cell early. I need to make some calls."

With that I was walked back to my cell early.

The King James Bible was open to the Book of Jeremiah, face down on my concrete bunk.

I hadn't left it that way.

Dared I hope?