GWOT III - Custodes
Nov. 29th, 2023 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyI'm pretty sure I dreamed this next bit.
I spent nearly my entire time in the Homeland building (formerly the Federal Building) in one of three places.
In my tiny cell.
In an interrogation room, chained to the table to prevent shenanigans. (Mostly.)
Strapped down to a rolling gurney, to properly enjoy the haunted house of horrors that awaited lower down.
I would have had no opportunity to walk around freely, to speak to ordinary Homeland staff, or to talk about subjects Homeland would consider either treasonous or security restricted or both.
So I have to assume I was dreaming.
It's really the only explanation.
###
The guard was pretty strak. That means squared away. Neat. Well dressed. Having that combination of poise and fashion sense.
As posts go, he found it pretty straightforward.
He didn't have to go out with the teams to do stuff, not that he really wanted to. He would of course do whatever he was told, but he had been a security guard before the Firecracker, so he would stay a guard now.
They were really big on cross training. So he covered the lobby surveillance, the camera surveillance, the loading dock entry point, the sally port, and the office interior patrol. Special procedures applied to all of them.
He could recognize each of the seven Homeland credential types on sight.
We discussed his gear. He only had the one pair of handcuffs, largely for decoration as any situation that demanded physical arrest would result in a response from hordes of Homeland troopers.
He had a high retention holster. He really didn't need one, as his duties never brought him in contact with detainees, but it was a holding site as well as administrative offices, so high retention it would be.
No helmet, no vest. No real plans for him to be in a gunfight, so he didn't need them.
He'd been trained on the Guard Manual. Taken tests on it. Pretty much every situation not covered by instruction was one where he would call for immediate assistance.
The few public visitors he so closely observed in the lobby were cringingly compliant, even if arrested. Not like before the War at all.
The guards, the admin staff, the managers - all were civil, if harried and busy.
There were a handful of problem children, which he learned to recognize on site. They were Homeland Agents, the elite, and they demanded the respect they felt their positions deserved.
But the Guard Manual was clear. All persons shall display their credential visibly at the waist or higher at all times on the premises. So as long as he stuck to that, he was safe.
The upper floors were prisoner holding and interrogation. He never saw them.
The first floor was adminstrative offices. He patrolled them, checking exits carefully. A safe working environment.
The basement level was loading dock, trash dock and ash removal.
There were lower levels. He never saw them either.
So he did his twelves - 12 hour shifts - six days a week. Didn't tell anyone where he worked or what he did there. Green Zone credentials, pay in bluebacks, and the right to buy groceries at the lowest level grocery store in the Green Zone made him a wealthy man.
He was not paid to think. Or to wonder.
So if he occasionally heard an outcry, or saw a MRAP pull up on cameras and a couple people hustled and dragged out of it into the building, that was not his business. They were traitors or they wouldn't be in custody.
It never occurred to him to wonder why prisoners trickled in, but never ever left. The upstairs would be crowded to overflowing by now if prisoners had not been ... removed.
That they were leaving as ash was as beyond him as rocket surgery.
###
"Why are you here, bro?"
"Earning a living. How about you?"
"Trying to keep a bunch of people alive in this madness."
"So how did you get tagged by Homeland?"
"Somebody said I killed the wrong people. No idea who. How did you get the cushy job?"
"My uncle knows a guy who's a Homeland Agent. It was this or China, and I have flat feet. Why didn't you go to China?"
"Just lucky I guess. You know what they do in this building, right? Torture people to death."
"I somehow doubt that. This is America. That wouldn't be allowed to happen. Sounds like the kind of thing a traitor would say."
"I can prove it to you, let's go look."
"I can't leave my bounds, and you shouldn't be out of your cell at all."
"I can walk around freely, so can you. Follow me."
Access cards, cameras and other guards did not seem to notice that we existed.
I showed him my cell. I showed him the interrogation rooms - both the ones where I was chained to a table, and the ones where I was strapped into a chair. I showed him Dental and Medical.
Then I saw the kitchens where the food was prepared, the wardroom where Agents and interrogators talked shop and hustled up simple meals when the first floor cafeteria was closed. The janitor's closets, elevator equipment rooms.
We went down the never-used stairwells covered in fine layers of dust, not leaving footprints.
He turned pale when he saw the surgical rooms.
He turned green and obviously fought hard not to vomit when he saw the furnace, and the arrangements for burning the dead or the living, as appropriate.
And the mercy bat.
"This is what is happening here. This is what you are protecting. This is what pays you."
Then we saw the arrangements for putting the ash in covered pallets and elevatoring them up to the loading dock for disposal.
The technical terms, if you are a mortician, is cremains.
Enough that a covered 40' container was needed to store it between monthly swaps of the container.
"They accuse me of murder. You are an accessory before and after the fact to hundreds and hundreds of counts of murder."
###
I aat up bolt upright in my cell, on my bunk.
I had been asleep.
###
He sat bolt upright at his console, blinking. Shit. I fell asleep. I checked the cameras and alarms quickly, nothing had happened, no one had noticed.
What a horrible nightmare.
I spent nearly my entire time in the Homeland building (formerly the Federal Building) in one of three places.
In my tiny cell.
In an interrogation room, chained to the table to prevent shenanigans. (Mostly.)
Strapped down to a rolling gurney, to properly enjoy the haunted house of horrors that awaited lower down.
I would have had no opportunity to walk around freely, to speak to ordinary Homeland staff, or to talk about subjects Homeland would consider either treasonous or security restricted or both.
So I have to assume I was dreaming.
It's really the only explanation.
###
The guard was pretty strak. That means squared away. Neat. Well dressed. Having that combination of poise and fashion sense.
As posts go, he found it pretty straightforward.
He didn't have to go out with the teams to do stuff, not that he really wanted to. He would of course do whatever he was told, but he had been a security guard before the Firecracker, so he would stay a guard now.
They were really big on cross training. So he covered the lobby surveillance, the camera surveillance, the loading dock entry point, the sally port, and the office interior patrol. Special procedures applied to all of them.
He could recognize each of the seven Homeland credential types on sight.
We discussed his gear. He only had the one pair of handcuffs, largely for decoration as any situation that demanded physical arrest would result in a response from hordes of Homeland troopers.
He had a high retention holster. He really didn't need one, as his duties never brought him in contact with detainees, but it was a holding site as well as administrative offices, so high retention it would be.
No helmet, no vest. No real plans for him to be in a gunfight, so he didn't need them.
He'd been trained on the Guard Manual. Taken tests on it. Pretty much every situation not covered by instruction was one where he would call for immediate assistance.
The few public visitors he so closely observed in the lobby were cringingly compliant, even if arrested. Not like before the War at all.
The guards, the admin staff, the managers - all were civil, if harried and busy.
There were a handful of problem children, which he learned to recognize on site. They were Homeland Agents, the elite, and they demanded the respect they felt their positions deserved.
But the Guard Manual was clear. All persons shall display their credential visibly at the waist or higher at all times on the premises. So as long as he stuck to that, he was safe.
The upper floors were prisoner holding and interrogation. He never saw them.
The first floor was adminstrative offices. He patrolled them, checking exits carefully. A safe working environment.
The basement level was loading dock, trash dock and ash removal.
There were lower levels. He never saw them either.
So he did his twelves - 12 hour shifts - six days a week. Didn't tell anyone where he worked or what he did there. Green Zone credentials, pay in bluebacks, and the right to buy groceries at the lowest level grocery store in the Green Zone made him a wealthy man.
He was not paid to think. Or to wonder.
So if he occasionally heard an outcry, or saw a MRAP pull up on cameras and a couple people hustled and dragged out of it into the building, that was not his business. They were traitors or they wouldn't be in custody.
It never occurred to him to wonder why prisoners trickled in, but never ever left. The upstairs would be crowded to overflowing by now if prisoners had not been ... removed.
That they were leaving as ash was as beyond him as rocket surgery.
###
"Why are you here, bro?"
"Earning a living. How about you?"
"Trying to keep a bunch of people alive in this madness."
"So how did you get tagged by Homeland?"
"Somebody said I killed the wrong people. No idea who. How did you get the cushy job?"
"My uncle knows a guy who's a Homeland Agent. It was this or China, and I have flat feet. Why didn't you go to China?"
"Just lucky I guess. You know what they do in this building, right? Torture people to death."
"I somehow doubt that. This is America. That wouldn't be allowed to happen. Sounds like the kind of thing a traitor would say."
"I can prove it to you, let's go look."
"I can't leave my bounds, and you shouldn't be out of your cell at all."
"I can walk around freely, so can you. Follow me."
Access cards, cameras and other guards did not seem to notice that we existed.
I showed him my cell. I showed him the interrogation rooms - both the ones where I was chained to a table, and the ones where I was strapped into a chair. I showed him Dental and Medical.
Then I saw the kitchens where the food was prepared, the wardroom where Agents and interrogators talked shop and hustled up simple meals when the first floor cafeteria was closed. The janitor's closets, elevator equipment rooms.
We went down the never-used stairwells covered in fine layers of dust, not leaving footprints.
He turned pale when he saw the surgical rooms.
He turned green and obviously fought hard not to vomit when he saw the furnace, and the arrangements for burning the dead or the living, as appropriate.
And the mercy bat.
"This is what is happening here. This is what you are protecting. This is what pays you."
Then we saw the arrangements for putting the ash in covered pallets and elevatoring them up to the loading dock for disposal.
The technical terms, if you are a mortician, is cremains.
Enough that a covered 40' container was needed to store it between monthly swaps of the container.
"They accuse me of murder. You are an accessory before and after the fact to hundreds and hundreds of counts of murder."
###
I aat up bolt upright in my cell, on my bunk.
I had been asleep.
###
He sat bolt upright at his console, blinking. Shit. I fell asleep. I checked the cameras and alarms quickly, nothing had happened, no one had noticed.
What a horrible nightmare.
