Dominion

by J L Bryan

  “Where am I?” Ruppert asked aloud.

  “The land of no return,” someone answered off to his left. Someone else forced a laugh.

  “Are we in Canada?” Ruppert asked.

  There was another, snorting laugh. Ruppert didn’t attempt further conversation, and neither did anybody else.

  After more than an hour, a pair of crewcut young men, eighteen or nineteen years old, appeared in threadbare green US Army uniforms. They looked back and forth between Ruppert and a digital clipboard.

  “That’s him,” one of the soldiers declared. An obese male orderly appeared with a wheelchair, and the soldiers helped him move Ruppert into it. They strapped Ruppert’s arms to the arms of the chair.

  “What’s happening?” Ruppert asked.

  “Time for your interrogation,” a soldier said. “Do yourself a favor. Cooperate. Don’t give them a bunch of trouble. Tell them whatever they want to hear.”

  “Okay,” Ruppert said. “I'm familiar with the program.”

  They rolled him down a long, crowded hallway lined with bed-ridden patients along both walls. The patients wore flimsy paper gowns, and most looked heavily sedated. The facility smelled of rot and disease. Streamers of dark mold grew in the upper corners of the hall.

  They rode up in a freight elevator, and then the soldiers wheeled Ruppert down a long, white corridor to a black door. It slid aside, and they pushed Ruppert into a white cube of a room, where two black office chairs faced each other across a lozenge-shaped black desk. They moved aside one of the chairs and wheeled Ruppert into place. And they waited.

  After about twenty minutes, a section of white wall at the far side of the room slid back, and a man in the black tie, shirt and suit of a Terror agent entered. He was probably in his sixties, but he was very lean and fit, his eyes like blue ice under close-cropped silver hair. He seemed familiar to Ruppert.

  “That’s all right, boys,” he said to the soldiers. “You can go on. He’s no danger.”

  The soldiers saluted him, then pivoted and marched out of the room, the orderly lumbering after them.

  The Terror agent sat down across the desk from Ruppert. He touched the slick black surface, and a row of glowing white digital documents appeared beneath his fingertips, many with images of Ruppert alongside their text. He perused them at a leisurely pace, ignoring Ruppert. It was several minutes before he spoke.

  “Accessing illegal foreign data,” the man said. “Reneging on an agreement with the Department of Terror. Assault on a high official of the Department of Child and Family Services, for the purpose of accessing classified data. Assault and murder of a military school instructor. Forced entry into said military school, where you kidnapped a ward of the state, detonated explosives, killed two guards and injured several more instructors-all of this while publicly chanting terrorist slogans over an intercom.

  “Manufacturing and disseminating terrorist propaganda. Finally, attempting to exit the country illegally.” The man’s eyes burned into Ruppert, who thought the room had grown colder. Maybe it actually had, to intimidate him. “Even if we provided you a trial, you’d have no chance of surviving. You face a long, painful public execution. You are a terrorist, Daniel Ruppert.”

  Ruppert said nothing. Now he recognized the man: he was the one who’d been in George Baldwin’s office at the GlobeNet studio, while Ruppert was hypnotized. The one Baldwin had made him forget, until Dr. Smith deprogrammed him.

  “Dr. Reginald Crane,” Ruppert said. “That’s right, isn’t it? The 'doctor' for economics, not medicine.”

  Crane sat back in his chair. “Correct.”

  “They called you Duckers in school.”

  Crane’s lips curled into a slight snarl.

  "Short for 'Duck-fucker'?" Ruppert added.

  The man leaned back in his chair, folded his hands, sighed. "You've picked up a thing or two since we last met." He looked Ruppert over carefully. “There is no need for secrets in this place. On my part or yours.”

  “Okay,” Ruppert said.

  The man sat very still, and then he asked, “What else do you know about me?”

  “You’re Brother Zeb,” Ruppert asked. He made the connection even as he said it aloud. This was why the man had been so interested in him, why he’d come to Baldwin’s office at GlobeNet, why he was here now. "Of the white supremacist national church, or whatever you called it."

  The man's smile was tight and cold. He unknotted his tie, then unfastened the top three buttons of his black silk shirt. He exposed his chest to Ruppert, revealing a faded tattoo of six Viking swords arranged in a swastika. “I had most of them removed with lasers, naturally, but this one I kept as a souvenir. Those were heady days."

  “You programmed Sully to kill me,” Ruppert said. “And himself.”

  “Oh, no, that was a slight bureaucratic error,” Crane told him. “Once your little video emerged, standard protocols went into action.”

  “That was standard protocol?”

  “For a target as stubbornly on the run as yourself, one takes several precautions. But it wasn’t my group. We are highly compartmentalized, you understand.”

  “Terror?”

  “Above that.”

  “PSYCOM?”

  "I’ll admit now, we did lose you entirely on a few occasions. The woman you traveled with, Lucia, she is quite capable. I’m considering recruiting her for our side. What do you think?”

  “She would never.”

  “All people are vulnerable to persuasion."

  “Like Hollis Westerly?”

  Crane offered a small smile. “You feel pity for him, don’t you? A beast like that.”

  “No. I feel pity for everyone who died in Columbus. The people you murdered.”

  “Naturally you do. It would be inhuman to feel otherwise.”

  “Why did you kill them? So many?”

  “It isn't as though we took pleasure in it," the old man said. "It was collateral damage. A necessary act of war.”

  “That’s what Westerly said.”

  “It’s what I told him. War surrounds us all. Some of us learn to inhabit it, to move with it, but no man controls it. Do you fault a sailor for the violence of the ocean, or for learning to navigate the storm?”

  “You don’t feel anything?" Ruppert asked. "Remorse?”

  “Everyone feels remorse at one time or another,” Crane said. “But we have medication for that. You’re focusing on one event and missing the broader picture. Columbus was necessary to protect and preserve the nation.”

  “You protect people by murdering them?”

  “You aren’t listening, Daniel. I said we were protecting the nation.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  Crane summoned a holographic keyboard, then typed at it. A three-dimensional representation of ancient Rome appeared on the desktop, with stone aqueducts from the mountains feeding into fountains among colorful marble buildings.

  “This is from a PSYCOM training manual," Crane said. "Do you know what finally destroyed the city of Rome, Daniel? What caused it to become uninhabitable?”

  “Uninhabitable?” Ruppert asked. “I read the population was about 10 million people.”

  “You misunderstand. I meant the ancient city.” Crane passed a finger through a miniature aqueduct, and it broke, heaving water out into the mountains far outside the city walls. “Invading barbarians-Goths, if you care to be specific-besieged the city and broke all the aqueducts. They broke the aqueducts, you see, that fed the city, that made the Roman way of life possible. Without water, there could be no city. Never mind who won that particular battle. Without water, the population fell from a million to ten thousand. The greatest city in history became a ruin, home to only sheep and bandits living among abandoned palaces. You saw Las Vegas, didn’t you?”

  “Okay,” Ruppert said. “But what does Columbus have to do with aqueducts?”

  “Everything. In our case, it is not loss of water we fear. You know what we
need, though, do you not?"

  "Oil?"

  "Loss of petroleum would lay waste our cities. Should we fail to secure the necessary hydrocarbons, and fail to protect the intervening supply lines between there and here, every city in America would resemble Las Vegas in a matter of weeks. No commerce as we know it. And imagine our military-the tanks, the planes, the navy, all useless lumps of metal.

  “To protect the nation, we must be willing to fight off all competitors, great and small. We are the mightiest beast in the jungle, Daniel, but the mightiest beast must fight hardest to survive. It is the largest, therefore its needs are the largest, therefore it is, paradoxically, the most vulnerable. You see?”

  “You think nations need to make war to survive?”

  “Nations do not make war,” Crane said.

  “They don't? I'm maybe too medicated right now."

  “It is war that raises up nations, war that makes them powerful, war that destroys them. War is the survival competition among human beings, the driver of our evolution. It does not begin or end, though we artificially mark beginnings and endings to particular wars. The nation itself, Ruppert, is simply a long, sustained act of war, in which one group plunders both its own population and foreign lands. It is simply life, the competition for resources, and we cannot help if that is life's inherent condition.”

  “Now you're claiming to be moral?” Ruppert asked.

  “I am not,” Crane said. “Morality is for structuring and ordering society. Human beings, like animals, are not good or evil, but amoral. We are capable of good or evil acts at any time. It simply depends on circumstances. Look at your background. Not only did you carry out the various criminal acts I described earlier, but for several years, you made a good living spreading propaganda for us. You have murdered a few men, but you have lied to millions.”

  “I’ve tried to atone for it,” Ruppert said.

  “And you’ve failed. This little interview with Hollis will have no effect, I assure you. No one will believe it, unless they are already predisposed to believing such a thing. For most people, we will continue to tell them what to believe. We will tell them they are morally superior, that they love peace, but unfortunately this is a time of war, and one must support one's leaders. And they will continue to believe it. Because they need to believe it, Daniel, and at a biological level, they know it is necessary for the survival of the group.”

  “If people want war anyway, why do you have to lie to them at all?” Ruppert asked. “Why invent threats? Why not just say, ‘These people have oil, and we need it, and we're stronger, and we’re taking it.’ Why wouldn’t people support that war, if what you say is right?”

  “Because we also must live together for the sake of commerce,” Crane said. “Morals are necessary for, as I said, internal organization to support the war machine. The rule of every state rests on two things, Daniel: force and myth. Without force, myth is just words and images. Force without a supportive myth, however, will not last long, because it has no legitimacy among the people. No state can rule by myth alone, or by force alone.

  “The role of PSYCOM is to generate the necessary myth-an ongoing myth, extending into the fourth dimension-that is, a mythical narrative. Every war is a war to protect God, country, and family. We exist in an ongoing clash between good and evil, in which good means ‘us’ and evil means ‘them,’ the others who control the resources and supply lines we need.

  “What is it that forms our sense of identity, as Americans or as Englishmen or anything else? To which elements of history do we refer? Would you agree that America’s identity was forged in the Revolution, the Civil War, the Second World War, and in the struggle of freedom against terror?”

  “That sounds right,” Ruppert said.

  “And what do these events have in common?”

  “They were all about the struggle for freedom,” Ruppert said.

  Crane snorted. “The bigger picture, Daniel, is that they were all wars, weren’t they? Cataclysmic struggles over the question of who would rule whom. Our sense of being a people, that holy sense of patriotism, is generated by war and war alone. What is there that defines a nation beyond its wars?”

  Ruppert thought it over. “There's a lot. Culture, learning, science-”

  “Irrelevant,” Crane interrupted. “Now, consider the conditions of our existence as living organisms. Organisms can multiply rapidly, at a geometric rate, so their numbers are limited only by the need for each individual to consume resources and sustain itself. There are limited resources available at any given place and time. So they must compete. The slightest advantage-faster, stronger, smarter-determines who lives and who dies. Over time, advantages accumulate.

  “The role you served, Daniel, in your former occupation, was the role of coordinating information-the bee dancing before the hive, the ant laying down a scent trail to a food source. It was more complicated, of course. The point is that myth is used to program the group behavior of human beings, to direct their fear, their violence and their productivity as needed. We all have a natural fear for the security of ourselves and our families-so much of the world, and the future, is simply unknown. Myth allows us to nurture that fear, and to pool it into a collective monster. This is the process that permits us to compete for resources as one human group against other human groups, and of course against lone, dissenting individuals like yourself.

  “Evolution, as I was saying, results from competition over scarce resources. Colonies of bacteria, colonies of ants wage wars on one another. Trees poison the soil against one another. We have ongoing wars in our bodies, antibodies fighting off invasive disease.

  “From the smallest bacterium to the greatest civilizations, the same rules apply. Those who are able to band together and fight, dominate or destroy, are the victors in the evolutionary contest. But victory is always temporary, and there is always another fight tomorrow.

  “So, war is holy because it the means by which the group binds together to protect and provide for its members. The word religion itself means ‘to bind back together.’ Are you following me, Daniel?”

  “So you exploit people’s beliefs for fun and profit.”

  “No!” Crane’s fist slammed into the black desktop, causing the holographic city of Rome to scramble and shudder. “War is the thing that makes us, war raised us from the primordial sea into creatures that build cities and nations, war evolved all forms of life on the planet, war makes us strong and makes us strive, war brings us together, tells us who we are, makes us more, the essence of the nation and of the human being and of all life.” Crane leaned in close, his mouth a flat line, his cold blue eyes unnaturally bright.

  “War is God,” he whispered. “And God is war.”

  Ruppert sat in his wheelchair, looking back into Crane’s eyes. It was a long, tense moment, and then something beeped in Crane’s pocket. He removed a flat screen the size of business card.

  “I have an appointment,” Crane said. “You see? Even I am just a servant in the vineyards of the Lord. I’ve enjoyed our talk, Daniel, but tomorrow we’re down to business.” He opened a drawer in his side of the desk, then handed Ruppert a pen and a pad of paper. “I’m going to need you to write down everything, naturally."

  “I’m sorry?” Ruppert asked. He felt dazed by their conversation, detached from reality.

  “A history of what you’ve done,” Crane said. “An account of your crimes against the state and so on. And do grant me the courtesy of naming names. Note anyone who assisted you in your crimes. As I said, we have no need of secrets in this place.” He touched the desktop, and the two Army guards returned with the obese orderly.

  Crane stood and straightened his jacket, leaving his tie undone. “Remember what we talked about, Daniel. Consider your place in what remains of this world.” The wall panel slid away for him, and he turned and exited the room.

  “I’m sure I will,” Ruppert said. The orderly turned him around, then wheeled him out of the room, a soldier
close on either side.

  THIRTY

  They did not return Ruppert to the room where he’d awoken, but to a narrow, private room that looked as if it might have been converted from a janitor’s storeroom. It was no cleaner than the rest of the hospital, and smelled just as sour, and Ruppert decided it was less a gesture of generosity than an attempt to prevent him from talking to other patients and spreading any of the classified information he knew. He’d been placed in information quarantine.

  Dr. Crane did not send for Ruppert the next day, or the next. He had no reading material and no screen to watch, so he resorted to the pad of paper Crane had given him. Instead of a confession, he tried to draw a cartoon picture of Vice President Hartwell, and eventually he wrote letters to both Lucia and to Madeline, wishing them both the best. He knew they would never be delivered, but it felt good. After four days, he also wrote a note to Dr. Crane:

  Dr. Crane:

  You make a strong argument, but I don’t believe you.

  Ruppert paused, not sure what else to add. Then he wrote:

  You may be right. Historically, you are right. But there must be another way to live. And shouldn’t we be trying to figure out what that might be?

  He stared at what he’d written, and he sighed and put away the notepad. Reading and writing made him dizzy. He wondered what drugs he was on.

  On the seventh night in the private room, he dreamed of earthquakes and woke to silence. He lay in complete darkness-even the annoying little lights on the monitoring machines had vanished.

  Voices shouted from the floors below him. Then there was a long quiet, maybe a few hours, he thought he drifted in and out of sleep during this, but he couldn’t be sure. He was startled by a sudden eruption of gunfire below, which quieted, then resumed, then trickled down to a random shot fired here and there around the detention facility.

  It was just before dawn when the door to his room opened, but it wasn’t the large orderly or any of the nurses who occasionally dropped by to silently refill his meds. It was the two young soldiers who’d escorted him to meet Dr. Crane, one of them with blond stubble on his scalp, one with red. The hallway behind them lay dark, but both of them held flashlights.