A burly man wearing a black NaPol uniform stepped forward and flung Devin’s multi at him. Devin tried to catch it but his wrists were still restrained. It bounced off his chest and into his lap.
“You’ve been up to a lot of illegal activity,” barked the nat.
“Like what?”
“Well, let’s see. For starters, illegal immigration. Then there’s carrying false identification. Oh, and smuggling and possession and use and trafficking of illegal drugs,” explained the nat whose coffee breath Devin could smell from six feet away.
“Illegal immigration? But I’m a citizen.”
“You’re a citizen all right, a citizen of Goldstein. That makes you an illegal,” continued the nat as he moved towards Devin. “Anti-pats ain’t citizens.”
“Did you bother to get a travel visa?” asked the man in the black suit. “You know you cannot cross a state line without a visa, Mr. Moore,” he continued. “You’re in a lot of trouble.”
“This is ridiculous,” Devin replied.
“But I’m here to help you,” the man explained.
Devin rolled his eyes at the man’s condescending tone. “Help me? You’re here to help me? How?”
Devin’s reply agitated the nat. Blood flushed into his face. He stepped forward as if he was about grab Devin’s throat with both of his hairy, paw-like hands while Devin lay unthreateningly restrained in his bed. The old man in the suit held him back.
“Who the hell are you and why does this pig of yours want to strangle me?” Devin asked.
The man in the suit pushed the burly nat back as he took a seat next to Devin’s bed. “My name is Axel Morgenthau. I am the Director of National Police.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“We know all about you, Mr. Moore.”
“I said I want a lawyer!”
The Director pulled his chair close to Devin’s side and placed his hand on Devin’s restrained wrist to calm him. “We know everything, Mr. Moore. A lawyer cannot help you, now. Lawyers cannot help anti-pats. We’ve compiled surveillance video of you since you got off the train. We know the very cab you rode in. We picked up the driver and she gave us information on you. We even had her send you to a hotel where we could surveill you more effectively.”
“Ramielle?”
“She’s a true patriot,” chimed the nat.
“We know everything, Devin. We have incontrovertible evidence. You are going to a detention facility for a long time.”
“You need a conviction first.”
“Like I said, you’re an anti-pat. No trial will be necessary. But there is some good news, Mr. Moore. We’ve actually been expecting you for some time. Well, not you specifically but someone like you.” Morgenthau continued.
“What?”
“We have moles, Devin. Yes. Undercover ops. And they’re back in your little rogue colony up there right now as we speak. They’ve been telling us for a while that your people are planning something. They tell us they are planning an attack of some sort. They tell us you call it ‘The Delivery’.”
“I know nothing of anyone’s plans.”
Morgenthau ignored Devin’s reply and continued, “It seems your people believe we are planning an operation to liberate your colony and it seems as though your people don’t want that to happen. It seems that Goldstein is filled with anti-patriots. Why is that, Mr. Moore?”
“Because they don’t want to be slaves, I suppose.”
“Slaves?” Morgenthau laughed. “This is a democracy. Slaves? Americans are the freest people in the world.”
“Slaves,” Devin replied indignantly. “America is dead.” The nat growled, his face getting even redder.
“Let’s shift gears a little, Mr. Moore. I’m assuming you’ve been exiled? May I ask for what?”
“I broke the law.”
“What law?”
“The only law.”
“Let me guess, you stole something.”
“That’s right. I did it. I’m guilty. But I’ve broken no valid laws here.”
“Valid is what the government says it is.”
“I haven’t injured anyone.”
“But you have, Devin. You have injured someone. You’ve injured society. When you break societies’ laws, no matter how minor they seem to you, you injure society.”
“Society isn’t a ‘someone’. It’s just the sum of people that make it up.”
“Society is greater than that.” Morgenthau rose from his seat. “I can see that they’ve indoctrinated you, Devin. It leads me increasingly to the conclusion that you truly are the Goldstein agent we’ve been waiting for.”
“I wasn’t ‘indoctrinated’ until I got here, until I learned what you people are all about. You’re all savages. You deserve your fate.” Sensing that he had just entered Morgenthau’s trap, Devin tried to back himself out, “…whatever the hell that fate is.” But it was too late. He was caught.
“And so we come to it,” replied Morgenthau.
“What?” asked Devin, coyly.
“The Delivery.”
“What of it?” asked Devin.
The nat popped his knuckles as a jagged, jack-o-lantern grin spread across his fat face.
“We know it’s you, Devin. We know you are going to make it.”
Devin stared down at his wrists which were still tightly fastened by the nylon straps. “So is that what I’m being detained for, suspicion of terrorism?”
Director Morgenthau scratched his head carefully so as not to dislodge his perfectly combed, thin, silver hair. A wide, cosmetically enhanced smile widened across his leathery face further exposing his set of giant horse teeth. “We haven’t charged you with anything yet, Mr. Moore.”
“So why am I restrained? What about my rights?”
“Rights?” Morgenthau laughed. Morgenthau’s giant teeth extruded even further from his freakish grin as he chuckled. His squinty eyes squeezed into tiny black slits. “You anti-pats are always evoking that damn Constitution. Well I’ve got news for you, Devin. It’s just a god damn piece of paper.”
“So what do you want from me, then?”
Morgenthau’s teeth retracted back into his face. “You know what we want. We want you to show us The Delivery. Turn it over to us, disarmed of course. Then we can talk about modifying your detention.”
“Modifying my detention?”
“Modifying it from long and difficult to long and not so difficult. The choice is yours.”
“That’s not much of a choice.”
“We’re not so generous with anti-pats.”
“You said you searched my hotel?”
“That’s correct.”
“That’s where it is.”
“The Delivery? We swept the entire building. We found nothing useful.”
“It’s in my room, in plain view.”
“There was nothing. Now you’re playing games. Don’t make me turn you over to the examiners. They’re examination methods can be most unpleasant. You see, we already know what you dislike since we’ve already downloaded it from your brain,” Morgenthau explained with a new Cheshire grin.
“It’s there, in plain view. Look again. It’s not what you think. I was surprised by it, myself. The whole thing’s absurd.”
“You are in no position to play games with us. You can start by telling me what it is. That will buy you some time before the examination. Don’t be Quixotic, Devin. You’re cause is totally lost.”
Devin changed tactics. “It’s there, but don’t worry. It can’t do any damage without me.” He was playing a weak hand, but it was all he had left.
“Sounds like he’s a host. Let’s liquidate him now just to be safe,” argued the nat.
“Too dangerous. That might trigger some suicide cell somewhere.” Morgenthau pushed his chair back to the wall. “I’m going to leave now, Mr. Moore. I wish I could say it was a pleasure speaking with you but, unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve made a great deal of progress. I’m going to turn you over
to the examiners, now.” The nat grinned with excitement. “Good luck to you. Maybe we’ll get to talk again.”
Devin, dreading the now eminent torture, worked up a burst of defiance as a way of building up his courage. “No! Good luck to you!” he shouted back as Morgenthau was exiting the room. “You just better hope I don’t decide to deliver it right now. That would be very bad for you and especially for your fascist, pig nat, here.”
“Predictable,” lamented Morgenthau as he glanced back. “He appears to be acting disorderly. Please subdue him.”
Finally unleashed, the nat lunged forward and wrapped his fingers around Devin’s throat. He squeezed so tight that Devin’s airway closed shut. Then the blood rushed into his eyeballs and they felt as if they would burst out of their sockets.
Chapter Thirteen
Devin was taken to a dark place, a room seemingly without walls. He laid on his back, restrained to a hard aluminum gurney. A halogen light clicked on and beamed a buzzing prominence of white fire into his eyes. The thin membranes of his eyelids offered little defense against the searing rays. He laid there, slowly roasting under the halogen sun for what seemed to be hours.
Am I being watched? He asked himself. Most likely. Am I going to be tortured? Probably. Will I be killed? Maybe. No, probably not. Not right away, anyway. He repeated and answered those questions in his mind over and over. There was no new information to process, no means of answering with any more certainty than the moment before yet he repeated asking and answering the questions again and again while restrained on his back on the gurney under the white hot halogen sun.
Devin did not want to be tortured. He was not particularly brave and he had a low pain threshold. Nor did he have any loyalty to Goldstein, or so he thought. He didn’t want to be a martyr for them or for anyone else for that matter.
Torture was supposed to be illegal, anyway. But that was the hypocrisy of NaPol. The legal system which they were charged with enforcing clearly did not apply to them. Such as it was with all government.
It was unlikely that the download of his consciousness would enable the nats to discern anything actionable about The Delivery. Human thoughts are not written out in long hand like a journal. The hotwire technique captured an alchemy of sensory perception. There are frames and flickers of images, bursts of scent, pitches and tones, tactile sensations, the occasional uttered or written word. Emotional responses of fear, excitement, sadness, anger, joy come out. These could all be downloaded via hotwire implant with great ease by the NaPol specialists but assembling them into anything coherent was more art than science.
They couldn’t possibly know what The Delivery was just by probing Devin’s consciousness, not with any certainty. But they could know the incendiary fire of hatred that he felt towards the abusive nats which was based upon his recent, brutal experiences with them. The animosity downloaded from his brain was a parameter that fit neatly into the nat’s profile of a ‘motivated anti-patriot’. It gave them a pretext to torture him for all the laws and rules could be suspended so long as it could be shown that there was an ‘emergency’.
Had he not been abused by the nats he would not have built up so much animosity. Lacking pretext, the nats would then have to just blatantly lie in order to justify torture. That made them somewhat uneasy.
Now Devin’s mind was clear and he knew what was in store for him. They were going to torture him until he revealed The Delivery and he would sooner or later give them what they wanted. To hell with Goldstein, anyway. He had no intentions of being their sacrificial errand boy.
But what would happen after he gave them what they wanted? They would certainly not accept it. It was preposterous. They would not believe him and would just throw him back into a cell to await another round of ‘aggressive interrogation’. He laughed.
When will the interrogators show up? What was taking so long? Where were they? He thought.
“Come on now! I’ll tell you everything! I’ll give you what you want!” He shouted.
The hot rays of the halogen star burned his face. He felt the heat soak into his eyes through his closed his eyelids. He was already exhausted and it had only been a few hours. He wanted desperately to sleep. He was certain that they must have drugged him.
Don’t do it. Don’t give it to them, he thought to himself. To hell with them. Let them torture me.
“Torture me, you bastards! I won’t give you anything,” He shouted.
His shoulders ached. He was becoming restless and fidgety but hopelessly trapped in the nylon straps holding him down against the gurney. He couldn’t stand another minute of being restrained.
He decided to beg them to unbind him and he would give The Delivery to them in exchange. They weren’t savages, after all, they’re government officials. Government officials don’t torture needlessly. He took a deep breath and called out. The words came out differently than he expected…
“You all go straight to hell!”
Why did I say that? He thought. That was a big mistake, a huge mistake. I squandered my goodwill. Soon the nat goons will storm into the room and torture me for sure. They’ll come with pliers for my fingernails. Maybe they’d bring electrodes for my testicles. Maybe a hammer for my thumbs. Maybe acid. Beg for mercy! Beg for it before they come, he thought. He took a deep breath and called out again…
“Why don’t you bastards come in here and do it!”
Maybe an old-fashioned, leather-gloved beating awaited him, he thought. Maybe simulated drowning. Maybe choking. Maybe a red hot iron. Maybe dogs. Not dogs! I hate dogs! Beg for mercy. Do it.
“Do you hear me you bastards? I’m not afraid of you! You go to hell you…”
Maybe they would drill holes into his teeth. Maybe he would have his skin ripped off with tiny hooks. Maybe they would stretch him on a rack.
“Rot in hell, you! Rot in hell! I’ll never give you anything.”
He fell silent. He lay there for another hour focused only on his breathing under the blazing white sun.
The lamp went off. The buzzing stopped. He was alone in a deep space of total, silent darkness. It was suffocating, complete silence save for his own breathing which had become so loud against the void that he had to quiet it by breathing carefully through his mouth. It was unimaginably, perfectly, totally dark; dark to the point that he couldn’t gauge the distance to his own limbs.
It was so completely dark that he felt he would never see anything again. He wondered if he had been blinded by some hotwire brain tinkering. The horror of blindness welled up in his mind. Am I really blind? He asked himself. The nats could easily control his visual cortex by keystroke entry.
A blue halo appeared. Was it put there by them? Were they planting hallucinations into his brain? Every direction he looked he saw the blue halo set upon total blackness.
No, he wasn’t blind, he decided. The halo was left by the light of the lamp. It had burned a silhouette into his visual receptors.
The air was completely still. It was neither warm nor cool. He couldn’t even feel it as he sucked it in.
Devin recalled how when he was a teenager a schoolmate that he knew had drowned. The springtime runoff was turbulent and icy cold and the poor boy fell into it after slipping off a stump along the banks. The icy current paralyzed him for just a moment and that delay was enough to sweep him away as horrified onlookers watched helplessly from the shore. His body was found snagged on a branch a mile downstream, white and rigid.
Devin received the horrible news from neighbor kid. “Drowning ain’t so bad,” the kid explained. “My dad says that once you breathe in water, you don’t feel nothin’ no more. It’s like you’re just breathin’ normal but then you go to sleep.”
Devin never believed him. He often envisioned the poor drowning boy, flailing about in the icy water, choking, fighting, grasping, pulled under, expecting, praying for a benevolent god-hand to reach down and rescue him, but no hand would come.
Now, as Devin lay restrained and drownin
g in a pool of silent blackness awaiting eminent torture or death, he felt like flailing about, ripping the straps loose from the gurney and bolting into the darkness. It was useless. He could not break free. And there would be no benevolent god hand to reach down and rescue him.
How much longer? He asked himself not quite sure if he was asking out loud or not. It had been another hour.
He thought about Director Morgenthau, dressed in his tailored black suit, close by somewhere, sitting behind a pane, smirking at the greenish hues of the infrared feed— Devin strapped to his aluminum gurney, his white pupils darting blindly to and fro in the darkness.
Devin hated Morgenthau. He wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill him like an animal, ripping out his arteries with his teeth. He hated him more than the nats that had choked him and pulsed him in the street. Devin hated them, too but he felt pity for them. They were just mindless goons, brainless henchmen executing the orders of their lieutenants. Morgenthau, however, knew better. He had chosen the role of torturer. He had profited from it. His soul was willing and corrupted by it. There was no forgiveness for a willing and corrupted soul. Ignorance and fearful compliance were forgivable. Willing corruption was not.
Another hour passed, or so Devin thought. How many, now? Four? Five? Six hours? He had no idea. He wished for a breeze or a creaking noise in the ceiling or a sliver of light. There was nothing, just intergalactic blackness and the whooshing sounds of his breathing.
Then there was something. There was a faint ringing, an ultra high-pitched tone in his ears. Is it in my ears? He thought. It grew louder, slowly, barely, but perceptibly louder. It was mostly in his right ear. Then it bored through his brain and into his left. They are into my brain again! He thought. He was convinced of it.
The drilling, buzzing noise grew louder than even his breathing. Maybe it’s my ears? He thought. No, they’re in my brain. I’m certain of it. Stay sane, he ordered himself.
Was the sound being blasted into the room? He pondered. Yes, it had to be. There must be a speaker somewhere. He turned his head different directions attempting to coordinate the location of the speaker. The pitch remained un-locatable. He shrugged and cringed in his restraints.
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