Hazards of Time Travel Page 3

  By this time the arrestee had shut her teary eyes in shame, revulsion, dread. No need to see the show of hands another time.

  The officers hauled me out of the school by a rear exit, paying absolutely no heed to my protests of being in pain from the tight handcuffs and their grip on my upper arms. Immediately I was forced into an unmarked police vehicle resembling a small tank with plow-like gratings that might be used to ram against and to flatten protesters.

  Roughly I was thrown into the rear of the van. The door was shut and locked. Though I pleaded with the officers, who were seated in the front of the vehicle, on the other side of a barred, Plexiglas barrier, no one paid the slightest attention to me, as if I did not exist.

  The officers appeared to be ST4 and ST5. It was possible that they were “foreign”-born/ indoctrinated NAS citizens who had not been allowed to learn English.

  I thought—Will anyone tell my parents where I am? Will they let me go home?

  Panicked I thought—Will they “vaporize” me?

  Heralded by a blaring siren I was taken to a fortresslike building in the city center of Pennsboro, the local headquarters of Homeland Security Interrogation. This was a building with blank bricked-up windows that was said to have once been a post office, before the Reconstitution of the United States into the North American States and the privatizing and gradual extinction of the postal service. (Many buildings from the old States remained, now utilized for very different purposes. The building to which my mother had gone for grade school had been converted to a Children’s Diagnostic and Surgical Repair Facility, for instance; the residence hall in which my father had lived, as a young medical student, in the years before he’d been reclassified as MI, was now a Youth Detention and Re-education Facility. The Media Dissemination Bureau, where my brother Roddy worked, was in an old brownstone building formerly the Pennsboro Public Library, in the days when “books” existed to be held in the hand—and read!) In this drafty place I was brought to an interrogation room in the Youth Disciplinary Division, forcibly seated in an uncomfortable chair with a blinding light shining in my face, and a camera aimed at me, and interrogated by strangers whom I could barely see.

  Repeatedly I was asked—“Who wrote that speech for you?”

  No one, I said. No one wrote my speech, or helped me write it—I’d written it myself.

  “Did your father Eric Strohl write that speech for you?”

  No! My father did not.

  “Did your father tell you what to write? Influence you? Are these questions your father’s questions?”

  No! My own questions.

  “Did either of your parents help you write your speech? Influence you? Are these questions their questions?”

  No, no, no.

  “Are these treasonous thoughts their thoughts?”

  I was terrified that my father, or both my parents, had been arrested, and were being interrogated too, somewhere else in this awful place. I was terrified that my father would be reclassified no longer MI but SI (Subversive Individual) or AT (Active Traitor)—that he might meet the same fate as Uncle Tobias.

  My valedictorian speech was examined line by line, word by word, by the interrogators—though it was just two printed double-spaced sheets of paper with a few scrawled annotations. My computer had been seized from my locker and was being examined as well.

  And all my belongings from my locker—laptop, sketchbook, backpack, cell phone, granola bars, a soiled school sweatshirt, wadded tissues—were confiscated.

  The interrogators were brisk and impersonal as machines. Almost, you’d have thought they might be robot-interrogators—until you saw one of them blink, or swallow, or glare at me in pity or disgust, or scratch at his nose.

  (Even then, as Dad might have said, these figures could have been robots; for the most recent AI devices were being programmed to emulate idiosyncratic, “spontaneous” human mannerisms.)

  Sometimes an interrogator would shift in his seat, away from the blinding light, and I would have a fleeting but clear view of a face—what was shocking was, the face appeared to be so ordinary, the face of someone you’d see on a bus, or a neighbor of ours.

  My valedictorian address had been timed to be no more than eight minutes long. That was the tradition at our school—a short valedictorian address, and an even shorter salutatorian address. My English teacher Mrs. Dewson had been assigned to “advise” me—but I hadn’t shown her what I’d been writing. (I hadn’t shown Dad, or Mom, or any of my friends—I’d wanted to surprise them at graduation.) After a half-dozen failed starts I’d gotten desperate and had the bright idea of asking numbered questions—twelve, in all—of the kind my classmates might have asked if they’d had the nerve—(some of these the very questions I’d asked my teachers, who had never given satisfactory answers)—like What came before the beginning of Time?

  And What came before the Great Terrorist Attacks of 9/11?

  Our RNAS calendar dates from the time of that attack, which was before my birth, but not my parents’ births, and so my parents could remember a pre-NAS time when the calendar was different—time wasn’t measured in just a two-digit figure but a four-digit figure! (Under the old, now-outlawed calendar, my mother and father had been born in what had been called the twentieth century. It was against the law to compute birth dates under the old calendar, but Daddy had told me—I’d been born in what would have been called the twenty-first century if the calendar had not been reformed.)

  NAS means North American States—more formally known as RNAS—Reconstituted North American States, which came into being some years after the Great Terrorist Attacks, as a direct consequence of the Attacks, as we were taught.

  Following the Attacks there was an Interlude of Indecisiveness during which time issues of “rights”—(the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Civil Rights law, etc.)—vs. the need for Patriot Vigilance in the War Against Terror were contested, with a victory, after the suspension of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by executive order, for PVIWAT, or Patriot Vigilance. (Yes, it is hard to comprehend. As soon as you come to the end of such a sentence, you have forgotten the beginning!)

  How strange it was to think there’d been a time when the regions known as (Reconstituted) Mexico and (Reconstituted) Canada had been separate political entities—separate from the States! On a map it seems clear, for instance, that the large state of Alaska should be connected with the mainland United States, and not separated by what was formerly “Canada.” This too was hard to grasp and had never been clearly explained in any of our Patriot Democracy History classes, perhaps because our teachers were not certain of the facts.

  The old, “outdated” (that is, “unpatriotic”) history books had all been destroyed, my father said. Hunted down in the most remote outposts—obscure rural libraries in the Dakotas, below-ground stacks in great university libraries, microfilm in what had been the Library of Congress. “Outdated”/“unpatriotic” information was deleted from all computers and from all accessible memory—only reconstituted history and information were allowed, just as only the reconstituted calendar was allowed.

  This was only logical, we were taught. There was no purpose to learning useless things, that would only clutter our brains like debris stuffed to overflowing in a trash bin.

  But there must have been a time before that time—before the Reconstitution, and before the Attacks. That was what I was asking. Patriot Democracy History—which we’d had every year since fifth grade, an unchanging core of First Principles with ever-more detailed information—was only concerned with post-Terrorist events, mostly the relations of the NAS with its numerous Terrorist Enemies in other parts of the world, and an account of the “triumphs” of the NAS in numerous wars. So many wars! They were fought now at long-distance, and did not involve living soldiers, for the most part; robot-missiles were employed, and powerful bombs said to be nuclear, chemical, and biological. In our senior year of high school we were required to take a course titled “Wars of
Freedom”—these included long-ago wars like the Revolutionary War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the more recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars—all of which our country had won—“decisively.” We were not required to learn the dates or causes of these wars, if there were actual causes, but battle-places and names of high-ranking generals, political leaders, and presidents; these were provided in columns to be memorized for exams. The question of Why? was never asked—and so I’d asked it in class, and in my valedictory address. It had not occurred to me that this was Treason-Speech, or that I was Questioning Authority.

  The harsh voices were taking a new approach: Was it one of my teachers who’d written the speech for me? One of my teachers who’d “influenced” me?

  The thought came to me—Mr. Mackay! I could blame him, he would be arrested . . .

  But I would never do such a thing, I thought. Even if the man hated me, and had me arrested for treason, I could not lie about him.

  AFTER TWO HOURS of interrogation it was decided that I was an “uncooperative subject.” In handcuffs I was taken by YD officers to another floor of Home Security which exuded the distressing air of a medical unit; there I was strapped down onto a movable platform and slid inside a cylindrical machine that made clanging and whirring noises close against my head; the cylinder was so small, the surface only an inch or so from my face, I had to shut my eyes tight to keep from panicking. The interrogators’ voices, sounding distorted and inhuman, were channeled into the machine. This was a BIM (Brain-Image Maker)—I’d only heard of these—that would determine if I was telling the truth, or lying.

  Did your father—or any adult—write your speech for you?

  Did your father—or any adult—influence your speech for you?

  Did your father—or any adult—infiltrate your mind with treasonous thoughts?

  Barely I could answer, through parched lips—No. No, no!

  Again and again these questions were repeated. No matter what answers I gave, the questions were repeated.

  Yet more insidious were variants of these questions.

  Your father Eric Strohl has just confessed to us, to “influencing” you—so you may as well confess, too. In what ways did he influence you?

  This had to be a trick, I thought. I stammered—In no ways. Not ever. Daddy did not.

  More harshly the voice continued.

  Your mother Madeleine Strohl has confessed to us, both she and your father “influenced” you. In what ways did they influence you?

  I was sobbing, protesting—They didn’t! They did not influence me . . .

  (Of course, this wasn’t true. How could any parents fail to “influence” their children? My parents had influenced me through my entire life—not so much in their speech as in their personalities. They were good, loving parents. They had taught Roddy and me: There is a soul within. There is “free will” within. If—without—the State is lacking a soul, and there is no “free will” that you can see. Trust the inner, not the outer. Trust the soul, not the State. But I would not betray my parents by repeating these defiant words.)

  At some point in the interrogation I must have passed out—for I was awakened by deafening noises, in a state of panic. Was this a form of torture? Noise-torture? Powerful enough to burst eardrums? To drive the subject insane? We’d all heard rumors of such torture-interrogations—though no one would speak openly about them. Shaken and excited Roddy would come home from his work at Media Dissemination to tell us about certain “experimental techniques” Homeland Security was developing, using laboratory primates—until Mom clamped her hands over her ears and asked him to please stop.

  The deafening noises stopped abruptly. The interrogation resumed.

  But it was soon decided then that I was too upset—my brain waves were too “agitated”—to accurately register truth or falsity, so I was removed from the cylindrical imaging machine, and an IV needle was jabbed into a vein in my arm, to inject me with a powerful “truth-serum” drug. And again the same several questions were asked, and I gave the same answers. Even in my exhausted and demoralized state I would not tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear: that my father, or maybe both my parents, had “influenced” me in my treasonous ways.

  Or any of my teachers. Or even Mr. Mackay, my enemy.

  I’d been taken out of the hateful BIM, and strapped to a chair. It was a thick squat “wired” chair—a kind of electric chair—that sent currents of shock through my body, painful as knife-stabs. Now I was crying, and lost control of my bladder.

  The interrogation continued. Essentially it was the same question, always the same question, with a variant now and then to throw me off stride.

  Who wrote your speech for you? Who “influenced” you? Who is your collaborator in Treason?

  It was your brother Roderick who reported you. As a Treason-Monger and a Questioner of Authority, you have been denounced by your brother.

  I began to cry harder. I had lost all hope. Of all the things the interrogators had told me, or wanted me to believe, it was only this—that Roddy had reported me—that seemed to me possible, and not so very surprising.

  I could remember how, squeezing my hand when he’d congratulated me about my good news, Roddy had smiled—his special smirking-smile just for me.

  Congratulations, Addie!

  “Disciplinary Measure”

  Next morning I was taken from my cell and returned to Youth Interrogation.

  Half-carried from my cell, handcuffed and my ankles shackled, I was very very tired, very sick, scarcely conscious.

  It was my hope that my parents would be waiting for me—that they’d been summoned to come get me, and take me home. I would accept it that I’d be forbidden to attend graduation—forbidden even to graduate from high school; I would accept it that I might be sent to a Youth Rehabilitation camp, as it had been rumored the boys at Pennsboro High had been, who’d been arrested by Youth Disciplinary. All I wanted was to see my parents—to rush at them, and throw myself into their arms . . .

  Some months ago my parents had celebrated my seventeenth birthday with me. It had been a happy time!—but seemed now a lost, childish time. I had not felt like seventeen and now, desperate for my parents, I scarcely felt like a teenager at all.

  Of course my parents were nowhere near. Probably they did not know what had happened to me. And I did not dare ask about them.

  Instead I was being sternly informed: several Patriot Scholars had been arrested yesterday afternoon, simultaneous with my arrest, in a Youth Disciplinary “sweep.” After a season or more of relatively few such sweeps and seizes, YDDHS was “cracking down” on “potential subversives.”

  These Patriot Scholars were graduating seniors from other high schools in the area. Their names, too, had been handed over to YDDHS by the principals of their schools. The question was put bluntly to me: Was I, Adriane Strohl, a collaborator with these students? Was I a co-conspirator?

  Their names were told to me: I’d never heard of any one of them.

  Their faces appeared on three overhead TV screens: I’d never seen any one of them before.

  A camera was turned on me, in a blaze of blinding light. I had to assume that my frightened face was being beamed into other interrogation rooms, where the arrested Patriot Scholars were being held.

  Repeatedly I was asked: Was I a collaborator with any one, or more, of these individuals? Was I a co-conspirator?

  All I could answer was No.

  Weakly, hopelessly—No.

  CHEN, MICHAEL was a very young-looking Asian-American boy with sleek black hair worn to his collar and widened, very dark and alarmed eyes. He, too, had been named valedictorian of his graduating class, at Roebuck High School. A glance at CHEN, MICHAEL and you knew that this was a smart boy, probably ST3.

  PADURA, LAUREN was a thick-bodied girl with a strong-boned if rather ashen face and damp eyes, probably ST2. She was sitting as upright as possible, though handc
uffed and shackled at the ankles; she was a student at East Lawrence High. A glance at PARUDA, LAUREN, and you knew that this was a girl who thought for herself and very likely, in her classes, asked questions as I had.

  ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY was a tall lanky dark-blond boy with a blemished face, thick glasses, and a small mustache on his upper lip, ST1 like me. He had been named salutatorian of his class at Rumsfeld High and looked like a math/computer whiz—one glance at ZOLL, JOSEPH JAY and you knew that here was a boy you wanted for your friend, whose kindness, patience, and computer expertise would be invaluable.

  The four of us, on the TV monitors, were not looking great. Our eyes were bloodshot. Our mouths were trembling. Whatever we’d done, we regretted it. We didn’t look innocent. We didn’t any longer resemble high school seniors—we looked much younger. Just kids. Scared kids. Kids needing their mom and dad. Kids without a clue what was happening to them.

  A panicked thought came to me—what if one of the Patriot Scholars suddenly confessed to “collaborating” with the rest of us? Would we all be executed?

  A brisk voice informed us that we had thirty seconds to compose our confessions. At the end of these thirty seconds, if no one had confessed, one Patriot Scholar would be suitably “disciplined” with a Domestic Drone Strike (DDS)—on camera.

  We were terrified—paralyzed. No one spoke.

  Sleek-black-haired CHEN, MICHAEL opened his mouth and tried to speak, but no words came out.

  There were tears, and agitation, in PADURA, LAUREN’S face—but no words issued from her mouth.

  Then, I heard myself pleading, in a thin wavering voice, that we were not “collaborators”—we didn’t know one another, we’d never seen one another before, we didn’t know one another’s names . . .

  Indifferently the off-screen voice was counting: eleven, sixteen, twenty-one . . . Twenty-seven, twenty-eight . . .

  My heart was pounding so violently, I thought that it would burst. My eyes darted from one TV monitor to the others—as the Patriot Scholars trembled and cringed in their chairs, narrowing their eyes, yet unable to shut their eyes entirely.