10.

“The Gang Goes to Guantanamo”

EVER SINCE THE EVOLUTION of culture, mankind has oft concocted tales of the wondrous places that lay beyond their reach, high in the sky. Then technology advanced enough for them to discover that nothing was up there besides huge balls of stuff they already had and an inconceivably large amount of nothing. Some continued to delude themselves into thinking all the cool stuff was still just too far away to see; others started filling the sky with things like chemtrails, predator drones, and smog in order to prevent themselves from being foolish enough to ever get their hopes up again. But no matter what discoveries were made, the notion of a heaven hiding somewhere up there had never completely gone away. Many have even gone in search of it; and the unluckiest of them sometimes thought they found it.

In actuality, they found a little place called Guantanamo Docking Bay, voted “The Universe’s Worst Vacation Spot” for ninety-nine out of the last hundred years. Many surveys had also determined it to be the current leading cause of apostasy.

Hovering two-hundred-and-fifty freedom-units above the Earth, it was the only place where one could still hear the Barney theme song. Constructed as an homage to one of the most notorious prisons in the world’s history, Azkaban, “Space Guantanamo” infamously served as a detention centre for the extraordinarily dangerous and the extraordinarily unlucky. However, guilty or not guilty, the techniques allegedly employed within the desolate concrete walls seemed to be universally effective. In its brochures, the institution boasted a zero percent recidivism rate since the day it opened. Some might have said that’s an easy figure to achieve when you’re a place that never lets anyone leave, but that’s why they’d never asked for public input.

Despite all the good it claimed to do, there were still those who would speak out against the establishment. Claims of human rights violations and unlawful confinement were standard fanfare that the haters would blare. But all that ever resulted in was budget cuts and empty promises. No attempts were ever made by anyone to shut the place down. There was just something about the fact it was “way up there” that seemed to make people not care. “It’s in space,” they would say. “It’s the space people’s problem.” Others would even attempt to defend the prison, insisting it couldn’t be all bad. After all, it cured ALS almost singlehandedly from the contributions it generated doing the Ice Bucket Challenge.

In the minds of most, however, Space Guantanamo had nestled itself neatly into that moral grey area where they technically opposed it, but found it wasn’t really an issue they faced often enough to feel compelled to do anything about. It was a necessary evil, almost. Like traffic, or advertisements, or Mondays. Sure, most of the time none of those things involved rectal infusions, but they were still pretty annoying and much more common. So they were essentially on the same level of badness.

To those who worked there, it was generally considered to be a normal job not dissimilar to other roles within the correctional system. Really, they were just a lesser-known branch of the judicial system that still provided a public service. They weren’t sadistic monsters. They put their pants on in the morning, still laying in bed half-asleep with a toothbrush hanging out of their mouth, just like everyone else. Ask any of them and they would assure you that their job wasn’t all waterboarding and Russian roulette like those darn moving holograms would have you believe. They spent their days interacting with and getting to know the vermin people in their care. They sought to truly understand them. To rehabilitate them. Or at very least to convince them to go be somebody else’s problem. And just because they were sometimes forced to Jack Bauer the location of the bomb out of somebody didn’t mean they were bad people.

THE DAY THE NEW prisoners arrived had been fairly unremarkable. Even their arrival didn’t do anything to shake things up. “Prospective terrorists” was their moniker. But “Terrorist” was a term that had become a lot less meaningful with time, like “Love” or “Hitler.” The correctional officers had worked with enough alleged offenders to know judgement was something to be reserved. Getting excited too soon often led to being let down.

A group of them were stationed around the breakroom table when the door burst open. In stepped a mousy-looking woman with a fitted black skirt and a bun so tight it was a good thing hair didn’t require circulation. She carried a stack of tablets in her hands. After thumbing through them for a moment and separating five, she looked up at her mingling minions.

“Eenie, meenie, miney . . . Johnson and Peters! You look bored; have some work.”

Johnson and Peters did not look bored. In fact, they had been trying to look as busy as possible. But scrubbing at the table with a sleeve and filling every mug with coffee wasn’t convincing enough to escape their boss’s watchful eye. The stack hit the table with a sound reminiscent of a whip crack and she pursed her lips down at them.

“It’s about time you two stepped up from . . . whatever it is you currently do around here.” She said. “This case should be simple. Group of five accused of smuggling a chemical weapon. Their ship is in impound and the prisoners are in cells. Just figure out what’s going on.”

Not one to take questions, she left them to their own devices. And also the devices she left them.

Peters was first to act, snatching a few e-files for himself.

“Hmmm. Uh huh. A few years working together. None of them on any watch lists. Sounds like we got ourselves a freshly radicalized group of agitators.”

“Or! Or . . .” Johnson suggested. “Maybe, and hear me out here, someone is trying to frame them! That would be cool, right? We could be the guys that get to the bottom of it and find the real terrorists.”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s Guantanamo. Nobody’s innocent here. What we really need to do is find which organization it was that infected these morons and then get medieval on all of their asses.”

One of their coworkers put down his fork.

“Maybe you guys should try interviewing the detainees before you start drawing conclusions?”

“Shut up, Frank!” They both snapped back at him in unison.

“Do you want the case!? Huh?” Peters egged him on.

“You wanna be the one to handle this group of bloodthirsty psychopaths?!”

“Well, I mean . . . yeah, sure. If you guys don’t want the case I guess I could take it off your hands.”

“Well, you can eat a dick!” Johnson snarled. He snatched up all the tablets in his arms. “These were given specifically to us, so obviously you can’t be trusted with them!”

They both sneered at him before packing up their supplies and heading out. Frank just sighed and returned to his beans. One day he’d pay off his ex-wife’s house and retire. One day.

NEITHER JOHNSON NOR PETERS perused the files any further on their way down the hall. With chests out and arms swinging like a big Broadway number, they marched down towards the first interrogation room. Peters was first to get there. He reached for the handle with a pale, sinewy hand but Johnson quickly blocked the door with a much beefier arm.

“Wait, wait,” he urged. “We should have a plan or something. Or like, a tactic!”

“Hmmm, you’re right.”

They stood outside for a moment scratching their chins and muttering to themselves.

“How about good cop, bad cop?” Peters suggested.

“Good cop, bad cop!” Johnson exclaimed. “It’s a classic!”

“It’s a classic,” Peters agreed. “And that’s because it works! Alright, I’ll go in first and I’ll be real hostile—”

“So hostile!”

“—And just when they’re starting to think ‘Oh no, I thought I was the psycho-est person here but now I’m trapped with a real psycho. Who knows what he’s gonna do? Why is he turning off the camera? Why is he unzipping his pants?’ That’s when you’ll come in with your slick black hair and devil-may-care attitude. And they’ll think ‘Oh man, I better tell him anything he wants to know or he’ll leave me in here with that incredibly handsome crazy person!’ It’s the perfect plan!”

“The perfect plan!”

“Alright, give me about two minutes to get ’em nice and scared, then come in and do your thing.”

“You got it!”

Devilish smile upon his lips and an unprofessional level of excitement in his eyes, Peters punched the code to open the door. It slid open wide and he took half a step inside before he registered who was seated at the table awaiting him. They hadn’t yet made eye contact before he leapt out of the way and pressed himself flush against the wall while smacking at the close door button with a toddler-esque coordination.

Johnson gaped at him.

“New plan,” Peters stated. “You are gonna be the bad cop.”

“Wait, what?! Why do I have to be the bad cop now?”

“Well look at you, man! It only makes sense. No one is gonna believe someone who looks like me is crazy.”

“What the hell! I don’t look crazy either!”

“Well okay, no, but you look crazier than me!”

“I can’t do crazy, man!” Johnson insisted as he paced back and forth, shooting wild glances and tugging at his hair. “I just can’t. I’m too zen, and my body screams discipline, and I’m gonna be worried the whole time that he doesn’t believe me, and then I’ll get flustered, and I’ll blow the whole thing!”

“Okay, okay, fine!” Peters relented. He pondered the situation for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Alright, don’t be crazy then. Be a hardass!”

“A what?”

“A hardass! One of those angry, driven-by-justice types. Like Officer Brutality!”

“Officer Brutality! That guy’s my hero!”

“Alright, good! Go be Officer Brutality.”

“This is why you’re the idea guy!” Johnson grinned as he pressed the passcode. “I mean, how long have I loved that show for, and never once have I thought to try and be him at work.”

“Game face, man. Game face.”

Johnson bared his teeth and raised his hands like claws at him before stepping through the door. Once inside, his expression soured into that of a drill sergeant smelling flatulence. He chucked the stack of electronic files onto the table, ignoring how they became strewn about, and glowered down at the young lady sitting quietly on the other side.

“You’re in a lot of trouble, Miss Wang.” He growled at her.

She opened her mouth to respond. Before she could, he sucked air through his teeth and slammed his palms onto the glass table.

“WANG!!” He screamed.

The rush of air and spit particles that hit her in the face forced her to blink hard against the unsolicited bellow. Johnson took that as an opportunity to take a few deep breaths, then pick a tablet from the table.

“That’s what’s listed in your file,” he continued to growl. “Wang. Whisper Wang. Is that your name, Miss Wang? Whisper Wang?”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Whisper Wang. Graduated at the top of her class, Whisper Wang. Youngest person to ever be enrolled at the flight academy, Whisper Wang. Voted most antisocial member of her grad group, Whisper Wang. Well there’s just one problem then, ‘Whisper Wang.’” He raised his hands, causing her to pre-emptively flinch. “Whisper Wang is a pretty damn Asian-sounding name!”

He pointed his finger toward her with the dramatics of a court scene in a soap opera. It was a little lost on Whisper, since she happened to already be familiar with her own ethnicity.

She frowned at his hand.

“So what?”

“So what?!” He repeated. “So what?! Well I’ll tell you so what! Everyone knows Asians can’t drive!”

Whisper’s jaw dropped. But before she could respond, the door burst open.

“Sorry I’m late.” Peters said, his voice calm and sultry. He stepped inside with head high and hands behind his back. “Are you alright, Whisper? I can call you Whisper, right?”

“No, you can’t!” Johnson snapped. “Because something isn’t adding up here! Identity theft isn’t a joke . . . whoever you are!”

He slammed his hands on the table again.

“How about you tell me what’s really going on, huh! ‘Cause I think the person in this file is a bit too qualified to be named ‘Whisper Wang!!’”

“How about we all calm down a little bit,” Peters soothed. He took a seat in one of the chairs, then sidled it along the side of the table to get closer to her. “This young lady is clearly distressed, let’s start it a little easier. So, Whisper, you’re a pilot huh?”

“Well, I was! Probably not anymore, though . . .” She grumbled, sinking into her chair.

“How old are you?”

“Sixty-three. I just have great skin.”

“Such a clever thing,” he intoned, sidling a bit closer. “But it might help your case if you can verify the information in your file.”

“‘Kay . . .” The side of her mouth curled down in opposition to her rising eyebrow. “Fine, I’m . . . eighteen.”

“Nice, nice . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing. So, you like flying, Whisper?”

“Sure. I guess. It’s fine. I dunno.”

“Aw, c’mon, now; it’s gotta be better than fine. You got licensed at thirteen. I bet you love it.”

“Sure, yeah, definitely love, and not parental pressure or anything.”

“Family? Ugh, I don’t want to hear about them. Talk about flying more. Do you drive stick?”

“I . . . it’s a spaceship, not a backhoe.”

“That’s a shame. You should branch out. I bet you could do all sorts of things with these little hands.”

“Like choke people?”

Peters grinned.

“I could get into that.”

“Oh.”

“You got a boyfriend, Whisper?”

“No.”

“Oh, c’mon!” He teased. “You can tell me! In fact, you have to tell me.”

She blinked up at him.

“I . . . are you hoping I do or something?”

Peters chuckled with an exaggerated mirth. He grinned up at his bewildered partner, then looked back at Whisper. Slowly, he rose from his chair and loomed over her head, talking through the dark hair that obscured her face.

“I’m just saying you can get into a lot of trouble for lying to me, Whisper,” he grunted into her ear. “I’m a federal officer. I’m also the only friend you got right now. You don’t want to lose your only friend. You want to do anything you can to keep him. You wouldn’t want me to leave you alone in this room with him, do you?”

Eyebrows slowly creeping toward her hairline, she rotated her head over to Johnson. The man stared doe-eyed with his mouth agape at the both of them. Then she felt Peters’s bony hand grab her chin.

“Don’t look at him, look at me,” he ordered her through clenched teeth. He stared into her dark eyes with his own cloudy ones. “Is your boyfriend the one who got you into this? How old is he? How far have you two gone? You ever been with anyone else?”

“H-hey, Peters, can I talk to you outside for a sec?”

“I’m working here!!” He snapped.

“I really think you need a quick break,” Johnson insisted. He grabbed onto his coworker’s arms and started to pull him away. Peters struggled against his burly partner, never breaking eye contact with Whisper. As a last-ditch effort, he grabbed onto the metal table to anchor himself, dragging it for several feet before the piercing shrieks of friction and futility forced him to let go.

“Do you even know what it’s like to have a real man?!” He screamed just before being pushed out the door. Johnson spun back around to face Whisper. His hands slid back and forth down his pant legs and he bit at his lips.

“I . . . I don’t really know what that was,” he admitted.

After realizing it had fallen open again during all of this, Whisper closed her mouth and quickly reassumed her usual expression, with an added purse to her lips.

“You suck at being the good cop.”

In lieu of any wit to wisecrack back, Johnson instead replied with a cough. Not even a manly cough—a feeble and awkward cough that snuffed any semblance of control over the situation. With his entire plan and persona completely thrown off, he now saw no other recourse but to give an awkward nod and walk out of the room. A second later he came back in, scooped up all the files, gave another nod, and was gone once more. Peters was waiting for him just outside. Heavy breaths puffed in and out of his nose.

“What the hell was that?!” Johnson demanded of him.

“I don’t know!!” Peters sarcastically whisper-yelled back. “Why don’t you tell me what the hell was that!? You didn’t even give her time to answer any of my questions!”

“You weren’t asking her any questions about the case or anything!”

“I told you I was starting easy!”

“That was supposed to be easy?! You were talking to her like that guy that used to hang out at the playground by our elementary school.”

“That’s the whole point! I make her really uncomfortable with forward questions so that our other questions that we ask after will start to look appealing by comparison!”

“Oh . . . when you put it like that, it actually makes a bit of sense.”

“Exactly.” Peters put a hand on Johnson’s shoulder. “This is why you should just trust me. If we stuck to my plan we would have got the information we need for the case . . . and I would have gotten some information that would be useful to me for later.”

“Okay, see, I was with you for the first part . . . but what do you mean—”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just go do the next guy.”

Johnson couldn’t help but shoot him a couple sideways looks as they walked, but ultimately opted against addressing the issue further. It was hard to be outraged by anything after working in this place long enough, and by this point they both had seen it all: Chinese water torture, Antarctican sleep torture, Irish sober torture, and all the other regional breaking methods were just tools in their shed of sadness.

In fact, over time they had even become able to discern the method of information extraction being used based solely on the brouhaha being bellowed from any given room. Short, urgent yelp noises were common in pain-inducing programs. Those exposed to prolonged procedures like sleep deprivation would warble a long mournful wail like the kind you hear walking by your city’s cheapest motel at night. There was also this interesting phenomenon where prisoners tended to scream in key with the song being played during music sessions.

However, for all their shortcomings, Johnson and Peters wanted to add a more personal touch to their interrogations. Their job was to gather information, after all. They couldn’t just march into each room and beat every perp like a disobedient rug. In the biz, that was called rock’em-sock’em research, and, frankly, pretty much nobody had enough rage or energy to do that all day. That was really why the thugs and sadists never lasted in this job. Even those that did last weren’t regarded highly amongst their peers. One look at their hands would see their knuckles worn down like the soles on an old pair of shoes, and everyone would know they weren’t a thinker by trade.

Having reached the cell of their next charge, the pair of aspiring professional ponderers stopped again to reassess their plan.

“Alright, let’s try this again.” Johnson said. “I’ll start hard, then you come in soft.”

“‘Kay, gimme a sec to get soft.”

“Think I should threaten him with AIDSbola? That’s scary, right?”

Peters rolled his eyes.

“C’mon, man. Nobody believes in the AIDSbola thing anymore.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll just . . . I dunno . . . scream in his face or something . . .

He punched the numbers to the room without even looking. It was the same for every room; much cheaper than that fingerprint or eye scanning technology. There was still a spot to put your eye, though. Just to keep the riff-raff from getting any ideas of escape.

The door slid open and he stepped inside. There, he found another young person huddled in a chair, nursing a black eye and eagerly anticipating his arrival. Well, young-looking anyway. A quick glance at his file revealed he was actually thirty-five. Thirty-five and not a single facial hair sprouted. Shame; a beard would have been the only way he could have faked a jawline.

“Well, well, well.” Johnson announced, pacing around the room reading a tablet. “If it isn’t the infamous Donaldric Harambe . . . O’chopenisravich!xowalechrist. Am I saying that right?”

“Not even close,” Donald mumbled in his general direction.

“Well, it doesn’t matter!” Johnson put his hands on the glass table and glowered down at his doughy detainee. “Because this room is my town! And I run my town! With an iron. Freaking. Fist!”

He proceeded to punch at the air and followed it up with an uncoordinated front kick at nothing. Huffs and puffs were the only sound in the room. After enough of those to catch his breath, he resumed his previous stance at the table.

“You look uncomfortable, Donaldric. You uncomfortable?”

Donald blinked at him.

“The first thing that happened when I got here was some guy punching me in the face and saying ‘Welcome to Earf.’”

“Hey, that’s a centuries-old tradition for greeting extraterrestrials. You can’t just show up somewhere and hate them for doing things differently than you.”

“I’m . . . I’m also in a cell in Guantanamo. Shouldn’t I be uncomfortable?”

“Ohhhh, right, right.” Johnson mused. He licked his finger, then started thumbing through the tablets. “Rap sheet like yours? Of course being here, in the belly of the beast, might set you a little on edge.”

“What rap sheet?!”

“Servants of the law all stick together, Donaldric! We don’t appreciate civvies abusing and making a mockery of our . . . sacred profession.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

Johnson slammed a tablet on the table and slid it across to Donald.

“Oh, just your list of past offences, Donaldric,” he taunted. “That fuzzy memory of yours starting to come back now?”

“You just totally smashed the screen on this. I can’t read anything.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient!!” The officer leapt from his seat and paced around the room, hands clasped together and biceps in full flex. “Unfortunately for you, I already read it! Impersonating a police officer is a very serious offence. Said in there that you had the uniform on and everything. Running around, accosting kids in a residential neighbourhood. Says you never served any time either. Guess that means you escaped and were never caught . . . until now!”

“I never served any time because I was five!!” Donald bellowed back at him. “Those kids were my friends! We were playing cops and robbers!”

“And how about now, huh, Donaldric?! Are you just playing with your friends now, too?! Huh?! A good old game of Moon Terrorists Conspiring to Distribute a Chemical Weapon?! . . . Huh?!”

“If I say no, are you going to waterboard me?”

“What?!” Johnson sat down in his seat just so he could leap from it again. “Do I look like the type of guy who waterboards?! Look at these arms, dude! I could pop your head like a . . . like a . . . tiny, pop-able watermelon. I don’t need to do pussy stuff like waterboard! And besides, waterboarding is way too old school anyway. We have something called hydroplanking now.”

“Look, I don’t know about any chemical weapons, okay?!” Donald insisted. “The whole reason I took this job is because I wanted something boring and removed where trouble couldn’t find me. But no, no matter where I go I always end up caught up in somebody else’s problem . . . I mean—you think I want this dead-end job?! I should be writing code for NASA or programming Virgin’s service bots. But no. Instead I get to sit on a junk hauler answering phones.”

“Dude, that . . . that sucks.” Johnson couldn’t help but say. “I’m sorry. I mean, Peters is supposed to be the one who listens and cares about your sob story, but I’m not sure where he is.”

“Um . . . thanks? I guess?”

“Actually, yeah; where the hell is that guy, anyway?”

He stood up to leave, but Donald called to him with a final question.

“If I make up some incriminating stuff for everyone else, can I go?”

Johnson cleared his throat and folded his arms.

“That’s not how things work here, Donaldric. We’re not like the Space CIA. It takes more than fake claims to make us do stuff. You’d also have to back it up with fake evidence and a fake alibi for yourself and fake evidence to support your fake alibi. I mean, if you can do all that, then hell yeah! I’ll be glad to let you go!”

“But how am I supposed to—”

“‘Scuse me for a moment.”

He popped out the door quick and scanned the hallway. Not so much as a whiff of the mousse that Peters abused so much of. A few of his nameless and irrelevant coworkers bustled around in the hallway, but it was the commotion coming from the end of the hall that attracted his attention. It called to him like a siren. A deranged, vaguely homicidal-sounding siren, rife with voice cracks and incoherence. Its shrieks filled the halls with passion and vengeance. Rounding the corner, Johnson found it slamming its hands and occasionally face against the door of Whisper’s holding room.

“Keep on hiding, bitch!!” Peters roared at the door in a demonic voice. “I broke out of my cell, you think I won’t break into yours!?”

He pounded on the door several times, all the while showing it his best war face.

“You’re gonna die!! I’m gonna tear you to pieces and mount you on my wall!”

That was followed by a raucous bout of scream laughing. However, Peters’s mirth cut out when Johnson clasped a hand onto his shoulder.

“Dude! What the hell are you doing?!”

“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?! I’m terrifying the living shit out of her!”

Johnson stood silent for a moment, processing the information. It was to no avail.

“WHY?!”

“God, you are so clueless. She’s all alone, man! She has no one to protect her, no one to defend her from the all the horrors and psychos and . . . stuff.”

He shrugged and gave a sly grin.

“Or does she?”

Once more he slammed at the door, this time with extra furor.

“I hope you aren’t thinking that correctional officer slash male model is going to save you!”

“Why?!” Johnson said again. “Why?!”

“Do I have to spell everything out to you?!”

“Honestly, I’d rather you just stop doing things that make me have to ask what you’re doing.”

Peters squinted at him, studying him. After a brief stint of analysis, his eyebrows lifted and he began nodding to himself.

“I suppose it isn’t fair to expect you to be able to keep up with me. Very well; young Miss Wang needs some time to stew in her fear, anyway, before affections can blossom. Whatever. We can do things your way for now. Lead on.”

“Thanks, bro. I actually kinda think I’m starting to underst—”

Despite his order for Johnson to “Lead on,” Peters strode right past him and back in the direction of Donald’s room.

“Uh huh. Uh huh. So what do you got? What did kindergarten cop have to say?”

Johnson managed to overtake him just in time to block the door.

“Oh, him? He’s not talking. I don’t think they keep him in the loop. He’s just there to answer phones. I think he probably just hands the phone to his boss after picking up. Or maybe, MAYBE, he’s secretly the kingpin to it all, and that’s why he was pretending to have the most pointless job ever! DUDE! I think I just figured it out!”

“Maybe, Johnson, maybe. But why don’t we talk with the others first? See what they have to say. Who’s up next?”

He peered down at the file he was handed and couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Oh, great. Well, this should be interesting.”

They ploughed through coworkers and visitors on their way down the hall, smacking stacks of tablets out of hands and shoulder checking any who were smaller than themselves. Naturally, they elicited copious dirty looks, and their efforts even earned a real-life honest-to-goodness stink eye. But none of it registered, as their motivation to do their job was just too formidable. After a half-dozen or so workplace assaults, they arrived at the cell of detainee number three. In deference to past perps, rather than taking the time to formulate another pointless interrogation tactic, they instead just barged right in.

“WILLY!” They cheered in unison.

The Jefferson’s rent-a-cop was startled by the entrance, but quickly resumed his sheepish, hand-clasped stance.

“Hey, guys . . .” He muttered.

“What’s goin’ on, bro?” Johnson asked, taking a seat across from him. “You get shit canned from this place so you decide to go join the bad guys?!”

“No, dude, it’s not like that at all!” Willy insisted. His bottom lip began to tremble. “You aren’t gonna call my mom, are you?”

Peters sucked air through his teeth and pretended to study the file again.

“I don’t know, man. This doesn’t look very good for you. I mean, it’s bad enough that we found you with these guys. When we also consider your dismissal for arson of a federal detention center . . . It really paints a bit of a picture. Don’t you agree, Agent Johnson?”

“He’s got a point there, Willy. That is kind of a terrorist-y sounding thing to do.”

“Aw, god, you guys are right.” Willy’s voice quivered. He put his head in his hands and his elbows on the table. “I should have never let you use my lighter to test the bathroom for linoleum.”

“It’s okay, bro,” Johnson consoled him, resting a hand on his back. “We’re investigators now. We can help you. But you gotta tell us where the drugs are!”

“That’s not what we’re looking for.”

“ . . . The bomb?”

“It’s a biological weapon, dude.”

“Holy Jesus, Willy, what are you doing, bro!?”

“There’s nothing like that on there, dude, I swear!” Willy, well, swore. “Some old dude even locked us in the cargo hold and it was just full of space rocks. Search the ship if you don’t believe me!”

“Well, we are going to search the ship!” Peters said. “Top to bottom, in fact. But it would be way easier on you and us if you just told us where it was.”

“Yeah!” Johnson agreed. “’Cause we got other ships to search . . . with bombs and drugs on them.”

Willy shook his head. His gaze was still cast downward in hopeless despair, obscured by the long, curly hair that lay matted against the coalesced sweat on his face. His fingers trembled as they attempted to scoop the final remnants out of his bag of chips.

“I’m starting to think some of the people this place holds without trial or evidence might actually be innocent,” he whimpered. Peters rolled his eyes.

“Oh, come on, don’t you remember what they taught us at orientation? Even if you can’t prove guilt, everyone is always at least an accomplice to something.”

He joined his partner on Willy’s other side. They both had hands on his back, slumped over as he was, like frat brothers standing vigil while he chucked his groceries after the party. But, also like frat brothers, they didn’t actually care that much about his well-being, and wished he’d hurry up and work through this so they could get back to matters more suited to their tastes.

“Just tell us who the leader of your terrorist club is, bro.” Johnson urged. “And I promise I’ll get you the cell that has the working toilet.”

“I told you, dude, we were set up!” The big man blubbered, trying in vain to stem the stream of snot coming from his nose. “That old Banks guy is who you want! I tried to stop him but he kicked me in the balls! How do you stop a guy who’s willing to do that?! There’s . . . there’s some things you just aren’t supposed to do, man . . .”

“Bro, are you . . . are you crying?”

“N-no I’m just . . . *sniff* . . . cutting water weight . . . ’cause I’m bulking.”

“WARNING: LIE DETECTED.”

Johnson and Peters jumped.

“What the hell was that?!” The former demanded, absent-mindedly reaching for a blaster he didn’t carry.

Willy pulled his face from his hands and looked at him. His eyes were still bleary, but they squinted in confusion.

“That was the lie detector . . .” he informed them. “I forgot we had those.”

Peters gaped at the ceiling.

“Wait, we’ve had lie detectors this whole time?! Are they in every room?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s awesome!” Johnson cheered. “I knew there was no way humans were supposed to be able to do interrogizing on their own.”

“Oh yeah, it’s sooooo awesome!” Peters spat. “I mean, what are we even here for, right!?”

He laughed with a hollow, mirthless laughter that punctuated the rhetorical question with a feeling of unease. He didn’t even smile as he did it. He just stared unblinkingly at his two acquaintances with an intense pokerface, all the while chuckling through clenched teeth.

“In fact, why don’t I just take off this uniform, huh? Take this uniform off the perfectly sculpted body of this peak of biological evolution and hang it on that camera up there in the corner. Let the robots just take over this entire process! See how far our amazing space-age technology gets on its own! Then maybe I just go work at the front desk? Or as the janitor? Or maybe I should be the guy who drives that space food truck that parks behind the cafeteria to sell us the contents of its grease trap. I’m sure those would be much more fitted for . . . for a, a BEACON of charisma and . . . and raw, refined pantology!”

By the end of his speech, his shoulders heaved with his laboured breaths and a couple of buttons had popped during his many tugs for emphasis. Willy and Johnson gaped at him, trying to absorb it all.

“Bro . . .” The latter broached with care, hands slightly raised. “I don’t know what you’re goin’ on about . . . but you do know all those jobs are already done by robots right?”

“Well, I don’t want their help!! I can outperform any machine; just ask any woman!”

He snatched up a fist full of Willy’s scraggly beard.

“Say something to me, you fat sack of crap! Anything! I’ll know if you’re lying too!”

“Dude, you’re really freaking me out . . .”

“You LIE! You LIE!! You’re LYING! I KNOW YOU’RE LYING! YOUR OBESITY DISGUSTS ME!”

“He’s innocent, man! Get off of him!”

“He’s only innocent if I say he is!”

“Stop slapping me, dude!!”

“Why are you taking your shirt off?!”

“Because I am better than the machines!”

RECENTLY PROMOTED AND EVEN more recently disgraced Guantanamo security agent Peters stood in a vacant hallway with his nose stuffed in a corner. Behind him was a hefty prison steward with a hand clamped to the back of his head, holding it in place. They had been standing there in silence for a couple minutes now with all their coworkers passing by without the slightest amount of surprise or intrigue.

“You got it all wrong, man,” he reasoned into his wall nook. His well-rehearsed grin and chuckle manifested by habit while doing so. “It was just a little misunderstanding! And I mean, what, do you really think anybody actually wants you to sit here and hold me all day?”

“Sir, I’m under orders to hold you here until you calm down.” The man replied with an articulate and slow-paced diction. “Your partner has complained of dark and erratic behaviour that he described as ‘totally freaking him out.’”

“He’s being ridiculous!!” Peters slammed his fists against the wall. “And I am also upset! Where is my retribution!? Look at how upset I am! Gaze! Gaze in terror! How can you expect to gaze with my perfect face crammed in this corner like . . . like . . . take your stinkin’ paws off me, you damn, dirty . . . gofer!”

“Sir, I’ve asked you for calm behaviour and you’re giving me the opposite.”

“Fine! You wanna see calm! I’ll show you calm! I’m gonna be so damn calm that you’ll be able to feel the storm that’s coming.”

“Now you’re making it so even your calmness can be considered erratic and threatening.”

“Let go of me! I’m calm! I’m calm! I AM CALM!”

A shrill beeping began emanating from the hand holding his head.

“What is that?! What are you doing to me?! If you’re injecting me with something then I swear I will—”

“Man, that’s just my damn watch!” The attendant barked. He removed the hand from Peters’s head and silenced the device with a finger before folding his arms. “You clearly ain’t gonna calm down, ’cause you clearly got yourself some messed-up anger problems!”

Peters crossed his arms right back and leaned against the wall, shifting his foot back and forth trying to balance. His mouth hung open for a few moments, struggling to form words.

“Ssssssooo . . . uh, w-what are we gonna do then?”

The burly fellow shrugged.

“We? I’m goin’ home. My shift just ended. My daughter’s got a recital; y’all can do whatever the hell y’all want now, for all I care.”

“Oh no way! What kind of recital is it?”

“Zero-G ballet.”

“Wow! I hear that’s really hard to get accepted into.”

“It is, but she’s just so good. She actually got the role of Clara in their production of The Space Nutcracker this year!”

“That’s awesome, man! Good for her!”

“Well thanks, buddy! We’re real proud of her. And hey, I could probably comp you tickets to the next one if you’re interested?”

Peters clasped his hands in front of him, earnest smile etched upon his gaunt face.

“Well, that sounds just lovely.”

“Right on, right on. I should get going, then; don’t wanna miss it. Catch ya later, Peters. And I’ll get right back to you about them tickets!”

“Looking forward to it!” Peters called after him with a wave.

“Oh,” he added. “Hey, Stewart? If I don’t see you again, just know that I like you, man. And I’ll miss you.”

Stewart chuckled and shook his head as he kept walking.

“Why d’ya always say that whenever I leave, man . . .”

MEANWHILE, IN A CHAIR in a room in a hallway that was a different hallway than the previous hallway, Johnson sat with his arms and legs crossed. His current case was a curious one. But not in a Benjamin Button kind of way; it was more of a spook sort of thing. He knew nothing about the woman sitting across from him besides her name, and he only got that from the ship’s log. Other than that, her file was completely empty. As far as the collective knowledge of the Earth Defense Coalition was concerned, Kim Cox did not exist. Even facial scans turned up nothing besides likely Italian heritage and an age estimate of approximately fifty, though many have claimed the camera adds ten years.

After the last few fiascos, Johnson opted to abandon his Officer Brutality approach and opt for his best attempt at one of those calm and methodical modes of investigating. Initial impressions were bad. Whoever she was, Miss Cox was one of the less-easily-intimidated women who found themselves in that seat. That much was clear from the moment she ducked the punch and headbutted the “Welcome to Earf” guy in the face. Even after being thrown in a holding room, the severity of her situation never seemed to sink in. The way she sat there with a cool nonchalance, staring up at the ceiling and ignoring questions like a man stuck clothes shopping with his girlfriend, was almost enough to turn the tables and make Johnson the one who felt uneasy.

But just in case it wasn’t enough, his partner burst through the door. It was actually more of a flamboyant slide through the doorway, but its unexpected nature granted it burst-like qualities in the mind of the presiding agent. The way Peters stood there frozen in place, eyes wide and grinning at the two of them while taking breaths that sounded like hisses, didn’t help to mitigate the creepy factor.

“Oh, hello,” he greeted the two of them. “Sorry I’m late. I was a little . . . held up.”

Johnson threw his arms up in exasperation.

“Bro, you were supposed to wait outside until you calmed down!”

“But I am calm!” Peters purred. “We are all calm. Surely Johnson should be able to tells.”

“Oh, great, now you’re talking like Gollum—Jesus Christ, man, can you please blink? You are making me SO uncomfortable.”

“Well, you know what makes me uncomfortable, Johnson?!” Peters seethed. His glance traced its way over to Kim as he paced, lingering for a moment before returning to his rant.

“I am uncomfortable with what has become of my line of work!”

“This line of work that you’ve been doing for about a half hour?”

“Yes, that line of work!!”

He used both hands to push his hair back before placing them on the table, gripping it with the tension of a root canal patient. The lone light dangling from above magnified his sharp features, casting shadows over his deep-set eyes and under his cheekbones.

“Do you take your job seriously, Johnson?”

Johnson blinked at him.

“Of course I take my job seriously. I’m sitting here trying to do it.”

“Oh really? How’s that goin’ for ya? Asking lots of . . . questions? Getting lots of . . . answers? Then maybe . . . oh, I don’t know . . . assessing those answers? Trying to decide if they sit well with you? Or—”

“You’re about to bring up the machine again, aren’t you?”

“—maybe letting a machine do the work for you?”

“God damnit, bro!”

He got out of his seat and joined his partner in a similar pose. Noses snuffled, pecs twitched, and Kim yawned.

“It’s a lie detector,” he continued to admonish. “It’s like the metal detectors we use at the front door. But with lies. What is so hard to accept about that?!“

“Don’t you act like it’s the same!”

“ . . . It’s literally the same!”

“It is NOT the same! Nobody is made to feel powerless by the metal detector. Nobody looks upon it with fear and apprehension, knowing it peers into their psyche, leaving them helplessly cowering beneath it. But no . . . no . . . you don’t understand! How could you understand, you . . . you, you, you BITCH!?”

“I’m sorry—are you saying you want to be the one making people feel powerless and cower and stuff?”

“I want the power and I am entitled to it!!”

He slammed his fist against the table, then gripped his hand with the other one and winced. After a moment to shake his head, he carried on.

“I am the one to be feared! Me!! You think the machine is here to help us. You think we are still the masters while it does our bidding. You fool! It’s not here to further our power. If anything, it does just the opposite. It shackles us with accountability! I mean what, what, do you think we should just walk in here and sit in these, these ass-clamping peasant chairs and be all like ‘Oh, hello, I’m Peters and this is Johnson. We were wondering, oh, I don’t know, are you a terrorist?’”

“That’s . . . that’s actually a fantastic idea. We’ll know right away if they’re guilty or not.”

“I DECIDE WHO IS GUILTY! ME!”

The tablets strewn about the table began to dance in rhythm with his pounding fists. He turned his fiery fury onto Kim.

“And you.” It was less of an acknowledgement and more of a retch that sounded like words. “Sitting there all smug. Thinking you’re untouchable. Oh, but how wrong you are.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Johnson said. “What, are you gonna start beating her before you’ve even asked her anything? Let’s all just calm down here, huh? I wouldn’t even waste my breath on this one, bro. She doesn’t scare, like, at all. She won’t even open her mouth.”

Peters’s lips contorted as he considered the proposition with both tact and sedation.

“For the last time, I. Am. Calm. I’m the calmest person here. I’m the calmest person in the world! In fact, I am so damn calm that I’m not going to leap across this table and slap the shit out of you for claiming I’m not calm!”

“Oh, you’re gonna threaten me now? You don’t wanna unleash the dragon, bro.“

“Is that supposed to mean you? You’re the dragon? And you’re subtly trying to imply you’re caged right now? And if I don’t back off then what? You’re gonna throw a can of protein powder at my head?”

Johnson took a deep breath. When his lungs could hold no more, he let it out twice as slowly as he drew it in. All the while, he kept his eyes closed.

“You know what? You’re right,” he said with a pretentious tranquility. “I shouldn’t be reacting to your flare-up like this.” Eyes still closed, he folded his arms in front of him. “Try and bait me into a fight all you want; I am too zen for you. You don’t have any power over me.”

He was finally able to see his friend for what he was. All these years of doing pointless busywork surrounded by the solar system’s most dangerous faces, and yet he never saw the monster in his midst. Even though he’d totally dropped the observational ball, he also couldn’t help but feel just a little bit smug about his superior ability to handle power. However, while his words were correct, they were poorly chosen. Despite the fact that he could now figuratively see past the superficial charm to the self-aggrandizing megalomaniac underneath, standing there with his eyes closed like an idiot meant he literally couldn’t see the aforementioned sociopath pick up his chair and bash him over the head with it.

Johnson’s head recoiled back and bounced off the table on its way to the floor where it came to a stop. Blood leaked out of the two newly opened wounds, one on each side. Perhaps still in a fit of rage, or perhaps aware of the astronomical lawsuits that can be levied when someone survives with brain damage, Peters went in for the coup de gras. With a chair instead of a pick, he worked on the railroad for a good thirty or so uncomfortable seconds. Achieving the grisly shattered watermelon look proved to be beyond his capabilities, as skulls are much more fortitudinous than movies and TV would have one believe. Therefore, he reluctantly settled for stepped-on pomegranate before dropping the bloodied seat to the floor.

All was quiet in the room, save for the rhythmic breaths of exertion. Johnson’s hand twitched now and again, but as his partner recovered, he did not. Peters checked his shoes. They seemed clean enough. His gaze moved to his former friend, switching to neither horror nor mirth at the sight of him. If anything, it was a look of relief, like when the novocaine kicks in. He pressed his palms against his face and rested his elbows on the table. Those once-buggy eyes turned dreamy and he resumed that creepy smile. Only this time it was directed at Miss Cox.

“So,” he broke the ice in breathy tones. “Now it’s my turn to get to know you.”

Kim finally lost whatever interest she had in the ceiling. With a soft exhale, her eyes and head rolled all the way around before settling on the remaining agent. Some guys were really bad at getting hints.