a poor class.”
I took a few steps towards her and grinned. I could see that smug
look drain right off her face. “Then why are you so nervous that
the two of you are trying to pry my brain open, hm?”
“You have something we need,” Janus answered coldly. “Nothing
more, nothing less.”
“Uh huh,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Look, if you're going
to be torturers, might as well be honest torturers, am I right?”
“This isn't torture – it's an interrogation. You are a
prisoner of war, and you have intelligence that could save the lives
of tens of thousands of people,” Janus said. It was odd, but you
could tell that with the level of conviction in his voice, he
honestly believed they were doing the right thing. “We didn't start
this. I've never hurt a member of the poor class in my life.”
“Not directly,” I said, walking towards him, “but that's the
thing – it's rarely direct. It's sins of omission, sins of
oversight, sins happening because of you, because you can't think of
the consequences every time you decide you need to buy a new Leer
Jet. I mean, you had to see the writing on the wall. It's not like
there weren't warning signs.”
It was my turn to move us into a memory, surrounding the area with
riots, protests, people holding up signs saying things like “Lynch
all the bankers!” and “Minimum wage = minimally living.” I'd
picked this moment in time specifically because the protestors were
non-violent, locking arms together to hold on to a bit of the public
space. “This isn't fair,” Apathe said. “Things got out of hand
here, true, but it isn't like they weren't given a chance to leave
peacefully.”
“Leave?” I howled, turning to face her, while all around us
the protestors were chanting at a line of cops, decked out in full
riot gear. “Why on earth should they have to leave? It's public
land. It's a peaceful protest. They have a right to be here.”
“Except that they're becoming a public hazard,” Janus stated.
“Just look at these people. They're preventing regular working
folks from getting to their jobs, from doing business.” He waved a
hand at the crowd, which kept chanting “Hell no, we won't go”
over and over again. “Louts, rapists and thieves. They're nothing
more than an angry, unruly mob, and sooner or later, what happened
was inevitable.”
I sneered at him. “You're so used to the sanitized version of
it, the one where the cops have been exonerated, aren't you? Well,
let's have a good look at what actually happened, shall we?” It was
pretty clear that things were going to come to a head, but it was
someone throwing a paper cup full of soda that started it all. I
slowed down the action and the scene around us started to crawl. I
walked through the crowd, passing through people left and right
before I came to stop on the young woman, barely old enough to buy
liquor if she was lucky, throwing her drink at the cops. “No bomb,
no molotov cocktail, nothing harmful, nothing violent. There was no
way a cup full of soda was going to harm anyone.”
Apathe frowned. “You're distorting this. This isn't how it
happened.”
I wheeled to point a finger at her. “This is EXACTLY how it
happened. You know how I know?” I walked a few steps over and back,
a bit deeper into the crowd, and there, lo and behold, was a younger
version of me, a few years older than they'd seen me last, a bit more
grizzled and disheveled. “I was there,” I barked, pointing at the
younger me. “And for months afterwards, I had to watch news story
after news story where people talked about how the cops had done the
right thing, and that the tragedy was unavoidable, and yet, look
around you.” I walked a few paces over to one side, and pointed to
a teenager in a Nirvana t-shirt holding up his cellphone, recording
the whole thing. “Camera phone.” I walked a few paces further,
and found another. “Camera phone.” A few more. “Camera phone.”
A few more and right up next to the girl throwing the soda. “Camera
phone.” I paused, and turned to look back at Janus and Apathe.
“There were half a dozen more filming this, and yet, not one news
station picked up the footage. Not one of them showed what you're
about to see, for reasons of 'national security.' You think you know
what happened? Fine. Then you watch. I've seen this happen enough
times,” I said, walking deep into the crowd, letting the memory
unfold again.
The cup went sailing through the air and a voice from somewhere in
the police line yelled “BOMB!” Half a second later, there was
tear gas covering the area, cops were pepper spraying people left and
right, and a few seconds later, there was a gunshot. I froze the
memory right as I heard the sound of the gun going off. “Take a
look and tell me what you see.”
Apathe moved into the crowd, and then, eventually, towards the
police line, looking carefully. “The officers fired first?” she
asked, disbelievingly.
“No,” I said, as I walked up towards her, standing right next
to her, looking into the face of the cop who was firing the first
shot. “Not first. Only.” I let the memory unroll again, and after the
first shot was fired, several other cops drew their weapons and fired
into the crowd. Then again. Then again. “Rubber bullets, but that
close, that many of them, and with the stampede it caused...” I
froze the memory and shook my head, unable to let it keep playing
out. “18 dead, over a hundred wounded. Not a single officer even
more than lightly injured.”
“They were told to disperse,” Janus said, although I
No comments:
Post a Comment