Morality Outbreak Part 2

As soon as I closed my eyes I was back in the street again, holding that gun. The slight movement of the struggle and then the stillness of the body. I looked around, the crowd started to cheer me and rushed in. They lifted me on their shoulders and carried to through the street. Flowers were thrown in front of my path as the crowd carried me up the steps to a building. They put me down in front of the door and I turned to look at them, they cheered as I raised my hands up over my head. The door opened behind me and I entered the building.

            Inside I saw two rows of seats and a faceless man in white robes standing in front of them. Dread filled me, I turned to leave but the doors were gone. When I turned back around the seats were full of people and they all were staring at me. A child in a blue suit walked up to me and looked directly into my eyes. I was afraid but I did not understand why. The child just looked at me for a long time. Overcome I finally asked, “What do you want?”

            The child did not move but watched me. I looked away but the child was there too. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again I was sitting in a small box. A door behind a screen slid open and a voice spoke, “Tell me your sins my son.”

            “Sins” I stammered “What do you mean?” There was no reply. “I don’t believe in this stuff, none of it is real, just blasphemy pushed by the fascists to control people’s minds.” My heart started to race. Somehow I knew what he meant. I panicked and tried to open the door but it was locked. I pounded on it and tried to kick it open until I exhausted myself.

“Be calm my son,” the voice said. I sat down and closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath and thought, this stuff is not real, it’s all just a fascist tool. I opened my eyes and was back in college. The professor was writing something on the chalkboard and the rest of the students were hurrying to write it down on their computers. The professor was standing so I could not see what he was writing no matter how hard I tried to see. I looked over at the person sitting next to me who gave me a strange look and turned their screen away from me.

“Is there a problem?” The professor bellowed dusting the chalk from his hands.

“I can’t see what you are writing,” I said “and it seems like important information for our next test so I wanted to take notes.”

“Very observant of you comrade,” the professor said “allow me to adjust and give you time to write it down.” The professor moved aside and on the chalkboard was written the words Life is sacred in big letters. The professor pounded loudly on the desk and I woke up. Lucas was pounding on my door.

“Hurry up comrade, we’re going to be late.” Lucas said through the door.

“I’m coming,” I said as I rolled out of bed and rubbed my eyes. A dream it was all a dream. Dreams mean nothing. I breathed a sigh of relief. I still felt a strange guilty sensation in my guts as I quickly got dressed and went to the Center for Universal Social Justice and Equality in Free Speech. I grabbed a cup of Community Coffee and sat down at my desk. I started to do my work but kept thinking of yesterday. I was so absorbed with thought that I missed the officers from the Bureau of Anti-Fascist Affairs talking to Lucas and my boss. I did not notice as they walked over to me and asked me to go with them. It was not until I was following them that I started to realize what was going on.

“I am not a fascist,” I told them as I sat down in an interrogation room chair. The man that sat across from me opened a folder and started looking through some papers. He did this for several minutes. My mind raced. Did I do something wrong? Why do they want to talk to me? It has to be a mistake. Finally he closed the folder and looked up at me.

“You know this whole process goes a lot smoother if you just confess.” He said in conversational tone.

“What am I being charged with?” I asked worriedly.

“I think you know what crime you have committed. Just confess to everything you have done wrong and we can get on with it.” A pang of guilt ran through me. Did I do something wrong? Is that why I was feeling off yesterday after dealing with that fascist? Of course it is, that is why I feel guilty, I reasoned. Now if only I could figure out what I did and confess I will feel better and they will see it was nothing. “We know you are guilty,” he said as he took a piece of paper out and started writing on it. I racked my brain to try and come up with why I felt guilty but all I could see was that dead fascist. That could not be it, if he did not want to be killed he should not have been spewing his hate speech.

The interrogator kept writing and I kept going over my day. Someone came in and whispered something in his ear and a smile spread across his face as he looked over to me. He nodded to the man, who turned and left, and started writing again. He stopped and set his pen down on the table between us, folded his hands into one another and leaned forward. “We know you are guilty, and I think you know it too. Have you not been feeling guilty?” My heart started to beat faster. I did feel guilty but how did he know that? I just stared at him in stunned silence. “It’s okay, if you don’t feel like talking now we can always talk tomorrow when you have cleared your head.” The interrogator stood up and knocked twice at the door. Two other Bureau officers came in and grabbed me. The led me out of the room and into the hall. I could see Lucas coming out of another room with a different Bureau officer. He saw me but refused to make eye contact with me.

“Lucas” I called but one of the guards punched me in the stomach and told me to keep quiet. Lucas just walked away and would not look as the two men dragged me out through the office I had worked at for 5 years. No one looked at me, no one said anything. I had seen this several times before, I had even participated in the same way everyone was right now. But that was for people who had committed a crime, surely there was some mistake. I have not committed a crime, unless feeling guilty was a crime. I was put in the back of a van and taken to the Rehabilitation and Anti-Biased Training Facility. Once there I was put into a room that was just big enough for me to stand in. It was so small I could not sit or even kneel down. In the room, just out of reach was a bright light bulb that made the room uncomfortably hot and bright.

The first hour seemed to take forever but it was the second hour where my throat started to get dry and my legs started to hurt. I tried shifting my weight around but that only offered temporary relief. It was near the end of the second hour, or at least I think it was the second hour that someone opened my cell door and gave me a small paper cup with water in it. I lifted it to my lips but spit it out as soon as I tasted the salt in the water.

“There is salt in this water,” I said looking at the stony faced guard. “There must have been some sort of mix up.”

“Drink it or we’ll make you drink it.” The guard said with ease, as if he had said it before.

“It has salt in it, I can’t drink this.” The guard smiled and took the cup away from me and shut the door. He returned shortly with two other guards who grabbed me and held me still. I tried to struggle but with no luck. The third guard held a tube in one hand that was connected to a bottle in the other hand. He forced the tube into my mouth and squeezed the bottle. Salt water hit the back of my throat with such force that I started to choke. After he repeated this three times they put me back into my cell and closed the door. My mouth was dry and the heat of the bulb did not help. Soon my mouth became painful. Every so often someone would bang on the door, clearly they did not want anyone to sleep. I do not know how long I was in there before the guards came and collected me but each minute felt like a life time.

The entire time, I kept thinking, there must have been some mistake, I did nothing wrong. I killed a fascist and the community thanked me for protecting them. I did everything right. So why was I here? Why were they torturing me as if I was some sort of fascist? The guards took me to a different interrogation room. It felt so cold in this room that I started to shiver. The interrogator came in with two bottles of water and a piece of paper. He opened the first bottle and took a long drink. Oh how good that water looked. He ended his drink with a satisfying “Ah”. He slid the piece of paper across the table in front of me and picked up the second bottle of water.

“I bet you are thirsty,” he said opening the second bottle and setting it on the table, just out of my reach. “All you have to do is sign this confession and you can have all the water you want.” Confession, I thought, I did not confess to anything. But that water looked good and I really wanted this all to be over. I looked at the paper in front of me and started to read it.

“Don’t worry about reading it” the man said holding his own water bottle near his lips “it is all true and we have the evidence to back it up. If you just sign it, I can say you cooperated when you are sentenced and recommend a lighter punishment.” I eyed his suspiciously and shook my head. I started to read some of it. The list of charges included fascist sympathizer, conspiracy to spread hate speech, conspiring with fascists, and attempted spread of alternative facts. I was not guilty of any of these things.

“I can’t sign this.” I croaked, I tried to swallow but had no saliva left. “I have not done any of these things.”

“Haven’t you” the interrogator asked. “That is not what your friend Lucas said. He told us the whole story. Are you saying he is a liar? If he is we’ll have to arrest him too.”

“Lucas would never had said that because it is not true.” I said in a crackling voice.

“I guess you have not had enough time to think,” he replied as he grabbed the bottle of water on the table. “We can help you think if that is what you want, or you can confess and save yourself and your friend some trouble.”

I felt defeated. What should I do? I could not confess to something I did not do. But I did feel guilty. Maybe I did do something that deserved punishment. I picked up the pen and signed the paper. The man set the bottle of water down next to me grabbed the paper and left the room. Oh, how good that water tasted. My throat relaxed and my mind became clearer. Soon I realized what I had done. I confessed to crimes I did not committed. At least I confessed, I reasoned, so hopefully the rest of the process will go smoothly and I can get back to normal. The two guards moved me to a larger cell with a mattress. I remained in here for two weeks before they came for me again.

“Is it time for my sentencing?” I asked as the guards led me down the corridor.

“Sentencing has been passed already” One of the guards said. “The Social Justice Tribunal has already handed down the punishment.”

“Punishment?” I said, horror filling my body. “But, but I cooperated, don’t I get a say?”

“Shut your mouth you fascist scum.” The other guard said as they led me out into the court yard. Three men were standing over someone laying on the ground. As I was led closer I realized the person on the ground was dead. My gut revolted again but I resisted the urge to have the contents of my stomach rise up. As I was brought up next to the three men I could see the face of the body on the ground. It was Lucas. My heart fell and I started to struggle. The men tightened their grip on me.

“I’m not guilty” I cried as they forced me down on my knees. One of the three men read my charges off. I started to cry, why was this happening to me? I just felt guilty for killing a fascist. Suddenly it clicked. I felt guilty for killing someone. That was it! In that moment I did sympathize with the man I had murdered as I struggled against my bonds. My mind had betrayed the revolution and I had internalized fascism. I had tried to spread my fascism to Lucas even though I did not realize it. Now he was dead. I felt the gun press against the back of my head and it was then that the last thought to occur to me was, what if the revolution was wrong?