4. The Interrogation
After Humans - Episode 4
My instincts didn’t trust it. Did they pull aside all new arrivals like this? Or had I said something stupid? My name, perhaps? I followed them outside, trying to appear relaxed, feigning surprise, as if I had nothing to hide. “What is this about?” I asked.
No answer. I kept walking with them, voluntarily, though fear was rising in me. They led me back into town, where people went about their business. A few glanced in my direction. This attention unsettled me, as I had tried to remain invisible, by being insignificant, average. We returned to the command center. They took me to a well-kept office, likely the former commander’s. A clean desk stood in the middle, surrounded by a few cheap plastic garden chairs. One of the men stayed outside, while the other gestured me to enter.
“Sit.”
I complied.
“John Johnson?”
I nodded, while evaluating him. A Hispanic type, also lean, or skinny. I realized I hadn’t seen a single overweight person since I had started my journey.
“From… Los Angeles?”
“North of Los Angeles,” I corrected.
“North of Los Angeles. Does it have a name? Like, North of Los Angeles doesn’t sound like a town’s name, or does it?”
“What is this about?”
“Just answer the question.”
I had to think, come up with something. “Hollywood,” I said, vaguely remembering Hollywood was in the north of… well you get it.
“Ah, the Hollywood?”
“Yes. Now, can you please tell me what this is all about?”
He slid a book in front of me. “Open it.”
I opened the front cover. Went through a few pages. Each of them just had grids of photos with names under them. I recognized many of them. I had known some of them personally.
“So, the question is, is your photo among these?”
“Who are these people?” I asked.
“I ask the questions.”
I turned page after page. Scanning each photo, reading the names, pretending they didn’t mean anything to me. All of them were involved in the tech industry. Tech bro’s, some of them were among the top, billionaires, or even trillionaires, like Bill. I just saw his photo, and name. He is the one, the augmented, and he had abandoned me. Or that’s what it felt like for me. After all those years, after all my sacrifices, he had just dropped me like I was a nobody. And from that moment onwards, I was just that, a nobody. Just like everyone else.
“Do you know him?” he asked.
I was still looking at Bill’s photo. I couldn’t deny anymore, “yes. This is Bill Vale.”
“How do you know?”
I looked up at him. “Everyone knows him, right?”
He nodded, with a grin.
I continued going through the pages. Then, in the left bottom corner, I saw a photo of myself. My name too. I quickly moved my eyes away from it. I realized I barely even looked like him anymore in my current state. Facial recognition software would’ve matched me, but what is software without computers, without electricity?
After a few more pages he took the book away from me. “Look, I bet your name isn’t John Johnson. But you need to know, anyone whose photo is in this book will be put to death.”
I had to show I wasn’t affected by this potential risk, as I was supposed to not be in the book. So I just nodded, and looked at him, with a bit of a smile.
“So what is your real name?”
“John Johnson,” I repeated, since this lie was all I had.
“Why would anyone call his or her son John Johnson?”
“My father was a drunkard,” I improvised. “He found that funny, when I was born he just went to register me, and told them my name would be John, and he insisted on it. You don’t want to know how much I’ve been bullied with that silly name.”
He looked at me intently, as if reading me. “Fine,” he said. “Do you know any people in this book?”
“Personally?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I realized I had taken too long to answer. “Yes, I recognized one of the photos.”
He opened the book again, “which one?”
I skimmed through the pages, until I saw Jackie’s photo. I don’t know why I stopped there, perhaps because I had always secretly fancied her?
“Jackie Kim? How do you know her?”
“We used to…” I had to improvise again, I wish I had never admitted to knowing anyone… “we used to be friends.”
“Friends?”
I nodded.
“Do you know she’s connected to Bill Vale?”
I shrugged no, as if surprised.
He wrote something down in his notebook, Bill Vale’s name. And just like that, my mind returned to the last time we spoke. Not in person, of course, but over video. Shortly before he cut off the internet for everyone but himself. He had launched thousands of internet satellites decades prior, supposedly for the general public, but it turned out to be just for himself. He must have planned everything years ahead of time, and I’d been too blind, or too hopeful, to see it.
That last videocall had been brief, detached. I remembered how I’d tried to speak to him like before, as if I still mattered. But he wasn’t really listening. He had already made up his mind. I wasn’t going to be included. Not in the program. Not in the future.
It should have hurt more than it did, but instead it was a delayed pain, one I still carried even now. Bill had been my mentor, and more. He’d been like a father to me, and I had always been convinced that he saw me as a son. But during that videocall something was different. Even though I had always known we would never be truly equal. In the end he saw himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of our times, a creator, an inventor, someone who’d push humanity forward. At my peak, I’d been worth perhaps two hundred million? Accumulated with salary, stocks, bonuses. But I hadn’t built anything. I wasn’t an originator, at least not in the way he valued. In the end, he only respected founders, and even then, only the ones who’d pushed beyond human limits.
And in the end, he only respected himself.
“What do you think of Bill Vale?” the interrogator asked.
I focused. “I never liked him,” I said. “I always felt something was wrong with him.”
“Did you?”
“When he got involved with politics, I knew it was going wrong.”
“May I ask you what was your profession?”
I looked down, “software developer,” I said, somewhat ashamed.
“So did you help him to achieve his goals, and to throw all of us into misery?”
I shook my head, “no sir, I worked for myself.”
“What did you do then?”
“I was a game-dev,” I said, which had honestly been one of my hobby’s.
“And this…” he looked it up again, “Jackie Kim, did you ever work with her?”
“No. We were just friends, for a while. And not even good ones. Just someone we had over for dinner sometimes.”
“We?”
“Me, my wife and my kids.”
“And all of those have gone missing, right?”
“Yes,” I said. Which was largely true. I had no idea where they were, or if they were even alive. If there was anything I should regret, it should be this.
“Their names?”
Names, again names! Internally I laughed desperately, as again I’d have to come up with names, and then remember them for future encounters. My story would have to be consistent, forever, I’d have to keep track of all my lies, and remember whom I told which one. “Lauren, Susan and Jeffrey.” I intentionally didn’t name a third kid, so it wouldn’t match my profile, if they even had one. Probably not.
“Last name Johnson?”
“My wife’s maidenname was McCormick.” Actually her maidenname was McKinsey, but whatever. I had betrayed them, my wife and my own kids, whom I had loved. I had betrayed them, because I was so sure I would become augmented, like Bill. To live an eternal life, to be wired in with computers, robotics, to become a higher level being in all ways possible. We, my generation, had witnessed a true miracle, as without the slow force of evolution, we, humanity had managed to split ourselves in two branches, a single super human, and the rest of us. The rest of us were literally discarded, no longer part of the human endeavor to explore and invent. It was now just Bill at the forefront. He didn’t need us anymore. Us, normal people. Workers, programmers, cleaners, whatever. And now, we were basically just wildlife. Back in the middle ages, or worse.
My interrogator had finished writing down his notes. “Okay, well I think that should be fine then. Oh, by the way. About Jackie Kim, we actually apprehended her a few months ago in this town, and we have hanged her. If you are interested, she might still be hanging at the gallows, since we don’t make a big effort to bury the traitors.”
I concealed my shock pretty well, but it had been a shock nonetheless. After the interrogation, wandering back to the farmer’s colony. I pictured her. Jackie Kim. A smart woman, and sharp too. Sharp, as in cruel when needed. Just like all of us were. She cut right through me, those few times I attempted to approach her. I hadn’t been good enough for her, in looks. The only reason I never cheated on my wife, or had never had an affair, was simply because the women I liked didn’t like me back. And now, the idea of Kim’s decaying body hanging somewhere, nearby even, somehow felt like a triumph. Just like how I felt when I heard she had been discarded, while I was still on track to join Bill.