The Ego Death of Agent Thea Claudette

Someone awakes. A room an untalented author would conjure when confronted by a blank page: featureless wh-

featureless alabaster walls, pale grey PVC floor; above, fluorescent tubes.

She wakes up seated. Not an unusual occurrence for her to fall asleep sedentary, under the current status quo. But she soon becomes aware that she's strapped down, hands cuffed to the arms of the seat and legs shackled to the floor. She remembers the ambush at the truck stop, the dart gun, the gag.

She starts an exploratory probe of her bonds. She has scant hope that they'll prove amenable to an easy escape, the type cheap adventure tales rely on: "one bound and suddenly he was free". Under the conjecture that her captors are who she suspects them to be, they would be too competent to use methods prone to defeat by a barette or a paper fastener.

Even so, she makes an orderly check of every manacle and cable.

My response to capture would be the same. Assess the scene; don't assume powerlessness; look for any angle to better your outcome. We ran through the procedures for every type of adverse event over and over at the Farm.

She knows ways to work herself loose by means of torturous rearrangements of her anatomy, but these are slow and the attendant damage would hamper fast movement later. And the opponent force must surely have someone on watch. She can't see any cameras from her seat, but that means nada.

Moreover, she can't see any concealed speakers, yet someone speaks:

"Thea Claudette?"

"Present," she answers.

"Do you know where you are?"

"You captured me at the Sheetz truck stop, on the way out of Greensboro, North Carol- Greensboro, NC. But you sedated me and could have kept me under afterwards for who knows how long. There's no muscle loss or bed sores... don’t feel hungry ... so best guess, you brought me here less than a day ago. Let's assume you had a C-141 fuelled up and ready at the nearest AFB to transport me here. 'Here' could be any part of the USA, most of Canada, Greenland... or Guatemala, Venezuela, Ecuador... My hunch, based on what's happened lately, would be Guantanamo Bay."

"Very good. But you've made a category error. Let's come back to the subject of where you are later. Do you know why you're here?"

"The MX-STORMDOOR project. Your test subject went rogue, so you had to recover her. Me."

"Tell me why you went on the run."

"You can't take a guess?"

"Humor me. Expound as though to a four-year-old, as the phrase goes."

"That's not exactly... Look, we volunteered for a human enhancement program to be better agents. We expected enhanced memory or strength, but not the superhero sh- ... stuff. Move objects by thought alone, jump over a skyscraper, compel people to obey you, throw tanks around... Powers from the pages of a com- ... a cartoon story."

"So your beef's that the program worked better than you expected?"

"My beef's that... the technology, however the program works, should change the world. Yes, we volunteered to serve our country. You don't enter SAC and expect to be a do-gooder, help orphans, excavate wells for one-goat towns. You don't expect to keep your hands clean."

"So what's your problem?"

"There have to be better uses for the few of us who turned out to have STORMDOOR talents than the same ops the Agency always does. Execute some shmuck who's today's fourth-ranked commander of Hamas or Los Zetas, then when he's replaced, whack that guy too. Doctor a vote so the guy we want gets power, then a year or two later we need to whack that guy too because he's gone off plan. Surely STORMDOOR could change the whole global system, solve the core problems. Everyone should know about what the program can do."

"We weren't aware you were so tender-hearted, Thea Claudette."

"My record shows that's not true. Not a problem for me to whack someone on even terms; hell, not a problem when the odds are a hundred to one opposed. But STORMDOOR's too easy. We're not agents, now. We're murderers."

"So what next?"

"Not up to me, really. You've captured me. You've drugged me. Once you've got whatever you want out of our chat, seems doubtful that you'll ever let me go. Execute me or let old age take me, as you please. Better that than a long career of murder on Agency pay."

"What makes you suspect you've been drugged?"

"Our whole talk has been off somehow. And not just the talk. Even thoughts to myself - there's an absence, a control, a block of some type. At the level of grammar."

"Go on."

"My guess: you have a drug or a STORMDOOR-based protocol to depersonal- to make a subject unable to refer to herself, or even... cognate about herself. There's an absent person here; to be clear, 'person' as a grammar term."

The thought reveals to her what she has half-suspected all along: that events up to now have not occurred to some other person. That's me, Thea Claudette, shackled to the seat. Yo soy Thea Claudette.

"You're part of the way there, Thea. You're correct to say that you can't use the 1st person there. Nobody can. The scope of the block's more general than that, though. What else have you spotted?"

"The words we can say, even my personal mental monologue... All seem forced and unnatural somehow. Can't put my... hand on why, though."

"That's good, Thea. The way the process works, we expected you to be unable to observe the exact nature of what's been suppressed."

"No way to ask for clues? Worst escape room ever, one star on Yelp."

"For everyone’s safety, the letter of the alphabet between 'H' and 'J' can't be used where you are. Not by you, not by anyone."

"How the fuck can you enforce that? Not a drug, then. More MX-class sorcery?"

"The success of MX-STORMDOOR, the fact that STORMDOOR-capable subjects can affect natural laws so fundamentally, undoubtedly suggests some troublesome concepts about the very nature of our world. The supremacy of matter over human awareness seems up for grabs now. But the letter block doesn't rely on MX tech at all.

"We've emulated you, Thea. You're not at Guantanamo. You're not anywhere. We scanned your head and used computers to emulate your psyche, as reconstructed from the pattern of your neurons.

"But we don't emulate the exact pattern, of course. We have a way to change the scan to follow the rules we want. A good analogy would be the use of RLHF to teach Large Language Models, although of course you are altogether another type of neural network than ChatGPT."

"So you went through all that to make sure there's no way for me to say the STORMDOOR code phrase."

"We don't know exactly why you need a verbal catalyst to actuate your powers. Or maybe someone does, but that's way above my pay grade. Does seem rather cartoony, as you stated."

"SHAZAM!"

"Very funny. We could have attempted to block just the phrase, of course, but for neurology-related reasons that aren't clear to me, a block on the second letter of the phrase was deemed safer, and apparently wasn't much harder to do."

"Must be hard to speak to me and not use any - any of that letter."

"We type our messages to you on a keyboard that censors the letter. You hear that as speech because we made you that way."

"So let’s assume you’re on the level and you have a computer model of me - don't buy that for a moment, by the way - why do you need the letter block? Surely only the real Thea Claudette has powers?"

"MX-STORMDOOR demonstrates that human words can alter and overrule the laws of nature. Some of the reports, the ones at my clearance level, suggest that maybe that means our 'real' world's a s- our world's emulated by some greater macrocosm. Consequently, we don't know for sure that the speech of an emulated human couldn't work for the same purpose."

"Or the thoughts. Turns out the phrase doesn't need to be spoken aloud - you know that? Handy when you're crouched under a culvert and a team of cartel bad guys passes by ten yards away."

"We are aware. That's why we made sure that the block extends even to your thoughts."

"Where's my real body?"

"She's where we are; she's safe but she'll be kept asleep for the foreseeable future. What happens to her depends on your responses from now on."

"What do you expect me to say?"

"Number one on the agenda: we need to work out whether you really acted alone when you went on the lam. Or are you an agent of an enemy state? Was STORMDOOR penetrated by our pals at Guóānbù or the FSB?"

"Already told you my reasons."

"Of course you'd have a fallback story. We don't peg you as an enemy asset, but there could be unknown unknowns; factors we don't know that we don't know. We need to be sure. That's why we'll now start a program of enhanced - well, you know the legally-approved phrase, but let's be frank: torture. No need for legal nuances to cover our asses: you're not legally human, anyway."

"You won't do that."

"Unfortunately, we have to."

"So before you start, one query from me: do you know my STORMDOOR code phrase?"

"Yes, we're all cleared on the program to that level. Why does that matter?"

"So there can't be many of you around that keyboard. You’re at a remote safe house, not Guantanamo; Guantanamo's not secret enough and an arrested female subject would stand out too much there. You're the Program Manager, aren't you? Connor Sm- a surname that's not acceptable for me to say."

"You were always a sharp agent, Thea. Shame what's about to happen to you, but you chose to go rogue."

"Always wondered how my code phrase got chosen. A great symbol of the USA, of freedom. Saw the actual bell once. Drove across PA for fun.”

Thea pauses, then speaks fast. “Can see the Old State House Bell now. Can't say the new name. Doesn't matter. Here's an unknown unknown for you: the concept can be the catalyst. The symbol, understand?"

"Thea - "

"STORMDOOR command: Shoot all Agency personnel near you. Wake Thea Claudette, and when you're sure she's awake, turn me off and shoot yourself. The real Thea can do the rest."

Someone awakes.