The Magician

“Hi Jane. I am the Magician.”

The mid-50s S7 agent sits opposite me, pudgy fingers splaying out in a showman’s waggle. A sweaty face occludes the interrogation lamp hanging directly opposite my side of the room. Beads of sweat are already appearing on a balding forehead, pushing down towards bushy black eyebrows. Round spectacles and a mustache to match his eyebrows sit above an incongruously pleasant and predatory smile. That is S7 intelligence unit of the New Philadelphia Syndicate – enigmatic and dangerous, but also corrupt and indulgent.

It’s hot. My head hurts. My arm hurts, where I was pinned to the ground and cuffed. My knee hurts, where I tried to knee the guard at the S7 bureau. My lip hurts from the open-handed slap given to me by my first interrogator, who didn’t have some ridiculous name. Just Jimmy. There’s a sharp pain on the back of my hand. Not sure what that one is from, but I probably picked it up in one of the many scuffles. Everything hurts. It feels like I have been here for days, not hours.

“I know the name is a bit much, but it makes for a fun introduction.”

No change in the smile.

“You were allegedly caught in the act of sending a transmission to an off-limits address. Somewhere in the Heartland, yes?”

He stares. No questions or further comments. Seconds drag and I look around the room. My belongings are in the corner, including the locket. I am careful not to look at the locket any longer than any of the other contents. Heart-shaped, gold, and bearing a bejeweled detailing of a gorgon, shrieking into eternity.

“We tried ‘Medusa,’ in case you’re wondering. For the code. Is it tacky to make a sculpted likeness of a gorgon? Or is that bit of irony the good sort? I never could tell. If it matters, we also tried ‘heart’, ‘heartland’, ‘gorgon’, and just about every other phrase related to anything on that locket.”

I cleared my throat with a cough. “Maybe the gorgon just saw a mirror. Its reflection can’t be worse than yours, I’m sure.” He will notice the desperate deflection from the locket. He would have to. Maybe he won’t.

He chuckles and rolls a holoprojector out onto the table. The ball slides to the center of the table and clicks into place, lighting up in response to the ambient projection system that suffuses the room.

After the Dissolution, the New Philadelphia Syndicate somehow ended up with a lockdown on most tech east of the Mississippi. They control the northeast and most of the coast but have had trouble pacifying Appalachia – locals there are armed with mechanical rifles and old gasoline vehicles, but they make a habit of picking off minutemen in narrow valleys. You can’t backtrack an unregistered mechanical weapon in the same way you can track an electrically powered splicing unit. Of course, you might live from a gun. A splicer will leave you dead. Unequivocally.

“That’s right, you were combative last time.”

Something about his words snaps me back to the present. Last time? Either this ‘magician’ does his research, or I have been watched longer than I had thought. Or… he is called the magician. He probably laces conversations with tells like this to put his suspects in a state of confusion.

“Jane, you need to be aware of the situation. The full situation. The S7 exists to preserve peace within the NPS, and the NPS exists to reinstate stability to the former US states. Everything you and your little pals do to undermine this goal sets humankind back further on the path to recovery. I am not a torturer. Before the Dissolution I was working at this very facility as a researcher, investigating genetic memory altering solutions as a cure for Alzheimer’s. I don’t relish doing harm to anyone, let alone the people who live in a territory that I have sworn to serve. That being said, I will do what needs to be done to put down any acts of sedition. Your transmission of information to a known terrorist certainly falls under the umbrella of sedition.”

“I am going to offer you a choice today,” He pulls out a cell phone and absently drones on, finishing his sentence as he navigates a series of menus and passcodes, “But first I am going to show you a video.”

I appear in miniature above the holo-projector, asleep in the restraining chair, lit by the interrogation lamp. A waddling projection of the magician enters the room and pulls out a set of instruments. He carefully unpacks them and fills two syringes, one with a clear solution and the other with a pale blue. He administers the blue first, waits, and administers the clear. He then sits opposite the miniature me, applying solution to a dull metal blade.

“What is this? What are you showing me?” It has to be fake. It can’t be real.

“Do you think you feel surgery? When you are put under anesthetics, do they block your ability to feel the pain, or just immobilize you and block your ability to create memories?”

My lips tighten into a line. “What does it matter? And how is this relevant? And what the fuck are you showing me? Clearly you have some doctored footage, but what good does it do to show me? I am the one person who can easily spot the lie.”

“It matters. It mattered to my research. And now it matters to you. You see, I was able to perfect a serum that maintained your brain’s full cognitive function, but isolated and disrupted one piece. Memory. Now be quiet, here is where it gets good.”

My miniature stirs. Just as my eyes open, his corpulent miniature, another irony lost on my current state, waggles his fingers. ‘Hi Jane. I am the magician.’ He proceeds to ram the metal blade into my hand. I instinctively move to withdraw my hand and remember it is strapped in place. I also remember the searing pain I felt at waking. I look down at it slowly, horrified to see reality align to the translucent simile above. My hand is covered with a bright red and white chemical burn.

He fast forwards the clip, skipping over burn after burn on various parts of my body. By the end my miniature is sobbing gibberish into her own spittle, but two words are clearly audible. ‘The locket’.

I gave up the key. I sit, stunned at my own failure. A failure I can’t even remember. A failure that can’t have happened. That can’t be me. And yet no one else knows of the code and locket. No one else is sitting, strapped to the same chair.

“I told you that I don’t like torture. I believe in protecting people, so I developed a method in which in which I could preserve a person’s spirit through the process of extracting information. Did you know that the suicide rate of those who willingly provide information in war is significantly higher than those who don’t? Most people don’t care for people like you - traitors. I understand your predicament, though, and I want to help.”

A humorless laugh escapes my throat, unbidden but not unwelcome. “This, coming from a guy who has to inject a girl with chemicals to get what he wants, and, even then, can’t figure out what she is saying.”

“You’re right and wrong. We might have no more need of the chemicals. We’ve come to the point where I offer you a choice. The first is obvious. You are tortured with the most brutal methods my compatriots and I can concoct. The NPS has given us full discretion in that regard, and it is solely due to my good graces that option one isn’t our go-to. The second option is more delicate. You provide me with the way in which this locket is somehow the key to your code, and I inject you with the drug. It will erase your memory of confession. You will then be left unattended with a clear opportunity for escape, completely unaware of your confession. You get to return to your mud grubbing Heartlanders a hero, who survived the S7’s torture, evidenced by the burns all over your body. This option is why I am called the magician. Your pain will simply disappear. Or it will persist for an indefinite period, after which you will confess anyways. Everyone does, eventually. So, what do you say? The easy way or the hard way?”

It’s hot. My head hurts. My body hurts. My soul hurts. I’ve already lost. Its only a matter of time before S7 figures out the locket anyways. At least this way I can see my sister again.

“Stacie. My sister gave me the locket. The code is Stacie.”

I wake up in my new home in the Chicago mini-district of Heartland. Chicago is a husk of its presence before the dissolution, but today it serves as a bastion for those who fight against the tyranny and corruption of the NPS. Stacie is asleep in her bunk, wearing her gorgon locket around her neck. Mine hangs on the wall. For some reason I can’t stand to put it on anymore. Cloudy memories have started to return since my escape three years ago from the NPS, but fog still obscures any detail. I don’t remember any torture, but the burns were all over my body. The doctors say I likely blocked out the memories, and that the nightmares and fits of panic are natural in the circumstances. Upon my miraculous return, I was retired as a gun runner to the local militia we were supporting in the NPS city-centers of DC-Baltimore and given full access to an old psychologist, trained pre-Dissolution.

Something feels off today. I decide to get some air, grabbing the locket and my comms unit as I leave. Just because I don’t wear the locket doesn’t mean I don’t like to have it nearby. The reason I joined the Heartland force was to make a better world for Stacie and to recover the world described to me by the old-timers. The locket serves as a reminder of Stacie and a future that seems further every day.

On my walk, I pass by the new juris-building. Standing out front is the new general of the Heartlanders. A plump hand removes spectacles to dab at a distressed looking kerchief over a bald head. Something about his smile feels predatory.

“Hi Jane. I am the magician.”

Today I remember.