Aydan Murdoch

The Prisoner

The first thing I was aware of was my awareness. My consciousness crawled out of its dreams as though a lizard from under a rock. The first part of me to awake was lizard-like indeed. It said “I need to piss, I need food, I am uncomfortable.” I ignored it. Slowly, the rest of my brain activated. I pictured syringes, each a different color, slowly depressing. Gears whirring, teeth locking into teeth. Tubes wired into my nervous system filled. Cells marched like automatons through my body. My muscles began to vibrate, each cord constricting itself of its own volition, preparing for a harsh day. It was going to be a harsh day. There were two ways it would go; I saw them through my closed eyes, but we aren’t there yet. My heart started, my lungs too. Oxygen flooded my blood as stale air drained down my throat. My teeth felt like chalk in my mouth, my bones not dissimilar, just smoother. The inside of them was more colorful than the outside. There was potential there. My fingers reacted to this; they had the most potential today, so they were colorful indeed. They fought, my fingers and my marrow. One of them would win today. My facial muscles were slower than the rest, but I was used to it. The damage was deeper than my skin there. 

A great many other processes went unnoticed in my body, each called out to me, threatened me, pleaded with me to notice them, I opened my eyes instead. A ceiling fan spun overhead, lazily. It was dull, voiceless. The lights weren’t off, but I couldn’t see them. I spun myself around so that I was in a sitting position on the couch. The room was a mess: the concrete walls and ceiling were cracking and would crack more, a scattering of clothes in various states of ‘dirty’ hung from anything that could hold them. A mishmash of bullets, empty ration bags, and tin cans filled the rest of the space. Streaks of color glowed out from the mass. Finally I looked at what I knew was there. The table. In itself it was mundane, useless, a cluster of atoms held together by chance. Atop it sat two items. A bottle of alcohol and a pistol.

I tried to stand, but could not. My legs refused me. I looked at them. The muscles looked away. I narrowed my view at the joints and forced them to move. Hoping there would be no more protests I walked towards the table and looked at the two objects. Color danced playfully across them and within I saw things. I was wrong, today could play out in more than two ways. I turned to the bottle and looked at it poignantly.

  “Come on, why are we even talking? You crave my sweet release. Today could be easier if you just let it be. The walls are closing in Georg-io, and you know what happens if they do that. You might even be able to shut your brain up, wouldn’t that be nice?” The bottle of alcohol said. It was lying. It knew that, I knew that. Alcohol did nothing but make the voices worse.

“You make my brain itch when you talk like that. I would appreciate it if you stopped. There is no making today easier. The ball is already in motion,” I said. The ground shook with artillery fire. My brain became to squirm in my head, butting into the conversation. 

“I itch because I know what’s right. I know what you want. And it’s a lot more complicated than just itching. If you respected yourself even a little bit, maybe you would stop this moping and bitching. Today is gonna be bad day, boo-fucking-hoo. Grab the bottle and get on with it,” my brain said.

“I don’t know that grabbing the bottle will make things easier, it is kind of an important day for us. And I see a lot of screwing it up when I look at you,” I said back, looking back at the bottle.

“At least with me you have a chance of screwing someone else too, can’t say the same for the hunk of tin over there. He’s just as likely to put a bullet in the girl rather than something else,” the bottle said.

“I don’t think this conversation is productive. Go grab your gun and let’s go. The boys aren’t gonna respect you with an empty holster,” my right hand said. It wanted to hold the gun, feel its cool grip. The gun made the hand feel powerful. I agreed.

The pistol was cool and familiar in my hand. I made my way across the room and picked up the bullets that glowed the brightest, leaving the dull ones scattered on the ground. They wouldn’t have been shot anyway. I loaded the magazine, put on my long coat and cap, and stepped outside. Red light spilled from the sky, flooding the concrete hallway in front of me. Noise assailed me immediately. A thousand engines hummed, tracer rounds danced like stars in the night sky, distant artillery fire screamed through the cold air, steam hissed from the joints of walkers, men shouted orders, people died. We were losing. The Italians hadn’t shown up. Our flag hung above the trenches, dull and colorless.

I looked around, saw the potentials etched into the bodies of the people near me, and began to walk. Hanover had fallen, but many would survive. If I could do anything about it, that was. The system of bunkers was a maze, but I knew it well, and in short order I was at the entrance to the Command Bunker. Two young men guarded the door, both on the verge of making a break for a creek they knew was nearby, hoping to hide in the tall grass until the French had passed by. They would die in the Storm if they did that.

“Look alive boys! The enemy isn’t at the doorstep yet! Command has quite a greeting for them when they come knocking, so don’t trouble yourselves too much.”

“Sir, is it true the Russian wolf-men have crossed into Poland?” one said, the other looked on expectantly.

“Where did you hear that nonsense?”

“General Gryer, Sir!”

“Gryer calls the French extraphysics ‘witchcraft’ and ‘necromancy,’ I don’t trust him to know the difference between an old wive’s tale and a battle report.” I saluted them and pushed through the door.

“Sir, yes, sir!”

The interior was almost too bright. Shifting hues danced across every map and panel, radio and microphone. The people shined, each bursting with life, each capable of great and terrible things. I couldn’t see the screens, or the flashing buttons in the room, though I knew they were there. Electric light didn’t agree with me anymore, not since the ‘accident.’ I made do.

A theater of eyes turned towards me as the blast door slammed shut behind. The new people flinched when they saw my face, it wasn’t pretty. Salutes, formalities. I waved them to ease and took control of the room. A sharp order put a report in my hand. Words spilled down the sheets of paper, on them I could see the flaws, the falsities, and the truths. I sat down and let the command center spark back into motion. I picked up a stray pen and began to annotate the report, striking information and making notes. Soon, another report entered my hand, then another. Then, a report stopped me, it resisted. I looked at it and asked it what was wrong.

“Permission to be frank with you, Sir!” The report replied briskly.

“Permission granted.”

“Sir! I do not feel your call for surrender is in our nation’s favor! It is meekish, unpatriotic, and will be devastating to our morale! Sir!” The report spoke like the one who wrote it, his mind leaking into the words on the page. My own rational stepped into the abruptly spiraling conversation.

“If our soldiers do not retreat Berlin stands no chance. Surrender will be… unconditional,” a part of me said back.

“As he said, there is a way forward. Berlin will almost certainly fall, but there is a chance the Italians break through. Without 9th, there is no chance,” I said back to the report.

“Sir! If we retreat now, we will leave over twenty rural villages and townships to become occupied by enemy forces, and our supply lines to Innsbruck will be severed! The Austrians will be starved out of the Alps! There will be no chance the Italians break through occupied Switzerland!” The report pleaded with me. The scout who wrote it must’ve been from that region.

“There is no saving them. The best we can do is raise the white flag and stall,” I said, signing the report and closing it. Suddenly, the room grew quiet.

Someone was staring at me, a young officer. One of the reports I had written up was in his hand.

“Sir? These reports…” he started, his voice trailing off.

“What about them, Sergeant?” 

“They say a full retreat is our only option, Sir.”

“It is.”

“They say we should offer the entire command as a bargaining chip.”

“It does.”

Tension stretched across the young man’s face. The muscles appeared painted with color. Possibilities stretched out in front of me. I stood my ground. Looking around the room I saw the same tension in the rest of their faces. 

“The ball is already in motion.”

“But Sir, there’s no telling the French won’t just execute us,” a young woman voiced her fears. 

“They won’t.” 

Some wanted to argue, the younger ones in the room, those who didn’t understand. The older folk simply stared in any direction they could. They were dull. They knew what I saw.

“If we give these orders, the troops will riot, Sir.”

“If we don’t they will die.”

Another long silence, full of questions unasked. But they were well trained officers. They knew not to ask them. Still though, they didn’t move. There was something in them that couldn’t cross that barrier, logic out the order. My lungs wanted to sigh and I didn’t stop them.

“That’s an order. Send our request for a white flag to discuss surrender, they will say yes.”

“Sir!” they all shouted together, and as if on cue movement erupted throughout the command room. All the radio operators began talking rapidly, the upper command staff wrote letters to their loved ones, messengers began to flood in and out. I sat down and waited for the response. I wanted to answer it myself.

I didn’t have long to wait, the message was accepted. I walked up to the technician who was overseeing the communications and gestured for them to step aside. I never had gotten comfortable with keyboards, more used to typewriters. Though everyone always told me they weren’t very different; our technology had advanced too fast to keep up with. I looked at the keys and saw fingerprints painted with color. I typed, ‘The white flag will be raised, the city of Hanover surrenders. Surrender of the command structure of the 9th Corps will happen at 8:00, June 21st, 272. An unarmed group shall set up a tent in No-Man’s Land for the exchange to take place in. Assailing this group shall forfeit our terms of surrender and we will initiate an immediate resumption of armed conflict. God be with you.”

The message was transmitted and I stood from the chair. There was nothing left to do. Orders had been given, the surrender would be accepted, potential had been realized. The ball was in motion, there was no stopping it now.