This story is a reflection on the morality of revenge. It was originally inspired by my contempt for the dictator Islam Karimov, but applies to every tyrant you’ve ever wanted to see tortured for their crimes. My hope is that this story eventually gets turned into a graphic novel or short animation.
Start
The words “The Tyrant suffers forever
so that we may live in peace” were etched in block metal letters
above the entrance to the Lattice of Sorrow. The phrase struck
Ayesha as a vengeful prayer.
She walked along the long shadows cast
by the words and through the massive open gate. The Lattice, perhaps
the largest sculpture in the galaxy, now stretched out before her,
each one of its billion monuments commemorating a tragedy from the
Last Great War. The smallest memorials were no bigger than a
tombstone; the largest, great stone and metal mausoleums, covered
hundreds of cubic metres. They stretched in every direction and far
up into the sky, all unique save for two common elements: each told a
story about one of the Tyrant’s massacres, and each had a light
symbolizing the life and death of one of the Tyrant’s trillion
victims.
For the next hour Ayesha randomly
floated through the Lattice, experiencing the sensations which
emanated from the memorials. Some whispered stories, others broadcast
emotions scanned from victims at the moment of their deaths. The most
prevalent emotions were horror and fear. The most unsettling emotion
was relief, for people only feel relieved to die after unbearable
suffering.
A placard at the centre of a marble
arched doorway caught her attention. It read,
The recording contained in this mausoleum was taken 1,000 seconds
after the death of the child Elizum Kemble. He was one of the one
billion people killed during the Siege of Ashanti, the final battle
of the Last Great War.
The Tyrant suffers
forever so that we may live in peace.
Ayesha had always thought that it was
perverse to experience a death scan, but because of her anger at this
senseless murder she decided that she would. She stepped under the
tomb’s portico and paused for a moment. Upon entering she felt a
slight jolt as her perspective was replaced by that of the murdered
child.
Mechanized soldiers fall through the air like snowflakes, their uniforms splashes of white against a deep, blue sky and a brown, dusty town. I want to run but I cannot. There is no where to run to. We are encircled. I hide in the shadow of a doorway hoping that I have not been seen.
The soldiers walk towards each other, compressing the crowd – my
friends, my family. I want to help them but I cannot. I am trembling
with fear.
The Mechs pause, raise their weapons and fire. As the dust settles
they vacuum up the corpses into the balloon-like bags they carry on
their backs.
As the man-machines clear the quare of bodies, one turns suddenly and
looks directly at my hiding place.
I stare into its mottled green-brown eyes, trying to understand what,
if anything, it is thinking as it prepares to kill me.
Ayesha hastily stepped out of the
mausoleum. She was shaking because the Mech that killed Elizum
Kemble had the same eyes as the one that had murdered her own family.
She staggered off the platform in front of the memorial, hovered
unsteadily in the air for a moment and then scudded away into the
darkening sky. She had had enough of memorials so she flew directly
towards her ultimate destination, the Ashanti Palace. The Palace,
which once was a regional headquarters in the Tyrant’s empire, had
been converted into a prison and museum after his defeat.
The entrance to the Palace faced onto
the Plaza of Justice. From a distance the Plaza appeared flat and
empty, save for a lighted sphere in the middle. As she drew closer
she saw that it was teeming with people. Many were clearly tourists,
but there were also clusters of semi-permanent camps inhabited by
protesters and agitators. Though most were concerned with the
Tyrant’s suffering – some for, most against – she could see
representatives from a vast array of the galaxy’s political
interests. If you wanted to get a message out, this was a good place
to do it: most people visited the Lattice of Sorrow at least once in
their lives.
The Plaza was so large that it took
several minutes of flying before Ayesha saw the Panopticon, which was
popularly known as the Tyrant’s Punishment. She had always thought of
the Panopticon as a transparent sphere, but as she approached it she
could see that it wasn’t a structure at all: it was simply a force
field that held the Tyrant’s gaunt, twitching body suspended in the
air. From a distance his disjointed movements appeared graceful, but
as she lowered herself closer to him she saw that he was in agony.
Unlike her siblings and friends, Ayesha
had never flinched in the face of pain. When she grazed herself as a
child she did not run whining to her parents for solace. Instead she
would investigate the wound, and try to conquer her pain. She could
not help but look at the Tyrant. After ten thousand days of torture
she was surprised to see that his sunken, hollow eyes were alert:
they constantly darted around, looking directly at faces in the crowd
that pushed around the edges of the Panopticon, angling for a better
view. The look in his reddened eyes was deranged. His apparent lunacy
was emphasized by his frayed tongue, which incessantly licked his
bloody lips.
After several minutes of intent viewing
Ayesha retreated to a quiet spot several hundred feet above the
Tyrant’s body, and prepared to watch the end of the Cycle, a 10,000
day period during each second of which a memorial light would be
extinguished to commemorate one of his murders. As each the light was
extinguished, the Tyrant’s body would be wracked by pain. At the
beginning of the Cycle the Lattice burned with lights. Now that the
Cycle was ending the lights were gradually giving way to night. When
the last light was extinguished later this evening, medics would take
down his wretched body so that he could be revived sufficiently to
endure another round of torture. Ayesha would interview him
immediately before the Punishment resumed.
One hour before dawn the last memorial
light was extinguished. The only light in the entire Lattice of
Sorrow came from the Panopticon, which continued to glow with hard
white-blue light. The Tyrant’s body hung limply, only periodically
twitching from muscle memory, not torture. Over the next few minutes
the light from the Panopticon began to fade; soon everything became
black and still. The darkness lasted an interminable time then was
ended by a loud, crashing noise, which echoed for a few minutes more.
When the last echo died away there was a final moment of silence and
then the memorial lights were turned back on.
The Plaza was far more crowded than
Ayesha had realized. She lowered herself carefully into an empty spot
several hundred metres from her destination, the main entrance to the
Palace. On her way she passed a group of protesters quietly sitting
in a circle, sipping tea. Their placards read, “Only God can punish
for eternity” and “Let the Tyrant die and be judged. Hell is
worse than any punishment humans can devise.” These pacifists were
flanked by a more sanguine group sitting in the shade of a large
banner which read, “His soul has been judged already. Let his body
suffer for his crimes.” Ayesha rushed passed the two camps, not
wanting to get embroiled in a dispute.
As she approached the Palace entrance
she wondered yet again what she hoped to achieve in her upcoming
interview. She had no desire to vindicate the Tyrant’s crimes and was
indifferent to pleas for clemency. She opposed punitive justice when
it was difficult to determine guilt with certainty. But in this case
there were no doubts. The Tyrant had ravaged over one million worlds
and though he personally had killed not one person, his soldiers had
murdered over one trillion innocent civilians. The thought of these
atrocities brought her mind back to Elizum Kemble’s murderer, the
man-machine with a white steel body and human eyes. She wasn’t
interested in the machinery of terror; but rather the humanity behind
it.
A rabid looking man pushed his way in
front of her and shouted, “He didn’t do it! He only killed in
self-defense. This is all a lie!” The Denier waved a brochure he
thought contained evidence for his ignorant claim. Ayesha pushed the
man aside and walked into the thickest part of crowd, towards the
main entrance to the Palace.
Once there she activated her security
pass. One moment later a group of soldiers appeared out of nowhere
and with apparently no effort cleared the crowd from around her. They
entered the Palace through a tiny side door which opened onto one
wing of a tremendous, square hallway. The floors of the hallway were
paved with polished marble laid out in a red and white checkered
pattern. Twenty metre high marble statues lined each wall. In the
center of the hallway there was a huge alabaster sculpture of a man
wrestling with a snake. The roof had a grid of skylights that let
light shine down in articulated lines. The roof was held up by long
columns of dark green marble, the tops of which were decorated with
elaborate carvings of acanthus leaves.
Seven hallways radiated out from the
atrium, a main hallway that immediately faced the entrance-way and
one on each of the 3 remaining sides. Ayesha was led by her escorts
around the based of the alabaster statue towards the main hallway.
Her footstep’s echoed loudly as she walked. The soldiers who
accompanied her were silent. At the entrance to the hallway she saw
the erect, still body of a Mech. She looked at its eyes. They too
were mottled green-brown. Her entire body became tense with fear. She
halted several metres before it to collect herself. Her escort
saluted and left.
The Mech let her stand silently for a
respectful moment and then spoke with a disconcertingly soft voice.
“Are you alright?” She tried to answer the mechanized soldier’s
question but could not.
The Mech spoke again. “Please do not
be alarmed madam. No doubt you have seen countless images of soldiers
like me enacting terrible atrocities. You may have even experienced a
death scan. Fear not. I have been reprogrammed; I pose no threat to
you.” She did not respond; fear had paralyzed her.
“Ma’am. We have a very tight
schedule.” The Mech offered his arm, as an escort. She flinched
away from his touch but nevertheless proceeded in the direction he
indicated.
The main hallway was designed in a
baroque style. It had a painted parquet floor and its walls were
adorned with tall mirrors, which were interspersed with arched
crystalline windows. Large glass chandeliers hung in a row from the
centre of the ceiling. Even the most prosaic items, such as door
handles and torch holders, were the products of elaborate
craftsmanship. Ayesha paused to examine a fresco that dominated one
wall. The focus of the painting was a man with a great powdered wig;
his clothes were made of purple velvet and were covered with heavy
gold ornaments. His feet were shod in long leather boots which opened
up at his thighs. On one hip he wore a scabbard out of which
protruded the handle of a sword which had been decorated with colored
stones; his gloved right hand rested on a holster, which contained a
gun. On his head he wore a large, rimmed hat which was decorated with
a tremendous feather. The large feathered cap initially made Ayesha
think that this man was some type of shaman, but when she examined
the painting more carefully she realized he was a military leader.
Directly in front of the great man was a prostrate man, grandly
dressed, who was signing a handwritten document. The prostrate man
was also flanked by armored men, though his soldiers had all lowered
themselves onto one knee, and were unarmed.
Ayesha moved slowly forward, examining
the other paintings. All contained similar themes: pictures of the
great man in various grand, dysfunctional outfits, surrounded by
victorious and vanquished soldiers. She realized then that the entire
hallway, the mirrors, the chandeliers, the crystalline windows, down
to the very last, ornate detail, had been constructed to glorify this
one man’s military exploits. Not one painting gave any indication of
how brutal warfare was for these soldiers. “Imagine killing someone
by impaling them with a metal stick, or blowing them apart with small
balls of steel” she thought. “Somehow such images never never
adorn monuments to military victories. It’s as if humans have a
disability which makes us unable to see our barbarity for what it is
even as we celebrate it.”
Her escort interrupted her reverie.
“While we wait for the Prisoner is there anything you would like to
know about the Palace or the Last Great War?”
“Who is that man?” Ayesha pointed
to the painting of the leader with the feathered hat.
“His name is Louis Quattorze. He was
a French ruler. This is all a replica of a hallway in one of his
Palaces.”
“Was he a great military leader?”,
she asked bitterly.
The Mech replied in a neutral voice.
“If you judge greatness in terms of conquests, then no he was not a
great leader. Although he fought many wars against his neighbors,
when he died his nation’s borders were little changed from when he
began. Most of the few increases in territory he did achieve were
legal victories, not military.” The fact that the glorious battles
depicted along this gallery were pointless did little to change her
low opinion of Louis Quattorze.
The Mech waited a respectful moment for
Ayesha to reply, and when she didn’t, said, “The craft-work is
tremendous, isn’t it, particularly when you consider that the
originals these artifacts were modeled on were all constructed with
crude tools?”
She nodded her assent, but let the
Mech’s attempt to converse fail.
The Mech’s wrist beeped sullenly.
“It’s time”. He nodded towards the doorway at the end of the
hallway. They passed through it into a large room also decorated in a
baroque style.
“What is this place?”, Ayesha
asked.
“The Hall of Peace.”
“Was this one of Mr. Quattorze’s
chambers?”
“No. The Hall is modern. It is where
the Tyrant was captured after his attempted suicide.”
They did not enter the Hall but instead
turned down a grey, utilitarian service corridor. At the corridor’s
end they encountered a heavy metal door with a grill on its thick
glass window. The Mech gestured towards the door, “Please enter.
This is where you will be meeting the Prisoner.”
The interview room was a small,
windowless box, with white walls illuminated by bright blue-white
lights. In the center of the room there was a thin metal table which
was bolted to the floor. There was only one chair. She expected the
Mech to stand but wondered where the Tyrant would sit. Directly
opposite the chair there was a second door exactly the same as the
one through which she had entered. She sat down on the chair while
the Mech moved beside the second door and became still.
As Ayesha waited she looked directly at
the Mech. It was interesting what human traits had been retained in
the design of these man-machines. They had protuberances which
resembled arms and legs, they spoke through a vent where one would
expect a mouth, and had human-like, eyes. “Why had their designers
retained any human attributes?” she wondered.
“How old are you?” she asked the
Mech. Though the question itself was neutral, her tone of voice was
accusatory.
“I was born 1,158 years ago. I
reached this final state” it gestured towards its body, “1,026
years ago, just after the conclusion of the Last Great War.”
“Why do you exist?”
Though the Mech’s voice remained
without affect, it’s awkward body language made her think it was
taken aback by her question. It replied, “What do you mean?”
“I know that you are an amalgamation
of human soldier and machine. But I don’t understand the need for a
hybrid soldier. Why didn’t the Tyrant create an army of robots? What
does your humanity bring to soldiering?”
“Memory”, the Mech replied.
“I don’t understand”.
“The way humans and machines
interpret their experiences is different. Machines have virtually
unlimited storage capacity.
Humans do not and therefore must constantly filter and reinterpret
their experiences. The Tyrant felt that war was an art, and that
humans, because of how they remember and learn, are more artistic
than machines.”
“But you are programmed.”
“It is true that the general
parameters of my behavior are strictly regulated. For example, I am
incapable of killing you right now. Or any human, for that matter.
But within certain parameters I am free to act based on my
experiences and judgment. I am not very different from you, except my
boundaries are programmed.”
“What about your conscience?” she
asked. The Mech did not answer her question. She spoke again, “Did
you fight in the War?”
“Yes. In fact I fought right here on
Ashanti, during the final battle of the war.”
“Did you kill anyone?” Ayesha
looked directly into the Mech’s mottled eyes as she asked this
question.
“I personally was responsible for
1,021,067 verified deaths and several million more that were never
verified.”
“Do you regret what you did?”
“What I did was senseless.”
“Is that your programming talking?”
“No. From a purely military
perspective, the massacres were not constructive, even though our
victims’ bodies did power our weapons.”
“Did you take any death scans?”
“I took scans from as many of my
victims as I could. Scanning was part of my standing orders.”
“Have you experienced the scans?”
“Yes. All of them.”
Ayesha imagined this man-machine
sequestered in a booth reviewing its murderous deeds from the
perspective of its victims. She wondered if it was like an idiot
child who could use its fingers to count but could not make the
cognitive leap to abstract numbers. Could this Mech determine that
its senseless murders were evil or did the fact that it was
programmed preclude the possibility of moral sensibility? Could you
program conscience? Could you unprogram it?
Her agitated mind leapt to the memory
of her family’s murder. Looking directly at the Mech she asked,
“Have you ever been to the planet Luthan?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
Ayesha let the conversation lapse.
The door opposite her opened with a
clang revealing the body of the Tyrant suspended awkwardly in the air
by a force-field, which maneuvered him into the space in front of
her. He dangled limply in the air, the toes of his feet hovering a
few centimeters above the tiled floor. The door slammed shut.
Despite having just been revived by
medics, the Tyrant was stooped and frail. He wore an orange jumper
which hung loosely on his body. His watery blue eyes were unfocused
and drifted lazily around the room, rarely settling on any one object
for more than a blink. His manner was likewise unfocused and his
limbs constantly twitched. There was no hair anywhere on his body.
He leaned forward suddenly and shouted
directly into her face, “What is your name?!”
The force-field that contained him
slammed him back into the air, so that his body became straight and
rigid. Immobilized, he floated back towards the door. Though
startled, she replied without hesitation. “Ayesha”.
After a moment the Prisoner began to
move his fingers tentatively. His force-field prison allowed him a
certain amount of free movement, if he behaved.
He addressed his next question to a
blank wall. “You didn’t answer my question. I asked you, why are
you here, Ayesha?”
“I’m here to interview you.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
he continued, belligerently, his gaze still fixed on the blank white
wall to his right. “My Punishment? Do you want me to tell you what
its like to be repeatedly electrocuted? Do you want to talk to me
about justice?”
Ayesha knew from her research that the
Prisoner would eventually tire of these histrionics, so she silently
waited for him to continue. After a moment he spoke again, this time
with a tired voice, “Very well. Interview me.”
Ayesha took one long breath to collect
herself. She only had a brief time for this interview and wanted to
make each question count. She was well prepared. In her hand she held
a list of clearly cross-referenced questions; a flowchart of
potentialities. If he said this she would ask this, otherwise that.
But where to start?
Her thoughts kept returning to Elizum
Kemble’s memorial and the murder of her own family so she asked the
question that had been foremost on her mind all day, “Half of your
victims died in the last year of the War. Why did you keep killing
after you had lost?”
The Prisoner floated away from Ayesha;
his head fell backwards onto the nape of his neck and his manic eyes
wandered around the ceiling as he answered her question, “Do you
know the story of my capture?”
“You poisoned yourself moments before
the 82nd airborne stormed this Palace. Allied medics revived you and
then you were tried and sentenced by the War Crimes Tribunal to a
life sentence for each one of your victims, to be served in the
Panopticon.”
“Do you know what kind of poison I
used?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how deadly it is?”
“Yes. At least I think I do.”
With each question the Tyrant’s body
became slightly more erect and his eyes more focused. Suddenly he
wheezed loudly and his rigidity collapsed. He hung in the air like a
broken puppet, speaking his next statement with a soft, halting
voice, “Ayesha, I was dead for over 6 hours before the medics
revived me. I cannot answer your question. I do not remember anything
from before I died.”
His quiet words inflamed her response,
“Why would the Tribunal let me see you, if you have no memories?
Why would they let anyone see you?”
He replied with the same defeated
voice. “The Tribunal doesn’t believe me. They hope you will trip me
up with clever questions.” He nodded towards the ceiling. “They’re
watching now, you know. Of course you know.”
She dismissed his allusions to the
surveillance sensors and continued. “But you can think. You’re
lucid.”
“Yes. When I’m not being tortured.”
Ayesha’s mind was racing but
directionless. If what he said was true, all of her questions were
irrelevant. She repressed an urge to strike him. She knew that anger
was just an expression of her frustration. Then her rage turned
against the War Crimes Tribunal. “How dare they mislead me like
this!” she thought. “This interview is the culmination of years’
worth of effort. They could have warned me about this!”
“Do you feel betrayed?” The
Tyrant’s voice had a cloying tone. “Of course you do. All the
interviewers do. You’ve been manipulated.”
“Where were you born?” Ayesha shot
the question at him, like a trial lawyer.
“On the planet Sirius under a
blood-red sun,” he immediately replied.
“How do you know that if you have no
memories?”
“I hear that dreadful poem recited
continuously when I am enduring my Punishment.” The Prisoner made a
croaking noise which Ayesha assumed was laughter.
“What do you think of your sentence?”
He answered her question indirectly.
“Did you experience any death scans before coming here?” She
nodded and he continued. “There are millions scattered throughout
the Lattice. My soldiers took most of those scans for me. I have been
told that I used to experience the scans for pleasure. Ayesha, my
sentence is horrific, but I can’t blame you for wanting to
punish me. Of course I am guilty.”
His emphasis on the word you
off-put her. She had never felt herself culpable for his suffering –
he committed his trillion crimes and others punished him. But from
his perspective of course she was. The Tyrant’s Punishment was
dictated by her society. She could throw her support behind
those who felt he was better off dead. But she did not, and therefore
she shared some responsibility for his eternal suffering.
The Prisoner continued speaking,
“You’re not here because of the people I murdered are you?” This
raised her hackles, but before she could correct him he completed his
point, “Ayesha, you’re here because of some other personal tragedy
aren’t you?”
She took a moment to calm herself: it
was foolish to be angry simply because this damaged, insane man had
insight into her motives. She nodded.
“Are you afraid of me?”
She looked at him. “No.”
“What about that?” he nodded
towards the Mech.
“It terrifies me.”
“Why?”
“Have you ever heard of Luthan?”
she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a mining planet. I grew up
there. My father was a senior executive in the company that owned
it.” She looked at him to see if he was listening and couldn’t
tell. Even though his gaze was averted, somehow, out of the corner of
his left eye he watched her. He said, “I am listening. Continue.”
“When I was eight years old a company
tried to buy Luthan. The
company bribed most of the people who could influence the sale. My
father opposed the bid. He was a stubborn man who was strongly
motivated by his strict sense of morality. One day, as my family
prepared for dinner, a Mech murdered him. Then it killed my brother,
my mother and my two sisters. I escaped because I hid in a tree. The
police never captured the murderer. They claimed it was a renegade
from your army that had eluded reprogramming. It was a transparent
but serviceable lie. The next day the planet was sold.”
The Prisoner responded to the space
behind her left shoulder, “Ayesha, people are greedy.”
She shook her head sadly, “Its worse
than that. Years later I saw an interview with the owner of the
corporation that murdered my family. He was asked why his company had
fought so hard for a relatively unimportant planet like Luthan.
It turns out he did it for Eleutheria.” She began to shake while
recalling the memory. The Prisoner reached one of his palsied hands
towards her, but the movement was ended abruptly by a force-field.
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Eleutheria is a very beautiful
garden. My family was murdered for a garden.”
“Would you torture their murderers?”
“No.”
“Would you kill them if you could do
so with no consequences?”
When she did not answer, the Prisoner
resumed his interrogation, “What do you feel about me?”
“I hate you.”
She braced herself for a demonstrative
response, but instead the Tyrant slumped pathetically forward. His
force field pushed his limp body back into an erect but akimbo
position. He weakly spoke, “Ayesha, do you want me to suffer until
the end of time?”
“I want you dead. You are a monster.”
He laughed weakly. “Ayesha, I’m
certain that the old me, who I was before I died, would have loved
your hatred.”
An alarm beeped twice. Moments later
two soldiers appeared to escort the Tyrant from the room; the
interview was over. As his limp body was pushed out of the door,
Ayesha could see that he was trying to say something to her but his
words were muted by his force-field prison.
The Mech escorted Ayesha to the service
doors through which she had entered, but did not leave the Palace
with her. She stepped alone into the crowd; the small doors closed
quickly behind her. Immediately, a dissembling man with matted hair,
loose clothing and wild eyes approached her waving a pamphlet into
the air. “Lady, you must be important. Only important people are
allowed into the Palace. Listen to me. He didn’t do it! You must set
him free. He’s innocent.” The man stuffed a pamphlet into her hands
and then shouted directly into her face “He Didn’t Do It!” Her
temper flared; she harshly shoved him out of her way.
Her scuffle with the Denier was
interrupted by a procession from the Palace: the Tyrant was being
returned to his Punishment. Everyone turned to watch. At the base of
the Panopticon the Tyrant’s escort backed off into a semi-circle
around his skewed hovering body. Slowly he floated into the air. As
he moved the cables that nourished and tormented him gradually
ensnared him in a web. There was a thick moment of anticipation once
he was in position; this was followed by a loud crashing sound which
echoed into silence: the Cycle had begun. The Tyrant began to writhe
in pain as one by one the lights of the Lattice of Sorrow were
extinguished.
Ayesha fled in horror into the air far
above the Plaza and then set her course away from the cursed place;
the Denier followed her. She landed at entrance to the Lattice. The
moment she did the Denier grabbed her by the shoulders, roughly
turned her around and shouted into her face, “HE DIDN’T DO IT! YOU
MUST HELP FREE HIM” She faced him full on and shouted in reply,
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” and then violently pushed him to the ground.
The Denier fell into the shadow of the letters cast by the gate:
The Tyrant suffers forever so that we may live in peace.
