The Lesser of Three Evils
1
The door thudded, rattling as it hit the rubber stop.
The guards brought him in, cuffed hands and ankles clinking as he shuffled towards his seat. They sat him down, clicking his restraints in place.
“Wait here.” One of the guards said without irony.
The young man watched as they closed the door.
Across from him was a mirror. His sunken eyes stared back at him in the off color artificial light. He was a young man, but looked haggard. He hadn’t slept in days. They’d kept him awake with music and buckets of cold water thrown over him at random times.
The door opened, revealing an official looking man in high ranking military gear. He came in, placed his cap on the table and sat down.
They looked at each other in silence.
The officer adjusted his cap’s position on the table so that it was at a perfect right angle to him. He sighed, and turned to the chained man.
“I know you did it.” He said .
The young prisoner said nothing.
“Better get used to those chains son, you’re going away for a long time.”
The young man stared at the officer, his breath was the only sound that came from him.
“Admit it son, and we can all go home”.
“Admit what?” The young man said, “That I discovered your secret? Your lies? That I know the truth?”
“So you admit it then?”
“I found what you were doing.”
“So you admit the crime?”
“What I did was for the good of the country. For mankind even!” His chair screeched as he sat forward, raging at the officer.
The officer adjusted his cap on the table. His eyes flicked back to the young prisoner. What little humanity had been in his eyes was now noticeable by its absence.
Have you told anyone what you saw?
“I’m not telling you shit.”
The officer didn’t blink. “Have you?”
“Maybe. You’ll find out.”
The officer paused for a long time, his breath was the only sound in the room above the hum of the dim light overhead. “This isn’t a negotiation.”
The young man laughed, defiance in his smirk. “I have information on you and-”
“-and we have you in custody,” The officer interrupted, “we’ll put you in jail for the rest of your life.”
“You’ll be in the cell next to me, liar.”
The officer sat forward in his chair, his face coming under the pale light. “You’ll never see your family again. It’ll be like you don’t exist.”
The young man gritted his teeth. Doesn’t matter none. I’m doing it for the people.”
“Son, you’re not. You have a piece of a bigger picture. If you reveal what you know, you’ll make it worse.”
“Worse? How can it possibly be worse? You’ve killed people over this, changed history, ruined lives! How can I be making it worse? I’m doing something that should have been done years ago. Fuck you and your military industrial asshole bosses that kept this a secret for so long. Fucking warmongers”
The officer tapped his finger on his mouth as he thought, the insult had little visible effect.
“Fine. We’ll hold your trial in a military court. The case will be kept out of the press. You’ll go away and your family will receive a gagging order. All evidence of your existence will disappear. We’ll rub you out. You won’t even have a name. Less than a memory, solitary confinement, kept in the dark forever.” He sat back in his seat, arms folded. “You can tell the world, but you’ll never know what happened after the news breaks.”
“If it means you’ll face justice, I’ll pay the price for the truth.”
The officer gave a smile borne of experience. “We control the truth. We’ll make the announcement ourselves. It’ll be a misidentification. Military prototype. It’ll be kept out of the press in the interests of national security. Your story will go nowhere, and you’ll be in here, forever, and you wont change a thing.
The blackness of regret filled the young man’s eyes.
“Unless..” the general said thumbing the end of his cap, “You work for us.”
I’ll never work for you. All you care about is bombing people for oil. Baby killers with advanced technology, that’s all you are.”
The officer paused for a moment. That one stung. “If you work for us,” he wiped a speck of dust from his cap before continuing. “We’ll tell you everything.”
The young prisoner sat there in silence, a different look in his eyes, suspicious, but curious. “Tell me first and I’ll decide.”
“Doesn’t work like that. We don’t negotiate, except in special cases, and this is a one time offer.”
“I’ll be free?”
“Yes. You’ll be free, and you’ll know. But you can’t tell anyone. If you do, there’ll be no further offers, you’ll have no rights. Except one.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll have one right.”
“What right?”
The officer waved a heavy duty prison key in his face. “Right this way.” He smiled.
The young man looked down at his hands, they were trembling. “I need time to think.”
The officer pulled out a gold box. He opened it, revealing high end cigarettes.
“Have one. When you finish, tell me your answer.”
The young man took it. The officer lit it, and watched as the prisoner smoked it in silence. A complex look spread across his face, glowing a pale red in the light of the cigarette.
2
A cigarette butt sat on the table, smoke drifting between the two men.
The officer said nothing.
“I’ll do it. I’ll work for you. But I want to know everything, now.”
“Good. Sign this and I’ll tell you everything.”
He passed forward a sheet of paper, crammed with text so small it was illegible.
The prisoner looked through it, squinting.
“You have my word. Everything.”
He signed it, passing it back to the officer.
The officer nodded at the mirror and a suited man came in, taking away the document in silence. The officer waited until the door closed again before turning back to the prisoner.
“How much do you know already?”
“I saw everything you have on your servers. The nine craft. Highly, highly advanced. Where are they from and how long have we known?”
“That’s not what it is.”
“Bullshit.”
“It isn’t.”
“You said you’d tell me the truth. Where are they from?”
“It’s not like you think.”
“Explain it then!” The young man shouted. Veins were bulging in his glistening forehead.
The officer took out a cigarette and lit it. “The truth is,” he took a drag and emitted a long, deep exhale, “it’s us.”
“What’s ‘us?’ You mean the craft?”
“Yes. They’re ours.”
“What? Where did you get them from? From…” he paused, eyes flitting left and right, mind working overtime, “from them?”
“No. There’s no them.”
“Aliens?”
“Yes.”
“Then what? Are they us from the future?”
“No. You’re not listening. There’s no them. No aliens, no people from the future, no-”
“-Inter dimensional beings?” the young man interrupted.
“-No.” the officer said. “Its none of them.”
“Then where are the craft from?”
“It’s not real. None of it is. It’s all fabricated.”
“Aliens? UFOs?” The young man’s voice strained under the pressure.
“Yes.”
The prisoner frowned, his face a mass of confusion. “I don’t understand. How can… but the pictures!”
“We’ve looked everywhere. Across the universe, there’s nothing.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The young man shouted. “I’m not stupid. We don’t have the technology to do that.”
“We’ve had it for decades.” The officer said as he took another drag.
“What? What technology do we have?”
“Teleportation.”
“Teleportation?” The prisoner’s face drained of color. “You got teleportation from the aliens?”
“There are no aliens.”
The prisoner’s face contorted as if he were in pain. “But…. How?”
“It was the Chinese and their political prisoners. They’ve been experimenting on them for years. Started in the fifties. Cloning, teleportation, everything. A defector brought it to us just before they accomplished it. We beat them to the finish line, created our first teleporter, and went everywhere. We’ve seen everything.”
“How long ago?” The young man’s words were slow, almost to the point of slurring.
“Before you were born. Late sixties.”
“How long does it take to…”
“It’s quick. You can send people anywhere. We looked everywhere, mapped out everything. Couldn’t find a damn thing.”
“But the universe is massive, you must have missed at least some-”
“We didn’t. we looked everywhere, there’s nothing out there except us.” The officer stubbed out his cigarette.
They both sat in silence for a very long time. The smoke from the cigarette slowly faded away.
The prisoner was the first to speak. “I never thought…” His words trailed off into nothing like the cigarette smoke.
“It’s hard to accept. You don’t sleep for months.”
The prisoner shook his head. “But what about all of the sightings? Pictures? radar returns? All of the famous cases?”
“All us. We design them.”
“How?” the young man shook his head, looking for order and clarity in his questioning. “Why?”
“Some are holograms, others, real craft. A lot of them are just special effects put onto film. Some actors put amongst the witnesses, disinformation, obfuscation, muddied waters.”
“But why would you…. I mean, what would be the purpose of…”
“Confusion.” The officer said.
“Why would you do that?”
“To keep the people guessing. Those that pay attention anyway. We distract the masses with social media and entertainment, but those that study the field, it’s hard to trick them. We need to constantly come up with cases to keep them occupied. Sometimes one of them gets on to us, like yourself. We recruit them.”
“There have been others?”
“A few. They always go for the deal.”
“The same like mine?”
“Yes. They choose it and stick to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s best to keep people distracted.” The officer paused for a moment, choosing his words. “The lesser of three evils.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Distraction is preferable to everyone believing in aliens and society crumbling. But there’s one thing worse than the alien belief.”
“Which is?”
“Knowing that we are alone.”
They sat in silence.
Their heads dipped.
Minutes ticked by.
The young prisoner exhaled, nodding his head. The scale of the situation now apparent.
He reached out to the golden cigarette packet. “Can I get another one?