the_ferryman

I really don't.

Someone found this blog, today. I was sent home on unpaid leave, pending a meeting with the higher-ups. Writing this thing goes against "strategic communications policy," whatever the fuck that is. I am fucking finished with all that bullshit. I don't think I'll come back even if they ask me. DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU COCKSUCKERS? YOU MADE ME SHOOT THAT GIRL.

...I don't even know if that's true, any more. It's funny, what slips away. Reality. Sometimes I look at this town and the whole thing seems fake, just layers of paint, not a real city but just a film set or an artist's rendering. A whole city with phantom limb syndrome. Sometimes I dream the gun in my hands. Often, in fact. I feel its vibrations. I know the other guys get a sexual thing out of the interviews and the searches and what not. Maybe I could have been like that, given enough of a chance. But it's different after you kill someone. It just is. Even if an automated profiler told you to. Even if someone else made the decision.

It's really no different if a computer does it or a commanding officer does it. That's what they said in the training. This is where all our money went. After the split. Phantom limb, like I said.

A goddamn machine told me to shoot that girl and I did it.

That's what started all of this. I mean, my therapist said I should start one. Of course. But the reason I agreed was that I found her journal.

Her name is persona_non_grata . I'm not sure why she calls herself that. Called herself that. I should use the past tense. I'm the reason she's dead.

My therapist said I should talk about my first day on the job. Fine, I said. How much detail do you want? As much as I'm comfortable giving, he said. Fine, I said again.

My first day on the job, the Turks gave us a dead body.

One of those robot dolphins found it in the Bosphorus. It was all chewed up by crabs. Swollen. The police boat was busy, so they gave him to us. We didn't know what to do with him. He was sort of falling apart; only his clothes held him together. Bodies that have been underwater for too long -- they just start to slowly come apart. Dissolve. It was in the training, but when they say that nothing prepares you, they really fucking mean it.

Anyway. We had to contact the family. Of course they wanted nothing to do with us. Nobody wants anything to do with the customs man, when he comes around. They always think we're Immigration, but we're not. That's a separate agency, but we all wear the same uniform. The family, all nine of them, were crammed into this little house on a hill. Three bedrooms. No wonder the guy took a dip, we joked. We tagged a drone to watch the house, for retaliation. (The kids kept whipping rocks at it.)

We tried to find evidence of a long-term plan. Who his contacts were on the other side of the border, what he planned to do, what money he had. We had gone through his pockets and found nothing. Not even a phone. Not even a fucking flash key. We even checked his teeth, because sometimes (they told me this, in the training) they hold the data in their teeth. It's expensive, but nobody will ever find anything in there. You can get them printed out at some shops. Fake teeth with a solid state cavity. The good ones, they clone the bone from your own tissues, and put it on a rattan scaffold. Of course, all of this is predicated on you ripping out one of your own teeth and replacing it with something else.

The things people do to leave this place.

We experimented with the pain rays, today. Apparently, they heat up the moisture that everyone has in their subcutaneous fat layer. Fat is very moist, I guess. There's no damage to the skin. I know, because I tried with my leg. My therapist asked why I would do that, even though they asked us not to (the licensed retailers selling us the damn things are the only ones who can do that, I guess). I didn't really have an answer.

Then he wanted to know about the girl.

The one I killed.

Fuck that guy.

The therapist said I should start a journal, so I am. That's the only reason I'm doing it. I think journaling is really for little girls and people obsessed with themselves. I've never enjoyed sharing too much about myself, so I've never done this before -- except for in school when we had to do daily writeups. And of course I write reports at work, every time I discharge my weapon or there's trouble. But I write those up because I have to, not because I want to. And because they serve some purpose. At least, the higher-ups think they do. I don't know. I don't think anyone ever reads them. I think they're a waste of time.

I don't think anyone's ever going to read this little waste of time, either.