The Interview (5 minute read)

“Miss Wightwitch?”
As always, the guard asked the question through the locked door. He didn’t slide back the viewing port or use the intercom.
“Last I checked.”
“Please answer yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“You have an interview in 2 minutes.”
The female prisoner got up from the stiff cot, walked over to the radiator and picked up her prison jacket. It was a coarse synthetic garment which would probably last longer than she would.
It was also itchy and uncomfortable. When she was alone in the cell she didn’t wear it.
But you couldn’t attend an interview in your underwear.

The walk took longer than usual. The single guard led her down several dusty hallways before going through a double locked door in to a nicer part of the prison. There were carpets here and the paint on the walls looked like it had been applied sometime in the current century. This was visitor country.
In 16 months of incarceration, Ness had yet to see anyone who wasn’t a guard or an investigating agent. This meant something had changed. She didn’t yet hope that it meant good news.

The woman was already in the meeting room when Ness arrived. She wore a high-necked expensive-looking business suit with a pin in the lapel. As expected, it was the split red/blue circle of the progressive alliance.
“Miss Wightwitch, please take a seat.”
Ness sat. The woman stared at her for a moment. Ness began to feel uncomfortable, then realized what was happening and shook it off. The silence was supposed to make her feel nervous. Standard interrogation technique.
It never changed, no matter who was in power.
She sat back and let the interrogator wait.

Ness had brown hair, going grey. When she had come in it had been tinted blue, but that was all grown out and cut away. Small holes in her nose and eyebrow showed where rings had been removed when she had been arrested. They let her keep her thick rimmed glasses.
The agent began shuffling her files, coughed and made eye contact. Before she spoke, Nessy mentally awarded herself one point.
“Before we start, can I confirm your name? Vannessa Olivia Wightwitch?”
“Yes.”
Ness had learned the interviews went quicker when you answered with yes or no replies.
“Can you spell that for me?”
Ness did.
“Not ‘White Witch’?”
“No.”
“Ah, well. That clears up that mystery.”
Ness ground her teeth. She wouldn’t ask.
“You see, there’s been a... bit of a mix up. A clerical error if you will.”
Ness looked at the government woman. Now she did, she saw that she was quite young. Too junior for the suit, or the pin. What was going on here?
“I think we can get you out of here today. If we can sort out a few loose ends...”
The silence hung in the air like cigarette smoke. When Ness finally spoke, her voice was raw.
“What do you want from me?”

The door opened behind her and a man entered. Ness recognized him from earlier interviews. Before he had been arrogant and aggressive. She thought of him as bad-cop. Now he looked like about-to-get-fired-cop.

“This is agent Petersen from the Reconstituted Environmental Protection Agency. I think you’ve met.”
Petersen checked the cameras and other recording devices, and then leaned forward, eager to begin. Was this it, down to business finally after 16 months of investigative foreplay?
“Vanessa... May I call you Ness?”
“No. Call me Miss Wightwitch.”
“OK. Can you confirm that at no point have we subjected you to violence or torture or any other physical abuse?”
Ness looked at him.
“Answer yes or no.”
It was true, but she begrudged giving a confirmation.
“You brought me in here with no charges, no explanation. You took away my net access and didn’t let me have any visitors. You transferred me in the middle of the night to god knows where this place is, you never told me what’s going on or what’s going to happen next...” She stopped herself. She had been getting up from her seat.
16 months she had held herself in check. She wasn’t going to give up now.
“Answer yes or no.”
“Yes. There was no violence.”

Petersen leaned back. The woman took her turn.
“You must understand why we had to do this. We had reason to suspect you were connected with an eco-terrorist group working out of...”
“What?! Eco-terrorist? We were a community group. We organized local environmental activities; Recycling, grow-your-own food and so on.”
“But you were self-described Anarchists?”
Ness looked over her glasses and snorted with contempt. It was a move she always used to dispel rising anger at stupidity.
“That’s just a word. It doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
“Some of you group demanded revolution. They wanted to bring down our government.”
“We can’t control every member of our group. There were thousands of them. I told them-“
The woman leaned forward, hands pressed on the table, looking down at a document she had brought with her. “You told them that there could be no violence by anyone in the group. That the political wing of a movement could have nothing to do with any radical or militant wing.”
She looked closer, quoting; “’...whatever the supposed merits of violence, no one in this group should have anything to do with anyone trying to organize such actions.’”
“That’s correct, non-violence is a core pillar-“
“In another message you told a member that ‘...a public forum isn’t the place for organizing direct action’, what did you mean by that? Do you deny there’s a hidden subtext here?”
“Where did you get that message? That was a private message!”

“Do you know this man?”
The woman held up a print out. A familiar face grinned back at her, helmet tilted to one side. Ness laughed.
“Are you serious? That’s Hicks.”
“Hicks? That’s not the name he uses on his profile. But we can’t find any record of him and there’s no biometric match with the census data. He's a wanted man.”
“It’s not his real name! You know the character from the film. The space marine; ‘Take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.’”
The woman’s face went white.
“Nuke..?”
“No. Stop. This is crazy.”
Ness rubbed her temples.
“It’s fiction, a joke. Some people don’t use their real names.”
“A joke? What do you mean? How? These are public forums. You have to use your real name. There are checks...”
“Look. It’s not rocket science. It’s easy enough to fool the checks. Everything is automated. Everyone does it. Even me.”
“The White Witch?”
“Yes, it’s a joke. My old handle before the laws required real ID online. I used to write fan fiction under the name and a lot of people knew me by it. Nobody calls me by my real name.”

The woman sat back, Petersen leaned forward and started talking.
“A week before you were arrested you were involved in an altercation with a rationing officer at the food station on your block. Can you tell me what happened?”
Ness looked at the woman, then at the man. This was a common tactic too. Attack a story from different angles. Try to find a weak point. Don’t give the prisoner time to build a narrative.
“It was late at night, I was walking home and I saw him pouring bleach on a pile of food out back. I wanted to know what he was doing.”
“You knew what he was doing. Unclaimed food has to be rendered inedible.”
“But it’s stupid! Do you know how much food we’re still throwing away?”
Petersen held up a finger, getting ready to deliver a lecture.
“Everyone works, that's the law. Every worker gets coupons. Coupons can be used to claim food. Unclaimed food has to be disposed of. Otherwise those who don’t work-“
“Might eat! That’s why you shut down our public gardens isn’t it?”
“They were unlicensed. There’s no way we could check that you were growing the food within guidelines. It’s a matter of public health!”
“It’s a matter of control! You’re no better than the last lot! At least they didn’t pretend to be anything other than-“
The woman sat forward.
“Miss Wightwitch. Don’t say anything you might regret.”
Petersen looked sideways at her, shocked. Why was she drawing back from the kill?

“The Progressive Alliance has done what it needed to, in order to guide the country through a difficult period. We needed stability, order and unity. That’s what we delivered.”
“That’s why you didn’t allow elections?”
“We had an election. We won. Now it's time for unity.”
“And the camps? And the labor gangs? And the border walls? And the electronic communications laws? ‘progressive’ my foot! It’s Orwellian doublespeak!”
“All necessary. All part of the plan. Don’t you see? We won. The people gave us a mandate.”
Petersen joined in now.
“We all won. We got rid of the capitalists. We had our revolution. We are making a better world. We reduced emissions by 50% over ten years. We all had to make sacrifices!”
Ness took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
“But you’re doing it wrong!
Everything is going wrong!
You won’t listen to anyone!
There’s a better way!
People are dying!”
The woman pursed her lips and looked down. She linked her fingers and tilted her head forward, speaking quietly.
She produced a sheet of official looking paper and slid it across the table.
“Maybe you can... show us how to do it right...”
“What?! Me? What’s this now?”
“Sixteen months ago a letter of release was issued for an ‘Olivia Whitewitch’. Unfortunately, we had lost track of her in our system. We didn’t make the connection. We have a large number of... political prisoners. Some of them didn’t use their real names.”
“Sixteen months ago?”
“Your supporters thought we had... made you disappear. You became something of a martyr. Your group is now a lot bigger than a couple of thousand members. They have made the situation... difficult for us.”

“Difficult?”
Petersen slumped and rubbed his eyes. The woman looked around nervously.
“Impossible. Practically impossible.”