S Huang - Zero Sum Game

“Make it better. What else!” Courtney almost laughed at my slow-wittedness. “So many horrible things happen in the world. Like the drug cartels. But not just them. People doing awful, cruel things to each other, people starving, and war, and Dawna and everyone else are working to put a stop to all that. They’re doing so much good. And I’m going to help them, and I hope you will, too.”

“Wait. Let me get this straight.” My thoughts whirled. “Dawna’s goal is to make the world a better place?”

Courtney blinked at me. “What else would it be?”

I had been thinking along the lines of being an evil mastermind and making everyone her slave. Although perhaps such a dystopia was the same thing in her mind, if she forced all her slaves to play nicely together and made sure they all had enough food…after all, I thought ironically, wouldn’t that make for a mighty peaceful world?

Some detached part of my brain wondered what Courtney had been like before she met Dawna Polk. Whether she had been anything like this Courtney, or whether that original girl was gone now, forever. “If you’re all wanting to be such good people,” I probed, “then why are Arthur and I locked up here? Shouldn’t you let us go?”

Courtney bit her lip. “I—I like you. I do. And you tried to help me out a lot, in your own way. But people like you…you shouldn’t be on the streets.” She regarded me sadly. “You hurt people. I’ve seen it. And you’ve killed people, and you steal for people, and—-we’re trying to change the world for the better, put away the people causing all the chaos, and right now, you’re one of them.” She scrunched up her face uncomfortably, then added to Arthur, “And I don’t know you, sorry, but I’m sure Dawna has a good reason for having you here, too. She always does.”

“But you said you hoped we’d work with you—you all,” I protested, knowing I’d lost the argument before I even began.

“Yes, we do, after you turn away from all of that. Dawna will help you.” She was smiling again. It was eerie.

“What if I already have?” I tried in some desperation. “Turned away from the dark side, and all that? You’ve explained it, uh, really well, and I, I want to change and come and join you. I’ve seen the light, I swear. Will you let us out?”

The words sounded so cringingly insincere to my own ears that I wasn’t surprised when Courtney laughed gently. Apparently being brainwashed didn’t make her stupid. “When it’s for real, when you really do want to join us, I know we’d love to have you. I’d love to have you. And Dawna, she’s so forgiving, and—well, she’s really the best sister ever.” Her smile had gone all glowing and hopeful. “I think she’s going to come and talk to you pretty soon. She’ll be able to help you. You’ll see. I’ll come visit you after?”

“Sure,” I managed. I wanted to rage at her, to lose my temper, but all I could muster up was pity. Pity for Courtney, and fear for myself.

Courtney’s face lit up even more. “Great! I’ll see you then, ’kay? It was nice to meet you,” she added to Arthur, despite never having introduced herself, and then she turned and tripped off down the cellblock.

“In a way, she’s right,” said Arthur, as the door clanged shut behind her. “People like you and me. In a perfect society, we wouldn’t exist.”

I wasn’t in the mood for philosophizing. “When we live in a perfect society, you let me know.”

He leaned his back against the bars across from me. “Well, sometimes I ain’t sure I even make it a better one. Lord knows I try, but…well. I do lots of things I ain’t proud of these days. Suspect I won’t weigh out so well on the scales of judgment my own self. Maybe she got a point.”

I turned on him incredulously. “Do you really think what Dawna does is—”

“I ain’t saying it’s justified,” he interrupted, still in a contemplative tone. “But if she really is trying to improve things—I dunno, she could have worse targets than you and me.”

“What about Courtney?” I said tartly. “What about Dr. Kingsley? And Reginald Kingsley? And all those people in his file? And who gave Dawna Polk the right to choose in the first place, anyhow?”

“Calm down. I ain’t saying I agree with all the methods here. But a greater good thing that got out of hand—well, makes some sense, don’t it? And if we are talking greater good, I ain’t sure you and me would be on the side of the righteous, is all.”

I didn’t know what shook me more—that Arthur seemed to be able to see the side of the woman who currently had him locked up pending brainwashing, or that he was including himself on the same ethical level as me. After he had come down on me for my relative immorality the other day, hearing him so insecure about his own inconsistencies of principle was vaguely shocking.

Maybe that’s why I said what I said next. Maybe it was the impending certainty of my mind getting twisted into pretzels that made frank soul-baring suddenly more appealing. Or maybe I figured it didn’t matter what I said to Arthur anyway, as his mind was about to get twisted into pretzels, too.

“Whatever your scales of judgment are, you’ll weigh on them a sight better than I will,” I admitted, my voice cracking a little. “You at least try. I…I survive.” I swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about it, and you were right, before. I don’t think a whole lot about the people I hurt, and killing someone who’s threatening me—it’s always been the smart thing to do. You pointed it out yourself—I would have killed you too, back at the motel.” I felt as if I were making a deathbed confession. Perhaps I was. “I don’t think I’m a very good person,” I added softly.

“You’re wrong about one thing,” Arthur remonstrated gently. “You didn’t kill me.”

“Only because you’re right—I didn’t have the leverage.”

“No. Talking about after. You knocked me out, and then you left me alive.”

“You weren’t a threat anymore.”

“Yes, I was,” he corrected. “And you knew I could be.”

I frowned. He was right. Mathematical expectation had been that I was in the clear, but he had started out by pointing a gun at me, and the probability he would have been able to come after me again had definitely been nonzero. In point of fact, he had come after me again. Why had I left him alive?

“I thought you were a cop at the time,” I remembered. “Murdering law enforcement—too many complications.”

“And that why you didn’t do it?”

“Well, no.” The idea of dispatching him once the immediate threat was over hadn’t even crossed my mind, which seemed oddly illogical of me, looking back. “I guess the smart thing would’ve been to consider it.”

He chuckled. “You on some crusade to make me think poorly of you?”

“Fine,” I conceded peevishly. “So I don’t kill gratuitously. That’s a high recommendation. I’m sure it’s the stand-out essay God gets on ‘why I should get into heaven.’”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Russell. World’s a big place, and you got a lot of people beat just with that.”

“What happened to telling me I’m too violent and immoral?”

“Well, you are. But maybe so am I. We ain’t neither of us angels, I guess. And I don’t know; I think there’s hope for you. Maybe for me, too.”

“That’s comforting,” I said. “What’s your point, then? That we’re not the good guys, but Pithica should still let us go because we’re not the worst of the bad guys either and there might even be some hope of redemption?”

He smiled at my phrasing. “Just ruminating here, honest. Maybe we’re all shades of gray—you, me, Dawna Polk trying for her greater good…”