Project Itoh - Genocidal Organ

One of the men, who had evidently determined that I was the leader of our detachment, opened his mouth. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens when we get to our destination. Do you really think the cowardly government troops will be able to contain us?”

“Oh, no need to worry about that,” I replied. “Your faithful followers won’t have much luck if they try and spring you from your cells. Panopticon’s secure facilities are like a cleaner version of Alcatraz.”

“Panopticon? We’re being taken to a private detention center?” he asked.

“A prison, strictly speaking. A correctional facility. Panopticon has been tasked to provide security for the New India government and the UN. You won’t find any of your ‘cowardly government troops’ in their facilities, I’m afraid. Only elite private military forces, handpicked for their experience and security know-how. They’re the best in the world. I wouldn’t count on being rescued, if I were you.”

The man didn’t seem to believe me—his eyebrows were raised in a silent smirk. He evidently had no idea that this sort of thing was standard practice these days. He was an old man. The ID spot check we performed when we arrested him told us that he had been a colonel in the old Indian army. He was a product of a different era, a time when the state still did everything.

I left the old man and moved toward the back of the carriage where John Paul was sitting on his own, next to a window covered with iron bars.

“Iron bars, eh? You did well to find a carriage like this,” John Paul said, staring out the window. He lifted up his bound hands and pointed at the scenery that was drifting by. “Look, that billboard there.”

I only managed to catch a glimpse before it flitted by: some writing in what I suppose would be called gothic script, with a heavy, angular font. It was superimposed over a realistic if somewhat old-fashioned painting of soldiers.

“I came up with that,” John Paul said. “The grammar of genocide isn’t always dependent on the content of the message. You can sneak it into the most innocuous of everyday conversations, if you want to. But it’s best if you can incorporate it into slogans and propaganda, like on that billboard back there. There grammar is at its most concentrated form. You can embed the grammar into sentences in different ways, with different degrees of concentration, but stirring messages like the one on that billboard really give you the opportunity to lay it on nice and thick and dense.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.

“I have this little theory. Consider this. It’s not political extremism that leads to genocide. Rather it’s the need to prepare for genocide that makes people express their opinions in terms of political extremism.”

“What the hell? You’ve got it all fucked up,” I said.

“If by ‘fucked up’ you mean that I have my cause and effect the wrong way around, then yes, I agree with you. But then again, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the fact that all it takes is a few words for people to systematically start murdering each other is also ‘fucked up,’ as you put it.”

The Lord of Genocide shrugged.

Amber clouds hovered over the paddy fields outside. A pillar of light appeared in the distant forests, a Jacob’s Ladder. Were there more massacres going on over there, perhaps? Was God sucking up the souls of the innocent victims with a straw of light? The vista looked almost like a caricature—surely if there was a god up there waiting at the top of that, it would have been the one from Monty Python.

Time was nothing to me anymore. If you’d asked me what time of day it was I would only have been able to describe it as being “battle time.” A no-man’s land where your sense of time and emotion was masked by your BEAR. I found myself being drawn into the rhythm of the train, which made this already endless and timeless period stretch out even further and simultaneously pass in an instant. It was like wading through jelly, and yet completely normal and natural at the same time.

I was drawn back into the carriage by another piece of Hindu India agitprop out of the window. John Paul noticed that I was looking at it and spoke.

“You’ll notice how the picture to go with the slogan is rooted in the socialist realism school? I’ve noticed that beyond a certain point, right-wing and left-wing extremists alike tend to share the same aesthetic sensibilities, or should I say lack of—”

“You really are something else, aren’t you,” I interrupted calmly. “You fucking piece of shit. I’m not just talking about your genocides either. Even your friends over there, the fundamentalist nuts, you’ve been laughing at them while you used them as tools for your own ends.”

“And you can’t abide my looking down on them?” John Paul asked.

“Not just looking down on them—looking down on them and manipulating them into killing each other. At least they have the integrity to get their own hands dirty.”

“Yes. The problem is that I’ve committed myself to more than I could possibly do with my own little pair of hands. Unfortunately I just don’t have the time to busy myself with the manual labor. But I do accept responsibility for everything they do,” John Paul said.

“They’ll be standing trial soon,” I said. “The ICC will see they take their share of the blame. But not you. You’re different.”

“Back to the National Military Establishment for me?”

“Exactly. And after that, even I don’t know.”

I stopped speaking to try and read John Paul’s reaction. Nothing. He didn’t show anything. No fear. No resignation.

After a little while, John Paul spoke again. “I’m thirsty. Could you get me a glass of water?”

“How about a glass of ‘quit your bitching or I’ll slap you with another KO pad,’ ” I said.

“How hospitable of you. I think I’ll pass.”

“Where’s Lucia?”

“Not here.”

“I know she’s not here, you fuck. That’s why I’m asking you where she is.”

John Paul shrugged. “How is that question relevant to your duty?”

“Maybe it’s not.” I felt myself getting more agitated, and my voice grew deeper and colder. “Maybe I just want Lucia.”

“And you’re prepared to kill as many children as it takes to get to her,” he said.

I looked at John Paul. It was ironic. This was the first time John Paul had ever revealed anything approaching a human emotion. Sure, that emotion might have been animosity toward me. And it did make me angrier still. But there was also a little part of me that was … relieved?

“Sure, it’s tough. But I was just doing my job.”

I tried to give as bland an answer as I could, but it made John Paul laugh out loud.

“Tough? You’re lying, and you know it. I know all about the emotion regulation that you go through before battle. So that you can kill children without worrying, either before or after. You don’t even feel any guilt as you pull the trigger. I’m right, aren’t I?”

I didn’t say anything.

“And ‘I was just doing my job’? Please. Have you any idea how many ordinary people, people who wouldn’t hurt a fly in their day-to-day lives, have used that as an excuse to commit the most cruel and brutal acts imaginable? The Nazis who sent the Jews to the gas chambers were ‘just doing their job.’ The East German border guards who shot their own countrymen dead for trying to cross the Berlin Wall were ‘just doing their job.’ Just doing your job, eh? Well, if everyone ‘just did their job’ then we wouldn’t have any need for soldiers or bodyguards. Jobs exist to paralyze the human conscience. Where did capitalism come from? The Protestant work ethic: do your job, save money, and God will be pleased with you. A job is a form of religion. The only thing that varies from person to person is how pious they are. Most people actually understand this on some level. They just don’t want to admit it to themselves.”