simon_doctor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
simon_doctor) wrote2006-06-27 02:27 pm
simon_doctor) wrote2006-06-27 02:27 pm
Coreplot: Questioning.
They don't drug him again; not after the drug's spectacular failure the first time around.
There's that, at least.
-----
The second interrogation session is positively civilized. The two guards take up positions to either side of the door and never make a move, and the man asking the questions does so in a dry, disinterested manner that's almost soothing; state the question (a very specific question, aimed at a particular nugget of data), pause long enough to be sure Simon doesn't intend to respond, state the next one. The three who questioned him the first time are nowhere in sight.
Simon remains silent through the entire interview. At the end of it the questioner gives him a long look, and then a flat disgusted sigh. It's almost professorial, that sigh, that look: fine, it says, if you're so very determined to be stupid, I can't help you.
-----
For the third session, they wake him up out of deep REM sleep and start barking questions at him while he's still squinting against the cell's dim light. He doesn't manage to stay silent through that one; when the interrogator brings up River and the three men dead at St. Lucy's, he breaks silence with my sister is not a murderer. For a while after that he answers every question, on whatever topic, with another Interesting Fact To Know And Tell about the men in blue gloves, including the word can-toi and their extradimensional origin.
He's almost hoping they'll decide he's gone crazy. Their faces show clearly enough that they've decided he's playing games with them, and they're not amused.
When they finally leave, and the lights in the cell almost immediately go up to day-shift brightness, he realizes with an almost surreal sense of disorientation that he has no real idea what time it is.
If the meals that the guard Ensign Chao brings at intervals -- he thinks they're regular intervals -- are a reliable day-clock, he and River have been here ... four days. Three or four days.
Not so very long at all.
-----
It's during the fourth session (another civilized one) that the interrogator first brings up the name Malcolm Reynolds.
Simon fights to keep his face blank. "Who?"
"You mentioned his name in one of our earlier sessions. Who is he?"
And he's lying, of course he's lying, there must be some data in Alliance files connecting the Tam fugitives with the captain of Serenity and he's working from that ... but just for a moment there's a sickening lurch of uncertainty: I didn't tell him that!
...Did I?
Through numb lips: "Never heard of him."
-----
By the fifth session he starts to lose track of how many times he's heard any given question.
-----
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream?
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
If the Security analysts monitoring Dr. Tam's cell were to swap data with their colleagues who're monitoring his sister's, they might notice some interesting correlations between the timing of his sessions and her periods of greatest agitation.
It wouldn't occur to anyone to look for that, however, unless they already knew what they were likely to find.
There's that, at least.
-----
The second interrogation session is positively civilized. The two guards take up positions to either side of the door and never make a move, and the man asking the questions does so in a dry, disinterested manner that's almost soothing; state the question (a very specific question, aimed at a particular nugget of data), pause long enough to be sure Simon doesn't intend to respond, state the next one. The three who questioned him the first time are nowhere in sight.
Simon remains silent through the entire interview. At the end of it the questioner gives him a long look, and then a flat disgusted sigh. It's almost professorial, that sigh, that look: fine, it says, if you're so very determined to be stupid, I can't help you.
-----
For the third session, they wake him up out of deep REM sleep and start barking questions at him while he's still squinting against the cell's dim light. He doesn't manage to stay silent through that one; when the interrogator brings up River and the three men dead at St. Lucy's, he breaks silence with my sister is not a murderer. For a while after that he answers every question, on whatever topic, with another Interesting Fact To Know And Tell about the men in blue gloves, including the word can-toi and their extradimensional origin.
He's almost hoping they'll decide he's gone crazy. Their faces show clearly enough that they've decided he's playing games with them, and they're not amused.
When they finally leave, and the lights in the cell almost immediately go up to day-shift brightness, he realizes with an almost surreal sense of disorientation that he has no real idea what time it is.
If the meals that the guard Ensign Chao brings at intervals -- he thinks they're regular intervals -- are a reliable day-clock, he and River have been here ... four days. Three or four days.
Not so very long at all.
-----
It's during the fourth session (another civilized one) that the interrogator first brings up the name Malcolm Reynolds.
Simon fights to keep his face blank. "Who?"
"You mentioned his name in one of our earlier sessions. Who is he?"
And he's lying, of course he's lying, there must be some data in Alliance files connecting the Tam fugitives with the captain of Serenity and he's working from that ... but just for a moment there's a sickening lurch of uncertainty: I didn't tell him that!
...Did I?
Through numb lips: "Never heard of him."
-----
By the fifth session he starts to lose track of how many times he's heard any given question.
-----
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream?
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
If the Security analysts monitoring Dr. Tam's cell were to swap data with their colleagues who're monitoring his sister's, they might notice some interesting correlations between the timing of his sessions and her periods of greatest agitation.
It wouldn't occur to anyone to look for that, however, unless they already knew what they were likely to find.