The surroundings were minimal: three rolling chairs laid around a table in a trapezoidal room, with an electrical socket to power the SDANKAR lie detector that had been wheeled to its corner of the table. There were two exits to this room — not counting the grated skylight — on the second longest wall was the windowed door to the hallway, next to the switch to the corrective spectrum fluorescents at the ceiling's vertices. To its right, the empty doorway to a private washroom that had been halfheartedly renovated for accessibility, replacing the toilet with a squat model, but leaving the sink untouched, which is why a simpler fourth chair was inserted in front of the latter.
I was also able to see the paw dryer, the full-spectrum fluorescents, and my face in the mirror when I would enter it.¹ Behind me was an octahedral CCTV camera,
something to never express greetings towards, it would only be taunting them, an announcement of premeditated offenses. To do it anywhere else is an invitation to this room; here
, it would escalate what charges impend. Dry air and the hum of a distant fan poured out of a vent.
With the last measuring tool applied, I no longer needed to repress awareness of the occupants: Shoam beside the doorway who could have spared our eyes from his glistening visage by wearing every myriad covering of an Extermination Officer, Lysel whose motions and police vest was bursting with the symptoms of an unsustainable life while she returned to the chair opposite of me, and myself who was forced by the pressure cuff to sit as a biped would.
This chair had been the extent of my freedom for the past hemiaction of waiting, the border to a universe of my dominion where I would wander and stay as I pleased, all its monstrosity forgivable when the correct decision was made impossible by a mismatch of structure. Then their arrival mandated the machine to close into my domain so it could seize my chair, so it could seize my mouth, so it could seize my thoughts. Lysel completed the return to her seat and pressed on the number pad to the polygraph.
I heard it splay its numerary claws before a voice of indistinct species and sex spoke from the machine. "You have completed the setup of your interview subject's biometric feed. To locally record your interview, flick ◰. To pump your interview to the Forensic Interview Database, flick ◱." Lysel flicked one of the number claws to no avail. "- To begin an empathy assessment, flick ◲. To terminate your interview, press Enter." Lysel flicked again and reached into her vest pocket for a disposable copy of my personal information.
"Your recording is now being pumped in-"
The policewoman allowed the unskippable message to waste none of her time before she started raking the polygraph display for abnormalities.
"You have scary blood pressure for somebody who just made it through a raid alert."
"-real-time to the Forensic Interview Database."
Shoam strode towards the table.
"We can leave that alone for now. Is anything abnormal with his other readings?"
"If you have chosen this option by mistake, flick-"
"No, that's why I singled his pressure out. But that's in your field, you should be telling me if his other signs are outside the Graph† for his species."
"-◻ at any time to return to the previous branch."
Shoam apparently disposed of her line of thought and all attempts to obscure the depths of his exhaustion.
"My God, I told you to fix your thirst before this started. You did, right? We can't have you fainting inside our custody." He did a better job of choking down the honorifics this time.
"Please enter the citizen ID-"
"He's taking an Obstruction of Investigation charge if that's his master plan to qíaff with this interview. The ER has bigger fruits to-" the mouthbreather acted out her epithet
"-has their paws full."
"-of the interview subject after the beep."
I bit my tongue, waiting for my biometrics to cool down before I could say that I wasn't plotting to intentionally suffer heat syncope. There isn't a worse place than under the polygraph to reflexively deny some half-baked scheme. And was this hers? He picked up my emptied cup from the table and held it against his nose, his dour expression unchanged by the secret yielded by the
invitingly fibrous musk of its damp inside.
"Accessing the FID through-"
"I did take up on your advice- Mister Officer." The sink was fixed to an indecisive temperature for its perfectly transparent mud, it failed to quench more than my mood and likely called for chelation pills washed down with the real thing. Nevertheless, I drank four cups of the filth when refilling it was the only sane reason to move. I chimed in further. "But to tell the truth, I don't know how long that it would take before my cāpillaries would have finished adjusting-" I disregarded Lysel's scoff. "-to that water."
"-this device outside the employment of a licensed organization-"
She initiated a display of pulling a
civilian holopad, out of her
police uniform, during an
interrogation, before it played a tonal indicator that her
Thread-Weave application was finished querying the datastream.
"- is an offense punishable by fines-"
I scanned the other officer's face, as she scanned the results.
"Well, you probably know that you're a mammal, so that stopped being your issue about ◱◱ tasks ago." That's wrong. I did not wait for
most of a quadroaction in a room like this… conscious. The preparation process must have distracted me from the realization that it woke me up, from moments whose eroding soil called for the return of the roots of my memory. I took solace in the unspoken suggestion that they went through every duty of importance before wringing out my angle of last qua-, no,
octoaction's nonsense.
"-of up to ◫◼◱◳◰◰◲¤ or ◱◻ cycles in prison."
I did spot the shared bewilderment in Shoam which I was looking for, until his expression turned to one of realization, and
that became shared in turn, before he ended our wordless conversation with a pleading glance.
"You are obligated by law of the Fissan Compact-"
"Would medication be responsible for the interference?"
"-and Her condominate territories‡ to unplug this device-"
"Maybe, just-" She swung the right side of her head to face me.
"-you don't look like the kind of person to be needing hypertension pills."
"-and return it to a SDANKAR Electronics-"
You would know something about that, wouldn't you? "No, as a… side effect." I timidly stuttered.
"-store for reprogramming-"
"It's-" Shoam sighed,
"-not a rare side effect of adaptive injections.
" he completed in a helpful tone of voice, as he returned the cup to the table. Lysel gave an ear flick of understanding.
"-if you found it with this option outside-"
I could carry forth. The part seen by a polygraph had been taken care of, so silence would leave his claims unchallenged, even an affirmative statement would entail none of the deeper thoughts that could reveal a falsehood. There is no reason for her to disbelieve that I am a much fresher immigrant, one whose genes were still reeling from their artificial concessions to this demon planet. But he can't be allowed to play this game. "I'm actually on thiopentone." I responded in my least adversarial tone.
"-the possession of a police station, school-"
The delay after that was infinitesimal in comparison.
"...Oooh," he chuckled,
"must've just returned from surgery. Shame that this all happened so soon after that."
"-predator disease facility, or financial institute."
Lysel's ears were rightly incredulous.
"Oh, seriously? And they let him out of the Hospital on the very shift that he woke up, without any period of recovery. Are doctors really that useless on this planet?" Then she pressed her paw to her forehead, shuttering her eyes as if she was rummaging her memory, and I also cringed.
She met his response of
"There's your answer." with an agreeing ear flick, before hurrying to type my ID into the polygraph as it instructed.
There is no right to bring a further correction, the notions implanted at this instant are irrelevant to the events which I am told to divulge. I find nothing in search of a reason that the complete truth would matter. Had I not hurried into the demands of my spirit, I would have a reason to find him fired, or even jailed for this subversion of justice. Except instead, I have framed it as an innocent and swiftly corrected misunderstanding. As he intended.
I glimpsed between Shoam and Lysel, the former sitting to my left at a distance that was notably lacking, while the latter's right eye was absorbed in reading off a paper sheet.
"There are some questions that you will need to answer before you can describe the incident."
"Is your name El-"
No need to bother further with this one.
"Yes." Her furthest ear joined the other in scanning me, then returned to the angle of the machine.
"As a child, did your selfish attitude ever-" "Yes."
"-bring you to commit theft?" "Don't answer questions until they're finished!" she snapped.
"Do you have special knowledge-" Yes.
"that is too important" It fortunately isn't.
"or persecuted" It unfortunately wouldn't be.
"to share with others?"
"No."
"Do you have an eye for other people's possessions?"
"No."
"Are you a member of a recognized death-cult?"
"No," despite everyone's best efforts.
"Have you participated in death-cult activities?"
"No."
"Can you subdue beliefs that would put you at odds with society?"
I gave up on fighting with my sister to plant wards on her bedroom windows, and that's enough for a truthful "Yes."
"Have you witnessed death cult activities in your area?"
"No." There is no point in explaining reality to the police. I was not speaking with a creature of breath and blood, any fur covered by a uniform no longer belongs to the person underneath. Long and futile have been my conversations with the textual organism present, but… this is not even one of them. It is an immune response, and no one has ever spoken through their lymphocytes. You do not 'change the mind' of the tool itself when its users or designers make mistakes.
"Hwm?" Lysel's tail thumped twice against her chair legs.
"Can you describe the people that you are hiding from the law?"
When I was ☶☷ turns old, Vratzol told me a philosophy that people have different truths, that different things are factual for different people. It was one of the most offensive claims that anyone would tell me to until Mister Keolassa kept pushing the envelope. We all obviously live in the same universe.
I'd normally press an argument against any nonsense, but friendship is harder to find on Ronasilay than Hyporus 384☳ as with everything else. His wasn't something that I could afford to strain. Of course, he turned out to be very tolerant of attacks on his world of lies, which this notion turned out to be separate from. It was his badly chosen name for a skill that he used to survive his so-called 'primitive' attitude, and it was one that I had greater need for.
Do not explain things as they are but as the other would perceive them, act like they are right until you have the time and evidence to show that they are wrong. I gave her truth to herself so that she had what she needed to know, but to speak someone else's truth is to speak your own lie. "The reports were already dismissed, officer, what more do you want me to say?"
Lysel could not be quicker to sneer at me.
Shoam's eyes briefly bulged before he regained composure. He started whispering to her, I don't know if it was meant to be hidden from me, but he was probably trying to hide from the microphone in any case
"Oh, is this about the…" the Exterminator dragged his sentence to complete the illusion of ignorance
"Mastrati congregation? That doesn't sound like something that he would do. And our office knows about him because-" his lie segued into a truthful admission
"-he was mailing screeds against us to the baroness." While he was competently hiding it, I knew that the predator was pained to cede this much dirt to his legitimate counterpart.
Lysel was unlikely to leave me unscathed for admitting in the entirety, but I could not think of any leeway that she would have to really free Sraosho from my presence, so the policewoman's retaliation would be limited to making my life unnecessarily difficult. It would be best if I let Shoam have this one.
Lysel's ears swung back in my direction.
"Would you give different answers to any previous questions if we only counted groups that are recognized by the government as a 'death cult'?"
'The' is a laughable word on this planet, or galaxy, yet the one state holding enough familiarity to breed contempt for
them was also using its policy of solitary ownership to become a disaster on the horizon. Or so insisted every stripe of past-distortive
†| and idiot in the datastream. I despised my conclusion of "No."
"Do you respect the possessions and property of others?"
"Yes." It's a bad habit.
"Were you visiting the Debnitt Warehouse in the past shift?"
"No."
"Verlbyot store?"
"No."
"Meliora's?"
"No."
And so forth, and so forth, the full list of questions slipped from my being so utterly that it would be impossible to recover them through means that would have answered the same questions on their own. I have accounts of specific pebbles or leaves that would be more satisfactory to the curiosity of anyone who would choose my recollection over the governmental records for discovering questions that individually made the least additions to the history they were gauging.
"Commencing report-"
That was their only announcement that they finished racking me with polar questions
"-of the raid alert in ☷☴th Petal of ☵☷☳☷'s ☳th Wilt, from Civ-."
Why were the events of the past three actions labeled as a raid alert instead of an Arxur attack or false alarm? Is this normal? Are they hiding from me on purpose? Am I reading too much into a script that was written to fit all scenarios?
-under inspection of Officer Lysel of the Sunstruck Roads police department."
"All right, tell us about everything that happened before we arrested you."
My sister spent a break credit to visit her friend. That freed the space outside my bedroom, so I took a co-terminal (Lysel scoffed once more)
break to stretch indoors. A di-action later, she, I guess, realized in the middle of a game that she ran out of uukabrahv and asked me to restock it from the grocer.
I was there, retrieving a stepladder when the alarm hit. I knew that I would have been at a disadvantage in a stampede there, so I scampered for the washroom until it was-
Shoam stole my attention with a sharp slap against Lysel's left paw, which was starting to release its digits from a 'snapping jaws' gesture. I stared at his exercise of corruption until the policewoman urged me to continue.
"I hid inside the neutral washroom until I believed that it was safe to leave. Once the noises had receded, I made my way through the cans and boxes that were littered over the floor. Some had even collapsed in the stampede, (I grimaced)
spewing bloodstained vegetables or grains.
They were made to slice into the legs of those that compromise them so that the naive looters that ate their contents would be truly diseased.
I was a di-instant from leaving when I found… (I hated having just enough familiarity with Father's cultist friends to
think that I knew any of their names) ...
an elderly Venlil woman lying unconscious in the mess. I kicked myself for the accidental euphemism.
No, agonizingly conscious, she was very obviously failing to pick herself up. So I called the SR with my visor before leaving it behind on the checkout aisle.
"Excuse me?" said Shoam
"Why did you do that?"
"So that hunters couldn't track me through its signal."
"What."
"...No…" he limply waved his left in circles
"-people like-" until pointing at Lysel
"-her would be using it to look for you."
If the Stampede Response Team was already trying to find stragglers through their computers, then…
"Why call Stampede Response if they're already tră- tracing for people left by stampedes?"
"If I leave aside the fact of-" Shoam paused to clasp his palms.
"-people who weren't carrying computers with them because of misfortune or-" He slammed them sideways against the table.
"-mistake, it can't tell if you need urgent help, or what else is happening around you. It is a machine, and you're a conscious being." He lied.
This made me think about the Thread-Weave application that Lysel was using, a search bar that can search with a term generated from what it determined to be the most relevant search query based on everything that was just loaded or heard by the computer. (I'm not an expert but I'm confident that the device's very presence in this room, let alone use like this, is a good way to get in trouble with the present-distortional
†† behavior that prevails under this government.) But a stampede would have a very
distinct profile in sound and proximity, as would someone falling back in one. It can't be hard to detect this.
He loosened his expression.
"You did the right thing."
I found it appropriate to raise my ears. And noted that none of these problems apply to a square of gold-plated silicon inside your brain.
"Did I save her life?"
"-That is personal information." Shoam interjected, but I heard a rapping noise at the table and angled my eye to Lysel, who asked,
"Where did this happen?"
"Credit Orchid." I responded, and she was struck by a dawning expression. So I repeated myself, impatient for closure. "Did missus, uh…" I trailed off.
She closed her eyes, inhaled, and added "Her name was Vuohsi and-" "And did she make it?" I interrupted, rapidly recognizing that I was making a mistake by pushing this query. Lysel closed her eyes, and stated
"No."
She is going to take out her grief by throwing the book at me, everything that I say from this point forward is going to be re-examined in the most hostile light so that I am still hit with a Lethal Exacerbation lawsuit no matter what I did. But what was I supposed to do? How can it be a fault that I responded to a simple request as I was supposed to? How do true sapients do the same thing without accidentally killing people? I should have told Sraosho to buy her own vegetables so that this wouldn't have happened. She was trained in first aid as a farmer because she seized the opportunities that made the only good thing to come of moving into the Fissan Compact, and I tried so hard to keep her in that line of work because our parents, and for what it's worth, I, would have confiscated her mobility if it meant keeping her out of the same agricultural sector of any planet to use a genewasher. Now they are going to run themselves bankrupt on legal fees!
I hyperventilated - how could I do anything else if a statement of distress was going to register as a lie? But my time was running out, soon they would press for me to continue speaking, and I would either take an obstruction of investigation charge for staying silent, or everything would be miscast as a falsehood because
polygraphs do not measure deceptive intent, they measure stress!
"I don't think that █████████ is in any state to continue the interview." said Shoam, which was met with an agreeing flick from the police officer.
"Interview terminated until next recording." she spoke into the microphone.
"We're giving a task's worth of time for you to calm down in private." I would not wait for them to leave before I removed myself from the polygraph, then I slid to the floor with both of my forelegs bracing my tear-stained face (since when do I cry?) from injury. They failed, injuring but probably not breaking my nose. I heard the electronic door unlock and close before I even finished recomposing myself.
I scurried into the washroom to rinse the blood off of my face. I went to the chair that was planted before the sink, and lifted myself by its seat, that I would be able to rest my forelegs by the top of its back until I was able to grab the rim of the sink itself with my right forepaw. My left forepaw then did the same so that I was able to turn on the water slider with my right and then wash my face out while resting both of their elbows inside the sink bowl.
But there soon turned out to be a limit to how well that it would wash out without the right soap, which wasn't inside the dispenser (because everything in this washroom has to be actively terrible, I even knew some
alcohol stations †‡ in the middle of absolute tshleya ‡| that were nicer). I slightly turned my head to the shower behind me, and concluded that it was just as unsuitable. It wasn't going to be any cleaner, so with dread I turned the sink off and moved my face into the paw dryer,
deafening myself.
Footnotes
† The Extermination Guilds' measurement of mentally healthy, or rather acceptable, responses to different situations.
‡ How are the Fissans failing to accommodate quadrupeds? They're not, this police station and the surrounding settlements are ruled in condominium with the Telrani. 'One planet, one settler' is fine for the limited board space of a computer game, but the ground which you stand on is proof enough that any habitable planet has enough room for up to 300 nation-states.
†| Equivalent to 'delusional'.
†† Equivalent to 'paranoid'.
†‡ Not (strictly) an establishment for selling alcoholic drinks, but one for pumping alcohol into vehicles. Yes, he also thinks that it's weird enough to stress the difference.
‡| Wilderness or the verminous aspect of nature in Zhrenkreu. 
