I Am an Executioner (19 page)

The way my mother would tell it is as sort of a fairy tale, a bedtime story. About the founding. She would say that, long ago, when our City became independent, the first Monarch worried about holdouts from the old order; he wanted to root them out. He also needed more information about the population than he was able to receive in the corridors of the Municipal Palace.
He needed nuanced intelligence. So he asked his trusted adviser, whose name we will never know, to be his confidential eyes and ears among the population—to be his agent, as it were.

This man, this first Agent, had two children, a boy and a girl. Over the years, separately and confidentially, he revealed his job to each of these children, and asked their assistance. Neither child ever knew that the other had also been asked to be an Agent.

As from time to time the threats to our City increased, each of these children invited some of their own trusted friends—separately, individually, secretly—to aid them in their task. And like this, over the generations, the Agency persisted, simply by each Agent tapping the shoulders of others, as it were. It was one of these first Agents, probably, who wrote the Precepts, which have proved to be extremely useful and durable as regulatory guidelines.

I’d often thought about it, in my fantasies as a child, what it would have been like to be one of the first. In my imagination (now, this is embarrassing) I was friends with both of the children of the first Agent—friends with one and romantically involved with the other, actually—and they both separately asked me to join. It was very dramatic because I couldn’t tell either of them that the other had also tapped me. I had quite an imagination as a child.

You could say that this old story first got me interested in the Agency. Of course, it’s just a fairy tale, but it is useful, especially given that the actual history of the Agency is kept in confidence. I have never myself heard the actual story. The fairy tale doesn’t fit perfectly. Today we no longer have a Monarch, thank goodness; we have the Executive Committee of the Agency. Agents now work not for some powerful municipal ruler, but for the people, directly—as mediated through the Agency. We are agents, you could say, of our follow citizens. But at any rate, the story is what first piqued my interest in serving as an Agent.

As the Agency knows, I have not yet myself been permitted to invite anyone to serve as an Agent.

The day after completing my assigned investigation of 243-66328, just last week, I was given another assignment. A short assignment: I was to conduct a blinded interrogation of [redacted], who was being held at [redacted]. So I went to [redacted]. I conducted the interrogation. It took me about a day and a half.

After I finished, I was met by [Agent S]. I did not find this unusual. Because the recruiting Agent is the only Agent with whom I can have direct contact, [Agent S] is often used to relay information to me. This has remained true even after [Agent S] herself underwent investigation. That investigation did reveal her to be personally compromised—specifically, she was thought to have suffered a mental episode, as I was given to understand. As a consequence, my understanding was, she was confined to [redacted]. But she was still operating as an Agent within the confines of [redacted].

She met me and simply asked me, “Would you like to see the files on 243-66328?”

My reaction was startled. I said something like, “See them? Are you sure?” I didn’t even know, frankly, that she would be privy to where the files were kept.

And she said something to the effect of: “Yes, would you like to see them?” At which point, I reminded her, my clearances on this were apparently limited. I’d had no idea even that the records were stored here, and as I stated, I was surprised that she would just simply want to show them to me, when there had been so much secrecy around this.

And she said something like, “I know exactly what your clearances are.” And I responded, “Is there some reason you
want me to see them?” And she said, simply, sort of: “Come with me.” Or: “Come with me, we’re going to see them.”

And at that point, I began to have a suspicion: She seems really intent on this. Perhaps she’s having another episode, or something’s going on here.

It did occur to me to decline. She is well above me in rank, but she is not technically my superior, so I was not legally bound to obey her. At the same time, there seemed no reason not to. I didn’t see at the time that she would obviously be breaking any regulations. I thought maybe the best way to handle the incident was to comply with her—not to have an open conflict, not to excite her. And then, if anything seemed inappropriate, I could deal with it at that time. I can see now that I should have simply ended the interaction immediately.

To be honest, I was curious. I would have to say, frankly, I let my curiosity override my better judgment. I acknowledge that this was a grave mistake on my part.

She took me up to the [redacted]. This is a part of the facility where I had never been. She knew the combination to get us inside, and we entered an elevator and came out on another floor and passed through several secured doors—she knew all the combinations—and walked down a number of hallways and entered another elevator and emerged into another hallway. I think eventually we were in a sub-basement or sub-sub-sub-basement somewhere. I feel that we had walked maybe thirty minutes. And then we came to a large door, and again she was able to disengage the lock. It was a heavy door—it took both of us to swing it open, once it was released. We walked inside to find a vast room. It was enormous, high ceilings, concrete floors. The room had no windows, but it was well lit, the ceiling was covered with electric lights. It was just a very vast room—more than a square mile, I would guess. And there were rows and rows—and rows—of file cabinets, up to the ceiling. The whole room was filled with them. Files upon files upon files.
It was quite overwhelming. I felt that the files for the entire Agency must be stored here. I really hadn’t ever known that this storage space existed. It was curious.

And [Agent S] knew exactly where to go. We walked down the rows of tall cabinets, we walked for another twenty or thirty minutes—I would have been hopelessly lost if not for [S]—and finally she turned left and walked to one particular cabinet. There was a ladder there—a rolling ladder—that was much higher than should have been safe to climb. But she climbed it all the way close to the ceiling. It took her a long time, and I couldn’t even hear her voice when she got up there—frighteningly high. She seemed to open one of the wooden drawers and remove something from it. She slowly climbed down. Finally, I could see she had several file folders under her arm. When she reached the floor, she handed one to me. I started examining the contents, and I was amazed. I recognized my own reports, my own observations, although they were heavily redacted. I didn’t have more than a moment with the file. Then she took that file abruptly from my hand and gave me another one. This was a report of one of the other Agents who was apparently following 243-66328. The logs were even more detailed than my own. It had also been redacted, but the file seemed to describe the sound and timbre of his voice, the incremental changes, over the days, in the length of his hair and fingernails. The duration and frequency of his bathroom visits. Every possible observable detail, it would seem.

She removed that file abruptly and handed me another folder. It seemed that each report was more exhaustive in its specificity. I believe I glimpsed logs describing the ways in which he tilted his head, what he looked like in the morning, the color of his socks and underwear, the smell of his breath, the flutterings of his eyelids, a taxonomy of his gestures on a certain afternoon. Things even more detailed and personal than that, I believe, but I can’t be certain. This was all very quick, and many things
were redacted, and moreover I was not reading thoroughly. At the time, it was not immediately clear to me who could have collected such information, or how, or why it would have been useful. The subject’s workday was described, as well. As I found out, to my surprise, he himself was [redacted].

The drawer she had opened, I observed, seemed to have been a very long, deep file drawer, with probably hundreds or thousands of folders in it. And it is a very tall cabinet, as I said. All the way to the ceiling. I had only glimpsed a few pages from three of the folders. “Is that whole drawer dedicated to 243-66328?” I asked [Agent S]. And she responded, “This whole room is dedicated to 243-66328.” She said, “243-66328 has been under investigation since [redacted], and he is still under investigation.”

I don’t know what I said. I think I expressed disbelief. It seemed more information than anyone could even read in a lifetime, much less compile, even given the resources of the Agency. I wondered out loud what 243-66328’s suspected violation had been, that could justify such an investigation, and she said something sarcastic, to the effect of, “Why don’t you browse through his files and find out? It’s got to be in this room somewhere.”

And then she said, as I recall: “He is not the only one. Every case is the same. Every single case.” Then she took the remaining folder from my hands and climbed back up the ladder and replaced them all. I hadn’t had a chance to really take a good look. She eventually came back down. By this point, I was very obviously concerned that this might not conform to regulations. This bothered me a great deal. There was no clear purpose for my seeing this information that I could cite to one of the regulations.

I told her, at that point, I think we should end this interaction. I did not physically remove myself, but I clearly stated to her something amounting to: “I shouldn’t be here. We should leave.”

She ignored me. She said, “We have a room like this on everyone in the City. We are filling a room like this on you.”

I probably laughed. I said, “There is simply not enough room to store this much information on everyone who is subject to an investigation, much less everyone in the City. Much less me. There are not enough man-hours to compile it; the Agency does not have the resources.”

And she asked, “How big is the City and its affiliated Territories? How much of that land do you think the Agency controls?” And the answer, of course, is all of it.

She was agitated. She did not seem herself. She continued talking: “Do you have any idea how many Agents there are? Let me put it another way: Do you know how many people are left at this point who are
not
a part of the Agency?”

I was dismayed. [Agent S] is my friend, as I said, and I had always looked up to her. She had always been polished, controlled, the very image of what an Agent should be, to my mind. So it was sad to see her in this state. It seemed clear that she was having another episode. The only thing that argued in her favor were the files I had seen with my own eyes, the files for 243-66328. But again, these were just a few pages that could easily have even been fabricated.

But despite her state, she still had her force of personality. She was speaking to me in a very persuasive manner. She had not stopped talking, because she saw that she was getting to me. I believe I had become visibly upset.

I said, at that point, “I think we should go. Please, let’s go.” I somehow convinced her to lead me out of there. And so, again, a very long walk. We did not speak much during that walk; she may have spoken, but I did not respond. And finally we returned to that part of the facility I am more familiar with. We parted ways—I don’t know where she went, but I left her to complete my paperwork for the [redacted] investigation. And then I departed the [redacted]. I got in my phaeton to go home.

That is when I contacted [J]—after I got in the phaeton. I turned over the engine but before I began moving, I took out my Teletype.

I typed, “I have a lot to talk to you about when I get home,” or something to that effect. I don’t know what I meant, truly. I was upset. I did not specifically have any intention in mind. To be honest, it was not like our game or routine, that is, our “Guess what happened in the office” routine. I was just not even thinking that far ahead.

It was certainly imprudent. But as I stated, I had no plan yet in mind about what to tell him. So in my own conscience, I am clear that I had not formed the intention to reveal protected information. I can be sure of that because I know my thoughts. I believe I do. But to be perfect in my confession, it did cross my mind—the idea of revealing this information to him, revealing what I had observed that day—this did cross my mind. But crossing my mind (to my mind) is different from forming an intention, although it is on the same continuum. It was, I admit, a dangerous moment. It was a moment of weakness.

I would like to very clearly state: It was wrong.

[J] responded with something sympathetic or similar, curiously similar, like, “I know.” As I mentioned before, we are both mutual friends of [Agent S] in our civilian life, as it were, although I am the only one who knows her as an Agent. He typed, “I know you have heard from [S],” or something like that. But she does leave messages for me at my home, in our capacity as personal friends, and so that didn’t mean anything, necessarily. And he said, “Yes, we should talk.” I don’t know what he thought I was referring to, or what he was thinking; certainly at the time, I didn’t.

At home, [J] had started fixing dinner. I went into the kitchen to help him, thinking that making myself useful might help me to relax. [J] did ask, “So what did you want to talk with me about? What happened today?” And I took a deep breath—I
slipped right back into my training—and told him, “Oh, my day was kind of stressful, but really not that interesting.” I was completely rededicated in my commitment. As startling as the afternoon might have been, it seemed clear that nothing [S] had said had been authenticated; certainly, nothing was worth compromising the integrity of the Agency, or my own integrity. I said, “That darn radio was acting up. I really need to replace the oscillator.”

He looked at me very closely. I was chopping carrots to go with the roast. I was doing my level best, but frankly, my face may have betrayed something, because I was still somewhat upset; I was thinking about [S].