This Bitter Earth, Part I: Lost In Nightmares

The Second Nightmare: The Kill Switch

-1963-

I

"Once more, Mr. Oswald, from the beginning," my partner opened the interrogation.

"I've talked to five other people today about what happened," the morose gunman spoke in exasperation, "and all five people took notes and made voice recordings and video tapes-"

"This is off the record," my tenacious partner cut him off. "Whatever you couldn't tell the others, you can tell us with our solemn promise that you will be kept safe and secure from any attempts at reprisal from-"

"From whom? You think you can protect me from them? I don't even know who they are, man, let alone who you two spooks are. Why should I trust you?"

"All I can tell you is my call sign is Twilight, and this is Daybreak," he motioned towards me. "You should trust us because the others are going to hang you out to dry as a crazed lone gunman. We know what you did not only here in Dallas, but before it. We know you sold secrets to the Soviets when you were a radar operator in the Marines."

"I was stupid! The money was looking too good, man...too good to be true, but I did it anyway.... This greed, man, this capitalist greed is going to drown us all."

"There's still time to save more innocent lives, Mr. Oswald, but we need your full disclosure on the events that happened two days ago. Now, who were the other two gunmen?"

"Gunmen? I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"You know that the President of the United States was assassinated the day before last, don't you?"

"Only because that's what they told me when they dragged me out of the movie theater that day. I was just watching a movie, man, after I worked a half day and had lunch."

"You weren't in the theater the whole time after you left work, Mr. Oswald. Eyewitnesses placed you murdering a police officer in the streets not more than an hour after you and your cohorts opened fire on the President's motorcade."

"Murdering a police officer?!" The gunman's face was awash with genuine repugnance at the sound of the phrase. "Me and my cohorts?! Do you know what you sound like to me right now, man? A lunatic. A crazy person trying to make me crazy, too. I feel like I'm the last sane man on the planet, man. I feel like I'm the only one who is making sense, and all of you are out to get me. Murder a police officer? I didn't do it, just like I didn't assassinate the President. I'm being set up, man. It's because of the fact I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy! I know what my sins and my crimes are, and believe me when I tell you-I beg you!-I did not do what you all are saying I did. I'm a patsy."

I could feel Twilight's eyes on me as if searching for some faint sign of reassurance. I heard without hearing his voice in my head impatiently uttering a single word: well? I turned my head towards him and let him see my eyes. He squinted slightly as if trying to read the fine print of a newspaper advertisement and was instantly put on edge by the answer I spoke to him without speaking: he's telling the truth.

"That's not possible," Twilight pleaded with me. "There are witnesses."

"Oh, it's very possible," I spoke urgently through grit teeth as I could sense the police officers standing just outside the door of the interrogation room becoming increasingly restless, "and I think you need to consider that if he were trying to suppress the truth, I would know, and I am telling you he isn't hiding anything. He's completely honest."

"You see?" The gunman smiled and pointed at me. "She gets it."

"Hypnosis, then?" Twilight rolled the idea over in his head for a moment. "No, not hypnosis, because if he were hypnotized to conceal the truth or to commit the killings, he would still know the truth and would still have to either consciously or subconsciously work to conceal it." Twilight's eyes sparkled at the instant I sensed his sharp mind deduce the solution, and he snapped his attention back to the gunman. "So you were unconscious when you did everything you did, because if you were unconscious, you could not possibly craft a memory of what you were doing, hence the reason that my partner finds you to be perfectly truthful when you say you did not assassinate the President or murder the police officer. You do not remember committing either one of these acts because you were unconscious, though not asleep, because witnesses claim that you were in perfect possession of your faculties and motor skills when they saw you. You were alert yet unconscious, therefore programmed."