Lost Time Incident

May 24, 2004

We Are Men of Action

The Sarge told me I needed to process the prisoner by the end of day and so I snapped to attention, saluted, said "SIR YES SIR!" and then grabbed the prisoner by the blindfold's knot at the back of his head to lead him away.

Prisoners are a relatively new phenomenon to this unit. Prior to this month, we spent all our time marching to and fro. We also set up a barber shop unit on the side of base closest to the enemy so they would be convinced we spent all our time worried about our hair. And no time at all worried about them.

So I brought the prisoner back to the cells and from my back pocket pulled out the latest issue of GI SOLDIER ADVENTURE, an instructional comic book they give us. It's about the adventures of Green Recruit, a decent but dumb guy who has a lot to learn. He's learning to be the Gruff GI, the closest we can aspire to being real-life superheroes.

Not that we're gonna wear capes or anything. It's just that Gruff GI knows what to do in every situation. And he can even shoot someone in the face and not spend days crying about it afterwards, unable to sleep, which makes him better than all of us.

I skipped ahead to Chapter Three, which is where Green Recruit learns how to use the Limb Trim machine, this new piece of tech that we got shipped to our unit special from Back Home. It's a handy gizmo. It's only for use on prisoners and even then only on the ones we don't think would be reliable witnesses in any sort of world court.

What it does is this: As the comic demonstrates, you get a prisoner to stick his arm in it, for example, then press the green button. BUUZZZZ! ZAP!Zap!ZAP! and the arm comes right off. Sticking out of the prisoner's shoulder is a plastic seal and a doorknob-sized ball. And the arm, which slides out of the machine's chute, now has a sealed off socket that fits the ball.

No blood! No problem!

BUZZZ! ZAP!Zap!ZAP! goes arm number two next and VOILA! You've got an unarmed prisoner. You can pop the limbs back on them for official photographs and they even work pretty good still, but the important thing is one strong yank takes them back off. It works with legs too.

So setting down the comic, I talked to the prisoner and said I really needed him to put his arm in the machine for me. And he was very cooperative, especially after I said that I would kill his daughter if he didn't. Which wasn't true. I wasn't the one who took him prisoner so I don't even know where his house is.

Before I killed her, though, I would teach her. This is what I told him. I would set aside an afternoon and tell her I was going to teach her math. But I wouldn't teach her anything except nonsense. Just show her charts and graphs and 2+2 equals whatever I feel like, different every time. And just when she's convinced she's stupid and will never know math, I'd kill her.

He put his right arm in the machine and BUZZZ! ZAP!Zap!ZAP! it came off. I didn't even have to tell him that I would not be swayed if his daughter would bring me an apple as a present. Wait. Do his people even have apples? I don't think they have apples. I don't know how they live.

BUZZZ! ZAP!Zap!ZAP! and his other arm came off and I patted his head and thanked him because the end of day was approaching and I was one step closer to being a Gruff GI. Then we did the legs, which I promptly put back on 'cause I wasn't going to carry him.

We went to go visit Sarge and I said "SIR, mission accomplished and the SUN has not SET, SIR!" and he looked up at me with a mouth full of mashed potatoes. I had found him in the mess tent. The prisoner stood next to me, knobs coming out of his shoulders.

"You did good, kid," said the Sarge. "You sure about that blindfold? It wouldn't do for the enemy to know where we eat."

I assured him it would be taken care of. I hadn't read all of GI SOLDIER ADVENTURES, but there was probably a chapter about how to handle prisoners who have seen too much. Maybe there's a machine to take care of them.

The sun was setting and I put the prisoner in a cell. I tied up his arms and took them with me, stowing them under my cot. On my back, waiting for lights out, I wondered.

I wondered if I really could be a teacher. I wondered if the Limb Trim hurt as much as it looked like it did or if prisoners faked it a little. I would. I wondered if the arms under my cot were gonna squirm around on their own when I really needed to sleep. A soldier needs his rest. Busy day tomorrow. Probably have to use that machine again on someone new.

Apples, far from home. The teacher's edition has all the answers in it. Disarming the enemy like action figures because we are men of action.

Tired. I really, really didn't want those arms to squirm around down there. I hoped they didn't. There was a lot of work to do.

Posted by Michael at May 24, 2004 11:32 PM