Black Balloon

Chapter 12

I was abruptly interrupted one day by an angry man barging through my cell door, not one of the soldiers, but some bureaucrat type, and two of his accompanying minions. My usual guard relinquished his post to my new captors who led me from my room and towards the elevator. We took the elevator downward, how far I don't know, and exited into some kind of basement storage area. The walls were lined with large metal shelves piled high with boxes; a repository for all the lab's spare junk. As I began to wake up, I recognized the lead man. It was Mr. Barnett, the dickhead-in-chief who had interrogated me on my first day.

Aside from all the crap in boxes, the only other thing in the room was a cheap table and two folding chairs, into which I was forcefully pushed. Barnett tossed a pad of paper and a pencil down in front of me.

"Vandergriff..." he muttered ominously.

I was still half asleep: "Yes?"

He leaned in, spitting nicotine and coffee in my face as he spoke:

"You are going to sit here for as long as it takes and write down every scrap of information that your little brain can remember."

"What information?"

"1955 until 2011. Everything. We want to know the big things, but no detail is too small. Every presidential election, every war, assassination, the name of every politician you can think of, every world leader, who wins every World Series. All of it. And we're going to verify. And if anything you told us is false or omits some major event...well you don't want to know what the consequences of that will be."

How do they plan to verify? I wondered, an obvious empty threat.

"Sir, with all due respect, I've already told everything I know to you or Mr. Gendelman and I-"

"You better put your fuckin' thinkin' cap on then, because you haven't told us shit. We want to know everything, and we're prepared to jog your memory if it comes down to it."

I hoped he meant with Gingko biloba or hypnosis, but I doubted it.

"Seriously, I've told you what I know. I am awful at history and always have been."

Could I suddenly "remember" things that I had failed to share before? If I did, I'd be accused of having intentionally withheld information. That might make matters worse for me than if I said nothing at all. The two large henchmen stood behind Barnett with their arms crossed. I picked up the pencil, rubbed my temples, and thought as hard as I could. I wasn't lying about sucking at history. I truly did not remember most of the major events of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and my knowledge of the 90s onward was only slightly better.

"I just woke up," I protested. "Can I at least have some coffee?"

Barnett glanced at the henchmen and gave an affirmative nod to the man on his left. The Cro-Magnon stumbled off, presumably to figure out how to brew a pot of coffee with his thick caveman brain. While I waited for him to return, I stared at the blank yellow paper trying to get the wheels in my brain to start turning. Threats of bodily harm have a way of waking one up, so I was already feeling more alert. I began to write:

John F. Kennedy elected president 1960. Cuban missile crisis happens sometime in early 60s. Kennedy DOES NOT ENGAGE SOVIETS and this prevents nuclear war. DO NOT INVADE/BOMB CUBA!

I couldn't tell them about Kennedy's assassination. The potential effects of this could be disastrous. But if I didn't tell them that, then I also couldn't tell them Lyndon Johnson would become president, which would make the Vietnam War hard to describe.