The Interrogation

“Excuse me miss, but you’ve won the lottery.”

“I beg your pardon?” The young woman was genuinely puzzled for a moment. She was also genuinely beautiful, with dark hair and dark eyes, and a face and figure that was just a little too cute to be sultry, and a little too sultry to be cute. Open-toed, low-heeled shoes added an inch to her height, but she still had to look up at the bland-faced man who had addressed her. Like that man, she wore clothing of a conservative cut, but while his was of the masculine gray, she had taken advantage of the female prerogative to wear bright colors that enhanced her dark and fiery beauty.

“Miss Galena Kimiko el Habib, I’m Agent Joe Potter, BTI, and you are under arrest for terror-related activities. Please hold still.” The words were spoken politely, but the tazer prodding her spine backed them up. Galena held still, careful to keep an outward expression of innocent confusion even as she mentally cursed herself. She should have pepper-sprayed this fed and clamed afterwards that she though he was a mugger - or a rapist. It wouldn’t have made any difference in the end - he undoubtedly had backup - but it would at least have given her a moment of satisfaction.

She felt the collar being locked around her neck; a Red Shield torc that would protect her from torture. Or rather it would provide an unimpeachable witness if she were tortured for what she knew. Under the New Protocols she could be held and interrogated for up to 72 hours - but not tortured. If she were tortured, she would indeed “win the lottery”: She would automatically receive an award of ten million dollars. Likewise she would be awarded the ten million if she were found to be innocent during her interrogation.

The only problem was that she wasn’t innocent.

She was one of the Vanguard of El Supremo, the South American genius who was succeeding with the Beautiful Revolution where the Fascists, the Communists, and the Islamists had all failed. And now it looked like she was going to be one of the Martyrs to Beauty. Her only chance, slim as it was, was to pretend innocence for as long as possible and to hope that the interrogators would somehow slip and let her through. If it did, she’d have 10 million dollars for the Vanguard, paid by the Enemy itself. If it didn’t... she wouldn’t think about that just yet.

So she climbed unresistingly into the car that pulled up - a new model, with an auto-driver - and smiled at the ugly BTI agent who sat next to her. She pretended, in short, to be an innocent caught up in a botched security operation, confident that her captors would soon discover their mistake and offer a handsome apology for the trouble they caused her.

Galena sat between Joe and another fed, a women Joe introduced as Harriet Potter. Galena looked back and forth at the two. “Married?”

“Yes, actually,” Harriet answered with a smile. Her voice, Galena thought, was just as ugly as her face. The two homely BTI agents deserved each other. But she had to continue to pretend to be innocent and friendly, and they politely pretended along with her.

They parked in an underground garage, and passed through a standard-issue security station to reach the elevators. “This is a secure building,” the guard went into his spiel. “Please remove your shoes and step through the scanner.” Galena stepped through, and found herself in the elevator without either her shoes or her handbag; the security guard had kept them both. Joe and Harriet were shoeless as well when they joined her: A standard security precaution. The BTI agents could pick up their shoes when they left the building, but if Galena escaped, she would be barefoot - and thus both hobbled and an object of attention.

At the end of the elevator ride, they came to the interrogation room. Carpet in a shade of Repulsive Rust covered the floor, and a set of shabby overstuffed chairs were arranged around a Question Boy. The recliner-with-restraints was immediately recognizable from the entertainment vids, and Galena stopped to stare at it. She couldn’t help it, and she told herself that an innocent would have the same reaction, spooked by the chair’s reputation.

“Yes, I know,” Harriet said sympathetically. “But it’s really quite comfortable. I’ve sat in it lots of times, myself. She sat in one of the shabby chairs and patted the recliner’s leather surface. “Take it slowly; just sit down. You don’t have to stretch out right away.”

Galena sat down gingerly. Joe handed her a glass. “Something for your nerves,” he told her.

“What is it?” she asked, although she thought she knew.

“Rum, coke, and truth serum,” Joe answered. “Drink up now, so we won’t have to give you an injection.”

Galena drank. It was what an innocent woman would do. Resistance would be an admission of guilt, and would only result in a forced injection of truth serum, and the loss of her only chance to escape this interrogation unscathed.

In the vid productions, a drink of truth serum would immediately cause the victim to jerk and shake uncontrollably, so that they had to be strapped down in a Question Boy recliner. It would also make them spout out the answer to any question asked them. Informed people knew that this was nonsense, of course, and as a Beauty Commando, Galena knew this better than most. But the ugly enemy had something. Every so often they would brag about the capture and confession of another ‘vile terrorist,’ the International Red Shield would confirm that the confession was obtained without torture, and El Supremo would quietly announce the loss of another Martyr to Beauty. Galena touched the torc on her neck. Had the enemy found a way to spoof the Red Shield’s monitoring?

On the other hand, there were those rare occasions when the BTI would admit to a mistake and release its victim with a ten million dollar apology. Galena had to cling to the hope that her captors would slip, that she would be one of those cases.

“Question time,” Harriet told her. “Go ahead and lie down now.” Somewhat nervously, Galena did so and the two agents strapped her down in the Question Boy.

As Harriet tied her ankles and toes, and Joe took a seat by the foot of the recliner, Galena felt a sudden surge of hope and terror. They were going to tickle her! They were going to tickle her, and she hated being tickled! It was agony for her! A horrible torture! But precisely because it was a torture, it would trigger alarms in the torc around her neck. The Red Shield would rescue her, slapping down the BTI for its act of torture, and the enemy would grovel before her, offering its ten million dollar apology. All she had to do, she told herself, was hold out for the brief time between the start of the torment and her rescue.

But she was wrong.

Her feet were naked and helpless before Joe, and he began stroking them with the tips of his fingers with his left hand, and with the tip of a feather in his right. The results shocked Galena: There wasn’t a trace of agony in the delicious tickle-sensations that he spread across her soles. There was only wonderful sense of pleasure that made her squirm in ecstasy and giggle euphorically. Joe continued the luxurious slow tickling he had begun with for a few moments more, and then began to mix in bouts of a more vigorous stimulation to her insteps and toes, and to the heels and balls of her feet. Galena laughed; it was marvelous. He paused for a moment, and she looked at him from where she lay strapped in the Question Boy, silently pleading for him to continue. And then to her delight he started tickling again.

The Formula Daisy truth serum had been invented decades ago, long before El Supremo rise to power, back in the days when the International Red Shield was still known as the Red Cross. It didn’t work very well, and so had been put back on the shelf until a neo-hippy clique in the intelligence community had found it in the course of their self-experimentation. They discovered the unique synergistic effects of Formula Daisy, and the BTI had laid down a security blanket. Now Formula Daisy was a closely held secret, protected by various wild rumors that the BTI itself encouraged.

In the roughly 4% of cases where the BTI mistakenly arrested an innocent, the victim was allowed to sleep off the effects. His or her natural brain chemistry would metabolize the dose, resulting in vivid dreams. The memory of the actual interrogation would become lost in those dreams, and would ultimately fade with them. But in the 96% of those cases where the BTI was correct in its accusation of terrorism, the captive would be given a booster dose of Formula Daisy, and would ultimately suffer a different fate.

Joe ran the tip of the feather up and down Galena’s soles, then back and forth and in diagonal lines. Galena giggled prettily, squirming in bliss. Joe switched to a cotton swab and stimulated the sensitive areas between her toes. Galena shrieked and pulled against her bonds as waves of tickle-bliss ran up her legs. He took a new swab and ran it in lazy spirals covering her heels and insteps. Galena laughed uncontrollably, hoping, wishing, that the tickling would never end.

“I think she’s ready now,” Joe told his wife as he continued his slow tickling. Harriet turned to Galena and began to ask questions.

“What is your name?”

“Hee hee. My name hahaha name is Galena Kimiko el Habib heeheehee. But hahaha my code name heeheehahee is ‘Naomi hahahahaheehee.”

Galena found that she could not keep herself from answering truthfully and completely, not any more than she could keep from giggling in response to that delicious tickling of her feet. Over the next hour and a half she confessed, between bouts of laughter, to everything she had done as a Beauty Commando ever since she had entered the country. Obtaining and distributing false IDs. The aid she had given to the greenway sniper. Her own part in planting explosives on the Carver Bridge. Everything.

She tried to hold back, and found that she couldn’t. Not for more than a few seconds at a time. She concentrated on laughing, on the euphoric tickle-sensations that Joe was inflicting on her. That worked a little better, but she’d lose her breath, and her interrogators would pause to let her catch it again. Then Joe would dust the soles of her feet with a whisk-broom, and she would squirm and giggle at the burst of pleasure that the tickling sent through her. And with the giggling, more answers came.

It took just under two hours to obtain a complete confession. As Joe put the tickle-tools back into their case, Harriet uploaded files, and Galena sagged in the Question Boy. The captive terrorist was wimp, sweat-soaked, and bitterly ashamed at having betrayed the Revolution, a shame made worse by a nagging desire for just a little bit more. “You hate me!” she suddenly cried out as the two agents waited for a response to their upload. “You hate me and I’m glad! The Beautiful Revolution will never die! Long Live El Supremo!”

“No,” Joe said. “We don’t hate you. We hate what you did, and we’re glad we stopped you, but hating you, personally, would be unprofessional.”

“You have to understand, though, that your old life is over now, Galena,” Harriet put in. “It was over the moment we arrested you. No one can resist a modern BTI interrogation. If you can accept that, your future life will be easier for you.”

“Future life? You should take me out and shoot me!”

“No,” Joe told her, echoing his earlier words. “We won’t shoot you. It’s unprofessional.”

“Hmmf.” Galena lay fuming on the Question Boy. Not that she had much choice, still strapped down as she was. Minutes passed, and the craving that she felt for a bit more tickling faded. Slowly. And, she admitted to herself, that ugly Harriet woman was right, in a way at least. Even if she could somehow escape, she could never go back to being a Beauty Commando. Not now that the enemy knew who she was.

More time passed. Harriet released Galena’s arms, and the two agents sat back, waiting. Her legs still trapped, Galena had to wait as well. She spent the time evolving a theory that the two agents were applying some subtle psychological pressure to make her easier to question. But they didn’t need to, not when... Galena shied away from that thought.

A tone sounded. The two agents checked the computer display and gave small nods of satisfaction. “What is it?” Galena asked, no longer able to curb her curiosity. “What will you do to me now?” Her voice cracked on the last word, her throat dry.

Joe handed her another glass. “Drink this, It will make you feel better.” It was more rum and coke, this time spiked with fifteen times the previous dose of Formula Daisy. Galena’s confession had been read by a special court, and endorsed by an advocate of the Red Shield who had checked the readings from the torc Galena wore and had confirmed that the confession had been made without torture.

Galena drained the glass. “What will you do to me now?” she asked again.

“You’ve been found guilty of terror-related activities,” Harriet told her, not unkindly. As her husband had said, hatred was considered unprofessional by the BTI. “We’ll be sending you to a prison camp in a few days, and - you’ll be told more later,” she ended as she saw Galena start to nod off. The exhausting pleasures of the interrogation, followed by the overdose of Formula Daisy, was sending her to sleep.

The overdose would change Galena’s brain chemistry as she slept, making the effects of the Formula permanent. Once she was in Camp Scavenger - the prison set aside for captured terrorists - she would be given access to tickle-machines as long as she behaved herself. And if she was very good, she would be allowed visitors. Not from any of her former comrades, of course, but rather from BTI agents who wished to improve their tickling skills. The inmates of Camp Scavenger competed rather intensely for that ‘duty.’

But for the next few days, Galena would be held here in the Valerie Building, where BTI staff would complete her interrogation.

Galena Kimiko el Habib paced in her cell, deep in the Valerie Building. It was a modern cell, spray-coated with grass green Fuzzifoam(TM) that rendered it warm and comforting, unlike the barbaric sterile-concrete cells still used in some prisons. Its entertainment system is one that an audiophile of a hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago - would have given his eyeteeth for, and the disposable silk wrap that Galena wore was likewise utterly luxurious by the standards of the previous century. But Galena was a barefoot prisoner, and the cell also included a set of padded stocks at one end.

She continued her pacing. Her captors were diabolical, utterly diabolical! They’d told her exactly what had happened to her, what the effect of their ‘truth serum’ had been. Then they had told her that they would not question her further unless she asked them to. And then they had put her in this cell, with her new cravings. Diabolical!

With a cry of anger she sat down behind the stocks. That cursed Harriet woman was right; no one could resist a BTI interrogation. She closed the stocks around her ankles, and snapped the old-fashioned mechanical locks shut, trapping her bare feet. “Guards! Guards!” she called.

A BTI staffwoman came immediately, pulling a portable tickle-machine behind her. “We’ll get started right away, honey,” the dark-skinned woman promised, and true to her word it was less than a minute later before mechanical fingers began a delightful tickle-dance over Galena’s bare soles. The staffer then sat down by the giggling captive and began to ask questions.

(end)