Allan's Interrogation

On the eleventh day, Medic Allan Koontz sat on a straight back chair in the middle of a bare room. Allan's interrogator, Michael - Michael with the well pressed suit, perfect nails and pearl cufflinks - paced back and forth in front of him. Allan Koontz’s eyes were tired. Each time his eyelids came down, he felt he was sinking onto a giant inflatable pillow after a fifty foot fall, and it felt good. The effort required to keep his eyelids up was like climbing a fifty foot ladder. He preferred them down and not up, but if they stayed down it affected his ears, the world got silent, and he would fall asleep and fall off the chair. Just after the silence started, he could fend off the sleep by shaking his head. Michael stopped in front of Allan and started talking solicitously.
"Allan, this is when you tell us what happened. We have your journal and selected data from Cicero. You took on a responsibility when you accepted the mission, and the term of that responsibility has come to maturity. We need to know what happened. The country wants to know. The world wants to know. Until we make a report, there are people out there that will make up their own story about what happened out there and it is going to involve little green men racing towards us with anti-gravity machines that will tow us back to their god-damn death star. Do you understand me, Koontz?" He was shouting.
Michael was as sick of these daily sessions as Allan was because Colonel Shipton was riding Michael like the fat lady riding a cocker spaniel. Michael was behind. He had been told that the interrogators of Engineer Peter Chapman and Navigator Stuart Noel were getting more out of their charges than he was getting out of Allan. This was not true. Michael was told that Peter and Stu had implicated Allan. This also was not true. Michael was told by Shipton to get more out of him. Michael ran his hand thru his perfect hair and straightened his cuff links.
"How are you feeling, Allan?" Michael said.
"I feel like I am on Saturn."
"Your strength will improve with time. Do you want to tell us anything else about the mission?"
"I told you already,” Allan sighed. “I can't be sure that Cicero interfered with our communication, I only suspect it. Have you talked with Stu?" Allan’s head ached after being screamed at.
"We'll get back to what Stu said. Let's switch topics: Did you notice a hole in Lorrie's suit when you were walking behind her thru the desert, Allan?
"No. Listen, you guys are all screwed up. She hurt herself on those rocks!"
"Were there aliens around her?"
"Yes. I told you. Look, everything I have to say is in my journal, which you stole!" Allan looked up from his chair and stared Michael's biologically impossible irises. Allan suspected microscopic gold flecks had been implanted among the natural pigments: something new since he had left earth. "Read it."
"So there were aliens around her, then. Are you saying, Mr. Koontz, oh, I'm sorry. Have you been notified that you are no longer licensed to practice medicine in this or any other state in the union?” Michael pursed his perfect lips and looked down, standing one foot in front of Allan’s chair. “Some technicality about having failed to submit continuing medical education verification, et cetera et cetera” He sauntered two paces to his left turned around. “Look, Koontz, I’m on your side. I would like to help you with this little administrative issue, but in order for me to do so, you must really be more up front with us, understand?
"Lets start again. Are you saying that the alien named Kee killed Lorrie?"
"Her name was P-r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t Kie, ‘K-eye-ee.’” Allan pronounced it as three syllables, thoug he knew it was really just two. “And no, she did not kill her, damn it. I was there! Stu was there. Did you talk to him? He'll tell you all about it. Can I please go now?"
Instead of replying, the man named Michael leaned down in front of Allan and said, in a cozy, confidential voice up close to Allan's left ear, "Stu says you were close to Lorrie." Then he stood up again and grinned down.
"Everybody was close to Lorrie, everyone liked…"
"I mean when she 'slipped.'"
"What? Are you saying…"
"Let’s put it this way, Koontz, you were the only human near her, at the time. Is that accurate?"
Allan couldn't believe his ears. At first he thought he had gone to sleep and this was happening in his dream. He shook his head. He found that he was awake. Allan turned to face this man. He had had enough. "I don't think I am going to answer any more of your questions right now."
The man in the perfect suit stood up, casually walked five feet away, turned around, and said, "Do you have representation?"
"Do I what? What do you mean ‘representation’?"
"Because if you don't," he said insipidly, "you can be provided one."
"You mean a lawyer? You bastard! What are you doing to me?" Allan screamed. "I want to talk with Stu!"
"That's enough for tonight, Mike." The voice of Colonel Mark H. Shipton descended like a curtain from the four ceiling mounted speakers.

But Colonel Shipton was anything but calm. Ensconced in his office three flights above, Shipton had the feeling that Michael was swimming upstream on the particular creek he was taking Allan. Nor was it very professional.
The heat was on: from the top. The Colonel's boss was giving daily briefings to the president. The Colonel's boss was asking for daily updates from the Colonel. Shipton was being squeezed, and he hung his head in his hands and starred down at his desk. A red light appear on the bottom left corner of the console embedded in the mahogany surface. Then an amber light went on. 'Must be someone important,' he thought, for this time there was no delay. Colonel Shipton prepaired himself for the most likely possibilities. If it was Michael demanding to continue his session with Allan, Shipton had to do battle with a pit bull, but his heart would be only half in it, because Shipton desperately wanted Allan to spill every one of his beans. If it was Michael announcing he was going to quit because the pressure was too high, then Mark would have to contact the CIA, or Mr. Sir, to spirit Michael away to shut him up, and Mark did not like to think about what that would involve. If it were the president, he would get his ass chewed out harder than one week ago, when he had been given exactly and precisely seven days to find out exactly… Mark sat up straight. He adjusted the row of medals on his left chest. A red light appeared on the wall screen in front of him, which meant that an eight foot by six foot laser quality image of the caller was about to appear in front of him. He coughed. He knew that the caller would see him in a similar format. He turned to the side and spat a wad of phlegm on the carpeted floor. He looked up as the red light started flashing. Mark had decided that the President was the most likely. It was going to flash three times.
It didn't. It flashed once, twice, and the screen was filled with a image of an operating room table, in nineteen sixty era security camera resolution. The head of the table was to the front and right of the image. The table was not straight in line with the field of view but was at an odd angle. A large curved plexiglass wall was evident behind the table. Beyond that was an open room. Resolution faded out before the far wall, but six sterile looking hot tubs were arranged in front of it…There was no movement, only a background hiss, the auditory ghost of magnetic induction coils…
"What the hell?" The Colonel checked the monitor embedded in his desk. The two lights had gone off: the transmission was now independent of his secure switch board. The image was still on the screen. He interrogated the data stream, and found gibberish: encrypted. No transmitting node identified. He tried cutting the connection. The image faltered, then stabilized, securing itself independent of any control that a human could exert on the transmission. He looked up. Even the red light had gone out: he could not turn it off if he wanted to. He got scared. Instinctively, he opened the dark mahogany drawer second one down on the left side of the desk and removed his standard issue side arm from its holster. He pointed it at the screen and cocked it.
A voice filled the room from the embedded speakers, like an old news reel but slower, and with more emotion…Colonel Shipton slowly let the gun drop.