Devil's Fork

by Spencer Adams

  “Wow,” Matt said, “Mind-blowing. But why does the mission have this codename?”

  “Because whenever we deal with North Korea or any purely totalitarian country, we end up seeing a lot of paradoxes, or situations where the end result is a contradiction.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well let’s take a basic one. The North Korean regime is afraid that it will lose power. To prevent this, it starts to develop nuclear weapons. The international community becomes worried and places heavy sanctions, causing hardship. Because of the hardship within its country, the North Korean regime loses some power, since you are less powerful when your people are unhappy. So they set out to become more powerful by making themselves less powerful, a contradiction. A paradox.”

  “I think I see what you’re saying.” Matt said while staring through the wall in front of them.

  “Here’s another one. The Soviet Union and China wanted to extend their sphere of influence in East Asia. So they had their ally North Korea invade South Korea. But because of an attack on its ally, the United States fought the Korean War and pushed the North Koreans back – initially all the way to the Chinese border, but eventually back to the 38th parallel. Now to maintain support for its ally, the United States has a large permanent military presence in South Korea and especially on the border, a presence we didn’t have before. Because of our heavy presence in the region, the Soviet and Chinese sphere of influence became weaker. So to increase their sphere of influence, they decreased their sphere of influence, a paradox-like situation.”

  “That’s interesting. I never thought paradoxes applied to the real world.” Matt mused.

  “You can find a paradox everywhere. But especially in totalitarian governments. I am sure we will find more at the end of this mission. So I decided to codename it Devil’s Fork. We’ll see what Tom finds at that secret base.”

  Sara was originally not fond of paradoxes. It made her mind think in circles, which after a few times around was unpleasant. Growing up in the Midwest, she had lived with a view of the world as generally straightforward. But she was always curious. Her search to better understand the world isolated her as a child. She had a different set of interests than others around her. So she spent her free time reading and thinking. That all changed when she went to college. She found others curious like her. She made friends and started dating. But she also learned that the world was more complex than she originally understood. In fact it was far more complex. She majored in history and saw that the story of human civilization was rooted in deception, fear, ulterior motives, and especially unintended consequences. In fact the study of history at times seemed to her to be the study of unintended consequences leading to further unintended consequences. She felt that maybe we should stop trying to predict the future. Mankind was walking through a large dark house, occasionally feeling something and yelling out that it understood how the house was laid out.

  She took interest in totalitarian regimes in college. She was fascinated that they were riddled with contradictions, some of which she later classified as paradoxes. Starting with the obvious fact that nobody who was about to be born, with his or her mind a tabula rasa, who was given the choice of which country to be born in, would ever choose a totalitarian state. Yet over the last half-century, almost half of the world, if not more, lived in a totalitarian or a control state. That was a paradox – it just did not seem to be possible. The other obvious one to her was that totalitarian regimes always presented themselves as coming to power for the people – with their “people’s army” and “people’s courts.” Yet the actual people in the country seemed to suffer tremendously. These regimes alleged that “people” had come to power to improve their lives. But these “people’s” regimes destroyed lives. Sara ended up writing a senior thesis in college called Totalitarianism’s use of contradictions for power. After college she came to the CIA to be able to continue to explore the mechanics of the world first hand. She remembered when she just started, she was explaining her thesis to Tom and he mentioned that he believed Power was the original drug humans discovered. He said its ability to soothe and give a sense of security to its holder mixed with its addictive nature was harvested long before any such plant was discovered. She had never thought about it that way.

  By now Matt had pulled up the Defense Message System and was getting ready to send a message to the Admiral in charge of Pacific Command.

  “What should I send them?” He asked.

  “I don’t think we should send too much information. Say we are planning to insert one of our operatives into North Korea’s northeast coast for a 6-hour mission. This mission will occur in two days. Say the Director has requested the USS Virginia and its SDV to be made ready along with the USS George Washington. Mark this as top secret. I think that’s enough. Anderson will tell PACOM and American Forces Korea the rest when he calls them.”

  Matt typed in the message. They read it over a few times.

  “Alright. I’m sending it.” Matt said as he clicked his mouse.

  Right as he clicked, his computer seemed to freeze with the message still on his screen. Sara and Matt looked at each other then looked back at the screen. Suddenly a window appeared with a Mandarin Chinese character. It went away quickly and then the message was sent.

  “Huh?” Matt said, inflecting his voice more than usual.

  “What was that?” Sara half-yelled.