Stopgap

by Liam Card

  “You don’t think any of this is wrong?”

  “No,” she said, and then sent me the full definition for the word “conviction,” having circled the appropriate meaning in context to her passion project.

  “Got it.”

  “This will be an exciting time for the world. A state of panic is highly probable, fraught with confusion and questioning, but the message will spread, and it will become a safe world. All on account of our work.”

  “Good work as in the prevention of harm and murder through murder,” I said.

  “Good work as in the protection of the innocent through the complete removal of harm and murder,” she said and sent me a clip of a wrestler pinning another wrestler. The larger, more heavily muscled wrestler doing the pinning had SAFIA written on his red Lycra briefs in white block letters. You can imagine whose name was written on the wrestler being pinned, the one in the blue briefs.

  “I guess you have me there,” I said and sent her back the laugh track from a nineties sitcom.

  She sent me back a smile. A simple one, like you’d find in a children’s sticker book.

  “I have some serious concerns about the Bookkeeper,” I said.

  “Why? He’s been nothing but silent.”

  “That’s part of my concern. Why has he been so silent? We’re moments away from dramatically altering what was meant to be.”

  “What if this was meant to be, Luke,” she said and sent me a wink. I plowed through her mandate once again, looking for loopholes out of the mess I had gotten myself into.

  “I think we should discuss the act of self-defence,” I said. “There’s no mention of it in here. ”

  “Good point. Acts of self-defence do not breed Thought Markers. In these cases, a fight or flight instinct entirely drives the decision-making process. So, when flight is taken out of the equation, leaving someone backed into a corner their instinct will be to fight. In fighting for their lives, the innocent may severely injure or murder the assailant coming at them; however, no Thought Marker is produced. It is all a wash of fear and survival driven by the desire to escape. Due to this, I left the act of self-defence from the mandate entirely. Besides, twenty-four or forty-eight hours from now, when the world understands that peace is demanded of it, the act of self-defence will not be required.”

  “This is really happening,” I said and sent her a document through which she could opt out of the operation and terminate our contract.

  Safia shared with me a digital clock counting down from ten seconds. “Yes, Luke. This is happening.”

  The clock reached zero.

  “You’re the Colonel, Luke. Please tell me where I am headed first.”

  The time had come to fulfill my end of the bargain. Any attempts to talk her out of this crazy plan had failed miserably, and worse, I had failed as a Mentor. More than just me, It seemed like the whole system had failed her, but who was I to question a system that had been in place long before Luke James Stevenson was crushed in an intersection and opted to come back as a ghost?

  Diana was alive, and this was the price.

  That was the deal.

  Colonel Luke Stevenson at your service.

  Just as she had taught me, I connected to the cumulative thought projections of the planet and then grouped, batched, and charted the projections as per malicious intent, conditions, context, and Thought Markers. Ninety-five Thought Markers were Code Red, which meant that those individuals had not only reached the point of no return as per committing the violent crimes, but that the crimes were likely to take place within the next sixty seconds or less. Of those Markers, I organized them in order of occurrence and sent to Safia the global coordinates.

  She thanked me and left to do her work.

  • • •

  She reached eighty-nine of the ninety-five Code Red targets in time, a few with only a second or two to spare before crimes were committed. But there were six she didn’t reach. I’ll never forget those six for as long as I’m able to recall. The sour luck of those six, the fear they felt, the pain, all due to the time I had wasted arguing with Safia and looking for loopholes to get out of the deal.

  Me.

  I was responsible for those six.

  Luke James Stevenson, the jeweller from Oakville, could have saved their lives. I felt the throes of remorse when that reality settled in. Those six souls weighed on me, and no amount of perspective was helping. If anything, after botching the data, I was hungry to save more lives. The entire mindset of the operation was twisting its way into making sense, and it scared me to think that I might start thinking like her.

  Like Safia.

  An apology letter was crafted, and I sent it off to Safia with respect to the unfortunate six. She sent me back a short clip of a boxer sitting in his corner after round one — eyes puffy and bleeding from both nostrils. The old coach screaming in his ear, “Get up, kid! You’re just getting started!”

  In sports, as in life, nothing motivates more than a good mentor and the sting of defeat. It was time to channel my energy, honour my commitment, and get back in back ring. Thought Marker after Thought Marker surfaced on the Code Red screening system, and precise coordinates were sent Safia’s way. I’ll say this much: In a short amount of time, we settled into a nice workflow as the body count rose.

  10

  The first several hundred executions were a breeze. Cut-and-dry cases. Situations in which I felt we were doing some good. Maybe even something heroic in nature. Innocents were being saved from certain death, danger, or dismemberment. However, within the first thousand executions, a few unique situations surfaced in the Conditions and Context portion of the screening system. In cases such as these, I would travel to the destination personally to assess the situation before calling in Safia to deal the death blow. The first unique situation required an amendment to be written, titled “Captive Cathy Anne.”

  Outside the city of Espanola, New Mexico, on Interstate 84, a trucker named Dale Henry had picked up a middle-aged woman named Cathy Anne Frank whose day, in a nutshell, had gone to hell. Her car died, but before her car died, her cellphone died. So Cathy Anne Frank, saddled with a dead car and dead phone, waved down an eighteen-wheeler and met its driver, Dale Henry.

  Dale Henry pulled his rig to the side of the interstate.

  Dale Henry offered her an energy drink because she was thirsty.

  Dale Henry offered her a chocolate bar and half a bag of Doritos because she was hungry.

  “Thanks so much for all of this help,” said Cathy Anne. “You’re such a nice guy. You never know who you’re going to get when you’re waving someone down. You know?”

  “It’s true,” he said. “You’re a lucky gal.”

  “I am, indeed. Thank God,” she said.

  When I found Cathy Anne Frank, she was tied to a chair in Dale Henry’s shed with duct tape over her mouth. After serious consideration and a few conversations in his head with God, the two of them had come to the conclusion that the best thing for everyone involved in this predicament was to end the life of Cathy Anne and then have Dale dispose of the body as best he could. So far, Dale’s top choice in the category of body disposal was to dig a big hole, bury her in it, and plant a tree overtop to make it look like he had just … planted a tree. He stood before Cathy Anne with his hands on his hips, wiping sweat from his brow every five seconds or so. He had originally thought of using a gun or blunt instrument, but when he and God chose to kill Cathy Anne, God demanded that the murder be carried out with bare hands. That having to physically strangle the life out of Cathy Anne would be punishment enough for Dale’s lack of good judgment thus far. The strangulation of Cathy Anne was the only way Dale could purify himself and still get to Heaven. Dale, in fact, desperately wanted to go to Heaven. His mother was up there, and he missed her tremendously. God had told Dale that he and Dale’s mother played bridge every Thursd
ay evening and that she was always telling stories of Dale growing up.

  And what a fine child he was. How proud of him she was.

  Until now, that is.

  God and Dale’s mother were not impressed with this recent bout of indiscretion regarding Cathy Anne Frank. However, thankfully, salvation was only one strangulation away. Sadly, for Cathy Anne, Dale was committed to righting his wrong. Committed to God in Heaven and his mother. Committed to a seat at the Thursday evening hand of bridge at the big man’s table, and he would do whatever it took to earn that seat.

  Dale rolled up his camouflage sleeves while walking in circles around Cathy Anne’s chair on the dirt floor of the shed. He cracked his knuckles a few times and repeated, “Here we go,” over and over again. And, “This is for you, God. This is for you, Mama.”

  Cathy Anne knew this was the end.

  Any shred of hope had now been extinguished. Part of her welcomed the end.

  She wondered what her kids might grow up to be. She wondered when her husband might move on, and how long his grieving period might last. Maybe a year, she thought. That would be a fine amount of time, and then he could get out there again. She worried about whom he might select as a mate, given his chequered history of dating. She worried about who might end up tucking her son and daughter in at night, and if her children would eventually come around to accept the replacement. She wondered if they would ever call the replacement “Mom.” That made Cathy Anne terribly sad. She wondered if anyone would find her body or bones at all, but thought it might be better if they didn’t. The debate raged in her mind: Was it better to be found dead and allow her kids a sense of closure, or never to be found and have her kids believe she might be alive somewhere, having abandoned them? Cathy Anne, with no real power to control any outcome at this point, slammed a gavel on the judge’s stand in her mind and ruled that being found dead would be best.

  Closure would be best for the kids.

  Dale’s Thought Marker was into Code Red, but something didn’t add up. A logical issue had presented itself that brought me to his shitty old shed outside of Espanola in the first place. I called Safia to the scene.

  “Are we ready to go here?” she said.

  “The Thought Marker is clear, but you can’t execute this one,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “This woman is bound to a chair. If you kill Dale Henry, Cathy Anne dies of either thirst or starvation.”

  “Cathy Anne is going to die anyway. Dale’s Thought Marker is clear.”

  “I understand that, however, does executing Dale make things better or worse for Cathy Anne?”

  “Better.”

  “Better? How do you figure that?” I said.

  “Dale is punished, and she gets to live.”

  “For how long does she get to live before she starves to death?”

  “I don’t know. That is not my concern, really. Either way, she dies.”

  “So death due to strangulation is better than death due to starvation? Are we actually ranking this now?”

  “If I don’t kill Dale Henry, she dies at the hand of her captor. If I kill Dale Henry, she witnesses a miracle and dies by a function of being human. So you tell me what is better.”

  This point of hers was a hell of a good one.

  “I think we have to kill Dale Henry,” I said. “But I’ve only come to that conclusion due to the off chance she could still be found alive.”

  “Then we have our answer, don’t we?”

  “We do. If the execution of the assailant could result in the death of the victim by means of exposure or starvation, the assailant is still to be terminated due to the fact that the fate of the victim was already set in stone via the Thought Marker.”

  “I don’t think we need an amendment to the mandate for that,” she said, and she was correct. But what if Dale Henry wasn’t going to kill her? What if this was another sexual assault? What then? I posed this question, and Safia buzzed around the room.

  “In that case, your mandate states that you must kill Dale,” I said, “and Cathy Anne dies of starvation, despite the fact that the assailant had no intention of killing her.”

  “The assailant must die in that situation, having violated the mandate.”

  “But wait — the life of the victim isn’t in question in this case. Their mental and physical well-being is certainly in question, and the crime is terrible, but their life is not in danger. What then?”

  “This operation is about the termination of violent crimes. If a victim dies due to being held captive while a violent crime is about to take place … then that victim will require more help than just me.”

  “Respectfully, I don’t think that’s good enough. If life is a gift, and this mandate is about protecting the innocent, I don’t believe an innocent bound to a chair or otherwise can die as the result of the execution of an assailant when their life was never on the line to begin with.”

  Safia paused and shook the shed. Some tools fell off the wall. Dale took this as a sign from God to get things going. “You are annoying me,” she said.

  “That means I’m likely right on this one.”

  In the end, it was agreed that in cases of violent crimes involving a captive innocent where the assailant did not intend murder, the assailant would not be executed, so long as the captive innocent willed to live and was holding out for escape and survival. If the victim wished to die rather than endure what was imminent, then the assailant was to be executed, and it would be left to fate for the trapped or bound survivor. In furtherance to that, two more issues were agreed upon: should a captive be forced to devise a plan to kill or severely injure their captor as their only means of escape, they would not be held accountable for the acts of violence, even if the plan to injure or kill was premeditated and produced a Thought Marker; secondly, anyone attempting to kidnap or take hostage an individual against their will would be found guilty and face death.

  “I think these are important additions to the mandate,” she said.

  “Thanks for talking it through.”

  “Thanks for being such a strong Colonel,” she said and sent me a solid gold star hanging from a red-and-white ribbon.

  Safia wrote the first amendment and its subsections to Operation Stopgap, and that amendment was called “Captive Cathy Anne.” We both initialled it and focused our attention back on Dale Henry, who was now dangerously close to carrying out his deadly agreement with the Lord. Dale put his trembling hands around Cathy Anne’s neck. He massaged the muscles in and around the area for several seconds, but the grip began to tighten and tighten.

  Cathy Anne said a prayer.

  And just like that, Dale collapsed to the floor, bleeding profusely from the nose, eyes, and the ears.

  Cathy Anne heard the weight of Dale meet the ground and opened her eyes. She was lodged somewhere between confusion and joy. She cried and thanked God. This was strange, since she had previously thanked God for delivering Dale Henry to her in the first place while attempting to flag down a ride. I sent Safia the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic.” She played it a few times, actually.

  “Maybe someone will find her,” said Safia, and sent me the image of a sterling silver bracelet. The bracelet was loaded with little pewter charms, all of which were in the shape of hearts with the word “hope” stamped into them.

  “Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t,” I said. “But I know we did the right thing here.

  • • •

  The second amendment to the code was titled “Forced Hand.” This situation presented itself just minutes before Safia’s first mass execution. I had sent along the coordinates of a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Just outside the village, military Jeeps approached, loaded with three dozen armed rebels. These rebels had a terrible habit of slaughtering entire villages, and the next small village on the kill li
st was unknowingly about to be wiped out. Orders from the top were clear: kill every man, woman, and child. Take the teenage boys as prisoners. The teenage boys, of course, would be trained, indoctrinated, and become rebel killing machines of the future.

  The jeeps came to a halt at the village outskirts. Men and boys jumped down from their vehicles, machetes in hand and guns loaded. It had only been sixteen days since this same group of rebels had slaughtered a village just like this one, to the east by a few dozen miles. One of the rebels, a boy eighteen years of age, thought that he might not swing so forcefully with his machete this time around. Sixteen days ago, he had buried it in a small child’s skull and spent a good five minutes trying to get it out. Another young rebel wondered if these villagers, unlike the last group, might put up less of a fight during the rapings. Sixteen days ago, his face had been badly clawed and a piece of flesh torn from his arm by the teeth of a young girl. This time around, he thought it best to knock them unconscious or heavily daze them before proceeding.

  One of the rebels was a twenty-one-year-old boy named Bonyeme. Of the three dozen rebels, he had no intention of being there, nor did he want to kill anyone. What Bonyeme wanted was to go home to his parents. However, the rebel leaders had made it very clear that this was not an option. If you do not fight, we will kill you, and then we will kill your family. Those were the rules. Thus, Bonyeme’s actions, even sixteen days ago when this group slaughtered ninety-one innocents, were not only for his own survival, but also for the survival of his own flesh and blood back home.