Interrogation

Private First Class Dennis Tripp couldn't remember how he had gotten strapped to the bed he was in at the moment. His body was riddled with pain, but he couldn't remember getting hurt. He tried to move his head, but it was too heavy. He could barely get a glimpse of what looked like a hospital room, an IV stand with a tube coming down towards his arm, and a few people. How many had he seen? He'd just seen them, but he'd already forgotten if he'd counted them at all.

He looked at the man standing over him in a lab coat with dark, closely cropped hair and a stern expression on his face, and wondered what exactly was going on. For a moment he thought that he was in a hospital in Germany. That's where they take wounded American soldiers before they go back to the US, right? But he'd studied German in high school, and the language floating around the room was not German. It wasn't English, either. Wouldn't the US military hospital use English speaking doctors? Yes, they would. This wasn't that, then.

Another man came into view above his head. This man didn't look like a doctor at all. He had no lab coat. He wore ordinary street clothes. They weren't ordinary street clothes back in Michigan, but they were ordinary in... in... where were those clothes from? The shirt, the shirt, there was something about the shirt that placed these clothes in space, a place, a country. What was it? Tripp forgot.

What was he looking at again?

A man's face came into view above Tripp's head. He held up a syringe and a small vial of liquid. He filled the syringe with some of the liquid, and then he did something just out of Tripp's view. They were putting drugs into his IV line, he knew it. That's not good. They were doing that to keep him fuzzy and stupid. He had to fight the drugs. If he let the drugs take over, he might say something he shouldn't.

The man leaned back into Tripp's view again, the man asked something in a kindly tone as if he was trying to be nice.

Tripp didn't understand, but even if he did, he wouldn't have answered. He would give no answers until he knew exactly who he was dealing with.

Private First Class Dennis Tripp did not know where he was. He was seated in a chair. There was an IV coming out of his arm. He was not in his uniform any more. He wore a green smock and loose green pants. They were sloppy, like pajamas. What had they done with his uniform?

There was a sort of end table next to his chair. A man with dark brown hair and a beard sat in a chair kitty corner to him, on the other side of the end table. The man leaned in toward Tripp and asked something but Tripp didn't understand it. The man asked again, but it was pure jibberish. Tripp was beginning to wonder if these people even knew that he was American. Why weren't they speaking English?

A woman walked in to the room wearing all white. Even her hair covering was white. (Ah, now he knew where he was! The woman's hijab gave it away.) She pulled a clipboard off the wall and examined it. She said something to the man that was seated next to Tripp. The man replied. They continued to talk as the woman opened a drawer and prepared several syringes. She took Tripp's blood, and then she put something into his IV again. They said their good byes and she left the room.

Tripp thought that he was beginning to understand their language. How long had he been held here? He couldn't remember.

Private First Class Dennis Tripp did not know where he was or how he'd gotten there. He knew that it was an alien operating room of some sort. He remembered that he was on a battlefield at night and he'd been shot. He remembered the lights in the air. He'd thought that they were the lights of a helicopter. Now he knew that they had been the lights of an alien ship.

Holy Mother of God! Aliens! Those nut jobs were right all along. There really are aliens. They look a lot like humans, but when they don't know that you are looking, sometimes they morph into their true forms. He hadn't seen it yet, but he knew it was true.

Right now, he was in his bed, another hapless soldier in the room with him. They other man was crying. Tripp would not be such a coward. He had faced down terrorists in the desert, he could face an alien. He was afraid, but his father used to always say, “Courage is not a lack of fear. It's the ability to do what you must despite the fear.” Tripp would get through this. He would survive. He would find his way home, even if he had to steal one of the alien space ships and fly it back to Earth himself.

Private First Class Dennis Tripp knew exactly where he was. It was an interrogation room in Honduras. The man who had just walked into the room had introduced himself as Doctor Hernandez. Tripp was fairly certain that this man was no doctor. The man's outfit did not fool him.

“How are you feeling today, Mister Tripp?” the supposed doctor asked, trying to open the interrogation on a friendly note.

Tripp did not answer.

“Do you know where you are?” Hernandez asked as he pulled a penlight out of his pocket and looked into his eyes.

“Of course I do.”

“Good! Good! Can you tell me where you are?” The supposed doctor was playing games now.

Tripp did not answer.

“Well, there is someone here who would like to see you.” The supposed doctor kept speaking, but Tripp ignored him and stared at the green tile wall. “Would it be alright if I let your visitor in?” Was the only other thing he heard.

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Private First Class Dennis Trip could not remember where he was or how he got there, exactly. There was something about a firefight. He couldn't remember where he'd been at the time, though. Which front was it? Which operation? Which battle? His memories were all jumbled up, and he couldn't remember where he'd been when, which wars he'd seen on TV or in training simulations and which ones he'd actually fought in. Drug war. Oil war. Civil war. All wars are the same in the end. People kill and people die. Some people make lots of money, everyone else loses all their possessions.

Tripp was sitting in a comfortable chair by a window. There was a pole next to him. At the top of the pole was a plastic bag with clear fluid in it. A tube came out of the plastic bag with the fluid in it. The tube came down to a port in his arm.

Oh. An IV. He had an IV in his arm.

He couldn't remember how he got to that chair. He looked uncomfortably out the window, trying to figure out where he was. There was nothing familiar about this place at all.

A woman walked into the room. He knew it was a woman even before he turned to look. It was the smell of her perfume and the cadence of her step. There was something gentle, something sweet. He turned to see who it was.

His mother was there to see him. No. Not his mother. The clothes were not right. Something else was not quite right. She looked wrong some how. She looked too young. This wasn't his mother. This girl was about the same age as him, maybe a little older, but not by much.

“Good morning!” the strange woman beamed, “How are you doing today?”

“Who are you?” Tripp asked angrily.

“It's Denise.” Her smile turned to worry.

“What the hell?”

“Don't you remember me? They named me after you. Don't you remember?”

“What are you playing at?”

“Pops? Don't you remember me?” The woman's eyes filled with tears, “Denny? Little Denny? Not so little now? Your all grown up little Denny?” She started to sing a melody. It was the melody his mother used to sing to him, only she changed the words up. Instead of the song being about him, it was about her.

“You are not little at all. Who are you? How did they make you look like my mother? Did they do experiments on me? Is that it? Are you a genetic experiment?”

The woman began to cry for real. She turned her head away.

“Get out!” Tripp yelled. “Get out of here!!”

The woman turned and left the room. The door clicked shut and she was gone.

Private First Class Dennis Tripp understood exactly what was going on. They had captured him and were trying to get him to speak. They were using drugs and psychological tricks to get him to talk. It was useless. He didn't have any important information anyway. Still, there might be something he knows that would be valuable to them, troop movements over the last few weeks, details about the location of a camp he'd been to, or a weapon he'd been trained to use. Who knows what the enemy would think was important. It doesn't matter. He wouldn't give them any information. He wouldn't give in to their tricks.

Denise Tripp stood outside her grandfather's hospital room in tears. She'd been told by the doctors that he was not really aware of where he was or what was going on. She understood that he was confused, but she hadn't expected him not to recognize her.

The old man had raised her since she was a toddler. She had been his pride and joy, and he had been her fabulous Pops. He'd put her to bed with stories of strange people and strange places from his 30 years of military service before she'd ever been born. She'd called him “Sergeant Pops”, and he loved it. He'd told her when she was a teenager that he missed her mother like crazy, and wished that her parents had never died, but even so he was so grateful that he'd been able to raise her. It felt like he had a second chance to be a good father, to make up for the missed time.

Her mind filled with so many memories of her grandfather and the image of him sitting there, angry at her, not knowing who she was. She stood in the hallway and sobbed as others walked past and tried not to notice.