Short fiction: “We Will Conquer Music and Art with Superior Military Technology”
The rest of the day was taken up with exploring Prussian Occupation and its environs. Everywhere I went, soldiers on horseback were impossible to avoid.
As a tourist, I could come and go as I pleased as long as I didn’t make any trouble. The people who lived there were not so fortunate — every now and then a soldier would make a show of force by dragging a local out of their home and roughing them up. Other times, they’d scoop someone off the street and take them to who knows where, and the poor soul would not be seen nor heard from ever again. It was ugly, for sure, but nevertheless trumpeted enthusiastically by tourism brochures. (“See the oppression experience UP CLOSE by witnessing AUTHENTIC PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE at the hands of an occupying army!”)
I took part in a guided tour of the Prussian Occupation Museum, though it was a very disjointed experience — every time we’d get to the next exhibit or display, the soldier accompanying us would point a gun at the guide’s head, and they would stop their spiel in mid-sentence and simply move on to the next stop, and then the process would repeat all over again.
By the time I left the museum, I hadn’t really learned anything at all. The only complete information imparted was the fact that the original settlers of this town came here from eastern Europe with promises of free unsettled land from the Canadian government, but then I had known that already years ago.
A group of prisoners were being lead through their daily exercises at gunpoint by a small unit of soldiers. They were made to jog in a large circle and then drop to the ground and do several push-ups as one of the soldiers counted out loud in German. Soon they were back on their feet and jogging. (Wash, rinse, repeat.) There was only so much of this I could bear to watch, so I broke away from the crowd of tourist onlookers and took a stroll to somewhere quieter.
As I walked along a dirt road winding through some nearby woods, I started to feel a presence of some sort following me. I looked all around and saw nothing at first, but just as I started to relax, I saw a strange flicker of light in front of me. It only lasted a split second or so, but then it happened a moment later — this time, I barely caught a glimpse of a partial face, an eye and a nose. A few seconds later another flicker appeared, revealing another partial glimpse of what was presumably the same face, though this time I thought I saw a mouth and part of a cheek. It was as if I were looking at a person who was mostly absorbing light but occasionally reflecting bits of it a split second at a time.
“Hello,” I said, as if hoping for a response from whoever (or whatever) this was.
Instead, I saw another small series of flickers, but closer to me than the previous ones. I looked down at the ground and saw bits of dirt being disrupted in small patches, alternating to the left and right, as if being made by some phantom pair of feet.
“What do you want from me?”, I found myself calling out. Suddenly, a path of dirt was being kicked up in a path towards the bushes, and some branches and twigs whipped back and forth momentarily, as if this person(?) had bolted away from me and ran into hiding somewhere in the woods.
The Prussian Occupation Tavern was already crowded with soldiers and locals by the time I arrived. Being not only a tourist but also a former public figure (thanks to my old job as the official town crier for River of Tears), I was shown to a table right at the front of the stage, the best one in the house. Sitting next to me was the mayor of Prussian Occupation.
I remembered him from 1993 as a high school teacher, and if my math was correct he would have retired around 2005 or so. In fact, he hung on until 2011. One guess of mine that was bang on was that he had indeed undergone River of Tears Salt treatments, as he didn’t look a minute older than when I had seen him last.
I recounted my experience earlier with that presence on the dirt road, hoping he could enlighten me as to what had been happening. Deep down, I worried that it may have something to do with those vampires I had always heard about. But no, it was worse than that. The mayor looked down for a moment, perhaps collecting his thoughts and deciding which words to attach to them.
“We really shouldn’t discuss this matter,” he said with a look and a tone that suggested raw fear. As if on cue, a flash of searchlight cut through a nearby window from a helicopter somewhere above. The mayor looked up at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the evening sky, and then back at me with eyes wide with sorrow. He pointed upwards as he spoke.
“I can’t say that was more than a coincidence,” he said, “but accept it as the sign it very well may have been.”
“Holy shit,” I muttered, sitting back in my chair as I comprehended the gravity of what he was implying, that the presence was somehow connected to Buried Girl. With that, I simply let the topic go.
Before the evening’s “open stage” performances began in earnest, the commanding officer called the room to attention. “I have an announcement,” he said with much bravado. “The future of music resides in this very town, a result of the brilliant scientific minds in our midst. It is not enough that we have conquered this town. We will conquer music and art with superior military technology!”
Those in uniform were the first to clap and cheer, followed a moment later by the locals once they intuited their life-or-death cue.
“And so,” he continued, “it is our pleasure to give you all a little demonstration before we proceed with tonight’s fine entertainment.”
He gave a hand signal to someone in the opposite corner at the back of the room, near the kitchen entrance, from where some soldiers emerged dragging a brunette woman clad in a bright red leather body suit with matching high-heeled boots. She squirmed and jostled, as if trying to escape the soldiers grip, or maybe even the body suit itself.
The crowd cleared a generous path to the stage as the woman writhed more frantically, and shouted through gritted teeth, “No! Don’t do this to me again!”.
She was hoisted up one step onto the stage, and then made to turn around to face the crowd. She twisted and turned despite the soldiers’ efforts to keep her in place. One soldier put her in a headlock from behind in order to hold her head absolutely still as the commanding officer plugged an audio cable into the input jack on a guitar amplifier. And then, with locals in the crowd involuntarily pleading with him to stop, he held up the other end of the cable and said, “Watch! Listen! The future is unfolding before you in the form of a woman!”
At that point I noticed that a small rectangle of hair just above her left ear had been shaved away, where an audio jack had been crudely implanted. The scalp immediately around the jack looked red and inflamed. The commanding officer fumbled with the end of the cable in his initial attempt to plug it into her head, causing the humming amplifier to emit some crackles, zaps, and bursts of static. Finally, he was able to insert it fully into the jack, causing her knees to immediately buckle, and her eyes to roll back. The soldiers lifted the now-limp woman off her feet and laid her out face-up on a long table that had made its way to the stage while everyone’s attention had been directed elsewhere. They let her head roll to the right, and entirely by luck her unblinking eyes had rolled back down and were fixed on me, as if we were locked into a staring contest. Her lips began to move ever so slowly, as if mouthing some unknown words specifically to me. I had no idea what she was saying, but was grateful for what I took to be a sign that at least she was still alive — a moment earlier, I hadn’t been so sure.
A small group of men who wore uniforms but appeared too petite to be actual soldiers gathered around her. (I assumed they were attached to this unit as scientists.) One placed a hand on her belly, which seemed to trigger a low, clean sine wave from the amplifier. Another one of these scientists(?) held a hand above her upper left thigh, and as he moved it down that leg towards the foot, the sine wave became courser as it mutated into the buzz of a sawtooth wave. He moved his hand back to her upper thigh as sawtooth resolved back into sine.
Momentarily distracted by the these goings on, I looked back at her face and saw that her unblinking eyes now had an urgent and pleading quality that hadn’t been there a minute ago. Also, her mouth seemed to be enunciating words much more clearly, even if I couldn’t be certain just what they were. If I had to take a shot in the dark, I would have sworn she was alternating between “unknown origin” and “wood cutting implement”, or some such. Who the hell knows? It seemed just as plausible that her lip movements were strictly the random product of electrical currents passing through her body, but with her actual “voice” commandeered by this odd and merciless technology.
As the demonstration continued, the scientists(?) ran their hands above other parts of her body, bending, twisting, inverting, and shredding the sound waves, and then reassembling them inside-out as completely different sounds. On its own terms, this soundscape was as beautiful as it was alien. The context, however, with its unwilling human instrument splayed mindlessly on the table, made the whole exercise brutal and sad.
Rather than concern myself with these men conquering music and art, I simply kept my focus on her face, as she (at least superficially) appeared to be needing my attention, and thus it felt like my duty to maintain a pilot light of human contact with her. There was nothing I could do in that moment to save her, but at least I could bear witness to whatever flicker of consciousness may (or may not) have been trying to project itself to me through her relentless gaze and incessant lip movements.
At long last the demonstration was over. The commanding officer unplugged the cable from her head as someone switched off the amplifier. Her face turned pale and then blue as her body twitched a few times, but some soldiers were at the ready, and wasted no time placing an oxygen mask on her nose and mouth and what I presume was a cold, damp cloth on her forehead. A doctor appeared at her side and listened to her heart with a stethoscope, and then took her blood pressure. The crowd was dead silent as this was occurring.
As she started coming out of it, the doctor gave the commanding officer a thumbs-up, which was met by unrestrained clapping and cheers from the audience, soldier and local alike. She was helped into an upright sitting position, and allowed to sit at the edge of the table while her face regained its natural complexion. She looked down at me quizzically before being helped onto a stretcher and carried out of the tavern with the doctor following close behind.
I never did take part in the choral singing of patriotic bierhaus anthems — in fact, I couldn’t even bring myself to stay and watch. (As a tourist, I had that luxury.)
As I approached the Mitsubishi, I felt something brush past me, followed by the sudden movement and rustling of branches just beyond the perimeter of the parking lot.
I spent the next few hours driving the moonlit highways and back roads connecting River of Tears to Prussian Occupation and Hermitage Hill. Perhaps it was to give my central nervous system something to do while I lingered in the evening’s chain of events, and those aspects that were still perplexing me.
Did I feel pity for the woman? Certainly. Who could watch such torture and not be seized with pity, or even outright anguish?
As for the red body suit, was it her own outfit, or was it foisted on her? (My guess was the latter.) Also, was the body suit just for show, or did it serve some technological purpose for the demonstration? (Were the men playing her body like an instrument, or the suit? Or both?)
And finally, I found myself wondering if she was being held in indefinite captivity, or if the soldiers simply rounded her up on an as-needed basis. I wanted the latter to be true, as I wanted there to be some chance, however remote, of finding her somewhere in these hills. Or, if I’m being completely honest, I could feel myself falling in love with this mystery woman, and wanted the chance, however remote, to have her fall in love with me, too.