New Technology

Things have changed.

He sits in silence.

Once again he can congratulate himself on another success.

The only difference is that he now finds it harder……a lot harder.

Not that it is ever easy, of course. Far from it.

He just makes it look easy.

The others in his profession can but envy his prowess. They know that they only get employed if the ‘Great’ Oleg Novikov is not available. After all, he can’t do every job – his employer sees to it that there is far more work than one man can handle.

Of course, he has trained them all. They look to him as their mentor. And why not ? After all, he has earned their respect. He has risen out of his humble country beginnings, experienced the ravages of war and stood proud with his fellow countrymen through difficult times. Moscow loves him. ‘Oleg will sort it’, ‘Send him to Novikov’, ‘Let Oleg deal with it’…..these are all things they say.

He will ‘deal with it’. He will ‘sort it’. He has done so for longer than the USSR lasted. However, time is the great leveller of egos. He must now accept that maybe his time at the top should end. One of his underlings should take his place. Things are just getting too complicated.

From his chair he looks out across the room and one thing strikes him : how much time he’s spent in this foul-smelling, damp room of lost souls. Most of these souls he has himself liberated from their twisted hosts. Their last earthly mutterings being the treasure that he as the seeker of truth has tried so hard to discover.

It used to be so easy.

He remembers his youth. Back then, the mere threat of his father’s belt was enough to make him confess his sins. ‘ Threat’ is a very powerful tool. Whether or not a person is deemed capable of carrying out any such threat is not important. It is the seed of doubt that gets planted in the mind of the intended that is the crucial thing. It then takes the skill of someone such as Oleg to cultivate this seed and nurture it so that it takes root and grows into a great tree of fear. Each bough, each branch spreading through the fabric of resistance to deposit the futile fruit of hope. As with ‘threat’, ‘hope’ is also a very powerful weapon. Or, to be more precise, the false promise of hope….. They’d all broken eventually due to a combination of ‘false hope’ and ‘threat’.

But, it had to happen sometime. The geeks have started to make their way into his domain. What was so simple and elegant now requires a degree of competence with keyboards and whirring machines. Functional magnetic resonance imaging……strapping the subject to a table and zapping them with magnetic energy. Apparently it’s some super advance in neuroscience; some enormous leap in amazing technology. Groundbreaking…..the ability to tell when someone is lying….to detect when they are withholding something. You no longer need to be skilled in the art of interrogation. You just need to interpret results on a screen. Anyone can do that. You don’t need the years of experience, the highly attuned sense of knowing when the subject is finally telling the truth and you miss the challenge….the fun.

Anyone can do it.

That is, anyone can do it who can use computers. That means all these fresh-faced young upstarts who are coming in and stepping on his turf. Oleg himself struggles with this new technology. Here is a man who lied about his age so that as a young boy he could fight alongside his father to better the hold of the USSR. Honing his skill on the American spies in the forties, he helped speed along the development of the Russian atomic bomb, making the Yankees squeal all about the Manhattan Project. He further advanced his art of truth-seeking on Polish and Hungarian subjects that dared stand against Moscow in the various stunted revolts. He even took great pleasure in helping the Koreans and Vietnamese further the aims of the Communist state. Being involved in both the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts pitted him against his old American adversary. He enjoyed the secrecy of it all. The clandestine visits to those countries to encourage Uncle Sam’s nieces and nephews to tell him their secrets and their plans. The satisfaction of results followed by a painful death.

He was constantly amazed by the power of the human spirit to rise up against his insistent probing. Thus causing him to change and adapt his techniques to ensure success. Sometimes the spirit would outlast the body – the weak would die before he could get what he wanted. He didn’t like it when that happened – it made him look bad. So, he had to develop a more staged approach to his quest. Starting off gently with exercises in the art of persuasion, then moving on to the more active techniques.

He now felt cheated. These computers and machines can supposedly yield results from even the most stubborn and full-spirited adversary. Something that he himself could achieve !! How dare these children come here with their gadgets and toys and take away the opportunity for Oleg to once again demonstrate his total allegiance to Moscow !

How dare his old mind prevent him from figuring out how to use these machines. The sneers, the comments, the pity……yes, pity…..that was bestowed upon him by these young pups ! How dare they – he, Oleg Novikov, greatest truth seeker of them all – would spill their guts in a heartbeat !

He sits in silence.

Old and very much alone.

Oleg never took a wife. Choosing instead to serve his country and be ready at a moment’s notice.

Only now, sitting and watching others strip away his uniqueness, feeling his sense of self-worth slowly dripping away like the life-blood of his subjects, does he realise that maybe he missed something.

The ‘Great’ Oleg Novikov, feeling old and acutely aware of his own mortality.

From his chair he looks out across the room and one thing strikes him : maybe it’s time to stop.

He sits in silence.

(written in 2008)