ESNN Magazine article: “Prisons In Their Head- an interview at Camp Tebbutt”
Author and photographer: Ava Magdalena Ríos
[Cover image: two men seated on a bench in front of a chain-link fence, with a stunning Alaskan vista behind them. On the left is a scruffy bearded white man with shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, and next to him is a bald Middle-Eastern man with a neatly groomed mustache. Each is holding up his name on a small piece of card: “Hugh” and “Mustafa” respectively]
In other circumstances, Hugh Johnson and Mustafa Nazif would make for an unlikely pair of friends. Mustafa is a well-groomed, dapper and highly educated former dentist, whose clinic in Cairo made him a very wealthy man, while Hugh on the other hand is rougher, scruffier, less conservative, and openly acknowledges that he used to be a so-called “Coyote,” a human trafficker who made his money smuggling undocumented migrants across the USA’s border with Mexico.
Both are permanent residents the Camp Tebbutt Biodrone Internment Facility, a remote CIA outpost deep in the heart of the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area. It is from this camp, earlier this year, that the man at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, Zane Reid, was able to escape.
In the aftermath of his escape, Reid spread several video messages across the Internet laying out his manifesto and his accusations against the Federal Government. In reply, the Government was kind enough to open the camp’s doors to journalists and give us unfiltered, unrestricted access. We have permission, in President Sartori’s words, to portray the reality of this camp “Warts and all.”
There aren’t many warts.
[Image: a smiling woman in a wheelchair and hijab, holding a steaming cup of coffee as she trades jokes with Hugh. The two have obvious romantic chemistry.]
As the camp’s name suggests, all of its internees are former biodrones—humans with neural cybernetic implants who were unfortunate enough to have had those implants used to turn them into unwilling puppets of the alien agency known as The Hierarchy. Although some lucky few former biodrones had implants that could safely be removed, the ones at Camp Tebbutt are not so fortunate: their cybernetics are all deeply embedded, and are beyond the ability of even the most cutting-edge human medicine to remove.
In Hugh and Mustafa’s cases, the implants in question were installed deep in their brains specifically to biodrone them. They will forever be potential agents of the human race’s deadliest enemies.
Their stories of exactly how it happened are eerily similar.
[Image: Mustafa’s scalp, which is covered in a neat hexagonal grid of almost invisibly fine scars.]
How did it happen?
HUGH: “Like something out of a B-movie.” He laughs bitterly. “I was out in the desert south of El Paso. One of my contacts from the other side of the river was bringing a boat over that night and, uh, we had to move fast. USBP were damn good at their jobs, you know? I think I was just about at Elpadre Canyon when my car just… stopped. Engine cut out, I rolled to a halt. I got out and I was still scratching my head under the hood when there was this bright light like boom from above, and then:”
He snaps his fingers. “Hijacked.”
MUSTAFA: “I drove home from work as usual, a little late because I worked overtime with a rich client. My house was very nice, with a security wall and a gate. I drove my car through, locked the gate and then there was a bright light from above. I looked up, and…”
He trails off and shrugs.
“The next few months are like a dream that never really happened. I remember bits and pieces, nothing more. And what I do remember, I can’t even be sure if I remember it well.”
HUGH: “Yeah. Like somebody else lived your life for a while.”
MUSTAFA: “Which of course is exactly what happened.”
Both of you were more than just biodrones, though. You were host to an actual Hierarchy agent.
MUSTAFA: “Yes. ‘Six,’ he called himself.”
HUGH: “Evil. Real, honest-to-God evil. I don’t think I ever believed there even was such a thing as true evil until I met the Hierarchy.”
What did they do?
HUGH: “They… this isn’t the face I was born with. I was always kinda an average-looking guy, but Six and his lackeys surgically altered me. They got rid of all my distinguishing features… It took me a long time to get used to seeing a different face in the mirror. They did that to a few guys, actually. There were three or four of us, and you coulda sworn we were twins. Triplets. Whatever. I’m the only one left.”
He sighs, shivers and nervously lights a cigarette.
“…And, they used my body to commit a murder.”
Mustafa puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder, sympathetically.
HUGH: “She was an… investigator of some kind. A PI, I think. I guess she got too close to exposing the Hierarchy’s operation in San Diego, because Six had her killed, and used me to do it…”
He trails off. I can tell this is a deeply painful subject for him. I don’t press him for more details, and he doesn’t share any.
And after that?
HUGH: “Six wanted to… ‘poke the hornet’s nest.’ The Hierarchy still didn’t know much about mankind at that point, he didn’t know how we’d react to danger. So he decided to prod us and see what happened. He… tried to orchestrate a mass shooting.”
Tried to?
HUGH: “Yeah. Some sports event, a roller derby I think. I guess somebody in the crowd smelled a rat or something because the police arrived, shot one of the other biodrones dead and captured me. Or, uh, Six. Apparently they had to keep him in stasis for a few months so they could set up a facility to contain him, and… well. Here it is.”
He gestures around at the camp and the terrain surrounding it.
“I was Camp Tebbutt’s first internee.”
But Six escaped.
HUGH: “Yeah. I don’t know how, but he just up and left one day. He’d already told the interrogators everything, though.”
Interrogation?
*“Oh yeah! By-the-book, humane, totally civilized. No torture, this isn’t Guantanamo Bay and we’re not terrorists.**
[Image: Mustafa being taught a hand-clapping game by a child of about ten years.]
Some of you have families here?
MUSTAFA: *“Not here. My daughter, Civene, she stays with a foster family in Fairbanks. The Hierarchy took my wife as well as me, and she died, but—alḥamdulillāh—Civene was too young for them. Rather than intern her here, America found a family for her to live with, and she visits me.
HUGH: “The camp’s only permanent residents are implanted. Everyone else is either staff or a guest.”
Still, that has to be difficult.
MUSTAFA: “I would like nothing more than to live outside these walls as a free man, with my daughter. But I can’t. There are seven evil little devices in my head, the size of bees. I have seen the X-rays. Those are my prison. This camp? In the winter, I wish I could be back in Egypt, but in the summer it is a pleasant place to live.”
A recent Gallup poll suggested that one in four Americans don’t believe the Hierarchy is real. What do you say to them?
MUSTAFA: “Polls say many things that contact with normal people would suggest is not true. I am not sure I fully believe that. But even then, it is hard to argue with the willfully ignorant. They will see the truth one day, In’sha’Allah.”
HUGH: “I guess I can’t blame them. I mean, an alien mind control conspiracy? Twenty years ago that woulda been pure ‘turning-the-frogs-gay’ nutjob territory. How many people still think 9⁄11 was an inside job? Or that the moon landings were faked? The Hierarchy is way more outlandish than either of those… But it’s real, man. They’re real, and they want us dead. We’re in a f•••ing internment camp because of what they did to us! People are dead! You’re from San Diego, right?”
I am.
HUGH: “Can’t be many of you left.”
No, there aren’t.
MUSTAFA: “Then this poll does not matter. I will ask the camp doctor to show you my X-rays. They can see that, they can go look at where a city once stood. If they still wish to doubt…”
He finishes the thought with a dismissive shrug.
[Image: An X-Ray of Mustafa’s head. True to his words, there are seven bright white bee-sized masses scattered throughout his brain, each one extending fine silvery tendrils into the surrounding tissue.]
Medical exchanges with the Corti Directorate have achieved some amazing things recently. Have you heard of Rachael Wheeler?
HUGH: “The Byron Group explorer, right? Yeah, we heard about her. They say the Corti brought her back from the dead.”
Does that give you hope?
HUGH: “I guess. I mean… I dunno if I like the idea of having my whole head taken apart to get this s••• out of me.”
MUSTAFA: “Neither do I, but I like the idea of being a prisoner for the rest of my life even less.”
HUGH: “Truth.”
Have you been offered that as an option?
HUGH: “Not yet.”
Have you asked for it?
MUSTAFA: “We were told they need to perform a “thorough safety review” first. We do not know exactly what that means, but that is not surprising. We are kept ignorant of much news because of our implants.”
HUGH: “I sure know that if they’re gonna yank my brain out and dig the tech out of it, I want them to know what they’re doing first. I’ve been here a long time, miss. I trust the staff here, and I know they want us cured ASAP just as much as we want a cure. It’ll happen. We just have to be patient.”
The camp’s staff and commanding officer declined to be interviewed, but did provide the following prepared statement:
“Camp Tebbutt’s priority is the safe containment of people who, through no fault of their own, pose an immediate and grave danger to all the people of Earth, not just American citizens. We are acutely aware that our internees are victims rather than perpetrators, and do our utmost to treat them with the respect, dignity and humanity to which they are entitled. It is our hope that in the near future we will gain access to a means of safely removing their implants, at which point they will be released to rebuild their lives with as much support as we can offer.
“Until then, we will continue to provide them with as much freedom and autonomy as is reasonably practical. We reject the accusations made by Zane Reid, but will not comment further on the matter of his escape or his claims of inhumane treatment.”
For my part, as our helicopter takes off for the long flight back to Fairbanks, my lasting impression of Camp Tebbutt is a peculiar sense of community. The people here come from very different backgrounds and were thrown together by awful circumstances, but that seems to be a bond between them rather than a wedge. They have made friends, found love, grieved together and help each other through a daily necessary hardship.
These people have every reason to be broken and traumatized. Instead, they seem to share a peace and love for the simple things that I find inspiring. As we left, we were handed some freshly-baked Egyptian bread called Aish Baladi for the flight back.
It’s delicious.
Date Point: 16y2m2w1d AV
Folctha Jump Terminus, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Meeyuk, Champion of Clan Openpaw
“The Great Father will be proceeding directly from the Rich Plains and will expect an answer. I can imagine he will be demonstrating his, ah, usual patience with dithering…”
Meeyuk’s fellow Champions chittered nervously. They were five, in total: Meeyuk, Fiin, Thurrsto, Gyotin, and Wozni of Clan Shortstride. Meeyuk wasn’t quite sure why Wozni was present, but apparently it was at Thurrsto’s request.
Everyone listened to Thurrsto. He’d rebuilt trust in his Clan’s leadership after a couple of grave mis-steps by Father Regaari and the late ex-Champion Genshi, and if he thought something was important, then it was. He was one of the small retinue of towering intellects on the Champions’ council alongside Loomi, Gyotin of course… and the Great Father.
People sometimes forgot that Daar’s strongest muscle was probably his mind, and in that important sense, Thurrsto and the Great Father were kindred spirits. It wasn’t that Thurrsto was much of a scholar, though nobody could fairly call him uneducated. It was the fact that his mind was a scalpel that cut irrelevancies and “bullshit” out of everything until all that remained was the bare, lean substance of an issue. Nobody got anything past him.
Daar was much the same, if not more so. The difference was that, while Thurrsto was a calm, collected and deliberative man, Daar was the very definition of a mercurial creature. Generally playful and friendly, even gleefully cheery, he was not without his dark side and only the foolish forgot it. He could go from playful to murderous and back again in a blink.
“Are we certain we’re in agreement?” That was Wozni, who had a tendency to get caught up in detail. “I can imagine a number of objections—”
“Remember who we are briefing, Wozni. The Great Father values brevity.”
Sound advice indeed. If there was one true crime a Champion could commit, it was was to waste the Great Father’s time, and it was a sin he seldom forgave. Again, few were so stupid. After all, to pique the Great Father’s anger was to court death. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t so much as scratched anyone since the start of the War, outside of play-fights and combat. It didn’t matter that he was a patient and considerate man, to an almost legendary degree.
What mattered was his will. Daar had proven time and again that anyone or anything who stood between the Gao and their destiny wouldn’t survive for the barest moment against him. Nobody had ever forgotten the lesson of the late Champion Halti.
True to form, the Great Father arrived with his usual reserves of endless blustery affection for basically everyone, which contrasted strangely with the visceral threat his almost to-the-skin clip lent his appearance. He must have suited up again, or at least been ready for the possibility. He roared merrily and jovially, delivering hugs and crushing paw-pats to his Champions.
Meeyuk received special warmth in the form of an almost literally spine-shattering hug, followed by being pinned to the floor underneath Daar’s stupendously weighty bulk. It had been a while since they’d last talked, and that generally meant extra affection, complete with a wagging tail and a play-growl that would terrify anyone if they didn’t know Daar’s moods.
Meeyuk could feel his whole body going numb from the squeeze, so he flicked his ears back for mercy and somehow managed to talk without wheezing for air. “How did it go, My Father?”
“Like lecturin’ a smelly wall,” Daar grumbled, helping him to stand up again.
Meeyuk chittered. “I had heard that might be the case!”
“I’ll git through ‘ta Henenwgwyr one day…” Daar shook extravagantly, growled something in the back of his throat, and then brightened. “Anyway. I assume y’all met me here at the jump ‘cuz you’ve pondered on ‘yer advice?”
“Yes, My Father. Let me brief you…”
“When we git to the embassy. First, let’s set some blood flowin’ through our brains…”
Without a word more than that, he dropped to four-paw and sent Humans, Gaoians, dogs and aliens alike scattering out of his way as he charged toward the doors at what, for him, was probably an easy relaxing lope.
For most of the rest of the Champions it was a much more vigorous bout of exercise. Attending the Great Father was not for the weak of heart, spiritually or physically.
Only in Folctha would the sight of a foreign head of state plus his entourage choosing to run on foot from the jump terminus to the embassy pass mostly without comment. Folcthans were familiar with Daar, by and large. The town’s police force especially knew to leave him do what he did.
Then again, Folcthans were used to people charging around on foot in general. It was a well-planned city with short routes between all the major focal points. Pedestrian traffic was the norm rather than the exception, and it was home to a military base and offered powerful tax incentives for sticking to fitness programs. Joggers, runners, living battering-rams loping down the street… By and large, it passed with nothing more than a little amusement.
The Gaoian Embassy in the Alien Quarter had been redesigned around the Great Father’s foibles, too. It was a straight shot right through the front doors to the main conference room, and the way was thrown open for them as they arrived… and sealed up tight behind them as they piled in, panting and well-exercised.
“‘Kay!” Daar chittered as hs surveyed the Champions with his usual air of mischief. “Now brief me.”
He waited while they caught their breath, then listened attentively as Meeyuk and the others relayed the essence of what they’d learned. As always, he asked many piercing questions of each of the Champions in turn.
Meeyuk shared everything. The ‘lock and key,’ the long-term consequences not only for Leemu but for all of the Gao regardless of whether or not Leemu went on to sire cubs… He kept it brief and efficient, but spared nothing.
Daar didn’t need much deliberation to arrive at the only reasonable comment he could make about the entire mess.
“…Balls.”
“Yes,” Meeyuk agreed, with a slight chitter. The Great Father gave him the first amused look he’d worn in several minutes, and then his face furrowed into the almost-snarl that the more throwback brownies tended to while thinking.
“Well…I ‘spose there’s nothin’ for it,” he decided after only a few seconds. “Authorized. Tiyun, if you could…”
Tiyun, of Clan Highmountain, was the Great Father’s personal aide. He duck-nodded sharply, always eager to please. “Yes, My Father.”
Daar flicked his ears gratefully. “‘Yer the best, thank you. An’ when ‘yer done…take the day off, ‘kay? I brought a little somethin’ back for ‘ya…”
Tiyun duck-nodded and backed out of the room. Meanwhile, Daar sighed and fell to all fours, as if a great burden had been lifted from him. “Well, that’s one soul-crushing crisis dealt with,” he commented. “Though Thurrsto apparently decided there’s a second one to lay on me…”
“Two in one day? You’re very productive, My Father.” Gyotin joked. He was the most relaxed around the Great Father, which was something Meeyuk honestly had trouble getting his head around. Then again, he was probably the only one at the table that Daar couldn’t spin circles around, at least with words.
In any case, it made Daar chitter. He shot Gyotin a Look that promised mild and enjoyable retribution later, then returned his attention to Thurrsto. “I can manage more too… anyway. You said it was about Stinkworld. Garl’s still out in the field there, I presume?”
“And Meereo.”
“Right. Any word on how that’s goin’?”
Thurrsto was almost as relaxed as Gyotin. He turned to the so-far silent Champion Wozni. “Meereo says they’ve had a breakthrough, and he was so excited about it that he forgot how to dumb it down for those of us who don’t speak his language. I asked Wozni to join us so that he could make things a little more, ah, accessible,” he said. “I’ll defer to him.”
Wozni chirruped excitedly and fetched a notepad from his bag. Perhaps a bit paradoxically, he was rather like the Great Father in that he sometimes preferred paper over screen.
“Yes! Ah… here.” He clawed through it. “…We’ve figured out what the Irujzen node is.”
“Figgered that weird spacetime hole was more than just an art piece,” Daar rumbled. “What’s it do?”
“It’s… kind of the functional opposite of a Farthrow generator. It’s not a wormhole suppressor, it’s a wormhole booster. Space for hundreds of lightyears all around it is more… malleable, I guess. Wormholes form more easily, and are more stable. Stable enough to form single-end zero-point connections.”
Daar furrowed his brow again. “How…how in the fuck do you trick spacetime into doin’ something that fuckin’ magical?”
“We have no idea, My Father. We’ve only gleaned that through accidental discovery, when we attempted to set up a zero-point comms node. According to Meereo, the power required is…at least ten orders of magnitude less.”
Daar shifted and gave him a look of deep skepticism. “…Ten orders of magnitude.”
“At least. He’s running the realtime zero-point wormhole off a solar panel, My Father. We could call him right now, if we were on Gao.”
“I s’pose that explains how in the hells Six escaped from the Humans…” Fiin grumbled. “His cell was wormhole-suppressed.”
“Yeah. And I think it suggests that there’s one of these boosters somewhere in the volume around Sol.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s even worse, and only one end needs such a booster.”
“Yes. The receiving end. Meereo and his team is very confident of that for…” Wozni inspected his notebook and flicked both his ears uncomfortably. “…for very technical reasons that I don’t have time to go into. But the father in charge of the physics college over at Highmountain was…more than a little excited. They think the math says its possible, anyway.”
“It’s obviously possible ‘cuz we’re watchin’ it happen,” Daar noted drily. “Think we’ll figger out how it works?”
“Honestly, My Father? Not any time soon. But here’s the encouraging bit: the Hierarchy don’t seem to be watching it too closely.”
“…I remember when I was there, an’ the only things we really hadta worry ‘bout were snake-bears. I was expectin’ it ‘ta be a trap, we all were. Bestest friend was on edge the whole time. I unnerstand that a lot better now… Anyway. We chased this thing followin’ intel from one’a them, after all. How are they not watching it? How is it not a trap?”
Silence.
Eventually, Thurrsto filled it. “…If it’s a trap, it’s a very, very good one,” he said. “Baited with real damaging intelligence.”
Daar snarled and prowled the room. Such was his presence that it was hard to watch him roll silently across the stone floor and not feel intimidated. “…I think the only thing more insultin’ than bein’ an engineered slave-race o’ Janissaries ‘fer uncaring gods who are actually digital malware…is that they’re so tiny-nut incompetent.” He reared up on two-paw and made a vague, violent gesture of frustration. “I mean, fuck! How could anyone with resources like this just leave’ em undefended?!”
“The are very, very old, My Father. We don’t know if they are born, or if they die. Or if they have a definitive state like life and death,” Wozni said. “We do know that it takes literal centuries of training for them to even be able to interact with the physical world. Everything they ever built, they built it a long time ago. And it maintains itself well, it keeps ticking over… but I honestly don’t know if they have the knowledge to really understand it any longer.”
The Great Father, like he often did, made a rather impressive leap of analysis. “So…basically, they’ve drifted too far from what bein’ alive is an’ they’re dyin’, then. Er, succumbin’ ‘ta entropy, mebbe? ‘Ya know what I mean. An’ we’re in exactly the right place ‘ta inherit their legacy an’ kill ‘em, if we can ‘figger out out how ‘ta exploit what we’ve got.”
“There’s a certain poetic irony to that, isn’t there?” Gyotin mused. “Destroyed by their own creation.”
“There’s more, My Father.” Wozni shuffled through his notes. “We found a coal mine, of course. Every civilization needs steel and I am told coal is required for that. What we found in the mined-out parts, though…”
Wozni chittered nervously to himself, reached for his communicator and tapped a claw on it. What appeared on the wall was a picture of an endless-looking warehouse of…racks. All exactly the same, all completely featureless. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were.
Daar leaned closer, blinking as it sunk in.
“That’s… That’s them, isn’t it?”
“…I think so. We’re not certain exactly how they were assembled, but destructive analysis reveals the devices are, essentially, solid bricks of computational logic and storage. Each one has… incalculable memory and processing capacity, and that one bunker contains tens of thousands of them.”
Daar shook his head in disbelief. “…is Six actually insane?! He didn’t jus’ give us a leg up on intel, he gave us the means to obliterate ‘em!”
Thurrsto looked similarly appalled. “Meaning he’s either playing seven-dimensional underwater space Ta’Shen or he is, yes, utterly insane.”
“Or, ignorant about what Stinkworld actually is,” Gyotin suggested. “If he mistakenly thought it was some harmless peripheral system…”
“Never assume your enemy is an idiot,” Thurrsto said.
“…Hrrm.” Daar finally sat down again. “…Wonder what Yulna would have ‘ta say about all this? You did invite her?”
“She sends her apologies, My Father. Apparently there’s a certain birth she’s taking special care of.”
Daar reflexively glanced north, at a blank wall and the distant island far beyond it and hundreds of miles away over the sea where the Grand Commune lay. His ears pricked up, swivelled back and forth for a moment, then drooped.
“…Right.” He shook himself back into the moment. “So. More an’ more, we’re pickin’ a fight with our gods. Pretty much literally. An’ they ‘parently got godly tech, too. An’ they’re too stupid to realize it. Or too far gone.”
Fiin made the rumbling noise of a Stoneback channeling a thought from somewhere deep in his gut. “Gods or not, stupid and too far gone or not, it’s not like we have any option but to fight ‘em… Have we informed the Humans yet?”
“They don’t have anybody on Stinkworld right now,” Thurrsto said. “I thought it prudent to discuss this in council first.”
The Great Father sank to the floor and stretched himself out impressively with a teeth-flashing yawn. “Inform them.”
“Yes, My Father.”
“This all looks like I gotta go to Earth an’ make an extended visit, an’ do so with a delegation,” Daar decided. “‘Cuz I think what we just stumbled into, My Champions, is a path to victory. Either that or the meanest, most devious trap I ever did see.”
“How soon, My Father?” Tiyun asked. Meeyuk almost jumped: he hadn’t seen or heard him return. Good aides, it seemed, could be preternaturally discreet.
“…After Leemu’s therapy,” Daar decided. “However it turns out. Obviously it’ll hafta include all the AEC leadership, so…take ‘yer time an’ get it right. An’ didn’t I tell ‘ya t’go take the rest of the day off?!” There was a growl in his voice…but his tail was also wagging.
“I had a feeling you might need me again after all, My Father. Thank you for the jerky.”
“You an’ your damn perfect instincts…” Daar growled. “…Is there anythin’ else I need ‘ta know?” he asked of his Champions, who collectively indicated that there was not.
“Alright then. Meeyuk, you an’ I are goin’ up ‘ta the spaceport. The Empirical Razor’s waitin’ ‘fer us. The rest’a you…” Daar pant-grinned with a little more fang than usual. “…It’s Friday here on Cimbrean an’ I somehow suspect ‘yer Clans can manage without ‘ya tonight. Take the rest of the day off! Me, I’d highly recommend y’all go clean out Ninja Taco…”
Fiin in particular seemed to like the sound of that, and so did Wozni. Gyotin and Thurrsto both took the suggestion with characteristic understated good humor. Meeyuk wished he could go with them.
Instead, he had an altogether less pleasant appointment ahead of him.
One way or another, the future of his species was going to change once again in the next few hours.