Ten Minutes

     I hold the cold metal detonator in my hand. It’s a simple device; two buttons, one to arm the bomb, and one to detonate it. I think back to the conversation with the man in the ghost-face mask. “Thieves and liars are the blood in the veins of our nation. And the vital organs are the buildings and monuments of this city.” He said that he had chosen me for my standing in the national “anonymous” organization: an organized league of anti-government hackers that plaster our propaganda onto the face of America in an attempt to rally the citizens of the country. We have drive but we never wanted to hurt anyone, especially the public. This masked man who told me to blow up this bomb had given me the choice between taking action with a detonator or to resume our hacking (which was a slow agonizing process, which is why this was tempting). This is going to kill more than politicians. It’s going kill innocents that are looking at the monuments. The explosions will cover not only the capitol, but also the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial. Sitting in my SUV I go over the proposed plan in my head. Detonate, drive away, collect ten thousand dollars. A seemingly small price for such a large feat, but my payment will be a revolution. At least that’s what the masked man has said. I arm the device and I detonate.

     Explosions rack the cityscape in front of me. I feel the shaking of the very foundation of the city. They last a full ten minutes. I hear the screams through the bedlam. I don’t notice the chopper heading toward me. I don’t notice the men with guns emerging from it. They rip me out of my car. They drag me to the chopper with more than half of their guns trained on me. I see them seizing the detonator, when it self destructs. I see a man being treated for burns.

     They take me to a prison that I’ve seen in every spy movie that I’ve ever watched. Concrete walls, concretes floors, and fluorescent lights throughout the entire facility. I tell them everything I know, which is little. They keep me on two meals a day in a room with no bed. One day they let me watch the five o’ clock news: headlines about the government abducting an innocent man, riots and protests, escalating violence, threats of terrorism. It comes together all the sudden. The masked man’s intentions had never been to ignite an army of sleeper agents; his plan had been to make a CPA from California a martyr--to make me a martyr. As if on cue, the men in suits explain it all to me and tell me how clever I am. They take me back to my cell and shove me in with a promise of an eventual execution. I’m happy though. I’ve done my duty.