Chapter III: Revelations
It could have been worse.
Michael was eternally grateful that there were no racks, thumbscrews, hot needles, whips, iron maidens, or any other unpleasant instruments of information extraction. For the longest time, he had always considered the word “interrogate” to be synonymous with “torture.” He had thought of the Spanish Inquisition, with mad monks gleefully prodding shrieking prisoners with hot pokers. He had thought of sausage-eating Nazis pinching with pliers, screaming “Ve haff vays of making you TALK!”
Interrogation was nothing like that. There was only one word that adequately described it. It was… boring, of all things. Every day, they asked him the same questions, and every day, he gave the same answers.
“Now, let’s see if we can get anywhere today. Who are you?” asked the Superintendent time and time again.
“I’m telling you, my name is Michael Timothy Cunningham,” Michael always responded.
Mr. Andrews, the Superintendent, didn’t believe him. He never did, and why should he? To the Superintendent and the rest of the New South Wales Police Department, Michael Cunningham was trouble. To begin with, he officially didn’t exist. Michael had only his word to certify who he actually was, because he had no birth certificate, and absolutely none of the Michael Cunninghams in the world matched his description.
That in of itself was enough for Mr. Andrews to suspect him for being up to no good “ but no, there was more. Michael had sworn up and down that he had no shooting experience at all, but he mysteriously knew everything there was to know about guns and to his surprise was a first-class shot. And, of course, assaulting a police officer with absurd ease did not help him in the slightest.
That was what did Michael in. His firearms expertise was unusual, his lack of credentials was incredibly suspicious, but beating up the policeman in the Superintendent’s office was downright alarming. Whether he liked it or not, Michael had proven himself to be a very dangerous individual indeed.
However, the most maddening thing for Michael was that he had no idea that he was capable of such feats. He had never used a gun in his life before, but he somehow managed to accurately hit every target and instinctively knew how to use weapons without any instruction. Most disturbing however, was how quickly and easily he dispatched the policeman in the Superintendent’s office. The worst part of it was that he wasn’t even conscious of doing so until after he had done it.
Lost in his thoughts, Michael sat on his mattress; a bland foam pad thing on a simple frame of aluminium tubing. There was a plain sink and a cold, steel toilet nearby, and above it was a barred window. The cell was quite dull, but it didn’t seem to bother Michael at all. In fact, the plain bed and the room’s brutal simplicity seemed familiar and inviting, of all things. Just wonderful. I must be going mad, he mused.
Michael sat on the bed, staring at the wall and thinking of nothing in particular for several hours. He hardly noticed the steel door opening and the Superintendent waiting at the opening.
“It’s time for questioning, again,” he said simply.
Michael grunted, acknowledging that unpleasant reality.
The Superintendent was accompanied by two others, as usual. They walked Michael down the hallway to the interrogation room. The name sounded ominous, but it was just another plain, whitewashed room with nothing spectacular about it.
Without waiting for an invitation or instruction, Michael seated himself in the chair in front of the desk in the middle of the room. On top of the desk was a recording device and a polygraph apparatus, or a lie detector in plain English. Mr. Andrews took a seat while one of his companions strapped the sensor components of the polygraph to Michael’s body. The lie detector measured his pulse rate, blood pressure, and breath rate to detect anxiety, and “ by extension “ lying. Michael suspected that it wasn’t all that reliable, and was instead used for its intimidating effect. Who wouldn’t feel slightly anxious strapped to a machine with sharp needles, scribbling black slashes on a treadmill-like roving piece of paper?
One of the policemen stood at the door, while the one who fixed the lie detector sensors on Michael sat down at the back of the room with the polygraph’s chart recorder. The Superintendent switched on the tape recorder and stated, “Testing. This is Superintendent Andrews of the New South Wales Police Department, Inner Metropolitan District, questioning Mr. Michael Timothy Cunningham.”
“Now, Mr. Cunningham, if that’s who you really are, let’s see if we can get anywhere today. Are you ready to give us some answers?”
Michael said nothing. He had gone through this many times. The room was silent except for the soft whirring of the spinning tape in the recording device. This bloke is very persistent, isn’t he? his brain suggested stupidly for the hundredth time.
The seconds crawled by. The Superintendent rapped his fingers on the desk, getting impatient. A few more moments passed in silence before he finally said, “You know, we could go on forever… but I’d rather not. I have so many things I’d much rather be doing, and I presume you’d much rather not live in a cell and be interrogated every day. You do want to get out of here eventually, don’t you?"
Michael finally spoke. “Of course I do,” he replied indignantly.
“Then give me some answers. Who are you?”
“I’ve told you a thousand times, my name is Michael Timothy Cunningham. That hasn’t changed, and it never will change, because that’s who I am. It’s as simple as that,” he recited.
“Can anyone else verify who you are, because if not, you are only Mr. Cunningham because you say you are? According to the British government records, you don’t exist. Now why would that be? Answer me that.”
Michael had no idea, and let the Superintendent know.
“I have a theory,” Mr. Andrews asserted. “It’s unlikely, but it’s the only one that makes sense right now. I think you could be a British spy. As to why they would want to spy on Australia, I have no idea, but you see, people just don’t disappear off the birth registry. If you really are Michael Cunningham, then you probably don’t exist because the British government doesn’t want anybody to know that you do. Do you follow?”
Michael understood perfectly, but he definitely didn’t like anything Mr. Andrews had said. If the Superintendent was only saying that to make him nervous and betray his non-existent secrets, it didn’t work. Judging from the polygraph operator’s bored expression, and the completely still needles on the device, Michael offered no indication that he was hiding anything.
“You intrigue me, Mr. Cunningham,” the Superintendent continued. “You could certainly be a spy… or perhaps not. You’ve demonstrated expertise with firearms and hand-to-hand combat, but you have an appalling cover story. Why would a British spy want to join an Australian police service?”
Michael managed to pull a slight smile. That notion was quite ridiculous, so he said, “I don’t know. There’s no real point, is there?”
“Exactly, Mr. Cunningham. Exactly. But seeing that you aren’t being more helpful with your answers, you being a British spy is the only theory that even makes the slightest amount of sense.”
If that was the most plausible theory, Michael wondered how bad the rest of them must have been.
“So, please tell me, why did you decide to move to Australia?” Mr. Andrews questioned.
He had been asked this question several times, and the answer “ still “ was the same. The exasperation was evident in Michael’s voice.
“Once again, a freak hurricane destroyed everything I owned, and since I had to start from scratch, I thought I’d like to move to Australia. It’s a nice place.”
Mr. Andrews had heard that response many times before. Nothing had changed. Or had it?
“But why Australia?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“Why Australia?” the Superintendent repeated. “Why not Hawaii… or say, Zimbabwe? How come you decided to move to Australia and not someplace else?”
“Well, I…” Michael paused. Now that he thought about it, he had never really considered why he wanted to go specifically to Australia. He just… wanted to go. He had never thought it through at all; the desire was just there. Why did he decide to go to Australia?
The Superintendent watched Michael expectantly. A few seconds dragged on in silence.
“Yes…?” Mr. Andrews insisted.
Michael didn’t really know what to say. He didn’t want to be interrogated forever, day after day, week after week. His mind raced. If he said that he just liked Australia, which was the truth, Mr. Andrews would probably not be satisfied and the questions would just drag on. But… what if he tried something different? Michael decided to tell him the truth.
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
“I’m sorry?” Mr. Andrews asked, surprised.
“I have no idea why. I just… did.”
The Superintendent was taken aback. He hadn’t expected this. Neither did the polygraph operator, who looked up from his boring, still inactive machine to look at Michael with a puzzled expression.
“Could you please elaborate?”
Michael said nothing. He couldn’t really elaborate, and Mr. Andrews seemed to notice.
“All right,” he said. “I think that’s enough excitement for today. Hopefully you’ll gather your thoughts together for tomorrow.” The Superintendent’s voice sounded less harsh, but that was probably out of surprise for the sudden change in Michael’s answers.
The lie detector operator removed the numerous sensors from Michael’s body, and he was led out of the room back to his cell.
The phalanx had broken. Before, Michael’s answers were a solid wall that easily beat back every one of the Superintendent’s questions. No longer. That one question attacked and found a weak spot in the line, and now Mr. Andrews was eager to exploit it.
For the next week, Michael was called back and forth to the interrogation room. Mr. Andrews asked only a few probing questions each time, and when Michael was unable to answer, he was sent back to his cell only to be interrogated the next day.
And Michael was increasingly unable to answer Mr. Andrews’s enquiries. He couldn’t answer why he wanted to move to Australia, or why he decided to join the police service. Michael just did, and he couldn’t find any way to adequately say that. The questions were becoming more abstract and seemingly unrelated to the investigation.
And one of those irrelevant questions asked was outright disturbing to Michael: the Superintendent asked him to describe his family.
Michael told him about his mother and father and other family members and their professions and such. It was easy, and the information just flowed from his head and out of his mouth. However, Mr. Andrews then asked Michael to tell him about his favourite memories of them.
Only after the question was asked did Michael realise that he had none. The realisation hit him like running strait into a brick wall. To his horror, Michael was suddenly aware that his parents were just that. They weren’t people. They were just names to him. He had no idea who they were, what they looked like, what annoyed them, what their favourite colours were, how they smiled, what they liked to eat, or… anything.
Michael barely noticed that he was dismissed and was back in his cell. He racked his memory for any memories, any thoughts or vague ideas of who his family really was. He had no success.
Michael slept uneasily that night.
I’m going mad, he despairingly told himself. He couldn’t remember his family. He had no idea why he decided to move to Australia. His mysterious fighting skills came out of nowhere. What was happening to Michael Timothy Cunningham?
He woke with a start and sat bolt upright in his cot. He was sweating and couldn’t remember being more frightened in his life… because he had never had one.
He was terrified with his second disturbing revelation. First he realised that he knew nothing of his family. But far, far worse was knowing nothing about himself.
Michael Timothy Cunningham was just Michael Timothy Cunningham. He had brown hair and blue eyes. He was 185 centimetres tall and weighed 80 kilograms. He was born in Bristol, United Kingdom, on the 17th of November, 1968.
But who exactly was he? Who am I? He had a name and birthday. Did he have anything else? He had nothing. He knew nothing. He didn’t know what he liked to do as a boy. He couldn’t remember what school he went to, or who his best friends were. He had no knowledge of his own hobbies, or any favourite memories. He was just a name with no past.
Before he knew it, sunlight was streaming through the small window, and the lights came on. A tray with his bland, uninspired breakfast was inserted through the slot in the steel door, but he paid no attention to it. He wasn’t hungry. The hours flew by, and soon enough, the door opened yet again and he was called out for questioning.
He didn’t object as he was led down the hallways to the interrogation room, or when the lie detector sensors were strapped to his body. He just sat in the chair and looked at his feet.
“So, Mr. Cunningham, are you ready to give us some answers today?” the Superintendent questioned.
He didn’t reply. He didn’t need to.
Mr. Andrews commenced the questioning regardless. “I’m tired of asking you this question every day, but who the hell are you?”
Michael answered truthfully.
“I don’t know, sir.”
There was a very long pause. He was suddenly aware of how quiet the room was, as if everyone had stopped breathing. Even the tape recorder seemed to stop making noise.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Mr. Andrews insisted.
“I don’t know who I am, sir.”
“Aren’t you Michael Timothy Cunningham?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“So… if you’re not Mr. Cunningham, then who are you?”
Truth be told, he had no idea. He didn’t think it was possible, but he wanted to know who he was much more than the Superintendent did. “I told you, I don’t know,” he implored.
The Superintendent was nonplussed by this sudden turn in events. At any rate, he certainly looked confused. Mr Andrews stammered, “Well… you must have some idea. Don’t you?”
“No,” he said resolutely. “My mind tells me my name is Michael Cunningham, but that’s all I know about myself.” Michael proceeded to explain everything, holding nothing back. He told him how his combat skills came spontaneously and naturally to him. He had a mysterious scar on his left thigh that looked suspiciously like a bullet wound. He described his unexplained desire to move to Australia. He described how he knew nothing about himself, how he was just a name. How he had no past, how he had no story to tell.
Mr. Andrews said nothing during the entirety of his confession. It was perhaps more out of shock than anything else, but after the unexpected blow had subsided, he listened intently, giving him his undivided attention.
Things were looking better. Michael wasn’t confined to a locked cell anymore. He now had a room of his own with proper furnishing, which was certainly an improvement. In addition, he wasn’t treated like a bomb that might go off or some dangerous, shadowy person with questionable motives anymore. To them, he was just a very unusual, confused man in need of help.
But appearances were deceiving. For him, life had gotten worse. When the whole debacle started, he was questioned every day and treated with suspicion, but he at least thought he knew who he was. He had resolutely declared to the Superintendent every day that he was Michael Cunningham, and had thought the investigation was ridiculous. Now he was still questioned every day, but despite the improved circumstances, he was positively alarmed that he didn’t even know himself. His mind told him that he was a man named Michael, but he didn’t believe it.
He was desperate for answers, but he was no closer to getting any. Instead of being questioned by the Superintendent anymore, he was instead interviewed by somewhat drippy psychologist.
“Hello, sir,” Michael said to him.
“Please, call me Roger,” he replied genially. “I’m here to help you with your problem.”
Roger the Psychologist annoyed him. Roger asked him about all of his problems, and he earnestly told him everything… but Roger the Psychologist just nodded and smiled and said things like “how interesting,” or “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
It was aggravating. Roger didn’t appear to be genuinely concerned for Michael’s sanity. Instead, he treated him like some fascinating puzzle that needed to be solved. Roger the Psychologist didn’t seem to care about his tainted sanity; that he thought he was losing his mind. He understood very little of how he felt.
But Roger was at least very diligent at the task that had been given him. He asked him to both describe his problem in intimate detail, and also asked questions that made no sense at all. He held up a picture of a strange black blob for Michael to look at. “Tell me what you think this looks like,” the psychologist asked.
Michael knew nothing about psychology, and had no idea what the point of the pointless exercise was. It was stupid, that’s what it was.
“It looks like a black blob,” he said.
“Very good Michael,” Roger replied kindly. “But look at it very carefully. Does this black blob remind you of anything?”
Michael couldn’t imagine what a dark splat could remind him of besides a dark splat, but he looked intently at the picture nonetheless. He was irked by the seemingly nonsensical process, but he figured that Roger knew what he was doing more than he did. The top of the blob, with a bit of imagination, looked like a head with a hood of some sort, and the bigger splodge below it could be a body wrapped in a cloak. He told Roger the Psychologist what he thought it looked like.
“That’s better,” he soothed. He then picked out another picture. “What does this look like?”
“A really big fellow with a squashed head.”
Roger showed Michael more pictures of artistic splats. “A tank… a long pointy stick…”
The strange and vexing questions continued, and though Michael had no idea what they were supposed to achieve, he answered nonetheless and truthfully. Roger the Psychologist alternated between techniques every few interviews. He would ask Michael to try to remember his past for several days, switch to irrelevant psychological questions, and then back again.
Roger took particular interest in the freak hurricane that had destroyed Michael’s home a few months earlier. He asked him to describe the hurricane, but Michael could not. He wasn’t there to witness it in action, though did he remember its aftermath. There were houses ripped apart, bent lampposts, cars scattered about, bodies, scorch marks, bullet holes in walls, destroyed Army vehicles…
Only later did Michael notice what the freak hurricane had really done. He had racked his memory, trying to extract any recollections of why he was away at the time, but found nothing. He hadn’t seen it not because he wasn’t there to witness it, but because he couldn’t remember it at all. He had no memories of life before it had happened, but he did for after. It was as if Michael’s life started on the very day the freak hurricane decided to ravage Somerset with its peculiar path of destruction.
And peculiar it was. Michael had seen what the hurricane had done, and now he realised that the damage inflicted was baffling. For starters, hurricanes didn’t create bullet holes in walls. Only bullets did, and that was why bullet holes were called just that. Furthermore, he had no idea why destroyed British Army tanks and personnel carriers would be right in the middle of a hurricane impact. Besides, hurricanes also didn’t create craters in the road, flatten cars like squashed bugs, or completely demolish one house but leaving the house directly next to it completely undamaged. It just didn’t make sense.
Smiling to himself, Michael told Roger the Psychologist about his interesting discovery. It was strangely ironic; Michael had been probed for information for weeks on end, but now he himself was doing his own detective work.
Roger’s eyes lit up. Michael could see the little cogs and levers spinning and rocking in the psychologist’s head. They discussed the meaning of his discovery, and for the first time, Michael wasn’t annoyed with him.
Michael was in the Superintendent’s office for the second time. The scenery hadn’t changed. Mr. Andrews was seated in his leather chair behind his desk, flanked by two police officers standing at the wall behind him. Another officer guarded the door. However, now there were two chairs in front of Mr. Andrew’s desk, occupied by Roger and Michael.
“So, I understand that you’ve made progress with Mr. Cunningham here?” asked the Superintendent.
“Yes I have. I have determined that Mr. Michael Cunningham is not dangerous. He’s just very confused and can’t“”
“We’ve already gone over this,” Mr. Andrews interrupted. “Is there anything new you’d like to tell me?”
“Erm, yes,” Roger said. “Michael apparently has no reminiscences of life prior to the hurricane incident a few months back. I think that the hurricane was a traumatic experience for Michael here, and it somehow affected his brain. Either he got hit in the head by something and suffered some brain damage, or his mind voluntarily shut out all memory of the event somehow.”
The Superintendent nodded. “I see, but that still doesn’t explain why Michael doesn’t have a birth certificate.”
That was still an unexplained problem, but it was Michael, not the psychologist, who came up with a possible explanation. He told Mr. Andrews his idea: that he probably had an actual certified identity, but the hurricane had not only removed his memories, but had also somehow given him the false name of Michael Cunningham.
Mr. Andrews listened, but he looked slightly sceptical. When Michael finished his account, the Superintendent remarked, “I see. I never thought adverse weather could do such a thing. That must have been quite some hurricane, Mr. Cunningham.”
“It was a very unusual hurricane to begin with,” explained Michael.
“Really?”
“Well… I have a rather interesting theory,” Michael said.
Mr. Andrews looked intrigued. “Tell me all…”
Notes
Though I considered it, I didn’t include a warning for mental disorders for this chapter, the reason being that there is nothing wrong mentally with Archer/Michael. He’s just dealing with the unfortunate consequences of a very drastic memory modification.
Anyway, thank you for reading. I’m again sorry for the lack of magic in this chapter, but don’t worry. Magic returns for chapter four!
Tim the Enchanter
''OBLIVIATE!'' by Tim the Enchanter
Chapter Notes: Hurrah! I’ve managed to write not one, not two, but three chapters for “Obliviate!” now. You see, I am seldom able to concentrate on writing a single story, so writing several chapters of one fic and avoid getting sidetracked by writing another one is quite an achievement for me.
Once again, please understand that Archer/Michael is still with his fellow Muggles at the moment, so I again apologise for the complete lack of magic in this chapter. Don’t worry though, he’ll run into magic soon enough. I also know nothing about psychology or how the police system works in Australia, so any errors are completely my own.
I don’t own Harry Potter, though I sometimes wish I did. Anyway, thank you for reading and enjoy. All reviews will receive a response.