Camp Surrender

 The camp had low walls topped with steel net, which is turn was surmounted with coils of barbed wire.  It looked like it was intended to keep people from getting out; in fact it was to prevent people from getting in.  People in this warzone, at least, seemed to feel that a willingness to surrender was tantamount to a death wish.

The walls were made from local stone, mostly culled from fallen houses and barns.  The warzone had been here for six months before moving on and had flattened a lot of the structures.  Thankfully no-one had been salting the earth at that point so the ground was still fairly healthy and, despite the occasional bombing raid, there were fields of crops in and around the camp.

With little surprises hidden inside them, just in case the combatants decided that they could sneak up on the surrender camp.

Juan was sat in an office high up in the camp.  They’d built the camp deliberately on several levels with good lines of sight throughout, and there were defensive snipers posted at eight points around the perimeter.  Cameras made sure that there were no dead spots, and they fed their visual and auditory data to four different security points.  Nothing moved in the camp in a remotely suspicious manner without being investigated quickly.  The cost was ridiculous: Juan had seen the staffing bill and had been astonished by it, but it was effective.  People came and surrendered and were airlifted out of the zone to somewhere safer, and it worked every time.

An icon flashed blue on his screen and he inspected it and then clicked on it to acknowledge it.  A window opened up: someone wanted to chat.

“We have a new surrender,” read the message.  “He’s from the North American warzone.”

Juan’s fingers flickered lightning fast across the keyboard.  He’d learned to type in coding school for competitive coding tasks: knowing your data structures was essential, but being able to write the code faster than anyone else gave you more time to test it and get it bang on.  “We have no camp in the North American warzone,” he typed back.  “They’re a mole.”

“They’re here in Lviv,” replied the message.  Juan clicked on another icon for typing speed analysis and comparison.  You could never be too careful.

“Lviv?” he replied.  That was the centre of operations, how would a North American get there to surrender?

“Indeed,” replied the message.  The computer beeped: textual analysis complete.  Colonel Anna is typing with 88.7% certainty.

“Colonel Anna,” he typed, addressing her formally.  “How could a North American travel to Lviv to surrender?”

There was a slight delay and he was certain that she was running an analysis of his typing now.  “They are a general,” came the reply.  He guessed he’d been validated.  “Three star, so no mean feat, but they travelled as an observer of the Institute.”

The Institute for Surrender, the overarching body that Juan worked for and fervently believed in.  There was no other belief that would see the world through to the end of this nearly decade-long war, surely.

“Like the old days,” he said, not having a clue what they old days had been like.  “When they had the Iron Curtains.”

“Iron Curtain.”  You couldn’t send humour easily over text when emoticons and emojis were prohibited but he was sure that she was laughing at him.  She might remember the old days, or at least have seen footage of them.

“Sure,” he typed.  “Just testing.”

“Of course you were.  We’re accepting his surrender, of course.”

“Right.”  Juan pondered that while watching the flickering text Typing… at the top of the messaging app.  “And Central Ops have determined that your camp is strategically where he should be.”

“Oh hell no!”  It wasn’t like he hadn’t guessed before she hit Send but that didn’t mean he liked the idea.  A high-profile surrender like that would be hunted for by the North American sides and they, despite not being very successful at winning a war, still had excellent intelligence gathering.  He considered it again while she typed, wondering if he was overreacting.  He’d decided he wasn’t before she replied.

“It’s not actually a choice,” she replied, “as Central Ops have some pretty specific plans in mind that won’t work unless he’s at your camp.  They think they have an opportunity here to push Operation Rosa forward.”

Juan rubbed his jaw, thinking about that.  Operation Rosa had been stalled for nearly three years and could do with some attention and a boost.  But he’d prefer not to have to get it by importing a high profile surrender.

“Surely there’s ano—“

He was cut off by Colonel Anna.  “No.  Save it Juan, it’s been decided.”

“How’s he getting here then?”  There was no way he could fly on a commercial flight now he’d surrendered; the North Americans had no compunctions about blowing aeroplanes up or shooting them down whether they were in the warzone or not.  “Military jet?”  Even that wasn’t safe, but if there was a chance of not having to have the general, he was willing to take it.

“Diplomatic crate.”

Juan groaned out loud and then looked around his office.  It was empty, naturally, but he still got up and checked outside the door to make sure no-one had heard him.  Then he locked the door, just to be sure, and went back to his desk.

“You still there?” read the message from Colonel Anna.

“Yes,” he typed, wishing that he could find a way to refuse the surrender.  “Jesus, a live diplomatic crate.  Again?”

“You got a better idea?”

He really didn’t.

The Institute for Surrender

 The corridors of the Institute were dark; there was a power cut going on as we were led through the rooms and hallways.  Windows from the outside, in the rooms at least, let in weak afternoon sunlight.  The sky was grey and luminous, promising snow and the noise of the traffic from the Stoichiometric Highways was muffled by a line of tall trees.  I paused at a window for a moment, my hand pressed to the cold glass -- the windows were all single glazed -- and wondered how it had come to this.  Then our tour guide, Colonel Anna Crimea (not her real name), coughed politely and suggested we move on.  I noticed at least two of our generals fishing in their pockets for their protective face masks and wondered if that was a sign of sexism, racism, or just fear in general.

"This is the call centre," said Colonel Anna as we reached another door in another dark corridor.  She opened it into an aircraft hanger of a room.  Desks stretched away as far as the eye could see in rows and rows of phone-answering stations.  "This is for phone-calls; social media and chat messages are handled in a different room."

I could practically feel Caspar vibrating next to me and knew he was about to ask a question.  He was clearly excited to think he could make efficiency improvements again.

"Can't the phone operators handle short chats between calls?" he said, barely getting his hand raised before he started speaking.  Colonel Anna didn't sigh, but it looked like she wanted to.

"Surrender is a tricky business," she said, for what was probably the fifth time.  I doubt Caspar was counting though.  "We don't want the operators distracted.  They need to be able to determine if the call is genuine, and then to arrange for the actual surrender.  We don't want them sending the wrong details to the wrong person."

"Oh," said Caspar.  He subsided a little but we all knew he was still trying to find a way to be more efficient.

"Where do the, uh, surrenderees, get taken?" asked a general.  His accent was carefully neutral but that choice of word: surrenderees, marked him down as North American.

"It depends where they are surrendering from," said Colonel Anna.  "If they are combatants in the South American warzone, for example, then there are established surrender camps where they can make their way to."  She didn't give another example, which I took to mean that she, too, had spotted that the general was North American.  The North American warzone had had one surrender camp but both sides had bombed it and at that point the Institute for Surrender had pulled out and refused to return.

"The next room on our tour," said Colonel Anna, "is the break room.  Normally, when the power is on, this would have employees in it -- yes?"  She sounded surprised, but the general who had just spoken had raised his hand again.

"Is it possible to surrender here?" he asked.