INTERROGATION TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECT: Dennis Lagrange
AFFILIATION: Suspected New America insurgent
LOCATION: Fort Lee Temporary Holding Facility
DATE: 8 December 2000
TIME: 1934 EST
INTERROGATOR: Lt. D. McAllister
TRANSCRIPTION OFFICER: PFC R. Valdez
CLASSIFICATION: SECRET
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
LAGRANGE:
So that’s it, huh? You finally figured it out. Congratulations. Really. You're quicker than most of the grunts in that junta you call USMEA.
But let me ask you something: what are you gonna do about it?
Throw me in prison? Make another report to General Summers? None of it changes the math.
You think you're preserving something here. Order. Civilization. America. But you're guarding a corpse, friend. You're dressing up a dead empire and pretending it can still give commands. That flag you're flying? It's just a rag someone left behind when the bombs fell.
[Subject paces.]
You want to know the genius of it? No matter what you do, no matter what your bosses do, we win.
You try to be humane, feed a few starving mouths? Makes you look weak. Makes people ask why you’re feeding outsiders when your own patrols are running dry.
But maybe you get smart. Maybe you crack down. Shut the gates. Round people up. Shoot a few looters. Then you're the tyrants. The bad guys. You do our work for us.
That's the beauty of it. You're trapped in the old rules. We're writing new ones.
[Subject leans forward.]
You still don’t get it, do you? The war’s over. Not the fighting. Sure, that’ll drag on a while. But the war? That ended the moment your leaders ran out of answers and reached for the launch keys.
What’s left now is the reckoning. And New America ... we’re the future. The people know it. Hell, even you know it. You’re just too scared to admit it.
So go ahead. Lock me up. Kill me if you’ve got the guts.
Doesn’t matter.
We’re already inside the gates.
END TRANSCRIPT
NOTES: Subject displayed no signs of physical distress. Tone throughout was defiant and confident. No direct operational intelligence volunteered. Recommend psychological evaluation and further containment protocols.
APPROVED: MAJ J. Whittaker, USMEA Intelligence Division
DISTRIBUTION: USMEA Command; Fort Lee Intelligence; NCR Threat Assessment Unit
CLASSIFICATION: SECRET
DO NOT DISTRIBUTE OUTSIDE CLEARED CHANNELS
Somehow, all of this reminds me of John Carpenter's film "Escape from New York", with Kurt Russel as the lead actor. Which, by the way, remains one of my favorite movies of all time.
ReplyDeleteBack in January you commented a couple of times that in your T2K campaign you weren't using New America because you found them "too cartoonishly villainous" to take seriously. Has something happened between mid-January and now to change your mind?
ReplyDeleteNot really. I thought then as I still think now that GDW's portrayal of New America is cartoonish, with its weird, rigidly authoritarian, militia-inflected Christian nationalism. I had no interest in that kind of approach to New America. However, after I started developing the Free States movement for my campaign, I hit upon a way to introduce a more (to my mind anyway) plausible – and interesting – version of New America to serve as another antagonist within the setting.
DeleteAh, so your campaign's version of this faction is substantially different from the one presented in official material? (all I know about Twilight 2000 comes from reading your blog; I've never played it)
DeleteYes. I've changed a number of things about my version of Twilight: 2000. I've alluded to some of them in my various posts about the campaign, but maybe I should do a post specifically about it sometime.
DeleteI'm sure you've said elsewhere, but what version of Twilight 2000's rules are you using?
ReplyDeleteIn theory, we're using the Free League rules released in 2021, but, in fact, I'm playing very fast and loose with those rules when it suits me (which is often).
DeleteWhat do you think of the 1st and 2nd edition rules?
DeleteI played the 1st edition extensively in my younger days and liked them well enough at the time. I find them a bit too complex and clunky nowadays. I never really played 2nd edition, though I did play other games derived from them, like Dark Conspiracy and Traveller: The New Era. They're perfectly serviceable but nothing special IMO.
Delete