polygraphing | ooc: good end before the good happens

On some level, you realize the room you're kept in is much bigger than it needs to be. They could just keep you in a small closet with a screen and a load gaper, but that wouldn't be very intimidating at all, now would it? Instead, the room is large and white and round and sterile. The screen is wide and set towards the ceiling, so that you're meant to look up slightly and not stare at the floor, as you had done before it was moved higher.

Most of the room is taken up with soft white pillows, arranged in some mockery of a pile, that you are meant to sleep in instead of a proper recuperacoon. You know most trolls would find this the worst part of it, but you have long since stopped dreaming. Below the screen is the door to your room, and you know it is placed there so that those looking through the screen cannot see it and ruin the illusion.

You are dressed accordingly as well, in a simple white dress and grey tights without a hint of your blood color or symbol anywhere, and a collar of dull metal. It is supposed to make you appear detached, like you are an infallible machine and nothing like an actual troll. The only thing that is in contradiction to this image is the white cuffs that bond your legs together which prevent you from walking. Your only form of movement is to crawl across the floor, which you suppose looks fairly undignified, but it doesn't really matter. You're not meant to move when people are watching anyway. Frankly, you don't move that much even when they aren't. You doubt you can stand anymore.

The bonds are the only thing meant for you, as a reminder. You don't remember too clearly, but you think when you were first chosen for this role, you fought back. Vaguely, you remember flailing and kicking someone in the chin, and after that your legs were bound together. It was a clear statement of power and control and punishment. At first you were upset, but you don't really care anymore. You don't care about most things, really.

Your days are spent in solitude, until that is, the screen beeps. It is a one minute warning to get into optimum position and be ready to do your job. When the screen flickers to life, you usually see much the same thing; a troll that you've never seen before, bound in an interrogation room. Sometimes they are injured, sometimes they are not. You've found that it is a rare day indeed when they bleed anything higher than olive green on the hemospectrum.

Various voices will then ask the troll you can see questions. Sometimes you remember the voices, from previous interrogations, but there are so many ships in the fleet, so many interrogators, that you cannot possibly keep them all straight. The other troll is instructed to look at you when they answer, or more accurately, the screen displaying your image in the interrogation room. You meet their eyes, but it's been a long time since you've seen them.

When they answer, you can often tell a great many things. But the only thing that matters is if their statement is objectively true or false. The interrogators don't care if they're lying to protect something, or if they consider the lie important or not, or any of the many nuances you've realized you can sense over the sweeps. You're only meant to say one of two words after they speak.

true

or

false

Once the interrogation is over, the screen goes dead and you are left alone in the room again. You don't remember the last time you said anything but those two words, or the last time you saw someone that wasn't on a screen. You spend most of your time zoned out, thinking of nothing in particular, but every now and then a memory will surface to distract you.

Your lusus stomping beasts outside your hive, being very small and sleeping in her pouch, the way she slowly closed her eyes as you sobbed into the side of her long face.

Text on a screen of many colors, ghosts of feelings for gold and yellow, names that you can just almost remember but not quite.

Being dragged by drones to the recruit ship, failing nearly all of the tests, nearly being culled by an official that told a white lie at the last minute which prompted you to scream out that he was lying, getting the attention of the blueblooded officer overseeing, being promised a safe job due to your rare ability that would work across time and space, and then isolation.

And isolation isn't really that memorable.

But you don't care. You barely remember when you did.