Truth

A car crashes in Montana. This is just after 9/11, and the unconscious driver is trying to smuggle bomb-grade uranium into the United States. Weeks of hard interrogation yield nothing. The prisoner won't speak, much less break. And just as his torturers are about to give up, he asks for a pen and paper, making a list of celestial events that have not yet happened. Somehow, he knows the future. And the evidence, incredible as it sounds, leads to the conclusion that he came from the distant future with a group of time-traveling terrorists.

Ramiro is the world's most important prisoner, and Carmen is his new interrogator. Years have passed since the car crash. Humanity has been transformed by war and by paranoia. A battered government, desperate to survive, gives Carmen total power to do whatever she needs to uncover the truth about Ramiro.

"Twice each day, the prisoner was ushered into a long exercise yard built specifically for him. His gait was always relaxed, long arms swinging with a metronome’s precision and the elegant hands holding five-pound weights, shaped like dog bones and covered with soft red rubber. I thought of an aging fashion model marching on the runway, except he lacked a model’s wasted prettiness or the vacuous gaze. He was endlessly pleasant to whichever guard was standing at the locked door. I paid strict attention to his attempts at conversation, his words less important than his charming tone and the effortless, beguiling smiles."

"Truth" was nominated for the Hugo Award in 2009. The novella was made into a movie entitled PRISONER X.


Genre: Science Fiction