A Fragment of Truth

The sun hemorrhaged above Station 9, bleeding radiation across the charred earth of what was once the California-Arizona border. McCreedy wiped the sweat from his upper lip and contemplated the small capsule between his fingers. One more hit, and the edge would soften. One more hit, and he could stomach another day of processing the human detritus that washed up at his checkpoint.

He popped the blue pill before the thought was complete.

The narcotic rushed through his system, a chemical bulldozer flattening his conscience. The government-issued Deflect—street name “D-flect”—wasn’t technically legal for checkpoint personnel, but McCreedy had long ago stopped giving a solitary fuck about legality. The pills suppressed empathy. Made the job easier. Made the bribes easier to take.

A voice hissed over the intercom. “Incoming. One passenger. Designate LRC-716.”

McCreedy sighed. Low Risk Category. Another poor bastard fleeing the Dust Bowl that now consumed the American Southwest, looking for a better life in the New California Republic. They’d be desperate, which meant they’d pay whatever he asked.

The sliding door wheezed open. McCreedy blinked twice, waiting for his vision to adjust from the blistering white light of the anteroom. A man stood motionless before his desk. Unremarkable in every way—average height, average build, a face you’d forget while still looking at it. Dressed in a gray jumpsuit, frayed at the seams. Carrying nothing but a small plastic case.

“Identification,” McCreedy grunted, already calculating his price. Three hundred credits would do it. Maybe four, if the guy seemed desperate enough.

The man slid a holo-card across the desk. McCreedy picked it up, studied the holographic image that flickered to life. John Smith. Of course. A name so obviously fake it practically screamed “bribe me.” McCreedy grinned, a death’s-head smile that never reached his eyes.

“John Smith.” He emphasized the name, stretching it like taffy. “Convenient name.”

The man spoke in a voice like dry leaves. “Is there a problem with my paperwork, Officer McCreedy?”

McCreedy hadn’t given his name. He glanced at his badge, wondering if the Deflect was making him careless. But before he could process this discrepancy, the man continued.

“I seek passage to New Los Angeles.”

“Everyone does,” McCreedy tapped at his console, pretending to review data. “Unfortunately, I’m seeing some… irregularities in your documentation.”

The man tilted his head slightly, the movement eerily reminiscent of a bird. “Irregularities?”

“Severe ones.” McCreedy leaned back in his chair, the synthleather creaking beneath his weight. “Could delay your processing by weeks. Unless…”

“Unless you receive compensation for expedited services,” the man finished. He showed no emotion—no anger, no fear. Just stated it as simple fact.

McCreedy frowned. Most migrants broke down at this point—pleaded, wept, bargained. This calm acceptance unsettled him.

“Four hundred credits,” McCreedy said, padding his usual price. Something about this Smith character raised hackles he didn’t know he still had.

“Would you like to see what I carry in my case, Officer McCreedy?” Smith asked, ignoring the demand.

The pill was really kicking in now, turning McCreedy’s thoughts syrupy and slow. “What’s in the case isn’t my concern. The credits are.”

Smith placed the case on the desk and opened it with a deliberate motion. Inside lay a small black sphere, no larger than a marble.

“What the hell is that supposed to be?” McCreedy asked, suddenly irritated. “I don’t deal in contraband.”

“This is not contraband,” Smith replied. “It is a fragment of truth.”

McCreedy laughed, a harsh sound that bounced off the plastiform walls. “Keep your philosophy. I want credits.”

Smith gently lifted the sphere from its cushioned bed. “You misunderstand. This is what you humans call a memory sphere. A repository of experiential data. My species developed it millennia ago.”

The D-flect should have kept McCreedy calm, but something primitive crawled up his spine. “Your… species?”

“You’ve been classifying and rejecting my kind for decades now, Officer McCreedy. All while believing you were processing human refugees.”

McCreedy’s hand moved toward the alarm button beneath his desk. Smith’s eyes—had they always been that particular shade of amber?—tracked the movement.

“I wouldn’t,” Smith said softly. “You don’t understand what’s happening here.”

But McCreedy was already pressing the button. Nothing happened. No alarm. No backup. The room suddenly seemed smaller, the air thicker.

“What are you?” McCreedy whispered, the D-flect rendered useless against primal fear.

“We have been called many things across many worlds,” Smith said. “Travelers. Observers. Sometimes, more accurately, Judges.”

The black sphere began to hover above Smith’s palm, spinning slowly.

“This checkpoint isn’t real, Officer McCreedy. Neither are you, precisely. This is a simulation constructed from the memories of thousands of migrants you’ve processed. Exploited. Humiliated.”

McCreedy tried to stand, but his limbs wouldn’t respond. The walls of the station seemed to ripple, like heat waves on blacktop.

“You see, we’re not trying to enter your world,” Smith continued, his voice taking on harmonics that human vocal cords could never produce. “We’ve been here for centuries. What we’re assessing is whether your species deserves to continue existing alongside ours.”

The black sphere expanded, filling McCreedy’s vision.

“Every decision you’ve made here has been recorded. Every bribe accepted. Every family separated. Every genuine refugee sent back to die in the wastelands because they couldn’t pay your price.”

McCreedy’s perception fractured. He saw himself through countless pairs of eyes—fearful, pleading, hating. Felt the desperation of thousands who had stood where Smith now stood.

“This isn’t happening,” McCreedy gasped.

“That’s what they all say,” Smith replied, his form beginning to shift, angles appearing where there should be curves, his skin refracting light in impossible ways. “You are the ninety-seventh simulation of McCreedy we’ve run. All have failed.”

The station walls dissolved completely now, revealing not the dusty borderlands but a vast darkness punctuated by points of light that McCreedy somehow knew were not stars.

“What happens now?” McCreedy asked, his voice small in the expanding void.

The being that was no longer Smith smiled with too many teeth. “Now we begin the real border crossing. Your species has been denied entry to the galactic community. The process of removing humanity from this sector begins with understanding what went wrong with specimens like you.”

The black sphere engulfed McCreedy’s consciousness, and his final thought was a realization that the pill he’d taken hadn’t been Deflect at all. It had been something else entirely. Something that allowed him, for the first time in decades, to feel the full weight of what he had done.

And somewhere, in a border station that did truly exist, the real McCreedy popped another blue pill and called in the next migrant, unaware that among the desperate humans he processed daily moved beings whose judgment would soon extend far beyond his small kingdom of corruption.

Reality, like so many things at the border, was negotiable. And humanity’s passage had been permanently denied.