Hunt the Truth Season 1/Transcripts/Seven

Episode 07: WHO'S LISTENING

Petrovsky (in call): Hehe ... Oh so now .. now you want to hear my story huh?

Benjamin: Yeah Yeah Hey look I owe you an apology

Benjamin (voiceover): It was awkward, but after a few minutes Petrovsky started to warm up.

I .. uh, I've been listening to your story.

Oh, I know.

Benjamin (voiceover): I knew exactly what question I had to ask Petrovsky but I didn't want to ask it. If I was being honest, I've been avoiding it my entire career. The Spartan program had a dark, dark cloud around its origins. Civilians had no idea but soldiers had always whispered about it in the ranks. Even the few scattered details I gleaned during my years reporting from the front had been enough to convince me that this was one stone I didn't want to overturn. I was embarrassed to admit. I just avoided it, but I couldn't avoid it anymore. Anthony would tell me everything. I just had to get the courage to ask and when I did, here's what he said.

Anthony: [draws breath] Look, all I heard was rumors but everybody whispers about it. Now ONI kidnapping little kids, leaving behind decoys to cover their tracks - those clones, clones that were doomed to get sick and die. Now all the families thought they were burying their kids. But really though, they're little kids when they're government property kept by ONI, training to be Spartans for years. And then when they're barely like teenagers, they start biologically augmenting them, which is just a fancy way of .. of saying they tore the kids to pieces and rebuilt them with tech. Whatever tweaks could give the government tactical advantage. Jesus man, the survival rate was something like that uh ... but the kids who did live through it you know ONI eventually cut them loose just (pshh) sent them out the clean up the ugly in the galaxy. You know all top secret - "the Spartans are super-classified so Hush, hush soldier." But then the Covenant showed up. Earth got a front row seat and all of a sudden, you got people throwing parades for them, kneeling at their feet: the pinnacle of humanity. But they're not human. Nobody really knows what the hell is under those Spartan masks but sure as hell not a hero. It's not a person, whatever they are. It ain't us.

Benjamin (voiceover): That was the story I never wanted to hear. I couldn't prove it. I couldn't report it as more than just rumors, but his story was the only explanation I'd heard since this mess began that actually made sense with the facts and it gave ONI more than enough motive to bury the truth. Because the truth was a nightmare. The truth was treason, planned and carried out in the shadows with impunity. When you let those in power operate in the dark for long enough, sometimes the dark creeps in. Without checks and balances, it's in our nature to cut corners in the name of efficiency. Trim off pieces of our humanity a chunk at a time, justifying every cut until eventually all your left with is horror. By coming forward, Tony had just broken a rigid code of silence. I asked him why.

Anthony:Whose code, huh? ONI's? (Chuckles) Yeah, I don't care about that. Look, I don't blame that John kid - Master Chief, whatever the hell they call him. Just did as the masters programmed him to do. Now ONI, ONI that's the boogeyman. Some sadist CPO wants to test out his Spartan toy so he oils it up with the blood of my brothers?! No man, no I'm not keeping quiet for them.

Benjamin: Aren't you afraid of retaliation?

Anthony (under):What are they gonna do? (Alone) Tell me, what are they gonna make my life suck? Even more than it does? It's too late. I mean, I understand Ben - you haven't, you haven't seen where I live, where my house is like. Let me just tell you this: you might prefer the shelter. I eat canned proteins man. I am one missed check away from living on the streets all the damn time. I got, I got this, I got a titanium arm. Huh? Vets' benefits? On this planet, it's a joke. And this is how they repay me for running through their meat grinder for 15 years, for laying down your life every damn day for them? And you think I owe them some kind of responsibility to be quiet? No, I don't owe them a damn thing, not after what I've been through.

Benjamin: Uh, yeah good thanks. I uh- I got to go. I got to go.

Benjamin (voiceover): I'm sure this sounds callous of me but as Petrovsky described his hardships, I was drifting away. His story had left me dazed. I said I wasn't feeling well; I had to go. He understood.

Benjamin: It did, it did. Thanks.

Benjamin (voiceover): I needed to step back and look at the full picture of what ONI had done, but my mind just wouldn't do it. Instead, I was fixated on one odd piece: the doppelgangers made to replace the kidnapped kids. Out of the disgusting quilt Petrovsky had laid out, I was stuck imagining the tragic life of one of these clones. They were human, they were created in a lab, altered so their bodies grew painfully fast, their bones stretching by the hour, newborns inflated into 6 year olds. Someone taught them to walk, to speak. Did their handlers touch them? Did anyone look in their eyes? Did they have names? When it was time ONI plopped them into some other kid's life, leaving them alone in a dark unfamiliar room in a bed that was probably still warm. In the morning, a family would walk in - strangers who wouldn't even know to explain any of this to them. No one would comfort them; they were completely lost, and then, these small children would begin to die. Breaking, withering away surrounded by confused heartbroken strangers who were powerless to help them; all the doctors making frantic attempts to stop the spreading rot from eating this little terrified person alive. It was all just desperate wailing against the inevitable and they would be forced to endure all of it, because no one knew the truth; that these children had lived in chaos until they died in excruciating pain because someone had designed them to do just that. The nightmare the clones endured was not a byproduct of ONI's plan; the nightmare was the plan.

FERO: Did you hear the unpleasant story?

Benjamin (voiceover): It was still dark outside when I was awaken by that voice. I live alone and someone was calling me from the shadows. Ben, come in here. I was petrified. Then I realize it was coming in over one of the networks - my communications system had been hacked. I started recording. (Comm pad is turned on) FERO was finally here. And apparently, she let herself in.

Benjamin (voice-over): Please join me for the next episode of Hunt the Truth.