“Even though it was more than 60 years ago, I remember it as if it was yesterday,” the old man said to the grandchildren who huddled around his bed.

I remember how excited I was when I was invited by a teacher of mine to attend a conference in the summer I turned sixteen. I was a scholarship student at a school in a tony suburb of Port Bravia, an International Baccalaureate school, and as a poor orphan from the sticks, the thought of a free trip to travel anywhere sounded like heaven to me. I was too young and too naive to realize how dangerous the outside world was. It was the one time I have ever left Bravia, and I hope if you all get the chance to travel your trips will go better than mine did.”

He collected himself. “The trip lasted for over a week, and I traveled in luxury on a cruise ship out of Port Bravia to attend the meeting. I can’t remember the city the conference was held in, but it was in a country that had some kind of trade relationship with Port Bravia but no relations with Bravia as a whole. This was, as I was to find out, something that should have put me on my guard, but it did not. I ate like a king while I traveled. The cruise ship had a pool where I enjoyed swimming and relaxing, places to dance and meet up with other people, and their restaurants were open all the time. As I was a growing lad who had long known what it was like to feel hungry, growing up with a poor grandma in the tidal swamps of the Western river delta, I could not imagine such luxury.

When we arrived at the conference, I was taken to a hotel conference room to check in, and here too those of us who were guests to the conference lived like kings. We could order anything we wanted in room service, and we did, when we were not listening to speeches and presentations by the presenters there. I do not remember all of the lectures we had, but most of them involved very technical and, as I understand it now, misleading uses of words whose meanings I knew, but not in the sense they were being used. Speakers would talk about the need for equity, which I assumed was the sort of basic fairness that treats people as people, rather than being a code word for resources to be taken from or denied to some and given to others for reasons of identity. They would talk about environmental or social justice, which I took to be the application of justice in various fields, but was meant as a code for politically motivated actions to create different living standards for different groups depending on their political status. People would talk about the need to live sustainably, but from what I hear many of the lecturers had arrived in even more luxurious ways than I did, and I was on a fancy boat. I did not understand at the time that what was going on was a political conference and that I was meant to be a mule, listening but not understanding to what was going on, a useful idiot to people who had evil plans.

I was not to understand that until later, and so for the moment I enjoyed myself. When the conference ended, I was asked by one of the organizers to bring a box to my teacher. He had been told by my teacher, he said, that I was a bright student (and I was, in all truth, though not nearly savvy enough to realize I was being manipulated) and he asked me if I would take a box to my teacher. I foolishly agreed, without asking or inquiring what was in the box. Since there had been so many reports on offer at the conference, I figured that the box just had more of those, and if I did not understand the papers, they did not seem to be particularly dangerous, so I did not think that carrying papers would be a problem at all. When this was done, I returned to the boat, and before too long we made the return trip to Port Bravia.

Again, on the return trip I enjoyed the food and fun that the ship had to offer, and it was not until we docked at Port Bravia that I realized anything was wrong. When I departed the ship, the security officers asked if they could check my luggage. I said yes, not thinking that anything was amiss. Among the simple clothes they found the box, and asked if they could look inside it. Again, I said yes, not thinking that anything interesting would be found, and when the officers there–there were two of them, the minimum set of witnesses according to Bravian law–what they found caused their faces to turn from friendly to considerably more concerned. I was asked to come along with them, and when I did I found myself in a rather austere room with only a simple table and a chair on either side, and someone asking me questions on the other side. I answered the questions as well as I could, being confused, and saying that I had not read the documents in the box, but had been asked to deliver them to my teacher by a stranger at the conference I had just attended in _________. I am sure this information was eagerly jotted down, and once I had answered enough questions, I was taken to a cell in a prison in the port facility. At that point, I knew I was in considerable trouble. Before too long, a polite stranger came to my cell dressed in nice clothes. I recognized that he had been assigned as my advocate, and together we spoke about what was going on.

“You’re in big trouble,” he said to me. “That box you brought had in it documents that were trying to aid your teacher in subverting the laws of Bravia relating to politics, and included techniques in how to indoctrinate young people into supporting Marxism. Indeed, the other documents that they found in your bags were also found to be Marxist scholarly papers urging radical revolution against Bravia’s government and others like it.”

“I don’t understand any of that,” I replied.

“This I can certainly understand. You must be what, fifteen or sixteen?” “I just turned sixteen,” I answered. “Well, this stuff is definitely over your head. Most of it was written by and for people with a few years of education after university. But unfortunately for you, ignorance is no defense of the law. Now you are being charged with the crime of bringing in revolutionary materials and as an accessory to the crime of petit treason. I don’t have to tell you more details but you can imagine that the penalty they are seeking is the death penalty.”

I shuddered to myself. “I am under the death penalty for bringing documents I don’t understand to my teacher?”

“Yes, unfortunately that is the case,” the advocate said sadly.

“What do we do?”

“That is what I am here to help you with. Since this is a relatively simple case, I have asked on your behalf for a speedy trial. There will be two witnesses for the state, the port customs officers who initially took you in, and they will tell the court what they found and the judge-inquisitor will likely ask them a lot of questions about the documents and what they mean. We can’t do anything about that and it definitely makes you look bad. What we will do is to call you up as a witness, and you will then tell the judge about what was going on. Given what I know of the situation, and your own innocence in the matter, it will be clear that you did not do anything knowingly and that the blame for this should be placed on the responsible adults, especially the teacher.”

“Is my teacher going to get in trouble for this?”

“Without question. Your teacher, or I should rather say, your former teacher, is probably at this point already being brought in for considerably rougher treatment than you received. I saw the tape of your interview with the police that you had, and it was as good an interview for your case as could be the case. In fact, I would be willing to submit it as evidence if the state refuses to do so, since it makes it clear that you did not know what was going on or even that you had done anything criminal. That is a fault of education, not of character. And while ignorance is no defense of the law, being a person who is taken advantage of is always a better place than being a mastermind of evil, as your former teacher was. He will not have a pleasant time in the court system at all, and his advocate has a far more difficult task than I do.”

“What is your task?”

“My task is simple, tell the truth about your being a blameless and ignorant figure in a Marxist plot, and appeal to the mercy of the court.”

“Is the court generally merciful?”

“That is a hard question to answer. Generally, the court looks down on those guilty of political offenses, but there is a difference made between those who deliberately engage in revolutionary activity and receive the full brunt of the law and those who are caught up against their knowledge. There will certainly be life-altering consequences for what you did, even though you were unaware. I trust, though, that it will not destroy your life. You seem like a good kid, and I think it will work out alright for you. Let us hope to God that is the case. I would rather be in your shoes a million times over than in the shoes of your teacher, let me tell you that.”

I was a bit sad for that. My teacher, for all his apparent faults, had always been kind to me. It was hard to think that his kindness to me in inviting me to the conference was merely for some dark political schemes about which he had explained nothing. I did have one more thing to ask though. “Can you send a message to my grandma? I don’t know if she knows what is going on.”

The advocate thought for a second. “I will let her know what is going on, though given that you are in the records as being her ward, I am sure that she has been informed about your case at least from the state. Perhaps it would be good to talk to her as well and see if she is willing to give you a character reference. It might be a positive to you in the court if she is able to get some sympathy, given that you were an orphan under her care. Quite honestly, any sympathy you and your situation can gather can only work in your own favor.”

I could not disagree with that. With that, the interview was over, and I was alone in my cell once again.