The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

“You ever hear about that psychology experiment, where this guy made people pretend like they were either prisoners or guards, and everyone started acting just the way prisoners and guards really act. You see that?” “Sure, the Stanford prison experiment.” Angel started up the Undaunted episode again, pointed at it. On the screen the Desert Dogs were starting to butcher Merry Perrys. “This is the same. You give people something to do, and that’s what they are. People.” He shrugged. “It’s the job that pulls people’s strings, not the other way around. Put them on the border, tell them to keep the refugees out, they turn into a border patrol. Put them on the other side—they beg for mercy and get themselves scalped and take it in the ass just like the Merry Perrys. None of them choose their jobs. They just end up in them. Some people got born in Nevada, so they play Desert Dogs; other people, they’re born in Texas, they learn to crawl on their bellies and beg. Merry Perrys, they pray and they go across the river like sheep, and the Desert Dogs, they rip into them like prey. If they were born opposite, it’d still be the same.” “You, too?” “Everyone,” he said. “You live in a nice house, you’re one kind of person. You live in the barrio, you run with a gang. You go to prison, you think like a con. You join up with the guardies, you play soldier.”