dream from the night of the 10th anniversary of 9/11

Dream of an activist being tortured: a battery is brought out, a question is asked, a baseline established.  With the control measures in place, one battery after another is brought out, each larger than the last.  There are four total.  On the top of each battery is a small green LED screen and sets of toggle switches.  The prisoner answers the questions on the screen by toggling the switches up or down.

At the end of each round, invariably, the prisoner has lied and receives a shock.  He screams and convulses, cries and cowers.  The questions are political.  This happens twice.

On the third round, the questions are no longer about political crimes, but rather about the activist's girlfriend - small, insignificant betrayals that she has perpetrated.  Deeds whose doing, even if true, are of no consequence to either the prisoner or to the jailors.  He panics - "How can I know the answers to these questions?" - and after answering them all, perhaps six, a yellow dome light like a miniature police siren flashes, indicating that one of the responses was inaccurate. The jailors tell the prisoner that, if he picks the right one and changes his answer, he can avoid the shock.  

The man chooses correctly; it is over.

But I, the observer of the dream, know that this is the question that has broken the prisoner.  When the pain still trembling through his body recedes, when the fear of future pain has left him, the gravity and true significance of his response will descend upon him sure as the night.

The prisoner goes to the bathroom, taking a small yellow and blue wire from the torture machine with him.  One of the jailors gives him a sideways look, but does nothing.  The observer of the dream wonders if the prisoner intends to kill himself by sticking the wires into the wall outlet in the bathroom...