How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Investigation
The commission chair adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses with both hands, a gesture perfected over seventeen previous inquiries. Behind him, the flag of whatever nation we were in today hung at precisely the correct angle of remorse. “Let me begin,” he said, pausing to sip from a glass of water that had been tested for transparency, “by stating unequivocally that what happened should not have happened.”
This was progress. At the last investigation, they’d only gotten as far as “regrettable.” By the time the stenographer finished typing the word “unequivocally,” three junior staffers had already drafted the follow-up report concluding that systems were now in place to ensure it wouldn’t happen again unless it needed to.
The families in the audience clutched photographs of the deceased. The photographers dutifully captured their anguish for tomorrow’s front pages, where it would appear beneath headlines like “Lessons Must Be Learned” and above stock images of concerned officials walking briskly into buildings. A child’s drawing of a sun had been taped to one mother’s lapel - some remnant of normalcy, like wearing a wedding ring to a shipwreck.
“We have identified twelve key failures,” continued the chair, tapping a stack of papers that would later be found to contain six blank pages inserted at random to give the appearance of thoroughness. “Primarily, there appears to have been insufficient appreciation for how bad it would look if it happened.”
In the back row, a man in a suit that cost more than the average funeral nodded solemnly. He represented the firm that had designed the original system. They’d warned against implementing it without proper safeguards, though these warnings had been delivered in PowerPoint format during a lunch break at an industry conference. The font had been small.
“Moving forward,” said the chair, “we recommend the formation of a task force to examine the feasibility of establishing an independent body to oversee the preliminary discussions regarding potential future recommendations.” A woman in the front row began translating this into human language for her neighbor, but stopped after “moving forward,” as the rest was medically inadvisable to process in one sitting.
Outside, the protestors’ chants blurred into white noise, the way background music does in hotel elevators. Someone had brought a sign reading “JUSTICE” in letters tall enough to be seen from the commissioner’s window, had he chosen to look. Instead, he examined his watch - a delicate piece of Swiss engineering that could withstand depths of up to 300 meters, though never anything like this hearing.
The most damning evidence had been accidentally released months earlier by an intern who mistook public interest for public relations. It showed executives referring to the impending disaster as “the October surprise” in emails where they debated whether to address the known risks or wait for them to become statistically significant. The math, it turned out, had been sound.
By hour three, even the journalists stopped pretending to take notes. A toddler in the gallery began stacking crayons into a shaky tower that mirrored the organizational structure described in the crisis response manual. When it collapsed, no one flinched. They were all watching the clock now, counting down to the moment when “accountability” would transform seamlessly into “closure.”
The chair’s closing remarks included the phrase “healing process” and a promise to forward all findings to the appropriate authorities, though everyone present understood this meant a filing cabinet in a basement where two of the walls were technically shared with the building next door. As the room emptied, a custodian paused to straighten the witness table’s skirt - a nicety no one had noticed during the proceedings, but which would feature prominently in the official photos.
Later, over drinks that would be expensed as “stakeholder consultations,” the investigators agreed it had been one of the better ones. No shouting. No fainting. Only one person had brought actual bones in a box, and even those had been tastefully labeled. They clinked glasses, their ice cubes rattling like the last teeth in a skull. Next week, they’d all be assigned to a new panel examining why no one ever implemented the recommendations of the previous panels. One of them joked that they should just reuse the old reports with the dates changed. The laughter lasted just a second too long.
The minutes would be published online, encoded in a file format so obtuse it would crash most browsers. By then, the protesters would have dispersed, the news cycle would have turned, and the only remaining trace would be a slight stickiness on the hearing room’s floor where someone’s grief had temporarily overcome their respect for linoleum.
As the committee packed up, they reflected on the incremental advancements they’d made. Progress, after all, is measured in millimeters - the distance between a shrug and a sigh, between “never again” and “not exactly like this.” The custodian turned off the lights, leaving the room in the same state it had been before the hearing: spotless, undisturbed, and ready for the next performance.