Inmate #6455DA04
Psychological Evaluation

Inmate File No 4389LP76	Date/Time of Admittance 2/8/0000
Name Moira Wang	Age 24	Sex F
Security Low	Referral Source Hospital 924A
Chief Complaint Believes that supernatural force (the Presence) has imbued her with the consciousness of the planet itself

Psych Profile
Diagonsis:

Axis I - Documented history of ADHD
Axis II - PDNOS
Axis III - Moderately good health. Tested positive for recent use of Opal and marijuana. Admitted to prior recreational use of mescaline and methamphetamies
Axis IV - Transferred from hospital emergency room
Axis V - 39 (behavior is considerably influended by delusional fantasy, serious impairment in reality testing and judgement)
Medication - Prescribed 10 mg Haloperidol by intramuscular injection, every 4 hours

Notes:
This inmate was transferred from a local emergency room for admitted use of an illegal drug and in accordance with the Emergency Measures Act proscription against individuals publicaly orating about "the Presence."

Inmate is a young woman in moderately good health, with a freely admitted history of recreational drug use. She appears lucid and coherent, maintains good eye contact, although she is disposed to ramble about identifying with the planet and its "plight." Photosensitivity and dilation of the eyes may be a result of recent Opal use. Inmate is wakeful but does not exhibit signs of mental or physical fatigue. She reports heightened physical perception that appears to extend beyond the normal effects of Opal use, although this may be more psychological than physical.

Consistent with other "Presence" inmates, inmate is complacent about her imprisonment. She is non-aggressive but insists on the external reality of her delusions.

Inmate has not releated an obvious stressor that might have precipitated this delusional state, and does not display overt signs of anxiety, depression or mania. She may have entered a dissociative state to psychically escape recent trauma, distancing herself from emotional strain by entering a fantasy world reinforced by media reports and her memories of "highs" from drug use.

In light of recent events, I believe the inmate requires confinement, heavy sedation, and strict supervision by detached, experienced personnel.

personnel/gantry/casefiles/6455da04/default.htm

RECORD OF CONVERSATION, 2/8/0000
TRANSCRIBED 2/10/0000

DR. GANTRY
Good morning. How do you feel?

INMATE #6455DA04
Nervous.

DR. GANTRY
Well, that’s understandable. But I’m going to do what I can to help you. Will you promise to answer me honestly?

INMATE #6455DA04
Yeah. I guess.

DR. GANTRY
Good. Thank you. Now let’s start with the night you started to feel what you call a “presence.”

INMATE #6455DA04
Um, I was at this party. They had this new thing. You got a little piece of paper and you swabbed your hand with some kind of solvent and then touched it to a piece of paper dusted with the black, you know? So it would come in through your hands. So I tried it, I was sitting in the bathroom just waiting for the push. The bathroom was all white but the guy hadn’t cleaned it in a while, so I just sat looking at mildew until the push came. It felt so good I just sat there a moment.

DR. GANTRY
Excuse me. Why the bathroom?

INMATE #6455DA04
You get more of a push if you drink a lot of water first. Even more if there are a lot of people doing it with you. Makes it a bit weird, sometimes. Like, twenty people drinking as much water as they can and stoned in some lousy apartment with one bathroom or something.

DR. GANTRY
Hm. I can see how that might be awkward. Let’s get back to the Presence.

INMATE #6455DA04
You seem very interested in the Presence. Aren’t you supposed to be telling me there is no such thing?

DR. GANTRY
I have to respect your experience. Later, we may talk together about what it means. Right now, I just want to hear your story. Did you see anything? A vision, or a hallucination?

INMATE #6455DA04
Black doesn’t usually make me see things, you know? I did mesc for awhile and I had this one time where we were walking down the street and I could see in every house. I could see what people were doing. Black isn’t like that.

DR. GANTRY
Very interesting. I didn’t know that. So what happened next?

INMATE #6455DA04
I felt like there was someone in the bathroom with me. I turned around but no one was there. I could still feel a presence, so strong that I checked inside the shower. My hands and feet started to feel... full.

DR. GANTRY
Full?

INMATE #6455DA04
Like energy, pulsing. And then my spine started to feel hot. Like hot wax filling my spine from the inside. And then the fullness started to move in, up my arms and legs, and the heat started to move out and when they met... Oh. It was so good, so good, like the best lover I ever had moving inside me and my skin tingled everywhere. It was good but also scary, someone knocked on the door and I jumped out of my skin. I felt like something else had filled up my skin and I was just riding around on it, watching. I walked out of the bathroom but it’s not like I was at the party. It’s like I was watching the party. Moving around and saying hi to people but it wasn’t really me doing it. Something else had run into my skin and “me” was just pressed up into a little corner of my skull. The something else wasn’t just inside my skin, it was outside, too. Everywhere. I felt all glowy and nervous at the same time. Electric. I don’t know how to explain it.

DR. GANTRY
That’s okay. Just try to describe it as well as you can.

INMATE #6455DA04
Well, all that energy and heat, it’s suddenly focused in the middle of my body. And it expands into my chest, into my head, and then I’m turning inside out and I can feel the whole planet. A little part of my brain can see that I’m at this party sitting on the couch but that’s so tiny. A speck. The planet is huge and it’s complicated and I can feel the ocean currents, diving down from the Arctic and the Antarctic and moving slowly and then warming up and coming to the surface. I can feel a storm swirling across the water. I can feel mountains shifting and air moving and snow melting. [stops]

DR. GANTRY
Yes?

INMATE #6455DA04
I can’t describe all the stuff I could feel. I can still feel it, a little. I’m in this thing. It’s huge and I’m huge.

DR. GANTRY
What is the “thing” you’re in?

INMATE #6455DA04
I start feeling itchy. It’s all the roads and buildings and stuff. They’re making me itch. Then I feel pinpricks of pain. All these little poisons, dumping in rivers. Wells being sucked dry. They hurt. The air is full of stuff that makes me cough. I hate it. It’s like I’m being poisoned.

DR. GANTRY
Maybe the “poison” was the drugs that you’ve--

INMATE #6455DA04
Then the thing I’m in notices me. It knows I’m the one that’s making the poisons. I’m the one that’s hurting everything. And it’s going to clean me off the planet so it stops hurting. But that’s all right. I understand.

DR. GANTRY
That’s quite a hallucination.

INMATE #6455DA04
It wasn’t a hallucination.

DR. GANTRY
Okay.

Did it…

INMATE #6455DA04
Did it what?

DR. GANTRY
<unintelligible>

INMATE #6455DA04
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.

DR. GANTRY
<unintelligible>

INMATE #6455DA04
God? No fucking way. I heard another guy say that after he did the black, but he was just back from Bible Juvie. There are always a few Bible thumpers who see God on the black, because that’s what they came for, you know? They feel this thing, and it’s big and scary and holy so they call it “God” because that makes them feel safer, but nothing about the Presence is safe. Beautiful, yeah. But … I can’t think of the word. “Merciless” maybe.

If that was God, we’re in a shitload of trouble.
[laughs]

DR. GANTRY
You don’t think God can be merciless?

INMATE #6455DA04
Listen, I wasn’t going to tell you this, because I know it just sounds crazy, but the Presence isn’t from here. They’re…visiting. My grandfather, you know, he had a sheep farm in New Zealand. Mostly the sheep just roam free, but in the spring he would go up to their pastures to check in on them, get rid of the sick ones, shear the rest. That’s what the Presence is like. They’re here, checking up on this place, you see? And they’re going to get rid of the sickness.

DR. GANTRY
Which is us.

INMATE #6455DA04
Right! Exactly! We’re the disease, and the Presence is here with the cure.

DR. GANTRY
And you’re okay with that? It doesn’t scare you, or make you sad?

INMATE #6455DA04
Are you kidding me? I’m terrified. If you aren’t scared, you’re crazy.

personnel/gantry/casefiles/6455da04/witness.htm

He suspended Habeus Corpus.

He suppressed the press, and closed the newspapers.

He instituted the draft.

His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

index.html

Every American is a soldier in this battle.
Unfortunately, as the terrorist events of the past twenty-one years have shown, the casualties in this war are mostly innocent civilians.

• Protect your family and fellow citizens
• Report suspect behavior
• Respect the letter of the law

Treason costs innocent lives.

This is the Price of Treason.

24.5.1

priceoftreason.htm

For Your Protection
Jessica Delasko worried about her daughter, Stefanie, who had progressed from night terrors as a small child to clinical depression as a teenager. When Stefanie was just 15, Jessica took her to a concert by her favorite singer/songwriter, defying clear BoM guidelines for minors since the concert was rated for ages 18 and older.

When Jessica’s parenting score dropped as a result, she filed a complaint. She then refused to delete Stefanie’s Mature-rated music files, and continued to allow her to download age-inappropriate material. She posted a barely passing grade in her parenting refresher course. When authorities came for an onsite inspection and asked to take Stefanie for a private examination, Mrs. Delasko resisted, injuring a Social Services worker and placing additional stress on her own daughter.

Stefanie had just begun to adjust to her new living arrangements when Jessica broke into the crèche school in a failed attempt to abduct her daughter. The incident traumatized Stefanie, who successfully hanged herself on the crèche playground three weeks later.

Jessica walked into a Social Services office the following day wearing a vest of dynamite. After saying, “This is for Stefanie,” she detonated the explosives.

Clarice Hornshaw, mother of three, and Annabel Losado, who was due to have her first child the following month, were among those killed.

The warnings are there for your protection. Take them seriously.

1.htm

The Slow Slide Into Treason
The era leading up to 9/11 was characterized by relativism and leniency. Morality was defined socially, rather than by God, and the result was a slippery slope. In Neil Czerno it led to tragic consequences.

In –15, Czerno started a website called OpenSourceResistance. It asked people to make messages subverting American values and spread them around; to commit political acts and document them.

The acts it documented were often little more than pranks, things that some people would say were not harmful in any meaningful way. The events of the Hollywood bombing changed all that. When it came to light that the terrorists had been using graffiti tagger Waylon Quine to collect photos of their targets (with their infamous list of ‘challenge tags’ texted to his cell phone), society understood it could no longer see subversive art as a harmless kind of ‘blowing off steam.’ When he refused to take the website down, Neil was arrested and sentenced to two years.

A Wasted Second Chance
Upon release, Czerno told authorities he was living a lawful life. In fact, he was secretly involved in the world of underground music. He began producing podcasts, shooting guerilla video, and publishing websites accusing the government of censorship and authoritarianism. In –8 he tricked an intermediary into slipping an anti-American propaganda video into a news broadcast.

From here he went into exile, living in Europe for years. While American soldiers were fighting and dying around the world to defend our way of life, Czerno traded on Continental anti-Americanism to make himself a minor celebrity. Like Moore and others, he financed a dissolute lifestyle by putting out a series of ever-more fanciful attacks on the United States. With the execution of Jed Mather and the attempted terrorist attack on Seattle, the true threat of the IA became impossible to ignore. Czerno’s mainstream support dwindled, leaving him broke and friendless.

What Goes Around, Comes Around
Denied work permits in the European Union, Czerno learned the cost of social isolationism the hard way. When his wife contracted ovarian cancer, this “fearless social rebel” had the effrontery to come to the French government begging for access to public health care. In the aftermath of the Algerian bombings at the Louvre, this was of course denied.

Given yet another chance to return to the United States and seek a plea-bargain that might possibly save his wife’s life, he reacted instead with paranoid suspicion. He showed his true colors, reaching out to jihadist factionaries in a desperate bid to find another free ride. Even they viewed him with contempt.

The End of the Road
On January 1, 0000, the free world took a giant step forward in its united effort to face the perils of terrorism and join together for the efficient stewardship of the earth’s precious natural resources. In this new climate of unity, French authorities collected Czerno’s daughter on her return to school and required him to surrender his visa. The extradition hearings were brief and to the point, and on January 15th Czerno found himself back on US soil for the first time in 8 years.

He was executed February 4, 0000.

Let’s face it: it’s always fun to challenge authority. You don’t have to be responsible in your facts. Being a rebel is always cool...

...but in the end, does being ‘cool’ seem worth the price?

2.htm

A Helping Hand
Evie Parquette ran a little side business¬ to help her ‘kids.’ A trained nurse, she extracted nerochips from young adults who wanted to cross state lines when their driving re cord restricted them to the 50 mile radius of their home. She felt they should be allowed to see their families in Mexico or their girlfriends in Kansas.

One of the young men who came to her for a nerochip extraction had an antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus infection from his aborted attempt to remove it himself. In her Friday night ‘clinic session’ she extracted 16 nerochips. Four of the people she extracted chips from died because they were afraid to seek medical help until it was too late. Of the others, one lost his hand, two others suffered massive systematic infections which resulted in lifelong organ damage.

How “helpful” is it to help someone break the law?

3.htm

The Devil’s Playground
Cordell Singh was smart and bored. With two parents working, he had hours of unsupervised time to kill after school every day. Is it surprising he found himself drawn to a c rowd of older boys? To gain their approval, he delivered packages and picked up deliveries at a P.O. box. When he discovered he was relaying subversive material, they told him that he would go to prison as an accessory if he told anyone. He chose to trust them.

Three years later he delivered a homemade bomb to the Mall of America. It went off as he was putting it in a trash can, killing him and wounding six others. By this time he had brought his younger brother, Elroy Singh, into the group. Elroy, now 15, is serving a life sentence in prison.

If you are a working parent, ask yourself what your child needs more—a few extra dollars, or a parent at home?

If your friends ask you to become involved in something you think might be illegal, ask yourself if you are really willing to die to be one of the ‘in-group.’

Ask yourself if innocent people deserve to die because you weren’t brave enough to make an anonymous phone call to the authorities.

4.htm

It Was Only A Joke
Chaz Greber was an engineering student at Duke who became involved in subversive politics. When he called in a bomb threat to the power plant during a heat wave, his description of the location and probable effect of the supposed explosives alarmed authorities enough they had to shut the plant down while bomb squads went in to check the premises.

Over the next two days, as Durham sweltered without air conditioning or refrigeration, eight Americans died, including five senior citizens and one infant. Hundreds more suffered from heat prostration and food poisoning because Chaz thought it would be funny to play a prank on the authorities.

Chaz Greber was executed by lethal injection early this year.

5.htm

The Price of a “Free Press”
Ilse Stanescu, a reporter for the now-defunct Washington Post, used her position as a journalist to protect terrorists in the United States. In the process of covering a story on Muslim students at Georgetown University, she learned that several were carrying out systematic acts of public disobedience: but failed to alert authorities.

After a bomb scare on the National Mall, Stanescu was summoned to appear in front of a grand jury and required to name the sources for her story. She refused. That was her choice: but it was not a choice without consequences.

Like many a self-styled “crusading reporter” before her, Stanescu was jailed for contempt of court. Prison inmates are defined by law as unfit parents. Stanescu’s husband thus inherited sole legal responsibility for the child. But as a person married to a felon, his salary was capped under the “Beyond Bars” incentive plan.

Ilse Stanescu reconsidered her decision and offered to name her sources. By this time, however, three of them had left the country. Stanescu was charged with aiding and abetting terrorism.

6.htm

Over His Head
Moshe Krasnecky wanted to open a copy shop/mailing franchise, but after careful profiling American Trust turned down his loan application.

Refusing to take the hint, Moshe turned to family. His convinced his brother Sy Krasnecky (cognitively delayed after a childhood car accident) to loan him money from the trust their parents had established for him.

When the business was in danger of going under, Sy found some ‘friends’ at the tool and dye where he worked who would ‘loan’ him some money. Sy didn’t understand loansharks. Moshe and Sy fell behind in payments, and the loansharkers ‘turned out their business’; the practice of using Moshe’s name and credit to order tens of thousands of dollars worth of goods which they sold on the black market.

Sy told the loansharkers he would tell the police. Six days later his body was found by landfill workers; authorities believe he was probably beaten into unconsciousness and left in a dumpster due for sanitation pickup.

Moshe Krasnecky’s wife divorced him and he was convicted of failing to report criminal activity and blackmarket racketeering.

Our national bank uses data from your financial records, school transcripts, and even medical records and genetic profiling to determine who deserves credit and who does not. If the bank turns you down, remember: they have your best interests at heart.

Would you undermine the economy of this country by doing business with the criminal underworld?

Is any business opportunity worth the lives of your family?

7.htm

You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby
Vince Raeder let his wife, Carlena, sign up for evening classes at the local community college. Against the advice of his church elders, he signed a Head of Family waiver to allow her to enroll (required since two of their three children were still under the age of 12).

Later that semester, Carlena enrolled in a week-long out-of-state seminar. Again Vince signed a Head of Family waiver. The day she left for the seminar, Vince was feverish and pale, but he told her to go anyway. She did. That night, seriously ill with one of the season's most aggressive flu strains, Vince fed himself and the children some leftovers that Carlena had forgotten to throw away.

Carlena returned from the seminar to find her husband and two of her children dead from food poisoning. The youngest, who was still on canned baby food, was in critical condition from hunger and dehydration. Carlena is now serving a five-year sentence for home endangerment.

Is "a little independence" really more important than your family's well-being?

8.htm

Self-Medication
Jamal Naropa served with distinction as a Special Forces operative in Syria and Turkey. During this time, he was given certain medical treatments to enhance his strength and reaction time. When he returned, the Veteran's Administration medical personnel prescribed a simple regime to help him return to civilian life, but Naropa told friends it made him too drowsy and clumsy to work as a tow motor operator. Although he was offered a half-pay disability pension, he chose to work instead. He stopped using his legally prescribed drugs and began self-medicating, trying various combinations of alcohol, antihistamines, and cough syrup. After a series of minor accidents, one of which involved a worker’s compensation claim, he apparently began using marijuana, against the advice of his girlfriend, Aleta.

Aleta had waited for him during his years in the military. Although they had planned to marry before he left, he put her off when he returned. They went to her church for counseling; the minister described Naropa as “withdrawn and uncommunicative” at this time.

Despite the warnings of her family, Aleta came to stay at Naropa’s apartment when an injury kept him off work for two weeks. During this time she told a sister that he was smoking marijuana almost constantly and appeared uninterested in sex. Aleta urged him to stop using illegal drugs. On her third request he apparently complied. Two nights later he beheaded her with a combat knife and then sexually violated her corpse. The coroner's report described postmortem trauma to her stomach and esophagus.

The following morning, Naropa returned to the VA hospital where he killed two senior administrators and a senior physician before taking his own life.

What happened to Aleta is a tragedy, but could her death have been avoided if she had listened to the advice of family and faith?

Jamal Naropa thought he knew better than the medical establishment. Who should you trust?

10.htm

REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT

THE DEPLOYMENT OF CHEM AGENT WITHIN CONUS

Submitted by

Director of Consolidated Intelligence Agency

TOP SECRET
SPECIAL ACCESS

REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON
THE DEPLOYMENT OF CHEMICAL AGENT WITHIN CONUS

Executive Summary

The Red Horse bio agent is extremely hardy, presenting many of the same symptoms of the Ebola virus without the attending fragility one would expect of a tropical virus in temperate or high-altitude climates. Under this administration’s Directive 21-03 “Eye for an Eye,” clinical trials of the replicated Red Horse strain against interred Islamic jihadist prisoners resulted in 100% mortality within 48 hours of exposure.

Interestingly, whereas Ebola patients suffer tremendous and incapacitating pain, Red Horse subjects acquire a degree of homicidal psychosis that can blind the subject to his own pain and impending mortality.

This video, of captured U.S. Diplomat Jed Mather, shows the effects of the virus.

Upon inhalation, Red Horse patients begin to bleed out. Massive hemorrhaging follows with subjects bleeding from lachrymal ducts, ears (via cerebral spinal fluid) anus and urethra. In 65% of those subjects tested, external stressors exacerbated the hemorrhage resulting in full mortality within 45 minutes. Unlike Ebola, full hemorrhagic fever did not present, nor did patients live long enough to manifest symptoms of necrotic organ tissue. In all cases, cause of death was determined to be massive hypovolemic shock.

Development

Approximately two years ago, a weaponized biological agent code-named Red Horse was discovered within a laboratory facility inside the Caspian port-sector of Cheleken, Turkmenistan. The facility poses as an environmental testing facility but is known to be a hub for jihadist CBRN operations.

Assets in-theatre tracked delivery of Red Horse by air into Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Hand-off of the agent to known jihadist sympathizers was captured before vectoring a UAV asset to follow subsequent delivery by land south across the Vaksh River to a village of approximately 15 families outside of Kulyab.

The agent was then dispersed. Sat recon suggests a portable pesticide sprayer was used.

The agent proved 100% effective within the village. From Patient 0 to Patient Omega, (73 persons) it is believed that 51 hours had elapsed.

While Tajik nationals are not overt sponsors of the jihadist movement, Muslim sympathies negate serious antipathy. It is reasonable to believe that this Kulyab Event was a beta test of Red Horse prior to deployment against CONUS.

Following the Kulyab Event, our assets recovered the Tajik courier, Hamid Al-Mahvand, a second sample of Red Horse and plans for a Site B contingency test location, also in Tajikistan.

Subsequently we received the Jed Mather video. It is clear that jihadist cells have sufficient quantities of this virus that they want us to know that they have it.

The Tajik Red Horse trial proved that the agent is sufficiently deadly that a full TRVA was conducted. A vaccine development program has proven to be a qualified success, but has demonstrated several symptoms that cannot, as of this date, be countered without diminishing the efficacy of the vaccine.

Conclusion

CIA threat-risk-vulnerability analysis concludes that Red Horse presents a dire threat to both the Administration and its backers. Because Red Horse is believed to be at the disposal of dispersed jihadist operatives that may or may not be currently within CONUS, it is the recommendation of the CIA that:

• Continued discretionary funding be diverted to increase safer, faster production of the Red Horse vaccine;


• Existing supplies of the vaccine be provided for National Command Authority, the most senior strategic positions of the Administration and key corporate and religious figures, then increasing distribution to less-senior positions as inventory permits; and,


• Restrict all knowledge of Red Horse to this distribution list’s eyes only to permit deniability and mitigate panic.

Should Red Horse fall under the umbrella of public scrutiny, we should anticipate a panic with severe repercussions to both economic and foreign policies. Considering Red Horse’s efficacy, a public scare uncontained by official Vox channels risks provoking a “use it or lose it” attitude among jihadist operatives inside CONUS.

Copy to:

Director, Defense Research and Engineering
General Counsel of the Department of Defense
Chairman, Cedocore Industries
Brand Director, VOX
Chief Executive Officer, CDC
Board of Directors, Halli-Bech Reynolds
Chairman of the Synod, New Evangelical Church

CC: Special Operations Director, Bureau of Morality

24.9.2

Terrorist: (translation from French) This guy, leaves the embassy without escort. He believes like that we will help him. He believes we will keep him, to drive his car with his dog, without bodyguard, and that we will say : 'look, it is an American not like the others', he will be our friend that one.

Jed Mather: Please, let's talk. Let's talk. Please. I-I-I-I-I know people. Okay?

Terrorist: After Syria, after Chad, after Yemen. Trying to make us feel guilty after Tehran? Testing. Red Horse. The sickness has been developed by the IA. It is extremely contagious. If American troops do not pull out of the IA nations, we will have no choice but to release the sickness in America.

Jed Mather: No-no-no. P-p-p-please, I'm on your side. Please-please... *muffled sounds of struggle* *coughing and wheezing* Please. Please. Don't. Please, I-I-I... Please, this is... Oh my God. What are you doing? Please! God! Get down in here![?]

...one country at a time

24.11.1

default.htm

I'm a street artist. I got these panels in the mail from a GI in Syria. I thought at first it was from someone who knew my art.

I was wrong.

streetartist.htm

The story you need to know starts in Syria, 2/3/0000

Shit, my family was from Detroit. What other choice did I have?

I got caught shoplifting.

Only way I could get to college. I just liked the ads.

Yeah, during football games!

Swords. Rockets. Adventure and shit.

You are one dumb motherfucker, Blip. What about you, Monterey?

Hey, I look like a fucking Arab, right?

Raghead!

I figured people might treat me like an American if I had the uniform on.

What about you, Captain?

campfire.htm

Cops almost got me last night.

We were doing silhouettes down by Ft. Sam Houston, hadn't thought of that place in years and then we're[sic] were on hands and knees crawling through this culvert/drain pipe under one of the roads and I realized--

--this is where I got laid the first time, Jeni Reis smelling like sweat and cinnamon, me all oboy oboy and then afterwards her trying to pretend it hadn't hurt and me thinking fuck I didn't mean it to be like that.

Weird, right. The strange and familiar sliding in and out, like a dream. I had forgotten the sound of choppers overhead, like a ceiling fan, how I used to fall asleep to them.

Anyway, guys with stickers and guys with print and me with my chalks, a sentry and sirens, us diving for the darkness like so many cockroaches, the adrenaline high, that's right we're fucking roaches we're the common cold, assholes, cannot stop us all.

Afterwards, the others wanted to go for a drink and Mary was looking at me That Way (it's like we only ever do it after the Art Ops anymore)

But somehow I didn't want to, didn't want to be with any of them. The Protestors. Mom's an accountant/teacher/librarian, dad's a musician/lawyer/preacher.

They never lived in Fort Sam (or Brigg, or Bless or pick your particular hell) never went ot base school, never saw someone pulled out of class to get The Letter, go home white-faced and dry-eyed because back then we were doing our part and you never let htme see you cry, even when they dropped the flag over the coffin and fired the guns because that would be giving up, that would be letting them win.

There was an email from a soldier in Syria waiting for me when I got home.

letter.htm

Oh, I was like Blip here. Liked the ads, did a tour in Iraq. Told myself when I got home to my wife and kids I was never going back.

That's me, man.

Got a job at a car dealership. Painted the apartment. Read back issues of Wolverine to my kid for bedtime story. Thing is, I just wasn't any good at it.

At what?

Being...normal, I guess. Like somewhere outside of Basra I kind of forgot how.

You argue with your wife all the time--

You see a kid pointing like a water pistol--

Yeah. Yeah.

So my wife's in the bedroom, says she wants a divorce. The kids are watching the Academy Wards on tv, and BOOM.

It was a calling.

Well, at least it was an excuse.

touriniraq.htm

The next day we had to clean out a rocket next in another hellhole village.

Don't worry. It's okay. We're here to help.

I asked the Captain once if he still believed in the Lord. In what we were doing here. He said, "I'm trying."

hand.htm

That Syrian girl would have been... 11? 12?

When she was 14, my little siste [sic] Angie was abducted, raped, and murdered by an ex-Special Forces marine commando who had been discharged after operation Sandstorm. Afterwards he turned himself in and was hanged. My mom wouldn't watch the telecast but I did. I was hoping it would make something better.

adducted.htm

Holy shit.

Dear mother of God.

Five minutes later it was gone. Five minutes after that we remembered to be soliders.

Hope he asks her where we can find more water in this helllhole.

Hey, Monterey! Tell her me fuckee long time! For real American dollar.

Jesus, Blip. She's like twelve.

No rugburn!

soldiers.htm

Next of kin is an uncle in Tadmur - almost 50 miles.

Ok. If we start at dawn, we can be back by nightfall.

Due respect, Captain, but that country is crawling with snipers. Respectfully, nobody wants to get his ass shot off because you came down with a case of the samaritans, Captain.

If we bring her to Tadmur, Sir, chances are she'll be killed as a probable accomplice.

I was listening on the radio a couple of days ago. Voice of America broadcast. You know what they said? Apparently, we went into Syria to make these people's lives better. We go to Tadmur in the morning.

tadmur.htm

He was the Captain, but that didn't mean we had to like it.

100 mile round trip through hostile territory.

Land mines. Manpads. Scorpions. And snipers. Long guns behind every fucking boulder.

"For a 12 year old piece of Syrian puzzy?" Blip said. "Fuck."

Nobody else would say it. But we were all thinking it.

100mile.htm

They got Gomez when he stopped to take a piss and stepped on a mine. A medic might have saved him... But Gomez was the medic.

gomez.htm

The first thing I learned to draw was bodies. I heard somewhere that Leonardo used to buy corpses and cut them up to see how bodies were put together. I stole an old copy of Grey's Anatomy from the school library and hit it under my bed.

I wanted to draw like other guys wanted to be on the football team. I wanted to be a bad-ass. I wanted girls to think I was cool and moody and deep. I drew pictures of girls I wanted to sleep with hoping they would notice and it actually worked sometimes.

I used to wish I was more of a creep so I could just fuck them and not worry about it afterwards but it turned out life wasn't really like that. Even Cammy, the tough girl who dyed her hair black and kept getting suspended, we were in her room in the basement, he parents overhead staring at the tv, she pushes her paintes down and looked all flushed and embarrassed

and I thought, "I"m the age my dad was when he got mom pregnant with me."

firstthing.htm

God damn.

Holy fuck!

It made you want to crawl flat. It made you want to tunnel into the sand and hide. We stopped the trucks, and even Blip shut up, like one stray sound and it would NOTICE us, and that would be the fucking END. The whole desert breathless. Waiting.

breathless.htm

Down! Get down!

Sniper!

There's only one problem with using a scope. When the sun catches it, sometimes there's a flash. It's not much... But a good sniper doesn't need much.

Medic! God damn it. Is this what you wanted?

medic.htm

Captain!

Shut up, for God's sake!

Is this how it was supposed to happen?

I'm not saying what happened next was right.

Are you happy now?

But he'd already gotten two men killed.

Answer me, you son of a bitch!

And now he was shouting at that thing.

Captain!

As if he wanted to bring the lightning down on all of us.

captain.htm

Answer me!

KRAK

Captain!

There must have been another sniper!

another.htm

The last day before he left us my dad took us down to Corpus Christie for a treat. He lay face down on the oil-spotted sand while we screamed and jumped the surf and picked at the dead jellyfish lying on the beach. I still remember him lying there, surf bubbling around his feet. It seems impossible that I didn't know what was coming.

When we were nicely sunburned and sick on soft-serve ice cream we went back to our room at the Holiday Inn and mom and dad told us the news.

He talked about how much he loved us but how the country needed him. I knew that he just didn't like living with us anymore, but I hoped Angie was little enough that she would be fooled.

He came to visit three times. The last time was just a few months before Angie was killed. I was fifteen and refused to leave my room and visit with him. My mom tried to make me. She said he was about to ship out and I should be nice but I fucking hated him and everything he stood for and I wouldn't answer him even when he talked to me through the door.

Angie did, though. She gave him the special cross she got for her sixth grade graduation.

She always was a goody-goody.

goodygoody.htm

But... this looks more like an entrance than an exit wound.

I'm sorry.

But I figured you had a right to know.

exitwound.htm

The form letter from the army said my father had been killed by friendly fire.

I've spent the last couple of years doing street art projects against the Syrian Campaign. I used to think it was to piss off my dad. Maybe it was to bring him home. I can't tell anymore.

Guys I went to school with are in the army now. Others, like me, have drifted into a different kind of amry. We fight with chalk and spray paint, and it used to be a whole lot safer, but in the last few years things have gotten bad. A tagger I used to hang out with got picked up last month and shpped to the EFDC on Guam.

My mom hooked up with a born again dude. He calls me every couple of weeks to tell me she's drinking a lot and maybe she would listen to me if I told her to stop. He's real earnest. He doesn't understand that sometimes people get broken and you can't fix them anymore.

The guy who killed ANgie, the last thing he said before the trap door opened, he looked at the camera, right at me, and he said, "I'm so sorry."

My dad wasn't a bad guy, but he probably killed people in Syria and Iraq. Maybe a lot of them.

The last thing I ever said to him was that I hated him and never wanted to see him again.

Friendly fire.

formletter.htm

Meanwhile, all over the world tonight, US troops are spreading democracy with tanks and bullets and planes and guns. In these last days, I wonder if the generals and the CEOs and the President in his bunker look at their TV monitors and see that fucking giant hand coming down on us all, innocent and guilty, Christians and Muslims, black and white. And I wonder if they feel like I do, that something else has just shown up, with its own locked and loaded magazine of manifest destiny, set to bring up a new kind of reckoning...

reckoning.htm

THEY CALL IT EXTERMINAL

Technically, it's the Extrajudiciary Federal Detainment Camp, Guam.

Functionally, it's the fucking End of the Line.

It's where they disapper you if you think too hard, talk too loud, forget to drink the water, remember to be free. My best friend from high school got sent there three years ago. My girlfriend is therenow. Beaten, certainly. Raped, probably. Dead...I guess I hope so.

Ashes to ashes, zeros and ones.

Sooner or later they'll get me, too. They might pick me off with a Van Eck phreak, or catch me with a profiling algorithm, I suppose, but probably it will be something simple and stupid and ordinary: my landlady will overhear a phone call, or they'll put the squeeze on the 13 year old girl in the apartment next door after she downloads a song with Un-American Lyrical Content and in her guilt and panic she ill turn me in for no reason at all, but it will be enough for them to break into my apartment and find my water filter.

They'll put me on a plan to Guam and nobody will ever hear from me again -- except you. Because if you're reading this page, there's a good chance I will see you there.

Leave this site. Scrub your browser history. Be a good citizen. Stay alive.

The Hack
When the took Beth, I couldn't stop trying to find out what had happened to her. Weeks. Months.

There's a kind of evidence locker that stores electornic versions of documents and surveillance feeds. It's got a little older security protocol. Sometimes something leaks.

Don't ask me about your buddy, your teacher, your dad, your son. Anything I find, I post as soon as I get it.

24.7.1

Readme

Interview transcript

Charge: domestic terrorism, hate speech, subversive communications, etc.
Close of file update

3:18pm
Interviewer: You look thirsty. Have some water.

Subject: No thank you, ma'am.

Interviewer: Ma'am! Good manners. I like that. Have some water.

Subject: I'm really not thirsty.

Interviewer: <silence>

Interviewer: You know and I know that you're going to have to drink this water. There's nothing in it that every man, woman, and child acrss the country isn't drinking.

Subject: Not every man, woman, and child.

Interviewer: Spunky.
Drink up. There you go! All of it. Good. You feel better, right?

Subject: No.

Interviewer: Sure you do.

Subject: You're overestimating the absorption rate. It will take a couple of days for the Parpin to reach full effectivness.

Interviewer: Fascinating.

Subject: Well, you should know better than I.

Interviewer: Me? I'm just a thug who looks good in Gucci. All that sciencey stuff...pffft.

Subject: You should learn more about it.

Interviewer: I get by. Now, you were delightfully cooperative -- wait, are you a little warm? I'm a little warm. Let me lower the thermostat.
Okay. Better. Where was I? Oh right. Let's talk a little about this website of yours.

Subject: Look, I'm not brave. I told the other guy everything this morning. I swear to you, I just want to go home.

Interviewer: Here, have some more water.

Subject: God, enough with the water! I'm not thirsty!

Interviewer: Jonathan--can I call you Jon? Jon. Drink the water.
Jon?
Jon, honestly, I like you, believe it or not. The guy you were talking to this morning? He doesn't like you so much. You don't want to see him--

Subject: Okay! Okay!

Interviewer: Good. Whoops--don't spill!
Now. As persuasive as my friend was this morning, I think you might be able to remember a few more details if you sit quietly and think about things.
I have a magazine -- see? Nice, ordinary magazine.
I'm going to sit here and find out whether hemlines are rising or dropping this spring, while you think about things. Just pipe up if you think of something you might have forgotten to share this morning.

Subject: Please. Please. Listen to me. Let me go home. I'll drink the water. I'll drink three gallons a day, whatever.
Please, I'm not important. I didn't start a revolution or anything. I just did some research. I was stupid, I don't care that much, I don't want to be a martyr. Just let me go, please.

Interviewer: You want to go home?

Subject: Please.

Interviewer: Show of good faith. Here's -- a nice pitcher of water. Toss that back for me.

Subject: That's like, a gallon of water!

Interviewer: Technically a little more than that, but close enough for jazz.
I like you, Jon. You're the sort of nerdy kid who desperately wanted to date me in high school. Kind of charming. But...
I need to know that you understand what's a stake here. You can be smart, you can do your science, but now you're going to color inside the lines.

Subject: Fine. Fine. Here. <drinks>

Interviewer: Jon, thanks. I mean that.
Now, we're going to sit here quietly for a while. Just in case you remember something. Any little details that slipped your mind earlier that you think might be important.

Subject: Then I can go home?

Interviewer: Then you can go home.

Subject: Okay. Okay.

5:39pm
Subject: Um, could I please use the facilities?

Interviewer: Hmm?

Subject: I have to... I need to urinate.

Interviewer: Oh. Go ahead.

Subject: Um. Could you uncuff me from this chair?

Interviewer: Oh! You want to use the bathroom? No, no I'm afraid not. But go ahead. I don't mind.

Subject: But I -- I can't --

5:42pm

Interviewer: Still holding it? Wow. Here. Have some more water.

Subject: I can't!

Interviewer: We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. I think we both -- well, well, well!
<laugh>
See? Easier than you thought, right? Now, drink up.

Subject: Jesus.

Interviewer: Don't be so shy. I've seen much worse, believe me. Drink a little more for me -- oh, you really are so good. Excellent.

6:28pm
Interviewer: Hey. This might interest you. Did you know that in the past twenty years, the winter fashion industry has revolutionized to keep up with the climate change? Winter fashins now play with cold-weather styles while shifting to cooler --

Subject: I feel a little dizzy.

Interviewer: It's probably dehydration. Here, drink up.

Subject: Dehydration?! I can't -- Oh God. Oh God!

Interviewer: Well, all that water's got to go somewhere. Just a little more now. No -- don't -- there.

Subject: [weeping] WHy are you doing this?

Interviewer: Oh now don't cry. Valuable liquid in those tears! Well, never mind. 7:09pm
Subject: Why are you doing this?

Interviewer: You're the scientist! You tell me.

Subject: I'm not a scientist. I didn't even get through college. It's just a hobby. When can I go home? I feel really dizzy.

Interviewer: Jon, please. Don't whine. We've been through this.

Subject: No, not the Parepin, but like... too much... water. Something about... electolytes?

Interviewer: You know, you could be right. Looks like you've had... 3.2 gallons of water since we started. Wow!
Impressive. Right now your blood is thinner than a fashion model before Paris week. Your sodium and magnesium levels are completely out of whack, andyou're in the early stages of osmotic shift. Your body's cell are beginning to drown, one by one. Hey! I'm better at this science stuff than you thought. Let's flip a coin: heads you start seizing, tails you skip right to the coma.

Subject: You said I... could go home?

Interviewer: Well, yes. It was a metaphor. Jon, the truth is, we're a little busy this month. The bad news is, I"m not sure you're going to trot out of here and play nice the rest of your life. And the taxpayer doesn't want to pay for a plane ticket. Or even, you know, board and lodging in our little resort. Am I right?
Am I right?
Jon?
Hm. I guess it's tails.

Markakis, J / Inmate - Interview

Domestic Terrorist Pre-Sentencing Profile: Thibadeux, Sara: Summary

Status: Currently held in solitary confinement pending final sentence.

Crime(s): On 2/7/0000, two teachers and an administrator from Fisher of Men public creche in Dayton, OH were killed and a third teacher was seriously injured in a freeway auto accident when two tires blew out (front right and rear left).

Detainee was apprehended by police at approximately 3:35pm that afternoon. Detainee was transferred to federal custody on 2/8/0000 and quickly confessed to filling two tires (front right and rear left) of the driver's SVU with WD-60 earlier that morning.

Clam and resolute during the questioning, showing little remorse. General manner described by first responders as "almost military." Possible links to covert training?

Networks(s): No evidence of accomplices. No evidence of participation in or direct communication with existing dissident groups. Detainee distrubted information related to the crime on a P2P network the week prior, including summaries of solo terrorist tactics, and advised others that together they could "shut the system down."

Perpetrator: Superiors report Detainee was well above average in intelligence and drive. Also described as "high-achieving" and "extremely competent," with "advanced leadership skills."

Psychological Profile (Summary): Psychological evaluation indicates no obvious motivator for treasonous activity, in fact, Detainee came from the family of a decorated war hero (1) and performed exceptionally well in state/church care after mother's death (2).

Supporting materials: Recent Photograph of Detainee: http://www.exterminal.net/domestic.htm

1: Father was a Marine, killed in Kazakhstan by a 12 year old female suicide bomber when subject was seven years of age. Curiously, Detainee mentioned the suicide bomber several times during interviews, usually as "a fighter" rather than "a quitter."

2: Mother was transferred to care facility after CPI and Parenting Score dropped below acceptable levels; Detainee was transferred to local creche. Three months later, during a home visit, Detainee discovered mother consuming drain cleanser. Although mother subsequently died, emergency responders commented on Detainee's courage and quick thinking.

Thibadeux, S / Inmate -- processing report

Audio date collected as evidence againstinmate and logged as "Exhibit A." Audio analysts unable to determine method by which subversive material has been encoded. Conclusion: hold inmate without bail.

http://files.exterminal.net/exhibitA.wav

Classified / Inmate - Evidence report

TRANSMISSION ALERT: LIVE TRANSMISSION IN PROGRESS
inmate file: Bardsley, G
subfile: Known accomplices – aiding and abetting terrorism
tagged surveillance Subject: Carraig, Elliot
establishing pipeline to transmission device…connection established.
Feed 01
okay, I can see you through your office
window
can you see what im typing?
nod if you see
good girl. Welcome to the Resistance.
stop for a moment
get used to the glasses
if you're not used to a hedz up display
it can be weird
ok
txt me on your cell
	Feed 02
	tracing pipeline to subject #2…
	unrecognized subject.
	building new subject file…
	protocol: Cedocore Security Breach
	subject #2 identified; Roberts, Tayna
	(Administrative Assistant Grade 2)
	duplex surveillance tap established.
	test?
yep
its coming to me
ok, I'm right outside the Cedocore
building in the white van.
All you have to do is get the file, go
downstairs, through security and out
the door and I will be waiting for you
ok?
Are you ready?
	nerves
no one can see this display
even if they look right at you
you're just a pretty file clerk in
sunglasses
	the glasses
	make me feel
	a little sick
sit down
should have given you
some dramamine
:)
Gil said the glasses always made
him sick, too
	g wore these?
Gil loved gadgets
he loved this whole set-up
but we never used it for anything serious
	til now
right
here's the drill
plug the microdrive into your computer
then open www.cedocore.com/rswtb
The copy program will run automatically.
	got it
	cpyng
Good. It should only take a second.
When it's done, put the microdrive in
your bag and take a deep breath.
	Ok, done.
We're ready to go
	k…at hallway door
	nrvs bad
Ok, stop for a sec.
I want you to blink three times fast.
		Feed 03
		media pipeline established
		connection established
		Feed 03
		Receiving…
	????	Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-01
		Decryption Successful
Perfect. You've just sent me a picture of
what you're seeing.
Take a step back from the door and try
again.
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-02
		Decryption Successful
Good.
	This is crzy
You're doing fine.
Work your way towards the front.
I'll be with you the whole way.
	do you get nerves?	Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-03
		Decryption Successful
yeah
we all did
once i start moving i'm okay
	gil?
St. fucking Gil
don't make too much of him		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-04
		Decryption Successful
	yru here then?	Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-05
		Decryption Successful
Broke
	!!! Should I run?!?	Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-06
		Decryption Successful
listen, all that's going to happen is
you're going to walk out of the building		Interecepted Transmission
like you do every day		Encrypted Image-07
at the end of the day		Decryption Successful
there's nothing for the cameras to see.
	ok
i promise
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-08
		Decryption Successful
	Gils dead isnt here
	That’s why he isnt here
Tayna
	They got him
You've got to keep moving, Tayna
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-09
		Decryption Successful
	Truth
Yeah
	That’s why you're here instead of
	him.
yeah
	Elliot
	tell me this is important
	tell me it wl make a diference
tayna		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-10
		Decryption Successful
	tell me. Pls
	Elliot?
Tayna, you are a good person trying to		Interecepted Transmission
do the right thing		Encrypted Image-11
		Decryption Successful
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-12
		Decryption Successful
Tayna, don't be nervous. You don't		Interecepted Transmission
have to blink so fast.		Encrypted Image-13
The guards on the other side of that		Decryption Successful
door have no idea you are smuggling
anything out of the building.
	scared
they can't tell. I promise.
	okay
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-14
		Decryption Successful
Just walk right through.
The micro drive won't show up on their
equipment
Try not to activate the camera again until
you're outside.
Good! You made it out the door!
	Outside. 2 mor guards. Trouble!!!	Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-15
		Decryption Successful
Shit. Worst case -- they KNOW: just
waiting for you to officially commit the
crime by leaving the building.
Steady. I can see you now		Interecepted Transmission
I'm across the street in the white van.		Encrypted Image-16
Tayna, that guard walking up to you.		Decryption Successful
If he's talking about doing a background
check scratch your nose		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-17
Shit.		Decryption Successful
honey, don't be scared. i'm going to get
you out of this.
Don't stand between the two guards.
Get to one side!
Gonna run the fuckers down.
	Elliott!!!
do good, T
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-18
		Decryption Successful
SIGNAL LOST		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-19
		Decryption Successful
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-20
		Decryption Successful
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-21
		Decryption Successful
		Interecepted Transmission
		Encrypted Image-22
		Decryption Successful
		Signal lost.
Signal lost.
Subject evaded capture
Accomplice presumed dead: rescue crew determining status
End of file.

Bardsley, G (accomplice surveillance underway) / Accomplice - Carraig, E - surveillance

Confiscated upon searching apartment of Carraig, E. (deceased)
w/reference to GB

Lunch w/Travis
- Girl has access to Cedocore docs, Important
Resistance shit
- she was talking to Gil, doesn't know he's been picked up
- get her + docs past Ced security

never trust a lawyer especially one with a cause

No

G's sacrifice blahblahblah
I'm throwing life away

I, old man, you're a righteous fucker
throw some girl under the bus for
the fucking Resistance
revolutionary = bastard

$20,000, $5,000 now, $15,000 when finished
this sandwich is gross
Why do this? me --> shallow asshole --> Capital G

notes.htm

Confiscated upon searching apartment of Carraig, E. (deceased)
w/reference to GB

U.S. Bureau of Morality
One Nation Under God

1/31/0000

Carraig, Elliot

This is to inform you that your citizenship point total has dropped below 1,000.

Your current CPT is

851

The following privileges have been restricted or revoked,

Credit

Your CPT is calculated against a standard for your age, medical condition, genomic index and expected social integration. You can improve your CPT by (the following are major issues extracted from your lifestyle database),

Employment
Marriage
Chuch attendance

If you feel you have received this notice in error, you may contest.

elliot.htm

Confiscated upon searching apartment of Carraig, E. (deceased)
w/reference to GB

MaxAmerica Credit & Securities

Opening/Closing Date       01/01/0000 - 01/31/0000
Payment Due Date           02/19/0000

Carraig, Elliot

Minimum Payment Due for Credit Access Line	$	11,488.00
Past Due Amount	$	.00
Total Minimum Payment Due	$	11,488.00

MaxAmerica Credit Summary

Previous Balance	$12,274.00		Credit Access Line	$1,000.00
Purchaces, Cash, Debits	214.00		Available Credit	00.00

credit.htm

Confiscated upon searching apartment of Carraig, E. (deceased)
w/reference to GB

Travis

I met Tayna. I picked her up about 11:00pm and I said I just wanted to get to know her so and I took her to the grocery because I thought, well Gil loved to go to the grocery at you know two in the morning. He loved that it was such a weird time. I hadn't done it in a long time. Since Gil disappeared if you want to know the truth. I didn't realize how much I thought of the grocery store as Gil's. We used to go as this big bachelor group with Laural playing Wnedy to the lost boys.

Gil would ride the shopping carts. Buy weird shit. I'd be saying we were going to get kicked out.

They're still there, the night shoppers. The freaks and geeks the junkies and the prostitutes. We ran into a couple of drag queens and since I was wearing the heads up glasses and I could take a picture, I did. 'What are yuo looking at?' the one asked me and I got embarassed and looked away and they hooted. Gil would have flashed them a smile and something like 'Girls, you look fabulous' and for all I know we'd have ended up doing shots and a beer with them at some bar that was open at four in the morning for the third shift guys at the plant, us with a couple of beefy drag queens.

I may have gotten a little choked. Because he wasn't here. A new set of kids was there. And me. I was not one of them. I was some weid dude who didn't belong anywhere.

I told Tayna to stand there and I'd take her picture with the specs. She was about freezing to death in that skimpy top because of course the grocery store is cold. She'd left her jacket in the car.

That's her, Travis.

She was a fucking secretary with a life and a boyfriend. I can just imagine your line of bullshit, the pressure, the sad stories about your son. Acting like you cared about her, like you care about America. All you care about is getting even.

Look at the girl you're willing to send to Exterminal on the off chance it might do some good to your precious revolution.

Take a good look.

I hope you can't sleep at night, you fucker.

gil.htm

GB's group "The Spiders" -- documentation prior to first death of a member

City Vote to Restrict Use of Traffic Cameras

Jan 6, 0000

Spiders Win!

In a 7 to 4 vote yesterday, City Council decided to reduce the number of traffic cameras downtown to less than 200, all of which will be concentrated at intersections. The measure is expected to reduce costs by as much as $15,000 per year.

Duncomb says that the city has spent in excess of $20,000 cleaning and replacing cameras. "There are over 1,000 cameras in the downtown and people are voting with spray cans," he says. "I think the cameras have a place in intersections where they can be legitimately used for traffic control."

City cameras were brought to the public eye by a stunt last July. Downtown commuters coming to work say about 120 traffic cameras covered in streamers or spray painted with a balloon attached. The cameras were all out of commission for several hours as city workers removed the streamers and cleaned the paint off the camera lenses.

"I never realized there were so many of them," said Jo Ickert. "You can't go anywhere without being on one."

Although City officials explained that the cameras were used to control crime as well as traffic. The public backlash was unexpected.

Travis Woodgate brought suit against the city, alleging that giving speeding tickets based on evidence from a camera is unconstitutional. Judge Casey Solera found that use of the camears violated a state law with conflicting burdens of proof of guilt. People received tickets simply because they were the registered owner of the motor vehicle.

The Judge said that by requiring the drive to prove someone else was driving the car at the time of the violation, the ordinance "stood the presumption of innocence and the burden-of-proof requirement on their heads."

The city appealed and the ruling was overturned. But City Councilman Lenny Duncomb proposed a motion to restrict downtown surveillance to intersections. "I'm all for safety," he says, "but people feel that there are too many cameras and that they are invastive."

Since that time, however, cameras have been less systematically defaced or destroyed. Several people have been caught by other cameras. The city police believe that none of those arrests are linked with the original crime.

camera.htm

GB’s group “The Spiders” – documentation prior to first death of a member

Diary of a Revolutionary

By Elliot B. Carraig

I sit in my room typing this, with the typewriter bell signalling the end of every line because it is unsafe to use a computer in this day and age. I am hoping that whoever reads this some day lives in a time that is better than this one in a better time than this one.

I started typing this stupid thing last August and even then it I knew it was shit. We thought were were big bad revolutionaries because we spray painted traffic cameras and published the governor's private phone number in the want ads of the paper in a fake phone sex ad. because we were striking a fucking blow for the downtrodden and face it Elliot you thought that revolutionaries got laid like in the movies. Now Ian is dead and you have to face the music that someone died for what are basically pranks.

Ian was a good friend. Him and his fucking obsession with bugs and his fucking zoology degree. A gay black guy with a zoology degree. Could anybody have been lonelier?

fuck this i'm drunk

journal.htm

GB’s group “The Spiders” – documentation prior to first death of a member

The Spiderhouse

Tuesday is Slider Nite
Beer is half off and bar burgers are $1.00

At the corner of Dempster and Sterling Ave.
Sun - Thurs 11:00am - 11:00pm
Fri - Sat 11:00am - 1:00am

bar.htm

GB’s group “The Spiders” – documentation prior to first death of a member

Spiderhouse Rules

1. No phone or computer communication. It's always bugged.
2. Don't drink before a mission.
3. If we get separated, meet behind the doughnut place on Dempster.
4. If cops stop you, ask if you are under arrest.
   If no, walk away. If yes, call Travis
5. Carry no ID

rules.htm

Confiscated from the office of Travis Woodgate, currently at large

For Travis
Date Jan 10

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

M Elliott

Came to see you

Message L says Gil didn't go come home Sunday

phonemsg.htm

GB’s group “The Spiders” – documentation prior to first death of a member

Traffic Stalled by Tragic End to High Speed Chase

Traffic was tied up on the beltway for hours during yesterday's rush hour as the result of the fatal end to a police high speed chase. Police say Ian Menasco, 24, fled the scene after a scan at a routine traffic stop showed that his nerochip had been illegally altered. Police are not sure how he altered the programming on his nerochip.

Police spokesman Josaiah Fernstaedt said that this highlights the need for better monitoring. "Nerochips protect American citizens by making it clear who is here legally and who is not. When people tamper with or remove their nerochip, they are making it harder for us to identify people from outside the country who mean us harm."

Menasco was on probation for distribution of subversive materials. He worked for Conniker Systems as an environmental analyst. Conniker Systems, who has contracts with the state to monitor water pollution levels, did not respond to request for comments.

ian.htm

Confiscated upon searching apartment of Carraig, E. (deceased) w/reference to GB

It had been, counting back, eighteen days since anyone had heard from Gil. We were all pretty sure he'd been sent to the Exterminal. Which meant it was probably only a matter of time before they tortued him and broke him and we were all disappeared.

Walking down the street, my shoulders hiked up around my ears, waiting for the van to pull up behind me and someone leap out and throw a bag over my head. I dreamed at night of waterboarding. In the shower, once, I soaked my washcloath and put it over my face and breathed in--

I would break, I knew, in a heartbeat.

So when the knock came on my door my first thought was, Here they are. But it wasn't the cops or the BoM. It was Laurel.

My first thought was that she'd heard from Gil, but from the look on her face, if she had, it was bad. I was living in a studio apartment, one of those ones that aren't quite a basement apartment because they have windows high up on the wall. All day while I was writing code I could see feet walking past my window on the sidewalk. I was a fucking connoisseur of shoes.

Laurel was wearing boots because of the snow. She had on an old down coat and her hair needed washing and she still made me feel so much that it was like I was sick with her. Like she was an illness I had caught. Which was stupid because she was Gil's and Gil was my best friend and yada yada yada water under the bridge, been there done that. I know she knew. Everyone else always pretended not to know I was hopeless about her. At least to my face.

The first words out of her mouth were, "Elliot, I'm sorry, I didn't know where else to go."

I scooped up dirty clothes off the only arm chair and dumped them on the bed (actually a fold-out couch but I never closed it, because no one ever came to my place.) I was sure the place smelled funky. It always did when I first came in, but I was so used to it that I immediately stopped noticing.

"I'm pregnant," she said.

"Gil's?" I said, although it wasn't a question.

laurel.htm

0.
Things matter more when you have to work for them.  This matters to me.  I want it to matter to you, too, so I’m going to make you work. 
 
This is page zero.  Now find page 1.
 
The answer will always have something to do with a word somewhere on the page you’re reading.  In this case, I’ve even highlighted that word for you.  In the future, I might not.
 
Read everything carefully, I promise it will be important—life and death important.
 
1 - > opposite

0/

what is the opposite of work?

1.
Last night.

It’s snowing in Cleveland. When I was a girl, that used to happen a lot in early February. Now, not so much. Well, you remember.

I open a window in the office. I’m at the peak of the rush right now: my skin so hypersensitive even a silk blouse feels like sandpaper. The taste of batteries fills my mouth and the smell of snow is overpowering.

Wake up at 4:30, get to the rink by 5:15, two hours of practice before breakfast. Skates laced so tight my feet go numb. Cold leather, cold ice, stiff fingers, Madame Olga’s fat sleepy eyes and cigarettes.

A cascade of memories, all dense with smells: exhaust fumes waiting at the bus stop, latex gloves stinking of bleach, the harsh chemical tang of the decon team at the Star Chamber. And before that, when we first walked in: the smell of 112 bodies two days dead.

That must have been what it smelled like after 2/22. Thousands of cars parked on the LA freeways, windows rolled up. The ultimate American coffins, I-5 like a new Arlington, glossy tombstones by Chevy and Honda and BMW.

Is that why I took the job when they offered it? Partly. I lost something that day.

I hate to lose.

*

A flake of snow comes in from the night sky: lands on my arm like a white wasp: stings.

Time to go.

For obvious security reasons, they don’t let us take our computers home from The Office. This one time, that’s going to work out well for me.

Step 1: take a new gelled hydrogen power cell and swap it out for the old one in my machine. The point here is—

--well, I’ll get to that in time.

2 -> it has six letters, all in alphabetical order

0/play

look through the text to find a word that matches the condition

2.
Eleven years ago.

The recruiter was a non-entity: middle-aged, average height, no particular accent. The sort of guy you couldn’t pick out of a line-up if he’d backed over your dog with his SUV the week before. “You stopped skating at age 16?”

“What? I thought this was a clerical job.”

“Junior Analyst I,” he said.

“Why do you care?” I frowned. “I never mentioned anything about skating on my application.”

“We looked it up.” He didn’t look away from his computer screen.

One of my high school counselors used to tell me I should include skating on my resumes and college applications. People assume high-performance athletes are very self-motivated people and hard workers, although in my experience “neurotic people with very intense parents” is closer to the mark.

“You quit after 2/22,” he said. “Why?”

I lied. It’s just something I do. I’m good at it, because I am usually careful to make my lies out of as much truth as possible.

“They changed the scoring system,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“In the old scoring system, you started with a perfect score and then all you could do was fail. It was like life. But there was a scandal and they brought in the Code of Points system, where you score for doing jumps and turns and so forth. Like merit badges.”

“Merit badges?”

“Girl Scout merit badges.”

“I see.” He looked back at his computer and I had the funny feeling he was reading an entry about the time I got thrown out of the Girl Scouts. And that he knew the Code of Points system had become mandatory three years before 2/22.

“And that’s why you quit?”

I looked at him. “Mostly. Plus, when you get boobs it throws off your rotations and you have to relearn everything. Most of the girls are on drugs to keep them from hitting puberty, but …”

“Really?” he said. As if for the first time I’d said something that clicked with him. “Interesting.” *

—Interrupt:

Four days ago.

I am in a toilet stall in the bathroom of a nice French restaurant. I slip the top off a disposable syringe, kick off one shoe, and stick the needle through my pantyhose, into the webbing between the big toe on my left foot and the toe next to it. The stuff in the syringe is redder than my blood.

By the time I throw away the needle in the special garbage for Feminine Products my salivary glands are starting to clench.

Needles, swabs, pills, pain, abuse, sweat, tears.

Loneliness.

You always pay a price to perform. *

—Resume:

Eleven years ago…

I figured the recruiter knew I was lying and I was screwed because not only would I not get the job, but even if I caught all my buses perfectly I was going to be late for my shift in the Produce Section. I hated Produce, but it was still better than working the registers. “Are we almost done, here?” I said. “I just want a chance to help my country.” (And get on the government health care plan because my Mom’s a drunk and lost her coverage and I wouldn’t be covered in another three months anyway. But why mention that?) “This is my fifth interview in the last three days, not counting the entrance exams and the supplementary exam and two personality inventories, and to be honest I’m losing a ton of hours at SuperStockit.”

“Have you ever handled a gun?”

And for once the recruiter looked away from his computer screen, right at me. That forgettable face. I can’t even remember the color of his eyes.

I said, “What job is this again?”

“Junior Analyst I,” he said.

Turns out there are people in the world a lot better at lying than me.

Not that this is any surprise to you.

3 -> “what you really want to be remembered for”

0/glossy

google "what you really want to be remembered for" and look at the results

3.
Three years ago.

After my third mandatory Foreign Field Rotation I got transferred home to Cleveland. Mom was having drinking problems and I needed to be nearby.

So I set up shop in the Cleveland Branch. Nothing about it looks covert, high-tech, or lethal. The sign on the door says we are the Federal Print Document Control. We even have some people who actually work on printed matter from the Farm Bureau about things like the use of Fipronil on Fire Ant mounds.

The women (it’s mostly women) who work in the printing portion of the office are in a kind of strange gray area. They have to have clearance, but they’re not operatives. I think some of them are washouts. Lots of people here have clearance who aren’t operatives. The administrative staff. Even Dwayne has to have clearance. I like Dwayne. Everyone I work with is very smart, very intense, hi-I’m-just-a-nice-guy-who-happens-to-know-seven-ways-to-kill-a-man-with-a-stick-of-chewing gum kind of intense.

And then there’s Dwayne in his dickies, fifty-something, replacing the toilet paper, offering to meet me for a beer and show me how a mature man is way more fun than those callow kids my age. He drives me nuts, but in such a normal way, I almost like it when he comes over and sits on the edge of my desk and says, “What’s shaking, beautiful?” He carries around this twenty-sided die and he fiddles with it all the time. Takes it out of his pocket and spins it. Apparently he was into D&D when he was a kid. Yikes.

When I first start at The Office, Dwayne is trying to patent an invention that tells you where your TV remote is when you can’t find it. He thinks he’ll be a billionaire. He knows he’s meant for bigger things than maintenance. “Listen, hotshots,” he says, “you guys are dedicated to a cause and all that, but me, I’m an entrepreneur.” He explains to me a lot about the entrepreneurial view of the world, how the entrepreneur sees life as a series of opportunities.

Wonder how that patent is coming.

4 -> made up of only the same four letters, repeated.

0/goldaward

look through the text to find a word that matches the condition

4.
Thirteen years ago.

My little sister, Tina, was down in LA with friends. I was stuck at home because I had a competition next weekend.

Mom said, You’re used to things revolving around your schedule, Bianca. Maybe it’s time you weren’t the center of attention.

I hated her so much.

Mom and Dad were watching the Academy Awards when the bomb went off. I was doing homework. I had to train at the rink every afternoon so I only went to regular school until lunchtime and did the rest of my classes by correspondence.

Mom called Tina on the cell phone they got her just for the trip and she said she was okay, she was in a car with her friend Laila and Laila’s parents and as soon as the traffic cleared they were going to drive up to San Francisco and get a plane home from there.

Tina called later, when everyone was choking and she was having trouble, too, and Mom kept saying, baby, I’m here, baby, it’s going to be all right.

*

The guy in the hazmat suit that they interviewed on TV said that all the time they were checking cars, they kept hearing cell phones ringing. Lines of cars pulled every which way on the freeway with spray paint on the windshields saying that they were checked and how many dead were in them. Phones ringing and ringing, saying, pick up, please pick up, please. I called her, even after Mom and Dad stopped I snuck into my room and called and called.

5 -> the missing direction

0/hotshots

the first direction mentioned is 'up'

5.
11 years ago.

This is what happens when you are a Junior Analyst I.

Physical Training
This was the easy part.

There were a few guys in my group who were high school athletes—a basketball player and a couple of offensive linemen from pretty good football teams. Football is a tough sport, but it’s not on the same planet as figure skating.

All over the country little girls in pink dresses get up at 4 in the morning and spend many hours every day training to go as fast as they can and then throw themselves into the air and land on a surface like greased concrete. Figure skating is like NASCAR: the crashes are the only thing that matters. The difference is, the little girls don’t get seat belts or helmets. We also have to smile when it’s over.

Physical discipline is a habit. Enduring pain is a habit. The football players asked to be transferred out of my group.

I kicked ass at the physical training.

Skills
Turned out that I liked guns. I didn’t think I would, but I did.

If you have a girlfriend who doesn’t want to ruin the cut of her jacket or the outline of her purse, I highly recommend the old Glock36 slimline. All the stopping power, no unsightly pantylines.

Tradecraft
Codes, drops, surveillance, security, informants and how to run them. Reduced to its essence, tradecraft is all about lying—with words, or computer programs, or body language, or bank statements.

Lying and catching other people’s lies.

Waiting.

This was the hard part for me. It took me years to learn how to wait. Years and years.

In a funny way, I’m only just now figuring it out. And I learned from you.

*

Step 2: puncture the oxygen line into the power cell and cover the hole with a piece of masking tape.

6 -> N1*N2*N3*N4

0/left

multipy 4 numbers found in the text

6.
Six years ago.

My first actual kill. It was a Munich job, this 2/22 North Korean that grew up in LA. I begged to be on the case. Because of Tina, obviously. The whole reason I applied to The Office in the first place.

This Korean guy, Jun “Chopper” Park, came out of the LA street art scene, but somewhere along the line developed a hard-on for Kim Il-Song, apparently. Takes all kinds. He’d gone on the lam after 2/22, spent time in Asia, finally came back into the US on a fake passport and was holed up in some crap motel in Oahu.

Like shooting fish in a barrel, Antolos said. Antolos was my partner on the project. He’d lost an uncle in 2/22, so it was personal for him too, but not like me. I think I scared him a little bit, with my intensity.

I spent the flight to Hawaii imagining how I would kill this guy. One of my favorites was, I would walk in on him cleaning his gun and hold my aim while he scrambled to put it back together, and just as he was about to slide the last piece into place – Bam! Bam! Bam!

When we found the hotel we got the room number. In the hallway I said, “mine” and Antolos just nodded. He understood. We have a mag card that works like a skeleton key on any hotel door in the US. Useful. I took it out.

I came into the room gun high. Park was jerking off. It was surreal and kind of pathetic. He looked at me for half a second. Not even shocked or scared, just embarrassed.

I flipped my gun to semi-automatic and blew his head off.

I felt like a cop on a TV show and I tried to think of one of those snappy “look who got the last word” one-liners. But everything I thought of sounded lame, so I bent over and threw up my breakfast instead.

Antolos stepped in behind me and stared for a minute. “Christ, Sherer. Talk about getting caught with your pants down.”

I’d never seen brains scattered around like that. I let myself heave one more time and then clamped down, forced myself to stand up and walk out of the room. I holstered my gun because I was shaking so hard I was afraid I’d fire it accidentally.

I got a commendation on my record.

7 -> Adding 1 letter to the end turns a 1 syllable word to 3

0/3168

the letter you're adding is 'o'

7.
18 months ago.

They call it the copper.

You have to inject it every few days, which can leave embarrassing traces. They told us to try shooting up between the webs of your toes. Most people don’t look there.

When I signed up to defend my country, I don’t remember this being in the brochure.

It’s supposed to be a vaccine against the IA’s ‘red horse’ bio-weapon. Apparently all the Higher Ups are on it—the Board of Directors at Cedocore and Halli-Bech, Vox Chairman, POTUS, the NEC Synod. I guess I should feel honored.

Trouble is, the vaccine is still in alpha. There are side effects.

Physically, the first hour after you shoot up your skin gets unbelievably sensitive. The glands at the back of your mouth keep squeezing out the taste of batteries, and when you spit, you spit orange. Orange tears, too. Orange snot when you have a cold.

The mental effects are a little harder to deal with.

You don’t want to go out … big open spaces feel … exposed. It feels better to be close to walls. You like the lights dim.

I came back to my apartment one night after a double shift, flicked on the kitchen light, saw the cockroaches running for the baseboards. That’s me, now, if I have a choice.

Sometimes I get a laugh imagining what a Board meeting at Halli-Bech must be like. A big table in some conference room with nobody exactly sitting at it: twenty chairs pushed back against the wall. Twenty old white guys in sunglasses. Nobody meeting anybody else’s eyes. Silverfish in pin-striped suits.

The copper makes you paranoid, too. Or maybe that’s the job. After a few months, it’s hard to tell the two apart.

8 -> … fear of …

0/cameo

what is the fear of open spaces?

8.
3 days ago.

I leave for work at different times every morning, and I take a bunch of different routes to work and back home. Basic tradecraft, never leave at the same time or go home at the same time. Don’t take the same route every day. Every so often I see Dwayne’s piece-of-crap yellow 4 by 4. Sometimes I park in the lot, sometimes I park on a side street.

This time I parked two blocks away. I’m walking through the parking lot, I notice a new car: Honda sedan with Maryland plates. I look in the window. Totally ordinary car interior, except the driver’s seat has what looks like a satin pillow case over the cloth upholstery.

Dwayne’s getting into the elevator as I get out. “An old friend of yours is in town for a visit, Toots.” It’s probably the first time someone has been called “Toots” in the 21st century. Dwayne’s breath smells like beer and burgers with extra onions. He scowls over at my cubicle.

Antolos is there, grinning at me. Looking great. Smooth and clean and shiny as a bullet.

I freeze. Beside me, Dwayne spins his twenty-sided die on the palm of his hand, scoops it up, shrugs and scratches himself in a manly place. “Sure, he’s good looking. But it ain’t the tools,” he says. “It’s the plumber, baby.”

Antolos takes me out to lunch, says he doesn’t work for The Office anymore, wonders if I would be interested in a job. I shoot up in the bathroom between the entrée and dessert and when I get back to the table with my heightened sense of smell I can now catch the faint whiff of battery acid on his clothes. He is definitely on the copper, too, but the smell is very faint. He must not have shot up in two or three days.

Maybe he’s lying to me, trying to entrap me. Maybe he’s just a nice guy.

I tell him I’m happy with my current job. I’m lonely, but the drug is crawling under my skin, so I flinch like a burn victim where the cuffs of my silk shirt rub against my wrists. Paranoid, I wedge myself back as far into the booth as I can get and think about what I would do to him with my fork if he started to pull a gun.

“Copper?” he says, when nobody is listening.

“Couldn’t trust you if I wanted to,” I say. Apologetic.

He understands. “Too bad.”

*

The next morning I asked what I would have to do to retire. Turns out this job comes with more baggage than you’d think. Leaving aside the classified information I know, copper is only administered to people on the federal payroll. I figured I could just do without and take my chances if the Red Horse got out of the barn, but it turns out—and this is the funny part—it turns out the copper rewires you pretty savagely. Enough that withdrawal is fatal.

So much for looking for work in the private sector.

9 -> It has 7 musical notes

0/agoraphobia

a seven letter word made up of some combination of the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G

9.
Two days ago.

I was in bed when the report came in from the Star Chamber. First the DCS started sniffing keywords texting out of the location. Then there was a beat cop report. We had been at FP Con Charlie for Red Horse for months; within 30 seconds of listening to the phone scans I knew what was happening.

I used the drill channel to the local cops and ordered them there at full speed, no sirens, no radio, no warning of any kind. I told them to get there, use their tasers to drop anyone leaving the building, and as soon as they could get into position, I said, they had to lock the place down. Nobody in or out.

God have mercy on my soul.

I ran to my car and floored it, rocketing through the empty streets, wondering how we were going to track down everyone who got out of the building before the cops could arrive. I wasn’t sure which was worse: thinking about the people I had just condemned to death, the ones who were going to tear each other to pieces—or thinking about the guy dropping his subversive music down a storm drain as he hurried back to his dorm room, or the girl hiding her tattoo as she snuck back to her parents’ house, not knowing they might be vectors for biological terrorism on a scale we could barely imagine.

Two minutes before I arrived on scene, the night operator at The Office got a weather report from Virginia in best Langley style: 100% accurate forecast of something that had already happened.

The first cops were already on the scene. One of them had tasered someone coming through a door and was looking sick about it. Padlocks were on and they were starting to string yellow tape.

The sounds coming from inside were something out of your worst dream.

I stayed in the background, watching until everything was boarded up and locked down. When I couldn’t stand the screaming any more I left. Instead of going home I went back to The Office, sat down in my cubicle and watched the news crawlers for signs of an outbreak somewhere else. Hour after hour.

No outbreak came.

By noon the next day we were beginning to smile. By six that evening there was another commendation on my record.

It was a miracle.

10 -> made up of one of one, two of another and three of a third.

0/baggage

six letter word with three of one letter, two of another letter, and one of a third letter

10.
When you’re on copper, it’s hard to believe in miracles.

Step 3: Affix a model rocket igniter and 10 second fuse to the masking tape. They have ‘em at any decent hobby store.

11 -> +zinc

0/tattoo

what is copper plus zinc?

11.
Yesterday Morning

Dwayne was parking his 4 by 4 when I drove into the lot. I smiled and he waved back. Apparently he had forgiven me for making eyes at Antolos. I was a little flirtier than usual. He liked that. I made small talk, asked him where he drove in from. He said some place in Lakewood and I asked him if it wasn’t easier to come in I90 and he said yeah but this morning he had stopped to make an appointment with his mechanic and come in another way.

“Listen,” I said. “When Gus Antolos was here—that guy, you remember—did he go anywhere else in the building?”

“I think he was down in the dungeon for a while,” Dwayne said.

“Clean rooms, or interrogation, or the pen?”

Dwayne shrugged.

“Did you notice anything unusual when you were cleaning up?”

“Sorry.” Dwayne was beginning to look puzzled, his radar blank.

“No…flowers, or anything?”

Enlightenment dawned. Dwayne looked at me seriously. “Listen, baby, creeps like that, they’ll break your heart. You need an older man. Somebody settled down.”

I did my best to look disappointed. “Maybe you’re right.”

*

Some days Dwayne is gone by 4:45, but that night he stayed until 5:18 exactly. I watched the other cars pull out of the lot one by one, and then went down into the dungeon. Everything seemed to be in order, but then, it would.

I didn’t know what I was looking for until a found it almost two hours later. In the dumpster behind the building, a pair of latex gloves that smelled like bleach.

12 -> able was I ere…

0/brass

'able was I ere I saw elba' is a famous palindrome

12.
Yesterday Early Morning

I tried to book a 5 AM slot at my local rink yesterday but it was already taken by some hotshot Ukrainian pairs coach. Finally I begged for the 4:30 – 5:00 slot, told the guy I knew where the lights were and he could leave the key under a mat outside the back entrance.

Cold ice, cold boards, old skates I hadn’t put on in years. Lacing them up with a skate key, tight as tourniquets around my ankles.

Steel hissing on the ice.

The trouble with paranoia is, once you start, there’s nowhere to go but down.

Here’s the thing: no further outbreaks of Red Horse.

Meaning, everybody who contracted the disease stayed in the building. Everyone who got away, got out before they were breathed on or bled on or what have you. Thank god.

Sometimes miracles happen.

But recreate the situation. A jihadist (or his victim) is strung out on Red Horse. He plunges into a crowded nightclub. A fight breaks out. A few people are cut. Maybe a couple of people die. Maybe the bouncers step in. Maybe somebody calls the cops or the ambulance. There’s a crowd, because there is always a crowd. And there are runners, because there are always runners.

Nobody exposed to the virus tries to get out of there before the cops and EMT’s arrive? Of course they do. Of course they do.

Only the doors are locked.

The only way the equation makes sense is if the doors were locked before I ordered them locked.

If they were locked the minute the vector went downstairs.

I still take responsibility for ordering them all to die. That happened.

But somebody else was there before me.

*

The thing about competitive figure skating is, there are no secrets. Not in competition. You go out into the circle of blazing light in front of a panel of judges and ten thousand people in the stands and there is no place to hide. For four minutes, it is the most exposed place on the planet.

And for that reason, in a strange way, the cleanest.

*

It was good to feel the ice under me again. At first I stayed close to the boards, getting my legs back. I ramped it up, skating fast, crossover turns, my elbows brushing the fiberglass. A half-turn, skating backwards now, still faster than most hockey players can skate going forwards. Madame Olga used to make money teaching hockey players how to skate. Raced them at the beginning of every camp, dumpy in her furs and chain smoking. Every year another generation of guys drop-jawed to learn that on the best day of their lives they can’t skate with a fat middle-aged figure skater.

For some reason, it was very difficult to get away from the boards and skate into the middle of the ice.

*

If you accept that the nightclub doors were locked as soon as the vector went into the building, everything gets simple. Black, but simple.

A terrorist wants a plague to spread, doesn’t he? He doesn’t want it contained.

Or say he does. Say this is a warning shot across our bow. Wouldn’t our terrorist try … a government office? An army base? A school gymnasium? Doesn’t it seem odd that an IA operative would target a pack of college kids full of dissident ideals?

*

The worst thing about paranoia is that you don’t know when to stop. Because if we set up the business in the Star Chamber, what else might we set up?

Chopper Park was part of the gang that pulled off 2/22. I know that because it said so in his dossier. The dossier that gave the greenlight to go Munich on him. Written by the people who picked me to take the lead, take the shot.

*

Around and around the edge of the rink. Lights dim because I couldn’t stand them bright. The horrible naked feeling in my shoulder blades, like someone had a scope on me.

The click and hiss and scrape of steel on ice. The sound of my breathing, getting louder. Head down. Heart pounding.

Around and around. Around and around.

*

What were Gus’s orders? What would he have done if I had decided to take Park back to the mainland for interrogation?

*

Only the hiss of skate blades in the darkness. And I never could force myself to fly out into the middle of the ice, and jump.

Just circled the baseboards in the dark, leaving little orange teardrops on the ice.

Around and around.

*

Who killed my sister? Really?

13 -> all the vowels

0/radar

find the word with A, E, I, O, and U in it

13.
Today, lunch time

Me just back from hazmat duty, stomach wrung out from retching. People in The Office are arguing about the best place to get cole slaw.

Gwen says, Hey Dwayne, I’m getting lunch, you want something from the deli? He glances at the menu and rolls his die and says, yeah, get me a turkey sandwich.

*

Step 4: Wire the igniter to a key…

14 -> cabbage king’s mood

0/equation

a fun one. what is made out of cabbage? add king to get close to the name of a nursery rhyme and say the first line.

14.
Early this evening

Dwayne left at 4:47 exactly.

Took a swing by the dungeon. No sign of Gus. Out in the parking lot, no sign of the Honda with the satin pillowcase on the driver’s seat. Used some tradecraft. Found something I wasn’t supposed to see.

Can’t say my hopes were dashed. Can’t say I was surprised at all.

*

Someone has to watch the watchers. Someone really good. Someone the watchers will never suspect.

Someone that doesn’t need the drug to make him paranoid. Who has another trick for never driving the same way twice, never leaving work at the same time, never ordering the same item off the deli menu.

*

For the record, I never joined the service because I loved the game. Some do. They are the athletes of betrayal. They don’t need patriotism or money or fame to do what they do. They lie and cheat and betray for the love of the game itself.

It’s at least clean.

I was never like that. I wanted to protect my country. I wanted to keep Mom and Dad from getting divorced. I wanted to make it up to Tina that I hated her for going to LA and then she died. You can’t afford to hate the people you love, even for a moment, because they can be taken from you.

What I’m saying is, I’m not like you. I’m just an amateur.

But I still like to win.

You should know that you are not the only person reading this. The first, but not the last.

15 -> past present

0/merry

past tense of the first word + present tense of the second. google for the aproximate symbol

Form 2699-012a
Authorization to Schedule Operative
For File Only

Expiration Dated: Feb 9, 0000

Authorization matches biometric data.
Internal Security is authorized to expedite expiration.

Name of Operative:	Sherer, Bianca
Reason for Expiration:	Operative is unstable. In the last 48 hours, she has accessed information beyond her security clearance level. Given her tendency to operate alone, she is unlikely to maintain stability in controlled non-operative position: recommend liquidation. Ready to proceed on approval.
Recommending Officer:	Dwayne Vacheresse, Internal Security, Cleveland Field
Approval:	Chad Ulberg, Office Director, Cleveland Field
Approval:	Shayne Brudner, Assistant Director, BoM Wash. Office

STATUS: APPROVED

0/2699-012a-Sherer.htm

15.
10 minutes ago.

… Say you wired the ~ key.

When it’s hit, it will burn to the igniter which will eat through the tape and ignite the gelled hydrogen inside.

If someone is reading a very very small font, their face is likely to be closer to the monitor when it blows up.

You lived to betray. Tonight you die for it.

16 -> works backwards

0/~

find the word that forms another word when read backwards

16.
As far as the rest of you bastards go, I have sent a copy of this report to Another Version of the Truth. Whatever happens to me, the word will get out. Meanwhile, I have all the copper from the dispensary downstairs, enough to last three months if I’m careful. I have a Glock 36 and everything you taught me.

Catch me if you can.

0/devil