Some Election...Some Danger I leave the country for eleven months and look what happens! A black man is elected President. This is incredible and unbelievable. This is also terrible. Let me explain. "The Powers That Be," the people who I'm working against, the people who held me prisoner for the last eleven months, poured a lot of money and effort into making sure Republicans stayed in power, so they could continue their evil plots. Republicans could be bought off and made to look the other way. Most of the Democrats running for office also had been compromised. But not Barack Obama. He was a complete wild card they couldn't anticipate. As of a few months ago, while I was putting the pieces of The Plot together, they completely discounted the ability of a black man to gain the Presidency. They figured it was a fluke or a fad. People would get tired of him. They even tried to plant incriminating evidence against him, but those reports got buried deep in blogs no one reads. It became almost impossible to divert that kind of funding without jeopardising McCain's run. They really underestimated the peoples' anger at the current administration. I fear that the result of this election will be to move up the timetable even more while George Bush is still in office. They will be afraid that when Barack is inaugurated, he'll find The Plot and put and end to it...even it means WWIII. But I'm going to fight it. I'm doing everything I can to put a stop to it. If I could get in touch with Obama I would. Maybe someone can point this blog to him. He needs to know what's about to happen. Things that you take for granted are about to be shattered. I'm only a couple days away from my destination. Travelling by fishing boat is not the fastest commute I've been on but it's giving me time to write this up. When I get there I'll get a better sense of what we're really up against. Meanwhile let me catch you all up. As I entered our work area, I hadn't decided what to do. I could certainly set my foes up for at least a beating. Something inside me hesitated. I really wanted some revenge but it seemed like a dangerous precedent. I knew I couldn't trust the others in the room but a constant battle would most likely leave everyone dead...a lot sooner than we'd die otherwise. It had been weeks since the last "example" although I felt that was more due to our work becoming more important to them rather than a lack of fuck ups. There did seem to be a growing level of patience with us...as if we were providing invaluable data that they dared not mess with. But I couldn't let the betrayal go unpunished. I heard the snickering as I walked into the room. To my relief it appeared Misty arrived unscathed and she shot me a quick glance and brief smile. My first task was to undo the damage from yesterday. Fortunately Misty quickly pointed to a bunch of hints and I discovered the infected files and removed them. As I started to catch up on my workload I coded up a script and silently deployed it. The leader of this little gang was a Belgian named Franz Hendricks. He led the team responsible for detecting instant-message patterns. He divided the tasks among his team. I shifted the task list so all the tasks fell on one guy. This of course is not one of the capabilities I'm supposed to have. Within minutes the guy starts bitching and moaning. Franz fixes the issue and redistributes the tasks. I give them to another guy who again starts bitching at Franz. "I didn't do it," complained Franz. "Hey, Franz has no tasks," said Madie, and Indian women on his team. "What the hell are you trying to get away with?" It's obvious they don't trust him. I block Franz from editing the lists any more. Now one person on the team would get punished while the others would have a lazy day. Franz hacked away on his workstation. Finally he stood up and glared at me. "Hey Hero! You fucking behind this?" "Fuck you and you shithead friends," I cursed at them. "Don't fucking dick them over and blame me, you ass." Franz started typing furiously but he got nowhere. He slammed down his keyboard and rose to face me, his visage a red contorted mess of Belgian fury. As he walked towards me he pushed people, papers, and equipment every which way. The cameras in the ceiling whirred to track us. In a moment the guards would be on us, and something bad would happen. Then I saw it in his hands: a stolen kitchen knife. This could be over very quickly. As he jumped towards me, I felt something pressed into my hand. Misty had gotten behind me and passed me her knife. But before I could use it to defend myself, the door burst open and the guards tackled Franz. Misty grabbed back the knife and hid it before it could be discovered. Dozens of guards flooded the room, shouting at everyone to get down on the floor with our hands on our heads. Franz fought with them for a minute before one of them cracked his skull with the butt of his rifle. Franz collapsed like a sack of potatoes. The guards dragged him away. We never saw him again, but the rumor was that his feet were crushed and he was set outside the camp to die in the winter cold, eaten by wolves. We never knew for sure, and I suspect he was either shot or reassigned to one of the other camps around here. After about ten minutes of lying face down on the floor, a number of uniformed men walked in, men I hadn't seen before. From what I knew of Chinese insignia, they were some high-ranking intel officers. They talked amongst themselves for a moment while one of them scanned a stack of papers on a clipboard. The guards began rounding up the team leads one by one. They all left for a couple minutes while we lay on the floor. I looked at Misty and she shrugged subtly. The man with the clipboard returned and talked to a guard who came and pulled me up. They escorted me out and over to a conference-type room I hadn't been in before. It consisted of a rough wooden table, folding chairs, and bare electric light bulbs. A small gray-haired man addressed us. "I am Major General Wu, and I have taken charge of this facility as of today. You may be wondering why you have been brought here. You are our number one producing group, more than double any other cell. These people tell me you are responsible, Mr. Ross." I looked around the room at Bethany and the other leads. I didn't respond. "We have given you great latitude, allowing even the greatest transgressions to go unpunished," he said, looking directly at me. "But today I find this cell on the verge of war. Mr. Ross: can you fix the scheduling tool?" I nodded. "Good. We are willing to let your cell function without interference. In return, we will be bringing in an expert to make this cell work efficiently." "Does that mean no more General Khanan? No more beatings," I asked. The man leaned forward. "If you achieve your objectives." "And if we achieve them, what is our reward," I continued, waving at the members of the room. "It's hard to be motivated if we'll be executed in the end." The man considered me for a moment. "You can never return to your homes. That should have been made clear as a condition of your asylums or plea deals. If you can deliver us this project, we'll ensure that you live out the balance of your natural lives." I looked around the room. It seemed as if the leads had somewhat accepted me as their spokesman. "Somewhere nice, like Shanghai." "I'll see what I can do. Now Mr. Ross, since you seem to be talking for everyone, you'll be taking over this project until the expert arrives. I'll have my associates debrief you for the remainder of the day. Starting tomorrow, you'll be expect to deliver this project." "Hold on," I said quickly. "I'm going to need to set my own schedule, divide out my own tasks, and we need access to far better equipment than this. In fact, if you want us to work on some kind of real project, I want twenty-four access to the men's and women's dorms, no locking us in at night. We may need people working all hours of the day. I want the kitchen stocked at all times, and no more assemblies in the courtyard. If I even see a glimpse of Khanan around, we stop work and you'll have to kill us all. Leave the discipline to me. And trust me, I'll be setting up a kill switch on the system so if anyone dies, you lose everything. Anything else guys?" The leads started listing off things: toiletries, needed software, a bar-be-que, disk arrays, a football, laptops, and lounge chairs. Maj Gen We nodded. "No Wii. But I'm amenable to the rest...as long as you produce. The more you produce, the more I can provide. Now I must address my other cells. I will return in a week for a progress report." After the meeting, I spotted Wu talking with Khanan. Khanan seemed extremely agitated, pointing and stomping but with a little whine in his voice. When he spotted me he grimaced, and became even more animated, but Wu stayed calm with him. He did then say something that made Khanan grin in a way that sent chills down my body. Some people reported hearing shots later in the day. I guess some of the other cells weren't as lucky as us. For the rest of the day, the first secrets of "The Plot" were revealed to me. They didn't say as much, but I could sense it based on the level of secrecy. I could only tell my leads so much, they could only tell their people so much. But I heard much more. I heard of deep underground works sites employing hundreds of thousands of laborers...who never were heard from again. I heard of power sources so exotic they were capable of powering entire aircraft carriers without any fuel. I heard of some kind of gasless nerve agent that made people into virtual zombies. And we were to build the control system for all of this. We would build the targeting system for the most devastating weapon the world has ever known. And once I had heard all this, I knew deep in my soul that once completed, we would all be eliminated. Every bit of evidence of this Crime Against Humanity would be destroyed. And last week, this whole plan fell into chaos. And I'll give you one guess as to who's behind it. Posted: Wednesday, November 5, 2008 @ 10:44 PM