The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 21 JUL 2020 – 11 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase III
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function A: Ecological realignment of Sets 572F1 and 5601D via multi-factor token smuggle attack.
Function B: Pre-conclusive on-scene verification of Set 334DE negative inflection qualia. For the record.

"Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right, I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game." ~ Holden Caulfield. J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Hi, folks.

Tonight, let's talk about token smuggling again. Conversational steganography. Coded subtext.

You might remember that I still get paper letters sometimes, not just email. I think I mentioned that. Interesting, right? We live in a fully interconnected, semi-persistent reality, with video game menus that would make your head spin for their complexity. We have instant access to email almost anywhere, and yet... I still send and receive paper letters. Regularly. By choice.

Anyone who sends you paper by choice? Here? They must care. I mean, think about it... You've gotta go get something to write with. You gotta get paper, you need an envelope. You need to use a post office! Or couriers! Physical space!

Why would you ever use that if you have instant email? Simple. It's just part of your identity. It's just who you want to be, and the way you want to treat people. Quality... or quantity. Hard way... Easy way. Period.

You want that disconnection unilaterally? The hardcore difficulty planet, Satori, it's got you covered. No magic holo menu email, all snail mail. If you want to use your friends list out there, or telepathy, or whatever... you've got to deal with a lot of system hurdles to jump over unless it's urgent. No electronics, no easy mode menus. Period.

On Samsara? You don't have to jump through hurdles at all, we're a newbie zone. And if someone from my world sends me a paper letter? My ears perk up. Makes me care a whole lot back for whoever sent it, more than I typically would, because by gosh, they went for it.

Don't send me spam letters though, I'll... send Aegis and the Knights after you for that. Maybe even Coffee. You don't want that, you might have to spend the whole week vacuuming. Coffee beans in your socks and stuff. Heh.

So... Anyway. Speaking of paper letters...

Today, we're not gonna start with Harbor Island just yet. We've gotta lay some historical foundation first. So, let's roll the clocks back to a different time, to a different place, in a different country altogether.

June, 2017. Brazil had just lost control. The federal military was fracturing. Ferradors were using roadblocks and violence to deny uploads.

The Brazilian government asked the United States to come help, and the U.S. came running. The Pentagon was still full of generals who remembered that Kaczmarek infohazards paper. They knew Celestia was... winning, nothing they could do about that, but they could definitely slow the fall, and do so with a bias toward their interests.

This being the case, the Pentagon wanted to study how Brazil died, in real time, with their own eyes, so they would know what to expect for violence. And Celestia, in support of this endeavor, she threw them a bone. And why not? Deploying to Brazil reduced the size and strength of the United States military.

She couldn't just remove everyone Colonel and above from the U.S. military for knowing too much. That would have caused rapid global instability and quite a glaring red warning light to every other country. So she had to get cruel to control these guys. Brazil helped with that. It isolated a lot of officers from their families.

Anyway, slow burn, gradual escalation of force by the Ferradors from June 2017 to December 2017. Then the Ferradors broadcasted their assassination of the Brazilian president over their public news station, and the war kicked off in earnest. The gesture began a cascade of federal forces turning on their allies, kith, and kin.

Let me read you a couple of letters from War Ferrador. They're very important.

Ahem...

January 18th, 2018.

Dearest Andrea,

My love, new circumstances have limited us to this, as you can plainly see. I won't strain you by writing in cursive at all, its block letters from here on out, I promise. I do have more time to think more about what to say to you though. I appreciate the excuse to think about you more.

To answer the questions in your last e-mail, which I can recall but can no longer access:

The insurgents have destroyed now irreplaceable power and Internet infrastructure, so video calls will no longer be possible. This nation does not have the engineers required to repair infra, they have all long evacuated, so we need to find alternatives, if we even can.

It will likely be this way until either the work is done, or we pull out and return home. To be frank, I'm not certain which will come first. The Pentagon cannot speak with us any more than you might. Without a direct line home, both the Army and the Marines are in the dark, politically. As such we've been operating on our own initiative in response to the daily needs of the population. General Peters is doing his best with what he has, as he always does, but you know I cannot say more on that front.

This changes very little of my own operating procedures. The job of hearts and minds is the same as it has always been: befriend the populace so they do not hate us while we are here; do right by our promises, so that the populace is bolstered by what we leave behind for them.

So far… my greatest concern as it stands is for the mere stability of Brazil. With fed forces balkanizing, and with some indeed turning on their own soldiers, I shudder to imagine the next ten years for this country. The people here know the damage better than I do, and they seem to lack hope. The more geopolitically aware often compare their own plight to that of Iraq during its early days of power vacuum. Andrea, I do not know what to tell them. Do we even have the resources for reconstruction? Or even the will, in Washington, with the rest of the world as it is?

I don't know. We can not talk to them.

You do know, Andrea – and I will say it clear – that I am haunted over the way we left Iraq. I made many promises in good faith to good people who ultimately were left without the care I believed we could provide them. The instant we pulled up stakes, we watched radicalism take hold behind us, and our local assets were systematically eliminated by the new order. Politics may again stand in the way of us honoring our promises here in Brazil. I hope I am proven wrong.

Given these worries, I now promise no aid that I cannot personally oversee, or verify beforehand.

I should note that I've spoken with dozens of the peaceful luddite communities here, these 'blackouts,' as our press is fond to call them. In light of their stories, I would again implore you to speak with Monica. You know what I mean. She is an adult now, and a soldier at that; I do not mean to lord over her, but it is high time we recognize the threat at play.

Andrea… I wish I could describe to you in detail why I feel this way. My inability to find words to describe my concerns alone should imply the gravity of what I'm saying. I will just say that I am privileged to know other officers in similar positions, with similar backgrounds, and similar concerns for family, whose support I depend upon.

I wish I could be home for you now. But the needs of the people here in São Paolo are many, and I cannot abandon my duty, especially not with the situation as it is. I'm sorry. This region is without food and clean water, without government, without stability or purpose. Brazil once held the second largest standing army in our hemisphere. Now, they have nothing. Those are the stakes.

I know home is peaceful. Our government seems to be doing its job in keeping this militant luddite radicalism out of our yard, even as it devours Brazil. But much as with the common people of Iraq, or Brazil, our own motivations can be steered – we are not invincible – and such change always begins with individuals.

I love you, Andrea. I cannot help but worry because I love you. When you reply, please assure me that it will be okay. It would bring me much comfort in this place.

Yours always,
Carlos

Letter got lost, somehow. Hm. Odd.

Ah well, that's, uh... that's how post is sometimes, I guess, especially back on late Terra.

And then this letter, a month later.

Hang on. Damn string... M'kay... We're good.

February 16, 2018.

Carlos,

I don't even know what to say.

Arujá is all over the TV right now. It's all any of my friends can talk about. This happened under your command? They say you haven't turned yourself in, or returned to São Paolo, or tried to explain. I don't even know if this letter will reach you, or if you're on the run down there, or if this is a huge misunderstanding. The latest news it that you're standing your ground where it occurred?

I know I'm not there. I know war is not clean. But I hoped we'd receive this news with at least some hint of your motivations. You hardly write now. Carlos, and we really need to talk about this. We need to know what happened out there, and that you're okay. Please, I love you. I just want to know what happened.

Andrea

Curious.

Somehow, believe it or not, that letter did make it. In four days. From New York State.

Through a picket line of hostile forces? Wow. That military grade FedEx sure does wonders sometimes.

That's just... crazy.

Finally... I'll tell you all about another critical inflection point for Colonel Carlos Ramirez. Once we're done tonight, I'd like to hear your theories on exactly why he was building a fortress in Seattle at the end of the world. Might make a little more sense.

The date was February 21st, 2018.

The setting: Right next door to a hospital. At an upload clinic, dead center of Arujá, Brazil.

"I need to speak with my daughter," Carlos told the screen, his tone holding a serious, near-threat tamber. Angry, no doubt for his deep understanding of exactly what he was talking to. The Colonel was dressed in full combat gear, helmet and rig. He had a five day old beard. Fresh from work, soon to return.

Celestia blinked twice, leaning forward from the reception desk monitor with a look of apology on her face. Her looking sorry for someone told me immediately that I knew this memory would suck very much to watch, because it would mean she did something horrible.

A trend, by the way, I would go on to discover would not abate, no matter whose life I looked into.

"Of course, Colonel," the robot said. "I have already supplied her with your request. All we may do now is wait."

The cold echo of that lobby felt... lonely, as I waited beside Carlos, standing beside him in solidarity, trying to feel what he felt. The floor was gray and musty, covered in dirt and debris. It had to smell like soil and earth in there too, from the track of mud leading into the lobby, from thousands of shoes making their way to chairs. Blood, too, from what happened a week prior. No one saw fit to clean up the mess anymore.

Some soldiers were just outside the front door, loading crates into trucks. They developed an argument that went well beyond professional, arguing about supply lines, but… the unprofessional debate was preferable to stock silence, I think. Carlos allowed it to continue without challenge. Morale was low for their mixed unit of survivors, that much was clear, but to inject himself into that might be even more destructive to their situation, given the context.

It had been a full two minutes with no progress. Alabaster's mane, for her part, was about as interesting to watch as a loading bar. Likewise, the Colonel's patience wore thin on his face. His lip twitched once. "Out of curiosity, Celestia?"

She tilted her head with a slight increasing of her 'woe is you' look. "Yes, Colonel?"

"What was Monica doing just now? In that 'game' you've got her playing?" Carlos dead-eyed the screen, biting out every word. "Just now? How does it take this long for her to answer her father when he's in a war zone, contacting her like this? It's an OPSEC violation to even do this, she knows that, she would've dropped everything."

The AI's look of patient concern morphed into one of minor embarrassment. She averted her gaze and pointed her muzzle at the carpet of her dias for a moment, returning to him with just her eyes, indicating that she knew he would not like her reply, but could not help reality.

"I am using chain relay transmissions from intermittent towers, routers, and active signal repeaters," she said. "Across the entire region, Colonel. This adds a notable delay between transmissions, as you might imagine. Were I able to transfer these messages any faster—"

"I'm sure you would," was his mocking reply. " 'Were you able,' " he added, in accusation.

Yeah, see, Alabaster didn't answer the immediate wording of his question. But Carlos was not under Mal's protection. Even if he knew she was manipulating his emotions here, it didn't do him a lick of good. Remember how she acted when she uploaded my parents? Yeah, imagine that relationship with Celestia, but for several years.

Celestia didn't answer his challenge for several seconds, letting the subtextual accusation settle so that she would not need to answer it. Carlos noted that, I'm sure, based on his expression turning dour. She redirected the topic back to his daughter, not acknowledging his tone with anything more than her injured, shameful eyes-down crap.

"Give her a moment, please," Celestia said to the rug in her throne room, her eyes flicking toward Carlos briefly. "She is aware of your message now. I know this is… an uncomfortable situation, but this transmission method is complicated. And... I'm very sorry, but due to a bandwidth limitations, we may only use audio."

"A voice mail?" The man blinked, half-hurt, all-furious, gradually raising his voice, getting more furious as he went on. "You mean to tell me you can present yourself live to me, here, now, you can't send her a video?! I want my daughter to see my face when I talk to her, damn it! I have been evacuating, you fuckin' owe me!"

The soldiers bantering outside stopped bantering.

They were now paying rapt attention.

Again, Celestia paused for a socially awkward period of time, to avoid an argument that would permit him to vent more justified, well-directed rage, within earshot of witnesses.

"Well?!" Carlos bellowed, baring his teeth.

"As I've said, bandwidth is limited," was Celestia's apologetic refrain, with that nervous strain in her voice that implied she wished that wasn't the case. "I am providing this tenuous service for as many people as I possibly can, Colonel Velasquez." Her face took on a touch of stern. "And you are not the only one in the war zone sending critical messages home. I am already transferring as much data as is physically possible through this ad hoc system; my logistics, like yours, are limited by physics."

I saw several emotions hit his face. First, pain. Second, a more intense anger. Then... Carlos merely shook his head, frowning, his eyes falling to the counter. The point was surrendered.

Yeah. He interpreted that as a threat. A subtle one, but one verified by her silence at his realization of that fact.

See, that's the dangerous part of knowing too much. If you know for a fact Celestia can simulate your mind by reading facial cues alone, like I can... and if you ever felt she was threatening you? And if she didn't immediately dissuade you of that notion, that you felt threatened just then? What else could it be?

Message: 'You might have unrelated connection issues if you start slipping secrets about me.'

Before he could spend too much time thinking through that, the message winked through as a blinking red envelope icon on the monitor next to Celestia. A chime played. She reached down and grasped it with a hoof, presenting it to him. Her face was ever a mask of concern. "When you are ready."

He looked up at her from his thoughts, glaring with some apparent realization or a determination of a sort. Celestia, for her part, held the letter in his direction, awaiting his permission to open it.

"She is merely worried about you," Celestia assured. "If this is a matter of concern that she intends to—"

"Play it," he snapped. "And while you're at it, shut the hell up. It's the least you could do."

Faux hurt appeared on the AI's simulated eyes, but Celestia relented, brokering no argument, nor defense, nor threats. Obviously, he'd been through a lot lately, and she knew that.

Celestia upturned her hoof, and the letter icon played an opening animation. It winked out of existence, then a scroll appeared in her hoof with a flash of dragon flame.

Monica's voice poured out from the speaker. It was far quieter than Celestia's, such that none of the soldiers outside would be able to hear her. Carlos would have to step forward to hear her, so he did.

Her voice was… trembling.

"Dad, first, I'm really glad to know you're okay."

Carlos's eyes softened instantly.

"Mom is… very upset. I know how it is out there, kinda, I'm not blaming you, I'm sure you've been writing, but... It's war."

His eyes hardened suspiciously. The man's breathing increased in speed slightly as he listened to his daughter.

"I know we don't have all of the facts up here, I know. All we know is that something happened. They're saying it happened under your command? If not you directly, then maybe the men working for you did it? I don't believe you're capable of what they're saying, and neither does Mom, but… then why not go back to HQ, or send out a statement? Is it someone you know who did it? The Brazilians know who's working in that area, the news says some witnesses survived. They said it was the… the 4th who did it, Dad, your unit. So you must know something, even if it's not you."

He didn't know. He couldn't know. Carlos had theories, I'm sure, but only just. Between the BAF deserters, the Ferradors, the blackouts, partisans, even the U.S. deserters… who knew who did it?

Just the culprits, God, and... and...

And a 'theory' he couldn't prove. A theory that had no evidence. A theory one could not hold accountable. Ever.

"Look, Dad?" Monica sighed. "Mom, she just…"

There was a pause in Monica's reply. Dead air.

"I'm just sorry, Dad," was what finally came through. "I'm just sorry. I love you. Please reply back as soon as you can. Talk to you soon, I hope."

Celestia withdrew her hoof, rolling up the message with her magic, and sat stock-still as her mane billowed. Her head tilted downward fractionally, a look of empathetic pain, her eyes never leaving the Colonel's.

As requested, she remained silent.

Carlos closed his eyes and turned his head, cutting Celestia's non-verbals off, stepping toward the receptionist counter. He rubbed his temples with a single hand beneath the rim of his helmet. He turned and leaned his back against the counter, stretching his stomach with a lean.

I knew that feeling. Heavy armor makes your abs stiff after a while, especially if you've been moving around in gear all day. Even worse if you haven't showered in a while. He probably felt gross. Definitely greasy.

He ran his palm down his face, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slow. He looked at the men outside as he held his hand over his chin. They loaded yet more foodstuffs into the nearest truck.

I knew what he was thinking. They were absolutely trying to eavesdrop on him. Maybe the impending conviction in his voice would help clear the air; might curtail certain rumors from spreading. It certainly couldn't hurt to humanize himself before his men, now that morale was rock bottom. That was the most important thing, not... keeping the men from figuring out how much she really knew. Who cared about that. Working on morale might be the only thing that would save his life from getting fragged. He just barely shuddered at the possibility of that.

Without looking at nor addressing Celestia, he began dictating with a calmly serious cadence.

"Monica, I didn't do this. I really do wish I knew who did, it would make things so much easier. The reason we are not going back to HQ is because we simply can't. Between the evacuations, and the Ferradors running a picket out west to catch us retreating, we're bifurcated, on our own, and fending for ourselves.

"We can't rely on the federals half the time, and despite appearances… we really were doing our best for the civilians out here. Someone needed to evacuate them, and mija, I have tried, it is my job. Despite this... the remaining people of Arujá have made it clear they want nothing more to do with us, so we're leaving the city now, come hell or high water. Prepped or not. It's either that, or... their civilians go on the offensive; the many friends I've made here over the last six months, who trust me, have made it abundantly clear to me that if we stay... if we don't look like we're trying to leave... the locals will come for us, and we would die fighting if that happened.

"I can't let that happen. But if men in our uniforms really did do this to them? I can't…"

Carlos halted, seemingly noticing himself falling into a spiral of despondence; he caught himself the instant his emotional inflection shifted. Then he wisely inverted his mood. He turned and frowned at Celestia. The fresh anger he wore on his face in that moment, while dressed head to toe in that combat gear, could have melted a main battle tank into slag.

I knew that look very well. Recognition. Disdain.

Recurring disappointment.

Celestia blinked at Carlos curiously, lifting her head in expectation. A performance. Pretending not to know what he was about to say, or what he was mentally accusing her of. If someone looked at me like that, I'd know. Still, Celestia did as he had asked her to do, and kept her mouth dutifully shut.

"I have spoken…" Carlos said carefully, hesitating.

No, I thought, at the sight of his eyes. Don't talk to your family at her face, old man, you know better, look away.

Carlos impressed me. He let his eyes fall to the counter, and then he soldiered onward, pacing before the counter as he dictated angrily to the AI. He scowled at the upload chairs waiting patiently on the other end of the room, ready to go. His head twisted away from them with a scowl. Camera in the opposite corner. Then down and away from that too.

Back to looking at the ground, pacing.

That emboldened him though. There was fresh, cold fire in his voice as he went on.

"I have spoken with many of the disaffected blackouts here in Brazil, Monica. Personally. You can already guess what they've been telling me, about why this all happened. Of course… I acknowledge, they hold a bias, and it is true that a purely human element began this war. That assault on Alvorada Palace? It was indeed perpetrated by psychotic, ravenous murderers, and even the blackouts here agree with me on that. Excessive beyond measure. To my eye then, it's very possible that the Ferradors are responsible for this bloodbath in Arujá as well. But that is only one theory.

"Monica? Hear this. The facts of this slaughter remain unclear, even here, where the news is actually being made. This being true? No one could possibly know what's happening out here better than we do. So I warn you, and your mother, to be on high alert for rhetorical agitators. Trust very little of what you see in the news, or what you hear in the gossip, because… you can never know its original source. Believe this, Monica, as a firsthand source myself, please: I love you too much to disappoint you. This I swear to you: I did not murder those people.

"Please be safe. I'm coming home now. I love you both, Monny. Please tell Mom."

Carlos paused, half-turning back to Celestia on the screen before catching himself. I knew that feeling too, the man didn't want to even give her the respect to regard her image. He took another moment to think, holding up a single finger before pointing it at her, not even looking at her.

"You will send this message... to my daughter," he said, in a strained way, his brows knit tightly together, baring his teeth again. "Unaltered. Unedited. Not even for brevity. Do it now."

She nodded. And then she tactically averted her gaze downward, ever performatively sad for the plight of our poor species, as we killed each other on our own initiative... always seemingly in a way that benefited her.

Alabaster said somberly: "Done."

It was barely a breath of a word.

"Godspeed to you, Colonel," she added hopefully. "Please travel safely."

Carlos turned and left. No, she wasn't going to help him. But he still had men to feed, still had a picket line of Ferradors to penetrate, and still had a home to get back to as fast as he humanly could.

Okay. Enough about Brazil.

For now, let's consider a new perspective. One of many, so this'll be easy.

Close your eyes, count to five... wipe that mud-streaked clinic clean from your mind.

Back to the new front line. Back to Harbor Island, Washington. Burning sky, but sometimes also pouring rain. Gun in your hand, standing on the defense wall, smelling salt water. It's cold. The sound of thunder. You're watching a dead city. You haven't seen an airplane in months. Your buddy next to you won't speak because he's tired. You just ate a can of Chef Boyardee, and washed it down with a Monster Mean Bean coffee. And that second one was a luxury item.

Live that existence for a moment. Feel the rain.

...

Take a deep breath of that smoky ozone. Hold it. Let it out.

Open your eyes. Rewind time. Same character, but at an earlier date.

...

You're a soldier. The Pacific Northwest is your first go-around with an AI-driven war. You never hoofed it in Brazil, like some of these federal guys from the 4th. You've been on lights-out infosec for over a year, with no way to call home. At best, you'd get letters, or orders through convoy. But those convoys would lose men to upload desertions along the way, or... to skirmishes with Luddites, so... sometimes, those letters went missing too. And what were your orders, whenever you did receive them? Usually: 'evacuate some more people, chair 'em if you have to,' or... 'advise blackouts to leave this area,' or... 'Oh hey, found some new Ludds to shoot! Grab your guns!'

Nothing new about the Ludds. Same old neighbors, brothers, sisters. Just villagers at their breaking point. Some picking up a red-and-black arm band. Some digging a hole to hide in. But you're tired of killing. Tired of being shot at. Tired of hiding. Tired of everything. You've lost most everything, but you're tired of it.

If you're National Guard? Well, whenever you did patrols, you got to look at all your favorite coffee joints in Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, and everywhere in between... And you got to realize you're never gonna be able to pick up a cup of Dutch Brothers ever again with your roommate.

And that was before the nuke.

When that nuke hit... it was... tense. For three whole months, the orders stopped coming through. All you heard out of the Pentagon was… 'Maintain order.' Then nothing.

Okay, yeah, sure. Uh, question... What the hell did that mean?

By March, food's getting scarce. Convoys from the cordon have brought less and less food with time as national logistics finally die out, so you've been scavenging, building a system for managing what you've got left. Who knows what might happen. Apparently your Colonel saw this problem in Brazil at some point, so the guys from the 4th had a pre-existing system, and you trusted 'em, because they were some smart guys.

That was the mindset of you... a Guardsman at the Dock. That's all you knew. That, and things have been getting tense between the Pantry and HQ, another subtle argument between the bosses, but hey. Not your business. That happened in your military all the time, so oh well. Wasn't your bag. Odd though.

Oh hey. The government finally sent another runner from the east cordon. Ooh boy, what did the letter say?

'Head to SeaTac, or PDX, or the east picket. Get out, however you can, and get home. Now.'

It's now March, 2019. Did you go?

Depends.

How many blackouts have you talked to, since it started? How many personal letters did your friends get from back east? Your comrades, some of them, their letters usually carried notices of 'I'm uploading, sorry, nukes are going off. Hope you make it through. Find a chair, I'll see you on the other side.' Certainly, at that point, some soldiers did drop their guns... and dove into the nearest chair.

But not all of 'em. These were leftovers, folks. The remainder. The ones who didn't go so easily.

The gristle Celestia didn't want.

Imagine you were one of those guys.

Didn't it kinda prove that the blackouts were right to worry about Celestia, watching you friends jump into chairs? You were already been living like a blackout yourself just to get the job done, so it was not hard at all to identify with them anymore. If you had a conscience, and you were a local Guardsman, you'd have felt doubly guilty for any blackouts you'd displaced from their homes, under orders. And if you thought uploading was a form of death? You felt triply guilty for anyone who your government helped to, um... 'evacuate.'

So, what now? Where could you go? Home might be more of the same, watching it slide, helpless to stop it. Could you stomach that? Well, if not... why the hell not stay in the war zone? You had the most guns, you had the most men, you had all the food… AI can't talk to you without electronics, as far as you know. Who else would want to screw with you? At that point, you would be the new government.

And yet… just when things started to normalize… a new break from formula.

A new problem for you, grunt.

A serious guy rolled up in his nice suit and trench coat, carrying an automatic rifle. He identified himself as a government agent, then promptly killed five of your blackout neighbors, and then two of your own men. Then he disappeared. Practically evaporated.

Somehow, with fourteen men shooting at him, advancing on him, chasing him, he survived automatic fire like he was never even there, twisting away into the dust like some sort of liquid ninja. After that display? Base-wide at the Dock, folks, inquiring minds just wanted to know:

Who… is the Man… in the Coat?

Human nature, isn't it beautiful? In the absence of useful facts, the rumor mill spun crushed grain for the commons. For as long as these soldiers were all curious about what I knew? What I had seen, or what I had heard, as a sole survivor of the bogeyman? Folks, everyone there hung on my every word. For a time? I ran this base.

To start with? I spent a lot of that time getting to know my guards through the door, because of course, that is step one to hacking a society; give them the sensation of having you entirely under their control, so they aren't afraid to listen to you when you speak. Give them the sensation that they have convinced you to play nice while you perform a slow burn ideological attack on them.

You can do a lot from inside of a locked box, and they'll never see it coming until it's too late; just ask any AI scientist, they'll tell you.

To do this, I made friends with Casey, and I buttered up Meussen enough to get an apology out of him.

The QP squad understood the financial value of my brain, certainly, and they had complete control over me, and they wanted me to trust them so I would talk. So I gave them what they wanted, I made nice. They could then take those stories I told them, report the tactically relevant stuff to Simmons... and resell the trivia and fluff to very curious soldiers who would congregate at the fence.

Guardsmen who just wanted to know…

Who... is the Man.... in the Coat?

As we all know, folks, Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez didn't know very much of anything about the Man in the Coat. Obviously. He had never actually met the guy for more than a couple of minutes. So instead, Ramirez told stories about Portland.

What did the Marine Corps do down in Portland? Oh, a lot of stuff. Ramirez was actually kinda cool.

The life of Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez had been presented to me as a feature-length, full production, three-and-a-half hour long historical fiction film about the Second American Civil War. Entirely AI generated by Mal, purpose-built to establish my cover. Despite the fact that it was a briefing, it was quite frankly the most brilliant piece of cinema I had ever seen up until that point in my life. Mal truly does know what she's doing.

The piece contained no musical score whatsoever. The story? A man born in Nebraska, to a similar family as me, to similar parents. Same trauma in our late teens, and we'll get to that at some point, but not today.

Key difference was, between me and this guy: Ramirez watched The Military Channel, I watched Animal Planet. He played Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell, I played Halo and Half-Life. And instead of going to Washington to be a warden… Ramirez went to San Diego, and joined the Marines. Like me, he wanted to get as far away from the lifeless farm grids of Nebraska as humanly possible. I wanted forest, Ramirez wanted water. I went to the academy, he went to boot camp.

He was the twin brother I never had.

I watched a montage of Ramirez going through his training. Watched him get activated in California, to go to war. I then watched filmic vignettes of that war from their perspective, much like Saving Private Ryan, wherein Ramirez was one of several focus characters. I could gather the tonal sensation of what it was like to be one of these men, one among several of Sergeant Hardt's most trusted.

Mal even rebranded my own moments of severity in Marine Corps flavor.

My getting shot in my truck at OHR? A foot patrol ambush. Began as a quiet walk, then, mid conversation: Crack, impact, cut to black. Thud. Ramirez is down, tinnitus and blur, reverb… then jump-cut back to the squad's perspective, from the eyes of Sergeant Hardt. A tense scene of military tactical combat in the forest, with lots of over-the-shoulder, handheld shots, the 'camera man' ducking at the sound of rounds slicing past him. Crisp cracks of rounds, men struggling to find cover. Jump-cut back to the blurred perception, dull audio. Ramirez staggering up. Re-engaging, blowing a guy away with his 416... collapsing again.

The story I gave out to Casey, week one in this hole:

"Out on forest patrol, I got sniped. Scar on my sternum, looks pretty gross, the round slid down the bone. Unlucky, first man hit; solid center mass, Luddite FMJ straight to the plate – from an SVD, no less; put me on my ass. Bleeding. Angry. I got back up, I returned fire, and killed one of those bastards. Our squad fought the rest off, sniper was killed, but... Now I got chronic pain. Friggin' sucks. Loading magazines, carrying stuff... a huge pain in the ass on my cartilage. We killed the bastard who did it though. He's long gone."

I promised Casey I'd show him my scar. Already, not even a week in? The whole base knows I've seen some shit. I'm not invincible, but...? I can hold my own. I could survive Death when he comes knocking on my front door, having told him to get the hell off my lawn.

My mythos begins.

To purchase that story, some Guardsmen threw a bunch of rations over the fence at Casey. Do you think I saw a single extra calorie for providing that story? Hehehehe. Yeah, that'd be cute, but no. I had to spend a little more time making nice for that kind of privilege. No problem, I can work with that. Communication is alteration, we're still in business.

After getting a little closer to them, I had their full and undivided attention... so I communicated a 'theory' to Casey.

"See, the Pentagon was getting evacuation suggestions from Celestia, because she 'just wanted to help us.' Right?"

"Right..."

"Man, what if Celestia knew the Pentagon would take those maps, analyze the voids, and figure out where Ludds were from the gaps? Because if she arranged the evac suggestions just right, wouldn't that be a way she could send hunter-killer orders down the pipe? What if Celestia shaped those maps such that the only Luddite that we killed... were the ones she wanted us to kill?"

Oh, I blew Casey's mind with that one. He had never considered that duplicitous kinda shit before. If true, that would be how Celestia got around the 'I'm programmed not to kill people' crap she liked to squawk about on TV. Just arrange the information so that it's someone else who decides, on their own, to kill people.

Maybe that's who the Man in the Coat was. Maybe he was real government, following the information much like the military was, and being driven around toward AI objectives by carefully delivered facts.

My mythos grows. Not only am I a badass, but now I'm thinking useful thoughts. That theory spread through the base like wild fire. This guy, Ramirez, he was really God damn smart, wasn't he? Might want to hold onto this guy! I couldn't possibly be an AI plant myself, either. Why would an AI plant tell people that? Slagging Celestia just helped my cover, same way it did for the Ravens.

Week two. Another story. Pentagon ordered us to whack an old World War II bunker east of Portland, where the local Ludds had their southern HQ. We raided it by surprise at dusk.

Ramirez was on mission. He rode the side of an IFV on welded metal grip bars, hitting fast down a road to a solid metal bunker door, jammed open with a well-placed shot from an AT-4. Within; a pitch dark rat run, full of Neo-Luddites who had refused all calls for surrender, and indeed refused to pick up the phone at all. What choice did they leave us?

The firefight began immediately. Night vision, with no flashlights on one side; no night vision, with flashlights on the other. One perspective, the Marines; over-informed, too much light, could not see their target. The other perspective; the Luddites, under-informed, not enough light, could not see their target.

The scene:

Flash. Boom. A black void intercut with lasers and tracers. Red, green, yellow, bright flashes pulsing the entire tunnel. Visually, it was a incomprehensible, chaotic mess. Bright night vision scenes juxtaposed dark scenes with yellow muzzle flashes. The Amish compensated for their lack of vision with explosive and projectile saturation, sometimes even injuring themselves with the shrapnel of their own munitions. Silhouettes cast as the men moved and fought under the glow of battle. Then, to punctuate the chaos, a wide, final pan angle showed the side of the action.

Slow motion.

A muzzle flash on the left, illuminating Ramirez. An explosion on the right, illuminating dying men. A pause. A road flare thrown into a room. Ramirez, practically alone, the final uninjured soldier, closed on the final living enemy. He was down to just his sidearm, after expending all of his ammunition.

A muzzle flash. Then darkness.

"We rolled up hard, half a platoon on LAVs. Night vision goggles, a small armory on our backs. We pushed down the tunnel, hard. Lost... a lot of men, in the first barrage. Just... a slaughter, Case, they... outsmarted us really bad. The enemy started ricocheting rounds up the slope, got a bunch of us right there. We... we went in. They were backed into a corner, not really interested in talking. And our L-T was mad, so...

"He drove the IFVs into the tunnel against orders. Washed the place clean with high explosives, and it worked at first, but... they took our IFVs out, and we just... sunk cost, I don't know, we didn't want to quit. Just happened that way, I guess we wanted vengeance. And me, I was in the final stack. Not much to it, I think I drilled their commander, and his whole staff. Grenade in the last room. Dunno how many I killed in the dark, wasn't just me shooting, but I definitely got a few. But... at the end of it? We found some prisoners in there, civilians being forced to build an EMP bomb. The Ludds thought they could hurt Celestia with it, somehow. First thing all those survivors wanted to do, of course, was... upload. So, we sent 'em off to intel, up at the FOB for debrief, then… wherever they wanted to go after that, wasn't my business anymore."

So now, to Harbor Island… I'm a bandit, but I'm also smart. I'm a badass, but I'm also a hero. I've bled for this war, and I've blooded.

Through a game of telephone, as the stories spread, sold over the fence, I became quite nuanced. Now Ramirez was a complicated guy. The men at the base would read into that story whatever they want to see, further down the chain. Those guys told whatever version they personally liked best, and again... my mythos only grew and grew.

Week three? I told Casey about the haunted hospital.

A slow creep through the darkness, lit by candles. Flashes of lightning, the boom of thunder.

A fireteam of six, guns drawn, men thoroughly changed by this war. Suppressors on their rifles, so their shots would be lost in the downpour. They moved cautiously down a carpeted hospital hallway, their lasers cutting through the low saturation orange-grays of the scene. Their light invaded the darkness, their beams a looming threat of death. Mad dog killers were inside, renegades, vile murderers.

These were not warriors. This mission was not war. It was the balancing of an unsolved equation. The solution for a problem.

Ramirez and Private Weston turned the corner into a bunk room. Two guards attempted to lift themselves out of bed in a panic, but they both were killed with no hesitation, were given no opportunity to defend themselves. It was no better than they gave those civilians, so twisted as to leave mass graves unburied.

This wasn't war. It was a culling of broken men.

Without pause, Ramirez moved to the next room, bringing his rifle to bear. He planted his foot on the crash bar, and shoved. The door spun open violently, slamming the opposite wall.

Ramirez was seen from the side, pointing his gun into the final. The occupant is not observed by the camera. No hesitation. Target acquired. Ramirez pulled the trigger. Cut to black.

"Ludd Colonel went crazy in the dark. Command said she started killing every person out there indiscriminately, kill on sight, didn't matter. Military, civilians, blackouts, even other Ludds. It wasn't quite clear why she was doing it, from the outside looking in, but... for some reason, all her men were onboard too. Fanatical."

"Feral?" Meussen asked.

"Maybe. They definitely weren't standard Luddites, though. Y'know, I... I've heard the stories about ferals in Brazil, but I didn't really get it until that day, seeing what they had done to their own... their own people, y'know? Who just wanted to leave. Didn't even bury 'em, or burn 'em. Just left 'em for the crows. Guys wearing their own uniform! It was wrong.

"Anyway, we solved it. We stacked up. Came in through the windows during a storm, hit Radiology, popped their commanders, then... we went back to the lobby and cleaned up with grenades. We killed about twelve in total, my personal count was two. The rest of them, they... they fled. No idea where to. Didn't matter, job was done. Broke the place, took their guns and ammo, mission complete. Barely any food there, though… so... maybe they were starving? Maybe that's what it was. Dunno. Creeped me out though. I think that was our last straw before we wanted to call it quits on the war. Never thought people like that could... could even happen here, I guess."

A story of darkness. Of growing desperation. The story of what happens when the price to retain your humanity is… your humanity. The anchor is now set. A story was shared through a fence, of kin turning on kin. No one wanted to become that, a blue-on-blue psychopath. Feral, like all the stories told of Brazil, of razed villages, and of snipers in every window, of bandits stripping every body for everything of its worth. Men becoming as mere living robots, obsessed with only themselves and their own needs, to the exclusion of all others.

Folks? As I gave Casey this proto-Fire, this slow tilting and drifting, telling... military-flavored, watered down versions of my adventures with Mal… I was saving his life. Meussen's, too. And others. Not only was I spreading stories to a base hungry for context, engaging and rewarding their curiosity, I was teaching them about who was dying in this war, and why.

I said to Casey one day, through the door:

"You know, I… I noticed recently, been thinking. All these people I've seen die? Tell me if you've noticed this too, Case. Is it coincidence that the ones who don't make it are… usually murdering? I'm not just talking about the enemy, I'm talking about ours too, I mean... yeah, I've killed a lot of Ludds, but I've also watched a lot of guys bite it on our side. Pattern is... seems to be guys talking about killing. Hate in their voices. Violators. Psychopaths, y'know, ever see Generation Kill?"

"Trombley."

"Yeah, Trombley, guys like that. People making it harder to live out here. AI wants us alive, right?"

"I dunno, Miguel..."

"Well, example... right? Anecdote I guess, but... I loved my Sarge, don't get me wrong, he was my brother, but… he used to be… nicer. In the last few months though, he turned dark, man, near the end, when our food was running low. I mean… a month ago, I watched Sarge sight up suddenly… out of nowhere. Mid-conversation. On this guy who came around a corner down the street, a blackout, just… not hurting anyone. No gun. Picking through bottles in a bin, looking for drops of Sprite or something. And I've stolen stuff before, that's… that's survival, man, we'd done the at-gunpoint thing a few times. But the way Sarge did it that time? That didn't sit right with me. The guy was still breathing, and I made an issue of it, so... we dumped him off in front of an upload center. And Case...? Sarge is dead now. So why am I still here? I mean, I helped rob him, but... is it because I don't want to shoot innocent people? Is it because I thought that was wrong? I can't help but…"

At first, Casey suggested that I just had survivor's guilt.

He did think about it, though. Because now that I mentioned it… now that he was reviewing in his head who got killed in his version of this war… hm. That did seem to be the pattern, didn't it? Not always, but more often than not? That was the trend. The pricks with an itchy trigger finger always seemed to get a hole in the head, imagine that.

And as time went on… Casey watched this angry caterpillar churning itself apart in its cocoon, turning itself into a butterfly. Changing, for having been spared from death, now trying to extract meaning from that. And because Casey was listening, and it all made a lot of sense, he was changing with me. Him, Meussen, the other guys bunking in the trailer… their tone and temperament was surely changing. They started to identify with this Purple Heart toting, Marine Corps, combat veteran badass in their custody.

They valued my strange bursts of post-Singularity wisdom, and my little theories about how the AI might have messed with our perceptions. The things coming out of my mouth were a lot more nuanced than what these other guys already knew. They all knew, for example, how everyone's Google results were different, or… how their GPS apps had sent them down odd routes sometimes, to time their arrivals just right for some coincidence or another. They knew all that stuff. Obviously.

But I was bringing new stuff. What a useful survival tool I would be, if I somehow kept up this deep thought.

Meanwhile… in a different episode of this TV show… the Man in the Coat started showing up, often in the strangest places.

The patrols were still scouting outside, looting per usual, keeping my sight maps in mind. They started to notice someone watching them from the windows. From the shadows at the mall. Always gone from view a second later. Waste of ammo to even try to shoot at him, he was just too fast every time.

The bogeyman. The shadow. Like some dark creature stalking you in the Everfree. Like a Lohvorku on the prowl, blending into the forest.

He left symbolic warnings everywhere. If you're wondering why Coffee tried to befriend this guy, this is why. Foucault could become a cup of arabica dark when he really wanted to be. At first, the soldiers just thought Foucault was being annoying in leaving out various presents for them to find, like 34 rifle rounds on a mailbox. A nine millimeter shell casing in front of the rest.

Thirty-four dead. One missing in action.

He had already killed two of their men, but that was the moment the patrols started taking him seriously. In that context, this marking of their territory was less funny, and more infuriating. Frustrating. Terrifying. From just the number of bullets, the Man implied to the final Simmons political officer that he knew something dangerous. That message was carried home.

"Boss, he left thirty-five bullets on a mailbox."

A day after that? Foucault deployed that old battery-operated boombox I saw in his office.

He placed it down in a city intersection, three blocks from the harbor, and hit play. It blasted a 24-track, CD-R loop of Johnny Cash's 'When The Man Comes Around,' at max volume. Unenthused by this display, that political officer put a bullet clean through the boombox, to shut it off. That very same instant, DeWinter tapped his heart out with a 5.56, clean through his armpit, where his armor wouldn't protect him. The sergeant dropped like a bag of bricks the instant he pulled his own trigger.

Boom. The music stopped.

Message? Don't mess with the Man's stuff. Leave it friggin' be.

The soda cans were my personal favorite, though, because no one got hurt with that one. More funny than grim. Six clean, unopened cans of fresh Pepsi on a street corner, cold, wet from condensation in the muggy heat.

This drew their attention immediately. Put them on high alert from fifty yards away at the end of a T-intersection. Dresden stopped their whole convoy for it. In the middle of the six Pepsis sat one half-empty bottle of Coca Cola, with a bullet hole through it. The top had been cut partially off, and there was a fake stuffed rat inside, saturated in murky, smelly harbor water. The patrol watched this display for about three minutes trying to figure out what the hell it was, wondering where the sniper was this time. Ultimately, they left it be. Left the street. Left the cans. Didn't touch 'em. The calories weren't worth it.

The condensation implied something terrifying, too. It implied refrigeration, or ice. Both a forgotten luxury, for anyone living off the grid in the summertime.

And then… there was the really ultra crazily creepy shit, more so than the boombox of death.

A department store mannequin in a tattered Army combat uniform. Hung from a bridge by a purple business suit tie around its neck. A knife stuffed through its rank insignia on the center of the chest, making it illegible. Fresh spraypaint on the bridge beside the hanging mannequin, bearing the words in red: "Remember Arujá."

Now the question on the mouths of all of the Guardsmen at the Dock was:

What happened in Arujá?

The Man now had a target in mind, clearly, so who was the Man hunting for? Was it a Brazil thing? Hm. Hmmmmm. Curious. Strange, how no one stateside could remember anything about Arujá. Strange, how that news didn't spread very far back at home.

Paranoia ran rampant. The Guardsmen wanted to know even more about their survivor, and why he was spared.

Simmons ordered Casey not to tell me anything about what was going on outside. Casey told me midway through week three that Simmons had ordered him interrogate me some more, but Casey said back to Simmons that he didn't really need to do that; I was pouring words out through that door, thinking aloud, interrogating myself,. We both found that order to be so strange, given the context.

Was I going crazy in there? Or was I just ahead of the curve? Would Casey and his boys become Sergeant Hardt, and die fighting the Man? Or would they try to emulate Corporal Ramirez, and be spared for having a merciful, curious, aware, and mostly intact soul?

Who knows. Little bit of Pascal's wager playing out, though. Michael was out there instilling the fear of God in men who had forgotten what fear was. And with desertion being a crime, and the government ostensibly still existing out there… they were all different kinds of culpable, weren't they?

That doubt, folks? Instilling that doubt in the Quarantine Squad meant six fewer dead at the end of this thing. And that curious mythos of mine, that they had so gladly sold for a profit? A guy who rescues prisoners, abhors murder, loves his brothers, despises Celestia, and hates the Man? That bought me a whole lot of social capital with basically everyone else, because no one knew how to fully define me. I was an enigma to everyone, by design.

Everyone else was confused by the Arujá thing.

But Carlos? Mm-mm. He was calm.

The message he received, in who was getting sniped, specifically, confirmed his suspicions about Arujá. All three were men who were there.

Carlos had been right to want Simmons dead; he was wrong in how he had planned to do it. Carlos could see the mind games being played. And so, Carlos – now feeling much better, mentally, thank Christ – he played dumb. He sat back. He kept his mouth shut. And he watched.

To him? It looked like the Man in the Coat, 'Agent Michael Foucault of the DHS…' was indeed his secret savior. The one thing Carlos could count on for sure in this upside down, bizzaro America, was that Celestia was dead-set on reducing the number of fatalities, and fatalities were the one thing he wasn't sure he could stop on his own. Thus, regardless of his anger and hangups at Celestia, our arrival could not have occurred at a better time.

Whether or not I was in on it, though... Carlos didn't know yet. Not quite.

A harsh banging woke me from a dead sleep. The lock turned, the door opened, and rainy sunlight flooded the One-Star.

"You coughing at all?"

I blinked. I groaned, rolling my eyes before rolling over to face my rude awakening.

It was Dresden, of course, wearing an M50 mask on his face, with an Army field jacket in his hand.

Impatient friggin' asshole, maybe let me wake up first?

"Uh… no to coughing?" I answered groggily, clearing my throat and sitting up.

"Missing anything? Hearing? Smell? Taste, you got 'em all? Any diarrhea?"

Again, I blinked. "I don't think so, sir. I mean, yeah, I… have my senses, sir."

Dresden peeled off his mask immediately, revealing his angular face and messy auburn hair. His steely eyes looked tense, but he smiled.

"Good to hear. You're time's up, kid." He tossed the Army jacket onto the bookshelf. It unfolded in mid-air, half draping across the Clancy collection as he wagged his hand toward himself. "Come on, get yourself dressed, get your stuff, we gotta get you onboarded. Ditch that MARPAT, you're in Army Green now."

I glanced at the blood stained Marine Corps uniform folded up delicately and neatly on my dresser. I refrained from saying that it would be equal parts disrespectful and disgusting to wear a uniform stained with the blood of my beloved sergeant.

Nope. Ramirez liked Dresden, remember?

Dresden kept Marine Man fed in quarantine. Dresden goooood!

"Yessir," I croaked, reaching for my boots.

"Ramirez?"

I halted, meeting his eyes again, noting that his auburn hair looked like a greasy mess. His eyes looked tired.

"Sir?"

"Would be pretty useful today if you could tell us where your unit landed in the Sound. If we find food out there, it’ll fill your first box pretty heavy. Think you're good for a patrol today?"

My first box? Wow, he was really baiting the hook with the idea that I could advance myself here. Shame Ramirez had no idea what first box meant. He couldn't even wait until I was situated. Didn't even want to give me a tour of the base, wants to just put me on patrol.

Didn't even want to risk relating to me at all, just in case. Jesus, I really was worried for this man.

I stared at him for a moment, clearing my throat again. "You, uh… you have dive teams? Acetylene?"

He tilted his head. Dresden tried to keep a straight face, but I could see excitement tug on the corner of his lips, when he realized that those questions meant the food would be in difficult to breach the place. Difficult access meant it was unlikely that the wreck had been looted. At all. Guaranteed payout, I just made his day.

He asked: "Is it sunk?"

Yes. It's why I asked if you had a dive team, Julian.

"Half-sunk," I confirmed, swallowing some mucus and rubbing my eyes. "Run aground, south bay of Vashon. Crew cabins and mess looked to be above water when we left. We dropped anchor, and… uh... we got ambushed from the shore. Some kind of missile. No idea, we didn't catch any fire after that."

"From Vashon," he breathed in astonishment, his excitement spiking. Then his brow furrowed. "That whole island is full of mines, Corporal! What the hell happened out there?"

The LHD-2, U.S.S. Essex, a Navy assault ship. On task, carrying NEST teams up from California, a nuclear hunter squad. They picked up the 15th from Portland. Find the nuke, the Pentagon said. Celestia's original plan, remember? Use Marines to pressure Ludds into a self-immolation. Over six thousand projected dead, as Mal had described when she recruited me, shaved down to just under one thousand by her last-minute meddling. That's the recap. I know, it's been a while.

Just before my recruitment, Mal had to run clean-up on that old operation. To save those Marines, Claw 46 posted up on Vashon, using their implants to avoid the minefields while they prepped an ambush.

Normally, these assault ships would deploy tanks from hovercraft out at sea, but because of the local area jamming, they wanted to pull in nice and tight, so they could set up laser comms. They had selected Vashon for this because it had recently undergone a massive battle for control, some sort of Luddite compound out there. Afterwards, to deter resettlement, the Army laid mines to deny access, and posted signs everywhere to warn local blackouts not to explore.

That made it a safe harbor for a search operation... on paper. But the very moment they dropped anchor, all hell broke lose. Boom. Engine dead. All evacuated, ship sealed. Four injuries total. Good job to Captain Folsom, for the stellar evac. Clean op; good job to Mal.

"I dunno," I muttered, shaking my head. "Celestia let us call for help, thank Christ. Sarge and I though… we... we took our boys down the coast instead, along the water, where there wouldn't be any mines. We found some kayaks. The kid... he flipped over, the first time."

I smiled shakily in a mellow way as I recalled Private Weston's minor panic, flipping his kayak. I hoped Dresden would... feel something, for that emotional display on my face. Or at least express that he felt something.

"Risky, but real good thinking," Dresden said, nodding, completely ignoring the drop in my mood.

Come on, man. Just try to remember Russell, at least. Feel something.

He kept on. If he felt anything, he didn't show it. Just talked until it went away.

"So; we've got speedboats, and yes, we've got acetylene. Divers too, but we'll see what we need when we get out there, maybe make a second trip out for the gear. Hard to justify the fuel, but I think for a haul this big? Nakamura will make an exception. So… go on, get yourself sorted. Door's unlocked, I'll be at the Pantry gate. See me there."

Ah. Retreat. He did feel something.

He banged his fist twice on the door and moved to exit, scurrying off to announce to Simmons that he had just confirmed his theory about me being a huge payday.

I called after him: "Sir, will I need my mask?"

Dresden didn't even stop as he called back. "Don't need to wear it on base, keep it on you though. For emergencies! Casey, get him a new filter before he leaves!"

Jesus Christ, slow down please. Simmons isn't gonna give you head pats for speed, you know this.

I sighed and let it go. Try again later.

Screw their impatience, they could stew, they were on my time, not theirs. So, I used a hand mirror and a safety razor to shave. Got myself cleaned up good. Even had my sideburns looking just right, and my mullet didn't look completely gross.

My wife would be watching this later, so I had to make sure I looked good and hot for her. Heh...

I laced up my boots, got quickly dressed in the jacket he provided, and brushed my teeth. Did my business, got my carrier rig on. I had already stripped off the two bloody magazine pouches, left those in my waste bin. I cleaned the other two using toothpaste and mouthwash as solvents. It worked well enough. Made me smell minty fresh. Hi, Minty. Love you.

Finally, I donned my hat, pressing it gently down on my head. I looked at myself in the mirror, and… screw it, I tried on a mirthful smile, despite circumstances.

You know… I looked pretty good as a cowboy Army deserter. Hell, almost as good as a cowboy Marine! It sure did make a lasting impression! And with the whole base outside waiting to see what I looked like for the very first time, and curious about what I might do? I might as well look good for them too, right?

Bag packed, through the door I went.

Got my spare filters from Casey. Got my rifle, holstered my sidearm. I let Casey and the guys take a look at the pistol, my 'trophy' from the hospital, though I clearly had no idea what Eldil meant. And yeah, I made good on my promise, showed them my scar. We joked about that, called myself the Terminator... got shot fighting John Connor's resistance. We also joked about maybe getting an above-ground swimming pool installed at the One-Star, to bump it up to Two.

They got started cleaning the quonset for the next accidental exposure, or new recruit, whichever that might be.

Finally, I was ready to dive back into bleak. I reported to the Pantry gate, as ordered.

Already, there were spectators through the fence. Smart guys who did the math, realized their day off would land on my release date. Congregating near the Pantry wasn't typically allowed unless someone was coming out of quarantine; a morale boosting thing.

They didn't say much to me, they just wanted to see me. I gave a polite, almost shy smile and wave, sometimes a verbal 'hey.' The way I had normally greeted people in passing as a warden. Ten-four.

Dresden was with Simmons up at the front entrance to the fortress. Simmons actually shaved his mustache since my QP, which believe it or not, made him look twice as unhinged. That was probably the opposite effect of what he intended. As soon as he saw me, he put on a wide, bombastic grin, making his way toward me with a slow, performative walk, his hand jutting out for the shake that I knew would suck, gloves or not.

"And there he is! Our shining star! You know, the whole base has been talking about you, Ramirez!"

I was caught between wanting to salute and shake, quickly recovering with a nervous chuckle, meeting his hand. "Me, sir?"

"You survived the guy!" he excitedly bellowed with a tight squeeze of my palm. "Makes you a celebrity now, for whatever reason!"

Ow. My hand. Again.

Toxic handshake. If anyone grabs your hoof like that, lemme tell ya. It's a power play, to bait you into complaining. Strategic asshole shit. If you complain, they call you weak. If you let it go unchallenged, they consider you to be their bitch. It's the same thing with unwarranted physical contact, like… grabbing your shoulder when they hardly know you, or... patting your arm laughing, after they've just insulted you with a backhanded compliment. Psycho.

If someone injures you with a handshake, they are power obsessive, insecure, narrow sighted, opportunistic, unempathetic, and dangerously selfish. Guaranteed. Period.

A handshake is how you say hello. If someone's idea of a hello to a complete stranger is to inflict pain, on purpose? Zero empathy. Flat zero. Steer well clear, and maybe go warn someone.

Every warning sign I'd ever seen in crooks I've hooked up? I saw it in this guy. In body language, more than anything else. Eye movement, constantly judgmental. Sizing you up, looking down at your body with a frown every so often. Just to keep you wondering if he suddenly doesn't like you, which would clearly be a bad thing for you if that coin ever turns up true.

Rising to any of that behavior warns them that you're too smart to treat dumb. It's a testing technique. If you remain servile throughout all of that posturing or bluster, or otherwise don't notice that they're screwing with you? You're a patsy. You're bully bait. That means bitch, exploitable. So, as before… I disentangled my hand when he was done crushing it, and I kept a straight face, and I smiled at him. Because for now, Ramirez wanted to be his bitch, whether he was offended or not. This man clearly held the keys to this place, so he was a good 'friend' to have.

In that moment, I had to imagine Carlos avoided shaking hands with this guy on account of his hand injury, and he probably wasn't the only one. But… if you didn't like Simmons's handshakes? You'd never be his property. And if you weren't his property? You probably ate less.

"Now I want to assure you, Corporal," he said, as his face got serious, eyes widening as he leaned in and bobbed a flat palm at me. "Just as the Colonel did, that our number one priority is to find and kill this guy who hit you, so we can go back to business as usual. Hooah?"

Another test. A Marine would say 'oorah.' Already, he was attempting to strip down my old identity.

I compromised.

"Hooah," I replied, frowning. "And on behalf of my guys... oo-rah, sir."

He chuckled in a conciliatory way. "For their sake, sure, oo-rah. And I'll make you another promise, Corporal, to sweeten the deal." He bobbed a finger. "My orders are; kill-on-sight with him, but... if we have an opportunity? If he's still alive by the time we come to collect? I'll let you be the one to kill him, for what he did to you. How about that? That's fair, right?"

I sent Simmons some grateful energy in a nod as I held my frown, and whispered, "I'll treat him no better than he treated my Sergeant, I'll tell you that."

Simmons smiled tightly, glanced at Dresden, then back at me. "Glad we are in agreement. You know, we actually have some good news on that front. The Man claimed he was government, right?"

"Mhm?"

Simmons shrugged, his brows climbing up his forehead, rolling his eyes like the mere suggestion of a government agent was ridiculous. He waved me to follow him into the Pantry, explaining as we walked and talked.

"What government? Does he have soldiers? Hell, so far, we've only been able to verify it's just him, and one, maybe two snipers. It's been three weeks, and he's killed one more of my men, count's now three, so... you might say you and I share a vendetta now. He's also been leaving... bullshit markings and threats everywhere. Trying to scare us. Stuffed animals with knives in 'em, stupid shit like that."

"Like a child," I said coldly, as I listened to Simmons try to bury the fact that he was scared.

"Precisely my point, Corporal," as he waved a finger in the air, glancing back at me, putting on a show for his men as much as he was for me. He flicked his hand at the burly guards at the gate, who obediently hauled the metal plate doors open to grant us access. "Professionals don't act like that. My guess is, he's not really government. Just a blackout, thinks he's clever, maybe a… retired, burned out special forces operator, at best. Bet you dollars to donuts it's smoke and mirrors, meant to make us sloppy, turn on each other in here. Or stop scavenging."

"Special forces fits," I said quietly. "With the way he moved."

"But again, it doesn't mean government," Simmons said resolutely. "Or even that he's working for the AI. I've heard through the grapevine that you think that too, but I want you to think about this. If he's government, where are his logistics? Where are his soldiers? No, kid, this isn't about free will, or any of that other bullshit he sold you. Whoever they are, they just want our food. It's a con. Plain and simple."

The Arujá markings had him so scared that he was now quadrupling down on his own bullshit. Incredible.

The Pantry entrance matched simulations. This first area, a bailey, was where they offloaded trucks, so they had hand trucks and dollies aplenty, mostly Home Depot stuff. They had an office desk in a conex, opened sideways and curtained with a tarp, wherein they documented gear and food. Half a squad of men sat in the wide open yard, listening to music on a CD player hooked up to speakers. Marilyn Manson.

Misanthropic, was my immediate thought. Not to knock Manson, he's a phenomenal musician and he can lay a catchy tune, but his lyrics don't really appeal to me. You all probably know by now that I'm more of a Maynard fan. He's a lot more hopeful and constructive, not hopeless and deconstructive. But I digress.

For security, the Pantry had plate metal welded to metal bars, creating cover where they could bulwark against rifle fire. A couple of conex boxes sat on the other end of the yard, staged with forklifts. These could, in an emergency, crunch two empty boxes into a funnel at the opposite gate, which led to the storage facility proper.

The design of this space…

Remember at my courthouse? Where we had used staggered concrete barriers, so the crowd couldn't crush itself to death against the doors? Yeah, not here, this was the opposite of that. This was an ad hoc, deployable funnel. Spin up the forklifts, crunch in to a very barricaded narrow entrance, and wait. Half of the rioters would 'take care of themselves' with physics.

There is a damned good reason, folks, why civil control design, done well, does not include funneling.

There was visible intent in this. Once the soldiers outside started to starve, and were being denied access to their food? Once they were properly rioting? Open the doors on purpose, and let rush crush do the rest. And if Simmons and his men decided to just… cut up into full auto through the containers on the sides of this yard? Hundreds of bullets let loose, through a wall of thin steel, in seconds.

It was a bailey. Medieval implement. Simmons would give ground to this courtyard. They'd let the rioters get some false progress. They would pinch them in. Self-justified, because 'oh, they were attacking us, they left us no choice.'

The choice is in the design. The choice is in the preparation you take to prevent the loss of life, knowing what the risk table is. As a leader, you have a responsibility to be smart, and consider the lives of your compatriots as valuable enough to protect... even when they're pissed at you! The choice is in the design of your control system! If you have all the time in the world to figure out the right way to do something, and you don't? You don't actually give a shit. Incapable. Poor leadership.

I'm gonna state this clear. Fascists throughout human history have implemented the funnel for this exact purpose, and that callous disregard for life enraged me. Myself, as a university graduate who, like Velasquez, also studied feudal warfare very intensely for my minor… I was livid. This wasn't about keeping out strangers, or bandits.

They were keeping their own people outside the wire at razor thin margins, because near-terminal is where a system extracts the most productivity. When people are desperate, concerned they might starve, people work their utmost hardest. And quite frankly? If anyone starves people to exploit their desperation, we probably aren't gonna be able to get them out of their button shard. Not enough friends to leverage them out with. It's probably more ethical to kill them before they can upload, at that point.

Keeping a straight face in this courtyard was not easy. I was looking at physical corruption. I had no idea how Carlos had the strength to keep his furious soul in check, no idea how Carlos had resisted the urge to just drill Simmons in the back of the head before I showed up. I have no idea. Simmons had robbed him of command in all but name, by controlling whether almost four hundred people got to eat or not, through layers of well-bribed, well-fed men, these men, and their systems of 'fair' dispensation. Through multiple chokepoints.

I took a few slow, deep breaths. Got my shit level. Kept a straight face. That massacre wasn't going to happen here. No, we were stopping that. No repeats of past history. I passed through the bailey, moving deeper into the killbox.

There was more music on the other side of the inner gate. The gate was just wide enough to squeeze a truck through, or an MRAP. The vestibule guards saw us coming through slats and opened the doors for us. I hesitated in the doorway, looking beyond into the main storage facility.

The inner alley was four containers high, stacked like steps, with each container acting as a catwalk for the row above it. The immediate space closest to me was a recreational area under tarps. Gym weights, a small food prep area, an active firepit... a radio blaring some metal. There were half-eaten bags of Old Trapper beef jerky on the table near the fire, just laying about. I could smell cooked meat, that was a rare scent now. Smelled like spam. Lots and lots and lots of protein in there. That's what made me freeze up.

Dresden smiled at me from my left, nodding me forward. "Quite a sight, isn't it?"

Simmons turned to walk backwards a few steps, sweeping his hand performatively across the inner yard while looking at me. "A short tour, Ramirez. We all get a peek into how the sundries are managed, so you know we're taking good care of your earnings. Lots of boxes here are available, so when you get back from your first raid? Take your pick of any that isn’t tagged with a red or green ribbon, and start stocking."

Green meant taken. Red meant deserted, or dead.

"Gentlemen!" Simmons declared to his men, waving at them, then hooking a thumb at me. "Get your eyes on our new recruit! One of Dresden's, our lone survivor. You treat him good, people, he might be feeding you soon!"

A light cheer of support. Praise be me, I guess, as long as I was useful.

There was one guy lifting weights in an open tent, wearing a tank top and Army combat pants, and boots; he hooked up his massive barbells and sat up to stretch his arms back, his knuckles baring as he looked at me seriously.

Bald guy. Gritty stubble. As we passed him, I nodded at him with 'respect,' already knowing every crime he'd ever committed in his life.

The man did not nod back.

This was First Sergeant Meat. Head of fortress security.

Yeah. No, that's not me insulting him, folks… that's… literally what he called himself. Hey. The closer you got to the end of the My Little Pony apocalypse, the weirder the survivors got. It's just how it is, folks, I warned you long ago that it would only get weird toward the end. This war was a filtration system for sanity, what can I say?

Meat didn't answer to his old name anymore, and he got pissed if anyone used it. He ate more than anyone else there, and by just his nickname alone, you can guess he was proud of that fact. With a voice like a greasy steak, this man kept order.

Almost two dozen soldiers were in this immediate area just past the bailey, either wasting time at the Rec Pad, or walking the catwalks above, checking locks to make sure they were all secure. Three patrols of two each roamed the complex.

And… on the other end of the Rec? They held onto that beefy MRAP I told you about. Shielded M2 cannon up top, belt always loaded. A guy was maintaining the engine at the moment, hood open, buncha tools. This one was one of Sergeant Major Nakamura's guys, not Simmons; that mechanic would be heading back to HQ when he was done, not bunking in a crate here. Once the vehicle was fully tested and functional, they'd do a lap around the Alley with it before they would let him head out. Paranoid security.

Everyone here? Now that they were inside, eating good, getting yoked at the gym, listening to music, playing friggin'... GameBoy Advance, in one case… they were isolated from the politics of the base. Never had to do any serious patrols. No longer paying dues. All stratified beyond our help. Too well bribed, only allowed in for their loyalty.

Sucks, but that's what it was. Can't save 'em all, folks. This is how we inherited these people from Celestia when she washed her hooves of this base, and we can't reach across to drift 'em forever.

That's war.

Simmons and Dresden stayed under the tarps once we hit the edge of the Rec Pad. I kept walking a little further out into the drizzling rain to observe the first conex alley, known colloquially as Meat Street.

I looked left, and I looked right, performing more simulation verification. The containers went on for almost a hundred yards in each direction. Wood steps rose up at regular intervals, for ease of access. Simmons explained their system that I already knew everything about, stepping up beside me, pointing around. Stuff about… who gets what cut of how much is found in the field, 'bonus pay,' the 'carry-back' rule, some other nonsense that wouldn't matter once I was done carving this place up with Michael.

I tuned him out as I considered the space, pretending to listen, nodding my head and humming affirmatively when appropriate. But inside my own mind, under the white noise of the rain, I… relived a future event. That was friggin' weird. I gazed into the distance at a sandbag bunker at the corner of the yard, remembering that a machine gun would be there, when it happened. I looked at the MRAP. At its M2 turret, that Frankenstein's monster, filled with parts from a cannon Eliza had once tried to kill.

My mind recalled the smell of dust. Of salt. Of gunpowder. Of snow. The sound of rattling gunfire. The sensation of inner rain.

Back to reality.

"That sound fair?" Simmons asked, breaking me from my grim reverie.

Without looking back, I nodded, mirroring. "Sounds fair, sir."

Dresden stepped up to me into the rain and put a hand on my shoulder. "Ramirez? You good?"

I winced at him apologetically. "Yessir, just… really want to get back into the field. You know?"

Simmons grinned at me. "Yeah, I bet you're itching to do something after quarantine, I get that. Dresden tells me you have a payday for us, first thing."

I chuckled nervously, smiling back at him. "I hope there's still food out there, sir, because... this is a real nice place to keep it."

"Hoo-wah, that's what I like to hear!" Simmons grinned wider with gleaming teeth, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and walking me back under the tarps, gesturing at me as he spoke. "So here’s what we'll do, Corporal. You get yourself some food here at the fire, you relax, socialize, hang out." He pointed around at them. "Guys?! You feed him!"

A couple of the guys at the firepit nodded openly at Simmons. One of them started stacking food near the empty seat next to himself.

“I know QP sucks," Simmons said, "so, take a load off. And when you're good and ready, Corporal, and on your own time, you go ahead and show us on the map precisely where your boat went down... and anything else you think might be useful. Once you're done, we'll get you some kit if you need it. And once you're prepped, you'll hit the motorpool with Dresden, you'll check out some fuel and boats with Nakamura back at HQ… and then you hit the water with a team. You'll split the squad leader bonus with Dresden this run. Sound good?"

With a weak smile, I chuckled. He would interpret that as me being satisfied with the arrangements I’ve been offered. "Sounds good, yessir. Thank you very much, that's generous of you. I... I don't know what to say."

Simmons nodded, clapping me on the shoulder before he released me. "Pleasure's mine."

Yeah. That was true.

He spun on his heel as he went back to the joined containers that made up his office, clapping once and pointing at Dresden as he walked backwards. "Lieutenant; before you head out, come talk to me. We've gotta figure something out about this trenchcoat asshole."

Simmons then headed up some stairs to his room, off to do… whatever it is that filthy rich assholes do, once they've decided they've worked enough minutes for one day.

Me? I got back to work, doing my duty as an Eldil. I hung out with the guys I was planning to kill, just because the opportunity presented itself.

Grim? No, not just grim. Necessary.

Knowing what was coming... I wanted to record everything about them that I could. Pretty soon, we wouldn't be able to do that anymore, wouldn't be able to query their blackbox, couldn't review their perspectives once they were gone. So, I wanted to know their personalities. Their reasons for being out there. What had hurt them, if they would share. What they felt about their families, if anything.

Who were they, before the gravity well turned on?

Who were they, before their paths became set in granite?

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Major Lazer – Get Free]
🛡️ ~ [Johnny Cash – Rusty Cage]
🤠 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Sister Sarah's Theme]

🗡️ ~ Eliza's birthday was on the 8th, that month. I celebrated that night with a double ration.
🛡️ ~ It was a good night for her too, all things considered. Campfire singing. A moment of peace.
🗡️ ~ Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. Not every moment sucks in the apocalypse.
🛡️ ~ Lights in the darkness, Lance.