I got a call from Eric in the morning. It was 6:15 in the morning in fact, and I was bleary eyed.” There has been a change of plans, instead of sending the documents over there we will have you come to the office to review them here and I will have an assistant for you to take notes as you go along.

Oh boy, Eric was already changing plans and showing how powerful he was. I wondered if he was a regional Auditor for the State or a National Auditor. There was no way to know but I did know Eric was trouble.

I got showered and dressed and because of the change of plans I ordered a ride-share. In fact, I thought it over while the ride was enroute and figured that I might need to set up a daily commute with a ride-share company in order to make my cover story seem more real. Discussed at the restaurant was the fact that I would eventually need to start acting more privileged and start spending money on luxuries. Mom taking me shopping was a part of that and I could rely upon her to help act as if she was forcing me to adjust to my circumstances. They discussed how this could also help cover for my discomfort in this effort as it was a change of my lifestyle, and they could act like mom was the principal force behind that change. Just thinking back on that made me sigh with regret over all of my life choices. This was not who I had become and now they wanted me to act in many ways like the very people I had come to hate in life. The only consolation I had was that I might be a bigger part of ending their rule than I had ever considered.

On the way upstairs I had to change my mentality, being angry and not focused around Eric was a sure way to get caught.

Eric was waiting for me in front of the elevator as I got out. Internally I shuddered as this could have been it if I had walked out with the wrong look on my face, or with a different sort of body language. This man was dangerous.

“Follow me, we have set up the conference room for your work and I will introduce you to your assistant.” and with that Eric led the way to the conference room. In there were cabinets worth of paperwork and cabinets. I looked at Eric and said, ” You cannot be serious, this is too much for one man” .

“It is too much for one man, even with your assistant. I agree, but unfortunately, we are not calling the shots and the man who has become my boss wants all of this looked at” , and he moved his hands into quote marks, ” as possible.”

I knew this was not possible but then I had a thought... If it was not possible then I could deliberately set aside any evidence of the resistance as I went along as if I did not see it. There was simply too much paperwork after all, and I could plead innocence on it if challenged... No one could expect me to be able to handle all of this and make sense of most of it. Even with this assistant beside me. He was an auditor for sure in my head and I would have to be careful with Tom. The one thing going for me is that they already knew Mitch was a resistance member. I could search his files the hardest and use what I thought would be safe but was obviously a move by the resistance to show I was finding some things.

I looked at Tom and said ” Let's start with Mitch”

This was not as easy as I thought. Mitch was buying and selling things by the net ton, he had unique purchase orders by the net ton and since I still did not fully understand what the company produced, I could not tell if purchasing fifty pounds of magnesium was a legitimate purchase or not. The one for a gallon of ether I flagged as probably a suspicious buy and the one for the acetone, industrial bleach, and an ice machine was flagged by Tom and when he told me why I also flagged it as a definite issue. One thing for sure is that Mitch was making moves for the resistance, and he had been a little too carefree in his purchases and it showed.

Over the next few weeks, weeks during which I had no real messages for my parents, and they seemed to not have any messages for me from the resistance, except mom starting to nag me about grandchildren and if I was seeing anyone yet, I just focused on the files assigned to me. I was able to finally determine what my company was making through the paperwork; we were apparently an electronics company involved in prototype work including trying to make a simple device to get past resistance training to detect lies and to possibly even read our memories. I asked for information on the basics of this so I could see if purchases were in line with this effort or were not and I was given a short historical lesson on it.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

At one point in the early 21st century scientists and doctors had determined that if someone focused on something very specific, they could see it in the persons mind but only for simple concepts such as yes or no. Efforts also produced results in flashing images in front of a person and seeking a reaction. The resistance suffered huge losses until they discovered how to avoid scrutiny, this was some training I had in fact received. To defeat the system, you had to focus your thoughts on the answer they wanted if you were loyal, to act loyal in your own head. Since the devices had to be extremely close to you, they had no way to really hide the fact those devices were there. Further if they drugged you then it ruined the whole effort, the mind would wonder naturally and produce chaotic results. To defeat the flashing images, you just daydreamed something dull and boring in front of you and periodically made it less boring but still mostly boring. They would measure brain changes at periods that would not make sense and they would give up. Often, they would use older techniques then to get the truth, but this prevented the technological solution from working.

Only my company was trying to literally map the entire mind perfectly, to understand the language centers of the human mind to a scale never tried before. It was slow progress because there was a difference in how everyone's minds were made up but usually most people fell into a small spectrum of brain shapes.

When Eric told me all this, he confided to me and Tom that it was likely that Mitch and the others had sabotaged some of the work in some manner or another and therefore his work was to check and recheck all of the research to find out where and how bad the tampering was. I also found out he had an unprecedented twenty assistants working with him in the labs.

I already had a feeling that my mom and the resistance knew what was going on, after all Mitch had been their man in the facility and there was no way, he did not pass the word up and therefore I had no duty to report the basics at all. In fact, only if I found firm and usable information should I even try. Because I did not want to take that risk at all.

I really did not leave the office building however, even with my facilitator work, so I had no access to the labs, the fabs, the 3D printers, the researchers, or anything that would be solid information, at least not yet.

My facilitator work still progressed, I had to argue with Eric for a moment but I really did need to keep posting on my blog for that side of things, it was not just a cover anymore it was a way to help others avoid issues with an upset Elite, it was my way to keep a portion of what I used to do and to be able to keep my sanity.

During all of this the Health and Safety director, an Elite, showed up after a long delay due to the security concerns at my company. I had money sent to his sons' organization already, but it seemed that he was going to visit anyways. This turned out to be a nothing as the Elite literally stayed at a high-quality hotel nearby and had the new CEO and President of the company come and visit him to report to him personally. The entire affair of a true visit was avoided entirely, and I presume the donation was part of the reason but that the Elites were worried about the change of leadership at the company.

The only other thing to result during this time was that Tom had discovered too many purchases that did not make sense from a single supplier. He was running down information differently than I was trying and they, Tom and Eric, decided to send in Auditors to question the staff of ” Earls General Goods” in a city eight five miles away. I felt bad for Earl and his staff but there was nothing I could do that would change the result since they made the call before I even knew what was going on and I could not even arrange a dinner with mom until work was over. Since Auditors were never discreet when they made a move the resistance in that city would know quickly enough about the problem and well before I could get a message sent over. Simply put it was not worth the risk for no real gain.

That of course is when the resistance decided to throw me their own form of an ambush via my mom.