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I was about your age, and a little older, when the wall fell, the Berlin Wall, you know—or don’t you know? Soviet Communists had Germany divided from itself, probably as some sort of ironic divine judgment against the Germans by God himself, with a wall running between east and west in one of the capitals of German culture, Berlin itself. The inner workings of the Soviet Union corroded so much so quickly that they began to fail, and with a helpful push from a handful of people, the wall came down. Everyone took credit for it, and in the process, they ignored the aftermath.
I was “in Europe” when the wall fell, a tourist, you could say, with eyes and ears for details I was supposed to radio in—no, I wasn’t in the military. I was not associated in any way with the United States armed forces, or of NATO, for that matter. Mine was not a military concern, even if the military would have liked to know what I saw and heard. I was sent there with a backpack and a few Deutsche Marks (this was before Germany reunited and created the Euro to strike back at the Allies for what they done to them after the war), just walking around, taking pictures of castle ruins and slipping in and out of various countries, following the Iron Curtain—the Eastern Bloc—that’s what they called the divide between communist countries and democracies back then.
While everyone was watching the states crumble, they missed the sudden flow of technology heading east. Seems natural, doesn’t it? Open up a new market, develop it, sell to it, make a hefty profit, and so forth. Before the general public could be developed into customers, however, there was a rush into the black market by a few smart apparatchiks about to be unemployed. They didn’t even bother to disguise their intentions. All they had to do was to keep the transactions off the books, and essentially untraceable, and they succeeded. The smarter ones actually got themselves caught—on purpose—marketing relatively harmless, but ostensibly illegal, commodities, like certain breeds of cattle, or hordes of computer motherboards.
They paid their fines, absorbed ridicule, and “got legit” in the process, all the while those great big illegal transactions that were so openly inviting Interpol and the fledgling replacement governments were masks for smaller but more insidious technical trade. “Aw shucks, ya got me, coppers!” they’d say, and while the authorities were busy patting themselves on the back and heaping vituperation—yes, that means “abusive language,” Lars—heaping vituperation on these supposed grifters and rank amateur opportunists, these black marketeers were transferring state secrets and technology from one wealthy hand to another, usually operating in both directions.
It was my job to listen to the wind for whispers of locations and VIPs, where the actual cash exchanges would happen—even offshore banks were a little wary: financial activity was being monitored by too many actors. Electronic deposits leave a paper trail. Paper money, of all things, even with a deposit slip, establishes a nice little gap in the works, and when you try to investigate the gap, you attract attention, and the black market is thereby tipped off and makes haste to cover its tracks or remove the witnesses.
So I had to squeeze myself into some pretty tight spaces, avoid security detection, eat, drink, and live—that means I had to find a way to relieve myself without leaving a trail—sometimes for a few days. I learned how to hibernate, to burn very few calories, to get comfortable in colder temperatures, and I learned how to wait. And let me tell you, a young man in Europe—a young man from the West in Eastern Europe—well, to wait was a real discipline.
I already told you: I wasn’t associated with the United States military. Aren’t you listening? I was associated with the market. Certain individuals saw that I had some particular talents, and I saw that they had some particular needs, and we put the two together for a price.
No. Let me tell you something else: We Americans love conspiracies, big corporations controlling a world government, infiltration of the Illuminati, and such, and only an intrepid journalist or a streetwise beat cop has the wherewithal to knock down the fortress of evil, or what-have-you. What I had my eyes on was just straight up, boring old, ordinary theft and trade of intellectual property. That’s all it was. It just so happens that billions of dollars were changing hands, and it was all in cash. Well, what kind of element do you think is attracted to delivery vans full of cash?
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Now on the other hand, I did discover that the more centralized the government, the more likely it was that the purchaser of technology was a would-be magnate also purchasing power, like a lot of Vladimir Putin’s minions. At that point, things got a little rough. Rob a delivery van full of cash? No big deal, really. You may or may not wake up in the bottom of some silvery lake somewhere; that was the risk. Rob Vladimir Putin of a technological advance? That’s when missiles get launched at commercial airliners.
No, I do not think that Vladimir Putin is operating here in Idaho. I think someone like Putin is operating here in Idaho, and I suspect that our Ubermensch bounty hunter is an enforcement wing for an even stronger man, a well-moneyed gentleman involved in the sale and resale of technology advances.
Our pilots were carrying something, or releasing something, or doing something on his behalf, and they screwed up somehow, and got the attention of someone else operating here in the wilderness of Idaho—I remind you: Idaho is a border state, and we are quite certain that Canada is a puppet-state of China. Huawei is the ostensible presence, right? The ostensible presence is a mask for a black market.
That’s not a conspiracy theory, Lars; that’s a matter of fact. You listen to me, there is no Illuminati, just like there was no Masonic Lodge. What you have is the same as Josef Stalin, how he knew before President Truman knew that we had the atom bomb. You don’t need a global conspiracy when you have centralized powers fishing around for whatever it is democratic cultures are cooking up. Enough money gets involved, and here we are, sitting in a grove of magical trees.
Magically commanded trees, fine, I don’t care how it has come about, Abe, but I can see quite clearly that you are the beneficiary of a wrecked black market exchange, like when a truckload of Coors spills all over the road in front of you. Your car might be all crashed up, but you’re not going to be very sad for very long.
Yeah, Jason, that’s what I think. I think our Ubermensch is a patron of whatever technology was in that gas plume. We all sucked in a lungful of it in chaotic circumstances, and there's no telling what has come of it in us. I’ll bet he is a controlled experiment.
Don’t forget: the pressurized ink-capsule pen was considered magic when it first got invented. Flight. What else? Shoot, how they get the graphite into the wooden pencil: that’s still magic, isn’t it? Magnetic imaging devices. Step back a hundred years and show someone a three-dimensional colorized photograph of their insides, and they will freak out. Talking to a tree? Magic, but for now.
Color me skeptical, then; I don’t care. This is not different, whatever you're trying to tell me. Yes, it’s a fantastic ability; already saved our lives two or three times, all of us, hasn’t it? Magical?
Black market technology trade [https://embodimentandexclusion.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/chapter-7.jpg]
Now, back to the matter at hand: I’m supposing, judging by what you said you saw, Abe, and I think you’re right: he didn’t know what he was looking for, so he took everything they had on them—I’m supposing that he knew to look for something small, something ordinary-looking. It doesn’t have the Illuminati seal imprinted on it or anything. I’m also supposing that, considering what I saw being traded back in my day—and all this is a big “if,” you all must understand: I’m not “just guessing,” but it’s still only educated guesses. Based on what I saw being traded during the fall of Eastern Europe, this metal sewn into their epaulettes is some sort of communication technology, either a transmitter or a storage device. As in, the technology itself, not just information about the technology. It is the transmitter or it is the storage capacity, you follow me?
At first, I thought maybe the pilots didn’t know they had the device—I’m considering the set of four as a single unit, too; I don’t know if that’s right. I thought maybe they didn’t know about the dingus, but the more I think about it, the more likely it is that they are the actual mules, while Ubermensch was their shepherd.
What’s that? He killed them because he was under orders to do so. There’s a whole lot about this that doesn’t make any sense to me: drawing attention to the thing with a commercial airliner plane crash, obviously shot down, full of assassinated bodies, and so forth, which tells me something went very, very wrong with an item that is very, very valuable.
Yeah, Lars, you could be right: it could be that a very, very patient buyer became unhappy with the terms of sale, or vice versa: the seller didn’t like the buyer anymore.
Lars, what’s that in your hand? No, don’t turn it on. Don’t!
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