PASSION FOR TINION (WIP Novel 120,000 words)
© Cupideros, October 21, 2006
CHAPTER 6: SILTH ( I don't like this name and will be changing it at some point)
© Cupideros, October 21, 2006
Rolith sat in a quiet adjacent room to the recruitment-training center at SILTH Headquarters in Calun, Galan. He wore a normal grey suit of all Galan businesspersons. His brown hair held several grey strands. His blue eyes focused on a small metallic tablet pc flashing several speech cards. The air conditioner kicked on. Rolith knew a sudden heat blast must be in effect. He thin lips mouthed the lines, pause. Rolith then nodded as if remembering all the accompanying index card text. He clicked the electronic notepad again and another card appeared.
Rolith knew this speech by heart. He'd given it more than one thousand times. Of course sometimes, due to circumstances beyond his control, Legonadel did the honors.
Rolith felt secure at Calun. He'd worked his way up through the ranks. He did some nasty things in his younger days. He architect the blowup of Queen Morah's East Wing palace killing both her parents. Of course, Queen Morah's Secret Service retaliated and Lord Tweezer lost his own parents to a video-monitored-seeker bomb. When asked by Lord Tweezer why he attacked Queen Morah's parents when the military convention prohibited attacks on the highest officials’ family members. Rolith, in his characteristic innocence stare, replied. "We must do what no one dares, if we are to win this war. No one is off limits." Lord Tweezer gave his own characteristic sneer and stoic expression leaving the issue unresolved.
Privately, Rolith knew Lord Tweezer's peace plans, if he had any secret plans for peace, vanished. The war might go on forever, Rolith mused. His agency might grow to encompass 50% of the government. SILTH might out grow the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines combined. With White Opts Teams (WOT) his off the books intelligence agents swarming the two worlds, he already outstripped the military. He'd officially be the single largest CEO in Galan if he didn’t have to keep thing secret. Only of Lord Tweezer might overcome him—maybe.
"Rolith. The recruits are ready." Legondel said poking his head out the door.
"Are they eager, Legondel?"
"Very eager, Sir. We have all races and both genders in this class."
Rolith got up. His frame seemed slight. His average body mass matched a librarian or professor. "That's what I wanted to hear."
The recruits sat in wooden chairs in fifteen wide and ten rows deep. Typically varied colored school desk chairs, yellow, blue, green, red, shaped like a question mark held a tablet pc electronic notebook given to them by Legondel's staff. Rolith moved behind the podium. He snapped his electronic notebook in place syncing it with the wide screen behind him.
"There." He glanced up and smiled. He waited while his innocent face performed the magic of disarming the recruits. They expected a man with scars, a cold-blooded killer like one sees on the news or in pictures of the rare prison break. A man hard, bitter, determined. Or a man debonaire like the mythical useless James Bond. Here before them, an aged schoolboy clerk. A light came on and a tiny blob appeared on the screen. Rolith turned around to double check the image. Agreeing with the image's iconic size, he turned back to face the audience, a smug expression on his face.
"Can anyone tell me what that is?"
The entire class squinted and rubbed their eyes trying to see the figure. Many wild guesses flowed from the crowd. "Button, bullet, Rorschach blot, land, world, a symbol."
"I like that. A symbol. Any more guesses?"
One smart recruit turned over his electronic note pad and said, "A scorpion."
Rolith pulled out a $1,000 dollar bill and gave it to Legondel. “For the smartest recruit in the class."
"Thank you, Sir," replied the recruit.
The other students mentally kicked themselves when they flipped over their notebooks. The answer lay within their grasp. A large black scorpion and under it the words in blood red, SILTH Intelligence Agency.
Rolith blew the figure up. "A symbol. The Scorpion, the most vicious creature in the universe. Its determination is unmatched. It will kill itself rather than accept defeat. Scorpions hide under rocks but they effectively get their prey. They have two claws for hanging on and pinning down their opponent. If necessary, the scorpion will even sting itself!"
The recruit pocked the money and resumed listening.
"Each of you wants to be a scorpion. Each of you wants to walk in the mire of humanity straightening the path for Galan's future domination of this planet. Controlling the Herd classes as revealed in The Abyss and Philosophy is no small tasks," Rolith continued. "However, every resource known and unknown to the public is at your disposal. Should you find yourself without resources, you will create resources by any means possible.
What we do at SILTH is secret, but not so secret. What we do at SILTH is at times funny, harmless, sneaky, and trivial. Shooting tiny water tablets up a person’s nose to make their nose runny. Then making them cough. Convincing them they have a cold. Sending daily spam to a target related to their weight, or hair loss or whatever else the subject is or is not, I’m emphasizing the IS NOT, interested in. Deleting the enemy’s important cell phone and email messages. Blocking their email from being delivered. Taking every book in their home library, catalogue and searching it for note written, ideas held, opinions or fears, favorite topics of people. All harmless. What we do at SILTH is confuse, baffle, distract, depress, anger, irritate both our enemies and supporters. What we do at SILTH is frustrate our enemies, make our friends support the government's policies. Why would we confuse, baffle, anger, depress, irritate our supporters? Because our supporters belong to all the four herd classes! Should our supporters become live—like in AI. SILTH will be in deep trouble. People must not be allowed to think clearly—ABOUT ANYTHING! If there is an clearly written article designated,” Rolith suppressed a cough. “Designated for the major Cyber Pages, SILTH will create a bigger fake and harmless news story to force that clarifying story onto page 2 or 3. The story won’t seem harmless to the news agencies. They will seem like true stories. News agencies are at our disposal and our biggest resource for baffling all the Herds. The ends, Ladies and Gentlemen, do justify the means. SILTH stands alone between complete total anarchy from democracy's Herd weakness and prevents our capitulation under the Quoardian scientific boot or high-heal."
The recruits laughed.
"I don't mean to be sexist. Just a fact," Rolith went on with his disarming smile.
The same recruit raised his hand, "You said, 'we are harmless and sneaky and trivial . . . frustrate our enemies, make our friends support the government's policies.'"
Rolith nodded.
"If we do things harmless, how are we effective then?"
"For example, one of our tactics is to keep our enemies or disgruntle friends from getting sleep." Rolith shrugged. "This is completely harmless. It makes them less effective in their daily duties. Wears them down. Perhaps, they won't be so eager to fight with us or disagree with our policies. No one ever died from lack of sleep alone. We might for example, follow a person and have a variety of people whose appearance closely matches their family members, close friends, confidants or past lovers." Rolith shrugged. "No harm in that. Although it could be productive in slowing down the person's cognitive skills, muddle their thinking with extraneous information and analysis."
"Let's say the person doesn't get any sleep. They go outside, drive to work and run headlong into a family of four beginning their day in the opposite lane."
Rolith shrugged, he continued in his soft-spoken voice, "Can we help it if the person didn't drive carefully?"
"Then it wasn't so harmless."
"From our perspective, it is harmless. People make mistakes all the time. The accident can’t be traced back to SILTH. These random things happen. SILTH's primary purpose is the ability to cause without leaving any cause to investigate--to bring about miraculous destruction through the everyday habits of our enemies. If our enemies would not get on our short list, they'd have nothing to fear."
The recruit's face turned suspicious.
A female recruit wearing her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail said, "I heard we follow people around the clock."
"Well SILTH does not walk between the raindrops, if that's what you mean. Yes. We employ agents to follow others because electronic surveillance at times fails to capture the nuances of human behavior."
"Nuances of human behavior?" she asked.
"One human walks to the corner store and talks to another. Harmless daily weather talks or underground scheming? Human agents best determine and distinguish these matters."
"Tell me more about the electronic surveillance."
"I'm glad you asked that." Rolith pressed a button. The words: NANOTECHNOLOGY centered on the screen. "Yes. If you've heard of microscopic little cars, machines, tanks, smaller than the human eye can see, believe me it exist."
"Ouch!"
"Something bit me!"
"Nanotechnology dropped in any place provides us with ability to see and listen to our enemies. This technology also shoot dust, laser blast, spray our enemies with liquids making them itch, feel heat or cold."
"Monitored by computer centers," another recruit said.
"Yes." Rolith replied. "Legondel, this may be our best recruitment class yet."
Legondel nodded with a big smile.
The recruit who received the $1,000 said, "Let me see if I understand you. You will follow anyone the enemy talks too. You will use nanotechnology against anyone in their household."
"You're very smart on the uptake." Rolith said without a smile. "I neglected to mention our enemies rarely associate with others who are not in some form, now or later connected with dissent or disruption to Galan society."
"So everyone is guilty," the same recruit said.
"Everyone who talks or associates with the enemy, Yes."
"Even the newspaper boy; the old lady in the mall who just said hi, the lonely man looking for a date on a Friday night and happens to find the woman you're following attractive."
"I cannot control the choices our enemies make," Rolith laughed.
"I see. Well," the recruit got up and walked to the front of the class he handed in his electronic notebook. "I can't do this. I don't need your $1,000 either. I quit."
Rolith faced stared blank. "Are you sure you want to quit?"
The guy kept walking past Legondel without turning back. "Yeah, I'm sure I want out." He pushed the door wide and exited.
"He's a smart student, very quick. We need more like him." Legondel said.
"Too bad the really smart ones never stay," Rolith said with a shrug. "SILTH will attack anyone who quits, by the way. Too bad our friend there, is now on our short list."
The recruitment class froze in silence.
"SILTH doesn't believe in miracles or religion unless those organizations provide us with a means of cover for covert operations and personnel to help pursue our goals. But let's go on. Personal surveillance means following a person from sunrise to moonset. We follow all the suspected person contacts." Rolith chuckled and turned to Legondel. "I cannot tell you how many times this method has produce excellent intelligence information. If every SILTH agent had the skill to know exactly who a collaborative enemy was and who was not, we wouldn't have to follow every contact. Since SILTH doesn't believe in miracles, we cover all angles. Sure we might pick up a few harmless people, and have irritated those non-guilty individuals, but we're saving far more lives than we're hurting."
Legondel nodded.
"Legondel has been with SILTH for thirty years. I've been with SILTH for forty years. A long and healthy career awaits you Class of 6666. You can't always tell your family and friends exactly what you do. We'll give you various cover jobs. One of the famous cover jobs is as a correspondent, journalist. You go anywhere in the world and everyone will focus on your cover job not your real job. You might be an oil executive or building contractor, fireman, policeman or any municipality job provides good cover. The key is you will be protecting your country in sensitive area of security. No better job exists."
A female student said, “Tell us more about how Nanotechnology is used.”
Rolith paused. “Demostrations are best for nanotechnology. Rolith stared mesmerized into his tablet pc like he had “Fine The Snitch,” a popular video game on his screen. He smiled. Students began in unison rubbing their right arms or wrist. “Feel that?”
Students nodded and answer, yes.
Nanotechnology can pinpoint any part of the human body, externally or internally. You all were spritz on your right arm or wrist when you entered the door. The spritz is automated. Then…”
All the students started rubbing or swatting or complaining about a bug crawling on them.
“When I press a button you’ll the nanotechnology in the ceiling sends an invisible beam over the hairs on your wrist and arm.”
“I didn’t feel anything,” said one buff shapped recruit.
“You’re a swimmer, right?”
“How did you know that?”
Rolith shrugged. “Swimmers shave their body hair off.” Rolith gazed into his tablet.
All the students started complaining about a buzzing or ringing in their ears.
Rolith continued, “Sounds are not all equal. Some sounds are two low for multiple people to hear. Or in other words only those who have a sound beam directed at them will hear it. You’ll find this technique interesting…” Rolith pressed a boxed grid on his tablet.
“My legs feel really heavy.”
“I feel very tired.”
“No. You’re all fine. You may have felt as if someone had magnetized you and was pulling you down. Healthwise nothing is wrong with you.” Rolith, pressed the box again. “See.”
All the students felt light in their legs again.
“There’s a grid under this floor. Think of it as large magnet sized grid. We slip this under our enemies floor desk at work, more importantly at home under their bed or work chairs. Presto. They feel tired. They find it hard to get up in the morning.”
“Can this magnetic grid stop them from rising for work?”
“No. Not yet anyway.” Rolith thought about something else. “The grid simple confuses and irritates the enemy into thinking they need more energy, or don’t have the optimism to continue their day. They can rise and do rise, with some struggle. Our purpose is the then get them some kind of medical label. BioPolar Disorder. Or any one of the one million syndromes and disorder in the DVSM 6601. Now. you will grab your desk top and pull it to your left…”
“What The Fuck!”
“Look at all those tiny wires.”
“Medical wires,” said a young student doctor.
“Look at all those points pointing to us.”
Rolith looked amused. He loved this part of the course. “The last student said it best. Those are wires we could use to make you cough, sneeze (there is a difference), have fake tears come out of your eye corners, give you wrist pain, give you a panic attack.”
“I don’t believe the panic attack one.”
Rolith shrugged. He looked up, “Always one Doubting Thomas among the new bunch.” Rolith pressed a small circle. The entire classes chest started to heave and clinch and contract.
“Cut it off,” the Doubting Thomas said.
One girl said, “I can’t believe it.” She struggled to catch her breath.
One girl smiled, “I just wiped the magnetic dust off my blouse. I’m fine now.”
Rolith turned to Legondel.
“She’s good,” Legondel said.
Rolith continued, “Sure you can wipe it off. But SILTH will have wired the enemies house or office in so many places, it’ll be back on their blouse or shirt in minutes.”
Legondel interrupted. “Seconds, Sir.”
A guy szid, “Tell us about how you track people?”
“What do you want to know, financial tracking, health tracking, social networking tracking, optimism level tracking,” Rolith stared calmly at the guy.
“You compartmentalize and attack the enemy,” blurted out a girl who looked like a punk rocker.
“What’s your degree in?” Rolith asked.
“Chemistry.”
The class laughed.
“I am not a Meth Lab Head.”
Rolith considered her as an valuable asset. “We love for you to use your chemistry skills against SILTH enemies.”
A guy in a classic Galan business suit, said, “I understand completely! You’d use my micro encomnic skills to tear down a person, corporation, country, planet.”
***
RaydGalil returned to SILTH Headquarters in Calun, Galan. He rode up to the 11th floor, Covert Operations--Poison Dove.
"RaydGalil! "How’s your trip," said a buoyant officer who looked more like a college student.
"The trip went fine." RaydGalil said. "I know whatever I tell you might be used to manipulate me later on. I'll be brief. I went to the Fountain of Romance and I sailed the Lover's River. I went to my hotel. I took in a play about Romeo and Juliet. I rested the next day. I took in the museum sights the third day . . . Shall I go on?"
Take a seat. Don't be so terse with us," said the intelligence officer. "Did you meet anyone?"
"A few Gian girls. No one important," RaydGalil shrugged his shoulders.
"Very well. RaydGalil. What do you think? You want to leave the Army rut and spread your wings and fly?"
"How high can I go?"
"Sky is the limit?"
"I thought Intelligence was overstocked?"
"Not in this war. And not with the right people, RaydGalil." He handed RaydGalil a manila folder. "Your new ID, Passport, a fake biography to answer any security questions. Memorize that. And--"
"Some spending cash. $10,000 to be exact."
"Nice, Uh?" He paused and looked over RaydGalil's young face.
He flipped the file papers, "Why are you offering this to me?"
"Because you're smart. Too smart to being doing grunt work fighting in the trenches." He played with his pen, flipping it for a second."
"I want to fight in the trenches," said RaydGalil, "and prove myself."
"You're going to the front, RaydGalil, in a couple of weeks. I can change that order."
RaydGalil smiled.
"This is your last chance to become one of us and travel the world." He spread his arms wide.
"If I work hard, be loyal to my country something positive will happen. I do believe that. But believing remains difficult during 110 years of war. I need the Gods help to escape this insanity."
"RaydGalil, we know about your girlfriend. We cannot figure out the R&J passages yet, but we have a team of people working on them. A clever move. But cleverness has never stopped SILTH before. We more persistent than the sun rising everyday."
"Yeah, but the sun doesn't rise on old Earth!"
"And we caused that!" shouted the intelligence officer (IO). "Listen why don't you become an Quoardian. Meet this girl and live happily ever after. Just send us a report on the mood and thoughts of its citizens. We place you near TelGara, if you want."
"So now," RaydGalil laughed, "you are trying to make me choose between spying on my girlfriend TelGara and serving my country. But I've already chosen love. I'm not going to spy on my girlfirend."
The SILTH IO said, "Be reasonable, RaydGalil, love is a fickle thing. You saw how bad things turned out for Romeo and Juliet. Their situation doesn’t compare to yours. Forget all about this love muck, join us."
RaydGalil responded with anger, "I happen to have a high respect for love. It's worth something in my book of morals."
"RaydGalil, you know it is foolish to fall in love. Falling in love long distance relationship tops all foolishness. I know you're eighteen and we sent you on this vacation to relax and come to your senses. Being in intelligence is the easiest and funniest job around. Nobody will know what you do. Become anybody you want again and again. We wipe out your past. You have absolute freedom above the law in any country! What kind of choice did you think I was offering you? Some dull job where you work hard receiving boring little pay. You like adventure. Intelligence work is adventure."
"No I--"
Two men came into the room and blocked the door.
"Simply hear me out. I'm sure you might be pleased. The Poison Dove is one of the easiest and cherished positions in SILTH. Time honored tradition dating back thousands of years even on old Earth."
"Since I have no choice go ahead." RaydGalil turned back from the men blocking the door. "Tell me."
"The Poison Dove program is a way to infiltrate the highest levels of society through the female. We do have female poison doves who date the men."
"I'm one-hundred percent straight."
The IO held up his hands as if caught, "Just wondering. Now I know for sure. As I left off, the males seduce the female. RaydGalil, you find a target and get her to fall in love with you. You wine her, talk about what she likes. It's all about her, remember. You even make love at the appropriate time, which could be right away or after the standard three weeks. Once the woman is in love, she will become very attached. This is where your options vary. One, if the target is someone we want distracted, once she is in love and showing all those signs, you abruptly break it off. Dashing her hopes of matrimony and long term relationship. You contrive some excuse, any excuse. Your wife came back from the dead. You're dying of cancer. Whatever! She will be so distraught. She will forget her important duties to her organization, say in banking or intelligence, in the military, or in engineering. Killing the enemy or locking them in a cell block is so antiquated. Just make them ineffective, see RaydGalil. Annoy them in this way or that," the SILTH IO," said in his easy tone.
RaydGalil begin to think how much his meeting TelGara already mimicked the Poison Dove program. "The second method?"
"Two you meet the target. You date her; get her to love you and then you stay in a relationship getting to know all her friends and contacts and employers. Use any of these people for information helpful to SILTH. Of course, you’re looking for people who work in propaganda or intelligence or in highest economic brackets."
"And how does one get out of the second situation?"
"Any number of ways," the SILTH IO," said smiling, "We fake your death. We have you arrested by our agents dressed like their cops. Trust me this is a timeless workable situation, RaydGalil. You'd be Poison Dove #488."
"Not that many Poison Doves?"
"Well not many males have the charm and good boy looks. You see how women more naturally fall into this line of work."
"I see. Guys are rather indiscriminate as long as she is pretty, big boobs, long legs"
The SILTH IO laughs.
"You mentioned adventure. What if I have a conscience?"
The SILTH IO scoffed, "I believe in my country, its cause and this so called Eternal War. We will win this war in just a little time." The SILTH IO made his forefinger and thumb squeeze a tinniest air space. "A few more spies placed here and there inside the Quoardian infrastructure and the war will be ours. Besides, RaydGalil even in peacetime, you always need spies. We're a growth industry!"
"Lies. You feed on lies, manufacture lies and you won't believe anything unless it is the lie you support. I'd love to see the war end, but how? I'm one person, one clog in the mighty wheels of productive insanity or economic necessity of the military industrial complex, if you believe the financial markets. If the Gods allow this war to go on for 110 years, they must have a purpose. Maybe it is to punish our countries by eliminating all the stupid people. Whatever it is, I'll have to get myself out of this. I don't believe this war is good for our country or any country other than Gian. I'll take my chances on the front," and RaydGalil stormed toward the door but the two men stood motionless.
"What if we sent a Poison Dove to TelGara?" The calm SILITH IO said, "As he walked about and stared out the 7th floor window. "Oh she's smart. But this guy, Poison Dove #112, 112 for short is good. He's in Quoardian. He's attractive, has the charm and I believe an intelligent attractive man is a high criteria for TelGara?"
"Sensitivity and Intelligence--" Then RaydGalil stopped himself. He walked back to the table and picked up the folder.
"Oh, 112 adopts those qualities too." The SILTH IO turned back away from the window. "He's loves seducing the attractive women of Quoardian. With their Forced Propagation laws, its startling easy for 112 to operate."
RaydGalil flung the file folder and the money drifted downward. "If I find 112 has even been around TelGara, I'll kill him!"
"Calm, down," The SILTH IO said, "This is all off the record. None of this has to happen. You have a choice. That's true democracy giving a person a choice, right?" He stared cold at RaydGalil.
RaydGalil pointed at the SILTH. "Nothing has changed in 110 years. You IO's never learn. Perhaps it is our fate to be killing ourselves for 110 straight years. After all the races here span from the wicked former intelligence agencies who engineered the destruction of old Earth."
"That's hearsay!"
"Hearsay, you're doing it again, now! Several Galan and Quoardian generals wanted to stop this war fifty years ago. Declare peace! But the intelligence groups on both sides won't allow that. Oh you give me a vacation to entice me to become an IO. 'Travel all the countries of the world; meet all the young women you want. All we ask in return is for you to spy on them and bring us intelligence from their countries.' I refused to be recruited as your Poison Dove. And I know you've engineered me being sent to the front! I'm not stupid as you admitted yourself."
The SILTH IO waved his hand to the two men who stepped aside. "RaydGalil stormed out of the office.
end chapter 6
Back in antiquity, Psychologist and Psychiatrist, wanted to solve all the world's problems by pharmaceutical drugs. Their established fifty year plan: get everyone on some type of medication by circa 2000. They didn't succeed. They got millions of young children and teenagers labeled. So many children had labels, it was a productive status symbol. In those ancient days the DVSM listed a mere 100 syndromes and disorders. Now, we can proudly say, the DVSM has over one million syndromes and disorders. We owe a debt to those pioneering psychologist and psychiatrist who started women pregnant women routinely and screening babies at age zero for mental disorders, long ago. Because of their efforts, psychology dominates Galan Society today.
--Opening Remarks at GALEN ANNUAL MEETING OF PSYCHOLOGIST AND PSYCHIATRIST
