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I'm averaging about one news story plus one instalment of the Climate trials a week now. That's about four feature stories plus a good chunk of fiction a month. If you can afford it, why not kick me some coin? (Thanks Ben for being so awesome!) It's easy to do through Patreon and Pay Pal.
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Field notes for agent 34 of Oprix Investigations:
day 15 of file 2205:
Another routine day.
The only event of interest was at 15:55---when subject was out away from home the thermal imaging cameras suffered an hour of down time due to what appears to have been a squirrel jumping on the remote camera unit, diverting it’s aim from the window we use to scan inside the house. Once the problem was understood, agent 34 was able to realign it and resume recording the interior.
At 17:34 the subject returned to the house, cooked something to eat, watched some Netflix, showered, then went to bed at 24:38. No activity perceived after lights out.
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Field notes for agent 22 of Oprix Investigations:
day 20 of file 2205:
While following the subject I temporarily lost the tail for approximately two hours after an elderly Asian woman came to me and started talking loudly to me in what I assumed was Mandarin. She wouldn’t let me go and kept jabbering at me. I found I simply couldn’t disengage with her without causing a scene and drawing attention to myself. Eventually a young man, also of Asian descent, walked by and asked her something in her language. He told me she is visiting her son who is a teacher at the local university. She’d become separated from him and didn’t know what to do. I told the young man that I was very busy and I couldn’t help her. He said that was Okay and he’d help her out. He said something more to her and they left together in search of an address she’d shown him on a piece of paper.
This whole event took less than ten minutes, but in that time I completely lost the subject, who had gone into a store which has separate entrances and exits. Since he has “frequent haunts”, I was eventually able to find him again two hours later. He was leaving the library with a full shopping bag. He’d obviously just been running errands downtown.
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Mikhi was in the bulk food store buying some things when Ian walked in and came up to him. “We’ve just removed your surveillance tail for a short period of time. When you’re finished here I need you to go to the Vietnamese restaurant in the mall. Go to the upstairs balcony that is on the right as you walk in the main entrance. There will be someone you recognize from the Holy House sitting at one of the tables. Sit right down with him. He wants to talk to you.”
Mikhi was nonplussed. Increasingly, nothing about the Elders surprised him. He certainly realized that the success of the “Climate Trials” podcasts was going to piss off some very wealthy people. In the past, he’d found investigators snooping around him for far, far less successful campaigns. There were incidents with sketchy looking people taking photos and video at demonstrations. Once a hard drive holding the national membership list had been stolen out the computer in the head office of an organization where he held the position of media officer. And he’d also been involved with projects where death threats had come down the pipeline---one so serious that plainclothes policemen had attended every public meeting “just in case”. So there was nothing really new about any of this. In fact, he’d often told naive volunteers that if they were ever really successful in trying to make the world a better place they’d end up being hunted by death squads. A little surveillance was “par for the course”.
He did as he was told and one of the fellows was where he was supposed to be.
“Sit in that particular chair and don’t move it. We’ve worked out the angles and no one can see you sitting there unless they walk through the door you came through. And in doing so, he’ll be very visible to other people we have on the ground floor. As well, we have people in the Mall who would recognize the people who’ve been following you. No one can get near you without us knowing.”
“If you have to leave suddenly, go to the rear of the bar and walk through the kitchen. There’s a door there that exits into the back hallway where the upstairs public washrooms are. If I say so, quickly exit that way and then got to the toilet and wait for a call on your cell phone. Answer it, and follow the instructions. That’s the “emergency” plan in case something unexpected happens.”
“Okay. Here’s what you need to know.”
“A few days back a team of ours created a diversion for the people watching your house. When that happened, we planted a ‘shunt’ onto your computer system that creates a phony stream of activity for the surveillance device that these private investigators planted on your equipment. We also strengthened the encryption on your computer so we can obscure whatever we need to hide from them. (Of course, it’s much better that they think that we aren’t hiding anything, which is why we have the shunt.) This means that we will go back to emailing conversations with you---so don’t worry about that angle of things. It helps that you use open source software because we can use a “look alike” system upgrade site to scan for more malware on your machine and to periodically repair anything that might get installed by the spooks.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a cell phone. “Here’s a Linux phone with special software on it. When you get home, transfer the SIM card from your existing smart phone and put it in this one. That should give you a secure way we can contact you quickly. Look in the “notes” section of the menu and you’ll find some info about how to use it to contact us.”
“As for the agents following you today, that’s a more difficult problem. Once in a very rare while we can intervene like we did today. But this has to be done very sparingly or else the private intelligence firm will become suspicious. What we are trying to avoid is any hint at all about the Elders’ existence and our involvement in the YouTube videos.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“What are they looking for, do you think?”
“I suspect that they are trying to figure out why your program is doing so well. You wouldn’t know this, but there is a very substantial campaign going on to ‘spoof’ the artificial intelligence programs of the major search engines to drive people to the show. In addition, the production values are far greater than would be expected from a small organization of volunteers. But we’ve been very good at not leaving any ‘finger prints’ to identify us. The people who’ve hired the investigators are probably really interested in finding out who the ‘new players’ in town are. And as the face of the Climate Trials you are the only real lead that they can follow.”
“Is there any evidence of government skullduggery?”
“No, not that we’ve seen. Nor have we seen much evidence that the big tech companies are interested. It’s true that there are political factions who are actively attempting to sabotage attempts to prevent runaway climate change. But they tend to be very wary of getting government bureaucrats involved in their nefarious deeds. Most government agencies are be run by professionals, who tend to work on objective information instead of ideology. That’s why there is so much noise about the ‘deep state’. Unfortunately for our conservative friends, objective facts tend to have a liberal bias---which means that career officials can’t be trusted to destroy the earth so someone else can get rich. Similarly, the big tech companies are dominated by young engineers with families who can understand mathematics and don’t see much value in destroying the planet either.”
“That just leaves the fossil fuel companies. Unfortunately, they still have a lot of resources to hand. And the ones that were foolish and refused to diversify are finding themselves with a lot of stranded assets. Some of them are realizing that they spent a lot of money for fossil fuel reserves---shale oil, tar sands, heavy oil, etc---that are quickly becoming worthless. Because, as the demand for oil dries up, prices drop and customers are moving towards the absolute cheapest sources, which means Saudi Arabia, not Northern Alberta or North Dakota.”
“Unfortunately, mature, large corporations are led disproportionately by psychopaths who like to take crazy risks and feel no moral obligation to play nice with people who cost them money. If they feel their power and privileges slipping away, at least some will gladly hire thugs to rub-out people like us---if we let them. But don’t worry, the Elders won’t.”
“Wow! I’ve finally got to the point where what I’m doing actually has an immediate positive effect on the world around me. I’ve always believed that if I was really doing some good that I’d end up with someone threatening my life!” Mikhi was positively glowing.
His companion chuckled. “That attitude is probably part of why the recruitment committee suggested you for this project in the first place.”
“OK. If there’s nothing else, you should go now. Leave through the back and go do what you’re going to do, then go somewhere public and visible that you would normally go to kill time---a favourite coffee shop, restaurant, the library. They’ll have people watching there on the assumption that they just lost you through happenstance. Happens all the time in their line of work, and they will just shrug it off if you don’t do anything suspicious. We’ll email you as soon as we feel sure that it’s safe---then it’s back to ‘business as usual’.”
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