“So you work for some government?” asks Medic, partially amused and partially irritated, feeling like he’s being pranked. Or worse.
“No. No governments. No corporations. No large groups of any kind, really. Unless it suits our purposes,” she explains flatly. “There’s just the agency and our little cell. I don’t know if there are others because, as I said, the organization keeps a pretty tight lid on things.”
“Wait. So what is it that you actually do?” he asks with an incredulous frown.
She pauses briefly as a stern expression creeps across he face.
“I should’ve told you off the top,” she says firmly, “that there are many things I simply won’t be able to tell you. Some are classified, some I just don’t know. Of the things I can tell you, some you’ll find out later and some you never will.”
A quiet ding interrupts the amplified audio, telling her that a text message has just arrived from Dmitri. “No go. Too exposed,” it says. That means that she has about twenty minutes to idle here before moving on to the next destination.
She closes her eyes again and listens intently.
About ten minutes later, a few quiet but discernible words echo into her ears. She grins with satisfaction, not because she understands any of it but because she got a recording.
His first search is for “The Handler” which pulls up over forty pages of results. None of them seem right. He revises the search by adding a few digits from one of the random-looking lines on the business card. There’s exactly one result.
The sequence of letters and numbers on the website seem to match those on the business card. Beneath them, only the words “GET ME HOT” appear on the otherwise empty page. He waves the mouse cursor over the page looking for hidden links but finds none.
Just then, three shapes emerge onto the path from the shadows.
The two large men instantly attract his attention. One looks like a mountain, maybe a boxer with a shiny bald head, cauliflower ears, wildly crooked nose, hands that look like anvils, and shoulders to lift them. The other one is a little shorter, has a paunch, brush cut, and a Burt Reynolds mustache suggestive of someone who spends too much time watching 70s action movies. Both men are dressed in long black overcoats exposing casually unbuttoned dress shirts. The look is professional.
Following close behind them is a petite woman wearing sunglasses. She’s dressed similarly to the men but her clothes are tailored to suit her compact frame. It’s hard for Medic not to notice the gentle sway of her body as she walks, the warm and smooth glow of her tan complexion, the way the straight line of glossy black hair frames her face.
As a responsible “citizen journalist” I do my best to research a topic before I post about it. Usually I’ll focus on a subject for a few days, sometimes a week, occasionally longer, but there’s one area of research that I’ve pursued incessantly for years.
It’s all based on a collection of loosely organized documents, images, and recordings; a series of semi-anonymous recollections and first-hand experiences that expose the methodology, technology, and clandestine operations of a very unusual organization.
Given this context it wasn’t surprising that much of the dossier was unclear if not outrightly opaque. Nevertheless, I could at least authenticate the bulk of the information, which can be found in its entirety on the web – if you know how and where to look.
Since I’ve taken some liberties with the source material I thought it best to repeat the same disclaimer that the collection opens with, namely, a warning that not everything contained within is 100% accurate for reasons of security, secrecy, privacy, etc. At the same time, however, a lot of it is.
Mostly it’s a matter of corroboration.
Without any additional preamble the dossier dives straight in…
These past two years have been an eye-opener, huh?
In the aftermath do you find that you’re more apt to question if you’re being lied to? Do you find yourself doubting “the truth“™? Have you uncovered new allies? Discovered new adversaries? Can you even trust yourself?
And now with China’s looming presence and Russia’s overt reemergence, doesn’t it all suggest some sort of literal / literary neo-noir, neo-cold-war espionage thing? Moreover, what if there’s something larger at play?
Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I’ve spent a fair chunk of this time doing a bunch of research, jotting down copious notes, and running some experiments. Without going into blatant spoilers I can say that what emerged from the effort was interesting. Like, really interesting. Enough so that I felt a need to spin it into what I hope is an interesting and entertaining yarn.
There’s definitely going to be a lot of fiction but there’s also going to be a whole lot of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Fiction too. Sometimes it’s “speculative” but sometimes it’s just established fact. Look it up.
But if you stick around everything will eventually be explained. Probably. Anyhow, here’s the main dossier:
Last July I wrote a post about Doug Ford’s assumption of dictatorial powers in the province of Ontario, “because Covid”. I noted that the powers granted under the “Reopening Ontario Act”, which Dougie clearly and obviously demonstrated he wasn’t willing to abuse, were set to expire at the end of 2021. I recall that my reaction at the time was something along the lines of, “yeah … sure.”
A few short months later it was revealed that – SHOCK! AMAZEMENT! – the non-emergency-emergency powers that the government magically granted itself will be extended until March 28 of this year, “because Covid.”
Should we be worried about a literal dictatorship that has repeatedly put people out of work, shut down the economy, driven families and large chunks of society apart, filled people with dread while making their lives miserable, maybe even had a hand in killing a few of them?
Of course not! The real and proven threat to “democracy” is … truckers!
I spoke with Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau this evening about the ongoing occupations in Ottawa and Windsor. We will continue working together to support our police forces as they manage these situations. We both agreed this must come to an end.
Just for fun, if you’re ever in the city see how many traffic cops you can spot who are parked illegally, often so poorly that they actually endanger public safety, all while handing out tickets for exactly the same “offense”. No doubt these brave souls will be out in full force keeping everyone “safe” and “free” from those awful violent truckers, not like those “mostly peaceful” BLM protests that the cops literally knelt before.
Warning: if you make the above activity into a drinking game, you might be dead by nightfall.
Not only is it illogical for truckers to hold fringe, unacceptable views and protest yet another encroachment on their rights and freedoms when so many have already been taken away – duh! – but there’s probably going to be violence and gridlock – because precedent – so just stay away from Ottawa!
Totally and, like, purely coincidentally … Prime Minister Trudeau is isolating and therefore unable to meet the obviously violent mob charging at him after he tested negative for Covid, twice, because health and safety first! Thankfully the state has a monopoly on violence, which it totallynever abuses, in order to deal with such abhorrent and senseless situations.
As of yesterday (I believe, but today certainly), the majority of beds occupied by Covid patients in Ontario ICUs were those of fully vaccinated individuals. The numbers are plain as day:
It was not so long ago it was being trumpeted that those selfish, disgusting, unvaccinated heathen were plugging up hospitals and possibly costing people their lives.
Looking at the graphs above, it’s clear that the sheer number of people in hospitals with Covid has ballooned so if they were already having problems in the fall of 2021, imagine the kinds of problems they must be having now. And all because of those damned fully vaccinated people clogging up the healthcare system! Lock ’em all up! Make ’em pay!
I kid, of course. Mostly.
I’m sure someone can still conjure up a “what if…” scenario using ratios and proportional comparisons to calculate how likely an unvaccinated person is to be admitted to the ICU compared to a fully vaccinated individual, and imagine if all the unvaccinated people suddenly needed to go to the hospital! …but these models and projections clearly aren’t in line with the reality: it’s the fully vaccinated who are putting an undue “burden” on the healthcare system, both in the ICU and in hospitalizations in general.
I use quotes around the word “burden” because I’m not certain how large a share of beds Covid patients take up overall, but if we assume a conservative estimate of roughly 21,000 then all Covid patients presently occupy roughly 1.3% of the total bed capacity.
Maybe it’s not a capacity problem but a staffing problem. I don’t know what the broader solution is but maybe the city and province can start by not demanding the firing of perfectly healthy, capable people? Just a suggestion.
With fully vaccinated individuals occupying nearly three times as many hospital beds as unvaccinated patients, and now that most patients in ICU are fully vaccinated, I wonder if the nightly news will do an expose on the “pandemic of the fully vaccinated” while bemoaning how these scoundrels are taking up needed beds and preventing potentially life-saving surgeries.
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