Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997 Pearl Publishing
The Triad
Jonathan, Alexis and Bubba sat sedately in the corner, waiting
for the Cowboy's arrival. Bubba broke out in a shit-eating grin,
and pulled a bottle of his infamous Private Reserve out from under
his robe.
Alexis, grinning from ear to ear, pulled out three shot-glasses
from her pocket.
Jonathan just stared at the two of them for a brief moment, as
if they were lunatics, then shrugged and reached for one of the
glasses.
"I suppose that a death row prisoner is entitled to a last
meal."
Bubba filled the three glasses, as the small crowd of fellow captives
on the other side of the room watched nervously.
The guards looked at the Shadow, who sat brooding silently in
his magnificent seat at the center of the proscenium. He smiled
slightly, and waved away the guards' unspoken question.
Gomez enjoyed watching these diminutive beings clinging to their
small creature comforts in an effort to stave of the reality of
their pending doom. Like the band on the Titanic, playing vainly
as their audience danced their way to a watery grave.
Seeing the Shadow's reaction, various members of the small crowd
began pulling out small flasks and sharing them with the others.
They seemed much less relaxed than the triad in the opposite corner,
however, and were partaking of the beverages offered as if receiving
the final sacrament that would hopefully result in their passing
on to a better place.
As Bubba and Alexis were downing a second portion of bourbon,
Jonathan spoke in a hushed tone, as if imparting important information,
"Perhaps they just want to ask us a few questions."
Alexis spit up her bourbon, spraying Jonathan with a fine mist. Bubba choked on his, trying to prevent it from running out of his nose, but failing. Then the three of them sat rolling in laughter as the others gazed across the room at them in disbelief of what they were seeing.
"I'll drink to that.", Bubba said, upon regaining his composure. He poured three more shots of his Private Reserve, which the trio quickly downed.
"Seriously…" Jonathan began, pausing when Alexis
and Bubba looked at him skeptically.
"No, really seriously." he continued, turning
to face Bubba, "since sunset is fast approaching, and sunrise
may not be coming, as far as we are concerned…" The
three looked at each other in silent agreement of the seriousness
of the situation, "…then perhaps you could answer a
few questions that have been driving me crazy."
Jonathan was looking hopefully at Bubba, who merely nodded for
him to continue.
"Well, for one thing, I was puzzled about the apparent connection
of the Author with so many of the more miscreant individuals and
groups of his time, as well as arms-length links to some of the
more notable abhorrent events taking place around him.
"For instance," Jonathan continued, "it seems everywhere
the Author went, there arose groups and individuals who were major
players in acts of destruction which claimed to be aimed at the
Evil One and his sycophants, but which, in fact, caused the deaths
of a multitude of ordinary people."
Jonathan paused, to take a sip of bourbon, then continued.
"From the intellectual Berkeley radicals to the Unabomber;
from the Oklahoma City bombers to the Solar Temple and Heaven's
Gate cults…" Jonathan stopped momentarily, at a loss
for words, and then blurted out, "even his 'son of gomez'
persona, 'sog', was strewn throughout the web of paramilitary
organizations surrounding his travels…Sons of the Gestapo,
ZOG, the Zionist Occupational Government, and a dozen other examples
that…"
Bubba cut him short with a soft wave of his hand.
"And on, and on, and on…"
"Exactly!" Jonathan exclaimed, relieved that Bubba recognized
the widespread threads that the Author's presence seemed to link
to during his wide-ranging travels.
The triad tossed down another round of drinks, and then Alexis and Jonathan sat quietly, waiting for Bubba to begin.
"Who did McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber call before the bombing?" Bubba asked Jonathan.
"Strassmeir." Jonathan replied, then added, "And then Strassmeir's lawyer."
"And when did Strassmeir, a German with close ties to that country's rulers, move to the United States?" Bubba continued.
"1989." Jonathan said, adding, with a tone of quiet astonishment, "The year that 'The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre' manuscript began circulating in underground computer circles."
Bubba smiled. "And what was the purpose of his move to the U.S.?"
"To work on a special assignment for the U.S. Justice Department, according to the interviews he gave in 'The Telegraph,' but he was quoted as saying that 'It never worked out.'"
Bubba shook his head slowly in disbelief that Jonathan could have
done so much research, yet still manage to miss the obvious.
"And, pray tell," Bubba prodded Jonathan, "what
were Strassmeir's duties when he was a lieutenant in the Panzer
Grenadiers, in Germany?"
Jonathan smiled sheepishly, and replied, "He worked to detect
infiltration by Warsaw Pact agents and then feed them disinformation."
He quickly continued the thread on his own, saying, "So his
claim of failure to go to work as an agent of the U.S. government
was merely more disinformation. And his U.S. contact was a retired
US Air Force colonel named Vincent Petruskie, who had strong ties
with double agents on both sides of the Iron Curtain."
Bubba nodded, smiling, and let him continue.
"Strassmeir went to Texas and started work for one of the
computer companies that was involved in the underground dissemination
of "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre."
Jonathan hesitated for a moment, then made a further connection
in his mind, and continued.
"He was involved in the international implementation of 'Operation
Eunuchs.'" Jonathan said with a look of amazement on his
face. "He wasn't an agent of the Author, he was involved
in the search for him."
Bubba slapped him on the back and handed Jonathan and Alexis another round of drinks, which they raised in salutation to Jonathan's mental detective work.
"Precisely." Bubba grinned, proud of his young protégé. "The twisted trails which appear to follow the Author's presence were actually indications of the results of the dissemination of his manuscript."
"The reason that the momentous 'Operation Eunuchs' had so
much trouble following the trail of the mythical 'Circle of Eunuchs'
was that the only outward manifestations of the Author's manuscript
showed up in the work of those individuals who misunderstood his
message and incorporated his themes in their overt activities
and organizations.
"Thus Strassmeir ended up following the trail to the Elohim
City religious militants, while other agents involved in the operation
infiltrated the Heaven's Gate cult who had extrapolated the 'Circle
of Eunuchs' ideal to include castration for the purpose of preventing
deviation from their aim of honing their computer skills to work
against the Evil One directly."
"Which was the very reason that those at the original meeting
of the Circle decided to go their separate ways, having no overt
contact with one another." Jonathan picked up the thread,
as he was starting to see the beauty underlying that decision.
"With no contact, the Magic Circle only existed in concept,
not in reality, so they could not be found, and thus be destroyed."
"They existed only in the Land of Mythos, as potentially real." Alexis added, beaming. "Like a gas that could be condensed, or solidified, in an instant, given the right conditions."
"Yes." Bubba beamed along with her, proud of both of
his protégés.
"While Gomez and the Dark Forces kept an eye on those, such
as the Unabomber, the Freemen, and the Posse Comitatus, who seemed
to be actively engaged in promoting the themes espoused by the
Author's manuscripts, but who were, in fact, merely incorporating
misguided bits and pieces of it into their activities."
"But didn't the Unabomber have a direct relationship to the
Author?" Jonathan asked Bubba, a quizzical look on his face.
"I remember that the Unabomber used to send him communiqués
over the InterNet through a contact in Billings, Montana."
"The contact was one-way." Bubba replied placidly.
"The Unabomber was linked to the hacker who named himself
the 'Evil 1', because of the Author's designation of the true
Evil One as the chief enemy of the Circle of Eunuchs. The Evil
1 hounded the Author wherever he surfaced on the InterNet, having
such prodigious computer skills that he could track him in a multitude
of ways, despite the inability of the Shadow's legion of agents
to pick up the Author's trail."
"Didn't the Author expose the Unabomber, leading to his arrest?" Jonathan asked.
"Not directly." Bubba stated, smiling. "But he
certainly caused the discovery of his identity to the authorities."
Bubba laughed lightly, and told Jonathan and Alexis, with a wink,
"He tripped the Unabomber up with the 'Winner's Bluff' gambit,
just as he did with myself, and Gomez, and more than a few others
in his time."
"The reward for the Unabomber had grown to two million dollars,"
Bubba related to his avid listeners, "so the stakes were
extremely high.
"The Author, having traced the source of the Unabomber's
communications to him to Montana, suddenly contacted Basis Inc.'s
'gomez', in Berkeley, suggesting that he had a hot trail and they
should join forces to expose the Unabomber and share the reward.
"He purposefully transmitted the message in the clear, allowing
the Evil 1 hacker to intercept his message and pass it along to
the Unabomber, who, shortly thereafter, believing that the Cowboy
indeed held the cards needed to expose him, contacted his family
and had them turn him, thinking that he was outmaneuvering the
Author and enriching his family in the face of the inevitable."
"But he didn't actually have the cards to do it, did he?" Alexis broke in with a Cheshire cat grin.
"No," Bubba smiled at her, "he didn't hold a single face-card, as a matter of fact. All he knew was the source of the ISP the messages were coming from, and he well knew that the Evil 1 hacker would be able to pick up the trail of any probing actions that the Author and 'gomez' might engage in to find him.
"But he was so bold in his declaration that the Evil 1 didn't want to take any chances, and so the hacker convinced the Unabomber of the danger of the Author's threat in order to sacrifice the Unabomber and leave a cold trail for anyone following up on the Montana connection."
"So," Jonathan declared in retrospection, "my assumption that the Author was performing a superhuman amount of activity to cover all of the ground where his influence was obvious was actually a result of the dissemination of "The True Story of the InterNet" manuscripts."
"Exactly." Bubba nodded in agreement.
"While much of the true work of the individuals working as single-cell units of the Circle of Eunuchs was taking place in unknown places, using untraceable methods, portions of the Author's concepts were surfacing overtly in the increasing resistance to central authority that was taking place in society at that time.
"Jane Wardlow Prettyman described what was taking place during that era," Bubba noted, "in a work called 'The Paranoid Frontier.'"
Bubba quoted an excerpt quite easily from memory, even as he knocked
back yet another shot of Bubba's Private Reserve.
"The question of state's/county's rights vs. a central union
was not settled with the Civil War. It just went underground.
It went out West."
"And the Author spent the majority of his time in the West," Jonathan added thoughtfully, "where a fishing pole, a rifle, and a six-pack of beer was considered to be the equivalent of a paramilitary identity card."
"Very perceptive, Jonathan." Bubba spoke with a grin, patting him on the back. "You've certainly picked up on one of the essential reasons that the Author's manuscript spread so readily among the citizen militia of the time, as well as among the more technically inclined."
"The Author," he continued, "was not an ivory-tower
intellectual. He bounced bars, roughnecked in the oilfields, and
operated as many whore-houses as he did computer companies.
"He was a man for all seasons," Bubba concluded, raising
his glass in toast, "much like myself."
"Right." Alexis laughed, poking Bubba in the ribs.
"You've been thrown out of bars, roughnecked with young girls,
and spent more than your share of time in whore-houses."
Jonathan and Alexis laughed heartily, while Bubba tried his best
to look offended.
"What about the CypherPunks?" Jonathan changed the subject,
realizing that sunset was nearing and the Cowboy would soon be
making his appearance.
"There seemed to be so many indications of the presence of
the Circle of Eunuchs within their ranks, yet, at the same time,
every apparent indication that this or that individual was a member
of the Magic Circle quickly turned into a wisp of smoke when I
took pains to examine it."
Bubba paused, lost in reverie, as Jonathan and Alexis looked on, and then he spoke slowly and thoughtfully.
"Actually, your observations were no different from those
of the Shadow. He always kept a close eye on the CypherPunks as
the possible core of the Circle of Eunuchs, should it actually
exist.
"And perhaps, in a way, it was."
Bubba sipped his bourbon slowly, then continued.
"Some of those at the original meeting of the Circle of Eunuchs
gravitated naturally toward the CypherPunks mailing list, finding
kindred spirits there. They soon realized that the CypherPunks
embodied much of what the spirit of the Circle of Eunuchs stood
for, from the first.
"My ancestor, Bubba Rom Dos I, had told them that they must
band together, in order to fight against Gomez and the Dark Allies.
Young, stuttering Michael told them that they must disperse and
work separately in their grand battle, in order to prevent becoming
a stiff, hard entity that could be broken by force."
"The CypherPunks were, in many ways, a physical incarnation of the concepts underlying the Circle of Eunuchs. They could be described as an oxymoron known as a 'band of anarchists'."
Jonathan chuckled, and intoned, solemnly, "Close ranks! Every man for himself!"
"Precisely." Bubba thumped Jonathan roundly on the back,
and poured them all another round of Bubba's Private Reserve.
"Everything about them was a dichotomy."
"Every label one tried to put on them failed to stick. Any
individual on the CypherPunks list might argue one point of view
one day, and the opposite point of view the following day, and
yet somehow manage to be consistent throughout.
"They not only drove you crazy," Bubba nodded
to Jonathan, "and drove Gomez crazy…they even drove
themselves and each other crazy, as well."
Bubba shook his head, as if at a loss to describe the CypherPunks
any further. Then he added, in closing,
"Perhaps the most defining feature of the CypherPunks was
that they strove to 'walk their talk', as the saying was in those
days. While they decried the increasing infringement of central
authority on the freedom and privacy of the individual, which
was near its zenith at that point in time, they chose to fight
for the right to be self-willed, rather than to impose their will
and beliefs on others.
"Instead of concentrating their efforts on forcing the authorities
to acting rightly, in the interests of freedom and privacy, they
focused on routing around the impositions and infringements that
the government and dark forces enacted to try to contain them.
"John Gilmore, one of the CypherPunks founders, often said,
'The InterNet interprets censorship as damage, and routes
around it.' Very Taoist." Bubba concluded.
Jonathan spoke softly, quoting a section of the Tao Te Ching which
had been a particular favorite of his grandfathers,
"A man of Virtue performs his part,
"But a man without Virtue requires others to fulfill their
obligations.
"The Tao of heaven is impartial.
"It stays with good men all the time."
The triad sat quietly, contemplating the lengthy trail of history
which had led to this point in time and space, where the future
of mankind seemingly lay in the balance, depending on what would
transpire among a mere handful of actors who were present.
But each of them realized that, whatever the outcome of this day's
deeds, it would be the result of eons of individuals who had raised
their banner, great or small, in the battle for freedom, and had
passed their torch to those who chose to carry it into the future.
A succession of individuals who had looked into the mirror of
their soul, heard the whisper of the Tao, and vowed that they
would not die plaintively pleading,
"Why didn't I do something."
Bubba poured the last of his Private Reserve into the shot glasses,
and raised his glass along with Jonathan and Alexis, as he softly
said, with a tone of great respect,
"To Vice-Admiral Bubba D'Shauneaux."
There was a commotion outside, beyond the doors of the Great Hall…
Chapter 35 - The Triad