1) A boatful of British sailors is captured by Iran.
2) Britain is confident their boat was in Iraqi waters because the GPS measurements confirm this.
2) The Iranians are confident the British vessel was in their waters because their crew says so.
3) The GPS network is owned and operated by the United States.
4) Everybody is well aware the Bush administration is dying for an excuse to invade Iran.
a) If the United States gets in to any kind of conflict, they will have zero support even from the American people.
b) If, however, the US were “coming to the rescue” of a still mostly respected ally, things might be different.
5) The bush administration has a demonstrable history of lying, deceit, and dirty tricks.

So who else comes to the conclusion it’s more than 50% likely the Bush Administration cooked up a little GPS hiccup in order to jump-start its goals in Iran?

United States of America, known in all but the most formal circles as simply “America” has finally checked itself into the prestigious Conressional Democratic Hospital for observation. Friends and colleagues are hopeful that America is finally seeking the care it has so obviously needed for several years. Like so many other tragicomic celebrity stories, America’s crack-up began with a string of resounding successes.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, America was reclusive and valued its privacy, content to stay mostly home, and only emerging for professional reasons. Though America was visibly active in business and related social circles, it remained aloof, and seemingly a little shy. A young nation, America was unusually dedicated to its education and fitness, and had surprisingly little interest in bravado.

It wasn’t until 1917, when America stepped into the first Brawl that the fruits of its industrious youth were first put on display. It is worth noting that America took pains not to get involved in the Brawl. Only after repeated instances of property damage, and compelling evidence that Germany and its friends planned to attack America did it take aggressive action. That action. however, was decisive, demonstrating America’s intelligence, ingenuity, strength and resourcefulness. Soon after America stepped into the fight, Germany was thoroughly beaten down. This was hardly a surprising outcome at the time, but what was surprising was America’s good faith attempt to acheive the most positive outcome for all parties. America was patient, and worked hard to settle things between the various nations in and around Atlantic Avenue. It was this straightforward and unselfish approach that gained America the reputation for fairness and honesty that it wore so proudly for most of the 20th century.

Through a second and more destructive go-round with Germany and its new friends, America continued to earn that reputation for fairness. There was a lot of unease at America’s handling of its fight with Japan, but it was generally accepted that the physically imposing America made the right choice in cold-cocking Japan, given that Japan seemed to have been irrational, and perhaps even willing to fight to the death. It was also telling that when all was said and done, America took pains to pay for some of Japan’s medical expenses, and to assist with repairing much of the property damage done in the fight.

It wasn’t long after America went nuclear that it jumped into a fight over at the Korea home. North Korea and South Korea were having a pretty serious argument, and soon most of the neighborhood was involved. It was at this time that major tension between America and Russia (United Soviet Socialist Republic if you’re not the sort who enjoys brevity) began to play out. Ever since the second Brawl, these tensions had been escalating, and the Korea divorce would not be the last time these two influential nations would use the conflicts of others as symbolic expressions of their own violent urges.

Both physically imposing, both highly intelligent and ambitious, it couldn’t have come as a surprise when these two nations went head to head in a battle of wills to see who would be the de Facto mayor of Earth. Though they spent forty-some years threatening to beat each other into oblivion, it is telling that both nations kept their wits sufficiently to avoid such foolish actions. However, the strain of this antagonism on America is telling, and signs of paranoia began to appear in the 1950s.

By the 70′s, America seemed addicted to conflict, and appeared willing to justify a great many questionable actions as being necessary to combat Russian aggression. Throughout the 80s, that paranoia fed into an avarice and desire for financial power and influence that left America with a crushing debt. Things seemed to improve briefly in the 1990s, but by the early 2000s, America was in bad shape.

On November 11th, America was mugged by a drifter named Al Quaeda, and all of the other nations were quick to extend their sympathy and support. America just as quickly demonstrated its addiction to aggression and apparent feelings of superiority by ignoring the advice of it’s neighbors and friends, and commencing a bullying and slander cmapaign against Iraq, convinced beyond reason that Iraq must have been involved in the mugging. America deluded itself and lied to the other nations with falsified evidence, and utterly disrespected them by ignoring even the most basic rules of civility. After a year of bullying and accusation, America forcefully invaded the Iraq home and has been running the show there ever since.

After several years of obvious self-serving lies and incoherent ramblings about “mission” and “duty” and making Iraq “free”, during which time America’s kids were living in the Iraq home and carrying guns, America’s close neighbor Canada was heard to say “That America’s gone batshit gosh-darn crazy, eh?”

Batshit crazy indeed.

Shortly after that comment, made in mid 2004, America was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer dubbed simply Bush II. The tumor is highly aggressive, and has spread in tendrils and nodes throughout America’s body. Throughout 2005 and 2006, America was seen rambling and mumbling incoherently, scratching and hitting itself, and even hitting itself in the head with a large stick. Psychologists have theorized that this self-abuse could in fact be the sentient behaviour of the tumor activly trying to harm its host. Evidence also suggests that reported bouts of bulimia may be a desperate attempt by America’s tortured brain to purge its body of the invading tumor.

In between bouts of demonstrable insanity, America has picked fights, spent shocking amounts of money (including, rumor has it, burning small piles of money throughout the Iraq home), and taken it’s children out of school on the pretense of religiously based home schooling. In recent months, what can be heard of America’s constand mumbled ranting indicates possible multiple personality disorder, as there appear to be two distinct voices arguing back and forth. This self-opposition seems constant, except when America would occasionally stop to lean out a window, or even climb onto a roof and shout “I am the greatest!” to the entire city.

Though the situation is dire, and the outcome uncertain, America’s many admirers (and this reporter counts himself among them), wish America a swift and compete recovery. It is doubtful that America will ever regain the respect and trust which led it to its former leadership role, but there is still a sliver of hope. The staff at Democratic Congressional has never been known for their quick results, but we know them to be dedicated and professional, and absolutely the last hope for a significant recovery.

Let’s jump past the uncertainty for just a moment, and imagine America’s life two years from now. Even assuming the complete removal of the Bush II tumor, there will be many years of work to do, starting with intensive phsychological therapy. America will have to come to grips with what kind of nation it wants to be, because the damage to it’s sense of identity and purpose has obviously been severe. It will have to rededicate itself to its education, as it has lost much of its focus in many of the areas where it was once an acknowledged leader. Perhaps most importantly, America will have to get back into the business of business. Whereas America built its reputation and wealth on the strength of a renowned series of family-run businesses. Throughout it’s recent instabilities, America has farmed out many of the key jobs to other nations, and it’s economic position is consequently fractured and unstable. Many observers wonder if America still has the ability to to provide the products and services necessary to reverse its cashflow. America has been spending money all over town, and we simply don’t know how it can repay its debts and rebuild its savings.

We know where America has been, we know what it has done, but no one has any idea where it’s going. Good luck and Godspeed, America. You’ve been a collossal prick lately, but we can still remember, if dimly, the wisdom and kindness which once guided your brute strength. We’re still pulling for you.

i used to think of myself as a stone and life as the river that broke around me
i tried very hard to be the stone
to be constant
to be strong
to be true

but only a very small part of the river would ever pass by me

now i try to be a fish

There is a world that waits beneath this world, and a world lurking below that one, and yet another world festering somewhere far below that. There is a man who walks within all of these worlds and stalks the spaces between. A woman hunts this man, and will hunt him to the ends of the earth, but can she follow him beneath the black? Can you?

So I’m pretty sure this is the new title for the story I was calling “Confession”. I wrote this up as a blurb I can use for my voice-over reel. I’ll try to get it recorded and update the post soon.

Lucas has never met his parents. Has no idea, even, of their names. It is, in point of fact, illegal for him to know their names. You see, Lucas is the product of a commissioned birth. There is an entire department, somewhere in the laberynthine corporate structure of Hotaku Manufacturing, the sole purpose of which is to monitor the genetic rights held by the company, and to determine how best to utilize those rights for company benefit. The acquisition of these rights occurs in various ways.

Nearly ten years before Lucas’ birth, Nigel Freeman, a very successful engineer from the agricultural equipment division was promoted to Chief Exeutive of his division. He had proven to be brilliant engineer, and had shown enough administrative prowess to merit the promotion, and the attendant opportunity to finish his career at the company with great distinction. It was given to this man to see over the market intruduction of Terra Nova, which was at the time, a revolutionary soil enrichment system based upon a bioengineered fungus, which was itself a product from an entirely separate division. According to design, the fungus was to be deposited centrally in the middle of a plot of future farmland, mixed in with organic material containing nutrients and other material suitable for rejuvenating the applicable soil. The fungus itself was engineered to distribute the organic mixture with remarkable efficiency, and die, giving it’s own organic material to the new soil.

All of the controlled tests had been incredibly successful, up to and including turning a hundred tons of sand from the Sahara desert into viable soil, suitable for a variety of grasses and hardy ground cover. One half of that sample had been allowed to evolve naturally, and indeed showed great progress, but what could be done with repeated treatments was astonishing. The second half of the original test sample was put through several additional iterations of treatment, and was finally put on display in the main lobby of Hotaku’s North American headquarters supporting miniature jungle. Three banana trees, a small bamboo grove, and several other very demanding plants were able to thrive in the treated soil, and the product was praised by dozens of international media outlets even a year before its launch.

Freeman, along with his employer, had been widely expected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, until a clever terrorist organization discovered that the Terra Nova process was in fact the most perfect delivery system ever devised for biological warfare.

Mexico Viejo, a group committed to reclaiming California as a Mexican territory was able to obtain a large amount of a highly engineered Ebola variant, and to introduce it into a shipment of Terra Nova, earmarked to the central coast of California as part of an effort to repair decades of soil damage caused by the California wine industry. This particular variant of the virus had been wrapped in a protective lipid capsule, resistant to most common chemicals, but designed to erode in the presence of bile, the chemical in human digestion responsible for the breakdown of fats.

Okay: I’m going to publish this right now, because I really like it, and just in case anybody’s reading the site, I figure I want to have people pestering me to finish it. I have to go meet my brother for a movie right now, but I’ll try to finish this side-story tonight. Feel free to pester me if I don’t.

K. Back to work.

The strike was more effective than any other act of bioterrorism in history. After the Terra Nova conditioning, the afflicted land was given over to the farming of potatoes. Growing directly in the soil, the potatoes picked up nearly all of the virus particles. In a final twist of fate, the entire balance of the infected crop was purchased, processed, and distributed by none other than McDonald’s, the once preeminent fast food chain. Jullienned into roughly 120 million french fries, and distributed across eight states, three quarters of a million people were infected within the space of a month. The very ubiquity of the McDonald’s franchise masked the cause of the outbreak for a full week, during which every contaminated morsel slipped through the system.

The allegations of Hotaku involvement in the conspiracy came after Hotaku Pharmaceutical Division acted with commendable speed to provide their still-proprietary Ebola vaccine to every person living between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. The vaccine had only recently been granted approval, and represented the culmination of a decades long tier five research program. At Hotaku, a tier five project means minimal staffing and funding, and was deemed sufficient for the Ebola research, because there had never been a widespread outbreak, and the risk of one had been seen as minimal. In fact, final FDA approval for the vaccine had been granted on the same day the first of the troublesome potatoes had been planted and preparations, including a massive stockpile, were underway for a massive worldwide rollout.. The more urgently needed Ebola antiviral treatment, however, was still in the midst of it’s first round of human trials, but since no similar project existed, Hotaku sought and received special dispensation from the President of the United States granting immunity from prosecution should the new drug have unintended consequences. The moment the paperwork was signed, production for the drug was pushed to maximum capacity, and over each of the next fifteen days, that capacity doubled, up to an astounding quarter of a million one-liter treatments were produced per day for two remarkable days. This herculean mobilization by a heartless corporation was the first, and probably last of its kind, for there is nothing so powerful and determined and fickle and stupid as the American Public.

It was too much convenience, they said. Too unlikely that exactly the necessary tools to combat the most devastating attack in history would be so handily available. It was too profitable, they suspected, to have been merely a happy accident. Of course “they” were most often far removed from the reality of the incident. They had the luxury of being far away from the disease, from the twenty thousand people the treatments were too late to save, and very, very far away from any of the tens of thousands of people inside and out of Hotaku who labored day after day without rest and who managed to maintain the highest standards of safety and precision, amidst physical, mental, and increasing spiritual exhaustion. These people listened to such reports, and very few of them had any kind reply to the use of the word “convenient” to describe what had happened.

But the attacks pressed on, accusing Hotaku of organizing a catastrophe for financial gain. The accusatory fever reached its peak on the day the inquiry report was made public, showing the role Terra Nova had played in the distribution of the virus. The report itself expressed no suspicion of such involvement, instead focusing on the many points in transit, where the Terra Nova could have been left vulnerable to contamination, as well as the determined nature of the radical faction of Viejo Mexico believed to have executed the attack.

The America Public was not so easy to convince, especially with several million dollars shifting hands behind the scenes keeping the story alive in print, television, and online media. Hotaku was finally able to quell the rabble by agreeing to take tax breaks in lieu of payment for the millions of doses of medication dispensed. It would take ten years of enormous tax savings to make up for the hundreds of thousands of man-hours that went into this effort, not to mention the cost of cleaning, sterilizing and inspecting every square foot of manufacturing space utilized in making the experimental drug available, lest it contaminate any of the regularly produced pharmaceuticals.

In the end, Nigel Freeman is chosen to make the announcement, and to fall on his figurative sword, taking responsibility for Hotaku’s imagined wrongdoing in “allowing” the Terra Nova to be contaminated in the first place. His short and dignified speech ended with his resignation, effective immediately.

That dignity deeply missed in the following days, as Hotaku, in an effort to recover some value from one who had been a highly valued employee, exercised a seldom used section of the standard executive contract, and required Mr. Freeman to provided repeated genetic samples for the company’s genetic library.

And this is how, unknown to him, half of raw material that one day became Lucas Hotaku was the humiliating icing atop a cake made from genius, evil, nobility, paranoia, tenacity and desperation, mixed in chaos, and baked in the glaring light of a media cut off from its roots and gone feral.

Is it a bad thing that the song that has cheered me up the most over the past week is “Everything Dies” by Type O Negative? Hmmmm . . .

Nope.

I opened a door, and in a split second, a blond man straight out of anime shoved me out of my dream.

I had enough time to think how weird that was, and then I went back to sleep.