Chow Down Right: The Body Snatchers Job

Game date: 10/22/2020

I started having my recurring nightmare when I was very young, too small even to be groomed for a life of endless boardroom meetings and machiavellian machinations. I am floating in an infinite space, surrounded by objects of varying size. In some dreams, they appear to me as numbers, in others, as rocks or spheres, and sometimes they are just formless concepts, but always, always, they are motionless, or perhaps locked in a tight, slow pattern of motion. Then, I notice the smaller objects occasionally dart from one place to another, but nothing comes of it, because they are too small to matter. They are beneath notice, and their erratic, out-of-pattern behavior affects nothing. Very rarely, a medium or larger one may move without consequence, but only slightly. When one of the biggest objects attempts to break the pattern, to dart about as the smaller ones do, then the entire system comes crashing down around me. And that is always when I wake up, frightened out of my wits.

Once, after a particularly bad awakening, I told my mother about this nightmare. She, being a mystical sort, told me that I must have an instinctual understanding of the world, for my dream mirrored how it works. And she also said that I should not be afraid when they all come crashing down, because any

system so rigid is bound to end in chaos. To prove the point, she brought some games. One of them was made with long blocks that were nearly (but not quite) identical in shape, and stacked in a tower. The goal was to remove blocks from somewhere in the middle of the structure and place them on top, building it ever higher. Being a bright child, I soon realized that, eventually, the tower must fall.

And then she showed me how to build a sturdier structure, using the same blocks, with a wider base. By putting more resources at the bottom, she said, the top did not reach as high, but was in no danger of falling. "But it isn't the same game," I said, and she agreed. "It all depends on what you think 'winning' is."

I got very good at these games, but never forgot the true lesson. I still have the dream, but sometimes, I play with it before the chaos begins. And, I keep a little pyramid model on my bedside table. I don't have any other real memories of my mother.

Soon after taking charge of our rebel group, I started to remember some other lessons. Father taught me the dirty tricks of management, but I took it upon myself to learn sound practices that actually build a team from the ground up. It's quite simple, really. You just have to put the time into it. I started to talk to them, individually. You know -- treat them like real people? Depending on who views my journal (preferably, nobody, but I doubt I live forever), this concept is either stupidly obvious, or completely foreign. Either way, I can't help you understand how the other side thinks. It's a disconnect that occurred somewhere so deep in our past that I doubt it's documented anywhere.

The point of all this is, that in one of these meetings I learned that the Border Patrol needed more investigation, and put some time into it. I didn't think there was any deadline, so I did this methodically, and enlisted some help, and thus found some very disturbing info. CyberTek wants to help put those injured agents (the ones mauled by the Golborn) back into service. Not put them on medical discharge. They are meeting with BP's Major Stone in two days for a presentation.

CyberTek is the corporation that is building the anthrodrones. The ones designed by Holographic Hilda, to be suitable for holding an AI consciousness. The ones we're planning on stealing. Do they plan on transferring people's minds into them? And, if so, do they plan on giving those people a choice in the matter?

I shared this data with Katrya, who was not happy at all. By now it's obvious she has a history with Border Patrol, and I've worked out that she's not completely satisfied with the way the relationship ended. (And now, I've concluded that I'd rather she were in charge than Stone, since he was on duty when the Wall was breached.) It was already a high priority to shut down production of CT's new drone line. Now, I believe, it was time to step it all up.

I gathered info on the marketing exec and Stone, and modified two micro-cameras to fit their expected appearance. Gathered intel on the most likely time & place to plant a bug on each of them, and quickly discarded the possibility of getting one on the exec. When I asked the team for volunteers to get the button on Stone (I'd made it look just like one of his medals), Mauger suggested hiring one of his thief contacts.

I cringed internally, but nobody else stepped up, and I certainly didn't think much of my own chances of success. It ended up costing more than I would have liked, and we may want to work on Mauger's negotiation skills, but it was done, and in the meantime there was a lot more to be done. Time was more important right now.

Katrya found some military-grade explosives and detonators. She seemed disappointed, saying it wasn't "the good stuff," but at least it wasn't the truckload we'd have had to cart in without her contacts. A few of us had to gamble rent to pay for it all, making success an imperative. I doubt we can all move into Frank. I grabbed the TekKnight camera off the wall where I'd stashed it a few weeks back (it was still there; nobody cleans gum off walls). We headed out that very night.

Jane took care of the security cameras for us. It was no easy task. They had some that reported onsite, and some that fed back to headquarters. She pulled her peculiar brand of mojo to feed both systems a loop, which should give us maximum time to work. (I must admit to being envious of this particular skill, and I wonder if it's similar to what Ryatt did during the bug hunt? I must talk to both of them about it and see if it's something that I can learn.) After achieving this, though, she said that she'd be no more help that night, and I told her to go home. Note to self: we must cut her in on this job if we get paid. Second note to self: Have a one-on-one meeting with Jane.

I had purchased knock-off CyberTek security uniforms for the entire team, even the littles, thinking that we may need them for disguise. Even so, we left Ellie and Ryatt in Katrya's van, her at the gun and him at the console, and fed our comms into Frank's displays. We also brought the AUC van, thinking that it would make a good disposable decoy, if we needed such. Varshana didn't want to risk her business vehicle, and I can't say that I blame her. My drones were, of course, on sentry duty, as was Mauger, who really loves high places and high-powered rifles.

However, my nerves got the better of me at the gate, and I couldn't get through it without help, so it was a very good thing we had kept the kids up past their bedtimes. With Ryatt's assistance, we got onto the grounds. Then we had ourselves a little hike around the building, to the loading docks.

Which, of course, had no outside access. Well, that was a possibility we had accepted when we started out. We checked the north personnel entrance, but it had no externally accessible ports -- it was just a keypad entry.

After some dithering, we decided to attempt a deception. Aru pressed the buzzer at the loading bay, and said into the intercom, "Yes, hello, this is the North Dock, right? This is Black Van Catering, we have the order for meeting room 3."

A loud buzzing from inside. Then, silence.

Suddenly, Jane spoke over the comms, sounding stressed. "Some lights just came on in the live feed. There's something big moving around in there."

"Spread out," I ordered, unnecessarily, for those present were already scattering, moving away from the large door. We waited. And waited.

And waited.

After a minute, Jane said, "Lights just went dark again. I'm guessing they're on a motion sensor."

I sighed. We were wasting time that we did not have. "Okay, this is ridiculous," I said. " I'm going to try to hotwire the keypad."

Which I did. It wasn't pretty, and showed obvious signs of forced entry, but then, we weren't planning on leaving this site operational, anyway. Vamir, undoubtedly the stealthiest person present, took point and opened the door.

Inside, half in shadow against a far wall, stood a humanoid figure, but easily larger than any such race that I know of. Made of metal and plasmer. Standing still, looming, waiting for us to move.