A battle at City Hall
I had a feeling July 16th could be eventful.
I had heard rumors that we might have a new police chief in Mountlake Terrace, but I had yet to confirm them.
The Police Department has made many decisions that have had a devastating impact on my life. But even beyond my personal interest, as Mountlake Terrace has become something of an epicenter of the battle over the secrecy of the satellite, the question of who is in charge of the MLTPD has wide-ranging implications.
So I decided to go to the City Council meeting to see if there was any information on what was happening.
Right up to the meeting, my nervous system had already been under attack from the satellite. I felt like hell, but I knew I had to make it to that meeting.
Though the Neural Net may be a deeply evil institution with many grisly methods of maintaining order within its ranks, still many inside it are willing to stand up and fight it - often at terrifying personal risk. Sometimes they go by ‘The Rebels’, or also, ‘the Resistance’.
Many of these people happen to be handling me, and when they offer to slip me information to carry to the police, or the outside world, I try to make the most of that opportunity.
Sometimes the Neural Net will try to sabotage this process with false information meant to be very damaging. The process of breaking this information can itself be very dangerous - the people who run the Neural Net see secrets as essential to their power, and revealing anything can provoke a rage that can produce attempts on your life.
It is a subtle and dangerous game.
As I drove past the train station, all of the sudden my handlers started telling me that they wanted to share with me a method for saving someone’s life if they are put into a coma with sleep mode.
For context, the weapon system on the satellite has a mode for tampering with the state of your nervous system that they call ‘sleep mode’.
On a low setting, sleep mode can make you feel sluggish and tired. On higher settings, the operator can ‘sleep’ you, which is their term for literally making you fall asleep. They can literally do this to you anytime they want, including when you are standing up - or even when you are driving.
Turning sleep mode on high enough, I’m told, can force you into a coma from which you cannot awaken, or even kill you.
Though I didn’t have a lot of time before the meeting started, this was a big deal, as information about the satellite’s capabilities is absolutely precious.
‘Time is life’, as they say in the Neural Net, and I decided to pull over as fast as I could before one of the bad guys on the Neural Net was able to sound the alarm and stop us. After missing a turn off, which probably cost another 45 seconds, I made a snap decision to just pull over, put on my flashers and pull out my phone as fast as I could.
“Nathan, the way you wake someone out of a coma who has been put into sleep mode is that you use adrenaline and also what you use to get someone out of a coma.”
As I was typing this, I noticed some guy was trying to get my attention. I think he mistook me for an Uber. I finished typing, waved him off and continued my drive to City Hall.
When I arrived at the parking lot at City Hall not long after, I suddenly felt totally exhausted. My handlers explained that the Neural Net was tampering with my nervous system again, trying to make me feel so drained so that I would not even make it into the building.
I scraped myself out of my car and walked into the City Council building. As I walked in the door, I suddenly felt better. I figured it was because the Neural Net thought it would look bad if the guy who was such a thorn in their side looked too sickly in front of all of the people in attendance.
I sat down and took a look around as the City Council members took their seats. As I got settled in for a long meeting, I got an urgent request from one of my handlers to take down a message for the police to review. I got up from my seat in the council chamber and found a place by the door where I didn’t think there were any security cameras.
With my back facing the wall, I started frenetically relaying a message from my handlers to the police. The bad guys running the Neural Net were livid that I had made it to the City Council chamber anyway, and they were already trying to kill all of us.
I added my own postscript to warn the cops that this could go on for a while. Our nervous systems are always a target during certain times of strategic interest, or particular visibility. I had a feeling the attacks were probably going to continue for at least the next hour and a half to two hours, or at least until the meeting was over.
I returned to the City Council chamber.
At some point, a police officer showed up, spoke with the City Manager, and then stood in the corner of the City Council chamber near the door. I wondered if he came bearing any news regarding the police chief.
Not long after the meeting started, I got a request to take down another message. I left my seat and returned to the spot by the door which I had been using before.
This time, my handlers told me that a fight had broken out between the different bad guys in the Neural Net and that they might start killing each other soon.
The Neural Net is full of petty, violent people who are used to getting what they want, and don’t take well to anyone challenging them - even if it’s from their own ranks.
I finished typing up the message and then I returned to my seat in the council chamber.
Just minutes later, as I sat back down and tried to focus on the presentation, I got an urgent request to relay another message. I receive a lot of these, but this one was different. I rushed out of the council chamber while trying to remain quiet, returning to my spot where I had been standing between the double doors at the entrance.
“Nathan, I am going to tell you that the Neural Net is going to try to kill the officer who showed up to the City Council meeting tonight.”
Typing as fast as my thumbs could work, I warned the police watching over us of the imminent danger and then returned to the room.
As I returned to my seat, I gathered as much information as I could about what the bad guys were planning to do. In a rushed exchange with my handlers, I found out that it was no coincidence that they had slipped me that information about sleep mode during the drive over.
The bad guys’s plan was to use sleep mode to kill the officer right in front of the City Council. With the satellite now an open secret among the people in our community, it would be a public spectacle that would spread fear across the land.
As I walked back into the City Council chamber, I thought over what to do next. I know from experience that sleep mode can be used in ways that can incapacitate you very quickly but are still really subtle. I chose a different seat that would enable me to watch him out of the corner of my eye. At least, since he was standing up, it would be easier to notice if he was having a problem. I know from personal experience that when sleep mode is used on you while you are standing, you will start to stumble around before you lose consciousness.
In my mind I played through the scenario in my mind, and thought through how I would manage the situation in the event that they targeted him with sleep mode. There would be people panicking, and I would need to be very calm and matter of fact to keep the situation from getting out of control.
I continued communicating with my handlers and casting glances at the officer while reading the room. As I sat there, I was told that the Rebels were under heavy attack from the bad guys in the Neural Net. We were in a battle, and it was up to everyone involved to hang on and do their part.
In the meantime, the attacks against my own nervous system resumed. I started feeling a shooting pain in my left ear that just kept coming back again and again. ‘It’s just pain’, I thought. I couldn’t afford to lose focus.
I noticed the officer leave the room and quickly get switched with another officer. I felt better almost instantly, because it was a visual indication that the cavalry was here, and they were watching. I kept an eye on him anyway, just in case.
The City Council meeting continued. I sat there, checking the officer and reading the situation while the presenters went through their slides. My ear felt like an icepick was inside it.
Finally, as the meeting came to a close, and the City Council members and everyone else began to mingle, I looked around. I went through a mental checklist of things to think about before standing down. I knew there were several police in the area, they were watching, the meeting was over, and my handlers had told me the worst of the danger had abated. I made a judgement that it was time to leave, and out the doors I went.