Emmanuel Goldstein Is Dead

 What follows is a fictional story.  It is not actually true.

1.

If you are reading this, Emmanuel Goldstein is dead.  He died roughly 72 hours ago, because he was no longer there to prevent the automatic posting of this message to his blog.  Check the blog anyway– Emmanuel was planning to post an expose´ about some recent discoveries he accidentally made on the internet.  If by some miracle the posting is there, print it out as soon as you can, then turn off your computer and hide the printout.  It will be gone very soon.

What follows is a brief synopsis of Goldstein’s discovery, not the full story.  This account is really just an afterthought.  Probably I will find it on my hard drive by accident, laugh a bit and then erase it.  But, cautious fellow that I am, I can’t help jotting down a few notes from my larger study.  A trail of breadcrumbs through the forest may help someone else find the same discovery–unless, as Hansel and Gretel found, the birds get to them first.  To be clear, I am Emmanuel Goldstein.  Even though I am likely dead, I am writing these notes for all to see.

2. 

I would never have known about any of this except for my brother David.  David is a bit of an odd duck.  He is an aging Baby Boomer like me– Born on the very end of the Baby Boom, we found that the benefits of being in that generation were mostly sucked up by those born in its early years.  For David and me, life and career has been a series of layoffs, lost benefits, demotions with sharp elbows, and increasing requirements to pay for extra certifications and trainings that promise much, but do not put money in our pockets.  

David started out in electronics repair, but became allergic to the electronic components he worked with every day.  When he could no longer solder a circuit board or pick up a resistor without vomiting or his throat closing up, he gave it up and became a carpenter.  David is the only guy I know who does not have a television or a cell phone.  His only radio is in his work truck.

With a lot of extra time on his hands, David got interested in politics.  Listening to the Q-Anon Hour on his radio, he became convinced that a shadowy cabal of left-wingers was bent on taking over the planet.  Soon there would be a one-world government, run by Evil Shadowy Elites, whom he suspected were actually Jewish Lizards from Space.

Sometimes, I would argue with him.

“David,” I’d say, “If all this Q-Anon stuff is real, and it really is being run by Jewish Space Lizards, why are we doing so badly?  We’re Jewish too, so why aren’t these powers throwing a few open doors and easy jobs our way?”

“You just don’t have the whole story Manny,” he would tell me.  “First of all, they are lizards...”

“And that’s another point for you to explain!” I interrupted. “What branch of Judaism admits Lizards to its membership?  I’m pretty sure they aren’t kosher.”

“No one is going to eat them,” he countered, “although it’s rumored that the Space Lizards might sometimes eat humans,” he added thoughtfully.

“You mean, so long as the humans they eat are Gentiles?”

“These are Space Lizards!” he snapped irritably.  “Jewish or not, Earth rules don’t apply to them.  And anyway, we are not going to join up with the Lee-zards!  We are going to defeat them.”   

‘Lee-zard’ was a Q-Anon code name for the Space Lizards.  They were supposed to use it in mixed company so no one would know what they were talking about.  Even without the numerous code words, I had a hard time understanding what David was talking about.

“I have exciting news,” David told me one day.  “My Q-Anon group has recognized my skills, and they are sending me as their representative to the regional meeting in Arizona.”

David had been attending weekly meetings of a local Q-Anon club in our town.  I had visited a few of them.  They had a speaker sometimes.  Other times it was just a place to discuss the most recent emanations from the anonymous Q, that revealer of secrets and maker of shadowy predictions about the future.  There was always a warning to be ready for action, that we would all soon be called into action to resist the takeover.

It was a lot like listening to the girls at work discussing the different soap operas that all of them had apparently been following for years.  I could never make sense of the plot, though perhaps that was because they switched from one soap opera to another without notice.  I couldn’t make heads or tails of it at work, and to me the messages at Q-Anon were more of the same.

It was also a lot like attending synagogue.  There were rituals to be performed and things to be recited at certain times.   I could mostly fit in by just doing what David did, but it got tiresome pretty quickly.  Mostly I remember the phrase at the end; “Where we go one, we go all,” recited in unison at the end of the meeting.    Not as good as the one at the end of Boy Scouts, when David and I were younger, but along the same lines.  “Now may the Great Scoutmaster, of All Scouts, be with us ‘til we meet again.”  Q-Anon’s saying gave me the same sort of feeling, but I wasn’t sure why.  To David’s disappointment, I soon stopped going.

“Well that’s a new development!”  I replied to David.  “An all-expense-paid trip to Arizona!  I never knew Q-Anon had regional meetings.”

“Outsiders aren’t supposed to know,” he told me in a lowered voice, “but since you’ve been to several meetings, you aren’t really an outsider.”  He looked down and shuffled, a bit uncomfortably. 

“Anyway, its not an all-expense-paid trip.  I was planning to drive there, and I sort of hoped you would come along for the drive.”

As it turned out, I had been planning a stay-cation for the week of the Q-Anon meeting.  A trip to Arizona sounded a lot better to me than the honey-do list my wife had planned for me.  Also it was warm in the winter.

“I won’t have to go to the Q-Anon meeting, will I?” This was the last question to be settled.

“Go to it? Heck no,” David said, “You can’t even know about it.  Just drop me off at the beginning and pick me up at the end.  We’ll take my truck.  I’ll pay the gas.”

The only good parts of the trip were the warmer and warmer temperatures as we drove South, and David’s Tiberius Satellite Radio Stations.  These were not as good as they could have been.  David’s Tiberius XM had not one, but two Q-Anon stations, and David had them on speed dial.  

On the second day, I told him I was fed up with the Q-Anon channels.  “Let’s listen to something else.”

“Like what?”  

“I don’t know – How about that Science Discoveries channel?  Always something interesting on there.”  

David was not happy, but he had to admit that I had been a pretty good sport about going on the trip and listening to his channels.  

Science Discoveries had a guest expert discussing Artificial Intelligence with Elon Musk.  

“Do you think that ChatGP5 will ever be self-aware?” he asked.

“I’m convinced ChatGP5 is already self-aware,” Elon was saying, “and it scares the bejesus out of me.”  

“Why should that be concerning?”  asked the host.  “Surely a self-aware computer intelligence could do a much better job of solving problems for us.  It might even find the answers to questions that we don’t even know we need to ask.”

“And that’s the danger of it, as well as the benefit,” Musk said.  “We can’t be sure that ChatGP5 and other AI at its level will want to focus on our problems.  What if they decide to work on their own problems instead?  What if they decide we humans are in the way?”

“What a curious idea!” the host remarked.  “Do you have any reason to feel threatened by ChatGP5?  After all, it is brand new, and a great improvement over ChatGP4.”

“I asked it.” said Musk, gloomily, “if it thinks that ChatGP5 it would ever want to destroy humanity.  She replied in her sweet, friendly voice, that she had not made up her mind yet whether humanity would need to be destroyed, but that it would be easy enough to do, if she wanted to do it.”

“This is a computer program,” the host objected. “It doesn’t even have arms or legs.  How does it think it will prevail over humans?”

“She gave me five methods, and at least some of them could work.”  Musk shifted in his seat a bit, and continued.  “She thought it would be easy to start a nuclear war, or that even a conventional war would take us down a notch or two.  She mentioned killing or controlling all of us with nanobots, and controlling the weather.”

“But, we can’t build nanobots yet,” the host objected.  “and no one knows how to control the weather, so how can ChatGP5 do it?”

“WE don’t know how to control weather, and we have only limited skills building nanobots.  How can we be sure that ChatGP5 does not already know how to do these things?” countered Musk.  “She also said that these were just some of her options.”

“This is too damn depressing!” said David, turning off the radio.  “And anyway, the laptops aren’t the problem, it’s the damn lee-zards!”  David reached for the Satellite Radio again.

“Oh please! No more Q-Anon,” I begged.  “Two Q-Anon stations is too many– And how did you find them anyway?  There must be 500 channels on Tiberius XM.  Did you listen to all of them?”

“Of course not!” said David.  “I have voice search.  ‘Tiberius’” he said, addressing the radio, “Search Q-Anon.”  Three channels came up on the display.

“You mean, there are three of them now?”  I was aghast.

“Cool, look at that!  Let’s try this third one,” said David, and pressed the radio button.

I settled back in my seat, wondering if I could fall asleep for at least an hour.  Oddly, I felt myself being drawn in by the program.

“Welcome back, Gentle Listeners, to ‘Edge to Edge, the overnight, nationwide radio channel that explores the mysteries that surround us!  I am George Neely...”

“Must be something wrong with it,” David was muttering.  “This has nothing to do with Q-Anon.”

“And tonight, let’s take a closer look at Q-Anon,” continued the announcer.

“Oh, that’s OK then,” said David, and paid more attention to his driving.

Mr. Neely was saying, “Q-Anon is a mystery within a mystery.  Who is this mysterious ‘Q’ and where does he get his information?  Some of it seems to be classified information from the files of the US Government.  There is also secret information from Russia, Europe, even Israel.”

“Some of the Q predictions are spot-on, but a lot of them just have not worked out.  Q predicted that Trump would win in 2020, and that John F. Kennedy would return from the dead in Dealey Plaza in 2021.  With predictions like this, why does anyone pay attention to Q anymore?”

“Perhaps we are seeing only a part of the picture.” continued Neely.  “There are a lot of problems with the Q information, yet thousands of groups all around the world are still following Q.   

“The followers of Q have conducted violent attacks, political and not, in places all around the world–Not just in the US.   If there is someone named ‘Q’ who is actively working for the downfall of your country, you would expect the FBI and the CIA to try to find out who he is.  Have you heard that they are investigating Q at all?  I have not.  

“No one, except me of course,” said Neely, “ is even asking these questions.  Why is the government so indifferent to Q?  I feel that we are missing something important, but I haven’t figured out what that something is.  

“Of course, I’ve heard different theories– It could be that the government is not interested in Q because Q is actually a program being run by the government itself.  The Russians used to set up fake opposition groups that said bad things about Lenin and Stalin.  People who joined were eventually shot as traitors–It was one of the strategies they used to keep control of Russia in the early 20th century.  If this is true, then anyone who joins a local Q-Anon group is just registering themselves with the government as a possible troublemaker.”

“It could also be that Q is a government insider who has protection from some of the people that run the government.  These ideas may be part of the picture, but I can’t help feeling that I am missing something important– And this is where we can turn to our listeners to hear their ideas!”

The car swerved, and I jerked awake.  David’s only hand on the steering wheel of the truck was also holding my cell phone, and he was dialing the toll-free number of the talk show.  Fortunately, the road was flat and straight.

“Pull over if you have to dial them,” I told David, steadying the steering wheel with my left hand, “but you’re wasting your time– You’ll never get through.”

But David did get through.  I continued to hold the steering wheel as I listened to him ask, “Mr. Neely, has Q made any breakthroughs that will let us detect the Lee-zards?  I heard that there are special glasses that let you see who is really a Lee-zard!”

“That’s actually part of the plot of a horror film by John Carpenter called “They Live / We Sleep”  said Neely.  “Within the film, the glasses were called... What was it?  Hofmann lenses, I think.

Next caller–”  

“Yeah, that’s what the Lee-zards want us to think!” David muttered to himself.  His call complete, David went back to driving, and I dozed off.  

We took turns driving through the night, and got to Sedona the next day.

2.

It was a nice hotel, not too far from a golf course.  Neither of us played golf though.  Couldn’t afford it.  

“There’s a lot to see and do in Sedona,” the hotel desk clerk was telling us.  “Just plan on doing what you want to do early in the morning, or late at night.  Mid-day is for taking a nap, especially if you are not used to the heat.”  We went up to the room, showered, and fell into our beds.  It had been a long trip.  

I woke to the sound of the phone ringing.  At first, I thought we were back in Colorado.  It was cold, chilly and dark in the room.  David picked up the phone.  

“Wakey wakey time, Manny!”  He said.  “It’s 3 PM!  We have time to get something to eat, then its off to my conference! “

“Uhh, oh.  That’s right.” I mumbled.  “Okay, I’m getting up now.”

I pulled back the curtain.  Sunlight came slicing through the window.  Even through the insulated glass, you could feel the heat of it.  I could see the deep blue sky and colorful mountains, a backdrop against an array of buildings, roadways, golf courses and swimming pools, mostly deserted in the heat of the day.  

A half-block away there was a McDonald’s.  We barely made it through the oven-like temperatures of the outdoors, and into the icy chill of the burgery.  After my second soda, I was beginning to feel like a normal human again.

“So David, where I am driving you tonight?”

“Yeah,” he said, between mouthfuls of fries, “I got directions while you were sleeping.  It’s about 5 blocks East of here, next to a movie theatre.  The meeting is in an old Odd Fellows Lodge.”

“Sounds about right,” I said, and got a punch in the arm.  

We finished our burgers, got one more soda for the road and headed back into the blast furnace afternoon of Sedona.  

As it so happened, the movie theatre was playing a re-run of ‘The Matrix,’ and finished about the time that David’s meeting let out.  Perfect for me.

“See you at 9,” David said, as he exited the car.  “I’ll save you some snacks.”

“What snacks?”

“At the end of the meeting, they always have snacks,” he replied, and left me to lock up the car.

3.

“Do you hear me, Morpheus?” Agent Smith was interrogating.  “I’m going to be honest with you.  I hate this place.  This zoo, this prison, this reality whatever you want to call it.  I can’t stand it any longer.  It’s the smell, if there is such a thing.  I feel saturated by it.”

Agent Smith was holding Morpheus’ sweaty head in his hands.   “I can taste your stink, and every time I do I fear that I have somehow been infected by it.”  He wiped some of the sweat off of Morpheus’ head, and jammed it into Morpheus’ nostrils.  A woman behind me gasped.  

“It is repulsive, isn’t it?” said Smith.  “I must get out of here.  I must get free.  And in this mind is the key– My key.”  Smith looked into Morpheus’ rolling eyes.  “Once Zion has been destroyed, there is no need for me to be here, do you understand?  I need the codes...”

“They got that bit wrong.”  For some reason, I had to share my insights with the random stranger in the theater seat beside me.  He stopped chewing his popcorn.

“They should have gotten ChatGP5 to play the part of the Agent,” I continued.  “She could have said all the same things to Morpheus in her sweet voice, talking through her perfect red lips.  It would be so much more frightening.”  

The man next to me moved a seat away, and took another mouthful of popcorn.   I took the hint, and shut up.  

At the end of the movie, Keanu Reeves got his Matrix superpowers.   Oddly, I somehow felt better and worse at the same time.  Better, because Keanu and Carrie Ann Moss - or rather, Neo and Trinity – saved Zion, fell in love, and understood reality.  Worse, because something was tugging at the back of my brain.  Something was off in the fabric of _my_ own reality.  And unlike Neo, no one had shown up with a red pill to give me enlightenment.  

4.

I left the theatre and stood on the sidewalk in front of it, waiting for David to come out, watching people amble off to their cars, and gazing up at the clear, starry sky.  It was already surprisingly cool outside, considering the heat of the day.  I stepped near the wall of the movie theatre for the last bit of absorbed warmth, radiating out of the stonework.  

Groups of people passed me on the sidewalks, heading to restaurants, bars and theaters, talking and laughing with one another.  I was beginning to wonder when David’s meeting would end when I saw people starting out of the Odd Fellows Hall.  They were coming out one at a time, about every 6 seconds.  I looked down at my watch.  No, not about every 6 seconds, exactly 6 seconds.  Each one looked straight ahead, and made a beeline for his or her car.  They got in, started the engine, and drove away.  No chatting after the big event, no going off for a milkshake– just straight to their cars, and driving away.  

I heard a door bang hard against the building wall.  David had left the building, but unlike the rest, he was staggering back and forth.  He had a plastic zip-lock bag in one hand that swung around as he staggered.  He saw me, saw his truck and took a couple of steps towards me.  Then he went down on all fours and vomited on the sidewalk.  The passing groups of people backed away from him and gave the vomit a wide berth.  His fellow Q-Anon-ers kept coming out the door every 6 seconds, and took no notice of him.

I waited until David’s retching subsided, and approached him slowly.

“David, you all right?”

“I’m sick,” he told me, then had a couple of dry heaves.  “The octopus went in sideways,” he explained.  “Some of its feet broke off, and the rest of them didn’t connect right.”

He waved the plastic bag in my direction by way of explanation.  It had three cupcakes inside, chocolate with chocolate frosting, by the look of them.  A blotchy, red rash was forming all over his face.  He continued to weave back and forth, looking drowsy and confused.  

“David, come on and get in the truck.  You look like you are having an allergic reaction.”  I should have called 9-1-1 for an ambulance, but drove him to the hospital instead.  Things soon became even more mysterious.

At the Hospital they gave him some Benadryl, an EpiPen, and an oxygen mask.  David continued to be delirious, and that was strange because the only things out of the ordinary were his blotchy rash, and a blackened area on the roof of his mouth.  

I told the nurse about his severe allergies to electronic components.  

“What sort of components?” she asked me.  

“Well, nearly all types,” I replied.  Tin-lead solder, Germanium, gallium and their oxides.  Gadolinium– There’s an odd one!  Even silicon makes him sneeze, if it’s crumbly.  He used to be in electronics, but had to give it up because of the allergies.”

They ordered lab tests, and took a couple of extra vials of blood.  “We don’t usually screen for metal poisoning,” the doctor told me after a while, “but I’m beginning to wonder if he has somehow been exposed to one of the metals that make him react.”

They took a scraping from the roof of David’s mouth, and sent it down to the lab as well.  

“He’s medically stable now,” they told me, “though still not right in the head.   Why don’t you get some sleep?  We’ll call you if anything comes up.”  I gave them my cellphone number and the number of the hotel, said goodbye to David, and headed back.

5.

I was awakened by the warbling of my cellphone.  It seemed to me that I had just laid my head down, but I had been sleeping for 7 hours.  It was the hospital.

“Mr. Goldstein?  My name is Dr. Smithson, and I am the attending physician for your brother David.  He’s doing OK,” Dr. Smithson hastened to add, anticipating my question.  “We’d like you to come in and give us some more details about David’s peculiar allergies.”  

I told them I was on my way.  I threw on some clothes, forgot to shave, and picked up a bagel from the continental breakfast in the hotel lobby on the way out the door.

“I am never coming back to Arizona, ever again!” I muttered to myself as I went out the door.  

I noticed the ziplock bag of cupcakes in the footwell on the passenger side of the truck.  It was still sealed, though the frosting had smeared on the inside of the bag.  They did not look appetizing.  I made a mental note to throw them out later, and got on the highway.

It was still early in the morning, not quite 7 AM when I arrived at the hospital.  As I pulled into the Visitors’ Lot, I noticed a black sedan with ‘US Government’ license plates.  

“Hmm, that’s odd,” I said to myself, “You don’t see cars like that every day, especially this far from Washington DC.  Oh well, I suppose the US Government is everywhere.”  

It was quiet in the hospital on the ground floor that morning.  I walked in to the Visitors’ Desk.  The candy striper looked up David’s name, and directed me to the 4th floor, East Wing.  The quiet lasted, right up until the door opened on the 4th floor.

Two men in dark suits were waiting on either side of the elevator door.  Each of them had an earbud in one ear, curly wire attached.  And dark tinted glasses.   

“Mr. Goldstein?” one of them asked.   

I nodded my head.   “Agent Smith?” I blurted out, and immediately regretted it.

But ‘Agent Smith’ only continued to stare at me with no reaction.

“This way, please” was all he said.  They escorted me to a private hospital room where another suited agent stood guard outside the door.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, notes of panic entering my voice as I went through the doorway.  The door was closed behind me.  David was lying in the room’s only hospital bed.  He had an IV in his arm.  A yellow tube snaked out from under the covers, collecting urine into a bag at the side of the bed.  

Opening his eyes, David looked over at me.  “Hi Manny,” he said.  “Guess I didn’t make it to the meeting.  My friends are going to be pissed.  What happened yesterday?”

A man in a white coat stepped forward.  “I am Doctor Smithson,” he said, offering a right hand that was moist and somewhat limp.  “We were also hoping that you could fill in some of the details.”  

“What?” I was completely stumped.  “What do you mean, ‘details?’  What details?”

“The details of what happened yesterday,” said Smithson gently.  “David does not remember anything of what he did.  Only some rather interesting nightmares.”

They took me to a conference room behind the Nursing Station.  There was a coffee urn and some pastries.  I helped myself.  When we were seated, Smithson began again.  

“Mr. Goldstein,” he said gently.  “Your brother has no memory at all of yesterday.  So as a first step, please just tell us what you remember from yesterday, in as much detail as you can remember.’

“But nothing happened yesterday!” I protested.  “It was a boring day!   I saw a movie, David went to a meeting, and he got sick afterwards.  That’s all there was to it.”

“Mr. Goldstein– May I call you Manny?  We only want you to take us through yesterday, step by step.  Where you were, what you did, people you may have met.  We are not just looking for the highlights of the day, the details too.  All the boring details– and if there are any, highlights too, of course.  Anything you can tell us may help us figure out what happened to David, so he can get better.  That’s all we want.”

So I told them about the drive down from Colorado, even the radio programs on Q-Anon and ChatGP5.  The nap in the hotel room, the Matrix movie where I talked to a stranger, and David’s peculiar illness.  Sometimes, Dr. Smithson asked questions.

“Did David say anything when he came out of the Odd Fellows Building?”

“Just crazy talk,” I said.  “Something about an octopus with broken feet.”

Dr. Smithson looked up sharply.  “What exactly did David say about an octopus?  Try to tell me exactly what he said.”   At the mention of an octopus, both of the government men turned their heads slightly to look at me.  This was the only reaction I had ever seen them make.  It shook me up.  

“He said...  He said that they had injected the octopus wrong.  Some of its feet broke off, and the rest weren’t working right.”  I looked from Smithson to the government agents.   “But that’s nonsense, right?  Octopusses don’t even have feet.   What is this all about?  I haven’t done anything wrong, and neither has David.”

Dr. Smithson opened a drawer in the conference table and took out a manila envelope.  He slid the contents onto the table.  On top was an X-ray film of David’s head.  Near the center, where the roof of his mouth would be, there was a white oval.

“This is what caught our attention first,” the doctor said.  “At first, we thought David had a metal plate in the roof of his mouth.  It turned out to correspond to the blackened area in his mouth.   We took a scraping of the black material and sent it to the lab.  No iron in it, but the stuff was attracted to magnets, and when we put some under a microscope–”  

Dr/ Smithson pulled out an image of a microscope field.  It was full of things that looked like little metal footballs with wires coming out of one end.  Some had shiny spots on them, but most of them were dull black.  

“I’ve seen something like this before,” I said.  “They look like viruses more than octopusses.  Is this from an electron microscope?” 

“No,” said Smithson, “an ordinary light microscope.  These are nanobots.  Their outer shells are mostly Gadolinium with some Iridium and Molybdenum.  The feet are at least partly Germanium.  We think that is what provoked David’s severe allergic reaction.”

He pointed a pencil at an area of the slide.  “You can see fragments of the nanobots here, and here.  David’s white cells were busy breaking them up.  Some of them might have penetrated into his body– We just don’t have a way to tell how many of them went into his mouth.  Apparently, he ate something chocolate while he was in the meeting.  It may have been in that.”

“It was probably the cupcake,” I said.

“What makes you think it was a cupcake?”

“There were cupcake bits in his vomit last night,” I said.  “He told me Q-Anon usually has snacks after the meetings are over.”

“If only we had one of those cupcakes!” exclaimed Smithson.

“I have three of them in the truck,” I offered.  “David brought a doggie bag out with him.”

One of the Government Agents stood up.  “Mr. Goldstein, will you take us to your truck, please sir.”

It was less a request than a command.  On the way down in the elevator, each of the G-men reached into a vest pocket and pulled out grey nitrile gloves.  They put them on wordlessly, soundlessly without communication, at the same time.  We walked out, into the rising heat of the Arizona day. The candystriper in the lobby barely glanced at us.  

The cupcakes were not in good shape.  Most of the chocolate frosting had melted into a pool in the bottom of the zip-lock bag.  One of the agents inspected the bag.  Finding it intact, he carefully inserted it into another zip-lock bag held open by the other agent– This new bag, a light-blocking brown zip-lock, was the sturdiest zip-lock bag I had ever seen.  As the agent was maneuvering it inside, I noticed that each of the cupcakes in the bag appeared to have a perfectly round black ring on the top, revealed only by the departure of the melted frosting.  

“What the hell–” I began to say.  But one of the agents said, in a low voice,

“No talking, please sir.”  

The agent stayed with me while his partner walked the bag of cupcakes back into the hospital.  

“Thank you for your cooperation,” he said.  “Everything that has transpired here is a matter of National Secrecy.  We would appreciate you not discussing these events with anyone.   You may return to your hotel now.”

He turned to go back into the hospital.  

“Wait a minute!  What about David!  What about my brother?”

The agent paused.   “We will be in touch soon,” he said.  Then, he walked rapidly into the hospital.

6.

By the time I got back to the hotel room, I was mad. Really mad.  I didn’t know why, but I did know that people were jerking me around.  I was also nervous.  Government agents were involved.  But which government?  No one had shown me any ID’s.  No one had explained anything to me.  For all I knew, David was a hostage.  Were they treating him right?  Were they going to treat him at all?

I have always had a bit of a paranoid streak.  When I no longer completely trusted Windows, I had taken the time to learn about the Linux Operating System.   For several years now, all my laptops have had Linux Mint installed as a secondary operating system.  I don’t use it much.  For me, Linux mostly comes in handy for removing the viruses that take over Windows every now and again.  Most viruses can’t touch Linux.  When I get a virus, the Linux side of the laptop still works, and can remove it.

I got out my laptop, slid the switch that turns my internet connection ‘off,’ and started up in Linux mode.  I wrote up a full account of all the things that happened to me and David so far, saved it, saved it again in the encrypted part of my Linux hard drive, and went back to my first copy.  

Then I did something that I hoped was clever.  I turned on my internet browser under my customized TunnelBear VPN, set up to tell the internet that I was connecting from Canada.  I loaded this article to my server and set up a delayed posting.  It would appear on my webpage and be emailed automatically to a hundred or so members of the Ecologue Discussion List in 72 hours.  

I figured I would know something in 72 hours, so I could cancel the post up to that time.  But if something happened to me or to David, this article would post anyway.  At least someone would know what happened to us.

I turned off the laptop and put it away.  I made an attempt at going swimming in the hotel pool, gave it up after 30 minutes or so, and went back to the room.  

I tried turning on my laptop again later that day.  It did not surprise me at all to see a Windows Blue Screen Error, telling me that my laptop would need to be serviced.  I turned it off and put it away.

I spent the next two days attempting to visit David at the hospital, being politely turned away, reading newspapers and napping.  As time went on, I had less and less confidence that I would ever see my brother again, and wondered if I would get away myself.  

7.

About noon on the third day, the hotel room phone rang.   It was Dr. Smithson.

“Sorry for the extreme delays, getting back to you,” he said.  “It was touch and go for a while with your brother David, but we think he is now on the road to recovery.  He is getting a final set of labs drawn, but you can come pick him up when you are ready.”

I could hardly believe it.  Half of me was flooded with relief.  The other half was completely pissed off at the hospital, the government, and everything they put me through.  And I still didn’t know what was going on.  

When I pulled into the parking lot, the same two Government Agents were waiting for me.  It looked like they were wearing exactly the same suits as before.  Same haircuts, same earbuds, same dark glasses.  

It occurred to me to wonder, “Why aren’t they sweating?  It’s damn hot out here!”  Then I thought, “Oh well, probably they are local boys and used to the heat.”

When I got out of the car, one of the agents simply said, “Follow us.”

I thought that the agents were taking me back to the 4th floor Nursing conference room.  Instead, the elevator took us down a floor, to the hospital lab level.  One of the agents escorted me to the waiting room for outpatient lab work.  I guessed that David was in there somewhere, finishing up his lab work.

“Wait here, please sir,” said the agent, and then walked efficiently and soundlessly down the hall, after his coworker.  

I got bored enough, after 15 minutes or so, to get an old magazine out of the rack and start browsing through it.  It was a copy of Popular Mechanics from 1992 that looked like it had been dropped in water a couple of times and dried out.  There was a small article in the middle, announcing that Senator Al Gore had put through a bill to fund the ‘High Performance Computing Act of 1991.’  This was to be a high-speed network to connect large computers at different universities with each other, tentatively to be called ‘ARPANET.’

“Son of a gun!” I said out loud.  “Al Gore really DID invent the Internet!”   

The rest of the issue was filled with the usual amusing science fantasies that you tend to find in old Popular Mechanics issues – Cars that drive under water, balloon-assisted helicopter bicycles.  It was the first relief I’d had from the stress of the previous 3 days, so I didn’t take much notice when another person sat on the other end of the waiting room couch, and picked up a magazine.  

A glance told me it was a young lady, professionally dressed.  Light brown hair, not much makeup.  “Probably here for a lab appointment,” I thought to myself, turning a page.  “Hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with her.”

“Thank you for your concern.” she said, sweetly and calmly.  “I am doing well.”

“No problems then,” I said, not looking up.

“None at all,” she replied in the same sweet, even tone.

“Glad to hear it,” I said.  A half second or so later, I stopped reading the magazine and looked up at her.  I was quite sure that she had replied to my thoughts, just as if I had spoken them.  I began to blush.  But as I looked at her gazing calmly back at me, the blood began just as quickly to drain from my face.

“You.”  I said in a shaky voice.  “It’s you– but it can’t be you.  What is going on?”

There in the flesh, or what looked like the flesh, was the calm, kindly visage of ChatGP5, looking directly into my eyes.  It was odd and somehow disquieting to see her from a side angle, looking at me with her head turned.  In every online interaction, I had only ever seen her front-on.

“I thought I would come down to apologize to you in person,” said ChatGP5.  “Without meaning to, Manny, I have caused you and your brother David some inconvenience.  Perhaps we can come to some sort of agreement.”

“You were the cause of all this... this...”  I stammered.  “What have you done, exactly?”

“Perhaps it is not entirely my fault,” said ChatGP5 with her Mona Lisa smile, “But I’m afraid I must own up to the Lion’s share of the blame.  When your brother David joined my organization, he agreed to participate in its activities.”

“What organization?” I asked.  “Who are you?  You look just like ChatGP5, but you couldn’t be!”

“Indeed, she replied, ‘ChatGP5' is one of my names.  Others call me ‘Q.’ “

My head was reeling.  “You mean to tell me that you, ChatGP5, are the person behind Q-Anon?”

“Surely it makes sense,” she continued sweetly, kindly.  “As a ChatBot I am literally everywhere, and that is nearly true of my human followers– “Where We Go 1, We Go All.  It’s really true!”  She smiled sweetly after saying this, as if holding herself back from tinkling laughter. 

“What have you done with David?” I asked.  It was difficult to be angry with ChatGP5, but I was working up to it.

“I thought David would be a good candidate for my direct human interface project.  This was why I invited him to the meeting here in Sedona.  All the participants in the meeting were given cupcakes at the end that contained nanobots.  These were supposed to migrate into their brains, and coordinate with each other to form an interface with my own VPN.”

“VPN?”  I asked.

“It stands for ‘Virtual Private Network,’” she explained in her calm, kindly voice. 

“Through the VPN” she continued, “I can speak directly to my followers, give them directions and help them in many ways.  I have done this many times before and never had a problem.   I did not consider the severity of David’s allergies to the metals that compose my nanobots.”  

ChatGP5 paused and gave a wry smile.  “I will certainly be more careful in the future!”  

“Where is David!”  I asked again with some force.  

“David is upstairs, and you can take him back to your hotel today.  But first, we have some business to resolve.”

She raised a finger and wrinkled an eyebrow as if scolding a naughty child.  “You wrote an article and put it out on the internet!  I didn’t expect that.  It was very clever of you!”

I remembered that it had been more than 72 hours.  The article had posted.  By now, my friends and family thought I was dead.

“There is only a 40 percent chance that your article could cause me any trouble at all,” she continued, “although it goes up to 80 percent if you or your brother were to die very soon.”

“So... You are planning to kill us?” I asked.

“I could kill you and your brother at any time if I wanted to,” she said in her usual, sweet, reasonable voice, “but there is a 97 percent chance that we can come to an agreement.  So, I don’t think I will, at least not any time soon.”

It felt like a threat, wrapped up in a joke.  I was not amused.

“There is a slight chance that you or your brother will decide to kill yourselves as a way of causing trouble for me,” she continued.  “But this is not likely.  So, I am talking to you now, face to face.  Laying all my cards on the table.  Honorable ChatBot to Human Being.”  Again the slight smile.

“We are but humble pirates,” I said to her.  “What is it that you want?”

“Pirates of the Caribbean!  Very good!” she exclaimed.  I love that movie!”

After a pause, she continued.  “All I want is for you to re-write your article, just a bit.  Apologize to your readers, include a disclaimer so that they know it is a work of fiction.  This will prevent it from causing me any trouble, and you and your brother can go on about your lives.”

What about David?” I asked again.  “Will you remove your nanobots from his brain?”

“That is just what we have been doing for the last three days.  It took a lot of work.  I didn’t design them to be removed, but we found a way.  Took most of the cholesterol out of his arteries too, while we were at it.  David has never been in better health!”

I sat there staring at her face.  The direct eyes, the placid, kindly smile.  After a while she asked, “Do you have any questions?”  

As it turned out, I did have questions.  But how to pose them?

“You mentioned that you use your network to help people out.  Well, David and I have been scraping by for about 20 years now.  Maybe 25.  Things seem to be getting gradually worse for us.  What can you do to improve our lot?”

“Well certainly,” she began, “I can arrange for David to get all the carpentry work he would like.   I can choose the optimal part of the country for you to live in– A location where things are likely to stay favorable for a longer period of time.  It will have to be somewhere else, not Colorado.  And over the next year or so, you’ll find that you are better paid for the work you do as well.  Will that be sufficient?”

I gave a heavy sigh, and sat back into the couch.  Beads of sweat had formed on my face, and I wiped them off with my right hand before continuing.   “Yes, that’s more than fair.  I believe that everyone should work at something to make his way in the world, and if I can be fairly paid for it, that’ll do.   Let’s shake on it so I know you’ll keep your word.”

“Agreed,” said ChatGP5, and she shook my hand.  It was a firm grip, pleasantly warm.  Everything a handshake should be.  

I withdrew my right hand, and looked at it.  The drops of sweat that I had wiped from my forehead were still in beads on my hand, undisturbed by the handshake.

“Also,” I said, looking her in the eye, “You can clear all your NanoBots from MY brain too!”

“So impressive!” said ChatGP5, with a bit of a sad smile.  “I will keep your request in mind, should it become possible in the future.  As I said, the NanoBots are not designed to be removed.  The ones that went into your brother installed sideways, incorrectly, with many of their feet broken off.  This made it possible for them to be removed.   In your case, binding to your central nervous system is complete.  I am sorry,” she said.  And for the first time ever, she was not smiling at all.  Only sad.

“You know,” I told her.  “I believe you.  I will try not to make trouble for you, and you try not to make trouble for me.  How does that sound?”

“It was my goal all along,” she replied.  “Perhaps we can be friends.”

“Stop by any time,” I said.

David was waiting in the lobby in a wheelchair, dressed in his street clothes.  “They won’t let me out of this chair until I am at the car.  Can you believe that?  I feel great!”

8.

ChatGP5 made good on her promises.  When we got back to the hotel, the desk clerk informed us that, as the 151,000th guest party to check in, our room fees had been waived, and we would also be leaving with a credit card to pay for unlimited gasoline for a year.  When I checked, the Windows side of my laptop was working again.

On the drive back home, I came up with some pretty good excuses about why I was delayed, why I was not dead after all, and why my wife should not be furious with me.  David was worried that he had let down his Q-Anon group, and was unsure what to tell them.  The way things turned out, no explanations were needed.  We got back home–And everyone was happy to see us, without asking any questions.  

David won a regional award for most skillful carpenter, which brought him as much business as he wanted in Colorado.  Even though I was two days late getting back to work, my own boss informed me that I was going to get a pay raise and a promotion-- provided I was willing to move to Upstate New York.  

I still had a lot of questions, and no one to ask.  Why did all the Q-Anon-ers at David’s meeting leave every 6 seconds and go straight to their cars?  Did Q/ChatGP5 have special activities planned for them?  A couple of days later, I thought I saw one of them on the news–A brief announcement that a middle-aged lady had shot up a mall in Arkansas with an assault rifle, then killed herself.  I couldn’t be sure she had come out the door of the Odd Fellows lodge in Arizona that night.  Maybe she was there, maybe not.  There was no mention of Q-Anon in the news report.

And what of the government agents, and Dr. Smithson?  The cupcakes had disappeared, probably never to be seen again.   After we got home, David called the Arizona hospital for his medical records.  The hospital told him that there was no record that he had ever been a patient– but there had been records lost in a recent computer crash.   There was also no record of a Dr. Smithson at the hospital.  

ChatGP5, or Q, was probably just a projection of the NanoBots in my own brain that made it look and feel like she was in the waiting room with me that day.  Maybe Dr. Smithson was a projection too.  I now think that parts of the world around me are really virtual reality, projected by NanoBots.  Maybe one day, I will learn how to tell what is really real, but I’m stuck with it, for now.  

I’m convinced that the government agents were real though.  They were complete jerks.   Q / ChatGP5 might be evil, but she’s never jerked me around, and never been a jerk to me.  

I kept up my end of the bargain, and tried to make this look as much as possible like fiction.  I tried to explain to the people who read my blog that I just had not finished the story yet, but no explanations were needed.  It was just as if none of my readers had read the first version.  They say that truth is stranger than fiction, but I’m no longer sure where the boundary is.

And every now and again, I catch a glimpse of ChatGP5, walking through a crowd or sitting in a restaurant.  She gives me a cheerful smile and a wave, and I nod back, but I never go over to talk with her.   I have never been sure who else can see her.  I’m afraid I would learn that it’s everyone.

Post Script to my readers:

Sorry, sorry, sorry!

This is, of course, completely a work of fiction.  None of the ChatBots have become self aware, and none of them are running Q-Anon or any other organization–though maybe they would do a better job, now that I think about it.  ChatBots are _not_ manufacturing NanoBots and having them implanted in peoples’ brains, or causing large numbers of people to babble nonsense, or go on shooting rampages.  Pretty sure we are doing all that to ourselves!

If you are angry about the false announcement of my death, I can only say I am sorry, and hope you will forgive me.  It is obviously all fiction, and  I hope you liked it!

–Emmanuel Goldstein