Dreams of the Quill

Simon! Your drill is a drill that will pierce the heavens!!

“What the hell is this?” demanded Jason as he hammered F5 on his laptop keyboard.

He was sitting on his bed in the dark of his room, window shades keeping the unpleasant truth of daytime at bay. No matter how many times he refreshed, his blog didn’t show up. No error message, no connection problem, nothing. He seethed. How would he update his site? How would he tell his readers about his exploits?

Jason gazed off into the blue glow of his LED monitor.

Is this the doing of that “LAW3 Media Branch” Frog mentioned last night? After returning to the LAW1 van, Jason had been shipped straight home without a word. He hadn’t had contact with any of his colleagues since. When he brought up the news on his television, there was nothing about the protest. Cheery-faced weather reporters had replaced the usual newscasters, describing how fog would once more envelope San Francisco this evening.

It was always the fog, thought Jason. The fog covered everything, hiding it from view.

Jason remembered something gleaming on the reporter’s shoulder.

A golden badge.

He flipped his television set back on but the news program was over, succeeded by an hour-long ad slot. It wasn’t there to look at anymore, but he was sure he’d seen it earlier. A golden badge. Just like those of LAW3. No, Jason was sure of it—it was a LAW3 badge. The weather reporter was an agent, a puppet of the government deployed to deceive the people.

First the hearing (and how well that went, Jason thought to himself), then the encounter with the terrorist girl, and now this “media branch.”

Jason pieced it all together, and the walls echoed his conclusion:

“IT’S A CONSPIRACY!”

He fell back on his bed, laughing. There was no way it could actually be a conspiracy, he knew. If this were some amazing television show he’d watched once, and if he were its main character, then it might be a conspiracy. But he knew what he knew. The world was too disorganized for conspiracies. The fog that hid the bay from his apartment window hid people from each other. No one knew anyone’s true motives.

Jason clenched his fists and then relaxed them. He knew he had no business caring. He had embraced the Establishment when he had begun working under it. He’d never liked radicals, either. He didn’t want to be like the insane terrorist girl.

He turned his head and looked over at his work machine, its web browser dutifully attempting to connect to his blog.

“Pierce the obfuscation with my Macbook Air, eh, Frog?”