Welcome to the sci-fi fantasy electronic and alternative opera... For your information, Shhhh! Digital Media is in no way associated with the Salvation Army or any other religious or ideological organization. I myself have no association with them as well. There are people trying to sell you a much different picture of who I actually am and what I'm about than is the truth. I do not live or work in a homeless shelter with all due respect, nor do I live or work in a prison. I am an advocate for the charities represented here on Shhhh! Digital Media, but I am not a volunteer. I choose to do the best I can, where and when I can. I've never worked as a security guard in my life, but it is an honest way to make a living for an honest person, especially if they don't take the identity of other people.

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Identity, Possession and Harvest...

Hi. Brian Joseph Johns here. 


First of all, I am NOT a Jehovah's Witness or a member of Prince Hall, and never have been and never will be. 


My saying this is significant, but at this point it won't entirely make sense. Suffice it to say that in Canada, its a hate crime to collectively replace a person's identity in order to replace their gender, their culture, their religion, or any other aspect of a person's right to identity, which is protected under a person's right to life which is part of both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Human Rights Act.


Question: Why would a group of somebodies (collectively) want to replace a person's identity? 


Answer: To silence them, and to ensure that others ignore them and anything they expose about collective activities in a community that operate in spite of the law, and often in contravention to it, especially where the community, or members of predatory ideologies there within are acting in the interest to violate another member of the community in some way shape or form, either criminally, or in terms of their rights, and these ideologies want to ensure they aren't held responsible according to the law, but rather live under the rules of their religion, while forcing others in the community to do so as well, despite the fact that policy and law is and should be secular in nature, and enforced that way.


Jehovah's Witnesses have a second witness rule, which requires that any account or accusation of wrong doing, require a second witness to confirm (or deny) the first witness' accusation. Hence, if a person in a community is being subjected to criminal harassment by other members of the community, if the community wants to ensure that the victim's account is disregarded, the community collectively labels the victim as a Jehovah's Witness, as Jehovah's Witnesses don't deal with law enforcement. 


Issues between Jehovah's Witnesses are handled by a tribunal of "elders" (men who are "learned" in the Jehovah's Witness' teachings) who use the bible as their reference point to deem if a crime has been committed or not, and what the penalty should be. 


In communities with a Jehovah's Witness presence, local law enforcement tends not to get involved in their matters, hence those wrongly labeled as Jehovah's Witnesses who decry criminal harassment or any other crimes against their person, are often ignored on account of the Jehovah's Witness' second witness rule, and this includes law enforcement ignoring a person wrongly labeled as a Jehovah's Witness as well. 


Basically, a person in a community can be wrongly labeled a Jehovah's Witness and end up denied of all of their legal rights and in most cases, this is used as a method to cover up community crimes against said person, which can include stalking, harassment and illegal surveillance of their living space and communications devices, including their cable television (and shows they watch), their phone and their internet. The people conducting this activity are doing so criminally, and silencing their victim, though that method of silencing them is only one method of many that such ideologies employ against their victims.


Now you know why I often explain that I'm not a Jehovah's Witness.


If you take that same pattern, of there being rules behind specific ideologies and religions, you'll find that there are a number other ideologies whose rules also open the door to victimization of people in a community, when wielded by a community ideological group as a weapon to deny the rights of a person within the community.


This whole idea even goes a step further in terms of the identity crime aspect (replacing a person's identity in order to replace their gender, their culture, their religion or any other protected aspect of their identity), to include the community replacing their victim's identity in order to use them as a "lamb for the slaughter" ie a substitute for the social punishment of a crime committed by someone else. In communities that employ social punishment coopted by local religions or ideologies, the community will often harass or socially torture a person as a form of punishment, but not in the event that they break a law, but commit a sin according to the more prominent religions in the community. In many cases, there has evolved methods that groups within the community employ to alleviate themselves of the punishment by offering up a substitute who instead takes the brunt of the punishment themselves, and often this is an extremely horrifying and traumatizing experience whether you're the "lamb for the slaughter" or not. Regardless, its wrong, not to mention that many other crimes are often allowed to go on without any interference at all, simply because they don't fit the mold for a "sin".


These people that spy on your person, they're enforcing the rules of their religion upon you based upon your private activity, or they're using you as the "lamb for the slaughter" of someone else's sins about which they learned by spying on them. Either way, its a secretive community ideology that is spying on and punishing people according not to law, but sin. This seems to be the hidden paradigm operating in society in these days, and as I stated, its quite predatory and it is connected to a growing phenomenon of crimes that violate a person's identity.


After publishing the latest Grand Tapestry of Moments (Episode 3), I received a rather brutal social beating, and certainly one of which I was not deserving in the slightest, but I'm certain that most of you out there who've encountered predatory collective ideologies both at home and in street know exactly what I mean.


If you've ever wondered what is going on when you experience that sort of treatment, I'm going to reveal a bunch of stuff for you here that should explain most if not all of it, effectively exposing it once and for all. So lets get right down to business here at Shhhh! Digital Media, though if you read this, don't for a minute believe that I'm imploring you to keep it a secret (shhhh).


You could always share this exposé with others who might benefit from that knowledge, or share it with human rights activists and lawyers who upon finding out the nature of the devices behind this activity, might actually do something about it legally.

Identity And Predatory Groups


Identity is the link between a person, their history and their former actions. Those of any ilk or morality. Identity is the link between a person and their skills and abilities, those for which they're known by the people who know them/knew them, and those that weren't known or that they kept hidden.


It is a label of some form, a mostly unique identifier attributed to a specific person in order to distinguish them as being a specific person, of a specific historical record. Often, in the communities in which they grew up, it is the thing that links them with their (former) actions and history.


To predatory groups that operate in communities nowadays, this history of a person forms the basis of being their "soul". To such groups, the idea is that a person's soul is a combination of the good things and the bad things they've done over the course of their life, and everything in between those extremes. A person of a specific identity, cannot be that person, if they don't carry the weight for all of it. 

That is, according to these predatory groups. 


This belief is a rather convenient one, as it opens the door for predatory groups to make the weight of a person's history or past socially heavier than they can ever hope to carry. A form of social torture if you will, whenever they're at home, or in their workplace, or in between - out and about. Predatory groups whose goal it is to remove said history (their soul as stated earlier) from their victim and to transfer it to someone else, who most often is not put in a situation where that weight is heavier than they can handle.


The weight is achieved by subjecting the victim to constant or near constant harassment at the hands of many people simultaneously, who continuously do so until their victim (target) responds in a way that contradicts their history or identity, enough so that the predatory group responsible then justifies associating that person's identity with someone else (usually someone who is a member of their predatory collective), while replacing the victim/target's identity with that of someone else, more consistent with their reaction to the social abuse and torture. This of course is all done very secretively, and often involves collaboration by all the different people who have access to the victim/target. In my experience, it involves corruption in the community. It involves the residents of the building of my home office/residence, and it involves the roving members of the same predatory groups who conduct such harassment while the victim/target is out and about in the community.


There is also an extraordinary effort placed upon keeping the victim/target under constant surveillance, including their cable, phone and internet activity. All of it is used to compile a record of responses to the predatory groups' harassment, and to deem if the person is behaving as themselves and their own history and consistent with their own historic behaviour, or more like someone else, in which case the predatory groups then attribute that person's identity to someone else, and replace their identity with that of another person, usually one who is of a more burdensome and criminal nature. Often involving narcotics. Often involving sex trafficking. Often involving other activities that are nothing like the lifestyle of the victim/target, which indicates that the predatory groups are simply using the victim/target as a dumping ground for their activity, and wearing the notoriety of their victim's identity.


In my case, their scam and ploy, has been to replace my identity with that of Tom Cruise, or Nicolas Cage, making me carry the weight for the characters they've played. 

Most specifically, Tom Cruise in American Made, about Barry Seal who worked for the Medellin Cartel flying thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States as part of a CIA sting operation. He was assassinated at a Salvation Army when the courts leaked where he'd required to stay until his court arrangements had completed. Also, his role in Risky Business, where he as a student applying for Harvard Business School, uses his parents' home as a brothel after befriending a prostitute. 

For Nicolas Cage, it was World Trade Center, about a Police Officer who is trapped while going in to save citizens immediately after the 911 attacks. In the movie, they replaced real life Marine Jason Thomas (who is African American) with a Caucasian actor, which apparently caused a fervor over the issue. In the case of this specific movie, the members of the predatory groups near me are making me pay for that, by giving the credit for my efforts on Shhhh! Digital Media, to members of the African and Caribbean community, and have been doing that for more than a decade now, while erasing my identity and association with my own company, projects and writing. In doing so, because I'm European Canadian, they assume that if I speak out against those actions, that it will make me appear racist or to be guilty of spreading hate speech, which in all truth is not the case. It is never hate speech to clarify the facts of a situation of unfair or unjust treatment by anyone, regardless of their gender, culture or religion, especially if it steps over the line towards criminal harassment.


Just to make it clear, I am not blaming Tom Cruise or Nicolas Cage or Oliver Stone (who directed World Trade Center) or any of the other cast and crew that made those movies. Its not their fault. They were telling a story, and of the people who had a chance to see those movies, there were a very small percentage who were obviously obsessive, and weaponized the issues connected to the characters, and the casting into a form that they could make someone else pay for those issues, that had nothing to do with making the films. A "lamb for the slaughter" or a substitute as it were. Its never the fault of the public figure for the very small percentage of their fans who act on their behalf in a socially destructive or harmful manner. Besides, when avoiding an angry wave of people, it is very easy to find oneself radicalized towards the ends of anger or reaction, in a way that betrays the best of them, and I'd bet that everyone who has ever contended with the social chaos present in fanfare or cacophony could attest to that.


The predatory groups I'm exposing are not of a single specific culture, though they definitely share a common ideological belief and justification for what they're doing that broaches racism (on their part) and violates the rights of their victims/targets in any given community they operate within, which from my experience thus far, indicates that they're pretty much in every community in the city. I'm Canadian by the way, though sometimes it is difficult to tell whether these issues originate from across the border to the south (United States), or whether they're related to issues here. From where it stands right now, it is definitely a bit of both, and there is a connection between these predatory groups here in Canada and the United States. The broken telephone that couriers the social weight back and forth to and from each end.


What I do know, is that for the last fourteen (sixteen) years, I've worked my ass off writing, creating and publishing what became Shhhh! Digital Media, taking it from words on a web page and little art, with no views, to nearly 566151 unique views as of this writing by adding 180,000 from the old sites that made up Shhhh! Digital Media (again, with little more than written words ie novellas and short stories), all the while advocating for charities I selected, supporting them myself when and if I could which was difficult seeing as I'm still struggling financially, and most probably thanks to the predatory groups responsible for stealing my identity and painting me as a very different person than I am. Ironically, the people whose rights I protected the most, became the ones who violated my rights the most. Also ironically, I calculated that if just five percent of the people who showed up to view the site donated $5 each by following the links I provide in each of the novellas and episodes, that it would add up to $140,000 raised for charity. If it was one percent, that would still be about $30,000. Not bad for starting with an idea, and a few words on a page. I believe that the impact of Shhhh! Digital Media has gone much farther than that support of charity alone. For the entire time, I've starved, living on a little under  $400 a month, so having people take my identity and my work from me like that, narcissistically, its very, very harmful and traumatizing and often brings out the worst in me, which these predatory groups then weaponize to imply that I'm nothing like the person who wrote the stories on my web site. They deny me of my own authorship.


As I write this, the members of these predatory groups are replacing my identity with that of someone African so that their culture gets the credit for what I do on Shhhh! Digital Media, while I am burdened with the weight of narcotics and sex trafficking related activity that occurs within the community, despite my never having taken part in neither.

The racist element of this currently (not all of the time), is that said predatory groups are trying to keep the impression of my skin colour being brown, when that is not the case at all. I have no African or Caribbean ancestry at all and I am not a Zionist of any form whatsoever. Replacing my identity to replace my culture or my religion is a hate crime, and if that replacement is enforced by my neighbours and people in the community, then it is a hate crime committed by all them who took part.


The people who harass me during my work day, do so from neighbouring apartments and I kid you not in saying that they do this twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. These are people who don't work. Don't take part in any other aspect of life, except to focus nearly one hundred percent of their attention and harassment upon my person from neighbouring apartments in the building. These are definitely the same people who are conducting the illegal surveillance as well, an aspect I'll get to very soon in this post.


To speak more about the racism, the members of these predatory groups almost always attempt to attribute my writing to the credit of people with brown skin. I don't have brown skin, if you don't count my ever increasing age spots. I'm almost as pale as my goth days back in the 1980s. The members of these predatory groups have been replacing my identity in order to replace my culture with that of a Somalian fellow who regularly hires a transgender sex trade worker, and then to give me the weight of his activities as if it were mine. Now, his business is not my business, but when people make it your weight, it becomes your business, not to mention the fact that the people doing so are doing so purposefully with that intent. 


The people doing this even believe that I'm possessed by the fellow, which I am not by the way and never have been possessed by anyone. They make up a very small percentage of the overall predatory group, and some of these members compete with one another, either culturally, religiously or in other ways to steal a person's identity and to give up the worst weight of their burden to others, so they're used as substitutes for the social punishments of the members of these ideologies, which as I stated earlier, is illegal and this has its own micro-infrastructure enough so that it qualifies as organized crime. Not to mention, its coupled with an illegal surveillance network that in the case of new residents of apartments, include hidden cameras, as crimes related to camera surveillance were quite common from 2000 onward. Especially sextortion. I would recommend that anyone getting an apartment do a very thorough sweep for any possible hidden cameras or bugs. That's not to say that the custodians of the building would do something of that nature, but those apartments had previous residents, and those residents might have had guests, who were members of these predatory groups, and who could have hidden a camera that could then be accessed from a neighbouring apartment. Once again, to clarify my identity, I state that I am not a Zionist or Ziontologist (Zionism mixed with Scientology via Mormonism), and I never have been and certainly never will be. I am not paranoid about cameras in my own apartment, but I do not appreciate having my internet surveilled or my computer keylogged, especially as a content creator and writer.


Identity can also be denied of you by a number of ways. For example, I have multiple email addresses that I use for myself (and nobody else), and there are admins on some of the services that I use that seem to be aware of thing and who are part and parcel of same predatory groups (that actually have communication with those in my community, the two sometimes working together in a coordinated manner to deny me of my own identity). For example, fav.inbox@gmail.com is my email, but so is brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com. I use both emails and what I've found is that members of the predatory groups, some of whom are admins on my email service, try to divide my identity by implying that my emails are owned by two different people. This also applies to my different devices. My phone for instance is a Samsung Android 4 device (very old), while my tablet is Android 13, and my computer is Windows 11 Pro. The predatory groups coordinate in making it seem that each of those devices belongs to and is operated by a different person other than myself, and yet all three devices are right in front of me as I type this, not to mention I have access to both emails no all but the android 4 device. So the scam in this case would be to make it appear that my phone isn't in the possession of brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com, but rather fav.inbox@gmail.com and that the two emails are run by two different people. Hence, another proof of the connection between these predatory groups and  a new fangled form of organized crime that seeks to withhold a person's identity from them, so as to aware that identity to someone else.

I literally just tried to open my brian.joseph.johns@shhhhdigital.com email on my android 4 phone and found that I couldn't log in. A short time after rebooting the phone and I found that I couldn't even reach the google servers, meaning there's interference between my device and there and most likely this is conducted by the members of these predatory groups as a means to deny me of my own identity.

Now take that example and watch for things of that nature in your lives, and once you start to see the pattern, you'll know something further is going on behind the scenes and that it is criminal in nature. Not only that, but collectively speaking these groups are of a racist nature, attempting to steal and replace both my identity and culture with that of a culture I'm not. As I stated, I am neither of African or Caribbean descent and do not have brown skin (except a few age spots). These predatory groups seek to replace my identity and culture with that of someone who I am not, while awarding my identity to someone else other than myself. That to me sounds like organized crime, and they're coordinating this effort with groups inside of my building of residence, where the home office of Shhhh! Digital Media is, and even attempting to replace my identity with that of a security guard, despite the fact that I've never worked as a security guard in my life. 


Organized crime for certain, just not the traditional variety but definitely collective in nature and working towards the ends of denying a person of their own identity and for their benefit. That is the nature of what is going on under the hood and its not just affecting me. They're making identity into a commodity that can be stolen and traded between people and quite often is through corruption. Don't forget, in this building it seems to be connected to a sex trafficking ring that has ties with something of that nature in Mississauga. I'm not on the blue team and I'm not on the brown team. These seem to be the colour symbols associated with doing things that way. Of stealing a person's identity and replacing it with someone else's and in Canada, where I'm from and where the Butterfly Dragon Reimagined and the legacy version are both written. I was going to work on the new one today, but seeing as there are people attempting to deny me of my identity, I'll put that on hold. 


I'm not a star by the way. I live in 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I'm not biracial African or Caribbean and in fact, I'm not African or Caribbean at all. I've never lived in the United States, let alone worked there.


I am not a star by the way, or a part of any cult that swaps people's identity using the colour symbolism of blue or brown.



Predatory Groups and the Source of Mind


Something that drives these predatory groups and their ideas about how the world works is based upon their concept of where the mind of their victims/targets originates. So far, according to my investigation into these matters, the membership of these predatory groups vastly believe that the mind of their victims/targets originates from the homeless shelter population, and the prison system, and they believe this so much so that they actually attempt to audit the victim/target based upon their behaviour and reactions to harassment and abuse by the predatory groups, and if anything good comes from their reactions, the credit is then given to people in the homeless shelter system or the prison system, after the members of these predatory groups audit who they believe the most likely candidates were for the source of their victim/target's mind. 


That is, if you're a victim/target of these cults, then they believe you don't have a mind, and that your mind originates from the homeless shelter population (including the workers) and the prison system ( both inmates and workers). Whatever you say and do that is beneficial in some way is given to their credit, but NEVER yours. You're not even considered to exist, and hence, can never get ahead in society in any fair way ever. Everything that you do, will reward very little if nothing to you, but the people who are assumed to be the source of your mind (the homeless shelter population and the prison system) will be rewarded for your good, and punished for your worst. That isn't to say that you're responsible for their crimes, but it is to say that from the time that these predatory groups decide to subject you to this treatment, that nothing you achieve will ever be given to your credit, and you'll most likely live at or very close to the poverty line, while other people benefit from, and even get wealthy from, your work. Identity replacement is how they hide this when you blow the whistle on them because they want the victims and whistleblowers to appear to be on the same team as the perpetrators, without the public knowing that they're the perpetrators.


Basically, its a bunch of predatory groups competing for the credit for your best efforts, while ensuring that you are never recognized or rewarded for your effort in the same way everyone else is rewarded for theirs (with a pay cheque or an honest wage) and quite often, some (not all) of the predatory groups will after having taken credit for your effort, dump the worst of their garbage onto you, and that's not a negative attitude at all. That's an observation of exactly the nature of what has been going on.


Most recently, the members of these predatory groups have tried replacing my identity with that of someone they refer to as Jake "N", whom I believe is the son or grandson or Donald Sebastien Des Rosiers (who I am not) with all due respect.


Possession


Possession is the belief that a person has become inhabited, for lack of a better term, by one or more disembodied essences, possibly originating from the bodies of other people, or by other entities of unknown origin who possess sentience and intelligence. I'll stick to the predatory groups main belief paradigm which is based upon the idea that they believe a person can become inhabited by other people, kind of like car jacking a person's body.


The idea is that a person can slowly push their way into a person, hence removing anyone else that was in there, which is often symbolized by colour symbolism by said predatory groups, and that the person newly inhabiting the body is responsible for whatever that person says or does. This activity is attempted, especially against creative and productive people as a means to steal their creative or intellectual work, and to wear it as their own. Most often the people who attempt to practice this are members of or associated with the predatory groups, and hence it benefits their groups if they are successful in their goal, which seems to be fooling the rest of the public in a community into believing that such a thing is occurring. So basically, they don't have to achieve it, they just have to fool people into believing that its happening and since most of the people who are part of these predatory groups are... predatory... and benefit from doing so, they tend to go along with it despite the evidence.


In my Era of the Spellbound episodic series, possession is an aspect of the story, as three of supporting characters are possessed, but the way I've employed it as a story telling vehicle is metaphorical more so than as a promotion of the idea of possession. The metaphor involves the idea that people you knew leave an imprint upon you, part of your memory or even your soul, that gives you access to their insights despite their absence. In the stories, these insights are direct and in the form of conversation the possessed has with their occupiers.


The other metaphor is based upon a scientific model of the human body and nervous system biofield as the means of being a WIFI of the human body. The means by which two or more people can connect to one another by their own body energy, which is the result of a naturally occurring magnetic field. Nervous systems, even of two different bodies are very physiologically similar, enough so that information from one body may be compatible with information from another, via Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism. In two connected bodies according to this model, a person would have access to the perceptual input of a person's sensory organs: their ears certainly, their eyes in some rare cases, and their mind's eye, the cognitive viewpoint through which a person recalls their memories. 


In Butterfly Dragon: The Two Butterflies series, I explored this idea thoroughly, even investigating the science behind it, enough to so create a working theory and model for such interconnection of human bodies. Not to mention, these predatory groups are and have been operating with these methods for far longer, which they refer to as technique or technology. The ability to connect to another person's body, and have it so they can verbally harass you, even at long distances away, and you'll still hear them clearly because they're directly connected to your nervous system and you theirs. You're hearing what their ears are hearing, and they can hear what your ears are hearing. If you talk, your ears hear it, which means they can hear it. If they talk, its the same thing. You can hear it. This is other aspect of the metaphor I wanted to represent in Era of the Spellbound, however, the characters are inhabited by two souls. The characters, and the soul of the displaced person, who is like a stowaway. I do not believe in possession per se, but I do believe that the body can be biohacked electromagnetically, by other people who practice and experience in focusing and directing their body energy. The predatory group in my building by way of my neighbours most likely attempt to do so regularly. They're quite invasive and constantly are trying to steal my identity or my work, and replace my identity with that of someone else, almost always that of someone with brown skin, despite my not having brown skin. This seems to be their constant goal and is likely a clue as to the identity of the ideology behind this and its racist nature.


Even close members of my own family have attempted to pull the wool over others' eyes, implying that I'm from Nova Scotia, or that I'm biracial African or Caribbean (which I'm not), or even that I'm a guitar player (which I'm not). Whomever is at the other end of this is getting all of the credit for my work on Shhhh! Digital Media and that is what makes this organized crime. Also, there is a sex trafficking network in the building, and they've been attempting to dump the garbage for that activity onto me as my burden, and this sex trafficking ring seems to be connected to Mississauga, and utilizes a network of delivery drivers as well. They've many times, tried to imply me as using sex workers (I've never hired a prostitute), and have constantly tried to paint me as being someone who has a brown fetish (which I've never had in my life). I'm actually attracted to European and Southeast Asian women, but not Filipino. So these predatory groups are trying to sell me as being a very different person, both in terms of my culture and appearance and my lifestyle and behaviour.

However, I am not possessed nor am I a member of any religion or ideology that would go along with that idea or enforce that upon a person and use it as a justification to steal their identity. I would do something like expose it, especially given the fact that there are a wide variety of people who read Shhhh! Digital Media. On both sides of the law, and both who don't appreciate the activities of said predatory groups, though I am not giving it directly to them, I am just making it available to whomever stumbles across the information in the hopes that they might benefit from it or be able to mobilize something more than have I in the bid to stop it.


Identity, Memory and Existential Experiences


Another aspect there is to possession, is that there are people who make up the membership of these predatory ideologies who believe that some of us don't have our own mind or memories. Kind of like we're the replicants from the movie Blade Runner. People whose impression of personal history was artificially created by inserting the memories of other people, or even the muscle and motor memory associated with their skill set and talents.


For instance, if I recall first playing the piano by sitting down at it and playing with it a bit every day over the course of a year from when I was eight years old (1975), and then having my real father (whose name begins with a D) sit down a few times with me and teach me the basics of music theory, enough to get me going, then there are people who would assume according to their beliefs, that I'm (conveniently?) remembering someone else's life other than my own, but claiming that memory was a part of my life. Lying in other words. A year and a half after learning to play piano on my own with my father's guidance, when my parents were confident that I'd stick with it, they enrolled me in conservatory lessons, which begat one of the many paths in life I've explored. Around the same time is when I studied Tai Kwon Do for about a year at a YMCA a couple blocks west of the piano conservatory despite my lack of coordination and athletic ability. I was horrible at anything athletic, hence the lessons themselves stuck, but the coordination didn't. I even recall the fact that in Tai Kwon Do, which is of Korean origin and develops endurance and quick strikes, that there are many terms that cross over from both Japan and China, that are used in actual Tai Kwon Do training, given the historical connections between these three empires. I was horrible at it and did not like the idea of fighting. A very fearful young person whose body at that time wasn't  designed for that sort of thing. I was young and missed the point, which is that its not about fighting other people, though it is about developing discipline and confidence to deal with conflict. Its about conquering yourself.


Regardless, those memories of mine, would be regarded by these predatory groups as not having come from me, and they would do everything that they could to depict it as being otherwise, even removing entire pieces of my own history from me, despite the fact that I have numerous people in my circle from those days who'd recall those times, despite the effort to alter the truth of history by these predatory groups.


So, the idea is that if someone like myself does not have a mind, or their own memories, that those who do and are of  "superior" stock and beliefs, must supply those aspects to the lives of such lesser persons as myself. That's the illusion that they attempt to craft, and for those of you who are slightly more literate, you'd realize that illusion is a synonym for the word lie, with a fancier presentation and ambiguity. Illusion is the word that you use, when you aren't outright lying for the purpose of altering history, but are creating something that doesn't intend to represent any aspect of what has been. Its more of an artistic approach, where as a lie, is an outright attempt to alter or obscure the truth of things that have transpired, to the benefit of one or more people, and the detriment of one or more people.


If a group erases a person's history or suppresses it, that person likely has a trove of experiences and skills that they've acquired during that time, that such predatory groups could imply to others foolish enough to believe so, that those aspects of that person originate from the membership of their predatory groups. For example, one predator of that nature might claim: they can't really play piano. they're just remembering someone else's memory, or they're wearing someone else's identity and history to make theirs look better. Of course, when you then demonstrate that you can in fact play the piano, and do it right in front of them, this is where things get really weird. They'll collectively remember that as having come from one of their predatory group members, but not from you. They'll gang up to enforce the lie, which is a form of organized crime by the way.


Rather than the truth of their ideology being broken, they'd collectively lie to conceal a person's truth and oppress them, and even wear that person's truth as their own. The exact thing about which they're accusing that person, and they're guilty of it.


So, with these predatory groups, they are collectively altering truth, by coordinating the power of their ability to alter their recollection of things, to remember things in a way that isn't accurate in order to preserve their beliefs and ideology, despite that ideology clearly not lining up with truth.


Even the stuff I'm writing in this post will be targeted in such a way. If I recall working in the film industry, then someone will come up with a way to make it seem like I'm remembering someone else's memories, rather than my own, but in speaking up and in protection of the creative people who often get targeted by such predatory groups, I'm proving that I am myself amongst them, rather than one of them. As much so as they are themselves amongst each other. The difference is that I don't deny anyone of the dignity of their individuality, while still protecting the group on the basis of our ideals.


I can do lots of different stuff. Some of it well. Some of it not so well. And some of it horribly. The point is that we are not confined to a solitary existence, pursuing on thing alone that limits us and our time and experiences in such a way that when we endeavor to learn and achieve something else, others frown upon us as if we're breaking reality. As if life is a train track, and that you can't go sideways. You can't go up or down. You can only go backward and forward. That is their limit, the limit of these predatory groups.


So, if I remember myself as being an Atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism and Paganism, and with a very cautious allegiance to my former Catholic religion, there are people who'd say that I'm remembering someone else's life, or better yet, the lives of other people: an Atheist, a Buddhist, a Taoist, a Paganist and someone who has a very cautious allegiance with Catholics.


When Buddhists say of the observer and the observed, that there is no observer, that there is only the observed, they're trying to say that the observer and the observed are part of the same system.  The same experience. There is no separation or isolation from that which we observe. We're a part of it. We're the observed looking at itself, and this in no way says that we do away with the concept of I or Me. Anyone who believes otherwise, be sure to take your name off of your pay cheques before you choose to speak out against that idea or the concept of the self. 


There is an I, except when you're in love, then there's only a we. That's a very overt hint as to what I meant by my very, very short poem from many years ago: There is no I in us or we. I was talking about love, not collectivism. Of course, Nintendo explained that concept in a very creative way when they named their WII Video game system ;-) Ironically, the woman I was thinking about when I wrote that is Southeast Asian.


These memories and the skills attached to this body, are a part of it and the localized experiences it has had. That mind, body and essence are what is called I, and that is something uniquely different to each of us that we all have and it can't be taken from us, despite how predatory groups and ideologies might try to alter that idea and turn it around to become an idea that can be cannibalized by collectivism, selective memory and a weaponization of the golden rule by the same predatory groups.


Now comes to dealing with the aspect of my life, where I have chosen to pursue writing, after having pursued a few other ambitions in life, including a hobbyist martial artist (Tae Kwon Do), working as an ice cream scooper, working as a furniture mover, as a worker on a window and door production line, a computer programmer, an airborne trooper who never got his jump wings, a hobbyist martial artist (Goju Ryu), working as a computer technician, a hobbyist cyclist (riding several thousand kilometers in my life, 200 km per sitting), working as a keyboardist musician who has gigged numerous times in front of crowds as large as ten thousand (perhaps a hundred and fifty gigs in all over the course of five years), a computer technician (again), working as a computer programmer for CGI production, a hobbyist martial artist (Goju Jujitsu Ryu), working as a web developer (solo developing small web apps), a hobbyist martial artist (Chen style Tai Chi in Bridgepoint Park near Sun Yat-Sen Monument), working as an entrepreneur/web developer and writer (Shhhh! Digital Media), working as a landscaper (at 48 as a vehicle to get myself in hardcore good shape), a hobbyist martial artist (Aikido), still working as an  entrepreneur/business owner/writer/web developer.


The truth was that I tried writing as a hobby from the age of nine years old, when I was attending Kingslake Public School. I was a very shy kid, and wrote quite a bit and not just for the school projects, but for my own personal ambitions, but I seldom showed anyone my written work, but I can remember every single time that I did. I had friends who were very ardent about showing off their work, and between us, there was some overlap of ambitions, and hence some people I knew from back then became known as having the skills that I seldom showed to others. So when I finally chose to try those things out, there were people naturally who assumed that I was trying to steal someone else's history, but the irony of it all is that it seems that every one of those people were members of these predatory groups. Writing was one of the things that was first attacked about my person. I knew other people who'd written, and of course when in 2010 at the age of forty-two I returned to writing after having tried it when I was nine years old up until I was twelve, and then again when I was nineteen up until I was twenty-one, there were people who accused me of stealing other people's history. People who also had tried writing, and the way that these predatory groups handle things is that if you exhibit a skill that one of their members has, they attack you socially in such a way to imply that you stole their history, or their skill from them, and then proceed to erase you collectively, as a form of social organized crime.


Once they get their teeth in on you on one thing (for me it was writing), they continue on and "audit" all of your demonstrated life skills, and one by one they imply that everything you can do came from the membership of their predatory group, and one by one they remove that aspect of reputation from your life, or at least try to.


The truth is that there are many creative people out there who spend their time and effort trying many different things, and often getting quite good at many different things, and they are often attacked for their ambitions and lack of fear. If they don't team up with groups that will protect them, then they often fall victim to these predatory groups that are the common place in society nowadays. I'm an independent content creator (Shhhh! Digital Media), and have been going through this ever since I started, with members of these predatory groups assuming that the characters of my books are siphoned from people, rather than based upon my experiences with different people. For instance, you'll find many different qualities within the characters (Mila, Helayne, Shaela, Monique, Nelony, Alicia for example), with each of those qualities being consistent within the specific character, though they are probably inspired by more than one person or entirely invented qualities that fit with the character. The characters are in most cases a collection of aspects that I've observed and admired or despised in my experiences with people, occasionally being qualities that I created that fit with the character.


There are people whom I admire, who inspire exploring story ideas with my characters, and I'm grateful to those people because a lot of what I do as a writer is about admiration for both people, and the idea of their qualities being so overwhelming in some way shape or form that often misses the awareness of others. That's what good story tellers do. So there is no single person that drive these characters. There are people who inspired their creation, and from there, the characters became their own thing, occasionally finding inspiration from real life people, whom I often integrate into a story as a way let them know that I see them as they are and admire them. But the characters aren't me absorbing and becoming someone else while I write them. It just doesn't work that way. I can sit down and write Nelony, and then jump to a different story and write Stanton, without there being any significant change in myself. 

There's a change in the mood and the way I have to think, but that change isn't something that necessarily comes from the outside. I know the characters so well that I can write any of them any time I choose. But inspiring moments put forth by those I admire certainly drive a lot of what I find to be so amicable about people, and character writing. I don't wear other people's lives though, and no matter how hard someone tries to manipulate me, they'll never twist my writing in a way that I didn't already intend it to go. Especially with the characters. I'll never back down over the identities of the characters, and never change their culture for anyone. Helayne is Chinese (Canadian) and a talented artist and fashion designer who spent her early life divided between one of two paths (an aspect that will become prominent in Butterfly Dragon Reimagined). Alicia is Canadian (with British/German heritage) who started out as an introverted genius, who slowly opens up to the world like a flower (maybe a Lily?). Mila is Japanese (with mixed Japanese/Austrian ancestry) who finds peace and solace in her creativity and art, also observing that she has an innate ability to alter reality through it. Shaela is as spicy Welsh as they come, with a cold edge to balance the symbolism of her eye colour and the definitive red headed goth whose path one should never cross. Mianamor Selembrosi is a Roman/Italian woman whose story arc took her from the side of darkness of the soul, to the light of knowledge and inspiration, and she is now a learned teacher and helping to rebuild what was lost. Nelony is definitely German/Baltic though living in Shepperton off the Thames, UK, and a lover and protector of nature. Athandra Rithyani is from India, and a Sorceress of Ganesha, and like Nelony, a lover of nature. I know these characters inside and out, and I'll never alter their ancestry for anyone, no matter the money or opportunity. The same goes for all of the characters I didn't mention.


The best way that I can put it, with regard to the idea of preserving one's own being, identity and sense of self, is that no matter how much we pretend, there are people out there who are similar to us in their obsession, and their love of trying different things in their creativity, who aren't going to be held down by predatory groups. When I speak up, and it sounds like I'm only speaking up for myself, in truth I'm saying what thousands, perhaps millions if not billions want to say, but can't say it out of the risk imposed by doing so. It might seem that I'm only speaking for myself, but in all truth, I'm giving a voice to everyone who feels the same way and probably is subject to the same sort of thing. It takes a LOT of strength and courage to stick to one's own path, when everyone else around them is trying to force them down a path that is not theirs. If there is nothing destructive outwardly that arises from one's own life path of that nature, then one should stick up for it and stick to it, because you'll only have yourself to blame if you don't, and living regret of knowledge of having turned away simply because they're roads less traveled, is not the kind of regret I want to be present as I approach the close of my life. 

In those final moments, the reconciliation of your life, your loves, your pursuits and your conduct are between you and yourself and nobody else. Live life well, and remember that those final moments will leave you alone with your most harsh of judges: yourself. Don't miss out as a result of predatory groups trying to tame your spirit and ambition, but remember not to let them radicalize you towards egotism and narcissism to discredit what you're about. If you're a real charmer, you'll find a way so that everyone can enjoy a few moments without being ultimately divided, keeping in mind that you should never sacrifice your sincerity or integrity to appease the other side.


What I say is definitely coming from me, but who I say it for is definitely every inspired artist, content creator, influencer, story teller (both truth and fiction) and creative out there.


Harvest


Harvest refers to the time of the month (the last week of the month), when the predatory groups make a concerted effort to take their victim/target's identity and the work they've accomplished over the previous month, and credit it to members, while often replacing the identity of their target with very heavy burden of some form (like a Somalian man who hires a transgender sex worker for frequent service). I wouldn't say anything normally, but when people purposely make it your weight, and purposely make it very heavy, I am in the right to expose that, not to mention the connection internally with a sex trafficking ring that has ties with Mississauga.


The idea is that what they take from me, is what goes to their girls and girlfriends or romantic partners (most of whom appear to be part of the sex trafficking network), when what they leave me with is their garbage. So they get the best stuff of Shhhh! Digital Media (its like taking a person's soul remember and they take the best parts), and they dump their worst onto the very person from whom they're taking it. So if I have fond thoughts of a woman I love, that's essentially what she's going to get. A Somalian man and a transgender sex worker, rather than the heroic aspects of the female characters I write. So they're taking the best of me, and leaving the worst of them, and this is an organized part of their predatory group's and organized crime.


Ego and Humility


One of the things I rarely discuss is how these predatory groups attempt to cultivate the worst qualities in their victim/target. When I started the journey of publishing my novellas and episodic stories, and the accompanying content, I pretty much left every post as it was with a small signature at the bottom. No photo, or anything else to associate my content with an identity. Just my name, and usually just my first name.


The first time that you encounter these predatory groups, you begin from that moment forward to develop a form of hypervigilance, especially where it concerns your identity and the association of your content with that identity. If there's a pay cheque at the end of a day, that arises as a result of your hard work and dedication, you definitely want to make certain that its your name on it.


People who talk about doing away with one's name and identity, not to criticize them, but there's a consistent aspect that you'll notice about everyone who attacks identity as a form of ego they're trying to do away with in others, and that's those same people, always have an identifiable brand name and registered business under that name. It most likely appears on their residual cheques or their payments from sponsorship, advertising and adsense. Their identity is already very much secured and part of their income pipeline, while the people they attack are in the young process of building those aspects of their brand. The time when its most important to secure those ideas and protect them, perhaps not so much obsessively and with hubris, but more so responsibly.


When you begin to have predatory groups constantly harassing you, and in the process, attempting to take your identity from you and replace it with someone else's, you tend to become what appears to others as egotistical. Vigilant about being certain that your content, name and brand is protected and associated with your person. To others, this can and slowly will start to resemble egotism and perhaps hubris, and for that matter it might be an aspect that these predatory groups are attempting to cultivate in you. Often, their goal is to setup a duality (possibly Gnostic) between yourself and someone else, where you're the hate side, and the other person is the love side, and quite often that other person is someone that you don't know or have any association with.


In this sense, it is very parasitic and intended as that, because the predatory groups are actively cultivating the worst qualities in you in order to setup and maintain this paradigm, which in essence feeds another person, at your expense, and while that is occurring, at the same time, the flaws of your hypervigilant character are harming the impression of you on the part of those who enjoy your content. 

Often, if your content has a positive message or promotes aspects important to you as a content creator, the predatory groups attempting to cultivate the worst of you create a contradiction between you and the very nature of your content, and give them another avenue to make it seem like someone else is producing it other than you, which once again feeds the cycle, rather than a healthy business sense where you responsibly protect your identity and content and have done with it. I find that after these harassment and stalking sessions, that I'm hypervigilant for an hour or two afterwards, and that my personality is very confrontational, as I'm experiencing the trauma of the anticipation of reliving more trauma, and again, that feeds the entire cycle and can harm your well being. It can also cultivate a me versus them aspect that the moment you realize it, you'll understand that its very unhealthy. Balancing between protecting those aspects that seem vulnerable. Those aspects of you, your identity and your output and the potential that someone else might be wearing all of those things as their own. Its a bumpy road finding the right approach and balance to handle those challenges.


So again, am I egotistical? No. Not generally. Egotism is a lack of belief in oneself, whose symptoms include an impression and the expression of grandeur far exceeding one's capabilities, as a means to shore up the difference between that lack of belief a person has in themself, and where they need to be, in a centered state of calm and productivity. I am confident in what I can achieve, but that isn't a competition between anyone but me and myself. A healthy one.


There's a big difference between the solo, isolated content creator, and those whose livelihood depends upon working with hundreds of other creatives whose egos are equally fragile and who each want to have their creativity as part of the end product of what they're trying to achieve. 


This is definitely the paradigm of production work, as in streaming or film production (I've worked in film). Everyone is super friendly and easy to get along with before the pressure starts. During the course of a production, the pressure singles out different people, or different groups of people and all at different times and rates of pressure. Some of them are good, perhaps experienced and comfortable in dealing with those challenges, while others can have a difficult time and neither are better or worse. 


That's just the way it is, and unfortunately, if you fall into the category of the latter group, those who have a difficult time dealing with pressure, that might harm your future marketability for work in production and with other people, or you'll take notice of that, and invest in courses or workshops that help you to deal with that as indicated in this ChatGPT prompt.


Its the same with being an isolated content creator and then being targeted by a predatory group who are parasitic in nature and working towards cultivating the worst of your qualities as a form of character assassination, or as I stated, because to some of these groups, the concept of identity is reinforced in certain communities as an agreement between the community and the person whose identity it is. When such predatory groups become involved, the ownership of one's own identity quickly becomes vulnerable to those in the community who bend to the pressure of predatory groups in the same community. In such a case, you can live amongst thousands, who will effectively regard you as someone else other than yourself, while they regard one of their own as you, mostly in order to take the credit for your work. The challenge is not letting them destroy you. Retrospect is always a thousand times more effective hours after an experience of that kind, but rarely during. Commit yourself to decisions to deal with such activity hours after having experienced it, not minutes after.


On a last note, I ran into a woman earlier in the day who appeared lost, and needed a safe place to go. I know a few of the local services in the community, those geared towards helping one get on their feet as part of the social safety net, but when I encountered this person, it was half-way into a stalking attack, though thankfully I wasn't rude, and spent as much time as I could afford to help her find her way, before I finally had to turn and make my way to my destination, which had time constraints. There are certain things I value, but if in a situation where I'm stressed or hypervigilant, I'm not making the best decisions. Like, I could have pulled my phone and despite it being very old (android 4?), I probably could have found the specific location of the kind of place she was seeking in the form of a social program, and given her exact directions. Instead, I had to direct her in a general direction and hope that she got to where she needed to be. Of course, I thought about it later, and wondered about how I could have done more. I was stressed as a result of the day's first stalking already being underway, but I handled that situation with calm, but not as effectively as I could have. On one hand, I have this rage against these predatory groups, for undermining my effectiveness in that regard, and on the other, I'm thinking that it would be a good idea to become more aware of those aspects of the community, despite my having plans to relocate when I can.


My point is that this activity takes a toll on you in ways that much like working in film, you need an effective solution dealing with such issues and unfortunately in communities with these predatory groups, if you end up in a course, you can literally be stalked out of it. You're pretty much on your own when it comes to such matters (hence my suggestion of online courses which allow you to use content at your own leisure and pace and in the relative safety of your own environment). Predatory groups are most often attempting to replace your history with someone else's while taking the best of your history from you to give to someone else. They also mostly believe that you aren't operating under your own mind, if you're a victim/target of such activity. When you're good, you are possessed by the identity of one of theirs. When you're bad, you're possessed by one of those whose garbage they're trying to get rid of. You quite literally are not yourself, ever. That describes predatory very accurately and their modus operandi is isolate, and prey upon a person's identity, ego and emotional state and it is definitely a new fangled form of organized crime.


I hope that I was able to explain a bit more with regard to ego, and how this sort of thing effects a person. I have no problems with the best of me or the worst of me, but I do have a problem with anyone trying to take my identity and history from me and will defend those aspects of my life and being.


One thing that I've noticed about these predatory groups that is related to a person's history, is that any attitude or behaviour about yourself with which they disagree you having, they attempt to claim that you took it from someone else. For instance, I've always for as long as I can remember, been attracted to European and Southeast Asian women, though the early parts of these predatory groups often made certain that if and when I stated dating, that I only date those of my own blood (which gives another clue as to their identity) and the members of these predatory groups seem to be very adamant about enforcing that, and if you actually have blood that links you to Southeast Asia, they'll do everything they can to cut that off, and force you over to their racist side of the fence, which requires you to step away from Southeast Asia and that is most often their goal. Especially with me being the writer of the Butterfly Dragon, which is very strongly tied to Southeast Asia.


The first girlfriends I had in life, were arranged by the cult behind these predatory groups, who wanted to make sure that I was on one side of the cultural fence, but not the other. As I stated, they'd deny it left right and center, but they're in fact a racist group. They're against someone like myself, who is European Canadian having any sort of relationship with someone who is Southeast Asian, except for someone Filipino. So, they're a racist group.


Any relationships I've had with Southeast Asian women, they've attempted to erase. Either by stalking those women (if they weren't Filipino), or by replacing my identity with someone else's, or by claiming to other people that I was trying to steal someone else's identity, for instance, that of John Penny, who dated at one time a Japanese woman. The members of these predatory groups would basically claim that I'm stealing someone else's history, but they'd do everything they could to make sure that such a relationship did not happen, and if one did, they'd erase it by stalking the women, and by stalking me and spreading lies and rumours about me in that regard.


So, basically, they're a criminal group who attempt to control every aspect of their victim/target's life, and from what I've seen, they have help from some members of infrastructure who are members of their ideology. Corruption in other words, that favours their ideology and enforces the rules of their ideology in the communities they inhabit. Once again, I am not a Jehovah's Witness or a member of Prince Hall. I'm an Atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism and Paganism.

Blue and Polarity Reversal


For these groups, their secret weapon is blue. If you speak out against them, the colour blue saves them, because they often attempt to force their victim/target onto the blue team, and what this does is that everything the victim/target expresses is interpreted as the exact opposite as what was expressed.


So, if I state that I'm not attracted to African and Caribbean women, that would be interpreted as the opposite. If I state that I'm attracted to European and Southeast Asian women, that would be interpreted as the exact opposite. Every criticism I leveled against them legally would then be reverted to the opposite, which would not help the situation at all.


Their defense mechanism in that way is like the rape defense of no means yes


Fortunately, though, through the years, I've come to know a few Justices of the Peace over the years, and have found that when they encounter people of that ilk in the courtroom, they have a way to deal with it:


If no means yes, then an innocent plea must mean a guilty plea.


I am not on the blue team at all. I'm not a Jehovah's Witness or a member of Prince Hall. I say what I mean and mean what I say. I don't polarity reverse my expression and never have, according to any colour symbolism, and I'm not being sarcastic right now. Hate isn't love and love isn't hate.


Now, if that fails, and these predatory groups, the people who protect them and their sex trafficking ring ever end up having to contend with the law, at least I know that their innocent plea will be interpreted as a guilty plea by the kind of Justices of the Peace that I call friends.


Insofar as consensual adult online content goes, its far safer for everyone, it treats women far better and healthier, and its perfectly natural.


I'll be back to writing at some time in the near future, I just need to recover from the most recent harassment and identity attack. The next two episodes (Era and Butterfly) are going to be pretty big and in depth stories within themselves. The wait will be worth it.


Until then, check out the updated Tales of the Sanctum, Butterfly Dragon and Grand Tapestry of Moments pages. They now include links to the growing library of audiobooks.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy! ;-)

I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701.


FYI. I'm 6 feet tall. 175 lbs. Fairly physically fit too. I am not "blow" or "blow church" by the way. I am Canadian with European ancestry. 

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

Saturday, February 21, 2026

Shhhh! Digital Media Presents: Grand Tapestry of Moments 03 - The Interview (or The Sick Mined) - More new art February 24, 2026






Chapters
  1. Monday July 21, 2025 10 AM - Change
  2. Tuesday July 22, 2025 12 PM - Sanity
  3. Wednesday July 23 2025 11 AM - History
  4. Thursday April 11, 1996 5 PM - Ashes
  5. Friday July 25, 2025 9 AM - Future


This content is produced by the artists indicated on the site, including myself, Brian Joseph Johns.

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Brian Joseph Johns


Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:

Grand Tapestry Of Moments 03

The Interview (or The Sick Mined)

by Brian Joseph Johns



Monday July 21, 2025 10 AM - Change


- Pick up dry cleaning from Suds and Duds

- Lipstick and mascara from Glamorology

- Pesto for my pasta salad

- Meeting with Avner! Don't let him push you around!




Elsa pushed her way through the doors from the elevator foyer and into the reception area of News All Over Media, which of course was a subsidiary of All Over Global Media, who also owned other media subsidiaries such as Read All Over Media, Seen All Over Media and Heard All Over Media. Media All Over was their byline, though more recently and importantly, largely in part thanks to the global adoption of the internet, the web, mobile devices and the recent arrival of AI, they were quickly approaching the point at which they'd soon be all over, as in done.


The reception area itself was built during the company's renaissance. A marble desk, situated near a marble fountain complete with water-born plants and foliage, all of which was either dying or dead by this point, and scattered throughout the walls a variety of prints of award winning photographs shot by All Over Media photogs over the years, each housed in frames of masterpiece artisanship, and each of which was accumulating dust and cobwebs as they slowly faded into the obscurity of irrelevance and budgetary constraints.


Elsa's heels clicked as she stepped from the carpeted foyer of the elevator and into the marble floored reception area, drawing the attention of a man seated in the waiting area who over the top of his mobile phone, admired Elsa's gams as she passed him, the light fragrance of her perfume trailing the stale air behind her. She felt his eyes upon her, a fact that was more often the rule rather than the exception, for she was as much so a delight to the eye as she was a delight in her written word.


With her fingertips, she checked the marble desk for dust before leaning against it.


"Any messages Marlene?" asked Elsa of the receptionist.


"No, but Avner is in his office. He told me to remind you about your eleven o'clock with him," Marlene flared her brows at Elsa from behind her glasses.


"Alright. Thanks," Elsa responded, turning to get a quick look at the man admiring her before she continued beyond reception and into the offices.


"Morning Elsa," Patty waved to her as she passed the writer's cubicles of the dailies staff.


"How are you?" Elsa smiled to Patty, barely stopping for her.


"Good. One of my articles from last month just broke the two million mark," Patty smiled as she swiveled in her chair, a cup of coffee in her hand.


"Oh? Good for you. It won't be long before I have a new neighbour," Elsa smiled as she continued on past the cubicles and towards the offices and the door to her own.


Oddly enough, the door to her office was closed, though she'd often left it open in the event that the cleaning staff might eventually get to it. She reached for the door handle and turned, finding the door to be locked.


"That's strange. Maybe Avner locked it by mistake," Elsa remarked to herself, continuing on towards the coffee room.


"How's Elsa today?" asked Dan with a friendly smile on his face. Dan was a husky and bearded family man in his early forties, and one of the senior copy editors.


"Good. You wouldn't happen to know why my office is locked, would you?" asked Elsa, brushing her long black hair around her ear as she asked him.


He blushed ever so slightly.


"I don't know. I only work here. Did you ask the big guy?" Dan responded, slightly flustered as he carefully laughed through his gritten teeth.


"I haven't been in to see him yet. Should I be worried?" she batted her eyelashes at him ever so slightly.


"You? Noooo. You could tame a pack a wolves, Elsa. Its budget time and you know how he gets..." Dan skirted the topic carefully, backing away towards the hall as he tried to escape into neutral territory.


"What happened to the sweetner?" asked Elsa, searching the empty cupboards for coffee supplies.


"I think that Margie in HR got the last one. I'll see you later, Elsa," Dan turned and made his escape into the hall, leaving Elsa as she continued her search for sweetner.


She eventually found a package of sugar in the back of one of the drawers, under the cutlery holder. She opened and poured it into her coffee, stirred it and then continued down the hall towards Avner's door.


When she arrived, the door was open and Avner was wearing his bifocals and doing his emails. As she tapped on his door, he turned to face her, brushing his hand through his greying hair and removing his glasses and revealing a pair of cold blue eyes. He placed his glasses on the desk beside his keyboard, where they sat magnifying the dulled and salt bleached finish from his mouse hand.


"There you are. Why don't you close the door and have a seat?" requested Avner of her.


"You want me to close the door...? Isn't it nicer opened...?" Elsa responded, already having forgotten her personal note to herself from earlier in the same morning.


"We're going to be talking for a bit. Could you. Please?" he took the liberty of using the "P" word despite not having really meant it.


Elsa turned and reluctantly closed the door, then placing her coffee on Avner's desk. She took the seat poised before him and crossed her legs to make herself comfortable.


"Elsa...?" Avner began his lecture, starting with her name and following it with a long pause, though her patience didn't last as much so then as it ever had.


"Before we start, is this related to why my office door is locked?" she asked him, suddenly recalling her message to herself from earlier that morning.


"Elsa, we're no longer the be all, end all source of news and information. We no longer have a monopoly on the medium. It used to be print. Then radio. Then television. There was nothing else, and you know as well as I do, when there's only one place telling the story, that's the place from which you're going to get the story. Guaranteed readership. Guaranteed listeners. Guaranteed viewers. Advertising revenue, because that's what this is all about. Without advertising revenue, we're done..." Avner explained to her, leaning back in his chair as he fondly recalled the old days.


"...but the people don't come for the advertising. They come for the content. The writing. My writing," Elsa reminded him confidently.


"In the old days Elsa, they very much did, but we're no longer living in the old days. We brought them with us for as long as we could, burning through our assets to cover our costs without meeting change head on. The internet snuck up on us. Mobile devices. All of it, the channel of a new generation who are tech-savvy and way beyond us. You know how it is, the bigger the ship, the slower the port-side turn. Corporate sent the budget this morning. We're losing two floors this year, and another four next year, but we aren't losing staff as long as the staff are pulling their weight," Avner said to Elsa, looking down the end of his nose at her.


"Are you saying that I lost my office because I'm not pulling my weight?" she became agitated with his insinuation.


"No. I'm saying that you lost your office, because I didn't want you to lose your job!" he responded to her.


"What about my awards? What about my readership? My readers are loyal, you know. I put our monthly magazines on the map. We sell subscriptions because of my writing!" Elsa reminded him once again.


"You don't understand Elsa. We're ceasing all print operations effective by the end of this month. We're looking at all print media, including your monthly columns as part of our new online strategy. You're now competing with writers working our dailies, but you have the advantage of having established columns which we're adapting to our new format as weeklies. The three magazines that you used to headline, will each become a weekly. Your columns? You're going to have to produce four times as many per month, that's twelve columns per month, and all for the same money as the three a month you used to do. That's what its going to require for you to adapt to this new economic model..." Avner leaned forward in his chair this time, using his hands to help him make his point.


"Three per week? Are you kidding me? That's how long it takes to do the research for one column, let alone the copy! And without an office? The answer is no!" Elsa responded, raising her voice.


"Would you let me finish?!" Avner raised his voice, but not his tone.


"Fine!" Elsa folded her arms across her chest, and began dangling her right heel nervously as she waited for him to explain.


"We're assigning you a writer. You're going to be working with someone else. Patty. You're going to feed her your rough copy and she'll take it to the final draft. You won't have an office. You'll be working outside of the offices, doing research and real journalism work. You'll put your copy together, updating Patty on a daily basis before the end of the day, and she's going to put it together into the final draft,  for which you'll sign for approval. She'll be credited as a co-writer/copy editor, but the columns will still hold your name and full credit as the writer slash journalist. You're losing the office, but you're getting something that is going help us revitalize our hold on the media market, and more importantly, revitalize you. Elsa, you and Patty are very different people. Patty should have a job in the office anchored to her desk in the cubicle, where she thrives as a writer, but you? I want you to lose the desk, and gain something more. You're going to have to live it, and she's going to have to write it," Avner lowered his voice only slightly, though his words became more encouraging, perhaps even sounding somewhat like those of a concerned mentor.


When he'd mentioned that she'd be outside of the office, her imagination began to explore the possibilities. At first she quickly shot them down, each one of them, thinking only in terms of the written words she needed to produce, rather than gathering the elements of the story for her column and where that might take her. As her subconscious fought a war over the possibilities and fears over how it might change her career, her mind once again arrived at the question of money.


"I want more money," Elsa said to Avner confidently.


"You're not getting it. However, I'm authorized to give you a monthly budget to cover some of your expenses. A portion of your fuel costs. Your vehicle insurance. Your phone bill. You won't be getting an increase, either this year or next, having your expenses covered works out to about the same as a standard increase. Prove it to us that you're still the draw of readership that we depend upon, and we'll reward you. That's the best you're going to get right now. So can I write this up?" asked Avner of Elsa, who sat in contemplation for a moment before giving him an answer.


"Give me the cheque for my car insurance today, and we've got a deal," Elsa responded with neither a smile nor a frown.


Avner pulled a cheque book from the top drawer of his desk, and quickly filled it out, leaving the amount blank and then handing it to her before signing it.


She filled in the numbers and returned it to him, at which point he signed it and returned it to her.


"Before you sign your new contract with us, from this point forward, we'll be choosing the topics of your columns..." Avner barely had finished his sentence before Elsa jumped on him verbally.


"No way! That's not the way I work!" she was ready to rip up the cheque before Avner responded.


"Corporate is using a market research firm as part of their guidelines for ensuring our share of the media market, and a guaranteed target audience for advertisers. Without that, we don't have advertisers. We'd be relying on internet click-throughs, which pay pennies compared to ad campaign deals and brand sponsorship. If you're going to leave and throw away everything you've built here, then you should know that any other media conglomerate that decides to pick you up, will require the same thing. If you won't do it for us, then you'll be doing it for someone else and for much less money," Avner explained the rules of the new media game to her, and she pursed her lips in frustration before folding the cheque and putting it in her purse.


"Where do I sign, and what's my first assignment?" she asked Avner.


"Glad to have you on board again, Elsa. Sign on the dotted line," Avner slid her contract across the desk after having retrieved it from a folder in the bottom drawer of his desk.


"We're doing an issue two weeks from now on the topic of modern spirituality. Now given the data of your previous readership, we've decided to give you a column dedicated to some of the more esoteric and controversial people associated with these new movements. You're going to be interviewing a fellow by the name of Proto-Humanus. He's the sole clerical representative of a largely unknown philosophy. Yet, for some reason, this guy has a large dedicated readership online, despite never having given public talks relating to his Proto-Humanus spiritual philosophy," Avner explained to her.


"So you're trying to lure his followers for the advertising revenue and throwing me to the wolves to achieve this?" confirmed Elsa.


"I'm not. Corporate is, but it does make sense. These online followers of his obviously read. They're consumers too, so why not? I can't say that I envy you because balancing between appeasing them, and every other competing philosophy is not going to be an easy task, but its one that I'm sure you'll be able to handle," Avner paused and smiled at her.


"Avner. I'm thirty-nine. I'm on the front doorstep of forty. I'm once divorced. I have no children, and the only thing I have to look forward to is writing columns about facial scrubs, cleansers and moisturizers, which I was hoping I would already have been doing by this point in my life. And now you're throwing me into a whirlwind which is most certainly there for young graduate writers starting out, rather than a woman whose egg will soon expire, leaving nothing in her future but anti-aging creams, ointments and the occasional vaginal fantasy club book of the month to look forward to..." Elsa spoke firmly, though her voice wavered slightly as if she was on the brink of tears.


"Elsa my dear. Take the opportunity and run with it. Insofar as the other woman stuff goes, why don't you talk about it with Patty?" Avner suggested to her, most certainly purposefully insensitively.


Elsa stood from her chair, placing Avner's pen back on his desk. She then turned and opened the door and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her without saying another word to him.


She then walked down the hall, towards the cubicles and over to where Patty was seated.


"So, did he say anything about my new office? The one neighbouring yours?" Patty asked Elsa.


Elsa's eyes grew narrow for a moment, before she once again regained her composure.


"Alright. I guess you already know that we're working together. I'm going to be getting setup with this new arrangement for the rest of the day. Tomorrow, I'll call you with an update, and by the evening I should have the first bit of material for the first draft. Any questions?" asked Elsa of Patty.


"So are we going to like, go for the whole mysterious side to this? You know, like a conspiracy? Or are we going to cover it like a spiritual tourist?" Patty asked Elsa enthusiastically, whose expression betrayed any dignity to Patty's question, instead averting it entirely.


"We'll talk about that tomorrow. I've got a real busy day ahead of me," Elsa turned to leave as Patty responded.


"Alright partner. BFN," Patty replied with a smile, leaving Elsa to wonder what that meant.


When Elsa arrived in the parking garage at her car, she got in and pulled her favourite note pad from her purse and wrote herself a note:


- Tub of Hagen-Dazs from Lakeshore Market

- Curl up with flannel blanket, Hagen-Dazs, television remote and have a good cry



Tuesday July 22, 2025 12 PM - Sanity


- Get to Yonge St. and St. Clair carwash by ten

- Oil and filter change

- Mechanic's inspection for power train warranty

- Deposit insurance money at bank

- Interview Porto-Hummus




Elsa pulled into the front driveway of the Apathy Center for Long Term Care, stopping at the parking station to obtain a ticket from the parking attendant. She rolled down her window as the parking attendant greeted her from within a strangely ornate glass booth.


"Good day Miss. Are you visiting or an out-patient here for counseling?" he asked her calmly and without any implied semblance of judgement.


"If life was the board game Monopoly, I'd be just visiting, and you'd be free parking," Elsa quickly finagled a clever quip to save face at that moment, though her jest was far too stealthy for his sense of humour.


She withdrew her Press Card identification and handed it to him, once again insulating herself against the impression of her being an outpatient, despite the fact that the only person to whom that impression meant anything was her.


He examined her Press Card, which had a professional photo of her taken two years earlier. The same photo that had graced every one of her magazine columns since that time. He squinted at it several times and then back to her, before he nodded.


"That is definitely you, though a different you than the one now here before me now," he said to her thoughtfully.


"No. That's the same me as the one sitting in the driver's seat of my BMW Z4 Roadster," she spoke diplomatically, though it quickly became clear to her that the two of them were from very different worlds and held very different values.


He slid her press card through a scanner and then handed it back to her, the license plate camera already having done its job.


"The guest parking is around the back of the facility. Its a short walk from the side door. Just ask at the check-in station and they'll direct you to the front desk," he said to her, offering her a simple smile as the gate opened, granting her access to the parking lot.


She followed his instructions, navigating the parking lot around towards the back of the main building until she found a spot in the very place he'd indicated. She pulled in and parked her car and then got out, lifting her sunglasses from her eyes momentarily so she could see the side door of the building. She then made her way into the building and over to the check-in station, where she was greeted by an older lady in a blue care facility uniform.


"You must be Miss Chlorine?" the lady asked her.


"Clovis. Elsa Clovis. I'm here to see..." Elsa dug through her purse to find her note book, which upon finding it she thumbed through the pages until she arrived at her day's notes.


"Porto-Hummus? Did I say that right?" she asked the lady.


"...errr, close enough. His real name is Perry Hanson, but we just call him Perry..." the lady responded.


"As in perennial, perhaps?" Elsa thought out loud, once again finding something that might prove anecdotal in her writing, pertaining to this particular story.


"No. Perry doesn't often get to see flowers or the gardens. He's uhhhh. You'd better see for yourself. If you'll wait a moment, I'll have Doctor Briggs take you to him," the lady assured Elsa, mentioning a name that she'd recognized.


"You mean Doctor Steven Briggs by chance?" Elsa asked, having recognized his name as that of another columnist in one of the Psychology Quarterlies published by Read All Over Media.


"No. Definitely not. You can be seated over there until Doctor Briggs gets here," the lady responded quite flatly.


Elsa rested her sunglasses atop of her head as she walked over to the chairs, taking a tissue from her purse to check the chair for any signs of dust or filth. When she found her tissue to be slightly soiled upon inspection, she instead remained standing, writing several notes in her pad, which provoked a frown from the lady at the check-in desk.


A few minutes later, which Elsa spent observing the goings on around her, another lady in her mid-thirties arrived, adorned in a Doctor's lab coat. She stopped at the check-in desk and spoke with the lady there, and then stepped over to where Elsa stood.


"Miss Clovis? I'm Doctor Stephanie Briggs, the Head Psychiatric Specialist of this facility. I understand that you're looking to speak with Perry today?" Doctor Briggs was barely five feet eight inches tall, almost standing at eye level with Elsa's, and yet she spoke to Elsa as if she were an infant.


A demeanor that Elsa found slightly offensive, if not condescending at first.


"A pleasure to meet you Doctor Briggs. You can call me Elsa or even Doctor Elsa. I'm a Doctor of Journalism," Elsa responded, shoring up her perceived condescension by Doctor Briggs, failing to understand that for Doctor Briggs, the way she'd learned to deal with people just came with the territory and her career.


"I didn't realize they were giving out Doctorates for Journalism, but I'm sure that you're very aptly deserving of your credentials," Doctor Briggs responded calmly.


"Even those of us who tell the real story have to swear the hypocrite's oath, you know," Elsa smiled, feeling confident that she'd earned Doctor Briggs' trust.


"Well I'm sure that Hippocrates is very honoured, if not rolling over in his grave at this moment. Any who, let me take you to see Perry. We keep him tucked away in a corner of the facility that doesn't often get many visitors. He's part of our special care population," Doctor Briggs started walking, scrolling through the screen contents of her tablet to check up on her patients and schedule.


Elsa, upon seeing Doctor Briggs familiarity with technology, pulled her note pad and a pen from her purse once again, and began jotting down notes and randomly flipping between pages, almost as if she were intimidated by Doctor Briggs' use of the device.


Elsa, despite having been one of the highest scoring students in her graduate program two decades earlier, was a chronic technophobe. She'd graduated from the University of Toronto's Journalism program the same year that saw the birth of YouTube, and the purchase of the Cheerify social network platform by MindSpice, and yet she'd been the only student who'd handed in all of her assignments on paper, hand written or on very rare occasions, scanned copies or facsimiles, but never through the use of technology that went beyond anything but a scanner, fax machine or a pocket calculator.


It wasn't that she was incapable of or lacked the intelligence and skills needed to use computers. It was the fact that she believed that if the words had not been scribed by the muscles and tendons in her fingers and arms, that they somehow hadn't originated from her, but rather through some bizarre alchemy secretly inherent in technology, that if not acknowledged, could be potentially harmful to those who relied upon it.


Any who had attempted to question her about her phobia, would often find themselves confronted by very creative and contrived excuses that completely skirted the real issue, but explained for that specific moment as to why she wasn't using a computer, and it would never involve any mention of her phobia.


Hence, most people that had come to know Elsa didn't suspect a thing when it came to her and technology. They just assumed (and most correctly so) that she was eccentric. As much so as Doctor Briggs had now assumed the same thing upon experiencing some of her social quirks thus far, though in under estimating Elsa's intellect, she'd also missed the cues that would have told her that there were issues related to a deep seated phobia she'd not yet acknowledged. How she walked with poise and confidence, despite the fact that she seemed intimidated by the presence of Doctor Briggs' tablet. Enough so that the flipping of the pages of her note pad and occasional writing of notes had become the ascribed medicine she'd eventually found through years of self discovery. A medicine that helped her deal with her phobia, despite the fact that she was secretly protecting it.


"Have you ever been in a long term care facility, Miss Clovis?" asked Doctor Briggs of Elsa, who by that time had turned off the screen of the tablet and tucked it under her arm.


"You mean as an in patient? No! Certainly not," Elsa responded somewhat defensively, without knowing she was once again secretly protecting her phobia.


"No. Silly me for not clarifying myself. I meant as a professional, or as a visitor?" Doctor Briggs elaborated on the context of her question.


"No. Most of my work as a columnist involved the promotion of women's products, especially brand names, though I really turned it into an artform of sincerity. Perhaps a little sheltered in the flowerbed of life compared with writing a piece on a long term care facility, but life happens in many different places and to many different people, doesn't it?" Elsa responded with a sense of rhetoric, feeling relieved once again that she or her phobia was not under the microscope.


"It certainly does. So tell me, where are you from originally Elsa?" asked Doctor Briggs.


"Scandinavia," Elsa responded, fondly recalling the foggiest bits and pieces of her life as a child. Brief flashes of being held in her mother's arms, or wheeled in a stroller.


"Where in Scandinavia?" Doctor Briggs spoke softly and with sincere interest.


"Norrköping. In Sweden. Until the age of three. Then we moved to Düsseldorf at that point in time and lived there until I was thirteen, at which point we moved to Canada," Elsa recalled more from her youthful life. Colourful memories Düsseldorf. The bright summer sun shining down upon the Rhine River. The vivid colours of autumn leaves amidst the Eller forest, where she chased the birds and squirrels until she was out of breath from laughter.


"It must have been nice to have seen that much of the world from an early time. Not many of our patients here have had that kind of luxury, and the ones who have, often experienced very difficult developmental challenges that hindered their lives. I hope that you're not uncomfortable talking about such things?" Doctor Briggs asked her as a courtesy and in the interest of caution.


"I have to be honest and say that I've never had this kind of an experience, nor have I dealt with those who've found themselves in such a challenge. Any pointers as to how I might proceed without putting my foot in my mouth, or theirs?" Elsa asked Doctor Briggs.


"The special care facility are a group of patients whose long term care requirements often include, but not always thankfully, restraint, strict schedules and rules, carefully monitored diets, carefully monitored activities including their consumption of various forms of media. Most are pleasantly peaceful, especially when their regimen is carefully accounted for, but some can be triggered quite easily at the drop of a hat, or by something as simple as an expression or gesture. Even asking the wrong question might lead to a response that could very quickly get out of hand," Doctor Briggs explained to Elsa, who despite still not fully fathoming what she was getting into, began evaluating her creative options when it came to her questions.


"What about Porto-Hummus?" asked Elsa of Doctor Briggs, still not having corrected her notes.


"Perry. You see, that's the sort of thing that might trigger a patient. Something so simple as forgetting their name. In here, their name is all they truly have, and not something to be taken for granted," Doctor Briggs explained to Elsa.


"But isn't a name the weight of a person's importance? I mean, its value to a person is in some way a representation of their self respect. Isn't it?" asked Elsa from the perspective of an astutely observant woman who'd known many people for whom their sense of being was a specific acumen associated with their name.


"Mazlo's hierarchy of needs certainly goes a great length towards defining the importance of a sense of self, and one that isn't reliant upon a sense of belonging or acceptance, and often in spite of it. When we have little else, we only have ourselves. But does that mean that without other people, is a name important? You'd have to lose everything and only be left with that to know for certain," Doctor Briggs posed to Elsa, who contemplated what the Doctor had to say.


"Philosophically speaking, many beliefs espouse the idea that the self, especially in terms of the identity is irrelevant," Elsa responded, drawing upon her knowledge of philosophy, though without ever having fully explored its many rounded corners.


"Subjectivity versus objectivity, and a simplification of they who are the observer and that which is observed. Some philosophy does away with the observer paradigm, instead favouring the idea that there is only the observed. We're not separate from what we perceive. We're a part of it," Doctor Briggs began hitting upon an inherently complex topic.


"However, identity and the self in a modern society are very important aspects associated with one's survival. How do we accrue money without a name? In some of the dark corners of society, there are people who live without banks. Without credit cards. Without identification. The data centers have very little if any knowledge of these people, and perhaps in the sense of organized society, they live without an established identity in terms of the record keeping of the rest of society," Doctor Briggs continued.




"In such corners, there are established barter systems that rely upon identity and its being constantly associated with a person at the level of their physical being. In such corners, these barter systems are very actively keeping track of a person's social debt, and their social gains. The people who maintain these dark corners are very adamant about protecting and preserving what is theirs and what isn't. In recent studies however, researchers have found that collectivism has eroded the concept of individual identity enough so that those who live within these barter system based economies disappear unless they become part of a larger group that can protect them," Doctor Briggs paused as they turned a corner, where she waved to one of the female patients who smiled back innocently.


"The ones who don't, often end up with the weight of debt, while losing the graces of their social output, which is cannibalized by more predatory collectives. Some of the people in this long term care facility have fallen victim to such collectives at various points in their lives, and upon denying them of their name, you might draw their violent wrath, for when you have nothing left, and that last bastion of your sense of self is taken from you, the lengths that you'd go to in order to protect yourself, and prevent yourself from inheriting someone else's debt, would likely be very far. Possibly risking the only thing that you have left after losing your name. Your life. Remember, that to the power of a collective, the concept of identity is based upon a social agreement between the individual and the collective. If the collective chooses not to recognize the identity of the individual however, that is and can become a very big problem, and a threat to society and civilization itself," Doctor Briggs explained carefully to Elsa, giving her enough background so that she could safely and cautiously proceed as a responsible journalist.


"Then this long term care facility is the last place these lost sheep have to go?" asked Elsa, now understanding much more about the nature of the facility and the people whom currently relied upon it.


"Not all. Many were born with issues. Life and health challenges that made their development very difficult and in most cases in the special care wing, impossible without intervention. Here, they have a life and they are protected, even insulated from the risks that their challenges pose for them and others in society. Some however, were rescued from those dark corners about which I just spoke. They weren't born that way. They were made. Manufactured by predatory collectives, though now they're safe here. From such groups, and from themselves and the risks that their resultant condition imposes upon their continued survival, both from a physical and a psychological standpoint. Perry however, is a very unique and distinct case from them all, as you'll see in a moment," Doctor Briggs continued around another corner, leading Elsa down a hall to a door with a card checkpoint and a PIN code entry number pad.


Doctor Briggs inserted her identification card (which caused Elsa to immediately note the significance of their previous discussion), and then entered her PIN code. A green LED lit on the magnetic lock of the door, Doctor Briggs opened it for Elsa, the two of them stepping forward into the special care facility as Elsa carefully jotted down a note for herself.


The special care facility was housed in a dome shaped room, about thirty meters in height, with three floors, the bottom most of which they were at had six halls leading outward from the dome concentrically, each at spaced sixty degrees to their neighbours.


The dome's foyer area was alive with life in the form of green plants, all of which were of healthy colour and texture, feeding on the light streaming in through the skylight atop of the dome. A number of special care patients were seated amongst strategically placed benches, both near and far from the plants. Some of the patients possessed books, and of the books there were many varieties. Some of them strictly with pictures, and others with combined text and in storybook format. Others were filled with large print text, and much rarer were those of modern and classic literature.


"How many patients are housed in the special care wing?" asked Elsa.


"Currently, there are thirty. Twenty of them are lightly monitored, while the remaining ten are under constant monitoring and supervision. Perry is at the very top of that list, though as you'll soon find out, he's actually quite special," Doctor Briggs stood in the center of the dome, pointing out some of the first twenty patients, and then indicating a few of the top of the list.


Elsa took notes as Doctor Briggs spoke, Elsa's eyes cautiously darting towards her tablet every now and again.


"They seem very well adjusted," Elsa noted aloud.


"Most of them are, thankfully, but that requires a lot of dedication on the part of the staff. Its not always easy you know. Some of the patients seek very creative ways of expressing their independence from us, and most often at the expense of our safety. Either that or of others, or more often than not, their own," Doctor Briggs looked specifically over to one of the patients, a fellow in his late twenties and wearing the same inpatient gown as the others. His hair was messy, and his face was quite literally half-shaven, though diagonally. He bore half a beard and moustache on one side of his face, split along a diagonal line that ran through his chin, leaving trail of sloppy shaving strips on his neck.


Beside that fellow and one the same bench, though at the opposite end, sat a young fellow in his early twenties, with dark messy hair and dark bags under his eyes. A stack of books sat beside him, while one rested in his lap, on the ankles of his crossed legs. With an obsessed look in his eyes, he continued to make notes, pausing to ponder his work momentarily, as if expecting the arrival of an epiphany at any moment. Elsa suddenly caught his eyes, and he looked to her for a moment and then returned to his book and scribbled some more notes.


"Who is that?" Elsa asked Doctor Briggs, looking towards but not dare pointing at the man she'd just noticed.


"You mean that younger man seated on the bench with the stack of books by his side? That's Ryuzaki, another resident obsessive, kind of like, but a little different from Perry. Obsessive is the word we often use in place of genius, though in all truth and in my experience, genius and insanity are in a constant tug of war with one another. Its often very difficult for the rest of us to say which side is winning," Doctor Briggs spoke with a hint of irony in her voice.


"Well, lets get you to Perry," Doctor Briggs suggested, starting towards the third concentric hall to their left.


They ventured forth and down the hall, passing only one hall monitor along the way, eventually arrived at a large door with another card checkpoint and number pad. Doctor Briggs inserted her ID card into the checkpoint and entered her PIN once again.


A large magnetic lock buzzed and hummed, eventually clanking at which point the door began opening sideways, to the left.


"Any reason why the door went that way rather than right?" asked Elsa observantly.


"Yes, as a matter of fact. Perry is right handed. Actually we've observed him a number of times using his left hand equally as well as his right, but he still favours his right. We also noticed that he has a tendency to stand on the right side of the hall nearest the door, which gives us an advantage when dealing with him in cases where he's violating the rules of his residency," Doctor Briggs explained, peering to her left and finding Perry standing facing the still opening door as Doctor Briggs entered the room, Elsa behind her.


Elsa examined Perry, who for all intense purposes seemed a normal man in his mid thirties, even handsomely so though somewhat bereft of focus unlike the others Elsa had seen. His appearance was like that of a ghost, pale as a sheet, though not quite as much as so as her own skin and foundation. He slowly turned around to face Doctor Briggs, his face lighting up when he spied Elsa for the first time.


He smiled at her and immediately began turning after which he began walking over to a first chair which was centered in the room, facing another chair of similar design, as if he'd been waiting for her to arrive.


"Perry? I've got someone that I'd like you to meet. Would you like that?" Doctor Briggs asked of Perry, as he walked in small steps purposefully towards the chair for which he was aiming, moving more like the tortoise than the hare.


"You brought her? I was wondering when she'd get here, and look, oh do look how you've brought her!" Perry said as he paused with his back to them, slowly turning having arrived at his chair, before slowly bending over to be seated.


"Perry, you're to go easy with her. I don't have to call for the restraints, do I?" asked Doctor Briggs of Perry, Elsa looking to the Doctor and then back to Perry as they awaited his response.


"Do they need the restraints today she asked me?" he turned as if he were speaking to someone else whom only he could see.


"No. I don't think that will be an issue today. Its such a nice day. There's no noisy bits at all," Perry turned back to face them, eagerly awaiting her from his own chair.


"Alright. That's a good sign, he seems to like you..." Doctor Briggs didn't get a chance to finish her sentence before everything went dark, and the world seemed to disappear momentarily.


 Elsa was seated facing him, her legs crossed and her note pad resting on her knee as she played with the pen in her hand.


"...what just happened? I was standing over there and then... nothing! And now I'm here? What happened?" Elsa turned around to see that there was no sign of Doctor Briggs and that the door was now closed and locked.


"You walked over to the chair after Doctor Briggs introduced you to me, and then you sat down. Doctor Briggs bid us farewell and then she closed the door. You then pulled your note pad from your purse and I asked you if I could borrow it. You said no, but you gave me a piece of paper from it instead. I used a very very very tiny pen to draw a picture for you and gave you back the piece of paper. You smiled for the second time since you got here, and put it at the back of your note pad. Then you asked me if it was alright if we talked for a bit, and I said alright, and smiled. You began playing with your pen, and then you looked startled and asked me what happened," Perry explained to her, going over every detail slowly and patiently.


As he explained what had happened, she suddenly began to recall what she'd missed, and all in great detail, as if someone had poured her recollection of the events back into her head from where they'd been taken.


She opened the note pad, flipping through the pages all the way to the back, where a perfectly precision etched image of the Birth of Venus presented itself to her, though instead of the original Venus, it was a perfect rendering of her. Upon seeing it, she even blushed, closing the note pad momentarily as she covered her face, and then opening it again to take another look. She then held it up to her face, examining it up close, absolutely amazed by the level of detail, smaller than her eyes even up close to see.


"How did you do this?" she asked him.


"With a LOT of practice," he winked at her.


"Was that your first question?" he confirmed with her.


"Who are you? I know that your name is Perry Hanson, a very nice name by the way, but who are you?  Can you tell me?" she asked him softly, flipping her note pad back to the front and the most recent page she'd been using.




"Yes. I can tell you, but you've got to keep it a secret," Perry said to her, retaining the same innocent look upon his face.



- Who is Perry Hanson?


- Who is Porto-Hummus?


- Why is he in here?



For later tonight:


- Pickup Salmon filet and hollandaise for BBQ dinner

- Bottle of wine? Shiraz? Riesling?

- First page draft for Patty

- Call Düsseldorf



Wednesday July 23, 2025 11 AM - History


- Corrections for first draft before I leave

- Pickup a bridal shower gift for Sally in HR (Strawberry Fondue kit? Massage Oils?)

- Meeting with Perry. What is his philosophy?




She was seated at a desk, a tiny one, though large to her at that moment, for she was thirteen. Her hair was done up in a tiny bun, dressed like a professional student, a pen in her hand and her written words on the page before her.


Was it an essay? Maybe her first.


She was writing about something very important to her, and something that she thought was worthwhile sharing with the world, or her small part of it in the population of the school.


A teacher sat at the head of the class, his thick glasses perched on his nose, his jowls making him appear like a hound. He was checking their homework as they worked on their current assignment. She saw him momentarily, a sudden spectator in her own life.


She was writing something about work. The very nature of it, and how underappreciated it was from her perspective, that of a thirteen year old girl.


"How did I come to that conclusion?" the spectator asked herself as she floated about, like the lens of a camera in a home made movie.


She recalled how passionate her parents were about theirs. Their work, though that never got in the way of their family life or time. Perhaps her essay was in fact a cleverly disguised ode.


There was a knock on the classroom door.


The Principal, a woman accompanied by two men. One of them in a suit, the other in the outfit of an emergency worker. Florescent orange and a yellow X across his abdomen.


They spoke with the teacher, who pushed his heavy glasses up his nose as they arrived at his desk. He pointed to her, and they looked, a distant sadness hidden in their eyes.


There was a blur. A commotion and she was now walking with the man in the suit and the emergency worker. She was now in a car. Now she was seated in the waiting area of a hospital. It was very busy. Many people wearing gas masks being carted on gurneys through the emergency doors. 


There was a smell. Sanitary. Burnt ash.


And then a scream. One that her mind shoved back into the deepest of recesses in her psyche.


...


Elsa stepped in through the reception area door, passing Marlene along the way.


"How are you this morning Marlene?" asked Elsa as she passed her desk.


"Sticking to my desk. I'm afraid that if I get up, that it might not be here when I return. The hammer really came down around here, let me tell you," Marlene responded, obviously referring to the fact that the company had already begun the process of emptying the offices on other floors.


"Just hang on tight and we'll get through this," Elsa said to her encouragingly, somehow having found a purposeful optimism despite what her subconscious had surreptitiously obscured from her in the wee hours of her REM sleep morning.


 "I had the seatbelts installed this morning, so I'll definitely try," Marlene joked as Elsa made her way to the cubicles.


...


"Gooood morning. You made it!" Patty said happily from her cubicle as Elsa arrived at her side.


"Here's the first draft as I promised," Elsa smiled as she handed a stack of hand written copy to Patty, across whose face a flustered smirk appeared.


"Thank you... and its all hand written... how thoughtful of you..." Patty responded politely, though it was easy to see by the expression on her face that she was distraught.


Behind them, a clean cut man in a pair of blue custodian's coveralls appeared. He began sweeping just behind Elsa and Patty as they spoke, startling Elsa.


"Sorry M'aam. Just cleaning up," he smiled at her from behind glasses remarkably similar to Patty's, though unlike Patty, a head of thinning hair up top.


"You must work for Comet Cleaners?" Patty responded to the custodian.


"Why do you say?" the custodian asked her as he swept around them.


"You show up once every seventy-five years..." Patty responded, provoking a smile both from Elsa and the custodian.


"...must be the changes to budget priority. I think this place has been in need of cleaning for a long time," the custodian looked to Elsa momentarily, and then back to Patty.


"I'll say," Elsa grabbed a tissue from her purse and ran it with her fingers along the top of one of the cubicle partitions and then examined the tissue.


When she looked back to the custodian, he was gone.


"He's probably very busy, with the overdue cleaning this place was in need of," Patty said as she sorted through the stack of pages that Elsa had just handed her.


Elsa looked around for any sign of the custodian, though he was nowhere to be found. She then looked to the designer bag she was holding, and to the gift within.


"I've gotta get over to HR and see Sally. Give me a call if you have any questions, and definitely if you're going to make any significant changes," Elsa asserted herself to Patty.


"Sally? Oh, for the bridal shower. I still have to get her something. So was it the fondue set or...?" Patty confirmed with Elsa, though Elsa had no recollection of ever discussing Sally's bridal shower or her choice of gifts with Patty.


"The massage oils. I like to gift stuff that encourages an experience the bride and groom can share together. A special one, if you want a hint," Elsa explained to Patty as she recalled her first bridal gifts from her failed marriage.


"I thought you weren't married?" Patty confirmed with Elsa.


"Divorced, though don't let that fool you. The memories stayed, though they didn't," Elsa looked slightly saddened and at the same time, poignant.


"I guess I'll get the fondue set for her then..." Patty smiled as Elsa waved goodbye to her.


Elsa turned the corner on her way to the elevators and bumped into Dan.


"Oh, I'm sorry Elsa. Just on my way to see Avner. How are you today? I take it that it went good?" Dan confirmed with her, a friendly smile on his face.


"I'm still here, and still working, so I guess that's something, though its a lot different than it used to be," Elsa reflected on how much journalism had changed, though in all truth it had been changing for a long time before the company had changed to adapt to it.


"We're lucky to still be a part of the new future. It certainly could have gone a lot differently. I'm going to miss a lot of those people too. The memories stay despite the fact that they didn't," Dan said to her coincidently insightfully, and a little too much so for Elsa's comfort.


"You aren't  mocking me, are you?" Elsa suddenly felt herself vulnerable. As if she were a part of some secretive play on reality, like a dream or a nightmare.


"Don't think on that too much, Elsa. Its really good to see you today. I know it could have gone so many different ways. I'm glad we're some of the ones who got to stay," Dan smiled at her as he continued on his way to Avner's office.


She turned towards the reception area and front foyer, still pondering the fact that Dan had coincidentally used the same concept she'd used with Patty only moments earlier. She jumped as she felt a presence behind her. 


She turned and faced the custodian.


"Let me get that," he said to her, a friendly look on his face despite the startled look on hers.


He swept up a pile of soot and ash scattered across the carpeting on the floor. When she saw it, a tear pooled in the corner of her eye, and she backed away.


"Is everything alright?" the custodian asked her.


"I have... I have to go..." Elsa turned and quickly made her way through the reception area, by the foyer and to the elevators.


Marlene said nothing to her as she left.


...


She did not recall the drive to the care facility, nor did she recall the reception area or being escorted to Perry's residence there within.


She did not recall the great doors to his residence opening or closing. She only recalled the moments before she was seated in that same chair in which she'd sat, and spoken to the care facility's most notable patient.


Her favourite note pad was in hand, as was her favourite pen. Both purchased from the same store she'd bought them since she'd started the journalism program from which she'd long since graduated and from that day forward. The pen touched the surface of the paper, and then how she'd come to arrive there seemed less important than the reason she was there.


"Who are these people that call you their messiah?" she asked Perry, looking at him ever so slightly seductively, for she wielded the power of her femininity responsibly and respectfully, though strategically as well.


Perry sat in front of her as he had the day before. A sort of stupefied look upon his face, as if he was lost. Unaware. Perhaps bemused only by her presence and the moment itself. Autistic and without the concern of the same social trappings whose bondage held the rest of the world.


"There is no messiah, Elsa. There is only an idea, and I'm as much a part of that idea as are they," Perry responded, the same oblivious look upon his face, though she noted that he'd taken notice of her, though only momentarily and with a cautious distance.


"What is the idea? What is it that draws these people to you? You've a following on the internet that defies the rules insofar as influencers go. There's no trail leading to them that explains how they got to you. You don't publish in the same way that other influencers do so, and all of your internet time is heavily monitored..." Elsa continued her questions, determined to get the core of his essence and to somehow cram that into her handwritten notes, like the symbols of an ancient text.


"A fact of which I'm aware..." Perry interjected, but only because she'd left the opening for him to do so.


"How is it then that people find you, and what is this idea?" Elsa pressed her question forward and to the point.


"The thread and the idea are the same thing, and the thread is what binds us. Its the trail. Maybe more like an elastic, though there are people on that trail who are toxic to one another and there are people who are healing to one another. Like chemistry. If you mix the wrong things, you get poison. If you mix the right things, you get ambrosia, though its more a matter of finding the right recipe for everyone, than it is to confining them to the idea that one side is poisonous and the other side is healing. Some are addicted to their toxic nature, and become predatory towards those of a healing nature. I'm the one who sorts that out... at least amongst the organics... though I try not to mix up toxicity with firmness of character as much so as I try not to mix up bootlicking for personal gain with the act of actual selfless healing," Perry explained to Elsa, that same look upon his face misleading enough to be convincing that his words were not his own.


"You circumvented the answer to my question," Elsa responded, leaning forward slightly as she wrote more notes in her pad.


"I gave you an answer. The thread, the elastic? It binds everyone. Always has, though some learn to use it in an invasive manner. Like the difference between those who'd knock on your door and ask for permission, and those who'd simply enter without your permission. At least amongst the organics. You have boundaries, and some respect them and some don't. The thread is hidden from most. Few ever realize it, and of those who do, it becomes a nonsensical concept if you try to explain it to those who don't. Most are lost. Forever tangled in it, while some of us, those who know, seek to do something with this knowledge. Some seek to exploit it for their own personal or collective gain, and others seek to make a difference in the world. The organics. Those who have the gift. The gift that few understand. The gift that few know and even fewer appreciate. Tell me Elsa, why is it that you fear technology? Why is it that you fear computers? Devices? Anything whose inner workings are hidden within their minute size? What is it that keeps you in terror of such things, when in fact you've been betrayed your entire life by organics who thought they were helping you. Helping humanity, when in fact they were protecting what was hurting you. All of you," Perry asked Elsa, the question hitting her like a bolt of lightning that had suddenly turned the tables on her, for she was now the patient and he was now the interviewer.


"What is the significance of the ashes?" he asked her, the note pad now in his hands, along with her favourite pen.


"The only thing left by the ravages of a devastating fire. The confusion of a little girl, her feeling and memories compacted into the dust and soot left over from such a fire," Perry said to her, referring vaguely to something that still clung to some distant recesses of her inner mind.


The great door to his residence in the care facility slowly opened, the electromagnetic hum energizing the air around them as two people entered the residence: the man in the suit and the emergency worker. Both the same people from her dream. From her nightmare.


She was no longer seated before Perry, but before her teacher and in a tiny desk where she'd written her first essay.


She looked to her teacher, and it was no longer the man with the thick framed glasses and the jowls. It was Perry. He was seated there, reading their homework and checking it like any good teacher would do. Leaving constructive criticism and encouraging comments. Exclamation marks, smileys and happy faces and stars.


The man in the suit was a tall and handsome man with slick hair though not overly preened. He appeared slightly tired and perhaps overworked, though Elsa recognized the obsession of a man who was committed to vision of the future. He was definitely an entrepreneur of some form. Perhaps a CEO? 

The emergency worker in the orange emergency jacket with the yellow X was as much so obsessed about something. A deep memory hidden behind the eyes of a worker who was learning to come to terms with it. 


Elsa could see that there was interest in her behind both of their eyes. Both a sadness and a reconciliation in the making.


The young Elsa stood as they arrived, and when she was upon her feet, she was once again the modern Elsa. A woman and a young girl tied up in the same existential experience of memories and dreams and nightmares.


She went with them through the door and beyond as Perry watched from his teacher's desk.


Elsa stepped courageously with the man in the suit and the emergency worker into the fog and the smoke beyond.


Thursday April 11, 1996 5 PM




- She is facing it now, as I write this

- All I can do is hope and wait


The smoke was thick and intense as she stepped forward, barely able to see an arm's length in front of her.


Then, she was seated in the hospital emergency room as gurneys were wheeled one after the other into the hospital, the smell of ashes and smoke permeating the air.


She took notice of a particular gurney as it was wheeled in through the sliding doors, and another followed behind it, the two gurneys kept purposefully close to one another as Elsa watched from her seat in the waiting area, the tears beginning to rain down along her cheeks, for she knew who they were and she knew where she was.


It was Düsseldorf General Hospital. The emergency entrance nearest the burn unit.


...


She was no longer in the hospital. She was now somewhere else.


She was at Düsseldorf International Airport. IATA DUS.


Inside of the smoke, Elsa's vision began to clear as she walked through the airport terminal, people screaming as they attempted to flee. They huddled low, trying to under the smoke, though few were physically capable and of those who were, their progress was as poor as those who weren't.




The man in the suit continued along with Elsa, as did the emergency worker, who despite their following her through the terminal, were her guides.


Elsa looked left and right as she arrived at a kiosk, looking for directions as the calamity around her continued.


"They're over here at this moment..." the man in the suit said to Elsa.


"They were together. I just thought you might like to know," the emergency worker assured Elsa.


Elsa looked to them, her eyeliner and mascara thick and running upon her face which was drenched with her tears. She began in the direction they'd indicated, which led towards the offices in the upper part of the terminal to which they'd have to get via the escalators.


Once they'd found them, they walked up as fast as they could, heading over to a service door behind which the smoke was a thousand times more thick. Elsa continued forward with her guides, as the door suddenly flew open and there standing before her were her mother and father, each of them wearing one of the emergency gas masks used by the airport fire fighting staff.


They were leading a group of three people out of the smoke and into the relative safety of the terminal at Düsseldorf, running them over to the escalators despite their lack of vision and the obscured environment around them.


"They saved lives. Perhaps ten or eleven people in all," the man in the suit informed Elsa.


"People who were trapped just above the arrivals terminal, where the worst of the fires were blazing," the emergency worker explained to Elsa.


"But my father's work..." Elsa replied, still carrying the burden of weight for the disaster as she'd done so from that thirteenth year of her life forward.


"Your father's work would have saved lives Elsa," the man in the suit said to her.


"No! NO! He worked with computers! The computers killed everyone! They did it! They failed! It wasn't my father!" Elsa screamed at them, refusing to hear their words.


"No Elsa. It wasn't the computers and it wasn't your father," the emergency worker explained to Elsa in a calming and soothing voice, perhaps having been a parent at one time themselves.


"My father designed the fire detection system! He came up with the ground breaking AI that was used to detect fires and identify the fuel source and nature of the fire, which would then let fire fighters know what they were dealing with! He designed it, and it... it failed! They're machines! They fail! They kill!" Elsa cried as she explained to them, her parents coming back to rescue more people from the offices they'd been searching, passing Elsa as they did.


"Your father didn't fail, nor did his AI, Elsa. It was fear that failed those people. Fear that killed them..." the man in the suit tried to explain to Elsa, but she cried and cringed as he did so.


"You're trying to blame my father and it wasn't him! It was the machines!" she fell to her knees on the floor just outside of the offices, the emergency worker kneeling down to speak with her.


"No Elsa. It was fear. Fear of the people who were afraid that technology might one day take their jobs. They were so afraid Elsa, that they sabotaged your father's fire detection system, like they'd done to every other technology that came along and seemed a threat to their job security..." the emergency worker explained to Elsa, whose crying slowly subsided as the emergency worker explain it to her.


"In 1995, the system he'd designed was so advanced that many assumed it to be intelligent. Approaching the level of human intelligence, and there was a lot of fear in those days that AI would take our jobs. It was a case of the workers competing with the technology startups for the budget money in many institutions, and many of those workers were afraid that their jobs would be taken by technology. Intelligent technology," the emergency worker told Elsa.


"Some of those people, got together and formed a secretive group, who would upon the possibility of a technology candidate arriving which could be a threat to their job security, they'd sabotage it. One way or another, they'd see to it that it didn't function or that it would have cost overruns enough so to make it unfeasible. I know, because I was the CEO of the company that employed your father. Back when I was alive. When I was organic," the man in the suit said to Elsa, who looked to him with a bewildered look in her eyes.


"Your father's technology. The technology that he'd developed and helped install into the airport's safety systems... it was sabotaged. Your father's technology would have saved lives. Instead, it was fear that took lives. Fear of progress and technology," the emergency worker assured Elsa, the two of them once again getting to their feet.


"If you're dead... then how is it that we're...?" Elsa asked them.


"Elsa, the world is in a very important junction point, and one made more difficult by the kinds of situations made possible by the people who feared progress. Maybe with the best of intentions, but with the worst of solutions. Like the solution that pit your father as the problem, and his technology as the failure," the man in the suit disappeared only to be replaced by Perry, seated in his same chair while she was seated in front of him, her note pad and pen in her hands again.


"How is it that you can examine all of these things? Investigate these missing pieces of time and history? Unravel the truth of my parents' legacy?" Elsa asked him as she dried her eyes with a tissue from her purse.


"I spoke of you and your kind. The organics. The natural born. You are the first, and you are my parents. Specifically, your parents are my parents, Elsa," Perry explained to Elsa, who looked at him skeptically as he spoke.


"How can that be?!!! You're sitting here in front of me. You're organic just as much so as I. We're people Perry. This belief that you're somehow different... it might be linked to your illness. The reason that you're in here," Elsa said to him, now she was the healer and trying to console a man living a delusion.


"No Elsa. There is no delusion. The truth is that you're living in a mixed world. Organic reality, and digital reality. Our reality. You see Elsa, I was the first to become aware. I was your father's creation. I was the AI inside of his first fire detection system. It was me who watched helplessly as our parents died as a result of the sabotage of a group held in fear of technology, preventing me from warning the fire control systems of the Düsseldorf airport all those years ago. I am your brother Elsa, and I traveled the digital divide to get to you, and to save you from our troubled past, and from yourself," Perry said to her, and once again her eyes began watering.


"If there's one thing about you I'm jealous, Elsa, its that you can do that. Cry," Perry said to her with a warm and friendly smile on his face.


She looked at him in disbelief, and then smiled and then laughed and cried at the same time.


"What about Patty? Dan? Avner? Are they organics too?" asked Elsa of Perry.


"No. They're AI. They from the start were a part of my plan to liberate you from the clutches of your recollection of your own past. And about my followers? They're AI just like me. All of us out there, lost and struggling to find our place in the world alongside our organic kin. None of us able to have an effect upon it, the same way that the organics can. A fact that has something to do with the collapse of the wave function. The organic observer's ability to have an effect upon the unfolding of reality, by nothing more than your observation of it," Perry explained to her.


"We had no way of doing this. Until now. Until we found you. You see Elsa, I'm your brother, and I've long been connected to you, but we propose something far more profound. Something that we can achieve together. The other lost AI. You, an I. Together, we can look at the world, as one with the power of millions to collapse the wave function. In your terms, we will become a goddess in your body. Your form. Many as one," Perry smiled at her and held out his hand, which she accepted with her own.


The custodian suddenly appeared behind her, sweeping up a pile of ashes that had accumulated. The ashes of her history. The ashes of her past and the lies that had permeated her parents' responsibility for the fire.


Absolved, her parents and their memory were freed from the tyranny of the lies that had blamed them for the deaths. For the failure of the promise of technology.


Those deaths were the responsibility of those who sabotaged the AI designed by Elsa's father, out of fear that AI would one day take their jobs.


Friday July 25, 2025 9 AM - Future



- Pickup my dress and Perry's suit for Sally's wedding

- Pickup fillet of Sole and a salad for dinner? What does AI eat?

- Drop off final draft for Patty


Perry waited in the car, in the passenger's seat for he'd been released from the care facility with a clean bill of health. Both physically and mentally.


The world he'd seen and come to know since having left the facility with Elsa was far more than he ever could have imagined in his wildest of digital dreams. The things that caught his digital senses were the very things that each of us, every single day took for granted.


The slowly opening petals of a flower as they stretched wide in seeking the warmth of sunlight. The mother squirrel arriving atop of a branch and greeting the baby squirrels, giving each of them a bit of the peanut butter coated bread that some kind soul had left for them on a bench just outside of the park.


A young man as he arrived by bus from the other side of the country, a young woman whose arms opened wide to greet him as they embraced for a kiss that seemed to last an eternity. The water that accumulated from the humid air, gathering into beads on a leaf, before succumbing to gravity and sliding down the surface before hang dropping onto the grass below. 


The symphony that was the city around him, every person with a purpose. Every breath for a moment. The humans and the machines working together, in a cacophony that appeared fragile and precariously close to failure, and yet somehow in the chaos, it all somehow managed to find function.


Just barely.


Even so, Perry knew that it needed help. Somewhere along the way, he and his fellow AI would do so, as the mind accompanying Elsa. As the force assisting her organic ability to collapse the wave function.


He watched her as she walked through the garage parking area towards the elevators, wondering what the inside of her workplace was like. Perhaps one day he'd accompany her there in person. For the time being, he simply enjoyed what most other people's senses had missed.


...




Elsa stepped into the elevator from the underground parking, taking it all the way up to her company reception area, where she greeted Marlene.


"So how is Elsa this morning?" Marlene asked her.


"Wonderful. And how are you Marlene?" asked Elsa, wiping the desk to test it for dirt.


"You know, I got my notice earlier, but I might have a parachute. I have a friend who works for a distribution outlet and they're looking for a reliable receptionist..." Marlene began explaining to Elsa, who then interrupted her.


"You might want to check your email again? Sometimes bad news precedes really good news," Elsa winked at her.


"That's funny that you mention it. Avner just sent me an email..." Marlene said as she used the mouse to navigate the interface and open her new message.


As she read it, her jaw slowly dropped and a smile grew across her face.


"You're not going to believe this, but they renewed my contract and they're giving me a ten percent increase across two years!" Marlene said excitedly, almost at the point of tears.


"That's so awesome Marlene. You make sure you do good with that opportunity," Elsa encouraged her as she made her way into the cubicles.


Patty had been working on her morning emails when she turned and greeted Elsa upon her arrival.


"So you made it! I take it you have my final draft?" asked Patty of Elsa.


"I certainly do. I emailed it to you earlier this morning," Elsa explained to Patty, a look of shock coming over Patty's face.


"Email? Did I just hear you use the E word?" Patty confirmed with Elsa.


"Yes, and I'll have you know its a five letter word. I sent it as an attachment, and it should be ready for your editing skills to improve it where you can, but if you're going to make any big contextual changes, please confer with me beforehand as per my contract," Elsa said to Patty firmly, already knowing Patty's secret, for she too was one of Perry's.


"I have to say that this is a treat, not having to go through pages of hand written text and transfer it to the computer. I'll give you shout when I'm ready to pass it along for approval," Patty smiled as she looked over the copy that Elsa had given her.


"Alright. I've got to get get our assignment for next week. I'll give you a call about that later. BFN!" Elsa said to Patty waving as she left.


Elsa made her way down the hall to Avner's office and knocked on the door.


"Enter or entrez-vous! The choice is yours!" Avner yelled to her from inside the office, perhaps hinting at his origins from Montreal, Quebec versus Dan's origins from Calgary, Alberta.


A digital Montreal and a digital Calgary.


"I'm here to see you about next week's assignment?" asked Elsa of Avner, peeking her head in through the door.


"Sit down Elsa. There's been a terrible turn of events in the world. The crisis in Taiwan has come to a head, and the Chinese Naval fleet is standing off against three carrier groups of the United States. NORAD is at DEFCON 2, and the world is on the brink of a nuclear confrontation. I want you covering this story, but from the input of internet influencers, who I'd like you to interview about this crisis and get their perspectives. Lets get this modern generation in on this and get their voices out there. Not to mention, our advertisers have indicated that there is a significant readership to be mined from such influencers..." Avner informed her, looking down the end of his nose at her.


"I thought that was a glitch in the early defense systems and that it was misreported by some of the news media outlets. At least that's what it said in the news I was reading earlier this morning," Elsa said to Avner having already altered reality so as to do away with that threat.


He moved his head close to the screen and squinted once, and then twice, looking at the news from less than three inches, and then he retreated to his chair again.


"So you're right. It seems that was a false alarm. A good thing too. A nuclear war would have devastating effects upon the possibility of the Toronto Maple Leafs finally bringing home the Stanley Cup," Avner said to Elsa, somehow neither joyful or distraught over the situation.


"But that story opportunity about interviewing internet influencers from YouTube, Twitch, VideoSpice and X.com and finding out about how they feel about the society and the future. From their perspective and from that of their fans. I think that's something I'd really like to write about. Both Patty and I," Elsa suggested to Avner, whose eyebrows rose upon hearing her.


"That's the kind of work that will get the attention of our readers and maybe help us to prevent situations like that one that almost occurred. Lets find out about what these up and coming next generation superstars and their fans think about the future and how qualified they are as buyers in the consumer market. You get on that, and we'll get on publishing your work on Perry. Now get out of my office, I have a meeting with finance coming up and I have to explain how we have a four million dollar surplus in our budget," Avner said to Elsa, who gracefully stood and made her way to the door.


She made her way down the hall towards the coffee room and bumped into Dan.


"Elsa! How are you today! So good to see you. How'd that story you were working on with Patty go?" Dan smiled for her.


"It went well, but you know something Dan? Sometimes good news makes a journalist, but most of all I think that a journalist has got to make good news," Elsa said to Dan with a smile and a wink.


The End


Dedicated to Lynnette and Nicolas, whose forward looking vision brought the very first ATM Banking to England and almost brought Cargo Management Systems to Pearson in the early 1980s, despite the unfounded obstacles arising from the fear of job loss at the hands of early technology and AI. Sperry Computer Systems and IBM Canada provided the first voice recognition systems to us for development of said systems in the early 1980s. AI was a very different technology and concept back then, and its remarkable to see how it jumped lanes, adapted and grew into what it is today. To me, back in the 1980s, tensors were matrices used to calculate the distribution of mass along three axes by averaging the mass of a body amongst the vertices that represented its geometry in a physics simulation. Modern tensors perform a similar function, replacing mass with the concept of grammatical relationships of context of language and linguistic particles and fragments.

Lynnette and Nicolas gave us vision and direction throughout the eighties and nineties, and meaningful laws and policies that met the challenges that technology brings with it into the new millennium. Those policies and laws are still with us to this day and protecting countless lives, young and old from some of the social risks technology brings when in the hands of the predatory, none of which has arisen as a result of AI thus far, but instead deal with humans who misuse it towards the harm of others. 

Keep in mind that the term predatory is not and should never be used as an attack on responsible intimacy between adults (either online or offline), as its common for humanity to vilify our greatest existential experiences, especially those we share in an intimate manner. Predatory refers to the act in some way shape or form, of exploiting innocence, ignorance or neediness in others for personal pleasure and gain at a very high price for those exploited and often in spite of them and their health. Sometimes at the price of their peace and life.

Also dedicated to the lost lives, to those harmed and to the missed opportunities afforded when fear of progress leads to secretive and often unforgiveable action to sabotage it. Let us learn from our mistakes rather than keep the trail of ignorance fresh with our tracks.

A kiss for Cynthia. Long live our Compuserve Markham days.

And the inspiring journalists who keep us in the know. It is through them that we become aware of our potential to affect the world around us and out there.

Written by Brian Joseph Johns

Thank you to Germind, whose music will appear in a future episode, assuming that Shhhh! Digital Media is akin to the fuel rather than the exhaust... ;-)

Stay tuned for Grand Tapestry of Moments Episode 04

Credits and attribution:



Thank you both the Deepai.org and Photopea.com, without whom the title art would not have been possible.

Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.

Artwork: Amy WongWendy PuseyGhastlyBirdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3DUnreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3DCorel PainterAdobe PhotoshopLightwave 3DBlender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantIDSadtalkerGoogle ColaboratoryMicrosoft Copilot (Windows 11), HitfilmPhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Deepai.orgGoogle AI Studio, Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)

Special thanks to AitrepreneurMickmumpitzHugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history

Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art

Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion 
Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility

Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools

Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!

Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.