The Butterfly Dragon: Night Boat - Economy Of Sin - Episode 7 (Updated 4:30 PM December 3, 2024)

 

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Chapters

• Revolutionary (Finished November 14, 2024)
• Border Politics (Finished November 15, 2024)
• The Voices In The Waves (Finished November 15, 2024)
• The Path To Treadwater Island (Finished November 19, 2024)
• Life's Passing (Finished November 19, 2024)
• The Real Tesoro (Finished November 19, 2024)
• The Marketplace (Finished December 3, 2024)

This content is produced by artists indicated on the site, and by me, Brian Joseph Johns. 

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Some Food For Thought (but certainly not Thoth):

Regardless of the name of this story, I, Brian Joseph Johns, the author thereof, am not a member of any religion or ideology that is founded on the conceptual basis of sin, and to underline the fact that the concept of sin, is not the same thing as the concept of crime. 

Where it involves action or actualization by way of doing, there are crimes that are also sins according to such religions and ideologies, but there are also sins that are not crimes insofar as the law is concerned.

If thinking about something is not the same thing as doing it, actualizing it, and some thoughts according to some ideologies and religions are sins, then at what point in time did thinking certain things suddenly become a crime?

thought·crime

/ˈTHôtkrīm/

noun

an instance of unorthodox or controversial thinking, considered as a criminal offense or as socially unacceptable. 

"thoughtcrimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute"

Oxford Dictionary

...

thought·crime

/ˈTHôtkrīm/

noun

the offense of thinking in ways not approved by the ruling Ingsoc party.

George Orwell from his book: 1984

Of these two definitions of the word thoughtcrime, which was a case of life imitating art and which was a case of art imitating life?

Note that one of those definitions originated from a work of fiction by author George Orwell (who also about wrote about citizens being vaporized, ie erased from the records and from history), while the other definition of thoughtcrime is from a dictionary which came much later than that same work of fiction, meaning that in this world, somebody has elicited and enforced the idea at some point between the 1930s and now that thoughtcrimes are real.

There's only three pillars. Lose the other two, and you can kiss your freedom goodbye. 

Brian Joseph Johns

Warning: This story deals with adult situations, including references to sex, violence, tobacco and allusions to other substances. Reader discretion is advised.

The Butterfly Dragon: Night Boat - Economy Of Sin

(Episode 7)

Revolutionary

"In my native continent of South America, there was once a young philosopher who questioned the legitimacy upon which everything in his society was founded, for he'd seen his fellow South Americans over the course of history and his life, those very same South Americans that were native to the land, and those who were seeded by Latin explorers and Spanish Conquistadors from Europe in the centuries that preceded his own existence, become a strip mall of obscenities, selling itself out to bring the world to its doorstep to buy the only commodity that it had the courage to offer in droves more than anyone else around the globe: sin."

"He was a troubled man, to see his brothers build the casinos to lure global tourist markets composed of the rich and influential, and to introduce them to the wonders of the coca leaf, our only real crop until the industrialization of rubber trees in South America, shortly after the first casinos hit Cuba."

"And then to see those same brothers market their own sisters, becoming pimps, selling their women, one by one they went, to appease the god of carnal pleasures of the body and the almighty dollar of the two competing powers of the time."

"The power of capitalism and the almighty greenback dollar, in Washington, District Of Columbia blue, and the power of the people and collectivism, in Soviet Kremlin red."

"I often wondered if that same troubled man ever realized that Washington was and would eventually become a district of Columbia."

"The Columbia of South America that is."

"I've often wondered as well, how it must have been for him and his upstart revolutionary brother, whose last name sounds much like an operation visited upon young boys of the church to remove one of their reproductive body parts which in essence gave them the falsetto and suprano vocal range they were known for, to watch all of their women go to work at the casinos, knowing that many of those women almost a year later, would be mothers of illegitimate heirs to many of the global elites of the time who enjoyed those casinos all the same."

"However, none of those elites would be around to support their discarded children, for they were protected men. Protected by their money. Their fancy cars. Their jets. Their security services. Their intelligence agencies and even their own organized crime in the form of the Mafia."

"Entire markets of family based businesses of blackmail would inevitably arrive. Their only hope for survival would be to attempt to draw money from the wealthy by claims of illegitimate children conceived by these men, who smoked their cigars and drank their liquor and screwed their women."

"I've also wondered how many of those claimants actually had legimitate children of these powerful wealthy elites, and how many had just conceived children with their neighbour, then realizing that they too could cash in on the lucrative hush money afforded to those who ran their own blackmail family businesses."

"There was no DNA testing back in that time, and with the lack of computers, you'd be lucky if you could get a matching fingerprint linking one of those wealthy elites to their sister's bedrooms or the casino's lavish hotel suites. 8mm motion film stock was a luxury only afforded to the rich, never mind the cost of the portable fifteen pound cameras that these blackmail families would have had to procure in order to get video evidence linking such elites to their sisters."

"For those who saved up for such luxuries, they often spent their film recording alleged sexual encounters with look-alikes of famous elites, hoping that they could instead of blackmail, lure the pubic's support against the rich and powerful by such claims as illegitimate children. It all occurred at a time when even the blackmailers themselves were corrupt, no longer capable of profiting from authentic blackmail alone."

"It makes me think about how this revolutionary could then muster the will and the people, to confront the forces of Fulgencio Batista, who had essentially attracted the rich to one of the poorest countries in the world, and then to liberate the people and economy from the growing trouble arising from family child support blackmail, Mafia ties, the coca leaf and an economy entirely dependent upon the arrival of  the wages of sin on their shores. Then chase them all away, these rich and wealthy elites who were all too eager to spend their money, like fat dogs fleeing an overflowing food dish, scraps of meat still hanging froms their muzzles, their tails between their legs as they deftly scampered to get away without dropping one last precious scrap of the leftovers."

"I've often wondered how it was that in the middle of all of this, in a turmoil that led to the birth of red Cuba, that my mother survived and kept me sheltered from the aftermath of that turbulent time, that a revolutionary hero took Cuba's future into his own hands, and threw away what could have been trillions of dollars for South American people by now."

"Instead, my mother fled with the refugees back to South America and to Columbia, where she raised the illegitimate heir of one such global elite father."

"The true son of a global elite, and perhaps one of the most important of all. A secret she'd kept for her entire life, and all with only the incentive offered in preserving her life, facing the risk of her own assassination, for if such information had escaped her lips even just once, it would have been a vast fortune for someone else to sell that information to someone with connections, and that same greenback money would find its way to Columbia within a week, paying for her immediate death and the death of that same heir, with enough money for the assassin to retire wealthy for the rest of his inevitably short life, for the American institituion known as the company, very seldom left loose ends untied. Whether they'd have been single mothers or the would be assassins thereof."

"And yet, here I am, that very same son, looking at this revolutionary who chased my father from the country and made my mother flee her own home half-naked in the night, as his iconic face graces the cover of a book, where he's coveted as a national hero of not only Cuba, but the South American people from which he arose."

Alomera Constanza Zekestes thought to himself as he tossed the book he'd just finished reading, into a metal trash bin, spitting upon it a gruesome ball of phlegm after it had found its new home at the bottom of the pail.

"I've often thought, what twist of fate prevented me from being that man, that revolutionary, and he instead being born in my shoes to a poor struggling mother fleeing from the aftermath of his throwing the South American people to the wolves? If I'd have had the opportunities he'd thrown away, South America would now be the global leading economy of the world, and the United States would be eating out of our palms! The United Soviet Socialist Republic would be a heaping crater of nuclear slag, and the almighty greenback would rule the entire world over from a throne located in my home in South America. That same greenback, being my own puppet regime of course."

"But as fate would have it, I instead ended up with the shorter end of the stick, and my poor mother, a dancer at one of the casino shows, fled Cuba in the middle of the revolution, leaving everything she'd worked for, except me, to flee to an impoverished Columbia."

"If I'd have been able to walk when that had come to pass, I'd have beared arms against this revolutionary and his upstart, and rescued Batista from his downfall, even before I was able to speak the word: madre. That was when I was certain that the South American people had given birth to a fool of a revolutionary, and had thrown their future to the dogs and had instead chosen poverty over vast riches."

"Perhaps that is why I was born. To undo his gravest of crimes against the people of South America, for he'd jumped off of the cliff and into the ocean, taking everyone with him despite the fact that none of them had learned yet to swim. I on the other hand, was born of a man whose destiny it was to rule. To swim where the fishes sleep, and the sharks hunt. It is I who climbed the very same cliff from which that revolutionary upstart had pushed the South American people, and begat my own economy of sin, for the real power does not rest with those who sew their loins in carnal pleasures or the coca leaf. The real power lies with those who keep those secrets handy, and remind those whose secrets they are that their downfall is only ever a scandalous news story away. The one who keeps all of these secrets, is the keeper of all the power there is, for it is inevitable that those who have such secrets, often live their lives in the public in the appearances of being against such sins in the first place. I should know. I carefully crafted many of them myself. Having a polar dichotomy of contradictory ambitions and life fantasies doesn't happen by itself you know. It takes careful planning and years of guidance to make just one such powerful figure with all of the right contradictory extremes."

"Why you ask? Because, the power doesn't come from one being the good side, and one being the bad side. No, not at all. The power comes from the contradiction itself within one person, and so long as there is contradiction, it makes no difference which side they pretend to be, and which side their sins fall. The good man desires the bad fantasies, while the bad man desires the good fantasies. In each case however, the power over them occurs when there exists the threat of their peers and the public finding out the truth of this contradiction."

"The irony is that when faced with such an outcome and amongst those I've seen resigned to their fate in that way by my hands, it is usually the church that comes to their rescue, and that is the biggest contradiction of all. You see, they aren't there to save the soul of a falling man. They're there to reap the same profits from the opposite side of the fence that divides us, to keep that same failed investment of my time in play so that their church may profit from it all the same way. For me, seeing these men flee to the church as they run from me, is like looking in a mirror. They never realize that they fled the devil they knew in the guise of my former empire, to seek protection with the devil they don't. You see, we're both in the same business, and yet, we're mirrors of each other. Our empires built upon economies of sin."

Mr. Zek slowly fell asleep in the comfort of the best bed there was on the stern section of the vessel, just around the corner and across from engineering, where the constant low frequency rumble of even one of the quietest engines on an advanced destroyer refit was loud enough to mask all the conversation from the high tech monitoring capabilities of a modern Seawolf Submarine.

Mr. Zek from the moment his thoughts faded, fell soundly asleep despite the hidden threat of which he was unaware.

However, George Steadman, the man in charge of the bow end of the same destroyer refit known as the Many Faced Maiden was not so fortunate, and his late night conversation with Celeste was picked up by the instruments of that very same submarine, though not in realtime and as it occurred, for the waveforms associated with their speech had transitioned through numerous materials before it had arrived at the sonar detection array of the pursuing submarine.

The detection of vocal range information embedded in the sonar required the use of an advanced AI analysis system that had recently been integrated into the Seawolf's intelligence analysis suite during its last maintenance stop in Hawaii.

Instead, the operations proceeded with the collection of unspecified passive sonar data packaging which was then filed through this new AI analysis suite, taking some time itself to process, and filter out whale burps and dolphin farts, as the technicians often joked.

The Seawolf itself maintained its distance, a little over five hundred meters from what the Seawolf's Captain had presumed to be the electromagnetic stealth field, a magnetic shell of oblong toroidal shape that spanned the square magnitude of the ship's length divided by two.

The submarine maintained its position well outside of the Many Faced Maiden's penumbral of the wake, hence avoiding jet stream turbulence that may have compromised its silence during its continued surveillance mission.

George leaned back against the headboard, while Celeste was tucked between his right arm and his side, nuzzling up to the nape of his neck as they embraced in the moments after their recent but silent climax.

"You're quiet tonight..." Celeste broke the silence, as he threw back the last of his glass of brandy.

"Not much to say I guess. We have a plan. They, or rather, he inevitably has a plan. The men have been... somewhat withdrawn as well," George responded, though it wasn't so much that he was speaking in a way that indicated he was bidding for her encouragement, as much so as he was actually quite unsure of what to do.

While running Future Tangent Industries, under his alias of Greg Warley, he'd often encountered many times where the entire company had seemed to move in slow motion. As if in his administering of policies meant to animate the company at an ever increased pace, one more endearing to the shareholders, it was that his own sense of patience had become a liability. His acceptance of the fact that some things were in motion that were beyond his ability to affect, seemed absent, and yet he had become incapable of action.

To him, it felt more like the term resigned, as in resigned to the eventual outcome, or resigned to the fact that he had to wait. That he, the man at the head of the ship had been forced like every other sailor onboard to wait as their plans, his plans transitioned from intent towards action and eventually: completion.

Like Cora Hau.

"They are busy making what you put into place happen. There is nothing left to do but to wait," she responded, despite what little he'd revealed.

"Losing half of the ship and half of the crew like that was a big blow. Only weeks ago, we were in their territory, when we passed through the Panama canal. He's one of them, and they have this secretive allegiance to one another that fills the trust gap when the money isn't there. They all remember him and knew him well when he was on top of the world. There's no amount of money I could have paid my crew - the defectors - that would have prevented this, and I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating that is. I knew the risks when we passed through the canal, but because I had so many successes in breaking him initially, I let my guard down. I'm paying for it now," Steadman reached over to the bucket on his night table and pulled a bottle of whiskey from it.

"There's no glasses. Would you like me to go get some?"she asked him as he unscrewed the cap.

By the time she'd gotten the words from her mouth, he was already taking a deep swig, his eyes momentarily watered and he offered the bottle to her.

She sat up, releasing his side as she took a tiny sip from the bottle, coughing a little afterward.

"Ohhh, that's harsh..." she joked as her eyes too watered like his.

"...its the only way I'm going to get some sleep," he responded, rubbing her back as she leaned over and put the bottle in a bucket on the night table on her side of the bed.

"I've got an idea. Why don't you get on your stomach and I'll give you a massage that you'll never forget... Captain," she smiled at him seductively.

He sat somewhat emotionless for a few moments, and then a smile crept onto his face as the whiskey caught up.

"If you put it that way..." Steadman rolled over onto his stomach, tucking the pillow under his head as she crawled onto his back.

Then, she gave him a massage that he'd never forget.

Border Politics

Tellner stood guard in the corridor that connected the crew quarters and galley to the systems suite and intelligence data center of the aging destroyer refit. His hands were both firmly on his Heckler & Koch SMG as he kept his eyes firmly upon the corresponding guard, one of Zek's own, facing him on the other side of the junction.

Tellner eyed the man carefully, ensuring that the man before him was the same man he'd been tasked to shadow. This particular man and one of Zek's guards was another member of the boarding party that had helped Mr. Zek to take the stern section of the ship known as the Many Faced Maiden only a couple of days earlier.

At the last pre-duty briefing that Tellner had attended, they'd already uncovered eleven of them, and were using the names of bad guys from old Clint Eastwood Spaghetti westerns to uniquely refer to each of them. When combined with the security camera data they'd been able to gain of each of their faces, through their satellite network feed, they'd quickly ascertained the identity of each of the men, their level of training not to mention their criminal history or connections to rebel guerrillas in the Latin America region, and all through the wonders of OSINT. At this point in time, (Bow Captain) George Steadman and his nemesis, (Stern Captain) Alomera Constanza Zekestes were both two of the most wanted men on the face of the Earth.

In the days that had passed since the mutiny had taken half ot the ship, Steadman's special tactics team had collected enough field intelligence about all of Mr. Zek's guards and the timing of their shifts, matching it with their skill level to develop a very effective counter-insurgent track-and-match strategy that allowed the special tactics team to utilize its own human resources much more efficiently, while mainting its ability to provide effective deterence.

As a result of having these extra human resource assets, the team had been able to install hidden motion sensors and even a few encrypted micro-cameras, well into Zek controlled decks of the ship without the knowledge of any of Zek's team. They'd effectively covered the areas surrounding the side of the data center that was under Zek's control, but were unable to get any intel at or near the data center itself, given the density and frequency of Zek's guard rotations.

Tellner kept his face stern and in the direction of the guard, without ever looking at his eyes directly. He then relaxed his stance slightly, and looked to the left and right of the junction, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket on his combat webbing. He carefully removed the shrinkwrap from the cigarette package and a waft of fresh tobacco made its way across the cooridor and into the nose of Zek's corresponding guard. Tellner observed that the man's expression had changed ever so slightly as he man shifted his stance.

Tellner then opened the pack and from it pulled the foil wrapper and a cigarette, popping it into his mouth as he pocketed the foil and wrapper. He then searched his webbing with his free hand for a lighter, taking nearly half a minute before he finally gave up.

"Sh#t. Its in my other kit," he said aloud, the tension between the two guards dropping ever so slightly.

Zek's guard, whom they'd labeled as Terrill (from The Outlaw Josey Wales), reached into the pocket of his trousers. When he pulled his hand out again, brandishing a well used cheap plastic lighter, Tellner quickly leveled his SMG on the man before Terrill even had time to react.

"Easy pendejo. Its just fuego..." Terrill responded, slightly taken back in contrast to the peace of moments earlier.

"Huh? Oh, you mean fire. Gotcha. Sorry man," Tellner responded, lowering his MP5.

Terrill waited a second, and then stepped forward, across the junction and lit Tellner's cigarette for him.

Tellner took a few puffs, warming up the heater.

"Thanks. I guess with the situation and all, that things are a little tense you know. I appreciate it," Tellner nodded to Terrill.

There was no response from Terrill as he returned to his side of the borderline. A few moments passed as Tellner enjoyed his cigarette and the junction filled with fragrant smoke, and then Terrill finally spoke again.

"Are those Brasas Suaves?" asked Terrill of Tellner.

"One and the same. Been smoking 'em since Panama. Not my usual brand, but pretty awesome nonethess," Tellner took another puff.

"...you have another? Morta, pendejo?" asked Terrill.

"Death? What?! Oh, you mean the cigarette. Ha! That's funny. We call 'em coffin nails. Why, you want one?" asked Tellner.

"...if you got 'em camarada," Terrill replied.

Tellner reached into the same pocket of his combat webbing and pulled forth the pack, tossing them to Terrill.

Terrill caught them, and pulled one from the pack and put it in his mouth and then lit it.

"Te debo una," Terrill said, stepping forward to return Tellner's cigarettes.

"Sorry?" Tellner responded, unsure of what Terrill had just said to him.

"I owe you one. Gracias... pendejo," Terrill responded, handing Tellner the pack.

"Keep 'em. We got tons of 'em," Tellner responded casually.

"Ok... if you insist..." Terrill nodded to Tellner, addressing Tellner as if he'd lost his mind.

A few moments passed, and Terrill softened up a bit more.

"Respect..." Terrill added a moment later.

"Respect," Tellner took a puff of his smoke and nodded back at Terrill.

"These are my brand you know... I ran out yesterday. Nobody's got any. I'll be everyone's friend tonight until I run out," Terrill seemed relieved as he inhaled, his earlier tension having all but disappeared.

"Then lets keep this our little secret. The last thing I need is Steadman breathing down my f#cking neck," Tellner replied.

"I heard he's a bit of burro," Terrill added.

"A what?" asked Tellner.

"A donkey... you know, an ass?" Terrill explained to Tellner.

"Ahhhh... burro... Yep, he's a real work, that one... uhhh travajo I mean," Tellner elaborated.

"Alright. We keep this between you and me," Terrill nodded in agreement.

"Do that, and I'll bring an extra pack for you on my next shift, in sixteen hours," Tellner responded.

"Same here. That's my next shift too. Alright pendejo, you've got a deal," Terrill nodded, loosening up his stance a bit as he enjoyed his cigarette.

"We just need a bottle... Don't tell me you got that too, pendejo?" Terrill added casually, perhaps even jokingly.

"Lots, but lets just start with the Morta first, and we'll take it from there," Tellner smiled.

"Sixteen hours," Terrill agreed.

A few minutes later, Miller showed up to relieve Tellner from his shift.

Nothing was said beyond that point, but the first thing that Tellner did when he got back to his cabin was to requisition another carton of Brasas Suaves from the supply officer, who'd been instructed to give the special tactics team anything that they wanted.

"Been smoking quite a bit Tellner. Perhaps you should cut down?" Lieutenant Swanson remarked to Tellner as he retrieved a carton from the supply cabinet, tossing it to Tellner.

"Mind your own f#cking business - Sir - " Tellner responded sharply.

"If you weren't on Steadman's good side, I'd have some of the sailors round you up and toss you into the drink. When that protection ends, you've got some enemies here," Lieutenant Swanson reminded Tellner.

"I'll be waiting," Tellner responded, unphazed by Swanson's threat.

Tellner then threw the carton of cigarettes into his rucksack and returned to his crew cabin, where after removing his boots, he jumped into his bunk and found his digital device, which he'd buried under his pillow, and resumed reading from the point he'd left off.

The Voices In The Waves

In the eerily quiet Seawolf, Captain Spiers sat in his office, a tiny cabin with a desk that doubled as a kitchen table during the various meal times, and a meeting space for one on one sessions with his crew. Everything aboard a Seawolf, let alone any naval bathyspheric device was a matter of spatial management, and with the exception of the power source, atmospheric maintenance, engines, sensory suite and ordnance, every cubic foot of the sub was carefully designed and tasked for multiple purposes as the most valuable commodity on a sub, next to air, was real estate.

On this occasion, Spiers had been going over the crew shift rotations provided him by his first officer, paying close attention to any matters involving the data center and intelligence suite. Once he'd ensured that the shifts were as required, noting specifically the crew roster on those rotations, he signed off on them one by one with a tiny biometric scanner built into the desktop tablet system integrated into his desk. With each tap of the tip of his index finger, the shifts for another section of the sub were approved, and this data was relayed both to the first officer, and a data buffer that upon their surfacing, would be transmitted to Naval Intelligence with a variety of other intelligence and telemetric data.

A red light began flashing from the upper corner of his desktop tablet, but no sound accompanied the notification, as Captain Spiers had ordered the Seawolf to operate under the standing orders: silent hunter, which was code that the systems and the crew were required to maintain silence as the sub was operating utilizing sensitive sonar intelligence gathering operations. Any sounds produced on the sub itself could potentially infect the data with side-channel noise, that is, information present in a given channel source that is not relevent to the information being specifically isolated for analysis.

Despite the fact that the analysis systems of the Seawolf were state of the art, based upon GCN (Generationally Cooperative Networks), MLFSS (Multilayered Fractal Self Similarity) and DLLMs (Dynamic Large Language Models), any side-channel noise infecting a channel source could potentially increase the processing time logarithmically or in the worst case, exponentially and this was based upon how close to actual entropy versus information such noise ventured. There was a sweet spot between the two. Information and entropy. The closer that noise was to the halfway point between the two, the longer it took any AI system to process, and that factor increased (either logarithmically or exponentially) based upon the variety of side-channel noise and its offset from the sweet spot.

At this point, Captain Spiers knew that they had a finite timespan within which to discern as much intelligence data from within their target structure as possible before he'd be required to give the order to sink the vessel entirely. He knew that this eventuality involved sacrificing lives, some of whom were their own.

Despite the fact that running under such strict orders posed a psychological cost to the crew and morale, who were not aware that the target vessel carried their own. Others of sworn duty and ideals to the same or similar oath that they'd all made upon their enlistment and training. For Captain Spiers, the order and cost of running so quietly despite the strain upon morale and psychology was a matter of heart, but it was one that the science and mathematics of side-channel noise, information and entropy backed overwhelmingly.

After fading and locking the tablet display, Captain Spiers stood from his desk and stepped out into the central corridor (the main lane as submariners referred to it in slang, a reference to bowling), making his way the short distance along the length of the Seawolf, ironically, in the same direction as their target, the Many Faced Maiden, and to the data center.

When he arrived, his intelligence officers were already gathered around the tablular display, ready to brief him. One of them greeted him with a hand sign based upon a military/naval modified version of sign language.

"As you were, gentlemen. Lieutenant Wendell? Perhaps you'd care to start," Captain Spiers signed back to them, knowing that Lieutenant Wendall would be best to elaborate, seeing as his own sister had been born deaf at birth, hence he'd already a natural inclination with sign language and human expression.

"Right Sir. INGRID has finished the first sonar analysis and its a difficult situation. As you already know, the Gearing class destroyer has a bigger powertrain given the fact that they increased its length and altered the design of the keel significantly over stability issues involving manouverability and the deployment of its various ordnance. This particular refit has replaced one of the 127mm turrets with a helipad, but from what we've been able to gather, the crew operating it are not fully trained on its capabilities, which first of all means that they don't know how to deploy the aerial sonar buoy, thankfully..." Lieutenant Wendell signed to Captain Spiers as the other intelligence analysts observed.

Captain Spiers breathed a sigh of relief.

"That's certainly good news, so where's the difficulty Lieutenant?" Captain Spiers wanted to know everything regarding the challenges to their mission.

"Sir, a bigger powertrain versus the dimensions of the ship means a different acoustic resonance, both in terms of passive and active systems, both theirs and our own. Especially sonar. The engine is operating under minimal stress, but always kept between a quarter to half speed between the daylight hours, and  close to flank speed at night, and we're assuming that the reason for this is connected to their stealth package, which appears to be based entirely upon electromagnetism. The kind of stuff that gave Nicolai Tesla wet dreams," Lieutenant Wendell continued.

"Go on sailor," Captain Spiers pressed his officer.

"We started our analysis at the tail end of their daylight schedule for their operating velocity, and from what we were able to gather versus their night time velocity of full speed, the engine is generating a resonance that prevents us from being able to discern speech originating from the the stern. However, there has been a large amount of detectable speech originating from the bow of the ship, and it seems that their crew is divided..." Lieutenant Wendell paused as Captain Spiers interrupted him.

"I'm sorry Lieutenant, you said divided?" confirmed Captain Spiers.

"Yes Sir, as in there's a situation involving an attempted mutiny and from what we've been able to gather, the ship is roughly split between two crews and two Captains. One in control of the bridge, one in control of engineering and the engines," Lieutenant Wendell explained to Spiers in sign language.

"Have we any crew transcripts yet?" askd Captain Spiers.

"Yes and no. We don't have any full conversations yet, but we have a few names, and this is where things get a little scary..." Lieutenant Wendell explained to him.

"Don't keep us waiting Lieutenant," Captain Spiers urged his intelligence officer.

"Sir. The ship is being run by one George Steadman also known as Greg Warley. A man who is near the top of the FBI's and RCMP's most wanted list," Lieutent Wendell signed.

"He's the...?" Captain Spiers signed back to Wendell in question.

"The Captain of the bow section of the ship. He's struggling to keep control of the ship from the mutineers who seem to occupy the stern section Sir," Lieutent Wendell explained.

"So who's Captain of the stern?" grilled Captain Spiers with his hands.

"The most wanted man on the FBI's, RCMP's and Europol's own lists: Alomera Constanza Zekestes..." Lieutenant Wendell signed in response.

"I'll be damned. As of this moment, these details and any other intelligence you uncover is protected under the Official Secrets Act of the United States Navy and classed as TOP SECRET. No details of INGRID's findings thus far are to leave this room, nor any of you. Do you understand?" Captain Spiers asked his analysts.

Each of them signed in compliance with Spiers' order except for Wendell.

"But Sir, we were given this assignment with orders to report directly to Admiral Harris in the event of..." Wendell signed in response to Spiers' request.

"Not even Admiral Harris. You all report directly to me with regard to any issue or intelligence related to this assignment from this point forward," Captain Spiers made it very clear, however silently they spoke.

"Sir, what if Admiral Harris gives us a direct order to divulge the intelligence related to this assisgnment? He was the one who gave us our orders in the first place," Wendell responded with a good question considering Captain Spiers' order.

"In the event that Admiral Harris, or anyone else up the chain of command approaches you seeking information related to this assisgnment, you're to tell them that no significant intelligence relating to personnel or the activities on board the vessel was found. That's a direct order from the highest ranking officer on this vessel. Now resume to your duties and report directly to me any additional findings. We'll meet again after shift three," with his orders clear, Captain Spiers left the data center and made his way back to his office, where he used one of the ship's pagers to summon the commanding officer of Naval Police Intelligence.

Lieutenant Moorsby arrived a few minutes later in response to the summons.

"Reporting as requested, Sir," Lieutenant Moorsby saluted his Captain.

"At ease Lieutenant. I need you to put together a small undercover security team to keep an eye on our analyst team. I want a list of everyone they speak with on and off duty, including any communications that occur from their devices or the devices of the rooms they're occupying at that time, including the devices of other sailors and officers present in the same room. This team is to remain undercover and report to you with this information, every other shift, after which point you'll forward it to me. Understood?" asked Captain Spiers.

"Aye Captain. I'll take care of that right now, Sir," Lieutenant Moorsby replied.

"Very well. Dismissed," Captain Spiers set the man to upon the task he'd explained and without hesitation, Lieutenant Moorsby left.

When he was alone again, the Captain began drawing up a message that would be sent upon their next scheduled report to Naval Central Command in a day's time.

The Path To Treadwater Island

"As a young man living in Columbia, in one of the poorest villages during the early nineteen-seventies, I started working to support our household from the age of twelve. I'd earned myself a full-time job with very modest pay through a series of fortunate events for a small unfortunate family like mine. At the time, I'd been a jobber, a child who does odd jobs for the local farmers and markets, mostly as a runner, carrying orders and messages between suppliers and retailers."

"During one of my runs, I stumbled upon a rather valuable piece of jewelry, and pocketed it without taking the time to examine it. When I got home after earning a few cents for the day, and a bag full of corn flour as pay, while my mother cooked our meal, I examined the jewelry I'd found."

"As it turned out, it was a family heirloom of considerable value, not only sentimentally but financially as well. If I'd tried to sell it, I probably could have gotten the equivalent of one American dollar for it at that time. A year's wage for me, which was a considerable amount of money for a poor family. In examining the piece however, I quickly recognized its symbol as the logo of one of the wealthiest coffee plantations in Columbia. The Tesoro Oro Coffee Company."

"With barely a full belly, I left the next day and walked six hours to that same plantation from our three room mudbrick home in the village. After my long hike, arriving there in the late afternoon, I first set foot into the worker dispatch. A musty and barely kept office, which was the place they'd hire (and pay) their daily labour. Those who toiled in the fields for up to fourteen hours a day given the high demand (and global price) of coffee at that time."

I walked up to the dispatch window barely tall enough to see over the counter and addressed the clerk:

[I'm here for the reward.]

"Estoy aquí por la recompensa," I said to the clerk.

[The reward for what? What work did you do? You're a little young to be here!]

"¿La recompensa por qué? ¿Qué trabajo hiciste? ¡Eres un poco joven para estar aquí!" he grilled me, very much an authoritarian.

[I found some of your jewelry. I need to make sure that my mother and I are fed. I'll give it to you if you can give me some money?]

"Encontré algunas de tus joyas. Necesito asegurarme de que mi madre y yo tengamos comida. ¿Te las daré si me das algo de dinero?" I negotiated with a man whose rash boldness very much frightened me.

[How do I know that you didn't steal it?]

"¿Cómo sé que no lo robaste?" The man wasted no time in confronting me about that possibility. 

One I'd never thought would occur as I'd literally found it a few steps away from our village market, sticking out from beneath the bags of a coffee shipment that lay in wait in a staging area used by the local transport company to pickup produce bound for the port.

[You don't and I can't prove that I didn't. If I was stealing it, why would I bring it back?]

"No lo sabes y yo no puedo demostrar que no lo hice. Si lo estuve robando, ¿por qué lo devolvería?" I was astute, despite being so young, but very inexperienced in life.

[You could have stolen it, and brought it back for a reward?]

"¿Podrías haberlo robado y traerlo de vuelta para obtener una recompensa?" the man replied, at which point the supervisor, a somewhat meek and soft talking frame of a man came over to the dispatch window and pushed the mean man away.

[I will give you twenty pesos for it right now. No questions asked.]

"Te lo doy veinte pesos ahora mismo, sin hacer preguntas." the supervisor offered, pulling the money from his pocket and counting it out for me on the spot.

It wasn't the fortune for which I'd been hoping, but it would feed both my mother and I for a couple of months, not to mention that we could cut down on our day's work and look for other more promising means to support our meagre family.

At that point in time, I had no concept of how business was done. Most transactions were set in stone as far as I my experience had told me. I had no sense of my own worth or the worth of my work, and I had no sense that what I had to offer might be more valuable than what I was offered.

[Alright. Here...]

"Está bien. Aquí..." I reached into my pocket and handed the piece to the supervisor, who examined it closely as the dispatcher looked over his shoulder.

[It was nice doing business with you.]

"Fue agradable hacer negocios contigo." the supervisor said to me, pocketing the jewelry and making his way to one of the offices in the back.

And that was my very first business deal. A deal in which I was told less than fifteen minutes later, was a travesty where I'd undersold myself and what I had to offer.

As I walked to the door counting my money, the supervisor had stepped into the office of Señor Tesoro himself, the owner of both the plantation and Tesoro Oro, Columbia's biggest provider of coffee in the region.

The dispatcher, who despite being a very mean and feisty fellow, seemingly did not trust the supervisor, and so when the supervisor had stepped into the office for a meeting with Señor Tesoro, the dispatcher listened just outside of the door.

It seems that the supervisor told Señor Tesoro that he'd found a lost piece of family jewelry, and thought that it would be best to return it directly to him.

Señor Tesoror was so taken aback by the return of this family heirloom, that he rewarded the supervisor with five hundred dollars American. A vast fortune at the time. Señor Tesoro was the nineth generation to have inherited the piece that had been returned to him, and his own Granddaughter was in line to receive it next. 

With it having been lost, an important connection to his family history had been broken. A family who'd from the poorest of conditions, had grown their business through hard work and dedication, for nine generations from which point they'd broken free of the chains of poverty, and become a source for their people as much so as they were for each other. 

However, given the superstition prevalent at that time, Señor Tesoro was worried sick not only for his entire family, but their family business and their future in Columbia, for to lose an important heirloom like that, one that was worn by his own nine generations earlier, was a very bad omen. Hence, the reward he'd given the supervisor for the return of such a valuable piece of his family history.

The supervisor would enjoy his windfall for all of ten minutes, the length of time it took for the dispatcher to explain what had truly happened.

As I counted the money that would sustain my small family for months, the supervisor counted a fortune that would make him a comfortably wealthy man in Columbia, in addition to the pay he received as the supervisor of labour.

During that time, just after the supervisor had left, the dispatcher had requested a meeting with Señor Tesoro, who was initially quite defensive of the supervisor when confronted with the truth.

[Come with me, Señor Tesoro. I'll show you!]

"Ven conmigo, señor Tesoro. ¡Te lo mostraré!" the dispatcher urged Señor Tesoro.

Señor Tesoro got to his feet and walked with the dispatcher to the front of the building, where I was still double and triple counting my money. I couldn't believe how much I had as I'd never seen that much money in one place before. Like the man who has never traveled, that still believes the local foothills to be mountains.

The dispatcher approached me, and I backed away from him cautiously, still wary of him and his somewhat frightening demeanor. When Señor Tesoro stepped forward, I had no idea who he was. I thought that maybe they'd changed their mind and were going to take the money from me, so I quickly pocketed it and defied them:

[Don't take it please! We really need it to survive.]

"¡No te lo lleves, por favor! Realmente lo necesitamos para sobrevivir." I said to him reproachfully yet pleadingly.

[Where did you get this money?]

"¿De dónde sacaste este dinero?" asked Señor Tesoro of me, in a calm and confident manner, that was both commanding and endearing at the same time.

[I was given a reward for some jewelry I found. I recognized the symbol on it, and so I brought it directly here.]

"Me dieron una recompensa por unas joyas que encontré. Reconocí el símbolo que tenía y las traje directamente aquí." I responded honestly.

[Who gave you this money?]

"¿Quién te dio este dinero?" asked Señor Tesoro.

I immediately pointed to the supervisor, who too had just finished counting his money and pocketed it just as I pointed to him.

[I'm sorry, but I'm going to need that money back.]

"Lo siento, pero voy a necesitar que me devuelvan ese dinero." Señor Tesoro demanded of me, without raising his voice or being imposing.

He simply said it as if it was the right thing to do. As if there some aspect of being that was out of place, and that by my giving him that money, it would be fixed.

So I did as he requested. Never having been swindled in my life, I had no awareness that such things could happen. Like the man who gives up food out of his own mouth to feed a wild animal. There is no knowledge of the danger in it until the first time you're bitten.

Señor Tesoro took the money and walked back to the office and directly over to the supervisor, who smiled gratefully to Señor Tesoro as he approached.

[Something has come to my attention, and I'm going to need the money I just gave you.]

"Me ha llamado la atención algo y voy a necesitar el dinero que acabo de darte." Señor Tesoro demanded of the supervisor.

The supervisor's reaction and hostility was immediate.

[This little thief stole it, and I managed to get it back from him for you! Look at him! He's filth from one of the market villages!]

"¡Este pequeño ladrón lo robó y yo logré recuperarlo para ti! ¡Míralo! ¡Es una basura de uno de los pueblos del mercado!" the supervisor exclaimed, backing away from Señor Tesoro, unwilling to surrender the fortune that had found its way to him by his recognition of opportunity at the expense of another.

[Don't make me ask you a second time.]

"No me hagas preguntarte una segunda vez." Señor Tesoro said calmly as the hefty dispatcher folded his arms and began tapping his foot as they waited for him to comply.

A half minute passed before the supervisor reached into his pocket and handed Señor Tesoro the entire stack of money.

Señor Tesoro handed the supervisor the money he'd given to me, all twenty pesos of it.

[Get out of my sight. You are no longer employed here. If I see you around here again, I will call for the guards.]

"Quítate de mi vista. Ya no trabajas aquí. Si te vuelvo a ver por aquí, llamaré a los guardias." Señor Tesoro spoke boldly as the dispatcer stood protectively to his flank.

The supervisor spat at me as he left, but I quickly dodged it.

[This belongs to you. There is no virtue whose true value surpasses honesty. I would like to offer your family employment here with my company. How many of you are there?]

"Esto es de ustedes. No hay virtud cuyo valor real supere a la honestidad. Me gustaría ofrecerle a su familia empleo aquí en mi empresa. ¿Cuántos son ustedes?" Señor Tesoro asked me and I told him that it was my mother and I.

From that point onward, our living standards were much better, and my mother was now the supervisor for the plantation labour. 

While I worked in the fields until I was seventeen, the dispatcher, whose name was Wenceslao, became like a mentor to me. A father. A real man who had no connection to me other than the fact that when I was at my most vulnerable, despite he not being related to me by blood, he came to my rescue and changed the entire course of my future and my mother's. My blood father however, had fled before I'd even learned to walk and from that point in time, had never tried to find me. Not even once.

That is when I learned that family is a concept that goes beyond the people to whom you're directly related, for a man unrelated to me saved our lives, while my father of blood relation fled from us to escape scandal and save his own hide.

It was at Tesoro Oro that I learned about the value of what I had to offer, and that when you are ambitious, that there are people who will conspire to take it from you at your disadvantage. 

Those who chase money the hardest, looking for the quickest and easiest scam to get it, whether by hook or crook, most often fall the hardest. However, a group of such people all motivated by the same desire, can and are quite often very dangerous to the persistently ambitious person who is true to their motivations.

When you are surrounded by such people, it pays to be cautious at every step. Be seen and known from a distance, so that you're not secretly devoured and disappear.

For every one that admired me my honesty and for what I'd done that got my mother and I hired, and  for our hard work thereafter, there were three who grew jealous of me and my ambition, working together to take it and every opportunity for themselves.

It was in this environment that I remained hard working and humble, rarely but sometimes responding to it, while my mother was ever the diplomat, knowing how to keep the peace. This made her a trusted lady at the company, while I was an often scrutinized man, others cautious of my ambition.

Life's Passing

When I was seventeen, my mother became very sick and died shortly thereafter. It all happened quickly, and I was suddenly alone, except for Wenceslao and Señor Tesoro who too had fallen ill.

In the five years that had passed since my appointment with fate, I had become a well regarded employee of the company, working the fields as hard if not harder than others, just to quench my ambition and my propensity for challenging myself.

Other workers let it be known that they were not keen for my work ethic, and often did everything they could to slow me down. There were a few occasions where I ran into traps setup for me in the fields I worked, but thankfully I was never seriously injured. That didn't mean that working in the fields was becoming easier as I got older. It meant that others were getting more and more apprehensive of my ambition, and working more and more together to put a stop to it.

Because my mother was the supervisor, they couldn't promote me for political reasons, and despite my hard work, there was nowhere else to go in the company. It wasn't until that dark day that my mother passed away that things took a sharp turn.

At that point Señor Tesoro too had grown ill, and knew he was approaching the end of his tenure if not his life. So he summoned his Granddaughter to his bed and gave her the heirloom and with it, full command over the Tesoro Oro Coffee Company of Columbia.

It was at that point that my detractors went forward to Ursula, the Granddaughter heir of Tesoro Oro and urged her to have me fired, in order to ensure that I was not hired into the position of dispatcher, assuming that Wenceslao would be promoted to labour supervisor. By this point Señor Tesoro was barely able to communicate and so there was only Wenceslao to speak up in my favour, and to a new boss who had no familiarity with any of the workers or the management.

Naturally, she folded to the masses and fired me from the company in the interest of good labour relations and keeping them on her side. Wenceslao was promoted to the senior position thankfully, and one of the labourers was promoted to dispatch shortly before I was shown the door.

With all of those losses still weighing on my weary soul, I drove home, still protected by our savings and from the last of my earned wage. When I arrived in the upper middle class area of the village, there was a man, very well dressed, accompanied by two large men waiting for me outside of my front door.

My first thought was that someone from the Casino my mother had fled when I was a child, had sent someone to finish the job and tie up all the loose ends that could potentially lead back to and damn the good name of my elitist father. 

However, as it turned out, it was someone connected to something with many friends at home, and many enemies and customers abroad. Someone who had come to make me an offer that I simply couldn't refuse and one that I took out of desperation, being a young and able bodied man who was unemployed.

The Real Tesoro

Ten years later and at the age of twenty-seven, and I was living a lavish life that I never thought to be possible, residing in an estate in the historic Columbian city of Barranquilla.

Tesoro Oro was a distant memory, like the small Columbian village it was as seen from the rearview mirror of a Cadillac Eldorado, as you drive the mortal highways of your life. The ethic of hard work in a coffee field stuck with me, but not the self-righteous social caste of those collectivized enough to damn themselves to a life of eternal poverty, cannibalizing anyone else they saw striving to or living above their own standards. 

Like the fools who are seated near a grand feast of a buffet, and yet only nibble at the crumbs out of their own self imposed fear. That however, is not the worst travesty of their ways. Not by a long shot. 

Their worst comes in the form that they are like an angry group of trolls living under the bridge, quickly jumping on and devouring anyone else who sets in to gorge themselves at that same buffet. Those who would live to their highest potential and enjoy such a feast as is the greatest gift of all and the highest praise to any god, and one they got entirely for free: life itself. 

Those who espouse their humbleness before their god or gods, and yet spit in their god's face by making demands of everyone else in the name of that god all while squandering that gift and then barring the way for the rest of us here living this life for the feast.

In a heart beat then taking the words with which I liberate others, and repurposing them to appear from the mouths of their prophetic icons. Those not of humbleness or humility, but of the most oppressive of standards and ambition that they are. 

Like the very chains that bind their souls. 

Those chains appear like vines ripe with fruit and life, but in fact are the thorns of the very essence restraining one's being and full potential.

And though these thoughts and words make up the breadth of my story and experience as I see it now, from the stern of a cabin in a ship of war, riding the waves of the Pacific Ocean, back then, I felt the very same way. 

However, the reasoning involved between my feelings then and now is very, very different.

Back then, I felt guilty for the life I was living. That there were people employed at hotels and the various establishments that I frequented who were paid to hold doors for me and people like me. To make sure that the floors which my foot fall found were spotless. People paid to carry my luggage. People paid to drive me to the various destinations that I had to attend throughout my busy day, and then to the most popular Barranquilla discos at night. There was an entire infrastructure built around making sure that everything I was required to do throughout the course of a day, happened smoothly, if only to keep the highest profit export from nineteen-eighties Columbia flowing to the rest of the world.

They were all paid to keep my path obstacle free, every hour of every day, all of Columbia's yes men. They lived their lives safely and provided for their families, many of them living well above the standard simply for their humble ability to be agreeable. To never question what it was I was doing, or who I was doing it with. 

"As long as the day's work was going, so would Columbian money keep flowing," so the poem went.

While all of these humble yes men took their earnings and nurtured families, never breathing a word of what they heard and saw along the way, while men like me, in our twenties and thirties, built business connections in the day, and partied like there was no tomorrow throughout the night. The following day, we would all wake up at six in the morning and do it all again.

The difference between us being that these yes men, as they approached their retirement, were surrounded by people they loved and who loved them. Their wealth of life both arising from their sense of duty to Columbia, its people and economy, but most of all to their families. They were the real country of Columbia.

While I and everyone one of us managers had little to show as we got older and older. The partying started to get old, and yet we continued to lie to ourselves. Convince ourselves that we were enjoying it all.

In all truth, I was not as different from those collectivist trolls, the ones who thought life was about preventing everyone else from enjoying the feast, and cannabilizing everyone else who did, for at the end of the day, neither them nor us had anything truly of substance to underline the fact that we had been here and done remarkable things.

They'd continued to be a miserable collective of people living on the edge of poverty and making everyone else with ambition feel guilty for it, their eyes always on the buffet, wondering what it would have been like. I often wonder how many of the dreams of others they'd dashed in their miserable lives, our only last laugh being the fact that the buffet was never meant for them at all.

I on the other hand, had tried every dish at least once, and many of them numerous times, enjoying them each a different way, with a different glass of wine or fine whiskey in hand each time, and washing it all down with illustrious desserts, often of soft red lips, modestly rounded breasts and pale skin of the women I adored pressed up against mine as we climaxed.

Despite these many joys and pleasures, in the end, it was the yes men, those who worked every day of their lives regardless of the humble pie they were often served, who had the truest treasure of all.

When I started considering these ideas, I thought I was on a much different road. A road to becoming aware.

I was wrong. Oh, how I was wrong.

The Marketplace

You see, being a "manager", ensuring that our number one export remained that way, came with some hidden responsibilities, but as such, they had to be attended to directly on occasion and by someone from upper management. Someone like myself.

Sometimes the shipping was a problem. People get foolish and lazy. They make mistakes, like missing cargo. Missing couriers. Missing product. Like a leaky faucet in the residence of a well maintained luxury home.

Sometimes it was the receiving end. Sometimes there were issues with accounts payable. Money not making it to the right accounts. Money we'd received suddenly going missing. Money we'd not received at all.

In this particular case and one that required my presence, according to the Gran Maestro, the guy who ran this whole enterprise, there was a problem both with the customer receiving the product, and as a result, a problem with accounts receivable. A discrepancy as they called it. Product going out, but no matching financials coming in. The customer claiming that they'd not received it at all.

Now most problems of that nature were usually handled by a man specialized in dealing with such matters. One who'd come up on the streets and like me, had earned his way into the ranks of management, though this particular fellow handled things in a much more violent and less discriminating way. He was the hombre de iniciativa, a man of action. He was known as El Tormenta, meaning quite literally: The man who was a tempest, a storm, and not such a pleasant one at that, but on this particular occasion and much like those seasonal hurricanes, he only wreaked havoc upon those who'd skipped payment at his behest.

On this particular occasion, El Tormenta was not available, for he was indisposed with a señorita, presumably in some other part of the world. The one thing I've found is, that if people earn a meagre wage, they are almost always easily found within a short distance of where they live. This however, is not the case with those on the other end of the income scale, and those with money could most often be found anywhere but home. And so it was I whom the Gran Maestro referred to as an alternative, and he contacted me about a problem.

You see, shipping our product worldwide could be a very complicated process, and one that required many stopgap solutions, as our business wasn't built by manpower alone, but rather, built by the strength of manpower, but only made possible by the power of logistics, the most unheralded technology of humankind and one that had transformed our civilization since the supply lines of the Romans. The distribution networks of the Ottomans. The trade networks of the Silk Road. The global trade network of the British, and of course, the conquests of the Spanish. 

There is only one way to run a global empire, and that is with the power of logistics. Logistics however, like any complex machine, needs essential parts to operate, and in the case of El Tormenta's absence, I became the mechanic of that great machine. The mechanic of our Latin American logistics and a fitting one given the nature of our coffee bean empire and my experience from the lowest ranks, working the fields of just such an empire. 

Hencely so, within hours of the awareness of the El Tormenta's absence, Gran Maestro arranged for myself and a support team a flight to Costa Rica, en route to Juan Santamaría International Airport, and under employ directly as one of Gran Maestro's troubleshooters.

The flight, my first ever was magnificent, as I had never seen the vestiges of the Earth from the air. Looking down upon the tiny empires of man, like a god from above, I spent most of the flight with my nose pressed against the window as the coastline and ocean beneath us sprawled to the distant gradient of her curvature.

For most of the flight, I was lost, for I had never taken the time to appreciate cartography, let alone a map, most of my education having come from the volumes of books I read during my off hours. Those nights that I hadn't spent intoxicated both on liquor and the sound of big bands and their repertoire of latin music. Maps had seldom played a part in my education until that flight had awakened within me a fascination for the possibilities of a world beneath my feet. At that moment on the flight, quite literally.

The vast coastline that spanned the entirety of my flight remained mostly at the apex of my vision. Barely visible, I imagined what lay beyond these coastline cities. The hard working people of Columbia were buried somewhere beneath the canopy of coniferous trees that lined the country side, and beyond its borders were other peoples of South America, they too caught up in their daily toil, all while I flew above them, like a silent overseer of whom none were aware.

When the flight had started, I initially found myself struggling with a case of anxiety, arising from the fear that the aircraft might simply fall from the sky midflight, but as I consumed more and more drinks, those fears escaped me entirely and I was only left aware of possibility. That was the one thing that stuck with me after the flight, because everything else that happened beyond that point was an intense education in fear, and I had not been aware how dangerous a business the distribution of coffee could be.

The trip from the Juan Santamaría Airport to our neutral meeting ground, which was to take place in a meeting room at the Gran Hotel, took forty minutes during the late morning traffic. A time over which I sobered up considerably, drinking fruit juice as we made our way through the traffic by limousine, the rest of my team riding in a line of Cadillacs that trailed us.

By the time we'd left the highway and were driving through the streets of San José, the traffick had picked up considerably and even more so as we approached the downtown core where the hotel was located. I nervously checked my watch many times, coaxing the driver to pick-up his pace. He nodded agreeably every time, though it did nothing to advance our progress.

When it was upon us, or rather, we were upon it, I saw what had been keeping us from achieving our schedule. It was a spot check, being run by local Police, one of whom tapped on the driver's window, then beckoning the man to show his license and registration.

The driver opened the glove box and from within, pulled forth an envelope, bulging with bill folds of the Costa Rican Colón. The driver then took a small stack of paper money from the envelope and pocketed it for himself, handing the rest to the Police Officer. The Police Officer examined the envelope, thumbing quickly through the money until he was certain there was enough to cover his asking fee. He then nodded and gestured to the driver, who proceeded into the downtown core without any further scrutiny.

It was at that moment that I began to suspect that things were not as they seemed, and I inquired to the driver as to what his previous transaction was about.

[Why did you pay that Officer?]

"¿Por qué pagaste a ese oficial?" I asked him calmly.

[It was his fee. We're on his turf you know. If we don't pay, then he might impound the vehicle, and you don't make it to your meeting.]

"Era su tarifa. Estamos en su territorio, ¿sabe? Si no pagamos, podría incautar el vehículo y usted no podrá asistir a la reunión," the driver responded.

[That was no payoff. That was a small fortune!]

"Eso no fue una recompensa. Era una pequeña fortuna!" I exclaimed to him.

[Begging your pardon, Mister, but it wasn't your money. It was paid for by the company. It is not your concern. That's how we do things here.]

"Perdón, señor, pero no era su dinero, lo pagó la empresa, no es asunto suyo, así es como hacemos las cosas aquí," the driver responded calmly to me.

[With that kind of money, he won't even need to put on a uniform in the morning, let alone show up for work!]

"Con esa cantidad de dinero, ni siquiera necesitará ponerse el uniforme por la mañana, ¡y mucho menos presentarse a trabajar!" I responded assertively.

[That money is not only for him. Its for the rest of the checkpoint. Its for the tow truck operator. Some is for the dispatcher and some for the desk Sergeant. Nobody makes money unless the right people get paid.]

"Ese dinero no es solo para él. Es para el resto del puesto de control. Es para el operador de la grúa. Una parte es para el despachador y otra para el sargento de escritorio. Nadie gana dinero a menos que se le pague a la gente adecuada." the driver responded, switching on his turning signal just outside of the Gran Hotel.

[We're selling coffee. What makes you think we need to pay everyone off?]

"Estamos vendiendo café. ¿Qué te hace pensar que tenemos que pagarles a todos?" I became ever so slightly aggressive with him, but he still remained calm.

[Where were you born? Under a rock?]

"¿Dónde naciste? ¿Bajo una piedra?" he replied, and that was the end of our conversation.

I ignored him, not quite fathoming what his statement implied and perhaps it was for the better, because my naivety had spared me from a horrific fate unbeknownst to me at that time, but had very much left me open to looking the fool.

...

I walked the finely decorated corridor from the hotel lobby to the meeting rooms, a trail of men behind me making up my company entourage. I thought little of the fact that the company had sent fourteen men to accompany, when a few assistants would have sufficed. Again, my naivety of the situation had kept many key facts hidden from my talents of observation.

When we arrived in the meeting room, we were greeted by a fine continental breakfast spread across a serving table nearest the double doors. There were fried eggs, refried beans and polenta, and of course, the best coffee from the region: our own company brand. Further in the same room was a large boardroom table already set for twenty.

My three business assistants accompanied me to the table, while the eleven remaining men spread themselves between the meeting room, and the corridor beyond, as if they were taking up guard. Again, another indicator of something about which I should have earlier been made aware. I simply assumed that they were men with jobs whose families too needed sustenance, hence who was I to question the worth of their presence or its extra expense to our budget when we were there to ensure that the billing issues were resolved, for San José served as our company's staging platform for the European and Asian markets.

It was a short jaunt to Panama City from the cluster of warehousing our company had purchased in San José, and from Panama, our coffee shipped to the rest of the world, while a considerable chunk of it was shipped by train to Mexico, the United States and Canada. At that time, our three best markets, and it was these three markets whose supply was in jeopardy as a result of these billing issues.

I was seated with three other men when the other two parties involved in these negotiations had arrived, though in all honesty, at that time I was under the impression that it would only be one. It seemed that word had gotten around and a third group with a vested interest accompanied the other party.

[Mister Zekestes, it is a great honour to make your acquaintance today. To tell you the truth given your reputation, I was expecting someone older.]

"Señor Zekestes, es un gran honor conocerlo hoy. Para ser sincero, dada su reputación, esperaba a alguien mayor." a tall man entered the room, he too with his own entourage, a shorter and more stout man in a military uniform with a face rife with post adolescent acne scars accompanying him.

[I assure you that I've brought with me all of my years, but I've learned just like in cards, to keep the best years up my sleeves. I'm sorry, I didn't get your name?]

"Te aseguro que he traído conmigo todos mis años, pero he aprendido, como en las cartas, a guardarme los mejores años en la manga. Lo siento, ¿no me ha quedado claro tu nombre?" I responded to the tall man.

[Forgive my rudeness, Mister. I am Carlos Montaya, and I represent the San José Department of Trade and Commerce, and this is my associate from Panama, General Manuel Noriega. He is here in the interest of Panama security with regard to your trade access to the canal.]

"Perdone mi rudeza, señor. Soy Carlos Montaya y represento al Departamento de Comercio e Industria de San José, y éste es mi asociado de Panamá, el coronel Manuel Noriega. Él está aquí para defender la seguridad de Panamá en lo que respecta al acceso comercial al canal." Señor Montaya replied, introducing himself and the military man who accompanied him.

[It is a pleasure to meet you both, though I must admit that General Noriega's reputation in the region precedes him. Let us hope in the interests of good commerce that his presence at our negotiations is excess.]

"Es un placer conocerlos a ambos, aunque debo admitir que la reputación del general Noriega en la región lo precede. Esperemos que, en interés del buen comercio, su presencia en nuestras negociaciones sea excesiva." I responded to the men and their teams.

They filed in and found there way to their places at the boardroom table, one of their personal assistants serving General Noriega a plate of breakfast from the serving table.

[Pardon me, but I do not get nearly enough time to enjoy such extravagance in my line of work. Especially since Torrijos' unfortunate passing.]

"Perdón, pero no tengo tiempo suficiente para disfrutar de semejante extravagancia en mi trabajo, especialmente desde el desafortunado fallecimiento de Torrijos." General Noriega addressed those seated at the table as he descended upon his plate.

With his finishing words, he peered towards me, looking me square in the eyes, as if expressing some kind of irony that I had ultimately missed once again.

[Then perhaps I should begin, Mister Montaya, by reminding you that it is your coffee supply chain that is in arrears with the company whom I represent: Columbia's Finest. In the interests of good relations, we have overlooked this fact for three months before this matter was brought to my attention. I am urging you... no. Rather, insisting that these three months in arrears be corrected before I leave this table, so that we may all continue to benefit from this trade allegiance.]

"Entonces, tal vez debería comenzar, señor Montaya, recordándole que es su cadena de suministro de café la que está en mora con la empresa a la que represento: Columbia's Finest. En aras de mantener buenas relaciones, hemos pasado por alto este hecho durante tres meses antes de que se me informara de este asunto. Le estoy instando... no. Más bien, insisto en que estos tres meses de atraso se corrijan antes de que me vaya de esta mesa, para que todos podamos seguir beneficiándonos de esta alianza comercial." I spoke firmly and confidently, something that comes quite naturally to me after having worked in the fields, my callouses long since cleared from my hands, but not from my confidence.

[Are you not just a member of senior management for your company? Isn't there another troubleshooter that usually handles these situations? Don't you even feel in the slightest that you may be in over your head?]

"¿No es usted un simple miembro de la alta dirección de su empresa? ¿No hay otro solucionador de problemas que se ocupe normalmente de estas situaciones? ¿No tiene la menor sensación de que puede estar en una situación que le supera?" Mister Montaya responded, seemingly unintimidated by my earlier threat.

[Never. I handle all such situations and have for as far back as I can remember.]

"Nunca. Me enfrento a situaciones de este tipo desde que tengo memoria." I bluffed, never once taking my eyes from Carlos, as General Noriega scraped the last bit of egg from his plate and into his mouth.

There was a moment of discomforting silence as General Noriega chewed the last of his food. One of his assistants came and removed the plate from the table, replacing it with a small attaché case.

General Noriega then opened the case and withdrew a file folder from within, which he promptly opened and began flipping through a series of 8 1/2" x 11 " photographic prints. He stopped when he arrived at a particular set of them, and began sliding them across the table, one by one.

[You are familiar with the Sandinistas, are you not?]

"Estás familiarizado con los sandinistas, ¿no?" asked General Noriega of me.

[The Nicaraguan rebels? Yes, I am aware that they played a significant role in the downfall of Somoza's ruling party.]

"¿Los rebeldes nicaragüenses? Sí, estoy consciente de que desempeñaron un papel importante en la caída del partido gobernante de Somoza." I responded, speaking almost as much like a statesman as a coffee man.

[You must also know of the Contras then? No?]

"¿Entonces también debes saber de los Contras? ¿No?" General Noriega continued, then giving a small stack of photographic prints to one of his assistants, who walked them along the length of the table all the way to me, placing them in my hands.

As I examined the first photograph, I was caught off guard by what I saw. It was El Tormenta himself, his hands bound behind his back as he sat on his knees. Behind him, a group of men in military camouflage and touting modern battle rifles were in the process of dismantling a flagpole, with a crude hand-painted depiction of a symbol commonly associated with the Nicaraguan Contra Rebels.

I placed the photo on the table and proceeded to the next. When I looked at it, my stomach churned and I struggled to keep my breakfast where it had been since I consumed it on the flight.

The photo was clearly taken moments after the previous one, El Tormenta now face down on the dirt, part of his skull missing and bits of his brain exposed. It appeared that he'd been shot from in front, and that the exit wound was sizeable enough that it had removed a large portion of the back of his head.

I quickly put the photo down atop of the previous one, and held my mouth for a moment as my body reflexively gagged. After a minute of these struggles, I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead, fearful to look either Mister Montaya or General Noriega in the eyes, for I knew that my presence at the table and these negotiations was no longer the result of an accounting accident. They had intentionally set this trap, perhaps seeking further intelligence as to whom might have had association with El Tormenta.

The remainder of the photos depicted each of the executed rebels, various grievous wounds adorned their lifeless bodies, presumably from that same operation that yielded the death of El Tormenta, our previous troubleshooter who had clearly been leading a double life.

A large group of soldiers closed in on my assistants outside of the meeting room, the double doors still open as they did. Another group of soldiers came into the meeting room, taking the other six away, leaving me with only three, those familiar directly with the business and its process of conduct.

[Have you any ties to the military in Columbia? Any past associations about which you'd like to speak? To get something off of your chest that might help you to survive the next twenty-four hours?]

"¿Tienes algún vínculo con el ejército en Colombia? ¿Alguna relación pasada de la que te gustaría hablar? ¿Algo que puedas sacar de tu interior y que te ayude a sobrevivir las próximas veinticuatro horas?" General Noriega asked me, looking back and forth to my eyes, and the photographs that lay on the table before me.

[Never! I have been a working man for my entire life. I've never been involved in politics except where it brought me close enough to be aware of policy. Are you saying that I am under arrest?]

"¡Jamás! He sido un trabajador toda mi vida. Nunca me he involucrado en política, salvo cuando me ha permitido estar lo suficientemente cerca de ella como para estar al tanto de las políticas. ¿Estás diciendo que estoy detenido?" I confronted General Noriega.

[Arrest would be an understatement. You are now a prisoner of war, and we intend very much to use all the means at our disposal to extract every bit of information from you about your compatriots supporting the Contras. For your sake, I can only hope that you hold none of your body parts in such high esteem that you'd be at a loss without them, because as it stands right now, there's a very good chance that you will not be leaving this country with the same inventory of parts with which you arrived.]

"Arrestarlo sería un eufemismo. Ahora es usted un prisionero de guerra y tenemos la firme intención de utilizar todos los medios a nuestra disposición para extraerle toda la información posible sobre sus compatriotas que apoyan a los Contras. Por su bien, sólo puedo esperar que no tenga en tan alta estima ninguna de sus partes corporales que no pueda hacer nada sin ellas, porque tal como están las cosas en este momento, hay muchas posibilidades de que no salga de este país con el mismo inventario de partes con el que llegó." General Noriega responded to me in a well enough rehearsed statement that I immediately knew that he'd delivered this same oration many times before.

With that statement, a group of soldiers grabbed the remainder of my entourage and finally myself, getting us onto our feet and restraining our hands behind our backs.

As we were marched down the same corridor through which we entered into the meeting, the press descended upon us, flashes blinding us as we were led out through the foyer doors as hoods were placed over our heads. La Prensa the only existing opposition newspaper to Noriega, and several other pro Noriega state sponsored newspapers took picture after picture of us, as we were filed into a line of waiting vans, our fate unbeknownst to us. As Noriega had clearly planned it, our only source of information at that point was our imaginations.

It seemed that coffee was far from being the only commodity in this marketplace, for freedom was very clearly dwindling in supply as the value of life which had paid for it thus far seemed to have dipped substantially.

That was when I realized that like coffee, life was simply another commodity in the marketplace of freedom and commerce.

To be continued...

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.

I am truly an Atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism, and that is exactly the same across all of my devices. Both my phone, my virtual tablets and my computer and laptop. I am not a Marxist with all due respect, but I do believe that Canada's balance between a market driven economy and social infrastructure is a good balance. 

My own love interest is a Southeast Asian Opera singer with whom I was in a serious relationship in 2006.

I personally don't volunteer, but I very obviously advocate as you can see in most of my posts.

Credits and attribution:

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...

Invideo.IO which was used to produce the ENERTRINSIC INTERNATIONAL INVESTOR PRESENTATION.

Rutherford model representation of Deuterium and Tritium: By Dirk Hünniger; Derivative work in english - Balajijagadesh.

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)

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai

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

Special thanks to John Paul Young and the Cardboard Brains, whom you can now visit at https://www.ermiescub.com and https://www.cardboardbrains.com.

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.

Very Special Thanks to our Armed Forces and Federal and Provincial Police Services, who really do Stand On Guard, especially when it comes to the Charter of Rights And Freedoms and the Human Rights Act, and often without being self righteous zealots secretly protecting religious law. True keepers of the peace.

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

Brian Joseph Johns

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