Desperate Man Blues

“The New World Order, Enlightened Society…

at least the concepts of world governance are

beginning to become more prominent. Why?

Regional cultures are beginning to fade as world

culture arises. The world is becoming one civilization,

like it or not. And, as a completely new phenomena,

it is chaotic. It is also inevitable…

also completely beyond control…like a birth.”

                                                    Thornvold Arnquist

I  had to get out of town quick for the usual reasons…

the old scams weren’t working like before…people

were getting wise, or the hooks no long grabbed them.

I checked into an old hotel in Philly…paid for a week

in advance. The desk clerk seemed like someone who

had been around. Maybe I could trust him….well, not

trust exactly…more of a harmless friendly con so I

could get information from him. Hotel staff are never

good marks, but they can be good allies.

I knew they were after me. They were after everyone

who had any idea what was going on. I was an outlier,

a Buddhist, a non-believer…the hardest kind to brain-

wash and therefore a prime target. I tried to erase my

history, but there were some things you couldn’t erase:

body language, facial recognition, even the type of

clothing you wore. Luckily I’d trained as an actor before

my conning career, so I was hard to see. Still, to remain

invisible was a big challenge.

It was the biggest challenge of the coming revolution:

how to organize and not be noticed. Technology was

the answer: using surveillance technology against itself

to hide in plain sight. Look like conformity…act like

conformity…smell like conformity. It’s what everyone

else was doing as a matter of course. One world, one role.

Revolutionaries were trained as actors. They could

mimic a T.V. News anchor, a trader on the stock exchange,

or a guard at a nuclear missile station with equal aplomb.

Infiltrating every walk of societal control, they could wreak

havoc selectively or simultaneously.

But that was not my problem. I was too old to be trained in

that way. I had to sync or swim on my own in this brave new

world.  So, now, I am looking out my hotel window, drinking

whiskey from a Greatest Dad mug, wondering what my chances

are to not be caught for a while.