VIII
Reveries of an Attack
He awoke bruised again on the morning of the next day after what felt like a confrontation with Colby. In a last few seconds’ dream after a long night of fevered and wakeful soul-searching, futilely compiling in his mind and checking for possible meaning all of his various nocturnal “deviations” of mind of late – regarded as a sort of tea leaves of the soul, a new element suddenly emerged. In his dream, he noted that the news flash issuing from his TV, apparently still on, had to do with on-site reports emanating from The National Mall in Washington, D.C., where an incoming missile, fired from what was so far taken to be a predator drone, had come in, creating an unimaginably colossal BOOM ! that terrorized everybody and ripped a huge crater in that famous pristine lawn. And this unimaginable sacrilege happened precisely at the moment of the morning opening nearby of both houses of Congress, as they prepared for yet another day of wholesale dereliction. In first reports, no one was killed, though three people were reported missing. At that point, it gradually occurred to the Colonel that he was still dreaming.
But his reverie continued. None of the members of the Congress had yet ventured out onto the live scene, but teams of reporters were visible on camera, scurrying every which way, setting up a frenzied din as they came forth like a flock of chattering birds to pick up worms after a thunderstorm.
A dozen or more correspondents – almost but not quite birds, per se – were seen on camera perched on the rim of the still-smoldering crater left by the attack, arms akimbo, mouths at work, yelling into microphones attempting to be heard through the din of converging crowds – none of it made much sense.
“Ah! So the chickens have finally come home to roost,” was Colonel Crystal’s actual voiced comment, mouthed into his pillow, then over his firmly-held steaming initial mug of joe as he traipsed forth through the kitchen. “Or maybe they’re just swallows, or some other shallow little drinks of water or something.”
Switching to CNN in his mind, he amazingly found their reporter on the ground – who let slip that he’d been there since four in the morning, because he’d heard a rumor that something was about to happen – and must have had a super-blaster of a microphone. “It appears,” he dared opine a bit too loudly, “that they have started to chuck a few of our rocks back at us! Our worst nightmare would seem to have now materialized, and bomb-delivering predator drones are no longer only a U.S. weapon of war!”
“Oh, my!” he went on. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, I can tell you that! And one can only be left to wonder, ‘Where next?’ ‘Where will they strike next?’ Not what, but where? ‘Where next?’ Because, this is indeed a disheartening development for the entire civilized Western part of the planet! Because, we are the ones who are supposed to be chucking our stones! And why didn’t we ever think of this before and somehow, prepare for it? That becomes the big question now!” He let his big question stand for a moment, reverberating through his suddenly-malfunctioning equipment. “The question for now, that everybody’s asking, is,” he resumed when cleared and back on, “and it’s got to be asked is, what does or can the Taliban, or ISIS, over there, as it were, do by now to at least minimally protect its people from these seemingly spontaneous unpredictable outrages? What are the parameters of the new back-and-forth fight that’s been opened up here today? What are the rules? What indeed? And so, it would follow, naturally, what do we do now to answer this awful intervention, or invasion? This changing of the balance? And moreover, what about the Russians? What’s their part? Indeed… Back to you in the studio, Eric!”
Oddly, something about this superficially most horrifying and deadly experience, Colonel Crystal found– Strange! – as he himself would have expected – not appalling or terrifying at all but in fact in some weird way satisfying. It seemed like a sort of previously missing settling of accounts, perhaps, to shake us awake, or give us that chance, at least. Something about people who live in glass houses finding out one new, small detail, that real flesh and blood, thoughtful people in fact don’t like us throwing rocks at them. Or live fire. But this event was, at very least, a warning. And so, what on earth would be its implications? Well, he guessed we would all find out. Because, that’s how his dreams went. Stay tuned!
And then, still not quite recalling that it was, in fact, just a dream this time, the most important thought of all struck his mind like a more-powerful second bomb landing in his own yard: “But, what if it was merely one more false-flag self-attack, to get people across America – across the world – to do or think exactly what? what? what? I think that’s what it was.
“You don’t suppose?” he went on, muttering, addressing only himself, arguing it back and forth. He had, after all, urged everyone on his correspondence list to consider practically every domestic or global shock event that ever happened as at least much more than likely a put-up, inside job. A false-flag. Because, at least to his mind, at least most, if not all of them of late probably were! Almost daily now! So, he reasoned, why not this one, with its one-hundred percent certain potential to frighten nearly all his countrymen out of their minds? And, therefore, presumably get them to do or go along with most anything the real perpetrators, the insiders, might want or, in their minds, require?
Because, did anyone else on the planet – that is, any of the other killers and bad guys – really have the wherewithal to deliver lethal drone strikes around the globe today? Russia maybe, sure, but… China? North Korea? Iran? Al-Qaeda? True, others would, sooner or later. But now? Not that likely.
And so, a few other questions remained to be answered (even if it was a dream, it wasn’t just a dream) – who would be blamed for doing what we at least think we do best ourselves, to ourselves, this time? Who’s been blamed for the deviltry we did previously? And what could we set out to do to them, whoever they are (or would be) for supposedly mimicking our deviltry like that – even though they didn’t do it and we did it? Could our analysts even distinguish? Would they know the truth if they saw it coming at them?
And one more thing – would the powers-that-be honestly endeavor to even try to prove this time that it was them (meaning some poor, despised, designated enemy) who did it, and not we ourselves? Without intelligence otherwise, one could only hope in vain for an outcome that would not yet again victimize the American public, and mostly its middle and lower classes, taxpayers – as well as uninvolved designated victims overseas – for the far greater and sole benefit of some sponsoring, clamoring sneaky little elite of warmongering, gunslinging by-rights nobodies.
And, over the next few days, Colonel Crystal would continue to watch helplessly in his mind as those he considered the more lily-livered in American society cowered as if on hypnotic command, literally bending over in the Colonel’s bizarre extended new series of dreams – PTSD-fueled visions, as the nation he imagined awaited a succession of follow-up drone strikes that somehow never actually happened. And, once again, as always, the follow-up discussion droned on and on and on across all media, setting forth and expanding on every conceivable unresolved question and angle – except one – did we do it ourselves?
What really was, after all, he asked himself, both dreaming and waking, the likelihood that enemies known, unknown, with or without state sponsorship, had – could have – cobbled together what it takes to deliver the one, single powerful drone strike that had landed in the middle of our nation’s self-declared sacred space, on the grassy mall between its White House and Capitol?
Of course, that blunt assertion stood unchallenged in dreamland, all pundits and spokespersons alike in his mind finding themselves constrained to agree that it was an intolerable if only token retaliation for all the thousands of deadly drone and missile strikes delivered with seemingly reckless abandon over the years to scores of countries by U.S. forces, who didn’t have to foot the bill, by the way. Let it be emphasized – it was simply seen as an intolerable affront that such retaliation had taken place! If these bastards wanted re
taliation, then, “by God, give it ‘em, and more”! That’s what he heard in his head, in the depth of what he called his frequency, or other dimension, cycle of “dream-dom."
* * *
But still, he reasoned to himself (afraid, ashamed almost to bring it up with Colby and the boys), maybe it had been a warning shot, a token, and not really just all that the fiends who lobbed it over with uncanny accuracy could muster, to make a little crater, a little smoke, and noise like that. Or, on the other hand, maybe it was (would have been, as feared) but a prelude to an endless barrage of murderous predator drone strikes on “the homeland” this time to follow, no doubt passing ours practically colliding going the other direction in the other lane, shattering targets, or no particular targets, with random ease and no regret, here, there, nowhere, everywhere at once, while claiming to the contrary and “please try to reason” when it’s our side that refuses to relent. He woke up again in darkness, shaking.
IX
Bereft of Reprisal
“It is really the epitome of unfairness,” the spokesperson for the U.S. Defense Department (DOD), Margaret Latham, told a reporter named Charles Hodel of CNN,” Colonel Crystal heard from the low-volume somehow still left-on TV wafting in from the kitchen, a few minutes before definitively waking. “It’s a totally vexing problem. We don’t know for sure where the drone strike could have originated, so how can we send powerful enough return strikes to all the possible sources to retaliate without causing a real global stink? Obviously, we can’t.”
Colonel Crystal shifted on his pillow better to listen. “…Some logistical possibilities, like Canada, we really don’t think they’d have done it. England, probably not. We’ve ruled out Holland, for now. It may have been Russia, but we don’t think they’d dare, or China. So, no, it’s probably from the Middle East somewhere. There are reportedly no discernable identifying marks on the hardware. But in the Mideast, only Iran, but not likely those rogue Muslim groups we’re cleaning up, that we still hear about from time to time, could possess the technology on their own. So, our plan up to now is to pepper all of ‘em – maybe not Russia, we’re not saying, with bunker-busters… Because, the American people will not tolerate those kind of tactics, attacks on the Homeland, I can tell you that.”
“But what if you did it yourselves, you ninnies!?” Colonel Alva yelled out again from his bedroom, propping himself up. “Why don’t you ask her that question, Charles and the rest of you? Why don’t you? Why don’t you ever?? Ever, ever, ever… Why? Why? Why? WHY?” He started singing “Listen to the Mockingbird” very loudly, even still in his sleep. Then his voice trailed off, realizing no one was there.
X
Versus the Swamp Bug
Colonel Alva Crystal had not stopped thinking in the back of his mind about Will Goldsby, one of his sometime heroes for the revered cause of radical equality and the basic dignity and worthiness of all people everywhere, now facing disgrace and ruin. It was Goldsby who had shown all of America that minority families and family heads were not inherently different from or less admirable than the very best of mainstream middle-class America. In fact, they were mainstream. Everyone, it is said, has a dark side. So, can America afford to invalidate all but the dark side of Goldsby and blithely erase the truly ingenious inspiration of so many, who had managed to lift the image of a major part of the American nation to an unprecedented level of regular acceptance, from our minds? This man may have hurt people, but if he had cured cancer, would we reject the cure?
There must at least have been another side of the story. However non-excusing that may be, he, a master narrator, needs to find it within him to satisfactorily explain. Unless it’s all a frameup hung on a truly tiny tissue of truth and guilt somehow. To let the media try him and fry him was not justice by any definition to Colonel Crystal’s mind. A fair and just accounting had to be made, and that’s all that could be asked. And that was quite a lot, after all.
Just as with the American governing system’s perennial animosity toward chosen dangerous foreign enemies: give us the straight-up, transparent truth, powerful influencers, unless you’re afraid of or shamed by it. And let the people, at least, follow President Washington’s advice – as is their inclination – to “avoid foreign entanglements." In other words, let peace reign. As for Goldsby, Colonel Alva asked himself for the thousandth time, could it be possible that all of his accusers might somehow have been the end-product of what he liked to characterize as the FIB’s targeting and dirty tricks, well-attested, the accusations themselves implanted in the minds of every one of these presumably upstanding women, for starters, and then everybody? After all, using a sure-fire method of control perfected by the agencies, 47, or 1,047 target accusers, were essentially as easy as one. It just took a wider operation. It seemed unlikely, though not inconceivable – could be either way, actually.
He knew, at least vaguely, from obscurely published accounts (obscure out of general deference to “America’s “chief law-enforcement agency”), that the org he flippantly referred to as the “FIB," itself manufactured or abetted many, if not most, reported instances of so-called international terrorism in the United States. classically employed elements of entrapment, hypnotic suggestion, providing equipment and even elaborately pre-planned operations, where the bombs were not real, the bullets blanks, catsup substituting for blood, and the participants thinking they would merely be taking part in drills. There were all kinds of ways to do it, and the agency and ever branch and substation was perfectly capable of staging wholesale charades. But then, he reminded himself that he could only do what he could to modestly help find out the truth in Will Goldsby’s case. No more than that. The rest beyond his control. A bit later that morning, after a second installment of “predator drone dreams," the ex-Colonel was out in the reeds near the shore behind his “compound," trying to divert his massively overwrought intellect by looking for tide-flopped fish he could pick up and fry half an hour later for lunch, when a swamp bug stung him painfully in the soft tissue directly under his right ear. A bump rose up almost instantly, scarlet and scary-big. He swooned, began to fade out, and his blood pressure dropped, and what happened right after that, he’d never know.
That is, until he dreamed again, that he awoke after somehow being transported a considerable distance to lie undisturbed amid the most luxuriant deep-shag powder-blue carpet he had ever seen, behind a large, wood-crafted chair amply filled by a big, darker blue silk-suited official of some unobvious sort but with a smooth as honey, blaring baritone voice.
It happened that the unknown official was engaged in rapt conversation across the length and breadth of his enormous desk with someone blocked from his view. And Colonel Crystal presently came to suspect that the two were an undisclosed U.S. president and a cabinet secretary. He clearly remembered having essentially this same dream once before in Afghanistan, just before he’d shipped out for the last time. What he could be doing lying on that richly carpeted floor, or how he’d gotten there, he still wasn’t sure.
The conversation wasn’t about Afghanistan, it turned out, at least not in any direct way. And the man across the desk that he couldn’t see clearly wasn’t a cabinet officer, it turned out, but a media boss, a very powerful one – generally as far different animal.
It eventuated that they were discussing a sensitive operation to replace the recalcitrant elected leader of Botswana in southern Africa, where a stupendous discovery of a rare strategic metal, identified at one point as cobalt, had been found. And the trick, it seemed, was to justify the sudden forced ouster and replacement of the country’s popular but inconveniently uncooperative president to the public and officialdom in both countries.
“Tell them he’s a slimy black monster,” the president instructed, thinking on the spot late on a busy workday. “Wait. Skip the ‘black’ part. Tell them that he grabs his own subjects off the streets, rounds them up regularly, and barbeques them in his garden. Tell them that, or tell them anything!”
; “He does that? The incredulous media boss replied.
At this point, the President seems to have just sort of lost it. “Just tell them he does! I tell you, they’ll buy anything, anything! I should know.”
XI
Poly-tics = Many Small Irritating Beasts
As the large man in the large chair suddenly began to roll it quickly backward toward him, Colonel Crystal started to panic; and just as suddenly, the scene of the dream completely shifted.
Now, he could see and hear surrogates or flaks for the two main U.S. political parties venting their gargantuan frustration on network TV over whose candidate had, in fact, won the presidential election, each brandishing his fat ledger of statistics above his head in a menacing manner. A moderator whimsically asked them, “Do you think it is possible that two fleets of moving vans could be competing for space and access in the White House driveway come January 20?”
“No, that won’t happen,” boldly assured the Democrats’ man. “We’ll have it sorted out by then – sewed up in our favor.”
“It’s highly probable, actually,” answered the other.
“That’s unadulterated balderdash!” replied the first, instantly bringing an old word or two back into vogue. “The official winner must be recognized as the winner – and thus president.”
“So, what’s official? We can count as good as anyone,” countered the Republican. “We know who won – us – and the whole public must come to accept our verdict as to the seriousness and extraneous vitality, so to speak, of this election and accept our word on it – that is, on our victory.”
“I feel it’s my duty to caution the two of you: you are setting a very dangerous precedent,” the moderator intoned.
Colonel Crystal's Parallel Universe Page 4