Somewhere between the threshold of a tortured sleep and a bad hangover West understood his cellphone would not stop ringing until he answered it. Forcing himself into a semi-consciousness state he swung his arm over to the coffee table and grabbed his cell.
“Hello,” he answered through a throat that felt like it was clogged with sawdust.
The line crackled with static.
“Hello,” he repeated.
“The onion is an illuminating bulb,” a voice whispered through the static, “but only by peeling back all the layers can you find an enlightened soul or a rotten core. The truth lies with The Source. Follow Ulysses.”
“Who the fuck is this?” West snapped.
The line clicked a few times then went dead.
“Damn it,” he groaned trying to force one of his eyes to open. After a blurry few seconds he managed to get one eye open and for his success he was greeted by an explosion of pain that ripped through his head.
He forced his other eye to open and through double vision he saw an empty vodka bottle and beer cans strewn across the floor. He dropped the cell phone onto the floor and started to drift back to sleep until a memory flashed through his tortured consciousness.
He vaguely recalled reading a bizarre letter claiming that Mark Sloan was dead. Some memory synapse fired causing West to bolt upright once he realized it wasn’t a dream. He remembered calling Sloan’s house where a woman had confirmed his death.
A stab of pain tore through his shoulder. West grabbed his aching arm, wondering if he was having a heart attack. After a few seconds of panic, he remembered the liquor bottle incident.
Then he looked down in confusion. “What the …” he began to say, slowly rubbing a hand over the couch. The couch was covered in a fine layer of sand. He remembered going out to a few bars but he hadn’t gone to the beach. He hadn’t been there in years. What the hell was going on?
He picked up a handful of the sand, letting the grains fall in between his fingers back down onto the couch. Slowly the dream filtered back into his memory. He recalled the library or church or whatever it was, the windows with the strange symbols, the light and the man from the beach.
No matter how much he thought, he could not come up with a logical explanation for how all the sand got onto his couch. Had he gotten so drunk that he went to the beach and put a bunch of sand in a bag, brought it home and spread it out on the couch?
He looked over at the letter on the coffee table and picked it up with a shaky hand. West read the letter half a dozen times while his confusion increased significantly.
He turned on the business channel for no other reason than to bring some type of reality back into the present situation. A smoking-hot, 20-something news reader was trying her best to act professional yet concerned as she read off the teleprompter that the Japanese stock market had crashed 10 percent overnight and the stock index futures were indicating another bad day for the U.S. Stock market.
The clock on the TV read 8 o’ clock.
“Shit,” he cursed. He was going to be late for work and that thought made him feel even worse.
After he got fired the only media outlet that would have anything to do with him was the Weekly World Enquirer, a conspiratorial, gossip tabloid posted on Amerinet every Friday.
His boss, Simon Stossel, had made no bones about it when he told him that the only reason he was hiring him was because of the train wreck principle. Simon had explained that his tarnished and disgraced name would add subscribers to the newspaper’s list of morons who bought the tabloid for its enlightening insights into the New World Order, UFO’s, Atlantis, Elvis sightings, vampires, hobbits, Area 51, and alien abductions.
Simon told West he wanted him to continue following the Wall Street Banksters and the crooked politicians but in keeping with the paper’s conspiracy twist.
He could still hear Simon saying to him, “Add a tiny sliver of fact and then a whole lot of crap. That’s what our readers want.”
A few times when he had questioned his boss about journalistic integrity Simon had just scoffed and replied that at least they had the decency to add the tiny sliver of fact unlike the so-called Mainstream Media which either blatantly lied or spewed absurd government propaganda.
West picked up some more of the sand and stared at it for a long time. What the hell did it mean? He briefly thought about cleaning the sand up but decided to leave it there for now. He was late for work and his brain still needed more time to figure out how the sand had gotten there.
He forced himself to get moving and proceeded to perform all the necessary daily rituals of showering, shaving, and dressing so he could try and function like a normal human being. He left his apartment and headed to work, the whole time his mind screaming at him to just get out while he still could.
“Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Chapter 3
West walked into the half empty news floor and the first thing he saw was Simon frantically waving to him from his office.
“Shit,” West cursed. “What the hell is his problem?”
He shuffled across the news floor with his head down and when he looked back up he saw two men in dark suits inside Simon’s office.
Double Shit, he thought. Who the fuck are they?
He walked into the office. “Hey, what’s up?” he pretended to ask cheerfully, trying his best to ignore the fact that his head felt like it was going to split open and his heart was on the verge of exploding.
Simon’s scowl looked even nastier than usual, which was not a good sign. He pointed to the two men. “These two gentlemen are with Homeland Security and they have a few questions they’d like to ask you.”
The older agent stepped forward and handed him a card. “I’m Agent Joe McCain and this is my partner Larson Graham. You’re familiar with Mark Sloan, correct?”
West looked down at the card then back to the agent. He had wispy white hair combed over a mostly bald pate and his face appeared as if it could slide off his skull at any moment.
“Sure … I mean.” West shook his head. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”
The two agents exchanged a glance then McCain asked, “How do you know that?”
By the look on the agent’s liver-spotted face it was clear West should have kept his big mouth shut. “Well, I called his house last night, and someone told me he had died.”
“Who answered the phone and what exactly did they say?” McCain prodded.
“I don’t know. It was a lady who said she was a family friend. I didn’t ask her name and she didn’t say much of anything except that he had committed suicide.”
“How you close were you to Mr. Sloan?” McCain asked.
“I really wasn’t that close at all.”
“Then what was your relationship with Mr. Sloan?”
“He worked on Wall Street and over the years I’ve called him for comments, research, quotes. You know, things I could use in articles … You know, all pretty routine stuff,” West stammered wondering how many times he could say ‘you know’ in a sentence.
“And he worked for…?” McCain stared at West with a smile that was reminiscent of the Grim Reaper.
“He was at Goldman, but when I first met him he was working at Lehman Brothers,” West answered while trying to take a deep breath to slow his racing heart. The last thing anybody wanted to be was in the crosshairs of Homeland agents.
The second agent, Graham, edged toward him. He was pudgy with a bitchy attitude attached to his effeminate demeanor.
“Why were you contacting Sloan?” Agent Graham asked in a whiny Southern drawl. “Was he a whistle blower? An informer? Was he embezzling money? What’s the deal?”
Jesus what had he gotten himself into? West began to panic. He felt like he was about to have an anxiety-induced heart attack.
“Look guys,” he replied trying to sound calm and collected. “Sloan was one of hundreds, maybe thousands of traders, executives, politicians that I’ve had conversations with. I’m not sure what I can tell you about him that you probably don’t already know?”
Agent Graham took a step closer. West instantly hated the smug bastard. He had seen his type a million times over the years. He was the stereotypical government thug who hid behind the power of DC to threaten and coerce anyone not on board with the agenda. West wasn’t sure if it was the after-effects of the alcohol but he began to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Damn, he needed a drink badly.
“You appear disheveled this morning, Mr. West,” McCain interjected. “Are you sick?”
“I had a little too much to drink last night. That’s all.”
“Didn’t you take an AmeriMerck Wonder?” Graham snorted.
“No. I was running late for work and I forgot.”
It might seem hard to believe coming from a former drug addict but West hated those feel-good pills. Five years ago the government-owned pharmaceutical company AmeriMerck had come out with a revolutionary new drug that basically made most psychological medications obsolete. A single dose of the AmeriMerck’s Wonder Pill would instantly create a hyper-relaxed feeling with no unpleasant side effects.
It was hailed as the drug discovery of the century which was laughable to West. Due to the horrific and prolonged economic conditions the populace had been in a constant state of edginess for years. Mass anxiety, depression, rampant substance abuse, constant violence and high suicide rates had become a normal part of life but the new drug temporarily relieved those afflictions by providing an overwhelming sense of calm and well-being.
The net result was most Americans had subtly become drug dependent courtesy of DC. But it was easy to understand why the government promoted the drug so heavily: a properly medicated population was a properly controlled population.
West figured he must be an aberration of the human race because he hated the drug and its all-encompassing blissful state that it produced. For almost 15 years of his life he had loved and craved illicit drugs. He consumed any and everything he could get his hands on. You name it: cocaine, LSD, amphetamines, pot, heroin, ecstasy, uppers, downers and a plethora of laboratory produced designer drugs were his constant companions.
But something weird happened after he lost his job and was at rock bottom. One morning he woke up and quit drugs cold turkey.
Even now he wasn’t exactly sure why he refused to take the wonder drug. Maybe it had been the duality of drugs that West had sought out for so many years because he loved both the ecstasy and the misery that they brought. It was a contradiction most people wouldn’t understand but it was the combination of both the pain and pleasure that made him crave drugs. He had no interest in feeling good or peaceful all the time because that just wasn’t natural to him. After all, without suffering how could anyone ever experience happiness and tranquility?
So in his strange, some would say, demented world if you could do drugs to feel good, then take an AmeriMerck Wonder to eliminate the pain once the drugs wore off, well, what the hell was the point of taking any drugs in the first place?
But he couldn’t tell the agents all that because taking the AmeriMerck Wonder was strongly encouraged by DC and the system abhorred abnormalities and nonconformists.
Simon reached behind his desk and pulled open a drawer. “Here,” Simon said. “Take one of mine.”
West could have throttled his boss but he had no choice and took the pill. “Thanks,” he said meekly while dry swallowing the pill.
Agent Graham looked at a little notebook and continued the questioning, “You used to work for the Wall Street Journal, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
The agent smiled and looked out towards the newsroom. “Just out of curiosity why’d you move over to the World Weekly? You get a big promotion or something?”
“Maybe he thought he could increase his chances of winning a Pulitzer,” McCain laughed.
West couldn’t believe these assholes were goading him like this because he suspected the agents knew damn well that he had gotten fired.
“I moved for the great honor of working under Mr. Stossel,” he answered sarcastically. “Not to mention the outstanding benefits.”
“Was Sloan passing you insider trading information or anything like that?” Graham abruptly jumped in like a rabid pit bull.
“Of course not,” West snapped.
Neither agent said a word then West felt the drug suddenly kick in. His racing heart dropped by about a thousand beats a minute and an overwhelming sense of tranquility overtook his body.
“We have phone records indicating hundreds of calls were made between you and Mr. Sloan,” Agent McCain continued. “Do you always talk to your casual sources that often?”
West realized the agents were trying to rattle him for some reason but with the drug coursing thought his body he felt calm and relaxed.
West forced himself to smile. “That was years ago. And we stayed in touch for quite some time, so I’m not sure if that is unusual or not.”
“Mr. Collins,” Graham stepped back in front of his partner. “This is all standard questioning in a homicide. Everyone is guilty until we can adequately eliminate that guilt. So we are not implying anything; we are simply asking a few questions to see if we can perhaps jog your memory which may help us with our investigation.”
“Homicide?” West rebutted. “I thought he committed suicide?”
“Right,” Graham smiled. “However, standard investigations procedures dictate that we completely rule out homicide, even if we’re pretty certain it was a suicide.”
“Anyway,” interjected McCain obviously changing the subject. “We know from your tax returns and financial disclosures that you never used any insider information for personal gain.”
Warning bells began ringing in his head. Fucking DC! This was no simple inquiry because they had pulled his Personal Financial Records (PF Record).
It had become impossible to hide anything from DC. Four years ago a bomb was discovered inside the chambers of the California State Assembly so Congress had added provisions to the Patriot Act requiring every American’s tax return, a complete financial statement, credit report and annual financial transaction report to be filed with IRS.
A PF Record could be pulled by DC or a DC-approved law enforcement agency with only the approval of a DC-appointed bureaucrat. No warrants were needed. No judge had to sign off on it and the government wasn’t even required to notify the individuals whose records were pulled.
The law was supposed to be a temporary measure to help curb homegrown terrorism and to quell the rash of violence against Federal employees. But in America, no law, no matter how unconstitutional, was ever rescinded and in order to keep its citizens in further check a year later the Digital Currency Act eliminated physical paper and coin currency for the first time in the country’s history. The U.S Mint ceased operation and all paper and coin money transactions were illegal. America’s fiat currency known as Federal Reserve Notes were replaced by a new electronic currency called DigiDollars.
So unless you had something to barter with, all transactions were made with electronic cards or through electronic devices where the activity was transmitted in real time to the IRS department within Homeland Security.
The net result was every good or service that was purchased in the United States–food, liquor, houses, prostitutes, cars, mortgages, rents, drugs, books, electronics, clothes or explosive-making materials–was seen in real time or could be pulled up with a keystroke.
At first the law had created a huge black market for gold and silver but just as Franklin Roosevelt had ordered during the first Great Depression the President issued an executive order making not only gold but also silver bullion ownership illegal.
Initially, the order was largely ignored because the scope of private ownership was so large it was impossible to enforc
e. But after an irate Tennessee farmer blew nine high ranking members of FEMA to smithereens with a fertilizer bomb, DC went ape shit.
The farmer had been pushed over the edge when Homeland Security had forcibly removed him off property that had been in his family for generations. The non-appealable seizure of property was executed under the Progress For All Americans Act (PFAA) which allowed “private property to be seized by Homeland Security if it was deemed to be of greater or more beneficial value to a larger group of citizens than the current owner(s).” DC seizures of private property had become so widespread that it was an almost daily event and the practice was promoted under the slogan of PROGRESS FOR ALL.
If the PFAA laws weren’t bad enough, after the fertilizer bombing the President via Homeland Security passed through Congress the new Protect America Enforcement Act (PAEA). Anyone violating the PAEA law by possessing gold or silver or anyone caught receiving or using precious metals to purchase goods and services faced draconian prison sentences.
First-time offenders received a mandatory 10 year prison sentence with forfeiture of 30 percent of any net worth and a third time offender faced a non-appealable death penalty.
West knew he was in some type of trouble if they had pulled his PF records, although he couldn’t figure out why they would be so interested in a Wall Street executive that had committed suicide. There had to be a lot more to it and that’s what made him nervous.
“When would you say was the last time you met Sloan in person?” Graham continued to probe.
“I really don’t know but it’s been a while.”
“Ballpark it, a few days? A few weeks?”
“Oh no,” West answered. “I think I haven’t seen him in probably a year and a half. Maybe even two years.”
There was no reason for him to lie, especially because he knew that if they had pulled his PF records they also had his phone records, not to mention that Protect America surveillance cameras virtually tracked all movement within the city.
The Unraveling Page 3