Doubled or Nothing

by Warren Esby

  Anyway, we finally arrived in Colorado Springs without incident. Traveling through the scenic mountains was very scenic just as it was supposed to be. We checked into a motel, had a shower, ate dinner, said a few exciting words – you know – the usual routine, and went to bed and eventually to sleep.

  Chapter 33

  The next morning after breakfast we went over to NORAD headquarters which was located inside Cheyenne Mountain. You might think that it would be like one of those secret places within a mountain like you see in a James Bond film where you go through a secret door and down a dark tunnel that ends up inside a hollowed out mountain. But it was not like that at all. First we had to stop at a guard station before we got too close to it and had to present our identification and tell them what we were doing there. After they cleared us, one of their personnel then took us to the mountain and led us in through a secret door and down a dark tunnel that ended up inside a hollowed out mountain. We were turned over to a receptionist who told us that Colonel Carlisle’s secretary would be coming to collect us and take us to see Colonel Carlisle.

  Colonel Carlisle’s secretary was a male in a lieutenant’s uniform and told us to please follow him since Colonel Carlisle was expecting us. We walked down a corridor and were ushered into Colonel Carlisle’s office, and I realized that the lieutenant served double duty as both an usher and a secretary. Colonel Carlisle got up from behind the desk that had a sign on it that identified him as Colonel James P. Carlisle. I introduced myself and Anya to him, and he shook our hands and told us that he was sorry but he couldn’t tell us his name for security reasons and we should just address him as Colonel. I told him I understood completely. He then said he understood we had something to give to him, and I handed him an envelope from the hotel we were staying at with the little memory chip inside that I had taken out from under the little Beretta’s hand grip panel the night before. I had taken the chip out from under the Beretta’s hand grip panel because I knew that they would screen us for firearms and they would detect even small ones like the Berettas we carried. We had both left our Berettas in the Expedition. The unnamed Colonel took the envelope and told us to come back after lunch and named the time. He also suggested we visit the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo which was on the outside of Cheyenne Mountain, at least most of it was. And so we did. We had decided we liked zoos after being at the San Diego Zoo and thought it would be nice to see another one and compare them.

  The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is an interesting place, being on the side of the mountain. Although it is not nearly as large as the San Diego Zoo, it has its own distinct character. You can walk up a path and there are different animals at different levels along the way. One neat thing was how they had the giraffes located. You first saw them at one level and you saw mostly legs which is all you ever see at the San Diego Zoo. You could look upwards and see the head way above you. But as you continued up the mountain along the trail you eventually came face to face with the giraffe’s face. And there were little machines where you could buy giraffe food at an exorbitant price to feed them. Most people at other zoos never get to see giraffes face to face since their heads are so far above the ground, unless they take ladders with them to the zoo specifically for that purpose, and I never saw anyone carrying ladders at a zoo except for workmen with little names on the back of their shirts telling you which plumbing company or electrical company or construction company they worked for. Tourists always had little sayings on the front of their shirts which is how you tell those two groups apart. I realized when we stood face to face with the giraffes that they were quite unattractive and most zoo goers weren’t missing anything by not being able to meet them face to face and feed them expensive food. And they were sloppy eaters, too. Anya also thought so. But feeding them like that made us realize we were ready for lunch, and we left the zoo and found a little restaurant that didn’t cost us too much more than the giraffe food had cost.

  As we left the zoo I suddenly realized how brilliant it was to have a zoo on top of the NORAD headquarters. They almost didn’t need to have the mountain fortified with granite as they had done in order to protect that facility. No one was going to try and attack a place with a zoo on top. Not one enemy of the U.S. would even dare. If they did so, they would immediately reap the wrath of one of the most fearsome group of organizations the world has ever known. I am, of course, referring again to PETA and their compatriots the ASPCA, the Humane Society and Planned Parenthood. No one in their right minds or wrong country would risk coming up against that rabid group.

  After lunch we returned to NORAD and were immediately re-ushered in to see the unnamed Colonel Carlisle. The meeting was very short. He handed me back the memory chip in a plain white envelope, not the hotel envelope in which I had handed it to him. He said,

  “Okay. We copied all the information we needed from it. Check with Ben and Jerry when you get back to San Diego, and they’ll tell you our decision about passing it on. We have to do an analysis first, but that should be completed by the time you get back.”

  We immediately went back to the Expedition and left for Santa Fe. We were planning to go back by way of Flagstaff so I could see Wyatt and Raffy again. We spent the night in Santa Fe and ate at one of the nice restaurants and stayed at one of those nice hotels which I could now afford. The next morning after one of those nice breakfasts that I could now afford, we continued on our way to Flagstaff. When I had contacted Raffy about coming, he said he would check to see if Wyatt’s couch was available, but I told him I was traveling with my girlfriend and we would get a hotel room since there wouldn’t be enough room for the two of us on Wyatt’s couch. He recommended a motel near to them and said he would make us a reservation. I told him we would only be able to stay overnight since I had business in San Diego I had to get back for, but I wanted to take him and Wyatt and their wives out to dinner just like the last time I was there. He said he would tell Wyatt.

  We had agreed to meet at the service station that Raffy worked at and follow him to the restaurant. Wyatt would pick up Raffy’s wife and his own and meet us there. When we got to the service station, Raffy looked at Anya as if he had seen her before and then suddenly recognized her.

  “Isn’t this your cousin? She’s changed her hair color, bleached it I guess, but I recognize her.” And then he continued by saying, “I don’t know if it sits right with me having you sleep with your own cousin in a hotel room I made the reservations for.”

  “Raffy, she isn’t my cousin. She’s my girlfriend.”

  “Then she lied to me. I don’t know if that sits right with me either. I don’t like people who lie either.”

  “Well don’t you lie to all those easterners when you tell them the restroom is broken when it isn’t?”

  “Well, I guess some lies are okay. I’ll guess I’ll have to forgive her.” And then turning to Anya, he said, “But why didn’t you just say you were Alex’s girlfriend the first time?”

  Anya was quick. I had to give her credit for that. She said,

  “We had a fight and I didn’t know if people would tell me where he was if they thought maybe I was an old girlfriend and I was chasing him across country with a gun to kill him for something he had done.”

  Part of that lie was actually the truth. The really good lies usually do have elements of truth in them, don’t they?

  I could tell Raffy was okay with Anya’s explanation, and I finally introduced them to each other formally. We followed Raffy to the restaurant. Wyatt and the two wives were waiting at the entrance when we drove up and I introduced Anya to them. Wyatt noticed we were driving an Expedition rather than the Tahoe and asked whether it was Anya’s. I told him no, that it was mine and that I didn’t have the Tahoe anymore.

  Wyatt turned to Raffy and said, “I win.”

  “What do you win?” I asked.

  “The bet we had. I told Raffy you had got yourself into a disreputable business when you showed up with that Tahoe after driving away in that Corolla the fi
rst time. And now, if this Expedition is really yours, then I was right.”

  “What kind of disreputable business do you think I’m in?” I asked. I wondered if it was that obvious.

  He said, “It’s obvious to me that you’ve become a used car salesman.”

  I didn’t try to dissuade him. In spite of them thinking I was a used car salesman and making jokes about it all night long, we all had a really good time, better than the last time actually, because I had a date too. I asked about the prairie dog town. He said they were rebuilding it like crazy, and it wouldn’t be long before it was back to how it had been before except for the odd crater or two. Wyatt commented that left to their own devices the prairie dog real estate market would recover as long as the government left it alone. Raffy said it was actually a good model for the U.S. real estate market as a whole, especially for the real estate market in blighted areas. He said they could fix Detroit with one big drone attack if the government would only leave it alone after that. We discussed a few more solutions for some of the country’s problems before the night was over. All good times must come to an end and the evening finally did. We said our goodbyes and said we would keep in touch, and then Anya and I went to the motel to check in for the night.

  We left early the next morning and were back at the apartment in Laundromat Town Saturday night in time for our usual exciting Saturday night activities. I had arranged to meet Ben and Jerry for Sunday brunch the next day. I knew that Anya would want to sleep late so I told them it would only be me joining them. She did and it was.

  Chapter 34

  Ben and Jerry arrived punctually at ten the next morning and told me they wanted to go to Cardiff-by-the-Sea for breakfast. I asked if that wasn’t a long way to go for breakfast. They said it was only a short trip down the coast and it was a short trip, mainly because it was Sunday morning and we didn’t have as much traffic as we would have on a weekday. Cardiff-by-the- Sea, and yes, that is its actual name, is one of those American towns like a lot of them that were named by their town’s inhabitants for a town back in Great Britain that it reminded them of. Cardiff is in Wales and the Welsh like to drink which is the only reason I could think of for naming this little town on the southern California coast for a town in Wales that it didn’t resemble even a little bit except for the fact that they both were on an ocean and not even the same ocean. They must have been drunk out of their minds to name it that. And why they had to add by-the-Sea to the name when everyone knew it was located by the sea is something I’ve always wondered about, unless there is another Cardiff that is not by the sea, but then it would have resembled the Cardiff in Wales even less. And the Cardiff in Wales, which is also by the sea, did not have by-the-Sea as part of its name.

  Anyway, Ben and Jerry wanted to go to Cardiff-by-the-Sea because it had a very good doughnut shop. It was only rated very good and not excellent because it only had a V and a G in its name, but it had a large selection. We waited patiently in line for Jerry to buy a dozen doughnuts of suitable variety and three large coffees and took our very good but not excellent doughnuts down to a bench by the ocean where we could talk privately and eat our doughnuts by-the-Sea.

  Ben began. “Well just as we suspected, that chip contained the design for a guidance system for a stealth drone that Ivor’s laboratory had been developing under contract for the Department of Defense and it’s a very good one.”

  That worried me because if it was very good, I would not be able to make Anya happy and would probably die trying.

  “So that means we can’t pass it on?” I asked.

  “Oh no. We’ve been given the green light to pass it to the Russians,” said Jerry.

  “Why are you giving it to the Russians, if it is very good? Or did you sabotage it a little?”

  Ben said, “No, it’s intact. We don’t want them to think they can’t trust us. It’s just that enough time has gone by to make this obsolete. Whenever we contract for something like this, we always ask two or three different research outfits to design one so we can pick the best. MIT came out with theirs the quickest, but Georgia Tech’s had a really desirable feature that the Department of Defense wanted so they’re going with that one.”

  “What was that feature? Can you tell me?”

  They were dying to. Jerry said, “Well, it’s really common knowledge that a lot of time is spent by all the security services like us and the FBI and Homeland Security and so forth watching pornography on the internet. It’s almost like a requirement it’s done so much, and everyone’s coworkers make fun of them if they don’t do it. There’s an estimate that twenty-five percent of all time spent on the internet by certain departments is spent watching pornography. And for some of them it’s actually part of their job. I mean, they have to know what kind of illegal pornography is out there, like child pornography, in order to know what they have to stop, and they have to be on the lookout for it all the time, you know they have to be really vigilant. They have to watch pornography a lot to make sure it’s all legal pornography and illegal pornography doesn’t creep in. And the various departments take that task very seriously, and they all want to help out even though it is primarily the responsibility of the FBI. And so they all feel free to help out and they do so with their spare time. And they have a lot of spare time. You know the average government employee is the most efficient employee in the world. They can each perform all the work they need to perform to satisfy the government’s requirements in only two and a half to three and a half hours a day. The rest of the time they can do what they want, and it’s admirable that they use it to help out other departments.”

  Ben continued, “To make a long story short, Georgia Tech was aware of this need and programmed a split screen feature into the stealth drone guidance system so the operators could not only guide the drone to its target using one screen, but they could watch for illegal pornography on the other screen. Most of the trip for a drone is done on autopilot. The operator is really needed only when the drone gets to its target, so there is a lot of time that is wasted by the operator. But with the split screen system, they can be watching pornography on the other screen while the drone is traveling to the target and not be wasting their time. I think the MIT boys are a little too cut and dried in their designs. You know, they don’t have good football and basketball teams like Georgia Tech, so they don’t know how important partying is at an institution like the boys from Georgia Tech do, so it’s really no surprise, as good as they are, that they would not have thought to add this feature.”

  And Jerry added, “And it’s had an additional benefit as it turns out. A lot of the drones are going way past their targets in the time allowed for a mission, and some go so far off that they run out of fuel and crash because the operator notices something on the other screen they have to pay attention to. So to insure success when using the new guidance system, they send out twice as many drones as they used to which makes the government very happy since they have ten times as many of these drones as they really need. It’s really helping to cut down on the drone surplus. Anyway, the net result is that we can now pass off the guidance system designed at MIT to the Russians since we are only using the Georgia Tech system.”

  That was good news for Anya and for me. Then I said, “Speaking of illegal pornography, there’s something that’s always bothered me about the government’s approach to it.”

  “What’s that?” asked Ben.

  “Well, I really believe that old saying that with pornography, you know it when you see it. But the opposite is also true. You have to see it to know it. And that’s the problem. If the government workers, who are in charge of searching out illegal pornography or searching for people who are viewing illegal pornography, have to decide if it’s illegal pornography, then they have to see the illegal pornography or at least the pornography that the people who are viewing illegal pornography are viewing in order to know it’s illegal. If that’s the case and if viewing illegal pornography is illegal, then as soon a
s they see it and identify as illegal, they are guilty of viewing illegal pornography. Just as guilty as the people they are trying to identify as having viewed illegal pornography. And what’s more, how do they report it? Whoever they report it to must view it as well in order to identify it as illegal and confirm that a crime has been committed, and then they are also guilty of illegal activity and so forth. They’re all as guilty as the person they are confirming is guilty. And if they don’t look at it, then they can’t say the person viewing it is guilty because you have to see it to know it, pornography that is, and once you’ve seen it you’re guilty. To me it’s a real conundrum, and I’d like to know how you all handle it or do you all need to go to jail?”

  “That’s not how it works. All those activities are really crimes against what’s acceptable to society. And what’s acceptable to society is determined by the state, so you have to understand that a crime against society is a crime against the state. But if you are in government you’re part of the state and you can’t have the state commit a crime against the state. In other words, you can’t commit a crime against yourself, so you are home free. And all the bureaucrats and elected officials alike get used to this concept. You will too. The distinction between legal and illegal activity is blurred if you’re in government, and after you’ve been in government you just learn that nothing you do is illegal, no matter how illegal it would be for someone in the private sector. That’s why so many of the things government bureaucrats and politicians do that seem like criminal conduct to private sector individuals aren’t really considered criminal by people within the government. And if everyone is doing it in the government and it’s the norm, then how can anyone tell anyway unless someone else tells you it’s a crime, and in order for them to think that, then they can’t be doing it themselves, but they all do. After a while everyone in government engages in activity that would be considered a criminal activity if performed by a private sector individual, but since it’s the norm, no one worries about it. For example, just think about the way the government operates as a general rule. They take money from individuals and spend it on whatever they want to spend it on. It’s your money, but they take it from you and buy things with it, like a lot of drones that you don’t have any use for. Now if you did that in the private sector, take someone else’s money and use it for something you wanted for yourself but they didn’t, you would be arrested as a criminal, for thievery or robbery, and sent to jail. But if someone from the government does it, it’s perfectly legal. It’s called good government policy. And there’s nothing criminal about it. It’s great as long as you work for the government.” Jerry got tired of explaining so Ben continued,