Phil Elmore's Blog, page 14

Technocracy: Will Bureaucracy Bury the Bitcoin?

It is simply ironic that Bitcoin’s proponents are fighting so hard to achieve acceptance amidst the establishment that Bitcoin was created to challenge.

My WND Technocracy column is about the push by Bitcoin to find mainstream acceptance.

The crypto-currency has spent a lot of time in the news lately, much of the exposure being less than positive — but it’s just possible the widespread adoption of bitcoin is inevitable.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 39, “Willy Beaman”

 

Peyton closed the door. “It worked,” he said.

“I told you it would, Daddy,” said Annika. She tapped her forearm tablet, shutting it down. “You just make them believe you’re home alone and they’ll show up anywhere. I don’t think they stop to really consider what they’re doing. It’s like they’re too desperate to get here.”

“You didn’t pretend to be anyone else?” Peyton asked, leaning against the door, hunching to avoid striking his head on the ceiling of the flop. “No Jenni Syn avatar?”

“No,” said Annika. She took out her gold pocket watch, snapped it open, and stared at its face. “It works less well if I pretend to be grown up. There are so many that want children. I don’t like thinking about that.”

“No,” said Peyton. “Neither do I.”

The man standing in the entryway began to shake. He looked back the way he’d come, at the door now closed behind him. Peyton caught the glance and shook his head.

“Who are you people?” asked the man.

“What’s his name?” Peyton asked Annika.

“William Beaman,” said Annika. “‘Willy’ to his friends. He works in the shipyards, running dock robots. He’s pretty good with electronics. His grades were just average in school. He has bad credit.”

“I just can’t believe that worked,” said Peyton.

“Uh,” said Willy Beaman.

“Why, Daddy?” asked Annika. She was sitting askew the couch, her legs on the armrest, holding her watch in one hand.

“It just seems so… easy.”

“Things aren’t always hard,” said Annika. “People make them harder than they need to be.”

Peyton reached out and put one enormous hand on Beaman’s shoulder. The scrawny man yelped. “Please let me go,” he said. “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything. I won’t tell anyone.”

“YOU thought you werer going to meet a twelve-year-old girl here,” said Peyton.

“He did meet a twelve-year-old girl here, actually,” said Annika.

Peyton shot her a look. Turning back to Beaman, he said, “How many?” With his free hand he encircled Beaman’s right wrist.

“How many what?” asked Beaman.

Peyton frowned and, using two fingers, snapped Beaman’s right pinky. The little man screamed.

Annika closed her watch, put it away, and walked to the kitchenette, where she began printing breakfast.

“You’ve never asked me about your mother,” said Peyton. “I feel like I should tell you.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“How many?” Peyton asked Beaman again.

“Please,” Beaman said. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“Wrong,” said Peyton. He snapped the little man’s ring finger.

Shrieking, Beaman fell to his knees. Peyton would not let go. Beaman dangled there, held up by one arm, clutching at Peyton’s granite fist.

“I never knew her,” said Peyton to Annika. I assume she was a volunteer to the program, but I don’t know that. They took the sample from me, and then… Then one day they had Warden Richards tell me she died. They told me you were dead, too. I’ve wondered before if that means your mother might be alive.”

“Four!” Beaman shouted. “Four!”

“I don’t think so,” said Annika. “Montauk said the same thing. He told me that if I was alive, my mother might be. So I looked. I went on the grid and I searched. I found the death certificate. Not a fake one, either. She really did die when I was born.”

“Four other children?” said Peyton to Beaman. “Four times you’ve done this?” To Annika, he said, “Does it make you sad? You’ve never mentioned it. I’m sorry if it does.” To Beaman, he said, “I don’t believe you. Try again.” He broke Beaman’s middle finger.

Annika had to raise her voice to be heard over Beaman’s shrieks. “No, Daddy,” she said.

“What?” Peyton asked. He put a hand over Beaman’s mouth.

“I said,” Annika told him, “no, it doesn’t make me sad. That’s why I didn’t ask you.”

Through the screams and blubbering, Beaman managed to offer another number. “Twenty-four,” he cried. “Twenty-four. Oh God, oh God, it’s twenty-four. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Twenty-four.”

“Before I found out you were alive,” Peyton told Annika, “I wanted to die. I’ve been a bad man, Annika. I’ve done terrible things. I deserve to die for doing them. But then I learned you existed. It’s my job to be your father.”

“You feel obligated to be my Daddy?”

“No,” said Peyton. “I feel like my life is not my own. I’m responsible for you, yes. But I also… I want to be your father. More than anything. Maybe by being a father I can repay a small part of what I’ve taken. But that isn’t really why I want it. The moment I saw you, I knew I would die for you if I had to do it to keep you safe. But that meant something else. It meant… I had to live for you, too. Does that make sense?”

“I think so, Daddy,” said Annika.

Beaman struggled. Peyton shook him lightly

“I need to do right,” Peyton told Annika. “I need to do right by you.”

“Stop worrying, Daddy,” she said, smiling at him. “You keep telling me how bad you were. But you were going to let them punish you. You were going to let them fix you. It’s not your fault they couldn’t do it. You’re not in charge of everything.”

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“I’ve told you,” she said. “It’s selfish to want what you don’t need. I don’t need a mother. You’re all I need.”

Peyton’s vision blurred. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Thank you, Annika.” To Beaman, he said, “Twenty-four is a problem.”

“What?” Beaman sputtered. “Why? Why?”

“Because you’ve only got twenty fingers and toes,” said Peyton. He went to work nonetheless. When he got to twenty, he would just have to improvise.

“GOD PLEASE STOP PLEASE!” screamed Willy Beaman.

“What?” Peyton said, cupping his free hand to his ear.

“I said breakfast is ready,” shouted Annika.

Technocracy: Ludicrous Claims of Male Villainy

…[T]here can be no link between liberal female opinions and metaphysical reality.

Here’s an interesting question: When is a feminist not a feminist?

The answer is, “When she says she wanted to cry because she had to have sex with a fifty-year-old man and didn’t want to pay the kill fee so she wouldn’t have to.”

That’s one of the issues dealt with in my WND Technocracy column asks this week.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 38, “A Tertiary Source”

 

He drank deeply. The brown liquid was an old friend. It didn’t burn when he swallowed. Not anymore. Not for a long time. When the glass was empty he poured another double measure from the plastic bag of bourbon, wondering if he should get more ice from the dispenser in the hall.

Moxley sat in his walk-up Hongkongtown office off Dragon Street. Here, he was most comfortable. Here, he was surrounded by the debris of his life. As often as he thought the phrase, this was a literal truth and not a metaphor. His every worldly possession was crammed into this single room.

His desk was positioned against a metal-frame bed. Next to his work terminal was a bench grinder; opposite this was a bench bearing a variety of hand tools. Every wall boasted a mismatched shelf full of antique paper books and bound plastics — Moxley’s eclectic reference library, most of which was irreplaceable. A footlocker at the end of the bed contained those items he deemed worthy of extra security. These included his guns, his knives, and his Hongkongtown credentials, the latter stowed in a fireproof insulator.

The blinds over the windows were drawn; the only gap in the sun shields was for Moxley’s air-circ and cooling units. These were a necessity during Hongkongtown’s summers. Any wall space not taken by the windows was devoted to framed photographs and certifications, some of which were quite inexplicable without the back stories behind them. Moxley’s private detective license, certifications from hand-to-hand and weapons courses, his college degree, and several old photos of him with various politicians vied for space with lacquered, mounted fish, wood-cuts of Triad sigils, a painted shield bearing Indonesian blade patterns, and an impressive collage of pub and whiskey-bar coasters.

The remaining floor space was stacked high with suitcases, storage bins, a battered retail clothing rack that Moxley used for his coat and hat, his all-in-one printer-cooler-warmer, an industrial coffeemaker that didn’t work (but which served to support a commercial coffeemaker that did), and a dresser that held the rest of his clothes.

Moxley’s office chair creaked as he leaned back in it. On the desk before him, take-out cartons, wrappers, stacks of data chips, and several tab computers were stacked with obsessive care. These shook ominously when Moxley reached out to grab his drink from the desk.  He nearly knocked over the threedy that sat by his keypad. It switched on.

It was the only photo he kept around. The hologram was of his son, Connor, and his wife, Judith. Well. Ex-wife. In the photo, Connor was smiling. Judith was not.  Moxley raised his glass to the threedy, brushed the top of its housing with his finger, and drank his glass empty.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and his desktop terminal beeped.  Neiring’s face appeared on the desk screen.

“Ray,” said Mox.  “Late night for you, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you ever sleep?” Neiring asked.

“Why? You’d be happier if you woke me up?”

“No,” said Neiring.  “I’d be relieved you actually slept. And then I’d be sorry I woke you. But we both know I wouldn’t have.”

“Nope,” said Mox.  “You wouldn’t have. So what is it?”

“I’ve got a line on VanClef,” said Neiring.  “One of my contacts inside the corporation that runs the Promontory knows someone in Intelligence.”

“A tertiary source,” said Mox. He made a rude noise. “Be still my beating heart.”

“Just hear me out,” said Neiring.  “Word inside of Intelligence is that VanClef is persona non grata.  Anyone close to him is scrambling to put some distance between themselves and his loyalists, to save their careers.”

“So the Man in Black has the stank.”

“The what?”

“The stank, Ray,” said Mox. “Failure. One of these government types gets the stank on him, everybody else runs for the hills. Your source say why?”

“He’s working on it,” said Neiring.  “And I’ve greased the tracks as liberally as I can.”

“You’ve what now?”

“Let’s just say you’ll be buying lunch next time.”

“Ray,” said Mox.  “I’m proud of you. Resorting to good, old-fashioned bribery. We’ll make a detective of you yet.”

“I have a degree,” said Neiring.

“Don’t we all,” said Moxley. “That and half a chit will get you a handy in the Redlight.”

Neiring rolled his eyes.  “When my guy knows more, he’ll call,” he said. “In the meantime–”

“In the meantime,” said Mox, “I’d say now is a great time to sleep and drink. Not in that order.”

“Shouldn’t we plan our next move?”

“What next move?” Mox asked.  He fished for his vapor tubes in the pocket of his coat, which he was still wearing.  The nights were chilly and he kept his heat set low.  “VanClef already put you on notice.  Not to mention threatened your life.  You really want to poke around in the dark, hunting for clues to you-don’t-really-know-what, until he notices you?”

“I don’t know, Mox,” said Neiring.  “But I want to keep digging.  We’re close.”

“Close to what?” Moxley said.  “And when did this stop being about the Peytons and start being about VanClef?”

Neiring looked down. When he looked up at the video pickup again, he said, “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well,” said Moxley.  “Something’s fishy, that’s for sure. But Ray, I get the distinct feeling we’re not in the loop on this.”

“You too?”

Moxley put a vapor tube in his mouth.  He fumbled it and dropped it in his lap, which caused it to fall on the floor.  “Hang on,” he said, bending to retrieve it.

The window next to him exploded.

Moxley hit the floor as full-automatic gunfire punctured his window blinds and blew ragged holes in the plasticboard of the opposite wall.  Pieces of polyglass sprinkled his back.  Neiring’s image was annihilated by a bullet.  A long string of projectiles smashed the work terminal to shards and ripped up the surface of the desk.

“Great,” he muttered from the floor.  “This is just holing great.”  He crawled across the filthy carpet, toward the footlocker, while the gunman outside changed position and began raking the office from side to side. The gunfire was loud but not deafening.  A nailer, he figured, judging from the alloy spikes embedded in his desk and walls.

He took a nail through the web of his left hand while opening the footlocker.  Another nail nicked his ear, scaring him badly.  Blood trickled down the side of his head.  From inside the locker, he grabbed the one thing he wouldn’t have to aim to fire, the one item he was absolutely not supposed to have here in Hongkongtown.

When he pulled open the plastic cylinder of the heat-seeking rocket tube, the proctile inside fired automatically.  It filled the office with smoke and set the carpet on fire.  Moxley coughed and stamped out the flames while the missile hove away, out the window and into the night–

Daylight flared as the missile hit the closet heat source it found. Mox squinted away, face in the scorched and bloody carpet. His hand ached. His ears rang.

The light died.  Through the broken window, he could hear rain. Somewhere in the building, smoke- and fire-klaxons were hooting.

He stood.  On his desk, the threedy sat untouched. A trio of nail rounds was embedded in the desk next to it.

Moxley bent and grabbed a laser rifle from the locker. His left hand hurt badly. Shouldering the laser, he went to the window, careful not to expose himself to a second shooter.  On the ground two stories below, he saw what looked like the burning chassis of a hydrogen cycle.  Scattered through the alley around the cycle were gobbets of cooked meat that he assumed were his would-be assassin.

“Amateur,” said Moxley to the rain.

Technocracy: Is Tech Sector an Evil, Woman-Hating Industry?

Feminists and social-justice warriors wish to reduce all social and commercial interactions to identity politics and quotas derived therefrom.

My WND Technocracy column this week is about Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, #gamergate, and the constant complaints (most of them made up) of misogyny and sexism in the tech industry.

Read the full column here in WND News.

Episode 37, “Vagaries of Fate”

 

[image error]The medical bay was quiet but for the whisper of the breathing machine.  VanClef sat on a chair next to the bed, scrolling through notes on his pocket tab, occasionally looking up to check on the man in the life-support apparatus.

“Poor old friend,” he said.  “They tell me that you can hear me. What would you say, right now, if you could?”  He reached out and put his hand on Temken’s, mindful of the electronic sensors attached to the comatose man’s fingers.  “Not much of a future for you, is there? With your brain seeping out of your broken skull.”

“Sir,” said a voice behind him.

“How many?” VanClef asked. He continued to hold Temken’s hand.

“Several, sir. Myself, Smith, Eames, Jefferson, Klyter, and Korth. Perhaps the two men in charge of the motor pool.”

“What of other operatives in the hospital?”

“Eliminated, sir. The others have left in the chopper, headed for the warehouse.”

“Have we acquired a signature yet?”

“Not yet, sir. But that much depleted uranium will be easy to spot. The techs tell me Peyton’s system will retain the radiation signature for several days, even if any lodged projectiles are removed. The satellite we retasked is scanning the city. We’ll have coordinates soon.”

“And Orrin?”

“On the chopper, sir.  In power save mode, secured in the cargo bay of the helicopter.”

“Good work, Stevens,” said VanClef.  “Go down and bring the car around front.  I’d like a few moments alone with my friend.”

“Of course, sir.”  Stevens disappeared as quietly as he had arrived.

“They’ve issued the clean-up order,” VanClef said to Temken.  “No doubt they think they’ll cleanse me, too.  But I’m a step ahead.  I’ve purged the building of everyone who isn’t loyal to me. You’re the last loose thread, I’m afraid.  Poor, poor Temken.  You tried so hard.  That’s what I always appreciated about you.”

VanClef stood.  He heard the doors of the medical bay open.  In the reflection of the monitor above Temken’s bed, he watched the government tactical team enter the room. They held rifles. These were pointed at the floor, but that could change quickly.

“Agent VanClef,” said the leader of the tactical team.

VanClef’s hand, behind the medical bed, slid slowly down to his belt.  “You’re here to bring me in,” he said.  “You’re here to serve notice that my project is terminated.”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“That’s unfortunate,” he said. “Because I’m left with–”

He spun, drew his automatic, and fired four times. Each shot was a head shot. The four men of the tactical team were dead on their feet and VanClef was easing his pistol back in its holster before the first corpse hit the floor.

His ears echoed with the sound of the single shot the tac-team leader had managed to fire.  The shot had been wide. It had missed him by half a meter.  The wall above the medical bed was splattered with blood and brain. The sensors and reporting devices connected to Temken’s corpse began wailing their funerary tune.

VanClef sighed. Standing, he reached out and, quite deliberately, switched off the life-support equipment. He stepped away from the bed.

The shooting pain in his neck made him stop. Reaching up, he found the radio-oscillator dart jutting from his skin. The wound bled quite a bit when he yanked the dart free.

So. Not one shot, but two.  He checked the corpses.  One of them was indeed holding, not a pistol, but a pneumatic dart gun. Well. No matter now. These four weren’t going to track him anywhere, no matter what high-frequency waves his blood emanated.

On his way out of the hospital, VanClef paused in the foyer.  This portion of the building was separate from the hospital property.  Officially, it was leased office space, used by a firm that specialized in the genetic engineering of floral and vegetable products. Unofficially, the office space here gave VanClef ready access to a variety of specialized medical testing and treatment equipment that could be had nowhere else. And because it was a private hospital, he had only to pass around enough chits to keep everyone quiet.

Project Violet had originally encompassed the school beneath the factory, his warehouse, and these offices.  The extremely inconvenient clean-up order necessitated that he abandon all but the warehouse, which he had set up to be defensible.  It was simply one of the vagaries of fate that those defenses would be deployed to protect him from his own government, rather than from one of his subjects run amok.

He was getting ahead of himself, however.  It was necessary to make sure no trace of his work, no evidence of Project Violet, existed here.  A beautiful redhead sat at the reception desk.  He approached her.

“Mister VanClef,” she said behind him.  He stopped walking.  “Did Lieutenant Lewis find you all right?”

VanClef turned.  He walked slowly to the reception desk.  The girl’s gold holograph plate read, “A. West.”

“Ms. West,” he said.  Please swivel your terminal for me.”

“Of course, Mister VanClef.”  She turned the screen to face him.  He tapped out a series of commands on the reactive display.  Blinking warning lights began to strobe through the foyer.

“What’s that?” she asked.  “Are you doing that?”

“I’m shutting down the fire suppression system in the rented offices,” he said.  “There’s a redundant fire barrier between it and the hospital proper. I doubt any patients will be endangered.”

“Mister VanClef?”

“I am forced to assume that Agent Stevens didn’t speak with you.”

“Uh… no,” she said.  “He was here. He seemed distracted.  “Why do you ask? Should I be reporting that alarm?”

VanClef sighed.  He drew his pistol and shot her in the face.  The report echoed through the marble-floored lobby.

Holstering his weapon, VanClef produced a thermal charge from inside his coat. He thumbed it and tossed it onto the late Ms. West’s desk. The explosive produced a high-pitched whine.

VanClef strode out of the building. He had just cleared the outer doors when he felt the heat of the flames at his back.  Stevens was waiting in the car.

“Stevens,” VanClef said. He closed his door.  “The next time you’re feeling sentimental?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t,” said VanClef.

Maxpedition bases “Mall Ninja” patch on… Phil Elmore

A friend forwarded me the link to a patch for sale at the Maxpedition site today.  Turns out they’re selling a “Mall Ninja” patch that looks exactly like I used to dress when I first started my Kung Fu career (hey, I was young).  The description of the patch is what clinches it:  “Flashlight fighter, zombie killer, and master of the eyebrow raise.” If that isn’t a deliberate nod to me, I don’t know what is, ha ha.

Technocracy: Oops! ‘Isis wallet’ forced to change name

You could almost hear a room full of executives face-palming themselves.

My WND Technocracy column this week is about the rise of mobile payment systems that employ Near Field Communication (NFC) to allow you to tap your wallet or your phone when making payment.

There are some obvious security concerns that this raises.  There is also a rather amusing story where one of the players is concerned: Softcard had to change its name from “Isis Wallet” because of the obvious association with Muslim terrorists.

Read the full column .

Episode 36, “Jenni Syn”

 

[image error]“Annika,” called Peyton.  “Why is there a man tied up on the toilet?”

Peyton fought the surreal thickness in his head. He had been dreaming about prison, about Warden Richards, about joining the Project. These were not pleasant memories and he wanted to dispel them. Waking up on the couch in the paid flop he shared with Annika, he felt as if he were forgetting something. He couldn not place it. His mouth tasted like rust. He had a brutal headache.

“Mmmph,” said the man tied up on the toilet. A large piece of friction tape had been used to gag him. He looked very frightened. Peyton closed the bathroom door.

He was abruptly aware of his hunger. He stumbled to the kitchen.  He was barefoot and shirtless, wearing pants caked with dried blood and riddled with bullet holes.  The printer was pre-set to dispense baycon and soy cubes.  He pressed the button twice and found a polymer sphere of water in the wall cooler. His throat was dry.

He would eat, he thought, draining one sphere and popping the top of another with his thumb, and then he would kill the man in the bathroom.

Annika’s door was closed. He wondered when she had gone to bed. She stayed up very late sometimes. He felt uneasy about that, as if he should say something.

He put his plate on the kitchenette table, next to his sawed off shotgun.

Peyton stared.  The weapon brought him back. He remembered. He looked down at his chest, which was covered in bandage spray. How was he alive? How was he home? Was he dreaming?

He knelt next to the kitchen table and devoured his breakfast. The wall screen’s time display told him it was late morning. The date told him he had lost three days.

The shotgun looked freshly cleaned. He picked it up, opened it. It was loaded. He had not seen the gun since the battle outside the school. He had assumed it lost.

There was a trash bin in the kitchen, one he had not seen before. Curious, he checked. It was full full of bloody disposable towels.  He shook the bin; it rattled. There was more than one deformed bullet in there. Once more he ran his hand across his chest.

Whatever had happened in the last three days, it was clear he had missed quite a bit. He snatched up the last of his soy cubes, swallowed them, and went to the towel dispenser in the kitchenette.  He pulled a heavy wad of towels from the dispenser, soaked them in water from the kitchen sink, and wrapped the heavy, wet towels around the snout of the shotgun. He wanted to test the weapon, make sure it was still reliable. He could think of no better test than to kill the man in the bathroom.

“MMMPPHH!” said the man when Peyton opened the door again.  Well, that figured.  Peyton put the moist lump of towels against the man’s face and thumbed back both hammers of the shotgun.

“Good morning, Daddy,” said Annika behind him.  She yawned.  He turned to look at her over his shoulder.  “Aimee, Montauk’s daughter? asked me to say hi to you.  She says she moved to Central City. That sounds so exciting.  We were up late in the virts, talking.”

“Annika, please go back in the bedroom for a minute,” he said.  “I don’t want you to–”

“Oh, Daddy,” said Annika. “You’re silly. That’s Doctor Musgrove.  We’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

“You have?” Peyton asked.  He took the shotgun away from Musgrove’s head. The doctor’s hair and face were wet.  He glared.

“Yes, but we’re running out of time,” said Annika.  “It’s Sweeps week. That’s when the paid flops get raided.  Montauk told me it’s also when his friends get roosted.”

“Rousted,” Peyton corrected automatically.

“Rousted,” repeated Annika. “That’s why we weren’t there when Herm brought you to Montauk’s apartment.”

“Herm?”

“The robot garbage-man,” said Annika. “One of Montauk’s friends. He’s the one that brought me your gun. I don’t know how he got it.” She smiled.  “Montauk has so many friends.”

“He does,” said Peyton.

“Mmmpphh!” said Doctor Musgrove.

Peyton gestured with the shotgun wrapped in towels. Musgrove stopped making noise.

“Herm said he asked you where you lived,” said Annika. “He said you told him.”

“I must have,” said Peyton. “I don’t remember. I was very sick.”

“I know,” said Annika. “When Herm and the other robot brought you here, he told me you had toxic shock and that you needed a doctor to take the bullets out of you.  He’s the one that gave me Doctor Musgrove’s computer serial number, so I could find him on the grid. Montauk knows everything about everybody.”

“Where is Montauk now?” Peyton asked.

“Hiding,” said Annika. “Herm said he would be back when it got colder.”

“When the heat dies down?” Peyton ventured.

“Daddy,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “That’s what I said.”

“So you asked this Musgrove for help,” Peyton said.

“No,” said Annika.  “I couldn’t risk that VanClef might find us somehow. That’s why I didn’t call the girls for help, either. I don’t know what VanClef knows and what he doesn’t. I bought surgical tools at the bodega on Dragon Street with the last of the chits I had.”

“That was smart,” said Peyton.

“I had to make sure nothing could lead back to us,” she said, “and that meant Doctor Musgrove couldn’t know that he was coming here to treat someone. He thought was going to meet a dancer named Jenni Syn. He doesn’t like his wife very much.”

Peyton took that in.  He glanced to Musgrove, who was now carefully avoiding eye contact.  “So you lured him here,” he said.  “By pretending to be someone else.”

“I made an avatar for the virts,” said Annika.  “One of those ladies who take off their clothes for money. The ones Montauk told me not to grow up to be like.”

Peyton coughed.  “Uh,” he said.  “Yes.”  He made a note to have a chat with Montauk when the Og resurfaced.  He considered the bound doctor.  “Annika… how did you get him tied up and gagged?”

“I just pointed the shotgun at him,” she said, “and he did most of the work.  You already showed me how to load it.  I watched screen to find tutorials on how to clean it and shoot it.”

“Have you fired it?”

“No, Daddy,” she said.  “I was afraid to. It would probably knock me down. But I practiced bracing it against the chair where I sat.”

“Let’s… let’s get packed,” said Peyton. “The sooner we get out of here, the sooner Doctor Musgrove can go home.”

“You really feel okay, Daddy?”

“I do,” said Peyton.  “I can feel myself healing. I think Doctor Musgrove did a good job.”

“Oh, good,” said Annika. “I was going to put him to sleep if he didn’t.”

Technocracy: The Rise of the Creepy Factor

Despite a lack of consensus on what “creepy” actually means… we can all agree that we are uneasy.

My WND Technocracy column this week is about the rise of the “creepy factor.”

Apple says it’s going to ban “creepy” apps from its app store. But what does that mean? There’s a lot going on in society that puts us ill at ease.

Read the full column here in WND News.