justmessageme@hotmail.co.uk

Chapter 1

“Are you mad?” He said to me, trying not to raise his voice. We had chosen a poor place to talk about this, I admit that, but it just so happened that neither of us wanted to host the meetings in order to persist in the anonymity we lent each other.
The topic our conversation pertained to was not something we wanted members of the public to hear, and such this predicament was born.
What made this endeavour worse, was that as we sat here in this bar drinking, which only led to us overstepping ourselves and forgetting to check our surroundings before continuing to elaborate on our ideas, which in turn drew more attention to us when one of us had to forcibly silence or interrupt the other in order to prevent any nearby ears from listening in.
Unfortunately this was the only public house within adequate distance of our houses and there are very rarely ears of authority in such lower-class establishments, and this was the embodiment of a lower-class establishment, not a patron in the place looked like they had two cents to rub together, every single beverage on tap was some unearthly strong and stupidly cheap concoction and the whole place frequently smelt like a mixture of this, urine and industrial cleaning supplies.
It was in part due to this that we spent some time considering a change of location, or simply conducting our meetings without the consumption of any alcohol, though we also realised that in order for us to want to share ideas and begin the creative process that at least one of us be somewhat inebriated before chatter began.
In passing we developed a system by which we marked the edges of the seats we so often used, as to recall whom it was to be paying for the drinks on which day, he pertained to brandy whereas I much preferred port, thus on the days he was to pay for our refreshments we both drank brandy and in turn every other meeting we both took to port.
The meetings continued for some time, if I can recall correctly, some eight or so months passed between our first chance meeting and the period in which we deigned ourselves dedicated enough to the cause to begin what we later looked back on as ‘the hunt’, though this was merely a task of relocation; there was not a soul who knew of what we planned, and we would rather it kept that way, due to the nature of the crime, therefore it struck us as necessary to relocate our meetings.
I called upon a friend after eleven days of our search, someone who dealt in many things, a tradesman and also a black-marketer of sorts, not a man who was easy to track down in any case, the sixth warrant for his arrest had somewhat deterred the man from appearing in public, and when he did re-surface it was always for such a short period of time that attracting his attention was not always such a simple feat.
‘Darcy’ was a man of considerable talent in any case, with ties in illegal goods trading, prostitution, gambling, as well as a running a number of rather unsavoury import ventures, I had known the man when he was as straight as an arrow, alas time had not been kind to him, and after losing his wife to some illness he would not speak of, the man became an enigma, then within three or four weeks of his wife’s death he was lording over a small gang of whores and had his name on the deeds of as many small residences as I have hairs on my head.
My reason for contacting him was largely tied to the latter, our business venture was mutually beneficial in a sense, he had some housing in false names he had acquired through unethical means which he needed looking after, and I was in need of some lodging within which ‘him’ and I could do business. From this point onwards, I shall refer to ‘him’ as Johnson, for I am not merely trying to conceal Johnson’s name, I simply do not know his name, nor does he know mine, as we thought it safer that way, he refers to me as Henry, but I haven’t any reason to use that name to refer to myself in writing.
Once I had secured the deed to a small shack off of the centre of town, I bid farewell to Darcy and asked of him a favour of some liquor, to which he obliged me three bottles of port and two of brandy, without so much as asking anything of me, though I knew in time I would be likely to repay him in one way or another, one does not quite simply accept a favour from a friend without having to lend a hand at some point down the line.
We spent a little while neatening up the inside of the shack, though even after some renovation, we gave up trying to hide the impression of dank decrepitude, in fact, the inside was comfortable enough, even with the clearly botched construction and small damp patch in one corner of the ceiling. We merely had to make sure the light could not escape the many cracks and nooks through which we may have illumined ourselves to the outside world, as we were not keen on allowing them to know the building which had now become that of our headquarters was even in use.
We spent a little time at a local market sector, a place where almost anything could be traded - for the right price, which led to the area having an incredibly bad reputation, due to sellers hailing from the drug and trafficking businesses using shell-stalls to find perspective buyers before taking them somewhere a little more secure. It was for this reason that the area was the most police patrolled area in fifteen miles, as that’s how far away the next nearest ‘prole-market’ happened to be.
We were only there for a few blackout curtains, some anti-mould paint and a few storage units in order to keep safe anything we were going to need in the future, so we didn’t stay long, though merely existing in the area was enough to knock a person a little sick. The smell of sickness, poverty and desperation clings to you. It doesn’t wash off.
Darcy was not one to ask questions, so upon renovating the place he gave us our space allowing us to use the newly-refitted house as we saw fit. He would not be checking in on us, which was good, because letting him in on the plan was not an option, and I’d rather not have to put down an old friend out of pure pragmatism in order to keep ourselves hidden, least a man of Darcy’s renown, for that would bring even more attention and from more parties than I could possibly imagine.
I believed at the time of acquiring our shack that it was in both mine and Johnson’s best interest to keep the contents of our discussions limited to the knowledge of only Johnson and I respectively. He was apparently less guarded with the idea, as some twelve days later, I arrived to find him pouring a drink for a woman said to be his cousin, he had talked through it with her, knowing of her similar political and ethical beliefs and she had agreed to take part, only now it added another dimension to the plan entirely.
Both he and I knew that the more people involved, the longer it would take and the more complex the situation would become. I thought of perhaps introducing someone into the now ‘group’ myself, simply to spite Johnson, and whom I will now refer to as ‘Marie’, however, I did not know of anyone who would care for the tale we had in store for them, and I could not fathom the idea of having to further extend the length of our operation to accommodate the interests of a fourth party.
Marie asked me my personal standpoint, she was very direct and forthcoming with her ideas and ideals, and though I resented her presence, I quickly came around to seeing her as more of a nuisance than an outright hindrance We spent hours talking at first, she was very interested in my viewpoint particularly, on the timescale, our current situation and our immediate plans, so interested that I was unsure whether to trust that she came here with intentions of helping us, or whether she was a spy of some sorts, perhaps even a journalist.
Several weeks passed with her making her appearance at the meetings, she proposed we put our thoughts and anticipated actions down on paper, I was somewhat adverse to the idea, as we had tried so hard to keep the future proposal inside our heads as not to leave any evidence behind when we were done, but after some convincing we began assembling a sort of scrapbook, the entire plan boiled down to approximately fifty pages, fifty pages of confusing and inspired work, strewn about the place in awful fashion. The work I had done was barely legible in parts, perhaps due to my lack of handwriting skill.
In truth we needed an editor of some sorts to better organise our work, though there was no chance of bringing on board another person at this point. Consequently we ended up deciding we’d have to do our best to keep track of what we were composing ourselves, even if it took some time to decipher the mess of notes and plans we were throwing together at an alarming rate.
The date we had agreed on for the execution was the 19th of September, which at the time of our agreement was a mere seven months away, now that may seem like a long time, but since the events transcribed at the start of my recordings, four months have passed in total. To someone who doesn’t understand our intent, it would seem a large amount of time to plan anything. It is not simply a reckless offense for a monetary reward comparable to a train robbery, though to compare, what we were doing would be like that of taking the belongings of every passenger on every train from here to the very southern point of the country.
I will clarify, we are not stealing anything, this is merely an experiment about which nobody can find out. The nature of the experiment itself may not be illegal, as I may have wrongly implied earlier, but the means by which we will be executing the experiment will be viewed as terrorism, and could bring about catastrophic unforeseen events, which we have contingencies for; should anything too drastic come to pass.
It would not be possible to predict entirely, but we must avoid compromise in order to achieve our goal. I’m sure anybody resolute in bringing about an ideal must be, yet sometimes we wish those people were not so resolute, as many people have been made famous by stubbornly pushing their ideal across a nation to the point of war or national collapse, nevertheless in this case we do not foresee war or anything of the like even remotely close to a realistic outcome.
We made our list of possible outcomes shortly after we bound the ideas to form the first solid copy of what could be called a manifesto, although the word manifesto always seemed to provoke a negative connotation within my mind; rather I’d like to call it a philosophy, though the idea of it being a philosophy was utterly bizarre, it resonated much more fluidly with me than it being a mere manifesto.
Going about my everyday life seemed almost like a chore, I had put some effort into something and I was waiting for that effort to come back and bestow upon me results, and not just any results, expected results, results above and beyond the predictions we had begun to ascertain between ourselves in sessions of almost mindless rambling. I will admit I was still uncertain within myself of what would come of it, I was wholly uneasy and at the same time brimming with trepidation.
Going about my everyday life however, was what led me into my first real problem, or our first real problem, it was known to anyone in the area that in dealing with Darcy one was putting themselves at risk of garnering the attention of the local police force, a fate which happened to befall me after quite some time.
There was no real way of knowing exactly how they knew I was an associate of the man, nor could I tell how long the damned fools had been following me. I only happened to notice a rather conspicuous gentleman who had been shadowing me from place to place; or rather he seemed to appear in all of the same places as me, and for quite some time.
In that moment I felt like they had played me like a fiddle, slipping up in order to let me know they were onto me, that they had figured it all out and my world was going to come tumbling down around me, months of planning all for nought and perceived justice would be brought down upon the three of us involved for our perceived trespasses against the people.
Whereas the other option struck me somewhat slower, that the police merely intended to tail me in order to find their way inside Darcy’s inner circle. This was something that even I had no idea about, due to my lack of contact with the man since our short dealings over two months ago. In light of this I decided it was not safe for me to go to our headquarters, nor could I find any way of contacting Johnson or Marie; informing them of my possible exclusion from the group, at least for the moment.
Making my way to my home was all I could do, sit alone, find a new hobby for a time. For the life I was living had suddenly needed to become that of someone else -  I was to be another person entirely until the moment it was safe to continue being myself. Or perchance until I were accosted by the authorities in order to assess my personal relationship with Darcy Winchester, or Desmond as he been known in his youth.
My only thought was to mail a notice to the address, which was something I was unsure of, as it would bring attention to the address, even if only from a mailman. It seemed my only choice as I could not deliver a letter by hand for fear of being followed to or from the area. Mailing it at all was to be a chore, in order to evade suspicion I would be required to arrive at a mailbox and deposit the letter without being followed, as the police would surely have the authority to search the mailbox for my letter and confiscate it as evidence.
I coded the message using some familiar words and some small drawings which only Johnson would understand, in order to prevent its true meaning being found out if it were confiscated. Though the real problem was that if it were confiscated the address would most likely be investigated, which would be the worst outcome imaginable.
With that in my mind, I thought it safer to simply give the letter to the neighbour boy and pay him a small amount of cash for it’s safe delivery, as the address was only a meagre two miles from my house and children will do almost anything for money. I gave him ten dollars and the letter and told him not to return to me once it was delivered. I even approached his house under the pretence of offering my gardening services, which I then had for at least another seven or eight houses in order to imbue a sense of believability to my story.
This now means I have three gardens to prune for some of my neighbours over the next week, which in all fairness is a ridiculous outcome of a very poorly thought out plan. It’s a sad thing, a man’s ego, you have to be ever so careful with it, you can’t afford to shatter any illusions, and you have to make sure every time you come up with an idea, no matter how ludicrous it may be, that you follow it through, no matter the consequence and no matter the cost. If I had have spent another day or two deliberating, I know a more sensible plan would have struck me, furthermore I wouldn’t now be performing menial chores for my neighbours, yet here I am, for no reason other than to save face with myself.
On the other hand, it will give me something to do for the time I am confined to my neighbourhood by the mere presence of what I presume to be an undercover police officer.






Chapter 2

This next section is rather short in comparison to the last, which in itself, was also a very short collection of meaningless happenings, what will follow are a number of excerpts from a small diary I began during the seventeen days in which I was living away from the group.
Day one:
In order to make good on my offer of services to the neighbourhood, I had to journey into the city today. The decline of proper law enforcement has taken its toll on the area; the streets are either bustling with hundreds of people flitting to and from jobs or entirely deserted. Many large areas of the city are overrun with ragtag gangs, usually armed with whatever they can find on the black market, and still the police have time to scope me out…though I suppose that and the black market are somewhat a part of the same problem for them. It’s such a shame following me won’t get them anywhere but a little closer to a hardware store.
My father used to be a wealthy man, owned seven forty-sixths of a large company that dealt with the development of cybernetic enhancements for use in the military, twenty years ago people dreamt of the day they would see commercial use. It never happened. What’s more is that the government are more strict on illegal ownership of that hardware than they are on guns, hell almost everyone has a gun now. It’s not safe out there without one.
Can be if you look hard enough you can find a back-alley cyberneticist who’ll try his best to sell you on some of the items that get through customs, but your life truly does hang in the balance when you’re having dealings with a back-alley anything. Lest you want to wake up naked in the middle of nowhere with a new left arm you never wanted, what’s worse is when you now have two, and people talk and the police notice and you end up in jail with your right arm floating around the black market.
What remains of the police force all have some sort of small upgrade. They say it serves in the public interest for heightened senses to be used for purpose of reconnaissance, wherein lies the reason I acted so paranoid as to find myself in this fix in the first place.
We lived a comfortable life in the high-rise when we were younger, but when my father took ill at the age of forty-three, he had to quit the company; he had too much responsibility to our family to continue working ill. A couple years later he just disappeared, nobody knows quite where, I know not whether he still lives, hasn’t been seen by these eyes since they were twenty three years old. It was around that age that he’d fathered me, as luck would have it fourteen years have passed and I haven’t so much as had a relationship with anyone worth anything.
I’ve lived here alone in the slums ever since, looking to be of service to anyone, or anything. Jobs are hard to come by when unemployment sits somewhere north of thirty percent. Luckily with the help of what few friends I had and indulging in some less than honest work from time to time, I own my rather humble lodgings outright, which suits me well enough, considering I’ve been out of work for some time now merely coasting on past earnings to pay for utilities and food.
Day four:
Aside from gardening, I didn’t get much done for the past couple days, today I began re-drafting the plan from memory, only a short draft, but the distribution stage left me feeling uncertain and I couldn’t for the life of me ascertain what the purpose of the proposed distribution method in the original plan really counted for.
After getting as far as I could with the re-draft, I locked it away. Somewhere in the local area, a stash of sorts, though not anywhere I can explicitly tell you of.
Day six:
Upon leaving the house today and venturing into the city to find somewhere to play poker, I was accosted by a man wearing a rather conspicuous outfit. A large, almost cape-like jacket topped with a hat and wearing a rather baggy pair of pants that appeared to be some form of cheap polyester.
He grabbed me by the wrist and took me aside into an alleyway before leading my unwitting self through a hidden door behind a dumpster, at this point I was rather bewildered by the whole event, yet the man did not seem threatening. Moreover he seemed relieved he had succeeded in successfully getting me off of the street.
He explained to me that he worked for Darcy, and that Darcy’s informant within the police force had come to the knowledge I was being watched. Upon hearing the news, naturally Darcy freaked out and sent several men out into the nearby area to try and track me down. The man sat me down and began to ask me questions about whether I had talked to the police, if I’d told them anything about their operations, and asked if I had spoken to anybody at all suspicious in the last couple of weeks.
He seemed almost disappointed when I didn’t have much to tell him, but he was smart enough not to cause any further disruption to my day, and told me he would relay the information to Darcy. As long as he knows that I’m looking out for him by throwing the police off of my tail, he shouldn’t care to send anyone else trying to find me.
Shortly after leaving my previous encounter I arrived at a local gambling spot, it was underground, a dump, but the owner knew me well enough that it’s familiarity always seemed comforting. Despite the derelict looks of the place.
What interested me most is that on the counter at the entryway, there was a jar with what looked to be two human eyeballs floating amidst an unknown and yellow-tinged liquid. This was simply labelled: “price for cheating”, I asked Marcus about the jar and he told me of a situation which arose a few nights ago.
A patron came in, someone who he had never seen before, acting like a big shot and making bets usually too large for anyone to match in such a poor establishment. No idea why someone would be stupid enough to actually attract attention to his attitude but he continued to win or at least drop out of bad hands for long enough to amass a couple of thousands on the table. Now Marcus is on the guy’s case, he wants to know how he’s beating all of his usual patrons who are rather experienced players, he’s intrigued.
So he watches the guy closely, notices he’s staring intently at the other players every round before betting. Never goes in on a hand with nothing. Manages to call every bluff. He’s winning about seven out of every ten hands; the damn bastard had ocular implants, he was looking at the reflections in the other players’ eyes as they looked at their cards, needless to say, being an already illegal gambling spot, they had no problem relieving the guy of his handicap and sending him on his way. I have to say it’s a rather efficient deterrent, if not a little gruesome.
A few hours later as I was leaving, he says to me “You think I should put these babies up as a prize for a little competition?”  I guess with the people he already has to pay off to keep that little place of his open, it’s not worth trying to find someone to sell them on; he has enough trouble with Feds as it is.
Day Eleven:
Today was the first day I had been able to go about my business without immediately feeling followed. I kept a close eye on my tail keeping watch for anything, anyone; there was nothing.
The person following me had been fairly evasive over the past couple of weeks, but they’d never been so careful as to avoid letting me know I was being dogged, which leads me to believe that they may have stopped following me. Either that or they have put someone more adept on my six, or something.
There’s always a chance that when manual efforts are considered inadequate, they will try using some sort of mechanical device to follow you instead, of course it’s a lot harder to spot.
There have been reports of devices as large as remote-control rats being used by the police to watch criminals, or smaller things like spiders to infiltrate homes or public areas. I’ve even seen small drones on my outings to the black market, no more than an inch across, propelled by stasis field hover-engines, and they are entirely encased in bio-mechanical cells allowing for the use of optic camouflage. When it’s active, they’re nigh on impossible to see with the naked eye.
I’m not particularly fearful of them however; they are too precious to use on someone suspected of being a friend of a smuggler - going for thousands a piece on the black market.  I can’t imagine how much they cost the department of espionage to produce, they are mostly reserved for use in investigating matters of national security, and as far as the government knows, I’m not a threat to them at all.
Day Seventeen:
This will be my final entry, I have determined it safe to re-establish contact with the group, CDN reported today that some higher-ups in Darcy’s organisation were apprehended earlier this week and are being held for questioning, thus it appears I may have dodged a bullet in keeping largely to myself for the past two and a half weeks. All seventeen entries of this diary have been compiled with my notes, the ones to include in my finished works are marked with asterisks.

Chapter 3

I arrived at the time we usually met up, only nineteen days since I’d last set foot in so much as the same area of town. Neither of them was there when I arrived. Prior to setting off I had planned out thirteen different routes between my home and this shack, alternating routes should keep the chance of anyone being able to keep track of me to a minimum.
Marie and Johnson arrived together, as per usual, and regarded my presence with an air of suspicion and agitation; I had not seen anyone look quite so uneasy in some time. After a moment of sizing me up whilst I waited in apprehensive silence it was Marie who final broke the tension.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you bought this place from Darcy?” I think were the words she used, as she came at me with some pace, pushing her clenched fist through the side of my face, Johnson hadn’t had a problem with me dealing with Darcy, it was a means to an end and a necessary risk at the time considering nothing could have advanced without me making this…less than ideal purchase.
Johnson seemed at least a little pleased to see me after so long, though after the initial confrontation we sat in a sort of stunned silence for almost an hour. I guess it made sense, they had only a letter detailing that I was being followed by the police crudely scribbled in some manic code and delivered by a child they had never seen before in their lives, I cannot blame them for being suspicious.
Almost a week passed before the meetings seemed to return to the pace they were at before my predicament, I had to explain my actions of the past couple weeks thoroughly, which was an easy task after keeping a diary throughout the ordeal. It made no difference to me, I was happy to recant the adventures I endured through at home and within the city centre.
From the moment my alibi seemed believable to them, work began instantaneously, we made progress and hit milestones constantly. In a way that made me utterly bewildered. As we could not have hoped for it to be going so smoothly at this point, unfortunately, if it were to be completed early we would be waiting upon the specified date to perform the final stage; fortunately this could not cause us any problems if we maintained order.
Marie had come to finalise her chosen targets, which was essentially all that was holding us back from moving forward to the final planning stage, though this will be an experiment which affects a large amount of people, each of our personal targets are the organisations or groups which will take the brunt of the damage during the initial and only dangerous stage of the experiment.
Johnson and I had already planned our approach, escape and follow-through with each of our targets, and the initial date of operation had been estimated at 22nd July. As I mentioned earlier, it was now the 19th September, some eight weeks later, due to the additions made as a result of Marie’s ‘interference’, however, I agree that some of the people she has chosen to target were worth the effort, and it was almost foolish of myself to overlook having them on the list in the first place.
We fell into some further dealings with Darcy shortly after the meetings were in full swing again, in order to acquire some ERMs and a vehicle capable of moving quickly, quietly and transporting large weights across fair distances. Almost half of my life savings currently hung in the balance, a balance which could tip either way at any moment if anyone so much as heard a sentence escape us at the wrong time.
Darcy took it upon himself to greatly overcharge us for the goods, though one cannot barter in someone else’s property, especially not for black-market goods. He was the only person I knew could procure such items and I was the only person he knew who needed those particular goods at this particular time.
We spent the night afterwards strewn about our headquarters taking back drink after drink from what few clean glasses we could find, talking for the first time of what we would do after the plan had been put into place, what we expected the fallout to be, and if there were anyone we could; or would, want to make sure was out of the area before all hell broke loose following the incident.
Of course I had no family in the area and being a well-educated man who associates with the likes of criminals and those lacking in moral compass, I had no desire to tip off anyone for their safety. Hell, most of the people I know will probably profit from the chaos in one way or another.
Being of same bloodline, Johnson and Marie seemed to have a couple people they were arguing over letting in on the fact something would go down, course a lot nearer to the time, so as to not raise any alarms, or at least to minimise suspicion towards them both. Likely they disagreed on some people, family members they thought might be better off consumed by the chaos that the other had a particular liking for, as they argued for the better part of three hours as I sat putting back brandy after brandy. Only due to the fact I was all out of port.
Six in the morning, I woke up, the inside of my mouth feeling like sand. The smell of stale alcohol combined with the musty smell of the three unwashed drunks took me aback a little, to the point I had not a reason to stay, even if walking home in minimal sunlight cross some notorious thoroughfare in central city was the way I had to go. My head spun too much to care for the locals and the hard floor had not done much for the recurring problems I have with my back.
Upon reaching my bungalow I collapsed face-down on my bed and slept uninterrupted for another good seven hours. I must have turned the television on before I passed out, for it was staring at me, bright-faced and obnoxious, telling me of current geo-political matters the world nations had been discussing, not that politics interested most people; not since they made it so the lower-class had to earn voting rights through intensive government screening. I don’t think I’ve voted in eight years.
Like some sort of delayed magic, my head burnt out the moment I turned off the screen. Searing pain at the back of my eyes flared into every inch of my consciousness and forced me to the kitchen to find some painkillers.
I spent the next three hours underwater in total darkness with nothing but the sound of my breath escaping a snorkel and the drops of water from the taps hanging over my head to keep me entertained; still, I find this the best possible cure for a headache, nothing in the world is more relaxing to me.
I didn’t show up for a couple of days after this, mostly owed to the fact that my hangover seemed to last about thirty-six hours and I couldn’t seem to motivate myself to walk across the wasteland that was the lower city district without my entire wits about me; least of all risk not being fully alert to anyone taking an interest in me or treating me with suspicion this close to the deadline day.
The day was approaching hard and fast, we’d spent our time organising everything to the point of near perfection, because even with as much time spent planning something as we had, when the scale is a large portion of the east-coast of the country, there’s bound to be something that doesn’t go to plan. Usually a minor unforeseen setback or odd circumstance, though we only had to hit about fifty percent efficiency to accomplish our objective. We would finally be able to see our goal come to life. Hopefully as flawless as possible.
All of our equipment was in place, all of the pre-requisites achieved and all of the necessary people had been notified a la Johnson and Marie. The final meeting came about on the Tuesday before the go-ahead would be given.

Epilogue

I arrived at the final meeting almost in awe, the door shut behind me, falling into its misshapen frame for the last time before we left here without any reason to return. The mood inside the room was unexpectedly sombre, Johnson and Marie waited patiently on the sofa with glasses of water and what little equipment we needed laid out across the coffee table.
I took a last look around the place before joining them, such an empty and uninspired old bungalow in the middle of a desolate area of the city. How could this place possibly have birthed what was about to occur? The cracked enamel face of the clock stared back at me with unflinching fingers; the mould growing in one of the corners of the ceiling spreading like some black infection towards the centre of the room, this place was trash.
We had spent so many months planning this, it had become difficult to grasp what date it actually was when me and Johnson first met each other, and now we were about to see each other for the last time. Whether he and Marie had taken up such an agreement was not my business, though I imagine being family they’d be able to comfortably deal with seeing each other on occasion - without anything being suspicious.
We talked for a couple of hours, until around 8 A.M, then we made a last run through of the plans, shared a bottle of wine we’d bought several months back in preparation for this day, and bid each other a fond farewell, for only three hours from now, all hell would break loose. Not a single one of us wanted to be around when it did.
Alas I cannot continue our story past this point, as I may reveal too much, and endanger my life, their lives, or the outcome of our design; however, you are free to draw whatever conclusions you deem necessary to fill in the blanks. After all, it’s only a matter of hours before what we do becomes public knowledge anyway, past that point; I’m of no more use to you than anybody else in the world.
Perhaps in the next life. – Henry