Lammele Dama kept offices in Kathmandu, Nepal; Paris, France and Archer City, Texas. Though not equidistant, with a northern latitude valence - at 81, Lammele was at peace with his world of minor importance. He had taken the long view when young, content with intermittent amusement that had only grown in complexity, consistency and sheen. The practice of Law, however seedy and maligned of late,
for Lammele retained more than a veneer of rightness from its origins - this was the grain to which he hewed for the arc of his career. Mr. Dama thrived on the chatter from his diffuse 'intelligence' sources, and from where he'd settle in his seat of 'passing time' to peruse news with the calm detached curiosity, of the aged, and search for existential nexus through a variety of loci. When the distinctive ring of his working relic beckoned, Lammele put down his 2nd double-Whiskey Sour and 1st Cohiba Short to answer the landline; “Yes?” he asked leaning into the phone as though that would help to better hear.
The crackled transmission meant his modem had been activated and a download had commenced. The trappings of antiquated technology, as Lammele practiced them would be the equivalent of fastening a Dodge Dart frame to a Lamborghini chassis - "a sleeper". The quiet gong chimed, and Lammele went to his console to check the file - the demand for an encryption code always meant fun - though sapped by the 'hated password'. The subject line simply read “Archdai Tryump - phone dump · 20042027.” Lammele was more than familiar with that nefarious character, and had no qualms about accessing his phone files - tit for tat. His cellular phone chimed, the most secure channel of his far flung interests with no more than a half dozen people having access to the constantly shifting number. “Hello,” he waited.
“Hello Mr. Dama, my name is Leslei Coerktern; I’m an operative for Mordecaise Liszt who gave me this number as well as your landline. I transmitted the file you received minutes ago. Mordecaise asked me to call you directly to provide context for its contents.”
“Yes Leslei, I know of you; thank you for following up. What should I know about the contents, including the circumstances for how they came into your possession; please be as honest and complete as possible.” Lammele flicked a switch on his console encrypting everything that followed:
Lammele Dama was a very young man in 1969 as the liberation of women was gaining traction, so he marveled at the bold ingenuity of Ms. Coerktern, not just for securing important intelligence, but also the subtlety with which she covered her tracks - from personal experience with his lordship’s amoral sexual history · Leslei’s story fostered an avuncular concern, and collegial respect. “Darlin’ child, you hoodwinked a lecherous fox, but you may have incurred the wrath of a sociopath from the peerage - always a delicate prospect. .. ”Lammele Dama was too old to insist on being understood and waited patiently while Leslei processed what would be understood by all parties concerned, consciously, or unconsciously. “. .. If I may suggest, it might be safest for you to wait on his lordship to make the next move. He has no way to know whether his data was compromised or whether you are anything more than a sophisticate sampling all that partial-pandemic-providence has to offer. It may have been Machiavelli who first said, “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. I don’t know, but that idea may useful to you.” Lammele knew that by advocating this course, he was jeopardizing a young woman’s life, “it could also be deadly.”
Leslei had had trysts of the May/December kind, and though she preferred the rutting stag to any long-on-the-tooth stallion she’d ever met, her multifaceted libido simply enjoyed all aspects of procreation, especially the more creative aspects - a not uncommon reaction to the massive death that had been spasmodically rippling across the surface of the planet since early 2020. “Mr. Lama, you are very kind and wise. I have only a cursory understanding of the file that I sent and deleted, but from a forensic standpoint what I saw suggests the lordship and myself are nosing the same path; assuming that there is a covert cache backed by gold bouillon many times the size of today’s world economy and your deceased clients - the Schmuck brothers were somehow at the center. What would you ask of me, in addition to holding his lordship’s dick in limbo?”
Their telephonic link broke and each looked into their handset for an answer; the same as they had done countless times since the telecommunication multinational’s opted to leave vacant Covid deaths as open channels. Lammele and Leslei, were each thinking about the other - a brand new relationship less than !/2 hour old, yet tender concern for a stranger better described the break than any fleeting frustration about money, betrayal or fear · or any other aspect of their peculiar work - what a weird world the planet had become.
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Mordecaise considered himself a student of the fuck, but after 3 days in the company of Carina Abejas on the slopes of Monte Alban, he began to see how little he knew about the carnal arts. He was semi-sober, sapped and mindful - direct results of sexual saturation. Comandante’s ayudantez had taken posts on both sides of the ridge line into and out of Buena Vista and seemed content to no more than menace. The signal strength in the Spanish enclave prevented anything but local cellular contact and internet only sporadically available. There was no point, in Mordecaise’ mind, using the tapped telephonic 'microphone', so steamed in the compound’s temezcal; tippling the ageless miracles of mezcal while he and the Sra fucked until he nearly felt human for a youngster pushing 60 - life was good and 'Mordecaise' the chamaco decided to have some sport.
At sunup, Mordecaise stepped out the small iron door within the compound's large porton; doffing his shiny pate of an apparently undercover half of the 'monolithic' airport team from his arrival; this half was unobtrusively consulting his map, perhaps searching for the other half who ought to be easy enough to find if suited in similar incongruous evening attire for the dusty backroads of Buena Vista Oaxaca; getting no reponse, Mordecaise began his morning saunter away from the blazing sunrise toward a fried egg sandwich served in the local bodega.
After which his lumbering tail maybe expecting his turn at the feed bag was forced to shift gears when Mordecaise reversed his routine heading West away from the rising sun. The matching bookend hadn't been notified and was in the process of concealing himself as much as a flustered 150 kg male in evening clothes on a rural road in Oaxaca Mexico could just when it seemed an inevitable collision from subterfuge was to occur; the lanky hirsute bearded balding gringo bolted off the track into bushes emerging tucking himself akimbo onto an impossible slight mountain bike at an as equally unlikely velocity eastward past two startled figures as dust settled and their languid morning of of easy duty vanished into the very likely wrath of their superior.
They trudged eastward hoping to pick up the gringo cum conejo's trail until infernal impossibility repeated and the desgarbado pendejo whizzed passed them in a moto heading back down the hill westward. Giving the two no option but to reverse course for what seemed an eternity when Mordecaise pulled up in a taxi and offered them a ride, popsicles and a bill for the commandante's signature for "Personal Trainer" 'services rendered" in the amount of $500MXN x 2, just as the taxi pulled to a halt in front of the same porton Mordecaise had exited a short 2 1/2 hours earlier.
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Angela rose to a sun of portent - unclear what she distinguished in the hazy morning light; misery or joy · she slipped sandals on for a short walk to a sandy stretch of the bay and her morning run. Guildern was thigh-slumped over the long pillow, spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth onto the sheet from focused sleep; the rising sun burst over the ocean surface, nearly with her first stride onto the low tide shoreline of a loving run. She no longer carried syncopation devices and within a few paces and as many breaths, Angela was in the “zone,” the only distraction being broken glass or hypodermics syringes discarded by the pathos of a dying planet; barefoot running had its risks, little different than taking a metro cab before midnight on a Saturday night anywhere on the planet; quarantine; a much diminished population skewed the odds in algorithmic fashion blunting reaction formation; hysterical substance induced escapade and/or nihilistic resignation.
She rounded the last mounded curve before the tide turned and began to run back against the rising tide; she saw a leathered shoulder flit around a pine trunk, malignantly indifferent to notice. She stopped, gazing slowly around the grove in front of her; pulled on her water bottle and joined her lithe frame back to a running cadence.
Instantly, “fight or flight” informed her pace and she flew past the startled figure of Tito holding a knife directly into a semi-circular corral of malicious expressions intent on stopping her. A confine of Lilliputians - with a gate closing off Angela’s exit until she paused, stalled from flight on an uphill drift encircled by grins of vile leering ice.
Barefoot with running clothes, possessing nothing more than the dopamine of a half hour run: Angela calmed her breathing and assessed her assailants and the terrain they’d chosen for their mission of mayhem - clarity can be our friend in the most unexpected moments. The narrow sandpit was littered with bat-size branches and solid fist-size knobs of karst. Angela had been blessed with a multiethnic upbringing which included adults teaching stick-ball to clusters of poor children in the dense confused demographics within which she had grown; ipso facto, as though transported into an agile fearless girl-child in the mean streets of Tarzana, North of the Ventura Blvd of her youth - Angela, eyes to her feet, spied a suitable faggot, hefted it around the rotation of her wrists and turning to Tito with her faggot and a knob of karst which she had palmed then tossed lightly into the air and THWACKED the projectile into the solar plexus of the thug at Tito’s right; pivoting 180 degrees capoeira style she bobbed on the balls of her feet and through the furthest reach of her back heel launched a rock into the groin of the fool at her back.
After another low sweeping pirouette, she rose to display 3 more stones to Tito and his gang in her upraised palm; then thwacked a 3rd projectile hitting dead-center the heart of the man standing to Tito’s left. Holding two more stones high in her hand, Angela rotated the bat-faggot into an upright position at the base of her spine and waited.
In the next instant, there was a spinning whoosh - a fat rat fell from the overhead branches with a thud to the ground between Angela and Tito, followed by the gentle patter of an aged barefoot Indian woman and her loaded sling; Looking neither left, right or backward; she bent over lifting her prey by its tail and glided from the dappled grove and its stunned visitors.
A quorum of eco-tourists next arrived at an adjacent lot to the sand spit in an electric cart while its loudspeaker explained the local flora and fauna to Peruvian tourists - a lecture Angela joined quietly in a back seat, minus her club, clutching the last knob from her pickup game of “stickball does thug” as it was wheeled back onto the trails of coastal Uruguay.
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Angela arrived late back to the “Croc” and immediately folded herself into Guildern’s open concern; slowly recounting her misadventure as openly as she could feeling her mind open to the evil she’d just evaded, but powerful against its corrosive residue - a practice she and Pasqual had learned from Perma Cauldron to purge toxic events by embracing them fully while fresh in the psyche. Before she could finish, Guildern had loaded three clips and a round in the chamber of his vintage Colt 1911 from under the bar. Angela knew from a young age the arc of violence and understood both his fury and its futility. She determined the only path out would be to rein reason back into their lives - “breathe some more, I am unharmed and wish with all my heart for you to remain the same · do you understand what I am saying to you?”
Guildern stood rooted in murderous reproach toward an offense to his aging power to protect; resisting as much as she was imploring - breathing, music and a setting sun altered the course of the day · the resolve of the "Crone" in Angela murmured peaceful incantations, while the “Venceramos Brigade” bolstered the vibe without knowing why it was so important. “One Love, No Woman No Cry, Rise Up” wafted through the small Cantina and calm was pulled through the throat of mayhem helping a planet starving for peace. At Guildern’s behest, Angela arranged a conference call between Mordecaise, Pasqual, Leslei and Lammele Dama on a platform which rendered the entire conversation invulnerable to surveillance and non-existent after disconnection, but which rendered much clarity to challenging developments that had grown increasingly dangerous to all concerned.
“Thank you for joining me here; we need to hold hands if we are to steer this beast to port.” Lammele greeted each and asked for frank discussion and open speculation from each - however farfetched:
Mordecaise leaned into the phone and queried “what the fuck is going on” not really expecting an answer. He knew of the assault on Angela from txt msgs, as had everyone on line, and they about the continuing challenges from official sources surrounding the disappearance of Domhall Schmuck’s corpse. “Carina Abejas, as near as I can figure, loved Domhall as well as she had each of her previous 5 husbands, and made no claim upon his intestate assets. I am currently liaising with the local constabulary about the two operatives who framed me for smuggling money, but the Comandante is extremely tight about what he has learned. There is nothing gained pressing jurisdiction and everything gained from patience and dollops of good humor. Sra Abejas, is hooked-up at police headquarters; amiga de Guildern's abogada Sra Luz de Ley tiene es mejor usada tracking Domhall’s “paperless” corpse to Montevideo than ruffling mas plumas del Policia Oaxaqueno.
“Please be careful boss,” Pasqual ventured into the call. “I may have been trailed since my departure to Hoi An; whoever they are seem to favor pairs and are not overtly covert about their profile, and the local population isn't particularly supportive of any strangers in their midst. Reynaldo had a low profile but visible; in frequent transit between his home and Hue; communicating with the root pagoda of Từ Hiếu and the Bhikkhu, Thich Tok Longh. My uncle Jose Ortega, was MIA during the Tết offensive of 1968, he had also been in contact with the Từ Hiếu pagoda concerning registering with the U.S. Government as a conscientious objector just prior to the offensive. I don’t know if this coincidence will inform our interest about Reynaldo Schmuck’s close relationship to the pagoda. I will be traveling shortly to Hue to look further. PLEASE, We need to understand if Angela and Guildern figure in this case, they may be danger as a direct result of our collective efforts.”
Leslei took her cue and described the ongoing curiosity about Demsford Schmuck’s habitation in Aix-en-Provence and the fervent interest a peer of the realm, Archdai Tryump, has in the property Demsford had leased for 10 years, but which is now in her name; a candid accounting of how she came to possess a “mirror” the peer’s smart phone. She explained how during his visit he had seemed too familiar with the layout of the residence for never having gained entrance. Leslei then recounted the “tails” during her journey to France. In a very quiet way, Lammele interrupted asking if there was any indication that the peer was aware his phone had been compromised; Leslei returned a fact; “He is apparently secure enough to request more rendezvous; an understandable expectation given the apparently happy ending to our last encounter.”
A hush fell over the call as the three men silently “Groked” the courage she had demonstrated in service of their common objective.
Lammele then asked if any had questions for anyother; he advised close cooperation as much as possible within a necessary communication blackout, and to wait for instructions from Guildern or Angela about when to confer next; he then pulled the rug out.
“We have apparently been presented an abandoned nest egg of unimaginable scope; so well hidden by unscrupulous cowardice and greed that when those cognizant of its existence perished due to pandemic complications; all that was left of a vast conspiracy to hoard wealth on a scale never before conceived, remains an obscure thread somehow discovered happenstance by the Schmuck brothers. If their deaths can be attributed to that discovery none of us are safe; however, if as I suspect, our investigations are the only light yet shed on this cabal, then we are in a unique position to finance the perpetuation of our species - nothing short of that will gain my allegiance, or engage my assistance ·
“Take some time to evaluate the impact to your lives about what I have said. Nothing will move forward until we six are in complete agreement.”
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Reiman Curzewel drove his vintage M998 Humvee up the ramp out from his bunker in a former underground wine cellar outside of Healdsburg, CA. He’d bought the high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle while Chief Scientist at Googol Inc., and had it outfitted as an escape pod for events such as the 1st death wave of the pandemic and its subsequent variants, which by 2023 had killed over one million Americans and rent the warp and woof of a collapsing empire without the singularity that this “prescient” futurist decried was needed. Never mind that his rapacious greed and algorithms resulted in a “downgrading” of a natural inclination of the species to seek stasis, and harmony but instead had been overwhelmed by the technical virtuosity of a gaggle of “eggheads,” - encouraged, enabled and commanded to “move fast and break things.”
Reiman was anything but a monster: educated, sensitive and ‘tuned in,’ circumstances simply swamped the homilies he’d been raised with and overturned the culture in which he’d been born to believe; nor could, or would he ever acknowledge a point when the manifesto to which he’d been devoted and to which bore his signature ever morphed from “do no evil,” to its Faustian bargain “do know evil;” yet there he was driving South on the 101 in a military grade vehicle capable of surviving a nuclear blast and maintaining uplink capacity to any satellite-to-T1 connectivity surviving best-guess holocaust conditions. His mission, purely venal; his wife and family died between the outbreak and the 2nd death wave, it’s lethal curve now flattening after 6 months of lockdown - he was alive, similar enclaves within +/- 18 miles from his cocoon had sustained 81% fatalities. He wasn’t running for his life, but searching for the “Holy Grail” of Digital Capitalism - a mythological glitch from Y2k which resulted in a reputed file containing access to many times the value of the world’s ‘economy’ in a single http:// location hiding in plain sight.
It was perfectly natural to call Zchnarkzy Marskburgh knowing that neither knew more than the other, but between them they might be able raise a clue.
“Hello Zchnark, am on the 101 headed South - any clues yet ? ” · Reiman had sold 3 businesses by the time Zchnarksky Marksburgh had dropped out of university with $3.5 billion USD in his pocket from the IPO of “Face Race,” an application for promoting “professional notoriety” when internet traffic was doubling every 6 months; each had a wary respect for the other with little interest about anything concerning the other, except for any advantage that could be taken.
Listening in on this conversation, Faik Bezos knew the “clues” Reiman was pumping Zchnarksky for. The three rose through bursting bubbles out of the hypertext cauldron long before Apple fought Xerox for the right to own the “feel” of a computer screen.
Faik Besos had been brokering “Toxic Mortgages” out of his Long Island basement when he got saddled with an upside down ‘merican institution. In a cash-lean startup fit of pique, he decided to leverage his newly acquired long-on-the-tooth world famous brandname “Publisher’s Clearing House” into the rapidly expanding World Wide Web by drop shipping revistas sensuales de segunda mano to branches of "PCH" in the 12 largest Mexican Cities in the Western Hemisphere, Los Angeles, CA being the 2nd largest.
What rankled the still waters of these three was that someone had beaten them at their own game and allegedly accumulated many times their combined wealth located in an apocryphal digital file that their own COOs could not prove nor disprove.
(˚ ㄥ _˚)
3 March 2021
http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://Stoanartst.blogspot.com
prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
∞
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