What follows is the transcript of a meeting held last fall that assembled the nation’s top policy-makers to discuss America’s security future. The names and nomenclature have been changed and some of the actual details of the techniques and methodologies of monitoring and mass-arrest have been intentionally altered, so as not to risk our source within the Department of Homeland Security. The extent or degree of the monitoring and real-time knowledge of the two NSA supercomputers is likely far greater than is averred to by the participants in the meeting.

— The editors

(OPENING CREDITS SCROLL OVER GREAT SEAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY) 

DHS POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

A 9/29 FORUM

WITH

DR MELDRAKE

SECURITY CHAIR HIMMELMAN

SENATOR CORLISS

REPRESENTATIVE QUARLS

ADMIRAL FAISAL

COLONEL GENERAL LEBYADKIN

ATTORNEY GENERAL CLYDESDALE 

(VIDEO SNAPS ON, IN PROGRESS)

DR MELDRAKE

… It’s an easily crunchable number. Real-time tracking all 317 million possible targets is well within the current capabilities, a “mere” 25 million even more so. Our successful and continuing ammunition build starting in 2011 affords us a 1000-round margin, or, as we refer to it, 1000-rounds per “Frame” (our term of art, KpF, or roughly the expenditure, per enemy WIA or KIA during World War Two) of the initially-selected 25 mega.

SENATOR CORLISS

“Frames”; “Mega,” Doctor Meldrake? Could you elaborate on these terms?

DR MELDRAKE

Perhaps you could field that question, Madame Chair?

SECURITY CHAIR HIMMELMAN

It’s a “Frame of Reference,” reference, if you follow. And Mega, millions, of course. Given the masses of intersecting per-individual target input vectors, or what you might once have called “freedom of action” is, at this point, a now reasonably calculable series of possibility inputs. This “framing” device allows us to foresee, with 95% accuracy, the actions of our subject, out to three and a half days into the future. The “Analog” analogy would be, perhaps, to an extended, future-facing wind-tunnel test. Hence, “Frames.”

SENATOR CORLISS

Whew. That’s a head-scratcher.

HIMMELMAN

Yes. Difficult for us to visualize, but with the help of Utah Prognosticator, we can do not only that, but also substantially alter the Frame’s trajectory via our inputs within the SOCSPHERE, the “Social Sphere” to shape an effective… uh… conclusion.

MELDRAKE

Needless to say, we haven’t yet allowed this level of prognostic informatics to fall into the hands of your friendly “Eyewitness News” weatherman! Or whisper-thin weatherwoman.

SOME AWKWARD LAUGHTER AROUND THE TABLE

CORLISS

Not that somewhere-like Mount Weather, anyone?–a far more powerful computer isn’t fashioning some unusual weather!

APPRECIATIVE, KNOWING LAUGHTER AROUND THE TABLE

ADMIRAL FAISAL

Madame Chair, who are these so-called “Frames”?

HIMMELMAN

The overall characterization of these Frames is best summed up in Zwiebulin’s and Bőšć’s research (which is in the binder in front of you and may not be taken from this room). In general, each Frame is alarmed by the expanding remit of the security apparatus. They are, for some reason, afraid of the government’s security apparatus. We employ several still-evolving beta-test algorithmic chains from the MIT Media Research Project for cross-sectioning what we refer to as Individual Resistance Likelihoods, or IRLs. Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising discovery is that so-called Left Wing and notional Right Wing will be equally well-represented in the initial selection, owing to the similarity in mindset of both, and the uniform strength of their similar self-interest-slash-allegiance levels.

CORLISS

Can you provide a little more on how you project each Frame?

HIMMELMAN

Individual Frame status is constantly updated, and possible intercept solutions for the 25 million are continuously wargamed here at the Utah Facility. Here we are greatly helped by realtime RF cellphone tracking. Any of the remaining and nearly infinitesimal “airgaps” in cellphone coverage quite usually come under the broad background scrutiny of the ambient Panopticon of indigenous and user-carried imaging systems. Essentially, an Argus of warning eyes across the spectrum from the subaudible to radio frequencies to infrared to backscattered X-rays, to gravity aberrations and neutrino bending and even all the way to Kirlian Aura Imaging, Theta and Alpha brainwaves and a host of other bio- and psycho-metrics. Thus, everything is pretty much visible in real time, up to and including the contents of the Frame’s lunch and the Thomas Paine he may have read on the train. In the cases of the internet trail of the known yet isolated “Preppers,” the Utah Prognosticator also utilizes our human psi-gatherer network and Remote Viewers for more tendencies and predictions up to and including our Prognostic Smellers, the Foresite System and, of course, Tamarind Alpha.

CORLISS

The robot dogs.

HIMMELMAN

And the unmanned birds and bees, Senator.

APPRECIATIVE LAUGHTER

HIMMELMAN

(CONTINUING)

A note on the constant upgrading and implementation of the intercept solutions. Any intercept solution is calculated to occur at a time and place to so that the “intervention” on the Frame produces minimal collateral damage or injury or attendant attention by witnesses or media exposure. All is monitored by Panopticon, such that any Frame Intercept Solution, by its very “dynamic” nature, will witness, from many funhouse angles, clear violations of law and code by members of the involved access team by the Urban Exigency Force. They are ever bending the rules.

CORLISS

So, essentially, you co-opt law-enforcement, as well?

HIMMELMAN

We prefer to conceive of it as “Watertightness.”

CORLISS

No leaks. I see.

HIMMELMAN

Thus. In its widened interdiction mandate, UEF Access Teams are always tasked with finding the least attention-getting and most innocuous-seeming methodologies to effect the pickup or terminal mission.

PAUSE IN CONVERSATION

HIMMELMAN

It’s really something when you conceive of it in its entirety. It is a thing of four-dimensional beauty, if such a thing is conceivable. The ubiquity and interconnectedness of personalized RF transponders (the cell phones) yields important secondary benefits, such as rich harvests of personally leverageable contacts whom we can pressure to help us impart just enough impetus to set the Frame into the “final sequence” of our previously modeled, set-up action that will place him or her firmly in the net and be the Frame’s last “free” (or “unaccompanied” act. Thus, we can usually achieve perfect surprise and a minimum IRL.

MELDRAKE

The alternative always open to us is to intervene even more forcefully, and here we refer you to the recent demise of such “Web Journalists” as Andrew Breitbart “heart attack” on the eve of a reportedly “huge” disclosure about the president, or Michael Hastings in the fiery car accident, and, farther in the past, the loss of Pat Tillman. But that ups the IRL and collateral likelihoods. Of course, our friends on the other side can take credit for the earlier operations against Aleksandr Litvinenko, and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. Thank you, General Lebyadkin.

THE RUSSIAN, LEBYADKIN, SHOWS NO REACTION

HIMMELMAN

All were dealt with in conceptually (if not operationally) the same “Wet” manner as has worked for the Founders of the Cheka since the time of… Ivan the Fourth, General?

GENERAL LEBYADKIN

You mean the Oprichniki. We still missed Tito, though.

LAUGHTER

CORLISS

Well, you knocked Trotsky out of the park!

MORE LAUGHTER, THE RUSSIAN ONLY JOINS IN AFTER THE SENATOR MAKES A BATTING GESTURE AND NOISE TO EXPLAIN HIS REMARK

GENERAL LEBYADKIN’

Ah! Beisball.

MELDRAKE

All we await is final agreement on timetables to be reached and actions coordinated with law enforcement, NATO, our new Friends to the East (F2E), the NovKomOkhrana (the FSB leadership Cadre) and the US military (the entirety of the US service component will be sworn into temporary Coast Guard duty to sidestep any posse comitatus objections).

HIMMELMAN

Military modeling for such exigencies is closely coordinated with the Utah Prognosticator and its cousin, Deep One, located in Wyoming, for maximal redundancy. The most successful scenarios launch with an initial intervention wave of those individuals and families the Utah Prognosticator categorizes as “Salient”, i.e., directly jeopardizing those of us in the layered enforcement professions. These threats can come from hard-core survivalists, preparedness fanatics, gun collectors and dealers, Tea Partiers, religious people, Constitutional scholars, jurists, legislators, military “Oath Keepers” and a potentially much wider pool of candidates for blackmail.

REPRESENTATIVE QUARLS

Incredible. (TAKES OUT CELLPHONE) We are wearing our target designators in active mode. Wearing crosshairs, in some cases, directly over our hearts. I pledge allegiance…

LAUGHTER

HIMMELMAN

Once Congress legalizes what has been our free run over planetary information records, our very much on-going security task can come out more in the open as part of an overall, anonymous web security effort. Here, perhaps, one of our pre-packaged “Kickoff Casualty Event” destruction options along the lines of the Boston Marathon Bombing, raised to the fourth or fifth power. Such an exponential increase of effects is necessitated to enable the public horror that will allow this final erosion of antiquated personal protections. Locking the cage, as it were.

CORLISS

Be nice. Cages keep the cats out.

MELDRAKE

But not always out of reach. Spin a few crackpot stories and they draw closer to the edge… As to the on-going assimilation and manufacture of incriminating data against everyone, young or old, as per the dictum “Wherever the law is, crime can be found,” every US citizen is now unknowingly (or knowingly) guilty of a daily federal felony, sometimes several times a day. Thus the abundant if poisoned fruits of the tree of legislation hurriedly proffered, un-proofread and passed in the night. Certain unnoticed codicils (examples in Attachment #1, EPA Governance of All Potable Water and Waterways as State Property) in the 31,200-page Security Bill have made it, in actuality, impossible not to be in transgression of the law at any time in the United States. Utah Prognosticator and Deep One are quite literally “Of Two Minds” when it comes to apportioning data-mining resources, at least until next summer’s much-anticipated Delta 3 upgrade promising quintupled sorting powers for these two rival luminal powers. Until said upgrade is made, 85% of the modeling energies of the Utah Prognosticator are devoted to the necessities of scenario-building for real-time apprehension or to the requirements of immediate mortuary or ossuarial need. See Attachment #2 Regarding Resealable 4-person 80”x 50”x 36” Plastic Containers from Tupperware™ Ready for the Rugged Requirements of Containerization, Rail- or Over-the-Road Travel, and Disposal. Deep One stubbornly persists in its own long-term modeling civilizational and possible sociohistoric outcomes up to Year 3000. As of now, the results of these prognolinguistic tests remain undisclosed, classified at a level beyond this brief.

CORLISS

That’s something, perhaps, best left to the Deity to know?

HIMMELMAN

If I may, I’d like to play devil’s advocate, here, Senator.

AG CLYDESDALE

But I can take it, myself, Madame Chair.

GALES OF APPRECIATIVE LAUGHTER

(RECORDING CUTS OFF)