Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 52 (Eddie Works Out the Pieces)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 52 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index

August 4, 2008

Eddie Manchester wasn’t a resourceful person, but he was a senior-level employee with one of the world’s largest corporations, so he could at least use his position to dig a little deeper.

Being more emotional than thoughtful, he left Kite sitting in the coffee shop, and returned to his office, his mind trying to process what he had been told. Murder? The OMNINet? It was run by people who claimed that they were ‘good Christians’. They wouldn’t harm anyone, would they?

As soon as he got back to work, he checked his calendar and cancelled any meetings he had. Given his level at the company, his main excuse was that he was double-booked and he blamed his executive assistant with every apologetic call. The occasional derogatory comment came up and for a brief moment, he enjoyed poking fun at a girl that actually worked very hard for him. Continue reading →

Climate Change: Time to Move Beyond Lowest Common Denominator

Our leaders (at least those from Canada, the US and Japan) all argue at the G8 Summit that they will not push for major changes to any guidelines or reductions in C02 emissions. They argue that they will not take such action until countries like India and China take action as well.

Since when have we evolved or improved our general state of development as a species when we reduced ourselves to the lowest common denominator?

Since when do we say, "everyone is losing, so I’m going to lose as well"? Think of the Olympics. Someone’s just about to pull ahead to win the 100m dash and all of a sudden, everyone stops dead in their tracks, horrified by the prospect of success. "I don’t want the stress of winning a gold medal," they’ll say. "I’d much rather kick back in 10th place, because I don’t want to make my other friends feel bad."

What a crock!

Demand more from your leaders. Sign this petition:

https://secure.avaaz.org/act/index.php?r=act

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 51 (Kite Enlists Eddie)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 51 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index

“We have to talk,” was all Kite could bring himself to say on the phone. He was still feeling ill from the news about Pigeon. It seemed odd to him that Diana had so much information about what should have been a clandestine OMNINet operation, if they were involved, but he didn’t dwell on those options for long. He convinced himself that someone like her would hire several people to get pieces of information, leaving her to put them together. It actually protected people like Kite because he would never have to do too much or put himself in too much of a position of risk.

“Carl? What’s up buddy?” Eddie asked. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 50 (Kite’s Recording of Garamond)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 50 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index

Kite had always imagined that the voice of the end of the world would be the rough and torn sound of Shane McGowan of the Pogues, singing about recklessness and distracting us from the true perils that surrounded us.

Instead, it was Griffith Garamond. His voice was smooth. Calm. Harmonious and void of tension. When he spoke, he made people around him feel like they were small and needy. When he paused, people waited for more, wanting more from this great figure. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 49 (Kite Reports Back)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 49 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index

“All right lads,” Kite said as he settled back into the room that he was renting with Hummus and Chaos. “The shit, as they say, has hit the fan.”

“You know … that expression has always created such a foul image for me. Why would someone be throwing feces against a moving turbine and then equate that action to getting serious?” Hummus asked honestly.

“Good point,” Kite answered, getting momentarily distracted by Hummus’ curiousity. “So … what do we say then that’s not an over-used cliché that’s also to your liking?” Kite asked sarcastically. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 48 (Big Meeting, Big Plans)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 48 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

“What you are looking at, gentlemen,” Garamond stated, “is information on a particular form of technology that Nikola Tesla developed shortly before he died in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in 1943, just down the block from where we are now.”

“One of the last major projects that he was working on involved a theoretical technology known as ‘Scalar Movements’. The public has never seen these documents or what we’ve done with them because they were all confiscated by the FBI shortly after he died. They used ‘national security’ as an excuse and for once, they were right. If this technology fell into the wrong hands, it would have been disastrous for this great country of ours.” Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 47 (Kite Infiltrates the OMNINet Part II)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 45 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index

When you enter an office building on a Saturday afternoon, the first thing you think is that you must have missed the alarm bell. Acres of cubicles are deserted, stripped of their organic inhabitants, now a quiet and still refuge for sleeping computers (few of which are turned off on Friday afternoon), pictures of families and friend and smelly work shoes, tucked under the retractable keyboard.

It was the pictures that always struck Kite. These were icons of hope, images of desire and sometimes visual tombstones and reminders for all office employees that for a few brief moments each week, these people weren’t stuck in a cubicle breathing in the dust of hundreds of other clock-punchers and drones. Or that they weren’t breathing in the chemically unstable and highly toxic fumes of the poorly made chairs, desks and rugs, all mass produced with cost-efficiencies in mind, and not the health of the end users. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 46 (OMNINet’s Big Meeting)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 46 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

August 2, 2008

A group of twenty of the finest industrialists and businessmen of various ages and sizes sat around a large, wood and steel oblong table that would have appeared large had it not been for the fact that it was placed in the middle of a massive meeting room that overlooked Central Park in New York.

These men – and they were all men – were the leaders of the different business entities of the OMNINet. All were white, all were well-polished, and all were exceptionally prepared for this important meeting that took place every year at the same time in the same location.

This was an office space that would make a Chinese Emperor, French Monarch or even Catholic Pope blush. The walls were not a single material, but a carved array of the world’s most exotic woods and metals. Depictions of Christendom’s greatest events were depicted on these walls, but masked so that lay-people wouldn’t be thrown off by the overtly religious tone. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 45 (Kite Infiltrates the OMNINet)

9/11 really fucked things up for Kite. Well, it fucked things up for a lot of people – 400-odd bystanders locked up in Guantanamo, UN Peacekeeping, the several thousand people that went into work thinking everything was OK in their world, anti-war activists, and so on – but for Kite, 9/11 drastically altered the way he had to do business.

Getting into buildings, be they corporate, government or any other structure that housed information that Kite was hired to retrieve, was a cakewalk a few years ago compared to the environment today. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 44 (China News – The Dragon is Buying)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 44 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

HEADLINE: THE DRAGON IS BUYING … AND ITS ATM IS AMERICA

DATE: June 2008

SOURCE: International News Corporation (INC)

NEWS STORY – China’s Investment Corporation, the privately-held, state-run enterprise that manages the currency reserves of the Chinese government, now has cash reserves in excess of $US 1.7 trillion.

If you’re familiar with counting numbers that big, consider this: if you go by market capitalization, the value of a company based on its stock performance, $1.7 trillion is enough to buy most of the Top Ten companies in the United States outright .

Continue reading →

Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Monthly Archives: July 2008