Excited Delirium

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

Category Archives: Univists

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 53 (Greyrock – Bringing it Home)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 53 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 5, 2008

In Washington, a surprisingly large number of senior government officials have been working on a strict privatization plan for decades. Over the past 50 years, key players have been passionate about the need to integrate the private sector with government spending. 9/11 and the Iraq war became major jumping points for putting these plans into action.

The Tri-X IPO was the most recent shining example of the level of influence that this new economy held over the rest of America. Companies that produced more bodies than revenue were being heralded as the future of the United States and they were being rewarded for it. Everyone wanted to be a part of these ‘rising stars’, from pension managers right down to Joe-six-pack who saw this kind of investment as a great way to ‘support the troops’. Continue reading →

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 →

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 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 43 (OMNINet – Tri-X IPO)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 43 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 .

“It’s not every day that someone just hands you $100 billion in a day,” boasted Garamond.

“No sir,” Hadlock drooled. “This is indeed a very rare day. Especially given today’s economic climate," he added, referring to the general state of financial and economci malaise in the US.

Garamond ignored Hadlock’s last comment and continued: “I remember back in the early dot-com days – well, even closer to the end – we were raising billions with each offer, but this time it’s very, very different.”

“How so, sir?”

“This time we’re getting one-hundred percent of the take and we don’t have to share anything with these oafish little programmers that think they’re God’s gift to the digital world.” Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 42 (Greyrock: Afghan Mission)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 42 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 .

“I’ll remind you of your oath of confidence before we have this discussion,” Velasquez stated factually.

Instantly and without pause, Daniels responded “My soul is yours,” the standard statement that all Greyrock employees rehearsed and promised to their peers and commanders when reminded of their commitments. It was a blanket statement that was meant to remind all employees of their excruciating indoctrination process and what would happen if they disobeyed orders.

“We’re taking our model to the States,” Max Velasquez said, as Len Daniels entered his office. The office was a make-shift centre that Velasquez, an ex-Major from the Marines, used when he was in Kandahar. He hated it because it was nothing like his posh office complex in Virginia, but sometimes a few sacrifices had to made in the interest of making money. Continue reading →

Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 41 (Garamond and his marvelous house)

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 41 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 .

“I worry some times, because it makes me feel like a Sybarite,” Garamond hollered.

“Excuse me sir … a what?” asked Hadlock, as they hurried off the landing platform. He was having a little trouble hearing, having just leaped from his transportation, a freshly purchased executive-style Sikorsky S76.

“Sybaris was a village in ancient Greece,” Garamond yelled, “where the inhabitants were said to have lived in grand luxury. They were much more decadent than the Babylonians or even the Gamorrans.”

“Oh, OK. Those Sybarites,” Hadlock said, trying to keep his mocking to a minimum. “I fully understand now, sir” Continue reading →