An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode One
by Leon Manna
The following story is a work of fiction.
And today, the outworn chase of money continues.
2FA. My dearest friend and my greatest enemy. One of the biggest ways of telling hackers to get lost. There's one way to get around it, which is to somehow get a copy of the victim's SIM card by tricking the carrier into giving it to you. This doesn't really work anymore. I could cut an employee a nice check to Sawtooth National Bank. They won't ask for ID there.
No.
I had weaseled my way into an email and was looking through it. Mostly nothing of interest, except for a mobile bank. I tried to reset the password and it asked me for a method of verification. Classic two-factor authentication. The only option was a partially blocked out phone number. I realized that this was going to be an obstacle. First, I switched back over to the email and deleted any recent emails from the mobile bank, to avoid tipping off the owner of the account.
So I figured instead of doing a SIM swap, I'd run a ruse on the mobile bank.
I opened the customer support section and began filling out a request to change the phone number associated with the account. It asked for a bunch of information but, thankfully for me, the person who owned this email had made a fatal mistake.
They kept their tax returns in their email in a PDF. This is a terrible, terrible decision because your entire identity is in that PDF. Almost everything needed to know about you in order to become you can be found in your tax returns. And when you keep them in your email, you run the risk of getting your identity stolen.
So I filled out the request with all of their information, and then in the description section for the support team to read, I spun up some crazy lie that involved me begging them to change the phone number to the account. I think some random comment about me just starting college and really needing the money in the account got a bit of sympathy from whoever read the request, because after I hit submit, about 30 minutes later I got an email back. It was a link to change the number associated with the account.
I clicked it and it asked for a new number. For a second I figured I was f*cked. I wasn't about to use my personal phone number. If I did, I might as well just turn myself in. So I used a Chinese SMS/VoIP number and typed it in. The website accepted the number.
Oh look at that, it worked.
On my burner phone, I opened up the money transfer app and signed in with the phone number now associated with the account. I typed the password in and the rest of what happened is none of your f*cking business.
I thought about it. I had snatched quite a bit of money with some shit I found on a tax form and some OSINT searches, all of which was obtained through a poorly secured email with insufficient use of 2FA, and I'm 100 percent sure in my mind that we can do better than this. The state of computer science, information technology, cybersecurity, and any other term you want to use must be further along than this, right?
How can somebody make a mistake like keeping documents that have their identity on it? They fell victim to the monster Venus flytrap that eats anything that comes by it. The great machine has failed them and will now make things right by refunding whatever money was taken. That's the thing about this - nobody really loses.
When the amount of money fraudulently obtained (or the value of the item) is under a certain amount, the police will not pursue it. The money will simply be refunded to whomever it got stolen from, the account will get closed, and everyone moves on. The great machine might fail you, but it will also take care of you.
I stayed awake in my apartment for a while. They couldn't have actually fucked up big enough to allow me to do this, right?
But apparently they did. And the outworn chase of money continues.
An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Two
I'm typing this with a fractured wrist in an orange cast, sitting on a small bed in a shipping container. Writing out what happened now, I'm gathering anger and resentment towards someone. I didn't know who that someone was until I got up and looked in my mirror to realize that it was me. I saw a horror movie depiction of myself, eyes bloodshot and empty, a poorly made replica of some long-gone hero who was once there. I've made a fool of myself, yet the only one who I feel embarrassed in front of is me.
A high-speed Olympic race against The Machine. I let out a bitter, half-hearted laugh as I started my motorbike and disappeared into the desert, engaging in a literal race against the machine. And why not? They won't catch me alive.
Joseph Erickson strolled confidently down the street. When he got to the entrance of Sawtooth National Bank, he flung the doors open. His pupils were dilated and he was breaking out in a cold sweat from the methoxetamine he'd been taking throughout the day.
But me? Technically, I've never stepped foot inside.
Joseph Erickson walked up to the bank teller, and asked if he could deposit some money in his business account for a corporation called SysTime Management that does not exist in real life. The office is my computer, and the rest of the corporation is nothing more than lines on sheets of paper.
"Hey! What's new with you? I'd like to uh... deposit some money! In the bank that is... my account if you will. Thank you very much." Jesus! Get a hold of yourself man!
She froze for a second to look at him, then rushed quietly into a side room. Mr. Erickson sat down at some chairs near the door, and tried to listen to the conversation. With no other workers present, an employee named Liz rushed over and sat down next to him. Before he could even process what was going on, she whispered to him, "they are calling the police."
Joe knew what was happening. He opened the mobile app on "his phone" [EVIDENCE 1 ##2165235: ENCRYPTED ANDROID SMARTPHONE] and attempted to log in to his account. It was locked. In a panic, he launched a Denial-of-Service attack on the bank's Internet for no particular reason. He then proceeded to factory reset his phone. Shoving it back in his pocket, he cursed silently. Damn you Sawtooth! Catching criminals! Stopping crimes! Doing your job!
Can I even be mad? I don't think I have that right. At the end of the day, they are just doing their job. And what the hell am I doing? Fraud? I can't even bring myself to conjure up some false poetic justification for this. They're normal hard working citizens and I'm some freak who steals people's money, a 21st century digital pickpocket in a seemingly timeless age where doing it all in person is no longer worth it or even feasible. I'm absolutely in the wrong here, I know that. But regardless, I'm not going out like this. They hadn't opened the door yet.
So Joseph got up quickly and started to walk out. And then he heard the booming voice of an employee named Khir, who was attempting to stop him at the door. That voice said, "Mr. Erickson! I heard you wanted to deposit some money. Why don't you come into my office and we can get it done." A sick smile crossed his face, a smile that didn't follow in his eyes. There was an underlying tone in his voice driven by a clear objective. They both knew that no money would actually be deposited. Joe threw a stack of papers at his face and ran.
He figured if he stayed in the bank, he had about five minutes before the police arrived. It would only take a few minutes to transmit his description to the entire PD. And with that description, it wouldn't take long to find me.
The person you see in Sawtooth has little to no resemblance at all of anyone who currently exists. It's mostly to protect my identity. Part of it is the upkeep of the very existence of Mr. Erickson, an eccentric man who's known for his wacky appearance. A man who speaks a strange Midwestern dialect, using slang words they'd never even heard of. A man who likes chemical analogs and humid subtropical climates. A man with a look in his eye you can almost understand, but never quite get there. And when you look into those eyes, all you see is an empty cavity where a sound mind should be. The final factor is the emotional bulletproof vest of living as someone else. Who am I, anyway? I couldn't tell you, and even if I could you know damn well I probably wouldn't. The answer has always been "who they think I am" and it always will be.
Have you ever seen someone wearing purple khakis and combat boots? Women's sunglasses and a button down shirt that's a completely different color scheme? But his near-schizophrenic appearance was never a good enough reason for them to turn him down. Yes, he got weird looks when he walked in, but the embarrassment was necessary.
You are who people think you are. By that rationale, you can be anyone you need to be. So this neon monster they see in the bank? It was a ruse to steer everything away from my actual self.
I can't help but realize now that in an attempt to hide my identity, I inadvertently made it easier for them to figure out something was wrong. There was never a friendly "that's just Mr. Erickson." In fact, I felt the employees knew what was going on the entire time. But maybe I knew from the start that they'd get uneasy and just didn't correctly estimate when. Oh, the mistakes I have made...
The maniac flies down State Street on a 30cc Tomos LX moped, going by the dirty town of Agua Fria at speeds no higher than 35 MPH, blasting fumes of 93 gasoline and two stroke oil out of his ass. Passing the shacks, yuccas, iguanas, and people looking for work, he senses inevitable danger. A single tear falls down his cheek, because no matter how jaded he's become, he still can see the end. It doesn't look pretty to him, and with no helmet on, he almost prayed that his brakes would fail.
[EVIDENCE 2 ##3652752: UNREGISTERED MOTORIZED BIKE]
Aryana's phone rang. It was a number she didn't recognize.
On the other end of the line, there was Leon Manna, standing alone at a payphone in the middle of Arizona. His button down shirt was gone, and his Khakis had oil stains and mud all over them leaving them a sick brown color. His sunglasses had long since fallen off into a patch of Cactus [EVIDENCE 3 ##7291622: ORANGE WOMENS SUNGLASSES]. His back was beginning to burn from the sun. His arms had been ripped apart by sand, and the constant wind almost blinded him.
"Hello?" she said shyly. She sounded nervous.
"It's me!" I shouted it into the receiver, trying to figure out what I was going to say.
"I haven't heard from you in hours, what happened?"
I paused for a second, and almost convinced myself that I was f*cked. That there was no hope, and I needed to turn myself in. To give up the fight, and just stop completely.
I intentionally didn't tell her. "I might not make it back. I'm at a payphone in La Palma. Promise me you'll visit."
"Visit where?"
"Well, they'll put me in a local jail first. Once I go to trial and inevitably lose, I'll probably spend some time in the Federal Transfer Center, until finally they put me in a federal prison. Hopefully it'll be here, in Arizona, but they might extradite me to California or Utah."
She burst out crying. I felt like I had killed someone.
"Listen, I'll swing by when this is all over. They haven't found me yet, and it was a synthetic identity."
She hung up the phone. The tone coming through the awful device sounded like a rocket being fired into my brain.
The security cameras were the biggest factor. The whole thing fell apart because the IT guys didn't change the default password for their CCTV system. I found the login page for the panel which was publicly accessible and typed the default credentials in, expecting it not to work. I saw a successful login and wondered if I was seeing things, and it was just my mind attempting to put me at ease by lying. It just didn't seem possible. Absolutely spectacular OPSEC. For all I know, someone has already defrauded Sawtooth a thousand times over. I tried to destroy their CCTV system for a while, until I figured out how to wipe everything. It wasn't really deleted though, it still existed on the drive. It was just marked as empty space to be written over by new data, because for some reason that's how deleting files works. Any forensic team could have gotten that data back.
So after more looking around, I found an SSH login for the camera system with the same password. Thank you Sawtooth! Helping me escape! Leaving flaws in your system! Having your IT department fail you! I love you to death!
$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M |
dd is a utility used to interact with hard drives. Luckily the camera system had it built in. Instead of marking the space as empty we overwrite all of /dev/sda (the drive in question) with NULL bytes from /dev/zero, so whatever was left is gone. I checked for backups, and they have failed once more by not making them. This "right out of the box" mentality is an error in too many people's thought process, leading to events like this. Go ahead, try. Find a CCTV system, and look up the default password. We all fall victim to human error at one point or another. I'm not so sure the employees ever knew how to operate the camera system. In hindsight I'm almost positive the forensic team barely missed the window to catch me before I snatched the soul of their pathetic little camera system right up.
Coincidentally, Joseph Erickson was declared missing. There were no sightings of him after that day. They spent weeks searching the desert but a body was never found. There was no way to cross over to Mexico because of the extreme heat in the Arizona-Mexico border area that would have killed him before he made it even close. Border police in Texas and California saw no sightings of a man matching his description. Some suspect he's still at large. I would disagree.
Aryana slapped me. I guess I deserved it. She didn't talk to me for two days because there had been at least four incidents like this before while she was with me. She always told me to be safe when I went out, and five times now I failed to do so. For the first time, I felt a little guilty for what I had done.
My attorney called me an extremely lucky dumbass. I deserved that too. He explained that if I had slipped up once, the pieces of evidence they have would come back to me. They apparently found my phone, but it was encrypted. Even if they could get in there's nothing tied to me, just Joseph Erickson, and he never even existed in the first place. They found my motorbike in a lake, but it was so polluted from a nearby nuclear power plant that the prints washed off. I personally believe that god came down from the heavens and wiped them away.
So when he called me an extremely lucky dumbass, he was right. The composite sketch I saw on the news that night didn't look anything like me. It was followed by a dumb story about a bank employee who chased a criminal and was assaulted with a stack of papers. The employee chased him out of the bank and onto the highway in his car before the criminal erratically sped off and disappeared in the desert. In the interview he said, "I was assaulted, I mean my property and my life were under threat, and I managed to survive through brave courage." He kept repeating that he was assaulted.
Awful jackass.
The editor is calling. He wants his story, and I missed the deadline.
The sunglasses fall off. The checks all bounce and the numbers all add up. Everything is settled on both ends. The government IDs are thrown aside and the idea of an "identity" is completely disregarded. Then the methoxetamine wears off, and he wakes up in a dimly lit shipping container.
An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Three
No solutions anywhere. What do the people want? None of them ever knew the answer to this question. It echoes and echoes through tunnels and telephone wires until it reaches the ground beneath me, when I hear it in my head like sirens. I hear it everywhere I go, the wheeze of the gears moving in The Machine. It comes out of PA systems. TVs in pawn shops, radio stations and car engines as people road rage, LTE waves and police scanners, dispatch grumbling my description.
It's so loud you'd almost think for a second that it was Mother Earth herself breathing. But no! To everyone's horror, that's not who it is. Everyone who can hear it anyway. Most people that cross my blurry line-of-sight through my counterfeit Ray-Bans can't. It's important to listen. You know when it's close. Pig can be made into bacon. Maybe...
I slept for 25 hours in a shipping crate, this scene playing in my head over and over again, with no sign of any break from a lasting fever dream. What is the sun anyway? I was too afraid to go outside. I felt I had to disappear for a while before I operated again.
The things that got me through this tough 25 hours was 432 Hz music, back issues of 2600, and drawing. Scribbled notes, mountains, trees... I have no idea what it all meant. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all.
One drawing that kept appearing on my pages was a rough sketch of Sawtooth's front entrance. It had a big sign that said, "SAWTOOTH NATIONAL BANK" with a picture of a marlin on it. To me, Sawtooth felt like a supernatural being, something so powerful that I couldn't even see the true gravity of my actions. It was like I had messed with a higher power. My wax wings melted in the desert heat.
Boom boom boom! And then chuckling outside my crate.
Jesus! They're gangstalking me! They must have turned to harassment... And that's what happens in this country, a wretched cesspool of evil and greed, so terribly hideous that I can't even bring myself to stop looking at it! A free market scam, yet it's the only option we have! We can't become comrades, can we!? And socialism? That doesn't help the rich! But no, I have to pay to stay alive, and feel sorry for those who live in debt just to keep going, buy shit online, wages garnished by ten percent, repeat the cycle... Even the "free market" will f*ck someone, no, many people over! What else would you expect me to do than steal from them! Wouldn't you? This terrible madness... At this rate, we're all going backwards no matter where we are. I abruptly stood up in the crate, knocking my desk to the side and throwing my coat hangers onto the floor as I searched for my pistol. What the hell? Why not go out in style, right? Right!?
In reality, it was nothing more than four teenagers who were drunk. Someone cracked a really funny pun that was so ridiculously hysterical that one of them had to stand up and slam his fists on a shipping crate, a violent physical reaction to something they wouldn't even smile at ten years in the future. And you know, looking back on my years as a kid, I'm sure it was exactly that funny. Pointing a gun at them isn't. They must think I'm one of those people their parents told them about. The police visit the crate the next day to find it completely empty. The smell of bleach on the inside burned their nose hairs to a crisp.
It had been roughly two awful days since the incident back at Sawtooth, and I managed to get away with it... I think. I see Khir's face when I close my eyes, remembering when I threw that paper at him, and cringe internally as I relive that awful speech on TV, the number I did on my bike during that race, and his surreal attempt to take the law into his own hands.
I also know that my time in Arizona is up. I started getting nasty looks from locals all around. It seemed that I was gaining an unwanted and quite dangerous reputation, and they've realized the true extent to which I am an outsider. Rumors circulate like smog, covering the city. That's how it was in high school, and it doesn't seem like much has changed. But they all seemed to know I had the .22 tucked in my waistband. Some of them had bigger calibers and better shots, or more heads, but they just didn't want the trouble. They'd rather not go to the hospital for a nonfatal gunshot wound and kill some freak in the process.
I walked half a mile to Aryana's apartment. When I got inside, I told her I was leaving. "I'm gonna get out of AZ. I'm sorry, I really am. If you want to come with me you can. I'm going to South Carolina." I looked at my shoes. I couldn't make eye contact.
She didn't even look up from her game. She just said, "Yeah, sure." Lovely.
They prepare to zoom across state lines, skipping toll gates and swerving between lanes in a desperate but half-hearted attempt to go out with a bang. Had I ever left in the first place? A long time ago I was in a town called Hiker, South Dakota, roughly 277 miles from my birthplace of Minneapolis. I was having a drink with an old friend, not even old enough to do so, when I cracked a joke that I would commit a crime in every state. All these years later, there's only 15 states left that I haven't gotten to yet. He never left South Dakota. I am ashamed that I'm not ashamed.
So we walked another half mile to a car rental agency. I put on a pair of (fake) Ray-Bans. Tan dress pants and a white shirt. No tie. Briefcase, leather, totally empty. It has a plastic area where you can switch out various logos. This one said "OffShore," which was (at the time) a major oil rig. The shameless naming never sat right with me.
Hank Bill Waters, a sysadmin for an oil rig off the coast of Alaska, walked into FastTravel Car Rental. This time, Hank actually does exist. Well, he did exist. I forgot about that. He passed away recently when he fell 50 feet off of the oil rig into the choppy ocean below. A really horrible death to die, poor fella. He wasn't exactly a great guy though. A body was recovered, but it could take months for the information about his death to be processed by government entities such as the Social Security Administration. His death hasn't been effectively registered yet, giving me a window to assume his identity. After everything, I was left with a new driver's license, Social Security card, and birth certificate. He looked similar to me, and was born around the same time I was. As for how I did it, this one is a secret, but essentially I "lost" all my forms of identification. I just had to "prove" that I was Hank. When I walked out of the DMV, Hank existed again. I brought a dead man back to life. Beautiful, ain't it? I'm more powerful than god! It's a strange feeling to be someone else. For me, and maybe this is my mind scrambled from the past, it doesn't feel like I'm impersonating them. I am them. To tell a lie you have to partially believe it yourself. But there's a fine line that you can eventually cross into delusions, when you really do believe the lies you tell.
This time, Hank wasn't in the mood for methoxetamine. It left him disorganized and incoherent. He decided on 100 microgram pellets of ALD-52, a chemical analog of LSD. Something clicked in me, a gear shifted. I called my therapist to ask about NA groups. Yes, I have a therapist.
The orange sunshine fell down on my face. It seemed that I suddenly understood everything that was worth understanding, and that anything not worth that much could be forgotten. I felt like a superior genetic outlier who was given too much knowledge in life combined with a horrific and quite dangerous ability to put it to use. I was shot up to heaven, then cast back down from the most blinding light in only an instant, a changed man, there and gone. I felt warm vibrations as I got closer and closer to my getaway, vibrations I can't quite explain. They were orange. Energy was collecting in my skull, an insurance policy enforcing that I make no mistakes and get everything done. This is the time, do it now.
Hank went up to the only employee, and started casually talking with her. For the life of me I can't remember her name. Hank asked to rent a sedan, and they went over options before settling on a car. Synthetic confidence floated out of his head and into the air around them. She liked the things he said, but it wasn't Hank talking. Hank was merely a spectator, as someone else's voice came out of his mouth. Someone who, no matter where he was or what he was up to, knew exactly what he was doing. This someone had taken the wheel to get us there as fast as possible.
Hank passes his ID to the clerk. Fake IDs can be made with an ID printer and the right template. I just Photoshop'ed my face onto it and printed it. She holds it up, and then looks at him. It was a look of consideration, only lasting a few seconds. Hank realized she wasn't an idiot. She knew. They probably all know.
She passed the ID back and smiled. Hank understood. It was a genuine smile for communication. It shook him because he knew for a fact that she knew. He giggled nervously. Then she said, "Enjoy the car!"
Five minutes and 35 seconds later, a private investigator burst into FastTravel Car Rental and walked up to the clerk. He asked her, talking very fast, if she had just seen a man in tan pants rent a car.
"I did," the clerk replied, pretending to do paperwork so she wouldn't have to make eye contact with him. She made copies of documents for this exact purpose and was just writing random shit on them. Arizona is a pool of creeps, festering under the sun and freezing over at night, to wake from the dead the next morning and do it all again.
"He's still in the lot right?" There was urgency in his voice.
"No, he just left."
"What was his name?" He turned red and a vein popped out in his forehead.
"Hank. I can't disclose anything else."
He bolted out the door and, on the way out, a .22 shell fell out of his coat. The clerk smiled, picked it up, and put it in her pocket, thinking about the young man who just walked in. To him, she was just another person who got played. Someone else got in the passenger seat.
Just like Liz, the clerk was one of us. We're everywhere, on every block, every street corner, every bar, every restaurant, yet it's not like you would know. Face to face with me? You'd look into my bloodshot eyes and think I was one of them. Undoubtedly so.
The .22 wasn't going to make it. I never even wanted the thing. It would be stupid to try to bring a firearm across the country with me and certainly not through an airport, so I walked into a pawn shop.
A man with long white hair and a tie-dye bandanna was sitting at the counter. I haven't been around that long, but based on old photographs I'd seen of a very different time, he looked like he was still wrapped up, or maybe even stuck in a religious era of psychedelic drugs and CIA mind control experiments. And he did not look like a man who knew about dangerous weapons.
He looked at me, eyes red. "What's up brother?"
"I'd like to sell this .45 caliber pistol." I put the tiny gun on the table.
"Let me check the computer, so I can know the price."
After a moment of waiting, he looked at me. "I'll do 400. You got any ammo?"
"No," I said, as .22 rounds jangled in my pocket. Couldn't let him get his hands on those, he'll know he got sandbagged. I walked out with 150 dollars more than I paid for the gun. I'll miss you, Arizona. You were always good to me.
Before we got on the plane, I ate another ALD-52 pellet. Sitting in the gate with my arm around Ary, we talked about our hundredth new life in Charleston. Aryana decided she wanted an ALD-52 pellet as well. She ate it, and we waited for our gate to board. I realized that she had never even taken mushrooms before and she was about to be launched into a 12 hour trip. My heart sank as I imagined the classic LSD Freakout some people have. How would she cope with literally being launched into the sky and dropped off in an air strip in a place she'd never even been to before? I didn't tell her about it though; that would make it more likely to happen in some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. I had left most of my analogs in the desert, so all I had now was ten ALD-52 pellets. I just threw it in the bottom of my bag, hoping the TSA wouldn't find it. They didn't, because the TSA never finds anything except for conditioner bottles that are too big. My hair was a frizzy mess for days after.
While we're on the topic, I'll briefly go into analogs. Basically, all of the obscure drugs mentioned in this story are technically legal. A chemical analog is a compound which is very close in structure to another one, but is also different enough in one aspect or another that sets them apart from each other. So ALD-52 is a chemical analog of LSD, meaning it's similar in structure but still a different chemical. Keep in mind, I'm no chemist and this is just my best attempt at explaining it. Because it's not technically LSD, it's also technically legal in the U.S. It's labeled "not for human consumption" on the bag. I'm not technically breaking the law. The technicalities of it are very, very complicated.
Everything went smoothly until we sat down on the plane. As we got into our seats, the ALD-52 had taken hold of both of us. I looked over at her. She had turned into a drawing, and her pupils were as big as dinner plates. Her afro became a cloud, bouncing ever so slightly in a way I wouldn't have noticed if I was sober. I saw lightning strikes and rain falling down from the cloud. A 1990s anime rendering of someone I knew very well.
Then the flight attendant started talking.
"Alright everybody, we have a bumpy flight today so keep your arms and legs inside the ride!"
The entire plane was silent, except for hysterical laughter coming from a couple in the 23rd row. They were laughing so hard you'd think someone told them a joke so ridiculously funny it started a nuclear war and destroyed humanity. The flight attendant giggled, and attempted to continue, but the laughter didn't stop.
"Sir, please be quiet so I can finish. Thank you." I bit my thumb to stop myself from laughing.
"Drinks are free, and we'll come around twice to serve them."
More laughter from row 23. I'm not sure why we were laughing, there wasn't even a joke involved.
"In the event of a crash-"
"Make it stop, I can't laugh anymore, please, it hurts!" This was followed by even more laughter.
Frustrated, she shouted, "Sir if you don't stop laughing we will kick you off the plane."
We managed to shut up, and the laughter phase of the ALD-52 passed. The plane took off, and I could feel the air beneath. Aryana stared straight ahead the entire flight, which was roughly five hours. She didn't say a single word, or turn on a movie. Straight silence, no movement, no bathroom breaks, nothing. She completely ignored the flight attendant when asked if she wanted anything to drink.
I spent most of the flight trying to write short stories to keep my mind occupied, but what I read the next day was unintelligible. It was a mixture of gibberish, made up words, and incoherent run-on sentences, completely useless. We stumbled off the plane, with another six or so hours to go before the drug wore off.
Leon: "Hello?"
Atty: "I'm sure you already knew I was going to say this, but someone at my partner firm in Miami is gonna take my place."
Leon: "Who?"
Atty: "Lenny."
Leon: "The paralegal? Please, I'm begging you, please no. He's an insufferable jackass."
Atty: "You know who's an insufferable jackass? You. You're an idiot. You may very well be the smartest stupid person I know. Or maybe you're the stupidest smart person I know... I wouldn't even be representing you if you didn't feed my alcoholism. And he's an attorney now. You know what else? He's exactly like me, and if you don't want his legal advice, good luck finding another lawyer exactly like me."
Leon: "You fucking ass..."
Phone call ends
Lenny Cruz, a high functioning junk addict, is now my attorney. He is exactly like my prior attorney, except instead of alcohol he does some kind of opiate. This could start a nasty cycle, because if I get caught with that he'll be representing me in court, and I'll have to bribe him with more junk to continue. The only exception was that every now and then I could enjoy some analogs with my prior attorney and forget about everything, something I can't do with Lenny. I tried doing some ALD-52 with him to break the ice, but he went crazy when it kicked in, shouting maniacally at me about the FBI, God, subpoenas, my prior attorney, and how terrible my writing was. He said I was brainless, and that it was "a goddamn miracle the magazine accepts my third grade level writing."
Later that day, we cut through some palmettos to a nearby beach and went swimming. This seemed to calm him down for a bit, until he told me he saw a sea monster and started thrashing wildly in the water. Three seconds later, I saw a little bit of watery feces float to the top. It was picked up by a wave, and immediately splashed on a five-year-old. I dragged him out, still convulsing violently, and a fist landed right into my sternum. I ended up leaving him on the beach.
But he's smart, and a spectacular liar. I'll just have to put up with it. When I retaliated about the comment towards my writing level, I told him to try and write a better story. I read what he wrote and almost called Goldstein to tell him I was done and I had someone better for him.
It's a fucking shame when the biggest jackass you ever run into is also smarter than you. To be fair, if I met me I'd probably think I was the biggest jackass I've ever run into. Hank Bill Waters, watching down from heaven, agrees.
I knew the PI was following me. I know everything.
There was no investigation. It was an elaborate (and rather clandestine) harassment campaign mixed with a hope I would physically react and he'd have a reason to shoot me. I wish he would. Am I scared? No! Never! The angels always told me to Be Not Afraid. Blackmail put an end to this heebie-jeebie bullshit.
It turns out I'm being followed by a firm called Josephson and Smith. The investigator assigned to my case is a balding 36-year-old named John Capper. He has literally followed me across the country. I respect the dedication.
I bought John Capper's SSN on the deep web, along with a scan of his driver's license. You can buy anybody's SSN on the deep web, but thankfully it also had a DL scan. That's pure luck, but it did cost 15 dollars. I broke into his email afterwards. They were running an SMTP server called Haraka. The version was 2.8.8, which was vulnerable to a remote code execution exploit. This is no dig at the devs of Haraka, because it isn't their fault. The issue was the firm's refusal to update Haraka, leaving it open to vulnerabilities that have long since been patched. And, like always, it worked. Why? Because I always win.
I logged into John Capper's email. Nobody was alerted that I logged in due to literally no 2FA. Déjà vu? It was logged by Haraka, but Ii removed the entry from the logs, as well as the entry of me removing the entry in the logs, as well as the entry of me removing the entry of me removing the entry in the logs, as well as the entry of me removing the... Focus!
John Capper's inbox was a mess. It was full of emails informing him his free trial had ended, emails telling him that his bank account is 4000 dollars in negative balance, emails about him closing said account, and thousands upon thousands of spam emails. Dang, there's so many single women in his area! (Click the link to meet them now!!!)
Here's a list of things I could have used to blackmail him:
- He's having an affair.
- He's hired multiple escorts.
- He's been embezzling company money.
- He's cashed multiple bad checks.
- He has murdered someone.
I decided to use all of them.
I made a copy of all of the incriminating emails, and then included them as attachments. In addition to having his literal identity and driver's license, I also told him that I wouldn't hesitate to send it all to the police if I even suspected that he's still following me. I wrote him a little poem too:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your firm's OPSEC
Is a pile of doo dooRoses are red
Violets are violet
If you don't f*ck off
I'm gonna get violent
So stupid, but it was funny at the time.
I installed a rootkit for later access to the SMTP server. There is a script running on the server that constantly checks if the incriminating emails are deleted. If they are, it recovers them and places them back in the inbox. Once the email is recovered, a system-wide function hook I placed hides it, so they won't actually be able to tell that it's been recovered. I had to megadose Adderall in order to do this. Stuff like this was never my specialty.
And the fail-safe is called a Dead Man's Switch. Every night I disable an email and text message from automatically being forwarded to law enforcement, and if I don't disable it, he goes to jail. I made him aware of this, and he knows I can't disable it if I'm dead. I got the idea from a TV show.
The murder probably did it for him. I don't think he cares in the slightest about his wife, and I don't think he cares that he's hired escorts either. He could have probably gotten off of an embezzlement charge, and the bad checks wouldn't have done much as they were all under 100 dollars. But the murder? There was overwhelming evidence proving that he did it. He knew he couldn't get off of that either because his work pistol was the gun used in the murder. It's a revolver chambered in .38 Special, so no shells were found at the crime scene and he literally pulled the bullet out of the corpse. Despite this, the coroner concluded that it was, in fact, a .38 Special that killed him. He admitted to doing this in an email to a coworker, which pretty much defeated the purpose of removing the projectile. His cellphone was on at the time of the crime, and cell tower data would place him in that exact area. Imagine killing someone and leaving your phone on.
That was the last I'd heard of him. As far as I'm concerned, he stopped following me. But who hired him? It wasn't Sawtooth, as they had already made their money back, and probably didn't care anymore. Khir? He didn't know my real name.
So I logged into John Capper's email again. xa2w25@a1fg.ru hired him to follow me in an email, providing him with my real name. In the email chain, there was a routing and account number coming from the person hiring him. This must have been how they paid for the whole thing, but it still seemed weird to me. It didn't really make any sense.
The numbers were associated with the People's Bank of Rhode Island. I singled out a naive 18-year-old employee and sent him an email offering 8000 dollars for the name associated with the account. There goes 8000 bucks. Being 18-years-old, he accepted the offer. And he emailed me back saying it was my ex-girlfriend May.
She does disability fraud. She pretended to have a serious back injury in order to collect thousands of dollars in disability checks and prescription painkillers, which she sold on the side. Professionals have standards, and mine are far above stealing money from disability programs. But I shouldn't pretend to be that different from her... She admitted to doing this over text, email, phone calls, and in person. I gathered all the proof and called her, telling her that if she hires another PI, I would report her for disability fraud.
She started screaming and crying, calling me a terrible person, threatening to kill both of us while we were sleeping, and that she only sent the PI to harass me because I broke up with her, which happened over a year ago. When she (somehow) found out I was leaving, she went crazy. In addition to the PI, she also gave my information to a bunch of debt collectors reporting false debts. I still don't know how she did that. I've tried and tried, but I can't figure it out.
When you have a debt you don't pay, the first thing that happens is that it is sent to a collections agency. These are the people who will start a campaign to get you to pay off the debt. This happens in the form of letters and phone calls. No, they can't show up to your house and intimidate you. That's just in the movies. Your credit score will also go down, sometimes very significantly. For small debts, you can kinda just not pay it and they will eventually give up. You'll just have bad credit for a long time.
Bigger debts aren't like that. They will call you day and night. They will call you when you wake up and they will call you as you fall asleep. They will fill your mailbox to the brim. They will sell your debt to other debt collectors. But what if you don't pick up the calls, throw out the letters, and just ignore it?
Eventually, the people you owe may decide to sue you. You will be subpoenaed to appear in court. They don't have debtors' prison in the U.S., so you won't go to the slammer for not showing up unless you committed a crime. However, if you don't appear, you automatically lose the case. Then your wages are garnished by up to 25 percent. More often, it's less than 25 percent, but 25 percent is the federal maximum. You may also have your house or car repossessed. Pretty degrading.
I told them that I was unaware of these accounts and demanded all communication continue in writing. They sent letters to a P.O. box for two weeks before they realized that the debts were false and that she had tricked them. I didn't open any of the letters, just gave them to Lenny, who used them to start his campfires.
That's how I even got into a relationship with May. She did the same things I did, and it came back to bite me. Bonnie and Clyde? That's what we thought it was. Turns out we were two small-time crooks, and nothing more than that. I knew she was insane too, but went in anyway. My friends warned me this would happen, and I didn't listen. I believe that's called Karma.
I sat down in the apartment and opened a new shipment of my beloved analogs. I had a few blotters and was reading the first story in 2600 (that I stole from an unattended magazine stand) when I heard violent knocking on the front door.
Is it the police? Is it his ex-girlfriend? Is it Batman? Find out next time on An Atavistic Freakout by Leon Manna.
An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Four
5:43 AM on a Monday. Typing furiously into my laptop as the sun starts to rise, realizing that I intended it to be a late night and it ended up turning into an early morning, another maniacal, amphetamine-fueled organized keyboard mash which, by some ridiculous odds, turned into something that you could comprehend, or maybe even read. If you wanted to, that is.
I'm not Leon Manna. He was always just an idea when they stack the cards which, of course, are stacked against me. Leon Manna... The name sounds like a stranger to me. Some barrier was crossed, a bridge to a terrible life filled with excitement, after declaring myself dead to escape The Machine. There was something funny about it. Your, no, my whole life destroyed in an hour long funeral service, nobody in the casket as they lower it down. Never again... Now it's just checks and guns and cheap CVS cell phones that I drop into puddles. After the whole thing was over, I became Leon Manna. I lied to you, and I am truly sorry. Take the back door on your way out. The show goes on. It won't ever stop! Never! Don't count on it! Ride the wave! Mindfulness! You wouldn't like it!!!
So let's get back to my story. There I was, sitting on my couch like an idiot, waiting for the blotters to kick in, watching a mosquito fly around my room. Someone was knocking. They were like gunshots, Vietnam flashback to my old neighborhood, KDY at night, putting my nerves on edge, electrocuting my brain, 110 volts, neurons firing too fast to comprehend anything as my pupils dilated from the blotters and I saw the world in full color, not one, not three, but the entire range the human eye can even process.
No thoughts, just open the door. It was Lenny. His shirt was stained red. I stared at him for a second. The way he was just standing there, staring at me with this possessed, demonic look on his face was amusing. I knew I was supposed to be scared, but it was almost like he was trying to amuse me. I laughed and said, "Jesus man, are you okay?"
He groaned and his face turned red. "You left me on that beach! I'll brace you for this!" He swung his arm at me, missing by what, a foot?
"Hahaha... You shat on a five-year-old and punched me in the chest! What else did you expect me to do?" I cackled a couple more times.
He let out a guttural noise and started staggering towards me. I backed up and pulled a switchblade out of my pocket. "Lenny... heh... I'll stab you! I swear to... hah... I swear to god I will! Please man! Hahahaha..." My organs were starting to hurt. I couldn't stop laughing.
His eyes were glazed and unfocused. Red spot, he missed his vein. Telltale signs of the type of junk addict who wants you to stab them. Maybe I should, for his own sake.
"You wouldn't do that... You're gonna have to stab me... Hehehehe... Don't you live above the landlord? You spent too much time in drug dens as a teenager. Your mom was right about you! I had a whole talk with her last night over dinner. Bitch! Haw!"
"My mom went missing and is assumed dead, Lenny."
We stood there for a second and made eye contact, both totally silent waiting for the other to say or do something. But neither of us did; we just stared at each other. Then I chuckled, and so did Lenny. Now, rolling around on the floor, unable to control ourselves at all, a tenant peeked out of her door and then promptly slammed it shut. I laughed so hard I pissed myself. Is Lenny my friend? I'd hope not.
SECURE MESSENGER: 2600 Magazine: Yo leon_3k: what's crackin goldstein 2600 Magazine: Why do you call me Goldstein? leon_3k: Goldssten. 2600 Magazine: HOPE this weekend leon_3k: hope for what 2600 Magazine: The conference. You coming? leon_3k: Yes, of course. I'm gonna write about it, in your magazine, and I will be smoking crack the whole time. Then I'm gonna let a coyote loose inside the building. 2600 Magazine: do you have a job? leon_3k: I am self employed, I invest in imaginary encrypted money and the stonks markets. 2600 Magazine: How high are you 2600 Magazine: Oh, the other thing I had to tell you is that we got a letter from the FBI about you, they don't appreciate some of the things you write about. leon_3k: Kyle better be there. 2600 Magazine: No seriously, don't write anything crazy. We got subpoenaed last time. leon_3k: F |
Hackers On Planet Earth! How could it have slipped my mind? Why would it? And it was that year, so once more I would atavistically make a trip to New York no matter the distance I had to go, just to dive right into the very center of The Machine, all while being far too deep into some second life with too little correlation between the two to ever be able to turn back. I can see the point of no return through my rearview mirror, the exit I never knew I had to get off at until it had passed.
Me and Lenny started the trip. He loaded around three suitcases, which was strange considering we'd be there at most four days. He wouldn't tell me what was in them, but they seemed way too light. All I brought was some weed. I'm done with these research chemicals and the only thing I was researching was how high they would get me. Right as we got on the road, Lenny took out a needle.
"Put that shit away man! Not in the car! You need to drop that before it's too late. Have you ever read William Burroughs? I bet you can't even read and some sort of idiot algorithm in your heroin brain calculates it for you..."
"Shut up, shut up! I need it! You fucking nerd... My chest hurts! Uuaahhhhh!" Unhinged.
Idiot! I lit up my first spliff as we were driving. It was high quality weed. I felt very calm as my attorney suffered from a borderline opiate overdose next to me. It was nice to not be on some crazy psychotic chemical. Things felt peaceful.
And here I am now, flying down Interstate 95 in light blue denim pants, cuffed up twice, waterproof Vans, glasses hanging onto my face by a thread. The car was going about 70 MPH on a highway in SC. My shirt was in the back seat, because the AC didn't work and the heat in Charleston was reaching 94 degrees Fahrenheit. Lenny had his head back with his eyes shut, sweating and groaning every now and then.
I was focusing on the road when suddenly it all made sense. The FBI asked me to sing them a song yesterday... or maybe it was right at Sawtooth when they asked. Three letter agencies are better than no audience at all. Do I sing to them? I don't think I'm even capable of knowing when I am.
26 was the number on my shirt. What did it signify? I didn't know. I had thrown a suitcase together in a hurry at the last minute, a mixture of Khaki pants, shorts, white shirts, and socks. The amount of days we would be there outnumbered the clothing items by 26. And that somehow matched the number on my shirt, which matched my age, which matched the date. Was there a meaning? Or was this magical thinking? Did Lenny agree? Did Goldstein? Do you?
I looked up. I was standing outside of Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, not moving, with a dumb look on my face. This was where HOPE was (at the time) being hosted. Me and Lenny were staying in a shitty motel across the river in Hoboken, New Jersey. The parking was better out there, and we took a train to get into NYC.
My daydreaming was cut short by Lenny. "Stop staring at the hotel and let's get started. I wanna interact with these freaks so goddamn bad..."
"They aren't freaks. They're actually great people."
He laughed, and said, "If they're anything like you, they're freaks."
There was a journalist sitting at a table near an auditorium. I don't consider myself a journalist, but something like it. Still, that's giving myself too much credit. I just write stories. We started talking, and he asked me my name.
"Ocha. I go by my last name."
"Alright Ocha, you okay being in a story?" He looked at me intensely.
"I was going to ask you the same thing." Crooked grin.
"Who are you writing for?"
"I'm doing a story for La Palma Tech."
He said some random online publication I'd never heard of. Then he mentioned that he had some cocaine, and asked if I'd like to do a line with him.
"I'm supposed to be in that talk."
"Let's just go to the bathroom real quick." He grinned at me.
"I don't think that's wise. I heard they're going through people's bags while they're in talks. Hotel rooms too, the ones who are staying here! They're looking for drugs and weapons. Intel says there's about three firearms in the building right now. They already caught eight people for coke, and seven more for psychedelics. Didn't you see them taking people out?" I tried to look concerned.
His face changed. He got scared. Everything I just said was completely false. I don't really know why I was f*cking his brain up the way I was. I think I just wanted to see if I could. He was pissing me off anyway, and besides, anybody who offers random people cocaine deserves it. They weren't actually searching anybody's bags, I just wanted him to be in a constant state of fear that they would.
I don't remember what the talk was about, because I was too focused on trying to spot FBI agents. I wasn't able to, because all the FBI agents were dressed in normal clothes. I declined the journalist's offer of cocaine. He decided he was just going to snort it right there in the auditorium, and was taken out by security ten minutes later. I remembered the lie I told him warning him about this and wondered what was going through his head as they took him away. I pretended I didn't know him and stared straight ahead.
Then I heard a scream, and turned to the back of the auditorium. I saw Lenny's silhouette standing in the doorway. He rushed over and sat down next to me. The dude on stage let out a very wet fart.
"I gotta go man, I'm freaking out. They're taking people away left and right! We have to leave." He sounded afraid.
"Hold on, just wait it out. We'll be fine, we didn't do anything," I whispered.
"Cmon, let's go!"
"Alright, alright, we'll leave. You have a point. I saw the pigs take some poor nerd away 30 minutes ago. Then security kindly had a journalist escorted away."
"I saw him on the way out... They didn't look happy. As your attorney, I advise you to leave so we don't end up like him."
We got up and exited the auditorium. We chose not to take the elevator, but rather go down a restricted stairway. Neither of us were allowed to do this. We made it downstairs and into the lobby, when I heard a shout.
"Stop! Don't move!"
I looked behind me and saw a U.S. Marshal, some fat, middle-aged walking handlebar mustache. He looked like a freak cartoon version of Hulk Hogan after drinking beer and smoking cigarettes for 15 years straight. I looked at Lenny and we ran. Lenny barreled right into some silver-haired kid with a guitar, knocking him over in an instant. I dashed out the front door. We managed to outrun him, because he was about 240 pounds, and got into a nearby subway station.
TRANSCRIPT ISSUED AT REQUEST OF LAW ENFORCEMENT VIA SUBPOENA [Dial tone] Goldstein: Did you get away? Leon: Oh yeah. Goldstein: It's gone to shit. Someone burglarized our hotel room and stole two passes. We still don't know who did it, and they won't share the CCTV footage with us. Leon: I'm sorry, what? Goldstein: Yeah, someone got one of our staff to disclose our hotel room, and then somehow got in and took a pass. Leon: ... I'm gonna have to call you right back. [Phone call ends.] |
So that's how Lenny got our passes!
We saw the first palm tree at the bottom of North Carolina. We made it to Charleston, and Lenny said he needed a swim. We got to a beach and went down to the water. I smoked out of my hash pipe quickly and we got into the water. After a moment, I said, "that was crazy..."
"You're telling me? How long were we there for anyway?"
I laughed. "One day. It was supposed to be three. It was pretty funny when you let that scream out and burst into the auditorium."
He chuckled. "Yeah, I did that on purpose. Did you see their faces? The nerd on stage looked like he shat himself!"
"He did shit himself! I heard it! We outran a U.S. Marshal. We must be extremely lucky." "No, we're extremely smart." I noticed he was talking about both of us, and not just him. I'd never seen him as relaxed and friendly as he was.
"You proved yourself," he said.
I was shocked. "What?"
"You're someone I can respect and view as an equal now. And why? Because you actually listened when I told you we had to leave. I'm your goddamn attorney, and for the first time you actually listened. You're an idiot genius who doesn't know what's good for him. A lot of my clients don't listen. But when someone does, they've proved themselves. Besides, the pig could hardly keep up with you."
I didn't say anything for a second, just smiled. Then I laughed and asked, "What was in those suitcases anyway?"
"Hah! A couple servers I stole out of a server farm, seven laptops from the editor's room, a bunch of HOPE passes, four USB drives I stole out of a police station, and then one very very sensitive government document I really needed to get rid of."
My smile disappeared. Awful jackass...
An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Five
Por eso soy andariego
Pa' olvidarme de pesares
Soy barco de cualquier puerto
No me le arrodillo a nadie
Me juego en cualquier gallera
Aquì o en otros lugares
- El Charrito Negro
[That's why I'm walking
To forget about regrets
I am a port of any port
I don't kneel anyone
I play in any cookie
Here or elsewhere
- The black charrito]
I'm a coward and a fool! It seemed so simple in the moment, like such a sincere thought. Inner doubt, self loathing. It'll be my turn soon, here or in other places! God! We swam back to shore and started heading towards my apartment. Lenny coughed up seawater and looked at me. "Let me get a ride," he said.
"So you're living here now?"
He nodded. "Yeah dude. I got shot with a .22 like, four times in Miami. Four separate times! Can you believe that? Besides, you pay me to be your lawyer. You're the only person within a hundred mile radius who I can somewhat tolerate, and even then... You piss me off." He seemed to be in a good mood, I guess, despite the backhanded compliment.
"Just take my moped." He hopped on it and rode off. I watched him crank the brakes too hard and crash onto the sand. Then he got up like nothing happened, turned around, gave me the stink-eye, and rode off. About 15 feet later he did that whole thing again, and then disappeared on a bend in the road.
Lenny Cruz (right) and Leon (left)
I heard the dial tone. Then Ary picked up.
"What do you want?"
"Uhh... Your stuff isn't at the apartment. I haven't seen you in a couple days. Are you okay?"
"No, I'm not okay. My ex-boyfriend is a sociopath and I followed him across the country for no reason. I'm going home. I already bought a ticket."
"Wait, wait, wait I -"
"I don't want to hear it. I hate you."
I couldn't even say anything. Can I even be mad? No. Then she hung up, and that's where the Ary plotline ended, as well as any future I had with her. Once again, I felt guilty. It's my fault.
Across the U.S., a federal agent named Segev Bezalel, who we will refer to as Moe, gets a call about a strange guy. A strange guy who smokes crack in Best Buy. The strange guy has been doing unspeakable, despicable acts of cybercrime. Thousands upon thousands of dollars, missing, totally gone with no idea where it went. It's me. I'm the strange guy.
So the detective thinks to himself, "Piece of cake."
But the detective gets frustrated quickly because Leon Manna, who lived in Arizona, died pretty recently. What confuses him is that there's another Leon Manna in Utah. When he checks on that, it shows that he also died, but in 2013. Then he checks again, and sees a Leon Manna in California. And then he sees one in Nevada, and South Carolina, and then New York, until he's filled in all but 15 of the states in the U.S. Some are dead, some are alive. Each one has a vaguely similar description. I am everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I am more powerful than God.
This boggles his mind. How did he impersonate someone who's been dead since the last decade? How could it have happened? Moe has no clue what to do. He calls his boss, but it's three in the morning, so he doesn't pick up. He calls about ten other buffoons, none of which pick up either. He finally reaches his boss's boss, who "has no clue who the f*ck he is and why the hell would he f*cking call me at 3 am, I mean who has the nerve. Your boss will be hearing about this."
But something didn't sit right with him. He listens to the tone on his phone while he waits for Leon to pick up. He's about to terminate the call when he hears a voice on the other end.
"Hello?"
Moe paused. "Is this Leon Manna?"
There was silence. Then, "Long time, no see. I miss you Moe."
"Segev, dumbass. Let's talk, please. You don't need to run."
"No, Moe. I do need to run."
"You don't. We gathered everything, Leon. I even see an armed robbery here. We're going to catch you eventually."
"No the f*ck you will not. Also, that robbery wasn't me. It was a man named Nash Nashville. You'll find him in Memphis. I wouldn't bother looking in Nashville, though. If he's not there, I'd check your mother's house."
"Well, that's just disrespectful." But the call was terminated and there was nobody listening to hear him say that. When he called back, the number was disconnected. In the morning, he calls his boss. His boss decides to send him on a maniacal wild goose chase, investigating every single Leon Manna in the U.S.
So what now? Well, I have 15 states that need Leon Manna in them. A federal semi-turncoat is always won over with blackmail. They do nasty stuff, they really do, you just have to catch them. This is how we operated for a while. And then, we met this guy somewhere in a stack of papers. We knew he was from New Mexico, but we didn't know his name. I'll let you fill the rest in.
Moe sees this. Just like my shapeshifter act at Sawtooth, this actually did the opposite of what I thought it would. I was just trying to cause as much confusion and chaos as possible, there was basically no strategy past that. Moe isn't an idiot, and he realizes very quickly that I'm making all these fake identities in different states to confuse him. Why? Because if he would do it, I would. That's sorta how he caught us. They assigned my case to him after they did a profile on me. There was a reason it was him, but I simply can't tell you why just yet. There's more to say before. He calls his boss and after like, seven layers of bureaucracy or something, someone finally orders the Social Security Administration to check in on all of these Leon Manna clones. The SSA says they can't do that within the timeframe they needed because there were multiple real Leon Manna identities in some of those states. So after swearing profusely at the person from the SSA, the moron demands that they investigate every case of Leon Manna in any state ever, regardless of how long it takes. This was a huge waste of time because they can't seem to figure out which ones were real and which weren't. They couldn't go and check every single Leon in real life, they simply didn't have the resources, and I wasn't important enough for that.
So the Federal Pig calls the SSA back and says that they need to check to see which Leon Manna identities match up with each other in other states, for unknown reasons. I'm not sure what their tactic was there. But every single picture was a different person. I'm really good at Photoshop.
...
What to do, what to do... I didn't know yet. I was thinking about it, waiting for 1.5 grams of phenibut hydrochloride to kick in when I heard a knock on my door. Déjà vu.
Again, Lenny, except normal this time. "I'm going to Cuba. We both have warrants."
"I know," I said. "I called the county office claiming to be an employer looking to hire us. I said I just needed to know if there was anything that should disqualify us. The list was pretty long, this isn't good."
"Well, let's go then."
I thought about it for a second. "What about a contingency plan?"
And so here's what happened: I sat back and did nothing. But one night, at 3 am again, there was nobody in the office except for the security guard. The first thing that happened was somebody made it into the server that stored digital evidence of people Moe was investigating via the ETERNALBLUE exploit. The intruder dropped a small executable file into a temporary folder, executed it, and then disconnected. This executable, which had been encrypted and then packed into another executable, remained unflagged by anti-virus and looped through the entire filesystem until it had collected the paths of every SQL database file on the system. Then, the executable proceeded to overwrite that database with null bytes. Then it did that to the entire HDD. Then it destroyed the backups. Then wiped the MBR of the server.
The Master Boot Record (MBR) is the first 512 bytes in the first sector of your HDD that tells the computer where the OS is and then how to load it. If you overwrite the MBR with null bytes, the computer will not boot. If you overwrite it with your own code, the computer will run whatever you placed every single time it starts.
Long story short, the server says "f*ck you" on boot, every single time. So did every computer in his office. Then, somehow, the intruder got control of the thermostat in the evidence room and then turned it up to a dangerously high temperature, making most or all of the physical evidence useless. At least the shit they had on me. Eventually the evidence room caught on fire due to the amount of paper documents inside. Needless to say, panic ensued.
But this wasn't me. The IP address they associated with the intrusion originated overseas. The executable had basically nothing in it of value, even though they spent a lot of time reverse engineering it. The IP they had came from a country where they had no jurisdiction, far far away. Somewhere in Europe I think... But I wouldn't know, I just sat on my couch and watched a movie.
What evidence? What are you talking about?
Oh God when will it stop on: An Atavistic Freakout?
An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Six
I have dark circles around my eyes.
Leon holds up... I know that. I don't know why though. They still think that's who I am and apparently haven't even considered the fantastic possibility, or the reality, that I'm not Leon. I just can't figure out how. It doesn't make sense. Did I really fine tune him to be that believable? They didn't get my DNA before I "died." Maybe some bureaucratic error f*cked it up? Paperwork got shuffled wrong, or placed into the wrong file cabinet, or a shredder, or an evidence room that caught on fire? But why question a good thing?
They had Moe take an MMPI test - Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - and he matched the personality type I had after they did a profile. So close, in fact, that I see them as morons for not considering if we knew each other beforehand, because we did. Moe was one of my best friends in high school. He did me one last favor: he didn't tell the FBI that I was actually named August, I faked my own death when I was 19, and I've been living under a synthetic identity since then. He didn't lie; he just neglected to tell the truth.
...
Pierre was a tall guy Lenny knew down at the bottom of the U.S., the Atlantic southeast. They were friends when he was there, I believe. He had black hair and a smile on his face. You're in good company. He insisted that he wasn't French, despite his name. I think he was Irish.
And now we had Georgia's best compulsive boat thief. It was his specialty, his art. Usually he disables the GPS on the boat, drives it around, and then puts it back where he found it. He never keeps the boat. I guess he's just a nice guy. He's also a math genius, which I think helped his navigation skills. I watched him hash a string by hand with a pencil and paper. It took him seven minutes and the hash was correct. And he could get us to Cuba. Somewhere else from there, maybe...
We were driving through this tropical jungle in Savannah, Georgia when Lenny suddenly started shouting to pull over. I did, and we were outside of this construction site for an almost finished house. Lenny reaches over and honks the horn for me. Thirty seconds later I see Pierre shamble to the doorway with a gasoline can, leaving a trail behind him. Holy shit, I thought, I think I know what's about to happen. He tossed the cigarette on the trail, and walked up to the car with that smile.
"Who the hell is this?" I asked Lenny.
"Drive! Drive, motherf*cker, drive!" I knew better than to stay. As I floor it and the car bursts forward, the great red bang of the house's final breath went into the air, shattering my ear drums and any sense of peace. I took two hydroxyzine tablets. He filled the basement with gasoline.
"I used my lucky cigarette. Last one I'm ever smoking," he said. "Ever."
They got us in Miami. There we were, standing on this dock, the three of us, drinking some rum because we had just made our grand escape and now we were off to start a new life as we had a ride to Cuba. And we were just ready to get on our way when I saw someone walking down the pier towards us. Me and my attorney squint to see who it was, and it's some guy around my age wearing some joggers and a hoodie. He comes up to me and shakes my hand, says, "Leon?"
And so I said, "Who might you be, you... F*ck?
"Are you Leon?" I look at this hoodlum who can be no older than me, thinking, what harm could it do? He doesn't look like a cop, he's just some dude. Maybe Lenny knows him.
So I look at Lenny, who stares at me silently, and I look back and say, "Yeah. That's me."
From behind me, I hear Lenny say, "Idiot."
And then, all these years later, it hits me that this is Moe. This is Segev, that many years older, with a sharper jaw and a beard, and now he was wearing his glasses. It's been so long, I didn't recognize him. You know, I wasn't even mad I was getting arrested. I saw my old friend again, even if he's taking me to prison.
And so he throws some cuffs on me and says he finally got my ass when it hits me, and as I look behind me I notice he's taken his badge out. I'm pretty drunk at that point. Immediately my attorney jumps towards him, screaming about probable cause and demanding that he take the cuffs off me at once.
"They have someone coming for you too, don't worry."
Lenny cusses at him and cites some legal code that I didn't know. Moe made a weird face, and said, "Whatever. But you're not going in the same car." I turned around to see what Pierre thought, but there was nobody behind us. Just an empty harbor, the waves churning peacefully.
In the back of the unmarked car, we drove towards a police station somewhere... I don't remember. Me and Moe made eye contact for a second through the rearview, and both chuckled. We had been making frequent phone calls, which started out as him trying to convince me to turn myself in but turned into friendly conversations and then a verbal backhand from me at the end before I abruptly hung up.
"I finally got your ass."
I said, "You know, I shouldn't have doubted you."
"You should have seen the office after what you did. First our computers stopped working... heh... and then, when the evidence room caught on fire, the front desk guy... he... Hahaha... He shat himself!"
I'm starting to see a pattern. It's like my presence, or even the very ghost of my presence makes people shit themselves. Or maybe I'm just schizophrenic. "That wasn't me. It was Luke. Luke Lemon."
He smirked. "You're so f*cking dumb. Hehehehe..."
"I lied, his name was Nash Nashville. He was from Memphis, Tennessee."
Moe chuckled.
"No, actually, it was a man named Austin. Austin Texas."
When the unmarked car got to the station they had both - this time deviating from the pattern - vomited from laughing so hard. But the taxes paid for the car to be cleaned. I don't think they ever really got it all out, and there was a little ketamine in my vomit so the car is forever tainted when it comes to evidence.
Our story is almost over. There's one more part I have to tell you before I say goodbye.
Are we going to prison? Maybe! Find out next time!
An Atavistic Freak Out, Final Chapter
When they arrested us, I had dyed half of my hair light brown.
"Your honor, I'd like to begin with the fact that a recent malfunction in the FBI offices of the witness we will be having sworn in, Segev Bezalel -"
"You pronounced his name wrong, it's Bitch." This came from the defendant's table, and then a fake cough. The witness snickered from across the room.The judge yelled at me to shut up or I would be held in contempt of court.
Lenny continued. "Segev Bezalel, whose evidence room caught on fire due to a malfunction in the thermostat, has been unable to produce any evidence so far tying my client or I to any of the charges that are currently levied against us."
Some guy from the district attorney's office shouted that he objected for the millionth time that day, and his motion was not sustained, although quite a few were. They ended up calling Moe to the stand to testify. The prosecutor asked him about the intrusion that corrupted all of the computers and servers in his office.
"Yes, somebody installed malware on all servers and computers in my office."
"And who do you think did it?"
"Leon Manna."
"How do you know?"
"A combination of the childish message and Leon's real capabilities to do such a thing. The planning was characteristic of Leon's previous plots, such as Sawtooth."
"Sawtooth, where he was seen doing fraud in person?"
F*ck.
"Yes, exactly."
F*ck, again.
He asked a few more questions. Soon after, Lenny went in on him. "Tell me, Mr. Bezalel, about the IP address that was associated with this attack?" He had a look on his face like he was planning something.
"It was some kind of uh... proxy." He stuttered! Sweet-mother-of-God, here it comes!
"And where, exactly, was this proxy located?"
After a brief pause, he said, "Turkey."
"Were you able to get jurisdiction in Turkey and subpoena this server?"
"No."
"Then how can you be so sure this was tied to me and my client?"
"It was timed with your planned escape."
"Did the exact same attack not happen in multiple other locations nationwide? How can you be so sure that this wasn't some act of planned terror by a greater force and not some vagrant who wanders across the country? My client isn't capable of something that meticulous, at least not in that timeframe." I made sure to do the same thing a bunch of times. Everywhere. A lot of places. As many as I could. I am God. I am not an American terrorist.
"Well... I mean... Technically... No."
"I heard Sawtooth was mentioned, how can you say for sure that it was my client? How do you know?"
"We have CCTV footage of your client in the bank, as well as witnesses." He did not sound confident.
"Have? Or had."
"Have."
"Where is it?"
Segev glared at Lenny. The judge told him to answer.
"We're working on that."
But Lenny continued. "Sawtooth was robbed by a man named Joseph Erickson. As far as we know, Joseph Erickson is dead. And as for your evidence, it was destroyed in an act of terrorism, from an outside source, combined with a malfunction in the evidence room. Was it not?"
Moe chuckled, and said, "It was."
"Is that the case? Then how come Sawtooth was unable to recover the footage from their own system?"
"That information is classified. We don't have to tell you. We're not going to tell you. Leon knows, why don't you ask him?"
Lenny paused, and gave him a strange look. "You're aware perjury is a crime, right?"
Moe continued to give Lenny the death stare.
"I rest my case."
Then they brought in the bane of my f*cking existence, Khir, who got on the stand for 15 minutes but was ultimately unable to say for certain that I was the man he saw in the bank. My disguise was so half-assed, but despite what I thought, worked. Thank you, uh... What was his f*cking name... Joseph Erickson! Thank you!
Liz denied sitting next to me on the stand due to the fact that there was now no CCTV footage and nobody was present in the room when she uh... didn't do this and the prosecution was unable to get anything useful out of her.
They pulled the clerk from the car rental place up. She said she couldn't identify me (I'm a shapeshifter) even though she definitely could, did not feel like ratting me out, and was willing to lie under oath for me. I smiled at her. She smiled back. I didn't technically go in there. Somehow she seemed prettier than before. From across the courtroom, she looked like an angel.
They were unable to get in contact with Aryana. Probably for the best. Hope she's okay, though I heard she still hates me. I think she moved to Europe and found a nice French boy. John Capper refused to testify for obvious reasons. He was arrested on a failure to appear warrant, and was sentenced to 15 years for murder when they tied him to the crime. I think I disabled the script on their server while I was blacked out on bromazepam. I don't remember. May went missing and is presumed to be dead, which totally happened and is 100 percent true. She has them fooled though. I think she's a contract killer now, or some shit like that. Unconfirmed reports, but I know it was her. A woman matching her description was seen with several men who later died of cyanide poisoning. Goldstein also did not testify; he was busy testifying for a different case. I think they understood the nature of, well, Goldstein, and gave him a pass on that. Pierre moved to Ireland. Quite often I like to imagine he's still out there somewhere, riding out on the water. Right now he is a fugitive. Ireland did not extradite him, if they ever even found out that the fake identity I set up for him there was a fake identity.
The only charges we couldn't beat were the drug possession charges. A couple misdemeanors, one felony. I spent ten days in a state hospital for an evaluation before they released me on probation, under the conditions that I participate in an intensive outpatient program and if I fail drug tests or f*ck up at the IOP, they will send me to jail or a mental hospital. Again. Mountain View State Forensic Hospital. There were people in there who hadn't seen the sun in years.
I got a call from Segev when I got out.
"You tryna smoke?"
I said yeah. Even an FBI agent can break the rules.
And in the end, I learned nothing. There doesn't seem to be some kind of moral to the story here. I just couldn't figure it out. I was so close. By only a hair, they got me. But that hair was just in reach... What if I had done it right? What if I had gotten away to Cuba? What if I hadn't mistreated my ex-girlfriend? Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning.
Hah hah hah.
What if I did it all again? I sat in my apartment for a moment, thinking. Then, in the blink of an eye, my new name is Lee Williams. Lee Williams was born into this earth through a Ring Zero rootkit I installed on an SSA machine a lifetime ago, just like Leon was all those years back, and he was a new man, born again, for a second trial. A fallen angel, if you will. Which you won't.
Then, I reached into my drawer, pulled out a check, and the outworn chase of money continued.
Enjoyed An Atavistic Freak Out? Buy Leon a coffee!
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