Texts from Dave

(Takes place day after returning)
You will each get a text about the same time from Dave saying a meeting is required at 810 Flat Shoals AVE SE. Late afternoon.

For Lucien :

All 3 of you will need to attend and arrive together. (I'll post more once I know everyone is going.)

Driving by the house or checking it out that day prior to, or at the time of arrival:
There is the distinct smell of charcoal bbq in the air.
In the driveway is a black SUV
An unmarked white passanger transit van.
A pink minivan labeled AAA Tidy Clean.

Perceval will be going

(I'm going to try to section this off in case you want to interrupt something)

1. Approaching the door, a man in unmarked military fatigues opens the door. He sizes you all up for a moment and gestures to follow him.

2. Entering the foyer area the house looks and sounds empty as your footsteps echo around. All the doors are closed and you think you can hear some murmurs of voices on the other side of them. There is a young hispanic lady with her hair in a pony tail, wearing jeans and a plain white polo shirt. She doesn't say anything but immediately wipes the door down after you enter and seems to be keeping one eye on you all as you head down the hallway.

3. The fatigued man (haha) leads you straight across the foyer, past the staircase, through a short hallway, towards the back of the house and into the kitchen. There are grocery bags in the kitchen and some bowls and utensils out, a sign of someone having done some prep work. The backdoor is open except for the screen door which he opens and guides you through.

4. Outside is a small porch which descends to a patio. There is a picnic table set up with covered plates and bowls on it.
There is a middle aged man in jeans and a loose fitting polo putting steaks on a grill. Seated at the table is another middle aged man. His skin is albino white, he has stark white hair combed straight down, and is wearing dark sunglasses, a button up hawain style shirt and jeans.

5. The man at the grill half turns around, "just in time, steaks are just going on. I hope you like meat. Go ahead sit down, drinks are in the cooler there. How you like your steak?" And without giving you time to answer he points the tongs around and says, "rare, rare, rare...perfect. Only way I know how to make them."

6. As he cooks the steaks and during eating:
"Jerry Williams, your handler."
Dave immediately says, "No you aren't."
He gives Dave a sullen look, "For purposes of this and any future meetings I am."
"I wanted to meet you. I don't like recruiting out of terminal cases, I prefer the tried and true recruiting methods. It's a question of loyalty and what I want are people that want to serve their country, not save their ass."
"There is also the issue of baggage. Cases like you bring baggage. Things you know, things you think you know. No, see, I want a clean agent. An agent that has been trained, is loyal, that trusts and respects the chain of command, and doesn't ask questions or think they have the answers, or is going to get all snoopy trying to solve something they don't have all the information on."

7. He takes a bite and while he chews albino man pushes some papers and pens over. "The paperwork wasn't finished. We need beneficiary information. Your beneficiary is entitled to one year of your disability should something happen to you."

8. Jerry finishes chewing, "Now we let this Ankroptic thing get a bit away from us. We don't care what people want to worship, freedom of religion and all that. If someone wants to go to church and pray under their breath to the pillsbury dough boy, that is their business. But, this thing has gone further than we thought and we are seeing some action taking place around it. And we are going to send a message."

9. "What you need to understand is you have a job to do. Your job is simple. Don't be complicating it up trying to put pieces together. That is not your job. That is someone else's job. You are not acting alone on this. You are part of a team, like fingers on a hand. For every job, information has come in, someone has made a decision, you act, and there are people that will follow up behind you. People that will take care of your mess, people that will provide cover. And there are other teams operating exactly as you will be."

10. "This is also not a vacation, or an endlessly funded ongoing operation. If you are hoping to make a career out of this, that is not going to happen. You'll receive assignments, you execute those assignments, and you'll be evaluated. Maybe, if you are lucky you will be picked up for something else, maybe moved into field training and reassigned.
This is tax payer money, not your personal jet set money. We expect you to be good stewards and act in a fiscally responsible fashion."

11. "That being said, recognize that you are working for the good of the American people and Americas international allies. No half assing it. We are not going to let this thing get weaponized, and we aren't going to tolerate radicalized practices. We are going to successfully carry this operation out and put the lid back on this thing. Now pass those green beans over here."

12. Albino man, "Remember this is about sending a message as much as it is about...well...we can't have any accidents. There needs to be no doubt."

13. Jerry, "If you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler would you? The answer better be yes. If not, my concerns over recruiting practices are once again validated. Cause I'd kill baby Hitler in an instant, no hesitation. And I'd save Jesus too. History is what we make of it then and now in the present. Not in some liberal paradox hindsight. If that means my grandfather doesn't marry my grandmother and I'm never born, then so be it."

14. Albino man, "I'm going to need signatures." He passes more forms to you. "Confidentiality agreements, be sure to check cremation or burial, and for organ donation, and there is room on the back of form four if you have any message you'd like passed on to your beneficiary. I'd suggest keeping it simple."

15. "And this form, should it be needed, authorizes you to be identified as a foreign agent."

16. Albino man hands a license to Lucien, "We've gone ahead and printed you a new license with his address," pointing to Percival, "as your current residence is...well...and your employer's address is...has its own issues."

17. Jerry, "We, I've seen your files, are going to need you to stay away from Demarkov."

18. Albino man, "Disassociate."

19. Dave, "Yeah I've already signed these...." He gets a nasty look from Jerry. "I'll just sign them again..."

20. Jerry, "While we are on the topic of employers. As I said, I don't like hiring from terminal cases, but you do come with some recommendation." He points a piece of steak at Lucien. "Your former employer..."

21. Without missing a beat Albino man turns his cellphone towards Lucien. On the screen is a picture of Lucien's boss.
Jerry, "is...cooperating...with us, for a reduced sentence."
Albino man, "none."
Jerry, "Hell, we've been using him for years."
Albino man flips through some images on his phone showing ships, cargo containers, trucks and planes being loaded and unloaded with weapon crates.

Who were they talking to when mentioning Demarkov?

I think Lucien.

2. Lucien puts on gloves.

18. Disassociate from Demarkov : "Fine."

Percival seeing Lucien put on gloves will follow suit.

Percival will not eat anything while at this meeting.

When paperwork is presented to him he will read it thoroughly two or three times, to have an understanding of the language being used and looking for any word play tricks in them. Since he feels has little choice, after reading them he will sign them. As for a beneficiary, he will name Daniel.

He will check the paperwork noting a desire to be cremated, and will not agree to be an organ donor.

When they mention Demarkov, Percival will give a nearly imperceptible grimace. Nothing else elicits any response, he remains stoic through it all.

Jerry, "Well come on, dig in. Can't let all this food go to waste."
Jerry looks at Percival, "That's a grade A FDA approved American steak, eat up. You can afford to put a little weight on you. Me..." He pats his belly. "I don't know how many of these meetings I can keep having."
Albino man sets his fork and knife down, "How did your physical go?" He then picks up the knife and fork again and resumes eating.
Jerry, "Fine, fine. On lipitor for the cholesterol. Pass those mash potatoes around before they get cold. Make sure Percival gets some, help yourself."
After a few mouth fulls Jerry says, "You're into books right? Read Maximum Push*? God damn that's a good book. You should check it out. How about any of the Gears, Guts, Guns, and Girls series? You know, those would make a good movie, someone should make those."

Albino man, "I don't think Percival reads those kinds of books."
Jerry, "Doesn't read, doesn't eat, what do you do? For fun I mean."

*Percival might know Maximum Push is basically a fictional pulp war novel.

Lucien reads it but considers signing it. But after Percival has looked it over and signed it, Lucien will sign it, too.

Cremation, not organ donation. Lucien doesn't want any of the weirdness he's been around to rub off on anyone that gets his body parts.

Percival looks at Jeremy and winces at the mention of those books, “I don’t read poorly written pulp novels. But if you want to discuss rare printings and esoteric journals, I have read more then my fair share. If you want to discuss the GGGG series, I’m sure Frank Falco would love to talk with you, he was in one of the b-movies made about them.”

Percival doesn’t eat or drink anything.

Jerry, "Poorly written. Well I like a book that says what it means and means what it says. The interesting thing about cross roads is they converge. Here we are converged. You with your esoteric printings, and me with my pulp. We are at this point together, and I'm relaxed, well fed, you're hungry and anxious."
Albino man: "Perturbed."
Jerry: "Yeah, perturbed."

Albino man to Lucien: "I like models. Dioramas. I find it relaxing to place the shrubs of places I've been."

Jerry to Percival, "There's another quality I don't like about recruiting like this. You stand out. You dress weird, you don't eat, I bet you can't tell me who won the last super bowl. The thing about pulp-ular culture, it's popular. It connects people. It puts them at ease, it makes friends. I'm going to go piss, and let's play some horseshoes when I get back."

Albino man to Lucien: "The problem with dioramas though is, they are out of time. Where does one end? You can't make the entire world, and you just end up with these little set pieces. Little set pieces, sitting there on a desk, in this world, but also in its own. I also 3D print little figures of myself. I like to hide me in the models. Sometimes behind a tree, sometimes...I don't like horseshoes."

Albino man stands when Jerry gets up, and then he sits back down.

Albino man to Lucien: "Moments like this are difficult in modeling. I would have to make a little tiny steak and a little tiny stack of green beans and glue it to a little plate with little tiny tweezers. But every hobby has its irritations I suppose."

Albino man to Percivel: "He wants to like you. And you too Lucien."

After Jerry leaves...

"I like my steak a little a more done." He'll get up to cook it a little more on the grill.

"Yeah. I've known some people into modelling. Especially with high stress professions, it can be peaceful.
"It's all a glimpse. There is always something bigger out there, something larger than the scene. I should be used to it now. But I guess that's the thing. You all are setting the scene for us. We are the figurines in the model. We only get a glimpse.

"Thing is, with extremely high performers, it sometimes is worth it to give them context. Then they can be creatively effective. You just have to have alignment.

"If what Jerry says is true, I think we are extremely highly aligned. Just something to think about.

Lucien will take off his steak, sit down and start eating.

Percival nods, agreeably, with the last points Lucien makes.

He then waits a bit before responding. “Perturbed is a good word for it. I get it, I’m odd. Tell me something I don’t know, that I haven’t known since I was like ten years old, when I was nearly a foot taller then all my peers and thirty pound lighter, than them, as well. I just embraced who I was, because, as they call them in modern internet parlance, the “normies” treated me as a freak even when I dressed like them and dis the things they did. Thing is I learned you can’t trust those who just go with the flow, they are a dangerous hive mind, who blindly follow. Which is also why you probably let the Ankroptic people go for so long, because it was popular, it is popular, and it hides in plain sight.”

Percival leans back in his chair, then continues, “So let’s just cut to the quick here. I’m not here to be friends and neither are you or Jeremy. So let’s drop the charade. You have the position of power in this situation, and we are in a position of weakness.  So just tell us what you want, plainly, and we’ll accommodate and be on our way.”

Percival leans forward, taps the papers on the table, “If you have done your research as thoroughly as you should have, then you know I take NDAs extremely seriously and wouldn’t sign one unless I was going to uphold it, outside of that you’d also know that I would normally be recording this interaction, but I have refrained from doing so, nor am I taking the meticulous notes I normally would take when in a meeting.”

Percival yawns, “I’ve had a busy last few days filled with traveling and would like to catch up on my rest. So can we get to the point.”

Jerry to Percival as he gets up to go inside: "A recording of this conversation would have to be a fake since this conversation has never taken place." He gives a second glance at Dave.
Dave: "I report the missions. This isn't a mission. There is nothing to report." Jerry gives an approving nod.
Albino to Percival: "This," he runs his finger around to circle the table, "is the point."
Dave: "We're being scrutinized."
The albino gives a small shrug, "There is a certain amount of investment being made. A high risk with civilians."

Jerry comes back outside looking at his phone and muttering. "Goddamnit," he hisses and pockets his phone. He taps the unmarked soldier on the chest with the back of his hand, "grab the cooler will ya. Just set it down there by the table."
"Alright, who's up for horseshoes." (It doesn't seem like an actual question.)

Albino to Lucien: The albino man leans in a bit, lowers his glasses, "I would really like to see your house." He then stands and stretches.

Rounds of horseshoes will take place.
Jerry will crack a beer from the cooler which has been brought down and hand beers out.

Percival goes through the motions of the rest of whatever this is.. he will take a beer open it, walk around with it, put it down, pick it up, but he never takes sip. He plays a round or two of horseshoes.. which I’ll assume with dex of 15 he’s not bad at. If asked about games, Percival responds, that he prefers chess, go, othello, and other strategy based games. Other than that he does his best to just get through their excruciating performance.

Jerry: "Chess? We should be able to dig up a chess board around I bet. My friend there plays a bit of chess, don't you."
Albino man half shrugs, "A little bit. It has been a long time."
Jerry, "What'd you say, want to play some chess?"
Albino man looks at the horseshoes, "Sure."
Jerry looks over at the fatigued man and says, "See if you can find us a chess set in there, try upstairs on the bookshelf, I thought I saw some boardgames up there."
The guard will return with a ripped box. Jerry sets it down on the table. It is one of those checkers and chess sets with plastic pieces, some of which are missing.
The albino man digs through his pockets and substitutes in some loose change for the missing pieces.  

If Play Chess:

Jerry to Percival, "Let me get a new cold one, you barely touched your drink, it's going to be all warm."

The "party" will drag on into the evening.
There are opportunities to ask questions. I can either try to field them tonight or we can hit them during the session.

Percival is able to focus and ignore the Albino man’s distractions, now had he started just throwing trash around, or covering himself or the pieces in peanut butter or something, he might have gotten under percivals skin. Daniel has even somewhat desensitized Percival to even major distractions and annoyances… but not enough for percival to just ignore Daniel’s weirdness.

Percival will take playing chess seriously, utilizing strategy and theory he would have come across through playing chess, but it is much more about fun for him. And Percival does find playing chess fun.

As usually Percival will be stoic in his demeanor, and will take some time exam into the board and the options available to him.

During the second game Percival will accept the drawn.

Then after the third game, Percival will do his best not to let on that  he was allowed to win, but also doesn’t gloat, and just offers a hand shake and a “good game”

When Jerry offers to get him another beer Percival responds with “Do you have any coffee?”

Percival will just continue on as he has. If coffee is available he will drink coffee.

We will still go back and revisit a bit of the time there but shortly after leaving:

Dave will lean forward in the car, "Jonathan Pollard! Holy shit...there he is in high school!"
On his phone will be a picture of a much much younger but still recognizable albino man. Dave will rattle off some information as he finds it.
Jonathan Pollard, head of his high school chess club, Stanford chess club, 3rd youngest state champion, several national top placements. Utilized a grinding style of play. He's quoted saying, "I don't play to win the board, I play to beat the opponent...."
Quit chess sometime in college it looks like, or a little after...said, "everything I've seen chess makes you go crazy, I don't want to go crazy." Graduated with a math degree, went back to school for a cryptography.
Looks like he took a job as a consultant for...some small analysis company.


Ok ok, Published a paper around the mid 90s, "Economic Terrorism," and later one called, "Private Warfare - Fighting in the Public Sphere."
Dave reads a random bit of the paper: "5,005 large style trucks were involved in fatals crashes, a 43% increase from nine years ago." ...yadda yadda...lots of stats...."84% survival rate for the occupant,"...more stats..."a used Western Star EX..." That's an 18 wheeler, "costs on average less than $35,000, while a single 9x Sidewinder costs $473,000...."
Dave scrolls rapidly through the paper. It's about vehicle accidents...he's talking about using planted agents to target, targets with vehicles.
There's a section on military suicide and divorce rates....something about a "seduction force" that might drive those rates higher. Examinations of cultural suicide differences, such as crippling debt against north koreans who are more driven to suicide by "economic hardship."
There's a whole section on food poisoning, using agents as fast food workers to serve rancid meats...basically advocating to replace conventional armies with implanted "common residents." There's federal lawsuit and insurance cost analysis versus fielding troops...cost of living comparisons for soldiers in the field offset against daily wages in countries...something about...well this should sound familiar, "grind the leadership down internally until they are too exhausted to carry out a conventional war."
He has a rather scathing critique of nuclear weapons in one section.

Participated, or spoke at a wargaming event for the DoD. Joined the RAND Corp, I think...and that's all I can find.

Come on, an albino chess player, they had to know that would be discoverable, was that a slip...or did they do that intentionally?"

By the way...AAA Tidy Clean has a one star rating. "Scheduled an appointment, failed to show up," "left early," "sat in their van in front of the house for an hour, then drove away," "the "mexican sisters" are cute but did a terrible job," "called for an appointment but was told they only do corporate work, their website says residential!" Oh here is a winner, "called and specifically requested someone that does not speak english, but they sent two mexicans or whatever that did. Caught them they were listening in on my conversations." What the fuck? Dave laughs.

Percival nods, “Im pretty certainty the tiny clean women that were there were there as enforcers, if things didn’t go the way they wanted them to go.”  He spends a little bit of time thinking, “Maybe they knew we would find Pollard and his paper, for ideas or as a threat. I’m not certain which, but they don’t seem to do anything by accident. pollard was toying with me this in the chess games, he didn’t need to offer a draw in the second game, as he was going to win in 4 moves, and the third game he allowed me to win after Jeremy intervened.”