I almost shouted, "What the heck is going on?" No sooner than I had spoke, I look up to see one of the new bees standing at our table, Telling me that I am not authorized to audit the "Chair, " and any chance for my acceptance into Oraca will be revoked if I presume again.
"Excuse me," said Gretchen. "Carl, this is Phillip Johnson, the designer of the Personality Profiling Inventory." We would not have even known if you could survive the "Confidence Game," had he not provided all of us with the necessary diagnostics to determine your robustness." "Back Off." That rather big attractive younger man floated away. Gretchen again apologized. Weird. "Carl's a good guy, or at least he was before the reversal." "Look we are going to have a hard time finding privacy." "There is no inorganic surveillance here in the compound, no need." "Damn if we didn't train these kids too well. They can smell an incongruence a mile away." "They have been trying to scan me for weeks."
"Let me guess," I say, "Gunter isn't trying to sue you, and in fact you two have one of those "Secret Bonds," don't you?"
"Right," she says, "But we don't have a lot of time, I want you to profile this new batch of converts from InterSpace. Discreetly!" "There seems to be some bad bugs in the updated social linguistics code and our new bees our coming out arrogant and paranoid."
"You mean more so than usual?" Gretchen never liked my sarcasm. She scowled.
My two daughters and my wife have been confirmed 3rd level confidants and I feel like I don't even know them any more." "I've grieved the lose of my life's desire for two years now in silence." "No one knows except Gunter and now you." "Gunter has been corresponding by mail through the pseudonym of my Aunt Simone." "When the real Simone passed on last Oct. we had already set up my exit strategy." "We had taken a page from your playbook, and just planned for an inevitable truth." "And the truth is I'm sick of this place, everybody knows what happens to the bad child." "All in all, we knew the defectors would need a place to go and so we made it look like I wanted their malcontented disfunction." "I did make my fortune capitalizing on peoples need for a controlled rapid conversion experience." "It kept the code in friendly control and no one has to know I was the person who persuaded the holy master, JOHN MILLER to hand off the power of attorney for Oraca to me."
I look up again and before I have even tasted my soup, the original six converts from the airport float out of a mist. Light is turned up and we are informed that Gretchen is required to put out a proverbial fire in Malaysia. Turned out another ashram was bombed and it is suspected to have been done by another convert. Gretchen leaves me to ponder my dinner alone. Wow.
