The East PacificBoard

Habbakuk 1:4 - Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

Mind control has, for a long time, been seen as this esoteric concept that nobody should ever take seriously. To many, the concept of your own free will being perverted and bent to the ideals of another by just a few words and sounds has always sounded ridiculous to those who are skeptical of such a practice ever truly working on a human being.

What these skeptics forget is that humans and sapients at the end of the day, are simply animals. We are but an electrified bag of meat, much like the beasts we have given ourselves dominion over.

Animals have weak brains. We have weak brains.

Ever wondered why when you see an advertisement you suddenly get an innate desire to buy the product advertised? Have you ever done a repeated task so many times that when you perform the task, you never even think of it and your hands just glide like they have a mind of their own? In little and large ways, our very lives are a product of conditioning, and by extension mind control.

Your "free will" is only as good as the mind that proclaims it. And the mind that proclaims it is not particularly strong.

Sapients can absolutely be mind controlled. Or if you will, conditioned.

The conditioning can be benign. It can be malicious. But at the end of the day, when you are conditioned, your actions from that moment one become the manifested form of your controller's interests.

You become a pawn in a grand game of Chess that the higher power plays.

Now, where am I going with this?

Let me show you.

...

Esther combs through the mystery box from the Arnhem Island stronghold. Its files are most certainly incriminating evidence for Hart. Had anyone ever found out he had done this sh*t behind closed doors he would, for better or worse, have been killed for his vile, atrocious acts against his fellow man.

She pulls out another yellowed manilla folder from the box. This one is labelled NMW-Habbakuk, named after the Book of Habbakuk from the Christian Bible. Habbakuk's message of blindly trusting God would aptly describe what this folder had planned within the sheaf of papers bound tight within it.

NMW-Habbakuk had clearly never seen the light of day, like Genesis and Deuteronomy had. From what Esther reads of it, this project under the NMWGauze umbrella had only been in its conceptual stage when the government was deposed by her armed forces. It is most certainly interesting, compared to the efforts to create a better scopolamine-based agent.

Mind... control? Civilian sleepers? Conditioning? Just how insane was Christian Hart to greenlight this project's development? NMW-Habbakuk, to the untrained eye, is all but esoteric drivel. Humans can't be conditioned...

Or could they?

Esther continues to read. The techniques that were being conceptualized by the ATID lab rats were certainly unorthodox. Using a numbers station, a sleeper agent targeted by the program could simply be activated by playing a specific broadcast to them. On top of that, these civilians could be assigned a mission without even realising they have one until activation through a massive slew of various conditioning techniques, with many bordering on straight-up psychological abuse of the would-be agent to bury their mission deep within their subconscious, where it would remain until they were called into duty by the IEIA. The way the document touts this, the hidden nature of these civilians effectively make them impenetrable to counter-intelligence, because how could anyone ever suspect a genuine Joe Blow was involved in a massive conspiracy?

Could such a thing even work? It's presented to her as if it is entirely reasonable and feasible. It could be. Conditioning techniques already exist. Abusive relationships are a real thing, and are absolutely considered a form of mind control given many rely on manipulation of the mind to forward a twisted idea.

Mind control is simply the sterile word for manipulation, lying, deception and trickery.

Esther turns it over and over in her mind again, once more at a crossroads in her path as a leader.

Oh, it is absolutely feasible. But it doesn't detract from the fact this is morally wrong on so many levels. That not only it is morally wrong, it is also illegal.

But it would be nice to have an edge like this over the enemy. It would be awesome to have a legion of agents that could hide in plain sight better than the most well-trained agent the IEIA had to offer.

All at once, Esther's morality and pragmatism collides and begins to butt heads within her mind.

It's wrong.

But it's too good to shut down.

Would she do it? Could she do it?

What would Esther do?
...

Habbakuk 1:3 - Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me. There is strife, and conflict abounds.

9:45pm
A nondescript warehouse, Port of Point Whiskey

By now, Justin, Dzan and Helen have effectively broken paths with the IEIA as a whole. Whatever they are doing now is now no longer in the interests of either the One Republican faction or the Reformist faction of the divided organisation. Well... that would be more a half-truth; the One Republicans are still seeking to destabilise Mareuvia, which was what Helen and her posse were also aiming to do, albeit for different reasons.

Justin arrives at the shipyard warehouse Helen has called both of her loyal agents to. While not disclosing anything to him or Dzan outside of "it is imperative you show up," he is fairly sure that whatever Helen wants to show them has to be more than just a waste of his time.

He parks his car in a secluded area of the shipyard and steps out of the vehicle, surveying the area first for counter-spies before continuing on. He walks to the warehouse, donning a hood and avoiding the sporadically-placed lamps that light the devoid-of-life shipyard.

After a while, he arrives at the warehouse Helen called them to. It's less a warehouse, and is more a hangar for ships and submarines, with a large opening at the back that opens out to sea. The wall of the warehouse is marked with a large, yellow "18A" which signifies the port's designation in the yard.

He opens a small door on the side of the warehouse and enters. Standing inside, near a tarped trawler, stands Helen. Dzan sits nearby, lighting a cigar before taking a puff from it. Behind the both of them is a chair with a man bound and gagged to it. He is slumping forward in the chair.

"Good evening, Justin. Glad you could join us."

Dzan lets out a single grunt.

"OK... who the f*ck is that? And why is he bound like that?!" Justin points behind Helen at the man in the chair.

Helen turns towards the man in the chair. "This is Mr. Silverlock, Justin. Fresh right off the boat from the south, and ready to return to society as a functioning member."

Justin is majorly confused. Why did Helen bring the man back? Wasn't he supposed to replace him for the mission?

"Helen, I thought I was supposed to be-"

"I understand your concern, Justin. If you're confused as to what's happening, we're swapping you out with the real Mr. Silverlock."

"B-but why? He's not a spy, and he's working with the enemy, is he not?"

"That's where you're wrong, Justin. Dzan, care to chip in?"

Dzan stops smoking and turns his head towards Justin. "Mr. Mahan, our friend over here... well... he has been reprogrammed, da? I don't know specifics of what Helen did to him, but long story short, Mr. Silverlock is not who he is anymore."

Wasn't NMW-Habbakuk still on the drawing board? The TASA initiative was nowhere near ready around the time the coup happened.

"So, Donald's been brainwashed?"

"Exactly. He will take the mission's heavy lifting from here on out. Once we let him go, you will be tasked with monitoring him from a distance to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid or isn't compromised by counter-intelligence. You are also going to report to us how he is handling, as this is the first field test we have conducted for the TASA project, and the lab rats aren't exactly sure he will work as intended. You are to tell us if something goes wrong, and if something does go wrong and I hope it won't, you are to immediately provide evac to Donald to make sure the project isn't discovered by counter-intelligence."

"Am I clear with you, Justin?"

"Sure. I can do that." He eyes Donald. It looks like he's still asleep.

"Good." Helen hands Justin and Dzan some maps. "Now, we can't let him go from the shipyard, so we're going to have to release him back at his home. When he will wake up, he won't remember anything that happened after his initial abduction outside of what we want him to retain, so don't give him any hints that he even got abducted in the first place. Capeche?"

"Yep."

Dzan grunts again.

"Good. Now get out of here. Justin, use the family car you brought along."

...

1. 13. 5. 6. 3. 2. 3. 23. 43. 43. 5. 5. 6. 19. 18. 17. 57-

"He's responding well... give him another-"

"4. 4. 5. 6. 7. 29. 10. 18. 39. 56. 84-

"Will you do our bidding, Mr. Silv-"

"Dieu réunit ceux qui s'aiment-"

With a jolt and a burst of imagined light, Donald shoots out of his bed and inhales deeply. He looks around with a panicked look and tries to figure out where he is.

What the hell was that dream? What was with the numbers, and the Rouentaise chanson and the crooning manipulative voices?

What the f*ck was going on?

He relaxes a little. Its his bedroom. His lovely and homely bedroom. His wife is asleep next to him, with the morning sun outside shining a soft orange sliver of light onto her face. The birds sing outside the window, chirping away at one another about whatever birds talk about in the morning.

He writes off the strange dream as nothing more but that, and quickly settles back into his daily routine, as if nothing ever happened.

As if nothing ever happened...