"You are scheduled to be in D.C. next week for an appointment at the USSF in the Pentagon, we will pick you up on the designated day and time at your residence",the email read. What the hell is the USSF? Wikipedia open my eyes to this mystery, damn! The United States Space Force!
"Pete we have heard great things about you and your program, and how it is a unique approach with incredible results for helping operators in the field", said the general sounding like a character from a syfy series. I had to fight the urge to smile with a big dumbass cheshire cat grin, because it's world class bullshit. Who ever is my next victim is probably some poor cat they want to pump and dump. Now that my old friend "The Medic" has made me aware of "The Department" and the fact I've been injected with nano particles making me a transmitter. Who or what is listening to my private conversations may be on a level so high, I rather try to push that fact out of my mind, it just adds a whole new dynamic to this game, I'm being played, the client is being played, everything is such a mind bending deceptive clusterfuck of people giving their whole life to a fictitious operation . Shit, now I'm clenching my jaw so tight my teeth hurt.
"The Pilot" you are about to meet, said The General," is a world class hero in everyway mentally, physically and without trans technology enhancements. He is of such a high caliber in field performance, scientist are stopping by later for a mouth swab for another catalog of his DNA for future research". The General paused than continued," I am telling you this because your clearance is high enough for me to give you a deeper insight in to our dilemma. Buck Roger's has gone from being a model trooper to hell on wheels taking "work hard play hard" to a whole new level. We need you to knock the Dennis Rodman out of him and get him back on track. Effective immediately I have orders from command, I own you for the next 48 hours, you Will Exercise This Mans Demons by the 47th hour with 30 seconds left on the clock or so help me God your penalty for failure will be appropriate", finished the General. Fuck I was mad, this isn't how this shit works, who the fuck is this guy, and I already wasted my one and only emergency call to "The Operator, shit! "The Operator" would have said the same damn thing had I called, work for the General and STFU or take a dirt nap.
Than the General said something so magnificent and glorious that for a brief second I seen nothing but the brightest white light swallowing me up as a heavenly choir was performing in celebration."Could you please repeat that sir", I interrupted. "The General than said, "You have 48 hours and an unlimited budget at your command, and discretion."Yes!Yes!Yes! I screamed inside my head, this will be legendary! Valhalla Mother Fuckers...
Two chairs in an empty room just the way I like it, they actually let me dictate and demand specific things lately, and this was one of them, an empty room, been a real nice change from "how would you like a bullet sandwich" every other time I asked for something. "The Pilot" sitting across from me, we exchanged pleasantries and small talk, and than I slid my notebook to him with a hushing gesture as I was talking to him with the Following message: Play the game and talk to me Pilot! You and I are burning out of here after this meeting for the ultimate adult disneyland experience, you have no clue! With that Pilot gave me a thumbs up and proceeded to tell me his tale.
"I've been in the USSF for 10 years and 9 of those years spent stationed on Mars. I know you thought the The United States Space Force was only a year old, well it isn't. I was part of the first expeditionary force to inhabit and occupy Mars. It's come a long way since our first day 9 years ago, we are now ready for civilian enterprises to move in now that the infra structure is secure, and construction has taken off creating a literal city complete with off world creature comforts now that the planet is open to entrepreneur's. BioTech research is off the Charts on Mars, crazy fucking shit. I've laid eyes on some horrific shit nobody had any business even knowing existed, it's got something to do with the fact that there currently exists no government on Mars and Bio-Tech has shelled out huge amounts of money so they could run research off planet 100% off the books and unregulated. Hence my current attitude. I'm mad as fuck! I went through unreal hell setting up a planet from scratch, it took an incredible effort to get the place up and running, and that meant doing without and sacrificing for quite awhile. After 3 years we finished building our first star gate and it went instantly from living on food and water rations like pioneers to direct access to all things earth. I can't believe the hardship and sacrifice we made on Mars was purely for corporate exploitation and profit, so yes I've been kinda pissed lately. I'm on a 48 hour pass on Earth, and than will catch the next stargate back to Mars. Commands hoping my attitude gets readjusted in the next two days" the Pilot took a deep breath, looked at me, looked at his watch. I immediately got up and spoke to the General. That's right sir we need a private chartered jet for the duration of my session. and I need to get out of this secure area so I can get on my personal phone and make some calls right away please!
In between cities as we blazed our way across the country is when the Pilot and I would talk. He went into great detail on the struggle of colonizing Mars. Just landing in one piece was a step in the right direction. The Pilots whole experience was one of extreme highs and lows. Colonizing a planet meant long spells of incredible boredom confined to a tin can every minute you weren't in the field working on infrastructure, and then stress from building in a suit making small tasks monumental some days, followed by outright death if you were not careful, than seeing for the first time ancient alien monoliths, pyramids, statues, to include amazing alien technology recovered in a few well placed digs. The Pilot volunteered for every alien tech recovery mission and soon became the Indiana Jones of the planet Mars. Fearless, cut from the stuff of legend.
To get over the boredom of Mars an underground fight club emerged amongst officers and enlisted, complete with secret initiations, and the legendary oath every member of the club makes,"what happens in fight club stays in fight club". The pilot is the undefeated champion of Mars, bare knuckle boxing with MMA, the medics were starting to get pissed. There was an epidemic of broken moses and black eyes, and nobody was talking about it. The other escape from boredom on Mars is to be documented as the first Human in history to do something on Mars, everything from the completely shocking to the mundane was logged on a secret members only server on base. The game required 2 witnesses to document and record"The First Person on Mars to..." It took off like wild fire and became bigger than Mars "Fight Club". The "First on Mars Club", was just as secret as "Fight Club". It was a major obsession as people plotted and brain stormed elaborate "First on Mars" events to be recorded as the first in history on the new planet. Finally the Pilot took it too far. He became "the first" in something that got his ass in a bind, and because of his attitude with the Corporations lately they leveraged it against him and here he was on a counseling session of a lifetime courtesy of Me! I called every celebrity on my client list across the country and pulled strings with some big names in HollyWood, and Music, except sadly I couldn't call Kanye's clone...
"The Pilot" was a new man at the end of my 48 hour session, and the Pentagon was extremely pleased with my results. Pilot had an appointment booked for a follow up visit with me in 6 months! as a token gift the pilot gave me a small gift of what resembled an Ank carved from Martian stone. I added it to my safe with Kanye's thumb drive of rare personal tracks. It's rare this job has happy endings, today was one of them.
I'm "The Narrator". Don't worry about who I am, I'm going to add to "The Confessor's" story, how the hell do you think your able to read this! The Pilot and the Confessor thought they achieved the ultimate act of rebellion, charging the Pentagon black budget with a 25 million dollar bill for a 48 hour binge disguised as a therapy outing. Little did they both know nothing is as it seems in that line of work. The Generals at the Pentagon were about to rub the pilot out, the Space Command counselors said he was broken and had the potential to cause chaos on the level of an Organized Labor leader collectively bargaining with the Corporate powers on Mars, a new Corporate deregulated wonderland.
The Pilot's DNA was also worth a fortune, a human specimen perfect in every way. One of the biotech labs already has prototype soldiers cloned off of the Pilot's DNA. The lab manufactured Clones of various degrees including a few models with a quantum processor and AI operating system where an organic brain would be. The ideas is to create an Army of clones to pioneer, explore, build planets from scratch installing a series of Star Gates along the way opening a planetary silk road. The cost per clone in comparison to the cost of a human employee, made replacing people with Clones easy for Corporate Mars. No pay, no overtime, long hours with little downtime and mentally programmed for maximum efficiency where human entertainment and emotional states didn't need to be dealt with.
The Corporations on Mars payed the bill for the jet setting duo, and it didn't cost the pentagon a nickel. "The Department" new all about the Confessor's secret high profile client list and new he could pull off one hell of a moral boost if he was put under pressure. The Confessor isn't trained to even be a Boy Scout. The agency purposely picked someone who wasn't trained in anything military or government ops for the sole purpose of creating a pawn of great importance that is easily swayed with a little bit of discomfort and had zero ability to go underground. A million and a half in NYC for a personal performance by Beyonce and JayZ, a stop in Detroit, no one figured out what those 2 did in Detroit, Than on to Nashville for a private performance by Kid Rock, Las Vegas 3 million or so, more private audiences most notable in Vegas was Cris Angel, than Sushi in L.A. with Mila Kunis. Than there was the 50 million dollars we, the Pentagon, charged for the use of our Confessor successfully completing his mission. We now have a lifetime of golf outings and exotic excursions in a black slush fund named Confessor courtesy of Mars Biotech. Yes a happy ending. I've briefly read through the journal the Confessor left in his safe, it seems like happy endings didn't always come easy, Got to go before this fool walks in on us and knows we cracked his safe and have to knock him out...
This was originally posted on Steem in Jan 2021, and edited, episodes of my serial short fiction 1-6 were originally released on Steem. The coming episode "The Confessor Episode 7" will start all future episodes published on Hive