NaNoWriMo Day 13 - Passed 25k words

Angry Gary and Angry Larry the Leopard Slugs

Tyranny
Larry felt the excitement welling in him as he pressed forward. The Bolleak-AI site was evolving rapidly and he kept finding new features being added. Unsure of who was developing teh site he put the thought to the back of his mind and ran report after report. His pda had started to get slower as he continued to run rpeorts. The freeze time seemed to be increasing quickly and was now taking nearly half an hour per report. The waiting time was frustrating him and tempering his excitement but each time the pda unfroze the excitement bubbled again.
Larry was in the middle of waiting for the pda to unfreeze when Gary’s call came through the entrance to the nook. Larry called back and Gary entered.
“What’s up?” Gary asked.
“Running reports and the pda keeps getting slower. It’s getting to be pretty annoying. What you up to?” Larry replied.
“Just stopping to see if you want to go find some food.”
“As long as the wait is for these reports I have time. Sure let’s go,” Larry said as he slid the pda aside.
The two exited the nook and slugged their way towards a stump on the edge of the driveway. They stopped at little mounds of molds and various fungus for nibbles but continued towards the stump. As they sat at one fungus investigating Larry asked Gary, “do you think it’s worth my time to keep digging in the data?”
Gary looked up quickly at Larry and his eyes narrowed as he asked, “why? I thought you loved this?”
“I do but it seems rather pointless. What am I going to do if I do find answers? So I find out who is behind this, I’m a slug,” Larry said as he became despondent.
“Why the sudden about face?” Gary asked confused.
“The pda is making me so mad how slow it is now, it’s taking the fun out of the process. I need something faster if I want to keep working,” Larry said with visible frustration.
“So find one?” Gary offered.
“Sure, just like that huh?” Larry asked condescendingly.
“If you would stop working long enough you could do a search for a new one. Take time to make life better and you won’t be so pissed off,” Gary said slowly and emphatically.
“Yeah well I can’t do much with the pda frozen,” Larry said and turned and continued towards the stump.
Gary followed along and they soon made it to the base. Larry squeezed between the broken bark and the trunk and disappeared into the dark. Gary watched him then followed. Inside the space was cramped and tight as the bark was separated from the tree, creating a tunnel that followed the contour of the trunk. After about an 1/8 of the circumference they came to a open area, a sort of cave. Their eyes adjusted to the dark they could see a busy scene. The tree cave was filled with tendrils of fungus and movements of small bugs as they crawled through and over them.
“Look, there’s Tendra,” Gary said motioning to a slug on the other side of the cave.
“Where?” Larry asked as he searched the cave with his eyes.
“There, against the wall by the green fungus,” Gary said.
Larry continued to search the cave before finally lighting upon the form, “Oh, over there. I thought you meant the green fungus by the beetle.”
They both slugged across the cave and up to Tendra. Gary quickly said, “hi Tendra, how’s it been going for you lately?”
She looked up from the fungus she was munching on and her eyes perked up. Finishing her mouthful she said, “hi Gary, hi Larry.”
“Been a while since we’ve seen each other, what have you been up to?” Gary replied.
“I was away for a bit. I was on a bush looking for food when it got cut down and thrown out back of the house. It took me forever to make it back here. What have you two been up to while I was gone?” Tendra asked.
“It’s been crazy. We’ve had a wild week. We got stuck on the car and went for a ride, were in the middle of a stampede, Larry got canceled, and now the whole Bollinger data leak thing has him buried in his pda,” Gary said as he motioned to Larry.
“Wow, you have had a crazy week. What’s the Bollinger thing you said?” Tendra asked.
“You haven’t heard? The senator had all his emails and data dumped online and it shows that he has been running a company that import harvested organs from the CCP. A ton of politicians are involved but now there is a massive cover up going on,” Larry said with a bit of excitement showing.
“No, I’ve been trying to get back here most of the week so I didn’t hear anything,” she replied.
“Well, you want to go catch up on the news? We can go watch from the bush by the window? I’ve been there a lot this week,” Gary asked her.
“Sure, why not,” she replied.
“You wanna go Larry?” Gary asked.
“No, I need to get back to work and need to eat before I go back. You two go ahead,” he said as he turned to take a big mouthful of fungus.
“Eh fine, I’ll stop by later,” Gary said. “Whenever you want we can go,” he continued to Tendra.
She finished chewing and said, “sure, let’s go.”
Larry watched them leave and after devouring a few more mouthfuls of fungus he made his way back out of the cave. The temperature difference between the cave and air was distinct and he felt a slight shudder. He just was able to see Gary and Tendra slugging out of sight towards the bush and he turned and headed straight for his nook.
The pda sat blinking once again and he went straight to it. The report that was up filled the screen with text. The AI had done a masterful job of cross referencing all the names to title, job, home address, and even had links to data outside of the leaked data. His eyes roamed the report and his excitement built quickly. He read through the names and their titles and suddenly it began to crystallize for him. The understanding of how deep and how many people were involved and at what levels of authority they were rolled over him like a steam roller.
Larry’s mind was working hard with the thoughts of getting this report to the public somehow. Having been canceled he had no good outlet for it and he knew the media was useless and corrupt. He opened his Slimer app and scrolled through the feed. He came upon a slime that made him stop cold. It was a slime by Slugleaks and it gave Larry an idea. He went back to the report and searched for the options drop down, finding it he then found an option to share the report. His heart jumped and he quickly copied the link then pasted it into a fresh slime. He tagged Slugleaks, Slug News Network, and the Slug Savior Service and wrote simply “Here is the proof!” and he hit submit.
It felt so anticlimactic to him, he half expected sirens and balloons dropping in celebration of his slime, but he looked around and his nook was the same as always. He stared at the screen and expectantly watched his slime for likes or reslimes but it just sat there getting no views. Minutes went by as his eyes remained locked on the screen before he let out a big sigh and turned to the fungus on the wall and took a bite. Chewing slowly he moved against the wall of his nook and spread out his body to rest.
Gary and Tendra climbed the branches to the top of the bush and found themselves at the viewing spot, the sound still blaring through the screen.
“It’s always on the news. I’ve been up here a lot this week listening to all the drama. The man’s been doing a good bit of screaming at the tv too. It’s rather comical,” Gary said motioning to the house.
The television roared as a crowd cheered loudly while the camera panned over them before landing on the stage. President Slump was standing before the crowd having finished his speech when a secret service agent walked up to him and spoke into his ear. The president listened then nodded and turned to follow the agent from the stage. The crowd continued to cheer as he was lead to the waiting helicopter behind the stage which shortly started and with loud whomping sounds lifted into the air and quickly flew off.
“It seems the rally has been cut short today, the president was whisked from the stage and quickly took off in Marine One. We are awaiting word of why and will update you when we find out. For now we will go back to the studio and Shelly.
Thank you Letitia. We have breaking news for you now. We have gotten word that a major piece of evidence from the Bollinger data leak has been posted online. The list contains the personal information of 386 people whose names appeared in the data leak and it appears to have been created through a website Bolleak-AI. Our staff has had no luck in finding the owners of the site but the initial social media post has been found. We’ve spoken with the FBI field office to inquire about the owners of the site but they were unwilling to respond to our questions.
The post in question can be seen on your screen which appears to be a screen capture from an unknown social media site. The attempts to censor the post have been unsuccessful as the it was spread too quickly for the social media companies to rein in. Despite blocking the ability to share the post it has still continued to spread. The Bolleak-AI site was still online at our last check and it is likely only a matter of time before the authorities shut it down.”
The post shown on the screen was a screen capture of Larry’s slime and Gary recognized it immediately. He turned to Tendra and said, “that’s Larry’s slime”.
She turned her eyes and stared at him. “What?” she asked.
“Larry slimed that. He must have done it,” he said trailing off.
“Done what?” Tendra’s confusion showing.
“Larry has been working with the data and he has a list of names that he was trying to find info for each one with that site. It looks like he did it, he got the data together and posted it,” Larry answered.
The thumping sound began to grow and soon became louder than the television. Quickly a helicopter flew low over the house, turning sharply and dropping to the ground on the road in front of the house. As the blades slowed a cadre of unmarked vehicles skid to a halt around the helicopter and a slew of battle ready men jumped out and quickly began advancing on the house.
Gary and Tendra watched the sudden explosion of people as the helicopter landed and they found themselves shrinking back into the leaves to hide themselves. Gary knew they weren’t there for a couple slugs, they couldn’t be, but he still felt safer in the leaves.
The armed men surround the house then quickly kicked the door in screaming and yelling. “Get your hands up, on the ground now! Check the house, you check that room, you stay down!”
The man was screaming in confusion, “what the fuck!? Who the hell are you? What the hell have I done?”
Gary looked to Tendra and motioned down the bush to which she nodded and they quickly moved down the branches to the ground below. They sat at the base of the bush and watched as the armed men dragged the man handcuffed from the house and pushed him into a waiting vehicle which quickly sped off down the road.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a computer in there? They wanted all the electronics but all he has is a tv. Look, cheap ass still has a flip phone,” one of the armed men says to another.
“We’ll let command know and they can come do a sweep. The ip address pointed here so it has to be here somewhere. Let the crew deal with that,” the other replied.
Gary looked at Tendra and said, “we need to go see Larry. I don’t think he’s safe”.
The group of cars slowly all left and the helicopter started up and took off with a loud thumping. As the last vehicles left Gary and Tendra slugged away from the bush for Larry’s nook.