"Morning Boss. Did you sleep well?"
"Hmmm. Oh, yes, Morning Grgur. Where's my coff... Ah, thanks Erelah." He blew on the coffee for a while to cool it down.
"How very strange that the most popular exports from Earth would be beverages. Not that I'm complaining mind you, it just seems odd somehow." As he was saying that, he was enjoying the sensual pleasure of holding the mug in his hands and inhaling the marvelous aroma. The straw looked a bit out of place, but, without it he'd have to drink the coffee from something like the anti-gravity pouches that the ancient astronauts had used. His mouth-parts just didn't mesh with the edge of a mug.
The Observer shook himself and fluffed his feathers. "Well, back to business. Did you find out anything interesting or useful Grgur?"
"Ah, yes, that is, I think I did Boss. Interesting, very. Useful - I'm not so sure. I'll need your opinion on that. Here's what we have.
"If you'll look at the display, you'll see that pretty much all of the buildings fall within the specifications we discussed yesterday. Uniform over all. With one rather glaring exception.
"Take a look at this area. Kali's energy field looks to have been stopped about 30 meters away from this building. It's just this one. No others are anything like it at all. I thought at first that perhaps the gold-plated statue on top had something to do with it, but there's no interaction there at all. I'm afraid that I'm at a total loss as to the reason. I'm sorry Boss."
The Observer ran the data and then matched the image of the building with those on file. It was as he'd thought. He turned to Grgur with a very sad expression.
"You haven't done anything wrong at all Grgur. This was all done by the humans."
"What? By the humans? How?"
"This may sound a bit boring, but I want to make sure that we're all on the same page. You listen in too Erelah. You may end up having to know something about this some day. First of all, I have a question for you. What condition, more than anything else, feeds into the goals of the enemy?"
Grgur was grateful that the question was one of the very easy ones. It wouldn't be making any mistakes, yet. "It's anarchy Boss. When there's not any kind of government around to provide at least basic police protection, everything falls apart. Nobody cares for anything but itself. All kinds of horrible deeds are done by beings that might otherwise be useful citizens."
"Very good Grgur. And how does that tie in with the worldwide surge in terrorism?"
That was a bit harder, but after a bit of thought, Grgur puzzled it out.
"The terrorists are basically trying to push what might be called localized anarchy. Something where the central authorities are so busy with disasters, or have collapsed entirely, that they can't prevent the terrorists from carving out their own personal fiefdoms and doing whatever they want, no matter how horrible it may be."
"Again, very good Grgur. It's nice to see you using your mind." Grgur was grateful that the Boss refrained from adding "for a change," although it could feel the thought hovering in the air anyway.
"I'll cut to the chase here. You've probably read, at least peripherally about how politics works for humans. Basically we have a bunch of power hungry beings who get together to argue and fight over who has what precedence, who gets to run what committee, and so forth. Basically they're all looking to get more power for themselves and lessen the power of any possible opponents.
"Unfortunately even most of those who originally have a desire to try to do some good get corrupted by the constant need to compromise one's beliefs in order to get something, anything, done. We all know what happens with ongoing compromise. You give up small pieces of yourself over and over until there's only a shade left. In other words, a perfect target for the enemy."
"Oh I get it now Boss!" Grgur was very excited because he was pretty sure that he knew what was going to come next, so he kept his mouth engaged and hoped that he wasn't digging a hole for himself at the same time.
"It's like what they had last month in the capitol of the US where the politicians were fighting over who gets to decide what about their budget. They just wanted to be able to claim that they were the ones who won, even though all that posturing caused millions of people all over the country to be hurt when the government shut down for two weeks."
The Observer nodded again, very sadly. "Yes Grgur. Exactly that. And that's what you have in that building. It's the building that houses the Oregon Legislature. They're mostly not quite as bad as the ones who go to Washington, DC, but, even so, almost half of them belong to the enemy. It's that constant misama of evil that radiates from them that keeps Kali's energies from working properly near the building.
"Fortunately it's highly unlikely that any of the Knights would ever need to go there. In fact I'd wager that they've always avoided the area for some reason or other that wasn't entirely clear to them at the time."
Out of the blue, The Observer leapt into the air and drop-kicked Grgur in the head, knocking it off its chair and onto the floor. "Damn it Grgur! You're radiating your emotions again. LOCK THEM DOWN! I don't know what would happen if you affected the Knights while they're asleep. Just when I think that you're making progress, you make some damn fool mistake like this again. It's a good thing that nobody else noticed."
Grgur sat up with its ears ringing and with tears running from its eyes. It turned in horror to the scene in the display which was currently displaying Kimiko. To its great relief, Kimiko was still sound asleep. "You don't know how good Boss. I'd like to request a half-day off to work on this, please?"
The Observer considered, for about a tenth of a second, but let Grgur stew for a full minute before he gave his consent. Appearances must be upheld. He didn't want to become known as a being that made snap judgements. That would ruin your reputation faster than anything else. It's odd that if you make the same wrong decision after seeming to deliberate for a week, nobody blames you quite so much. Perhaps because they think that at the very least you put some time into making it. It made no sense, but such was life.
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Mmmmmm. Jane must have made the coffee with those premium beans she got from Sri Lanka. There's hardly any grown there any more, but what they do grow is heavenly.
With that as my incentive, I got out of bed, extremely carefully I might add, seeing as there were two cats and a somewhat gangly girl still in it. Said girl was snoring softly and had a hand out that was blindly searching for the covers so she could pull them back up.
"Come on Kimiko, time to get up. Rise and shine sleepyhead, ah, nebosuke."
The covers had crept up over her head and now it looked as if there were some catepillar pupating in my bed, so I threw the covers back and gave her a light swat on the rump.
"Move it! I need to make the bed and feed the cats, and you're in the way."
Kimiko sat up and rubbed her eyes then gave me her glare #2. "I told you, did I not, that you are not to touch me in such a familiar way. It is demeaning."
There was a blur in the air and then Kimiko landed on her feet beside the bed, having completed her usual dismount with a full layout backflip. She turned to look at me over her shoulder and stuck out her tongue. Then she gave me a big grin and bounced her way across the hall to her room.
It's a good thing that there are high ceilings in this house. If they were the normal eight feet, there'd be holes all over the place.
After we'd finished breakfast and gotten the kids off to school, Jane and I reviewed our problem and I explained what I'd come up with.
"It was the strangest thing. I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed and the answer was just there. Every one of these scum is at or near the pinnacle of their fields. Congressmen, mayors, CEOs and such. The thing that's important is that they all have underlings who are biding their time until they can push the ones at the top out of the way or pull them down.
"In other words, they all have enemies who are very close to them. And that's where you come in Jane.
"You have the evidence proving just how nasty these people are. What you have to do is arrange it so that their enemies get their hands on it somehow. They'll see the opportunity of a lifetime and turn them in. Most of them will ham it up for the reporters. You know, something like this:
"It's so sad. I've known her for years. Finding out what she was doing has just crushed me. I don't know if I'll ever be the same again. sob...sob...."
"But Mama, allmost all of those underlings are corrupt too. Otherwise they'd just turn the evidence over to the police. If they were honest they wouldn't turn it into a sideshow."
"Right you are Jane. IF they were honest. But we already know that almost nobody in politics stays honest very long. There's too much money and power available."
Jane nodded. "I'm afraid that you're right Mama. But if that's the case, what difference does it make. Once we take out one of them, another just as crooked will be in the same position eventually."
"Exactly the right word Jane. 'Eventually.' It will take several years for them to consolidate, and remember that many of the crime syndicates will be looking for plants. They're not very likely to trust whoever it is who replaces someone who was just oh-so-conveniently arrested."
"So Mama, what you're saying is that we're fighting a delaying action. In the long run, we can't win."
"Fraid so Jane. But winning isn't the point. There will always be bad people and good people and people somewhere in between. Nobody is ever going to 'win', but we can do our best to keep the balance tipped toward the good side as long and as far as possible, right?"
It sort of hurts to see reality stomp on the idealism of a young girl, but it's better to get the foolishness out of their systems as early as you can. Once they start to see more clearly, they're often amazed at how much more productive they become.
<
Now dreamers, those are people I can live with. They have a goal, even though it may be a WAY far out there goal. The difference from the idealists is that the dreamers are usually prepared to work damn hard to achieve their dreams. If some unpleasant fact blocks their path, they figure out a way to work around it instead of stopping where they are and complaining that something is in their way.
Ah. You understand. Good. No bonking for you this time.>>
"Oh Mama, that's so sad. But so is what we saw in Portland the day we saved Kimiko. You're right. We may not win, but I'm going to make sure that we spike as many wheels as possible before we're through!"
Jane had taken the bit in her teeth so I let her run with it. She headed down the hall mumbling to herself about setting up fallback positions and pitfalls to catch the ones who replace the crooks who were about to be removed from their positions. I couldn't hear any more than that because she was in her workshop and making odd banging noises.
In other words, the same Jane as usual, only this time it looked like the real Crusade had just begun. For about a tenth of a second I almost felt sorry for what was going to happen to the people she was going after....NOT. Of course I didn't. They deserved much more than they'd ever get.
But there's no use beating a dead horse, so I'll just leave that there and move on. Suffice it to say that Jane didn't surface for the rest of the week except to cook, work out, and bathe.
Everything else was going fairly smoothly until I suddenly got a text from Master Oh. I stared at his name for a few seconds then steeled myself and opened the mail. I realized that I'd been holding my breath only when I let it out...after I saw the contents of his message. All it said was that, given the Christmas holiday coming up, he wanted us to come up on Saturday, December 14th instead of the 21st.
No, I wasn't exactly afraid of what he was up to, but, after the way he trapped me this past summer when I was awarded my 7th dan, I was just a tad cautious.
There weren't any conflicts on my schedule, so I sent him a text saying that the change would be fine and that we'd be there at 10AM as usual.
I'd hoped to have something on my schedule, but my courier tasks always slowed down in December and Xandros hadn't been able to get anything at all to us except for a brief thank-you note for the birthday card we'd sent him. He'd been sorry to hear that Kumiko and I were caught in that horrid storm that day and he hoped that things would clear up some by late December or at least by mid-January.
I don't know why I'd hoped/expected that nothing much was going to happen on our next trip, since that was rarely the case. It seems that there was always some odd thing happening in Seattle when we were there. What I didn't expect, at all, was that things would go wonkers before we left.
"Okaa-san. I will not be separated from Kimiko any more. Given that we must go to Seattle to see Master Oh, there is no other option but for Kimiko to come with us."
"Ah, well, uh...Kimiko probably wouldn't want to come with us. It's nearly four hours each way and there's not going to be anything for her to do when we're there, and..."
"Don't sweat it Kaa-chan. It should be fun. Besides I want ta see your Master Oh. Does he really growl like a dragon when you piss him off?"
"KIMIKO! Watch your language. You shouldn't talk like that at your age!"
"Oh? And what age should I be? You talk like that all the time. Jane onee-chan does some of the time too. So do I need ta be 19, like her, before I can say 'piss off' once in a while and 30 before I can say it a lot?"
I threw my hands in the air and did the "why me" dance. You know, same old drill as usual.
Kumiko drew herself up and turned her most lofty expression upon Kimiko. "Children are supposed to be more circumspect around adults. We are expected to pretend that we are unaware of such words, and the adults also pretend that they have no memory of having used them when they were our age. If we do not do so, we will surely 'piss off' the adults."
Then Kumiko clapped both her hands over her mouth and started bouncing. Kimiko just stared at her for a few seconds then copied her sister, except that her bouncing was out of phase with Kumiko's. They sounded like a huge, slow jackhammer banging on the floor.
Then they both ran off with "peals of childish laughter floating on the air," except that it was in my mind since they could hardly laugh for real, could they?