Of Wheels and Angels 3

Posted on April 21, 2013 by ehurst

“Angie! Hold up a minute,” Preston called.
She slowed, stopped and put her feet on the ground, half turned to look back at him. He was looking off to left along one of the straight logging cuts through the trees, pulling the camera out. He took a few shots, then quickly unfolded the map.
Angie turned around and pedaled back to where he stood.
“Darnedest thing I ever saw,” he said, shaking his head as he gazed at the map. He passed the camera to her. She understood and rolled back the last few shots on the view-screen. Her eyes widened just a bit.
“We’ve got tour buses all over the place around here during this time of year.” He chuckled as he went on, “But I’ve never seen one pulled that far off into the woods. The map shows a limited paved surface in there and what looks like a camping spot cleared. But a tour bus?”
“Well, it looks like a German charter. A little older than most you see these days. Looks like it lists a handful of cities down by the Swiss and Austrian borders.” She looked up and handed the camera back. “I can’t imagine what they would want to see here.”
“I suppose it could be history buffs. The Hürtgenwald Battlefield is just a few kilometers that way,” Preston said pointing ahead and off to the left a bit. Technically these trees are part of the same woodland. Plus, we are on the far northern tip of the Battle of the Bulge area. It wasn’t all just Bastogne; that was simply where the war correspondents were hanging out. Those were two of the nastiest battles in World War II.”
Angie shurgged. “That would mean old people, because my generation hardly knows anything or cares about that stuff. Younger folks even less. What kind of camping do old people do?” She was itching to get going again.
Preston put his camera away and prepared to ride off. “Big tents and lots of equipment, I’m guessing. I don’t intend to stay around and find out. Let’s go. Monschau awaits us.”
The route swung around the countryside and it was almost distracting in beauty. Preston didn’t want Angie to feel pushed; he wanted her to feel that in full control of riding. She was quite surprised at herself how quickly they reached Monschau. While the Venn Bahn led around the picturesque city, they decided to take the main street down into the busy town center for an early lunch. Preston also wanted to find a wifi hot spot.
He managed to get a good connection and checked the dropbox. The script found a short message. It contained an email address on a service with the Luxembourg TLD. The message told him it was his new address, that he was to create a password and check his mail ASAP.
So he logged into the server with his new account name. The system demanded that he create a new password and had a couple other hoops to jump through. The service was essentially a plain text operation with no pretty graphics at all. There was a message waiting for him and the subject was simply the numeral one with a couple of leading zeros. The message was brief:

Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Forttensie. Got any pictures of your travels yet? I assume you are making your way here.

Preston had left his previous camera chip with their hosts near Valkenburg and started with a fresh blank. Up to that point, all he had were shots of himself and Angie in a few picturesque places. Plus he had the shots of that tour bus completely out of place in the woods. He doubted his boss had any interest in that. Still, he would offer them. He typed a reply:

We guessed the PO showed our new business address. So far, all we have are some honeymoon shots and something I thought strange: an aging tour bus out in the woods between Roetgen and Lammersdorf. What would you like to see?

He sent the message, and then poked around the interface a bit. Very Spartan, indeed. He was about to log out when a new message arrived. Naturally, the subject was zero-zero-two.

Very interested in the bus shots. Upload to the dropbox ASAP.

Hm. That was odd. Still, this was presumably the people paying the bills, so Preston complied. But first he removed the camera ID information from each of the images before encrypting them.
“Do you suppose there is something spooky to do with buses out here in the Ardennes?” She had a puzzled smile.
Preston chuckled. “In this, our new career field, nothing surprises me any more.”

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Of Wheels and Angels 3

Big, Sloppy Turning Areas

Posted on April 20, 2013 by ehurst

“Turning point” is a figure of speech, not a mathematically precise concept.
I wish I could show you the training areas I saw in Europe. There’s this place Hitler created for training his tank division during WW2 — Grafenwöhr. His predecessors had used the area before, draining off a large swamp. The result was a massive bowl with high ridges all around. Hitler shipped in boatloads of sand to make parts of it resemble desert terrain. Today, NATO units still train crews of tanks and other large weapons systems there. You’d be amazed at what a single tank company can do to the ground when they decide to change directions. The modern Abrams tank weighs over 60 tons empty, and the tracks are very wide. It would be a major physical challenge to cross the resulting mess on foot.
Most “turning points” are actually big sloppy areas. The burial of Pompeii under the ash of Vesuvius took all day. The Fall of Rome took years. The Battle of Thermopylae took three days, but the larger action was a full week. There are some truly sudden full catastrophes, but they are vastly outnumbered by slow ones that drag on forever in the consciousness of those directly involved. What we face as the West declines into oblivion is a long, slow process. Forget all the dramatic crap you see in movies. It will be painful all the way, so get used to it. And once this thing is “done” by any measure, it will hardly mean hellish misery for everyone involved.
There is a core group of international bankers who have been herding national governments into massive overspending. At the same time, they’ve been doing the same thing to consumers through various intermediaries. They control a vast amount of debt obligations. The process has been deliberately aimed at enslaving humanity. It can’t be done suddenly; it’s not quite finished yet. But they may be satisfied with the results nonetheless. They are surely aware this will cause most economies to collapse in a certain sense. I doubt they are concerned in the least, though I also doubt it’s their direct intent. Rather, they are taking advantage of a system their predecessors helped to create. Having pushed it this far, there’s no reason to change. They aren’t nearly so coordinated as popularly imagined. It’s a simple matter they all play the same greedy game so long as it seems they can win.
The system presumes something not at all certain — that there will always be some recognized authority in place to enforce the debt obligation. While I admit it’s been a good bet so far, you can’t forget Iceland. The Icelanders have one magnificent advantage: Their government is very close to the people. The place is small and so is the population. Most of the world is bound up in vast imperial governments. These are all subject to fragmentation whenever the central control weakens beyond a certain point. Even as I write this, The Powers That Be are struggling to cement their control, while the entire system is cracking apart. So the likelihood that the international bankers can keep their economic debt control alive is fading at the very climax of their power. In the past few weeks, several of the fifty states have defiantly passed laws that bind their agencies to actively fight federal mandates, mandates which most certainly do reflect the wishes of the bankers. While much of what we see publicly is noise and smoke, it reflects a very real breaking point. Notice this “point” is quite large, though. In truth, it’s not a point, but a highly variable threshold that constantly moves.
That’s because it involves people — millions of people. What makes the Social Sciences so utterly fascinating is this very lack of precision. It’s as much art as science to guess what will happen next. It has nothing do with what I feel or what you feel; it has to do with so many factors that no human mind can possibly track them all. Even when we have the concrete evidence before us, it’s not scientifically certain what it means. We all see it differently. So on any given day, on any given hour, some critical mass of ordinary people may well panic and the whole thing comes down. Even then, it’s not certain whether the stampede really changed much.
Populist predictions of cataclysm do hold a grain of truth, but if you read into it all the drama and special effects from recent movies, you’ll end up very disappointed. Those movies and video games are so entertaining in part because they bear little resemblance to reality. The sweet spot between clearly fantastic and approximately real is also highly variable, so the business of virtual reality gaming and video entertainment will ever be more art than science.
Yes, things are changing. Expect it to more resemble a tank brigade turn-around than a running back’s pivot on the playing field.

Posted in sanity | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Of Wheels and Angels 2

Posted on April 20, 2013 by ehurst

The border crossing had become wide open since the Eurozone countries had unified their customs structure, so they were largely ignored as they turned south along a much wider highway. They had crossed the Venn Bahn once already, but it looped around and was in front of them again. Upon crossing the physical boundary, there was a subtle but distinct change as things were much better maintained. It wasn’t much farther to one of the larger bike shops in town. Preston and Angie stood looking in the windows because they had actually arrive a little before the place was opened.
Angie confessed she had only ever ridden the standard Dutch commuter bikes with one speed, and would have to learn how to handle these multi-speed machines. They had time to discuss the merits of one kind of bike over another, but by the time the doors were unlocked, Preston had convinced her the hybrids were probably the best, most versatile choice for as-yet unknown uses. Preston figured the mountain bike he had picked out in Margraten was waiting back at the orchard and there was no sense duplicating it here. And while they still had generous funds left, he suggested they stick with the middle price range. They eventually found a matched pair in their respective sizes. They also picked out matching helmets, gloves and other accessories useful for touring. He saw no reason to shift their luggage onto the bikes, having spent so many years riding with a backpack. He hoped Angie could also get used to it.
The clerk didn’t hesitate to speak English. Once they were ready to pay, he first asked for their names for the warranty forms. “Forttensie,” Preston said.
“Oh, yes,” said a young woman working at a desk near the counter. She turned to her computer and did some mousing and keyboarding. She asked Preston to spell the name and she repeated each letter under her breath with the German pronunciation. She turned and said something in German to her colleague as the printer on a counter between them whirred to life and spat out a few sheets. The man gathered them and brought them back to the counter.
“Yes, Mr. Forttensie, your employer sent a purchase order to cover all this. We’ll just transfer the information from that. All you have to do is sign here and you can ride off into the morning sun.”
Preston took his copy of the order, then showed it to Angie. The address was in Luxembourg City.
Rolling their bikes outside, Preston set the packs down at the corner of the building. He parked his bike in front of them while he talked Angie through the logic of derailleur gears. It wasn’t really twenty-four speeds, but worked out to more like thirteen with some overlap. She was more worried about riding with her body down between such large diameter wheels, but found it quite comfortable. As she circled the parking lot playing with the shifters, Preston made a couple of laps ensuring the seat and handlebar height were okay for him.
After a few minutes, she stopped and said, “So where are we going on these things?”
Preston stopped and picked up their backpacks, handing Angie hers and shrugging into his own. “You saw the address on the order.”
“I thought you would say that. There are a lot of mountains between here and Luxembourg City.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You remember I mentioned the Venn Bahn? That will carry us most of the way there in comfort. When I first explored this area twenty years ago the Bahn was a very rough gravel path and covered with weeds and other greenery. The map says it’s now mostly paved, just like the part we saw in Raeren, and crossed twice hiking down here.”
He pointed her in the direction to the nearest crossing point. She started turning around to head that way. “How long do you think it will take?”
“I’m willing to bet we can do it in two days. I could make it in a day, but it would be a long, hard day. I haven’t seen you ride, and there’s no reason to push that hard in the first place. I would hate to interfere with our honeymooning.”
She giggled at that.
“Take the lead,” he said. “I need to get used to your pace until you feel confident with the gears. Just remember: The objective is to find a comfortable cadence and shift the gears to keep it.”
In less than a kilometer, they were thick in the woods.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Of Wheels and Angels 2

Spiritual Introversion

Posted on April 19, 2013 by ehurst

Humanity is both highly varied and generally predictable.
So while you could propose something like the MBT Personality Inventory, it will only go so far, utterly failing to set forth the truly critical issues of human nature. That’s because the MBT completely rejects the Spirit Realm and refuses to account for how the Holy Spirit can change common human traits. My connection to the Spirit Realm falsifies the MBT in some of the most important aspects of trying to figure out what to expect from me.
For example, I am an introvert. But while there is some overlap with common traits of introverts, not all of them apply.
If you consume too much of me, I’ll avoid you. I can pastor anyone who’s hurting. Pour it out; you can trust me to keep it under my hat. If you really want advice, you’ll get it. It will be the unvarnished truth, at least insofar as I have any ideas. Otherwise, I can let you vent for awhile and I’ll feel your pain. But I can’t afford to absorb too much of it.
I despise most common forms of entertainment. I can’t stand to watch embarrassment humor. You won’t get me to watch ten seconds of things like I Love Lucy. That’s not funny to me. When I watch people being embarrassed or harassed, I get dangerous. I can restrain myself most of the time. There are some things I can take up to a point, but you’ll have to ask if you need details.
You can put me in a roomful of people and I’ll do okay. I’ll feel isolated, but I’m used to that, comfortable with it. Unless I’m in charge, it’s better if I wait to see what’s going on. I’m not likely to jump into any conversations unless I feel a sense of mastery. It’s not fear; I’m not going to waste your time. Give me a heads up and I’ll go along with anything that makes of fool of me. I don’t take myself that seriously. Put me on the spot or attempt to entertain yourself by making of fool of me without my permission, and you’ll never get a chance to do it again. I might laugh it off; I can forgive, but I’ll completely write you off permanently. That’s a violation of trust. I don’t need people like that; nothing they have could possibly be that valuable to me.
My emotions are my business and I tend to keep them to myself. Precious few are the people allowed to see them. In that sense, I’m not that interested in yours, either. You can’t possibly be that interesting to me. I’ll listen to some things, but don’t attempt to make me part of any crowd, something I’ll never be.
Don’t you dare attempt to make me join something outside my range. You’ll get hurt. I am hostile to your assumption anyone can do anything if they just want to. I despise beyond words those nifty manipulative retreat programs so common among churches. Maybe I can do it, but if I don’t want to, you are unforgivably evil for demanding it. It’s not the same thing as an accident or unanticipated bad results. When God throws the curve ball, I’ll be there and suffer with you. But If you can’t trust me enough that you have to hide things as a means to controlling my behavior, you might as well wear horns and carry a trident. We will never be friends.
I’m okay with large groups of people. I can get up to preach and I’m willing to bet I’ll hold your attention for at least a little while. I have no shame. Stage presence is not a skill but a talent for me. I am comfortable taking charge and addressing thousands at once. No sweat; I’ll deliver.
I can also take charge of an informal gathering and be okay for a while. Even if they are interested in what I have to say, I still run out of psychic energy after a couple of hours. Change the group and I can hit it again for one, maybe two more sessions.
Then I need to go away and rebuild whatever it was I spilled out on the larger group. I’ll give all I’ve got, but when I run out, it takes me awhile to rebuild. If I don’t get some solitary time, you will come to hate me very quickly. I will make you miserable, unless I simply withdraw into a protective shell.
If I find you unsympathetic, I’ll never trust you. I won’t hate you, but I’ll avoid you. It’s not a matter of feelings. I understand you are wired differently than I am and I’ll avoid inflicting myself on you. Push yourself on me too hard and I could conceivably become dangerous. I might be sad about having to force the issue, but I won’t regret it. Ever.
This is why I say things about not letting people threaten my mission. My mission includes spending solitary time communing with the Spirit Realm to keep fresh what I bring to the world.
My wife is my best friend, but she’s not a man, and I’m not a woman. I would love to have one single best buddy, but I don’t right now. It’s okay. I realize the Lord has taken me into the most rarefied atmosphere and there simply aren’t that many out there who can handle it. They aren’t lesser, just different.
But we can become friends. All you have to do is want it bad enough to tolerate my quirks. You’d be amazed at what I can tolerate, because it’s my nature to do so. Only when you get close enough to be a problem will I warn you that you need to choose between change or distance. As long as you can handle me, we can be pals. You can disappear for years, and then come back and pick up where you left off and I’m cool with that. I will never make you feel guilty about failing to answer letters, etc.
So if you seek my loyalty, it’s definitely available and generally permanent. For me, friendship simply is. You can invest in it and get back rich rewards, but maintenance is not an issue. For me, it’s rooted in that Other Realm, so it will outlast both of us. With my loyalty, you can ask things I refuse to do for others, things I already know will fail spectacularly. I’m not worried about success, but there is a certain measure of what I do that will never, ever be surrendered to another person or group. Some things belong to the Spirit Realm.
That Other Realm is a major preoccupation. My business there will cause me to do some of the weirdest things you’ll ever see in this realm. I’ll sing, talk to myself and seem quite mentally off at times. I don’t care. I find this realm unworthy. The only reason I’m still here is I know that God has a mission for me.
Some of that is common to all introverts, but some of it is purely Spirit and won’t fit on any personality inventory.

Posted in personal | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Spiritual Introversion

Of Wheels and Angels 1

Posted on April 19, 2013 by ehurst

(Part 2)
“Belgian Rail sucks.”
Preston gazed upward through the clear plastic roof over the bench where they sat. The light mist was collecting and dripping off the edges. Several people stood on the long platform with umbrellas and various other means of shedding the cool morning damp.
They had come early because they had no idea of the schedule. But apparently the schedule didn’t matter that much today, because the train was late. At least by coming early they got one of the few seats on the covered benches. Yet there was little competition for them, as they shared their bench with only one older man who chuckled at Preston’s comment.
Angie and Preston sat with their packs on the ground beside their feet. He considered himself quite fortunate their hosts had such nice camping equipment to loan them. It was all very light and easy to use, and the packs were quite comfortable.
Angie hummed some tune Preston didn’t recognize, but it didn’t matter. She had fine voice and it was soothing to hear. He reached up from behind and stroked her neck under the braided red hair. She tilted her head back just a bit and smiled, eyes closed. Yes, it was worth it all he reminded himself for the hundredth time in — had it only been ten days? The summer was still ahead of them and it appeared his dream marriage was matched with a dream job that suited them both. Even if it all came apart, having been here for just awhile was better than he deserved.
She leaned back and snuggled against him, but only for a few seconds as the sound and vibration in the ground signaled the approach of the train. Suffering the quirky service of the Belgian rail system was a small price to pay for things.
It wasn’t a long ride from Eupen to Raeren, just a few kilometers. As they stepped off the train, they noticed parts of the station appeared rather dilapidated, while other parts were quite new. Preston studied the map for a minute. On the far side of the rails was a narrow strip of asphalt. Looking back up the track, he pointed to the left side of the rails. “That’s supposed to be a part of the Venn Bahn, a decommissioned cargo line now used for recreation. Nice and flat but if we took it now, that would be about three or four times the distance.”
After looking at the map and glancing around, they decided cutting across country would risk getting them lost on some of the poorly marked trails and delaying them. Leaving the station, they stopped to consult the map posted in a large, free-standing display case beside the street. The main road to Roetgen was a fairly simple route wandering out the southeast corner of the village and it turned out to be well marked. But once outside the municipal boundary, the generous paved walking and biking path disappeared where the woods began.
The clouds drifted apart, allowing the sun to peek through in places. Damp surfaces glistened in the dappled sunlight. They shed their rain parkas. Walking from behind, it dawned on Preston that he had never seen Angie wear anything close fitting. She did have a feminine shape, but was nonetheless a bit stocky for her height.
For a while it was a simple matter to avoid the vehicular traffic by walking just off the road in the trees, but eventually the thick underbrush drove them back onto the narrow crumbling pavement. This was about the same time the other hikers pretty much disappeared, and they were alone with the sparse vehicular traffic.
When possible, they walked holding hands. “You are a heart of sweetness coated in delicious milk chocolate. Why do I get the feeling you haven’t had a long string of lovers before me?” Her blushing grin was worth the time it took to think that one up, Preston decided.
She thought for a moment. “Most men I’ve met aren’t half so interesting as you.”
“Good answer, Babe. I get along well with Dutch men, and they can be quite adventurous, but there is definitely something missing in most of them. Fellows like my friend Harry are quite unusual. But most Dutch women are, in many ways, the same. American women can be quite materialistic too, but it’s a different flavor of materialism. Your lack of it makes you a rare treat.”
“Maybe I spent too much time hanging around nuns. They are like that.”
Preston kicked at a fragment of broken asphalt in the road. “For some reason you never felt the call to be one of them,” he surmised.
Her face took on a more serious aspect. “The Catholic Church has always been a good place to find spiritual warmth and commitment, but the institution itself is…” she paused, looking for the word. “I think it’s broken, misguided. It’s like good things happen despite the system and some of the people.”
Preston pursed his lips a second. “So you stayed working in the system because you understood its flaws and knew what to expect.”
“Yes! It’s like belonging to another country. Wherever you go in Europe, you have all the advantages of whatever government rules, along with the insulation of the Church.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Preston agreed. “You mentioned the threat of molestation. Did that decline as you got older?”
She keep her eyes down the road in front of them. “It was worst right around puberty. I always kept my hair short and played lots of sports. Those who wanted boys could always get them and those who preferred girls seldom had interest in a Tomboy. Once or twice it was simply my turn. It wasn’t so much the actual sex that hurt as the sense of having no escape. Everyone pretended nothing happened even when they saw it, so we tried to deny it to ourselves.”
She was silent for awhile. Preston figured it might be the painful memories as much as the thicket of passing cars and trucks. Eventually she started talking again. “Once I was no longer a captive of the system and left the orphanage, the threat changed to an entirely different kind. The priests were all about power — you had to obey. But the other predators were simply manipulative. It was less a world of fear and more of being smarter. I decided to let my hair grow out.”
The road was mostly straight, rising slowly toward a wooded crest. There were a couple of sharp switchbacks at the peak of the climb, then a long straight decline toward the border. While hiking the Belgian back country could be a lot of fun, and some of the facilities surprisingly extravagant, most of the time it was just a bit dreary. There was simply nothing pleasant about how most of the houses sat almost on the road, little or no gardens and parking laid out with no intent to please the eyes. The weeds grew thick and tall everywhere. There were nicer homes and well kept properties, but usually off the main routes.
They were holding hands again as the street offered more chances to avoid the vehicles. “I’m still surprised you apparently never found anyone worth stalking until I came along.” He emphasized the word “stalking” in a comical way.
Angie laughed. “I had a couple of flings before, but they were typical boring Dutch men. Really, I was just trying to keep my head down and work with the children and teachers. Last year they talked about budgeting problems in a staff meeting, and it was serious and long term trouble. I started checking other jobs but it seemed like the Church was ready to abandon me altogether. The secular jobs didn’t appeal to me. I had been really praying and thinking a lot about it. Took a lot of long bike rides up and down the coast. When I stumbled across you that day in Katwijk, it was as if you were the only solid thing I had seen in ages. I don’t know why it felt like that, but I decided to fight for it.”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “Baby, I’ll try to be as solid for you as anything in this crazy world can be. You make it worthwhile, and then some.”
She wrapped her arm around his waist and squeezed.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Of Wheels and Angels 1

Of Images and Angels 11

Posted on April 18, 2013 by ehurst

Preston set a blistering pace but Angie managed to keep.
At one point it seemed he was unsure of the route, because he turned toward the west again. At the next trail junction he stopped, yanked the camera out of the cargo pocket on his hiking shorts and fiddled with it a bit. Angie was too much out of breath to ask what he was doing. Almost as suddenly he stuffed it back into the pocket and turned, nearly doubling back the way they had come.
The Dutch-Belgian border in that area generally follows the lip of highlands. Preston’s breakneck pace continued down the steep slope, but in Sint Martens he finally slowed down. They stopped at a friture for dinner. Preston pulled out a sturdy plastic fork. “I hate those little picks they give you with fries.”
They passed under the arched viaduct bearing the rail line through the village, and then decided against camping. After checking to find several hostels and hotels full, they found one opening. The map had indicated it was a bed and breakfast and the price for staying was cheap enough.
Preston sat down on the side of the bed. Slowly he reached into his cargo pocket again. He pulled out the camera and held it up as if it were evidence of a crime. Angie asked, “Did we break it?”
He sighed. “If we had it might have prevented some of our excitement today.” He woke it from sleep mode and began stroking the screen menus. “After thinking about it on our meandering way here today, I finally realized why they found us so easily after all we went through to avoid them. I was thinking about how you followed me for several weeks.”
On the screen was a submenu for GPS settings. One of the items said, “Tracking.” He tapped with his finger to show it could be changed to “Active mode.” He tapped it again and changed it back to “Passive mode.”
Preston explained, “It was set by default to active mode and I changed it when we stopped back up on the ridge. It’s supposed to be an anti-theft feature. On cheaper cameras like this, there aren’t many options for controlling how it works.”
He took a deep breath. “I said it shared a lot of technology with cellphones. This one reports a unique identifying code to any cell tower. Most carriers ignore it until you report it stolen and pay a small fee to activate the tracking. Then they report the location to the local police as stolen property. The range is nothing like regular cellphones, so while we were at the orchard, it probably didn’t reach any towers consistently. When we climbed that tree, it probably sent one blip to the cell tower at Valkenburg because it was in line of sight. The next nearest tower I saw was near Margraten, so I doubt our hosts were compromised because of the lack of triangulation. Our boy was Israeli, and Israeli companies have a near monopoly on the technology that runs most telephone carriers. Their software often has backdoors, too. They wouldn’t even have to pay a fee to identify what towers reported the camera’s location, but thin coverage out here made it tough on them.”
He lay back on the bed. “However, for the price of a decent meal at any gasthaus, you can purchase a scanner that picks up the same reporting signal. All someone has to do is match the unique ID this thing transmits with the data that was imprinted in every frame of that video I gave Mr. Venkman. He was being a little subtle when he warned me about the GPS and it falling into their hands.”
Angie gasped, putting her hand over her mouth.
Then they both burst out laughing helplessly, and she collapsed on the bed beside him.
The next morning Preston got out his laptop. Since he ran Linux on it, he showed Angie how to use the basic features, then he had her watch him change the MAC address on the wifi. “We may need to do this pretty regularly. I also need to pick up a couple of different types of USB wifi adapters to switch out now and then. For the time being, we’ll be very careful and do this one thing. And maybe we can talk our sponsors into getting us a better camera.”
Their hosts had given them an account on a service Preston had not heard about before. It amounted to a dropbox for encrypted files. It was an FTP folder; at random intervals the files stored there came and went, or were simply renamed. The time stamps were constantly changed. They were all encrypted, but what mattered was the key used. Preston wrote up a brief report of what they had experienced, encrypted with the key their hosts had given them physically. He had struggled to memorize the long passphrase, but eventually got it. Angie had it almost immediately. All they knew about the service was that someone checked the contents of the folder frequently and would find his message. If he was expecting a message, he simply grabbed the contents of the folder, entered the passphrase into a script they gave him and it checked them all. When the script closed, it deleted all the files. This time there was nothing, so they decided to continue their exploration of the Ardennes.
A couple of days later they were in a campground in the German-speaking part of Eupen, preparing to enter the high moors and visit the lake east of the city. Preston found he could get a clear wifi signal if he crossed the little stream and climbed part way up the wooded hillside. He and Angie sat in a small clearing just off the trail. When he checked the FTP account, this time his script spat out a decrypted message.

No survivors. Tracking device in the car confirms your suspicions. We can get you a better camera later. For now, vacation is over. Train to Raeren; hike over the border into Roetgen for bikes. Speak English; call yourselves Daphne and Edward Forttensie. More later.

There was an address at the bottom for a bike shop. He placed the computer in her lap. “Memorize that, Miss Perfect Memory.”
She grinned. “I suppose you aren’t Daphne,” she suggested, patting his knee. They both chuckled.
When she handed it back to him, he said, “Babe, are you ready to give our riding legs and guardian angels another workout?”
She kissed him. With a big grin, she affirmed, “I’m with you all the way, schatje.”
This ends Part 1. Part 2 coming next.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Of Images and Angels 11

Modern Molech Worship

Posted on April 17, 2013 by ehurst

What’s the difference between sacrificing your children to Molech and abortion? Not much.
Unwanted pregnancy these days arise from the same basic profligate sin as characterized the Canaanites in ancient times. They often had sex in the name of some heathen god characterized by a religion of fear and other basic emotional impulses. Not that much difference from the irresponsible sexual behavior of a broad sector of modern society.
In the Bible, eating one’s own children was only a hair’s breadth better than tossing them into the arms of the oven god. Giving them to an evil secular government is somewhat better because even government propagandists and conditioning can fail. But aborting them for any reason at all is still murder in God’s eyes.
What to do about it?
Call it what it is. Prophesy in the fashion God has called you. Otherwise, the ownership of the child is truly that of the mother. If she decides to murder her baby, it’s her sin. Abortion as a medical procedure exists because women have demanded it. They wanted to institute a theology and ritual (procedure) that made them feel better about it — same as tossing one already born to the oven god, Molech. In biblical law, we rather expect women to lead the way in such things. Adam failed in the Garden because he was too damned lazy to restrain Eve. Eve was not really expected to know what was good or bad on the level demanded of Adam. It was his job. Had he been consistent as a good spiritual shepherd, she would have been more resolute herself.
We do not have the leverage to make abortion illegal. We have refused to create the proper moral atmosphere. The authority God appoints to stop abortion is the woman’s own family — either blood kin or covenant family. Civil laws about such things are a failure before you start because there should never have been civil laws involved in the first place. When you create a society founded on the assumption there can be no God, it tends to cause problems with getting people to follow God’s revealed Laws. Twisting God’s Laws by building on Western intellectual and cultural assumptions does as much violence to God’s Laws as abortion does to an unborn child. America aborted holiness long before medical abortion became an issue.
All the activism and harassment in the world is unlikely to reduce the incidence of abortion much. Sure, maybe you can manipulate a woman’s feelings and save that one baby. That’s not much of an accomplishment. She still worships at the shrine of the gods that brought her to that decision. But if you feel called to do that, go ahead. I don’t support you, but I don’t bug you about it unless you ask. I’ll face you down until one of us dies and you will still be wrong.
I know what God says and what He demands of me. You aren’t Him.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Modern Molech Worship

Of Images and Angels 10

Posted on April 17, 2013 by ehurst

It should have been an ideal way to avoid trouble, but it was not to be.
The morning dawned with heavy cloud cover and a hint of mist, but the weather was the least of their problems. The SUV was outside their door, but when they came out with their backpacks, the found the driver crouched by the right rear tire, cursing softly in Dutch.
Almost to himself, he said out loud in heavily accented English, “I really should have had that flat fixed last week but this is the spare, and now it’s flat, too.” He walked off to the garage. Returning a few minutes later he had a can of foam flat fixer.
“This stuff is really messy but it can’t be helped. I’ll get it all fixed after you two get on your way.” He connected the nozzle and began filling the tire with the foam and compressed air. After a few minutes it was up enough to drive safely. The driver tossed the can in the floor behind his seat.
Preston had Angie take shotgun while he sat behind her. The driver told them to make sure they put on their hats, but that wearing sunglasses would be out of place. “I’m just a friend taking you to get new bikes for your honeymoon.”
He drove past the bike shop on the main street through town, pointing at it with his hand below the window level, then circled around on the streets behind it. He pulled into a tiny brick surfaced parking lot in front of some shops. They got out and walked down around the corner back to the bicycle vendor with currency the driver handed them when he shut the motor off.
At the shop in Margraten, Preston found a dandy bike on sale, but they had nothing other than the standard single-speed commuter model to fit Angie. There was no way she could keep up on that. He rode slowly while she walked alongside back to the little parking lot, joking about the reversal of roles. The driver suggested they drive on to Banholt where there was another small bike shop. With Preston’s bike strapped down on the roof, off they went.
The driver followed N278 for a ways, then slowed. As they waited to turn left off the main drag, something nibbled at the edge of Angie’s mind. She turned her head and saw a vaguely familiar face on a bicycle waiting in the bicycle path for them to turn in front of her. She had the right of way, but sat with one foot on the ground, waiting. As they headed down the narrow lane south, she turned to say something to Preston but was interrupted by an odd clicking sound coming from the right rear wheel.
The driver slowed, glancing in the outside mirror. “Don’t tell me it’s already gone flat again…” Then his eyes bulged and he gunned to motor, racing down the narrow lane.
While keeping his eyes forward, he turned just a bit toward Angie. “There’s a dart or something sticking in the tire. Apparently the foam prevented it from losing pressure right away but it means they are right behind us somewhere.”
After whizzing across open fields about a kilometer, the road curved right and followed a tree line on the left. Suddenly it made a sharp left into the trees and downslope. Almost immediately the driver swung back to the right up a very narrow farm road. “Get ready to bail out. Take the path to the left behind the trees while I lead them off. You’re on your own.” He handed Angie a wad of currency, then slammed on the brakes. “Now!”
On a whim, Preston leaned over and grabbed the half-used can of flat fixing foam from the floor. He slid out of the seat while the SUV slowed to a walking pace. Grabbing Angie’s hand, he broke into a run, leading her around behind the vehicle. As the driver gunned the engine and flew off up the main path toward the Margraten Cemetery, they sprinted down the dirt track, screened from the road by trees. A few meters down they turned into the trees and crouched in the underbrush. A car came blitzing along a few seconds later behind the SUV.
They waited a long time, unsure what to do. The terrain was a bit hilly with lots of trees and shrubs. Like most places in the Netherlands, the paths were sunk well below the level of the fields. It seemed a good bet they could probably avoid being seen, but it was critical they get moving and keep moving. He pulled out the map, then shrugged into his backpack.
Angie gave a brave smile and said, “Adventure!”
He studied the map as they hustled down the sandy path. He didn’t like how their current path was bending back straight west. It was a popular bike route to Maastricht and the wrong direction. He would have cut across the fields on the left and grabbed another path back west and south, but the narrow lane was blocked by a large wagon moving very slowly, pulled by some vehicle obscured on the other side of it.
This meant moving along a paved farm road just a few meters before diving back into the countryside. They both were watching as they approached the road, hesitating just a moment, then running along the road. They never made it to the second path.
Coming at them from the south was the car they had seen shortly before chasing the SUV. They dodge up against the fence as the car slowed, and then swerved and nearly hit them. It halted, the right side tire sliding in the grass. The person in the passenger seat had the window rolled down, grinning broadly at them.
Their Israeli spy was a pretty large fellow.
Before he could think, Preston aimed the can of foam and covered the large face. The man bellowed in pain, slapping his hands into the yellow goo. Preston crouched just a bit and aimed at the driver, who turned out to be a woman. Her eyes went wide, then she stomped the accelerator and nearly took Preston’s arm off as she pulled away.
She promptly drove the little car up under the front axle of a very large farm tractor that had just entered the road from the left side. It came off a downward sloping path screened tightly on both sides by trees. The operator was dodging tree limbs as he turned out onto the road and hadn’t seen the car.
Preston was hoping the tractor driver hadn’t seen him and Angie either, as they fled up their intended path. Glancing back, he doubted either of the occupants could possibly get out of the car any time soon, even if they were alive.

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Of Images and Angels 10

Of Images and Angels 9

Posted on April 16, 2013 by ehurst

Preston’s mind reeled, but some deeper part of him understood all too well that he would have to say “yes.”
His only question was Angie. As he turned to look at her, she blurted out, “Met u al de weg, schatje.” Nobody had to translate that for him: I’m with you all the way, sweetheart.
Their hostess responded, “Goed zo. We want you to continue the training by wandering the countryside here. Feel free to check out the tourist traps in Valkenburg, but I’d like you to focus on being able to use that facial recognition stuff.”
She rose to her feet and took a step toward them. “I’d also like to braid that lovely red hair, Angie. It will make it easier to hide under a hat. Preston looks nothing like the man who wandered the area around The Hague, but we’ll get you both hats and sunglasses just the same. There’s no sense taking unnecessary risks with either of you being identified by anyone, regardless how harmless they may seem. Preston, do your best to stay in character as a Dutchman.”
Their adventurous natures chafed at skipping the most exciting attractions as they wandered Valkenburg each morning. It was more important to take pictures of other people doing those things, all kinds of things, and then spending the afternoons testing their skills at matching faces with various social websites. Angie picked up on it quickly.
Preston got up the make them tea. As he was brining the cups to the table, she had a clearly puzzled look on her face. Before he even sat down, she said, “The software has keyed on someone off to one side here. We have him in two frames but why does he get a blue square? I thought it framed our subjects in red.”
Preston froze for a moment. “That’s a different function. It’s someone we’ve tracked before but never identified.” He pulled the laptop closer and began mousing and typing. His heart stopped when it pulled up the image that had gotten them into so much trouble. It was the face of the Israeli spy.
Preston had never seen his hosts so busy once he showed them their unexpected discovery. No one had to tell them to stay inside their apartment for awhile. They had not asked, and had no way to guess how many of the orchard employees here were in on the “hobby,” but two or three different ones popped in once or twice for confirmation of something. Twice they were asked for various enhancements of this or that image, having passed the entire collection to their hosts as soon as they made the discovery.
It was late that evening, and who could sleep? They tried to compare notes and make as much sense as possible without bothering anyone else. There was a gentle knock on the door, but it still startled them, since no one had come by in the past few hours.
Their hostess came in all business, yet somehow elegantly relaxed. “Our boy isn’t alone, but we are sincerely puzzled why they would send him when he was already ID’d. We’ve decided it can’t be a matter of bait trying to flush us out. The trail for them must have gone cold in town, but we can only surmise he’s been promoted from basic thug to some kind of supervisory role, at least for their current operation. It may even be a form of discipline to make him clean up his own mess.”
Preston wondered out loud, “We were hardly the only people using a camera in a tourist trap like Valkenburg. At the same time, anyone who knows photography can spot another photographer in a crowd of yokels with cameras. Real photographers take a lot more time and far fewer candid snapshots, but shoot a lot more frames of the same subject from only slightly different positions.”
Their hostess shook her head sagely. “No doubt they were shooting both still and video cameras trying to pick out that very thing.”
Angie remarked she had noticed another couple had been doing something similar at two or three places in town over the past three days.
The hostess paused for a moment. “Do you like camping?”
Angie and Preston looked at each other with faint grins, almost synchronized in saying, “Of course we do.”
The older lady smiled. “I’m sure we can find some equipment around here you might find useful for exploring. My husband and I tried it, but we are just too old for that sort of thing. Still, we kept the gear.”
Stepping slowly toward the door, their hostess went on. “The two things any self-respecting Dutch village has in these parts are a bakery and a bicycle shop. It’s a short drive to Margraten, which is just such a village. I want you to buy good mountain bikes to fit your bodies. Pack your bags before you go; we’ll have someone drive you down and park off a ways. Once you have the bikes, grab you bags and take a tour of the Ardennes. You’ll love the scenery in the Belgian hedge lands and the high moors. I recommend you ride through Banholt, then stick to the small paths over the border to someplace like Sint Martens. You should know how to recognize the GR markers, but we’ll get you a map just in case. From there, use your imagination, but stay well east of the Maas Valley. We don’t have any friends in that area right now.”

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Of Images and Angels 9

Bits and Pieces 11

Posted on April 15, 2013 by ehurst

It’s not straightforward to install, but VMWare Player for Linux works very well on RHEL 6 and clones (I’m using Scientific Linux 6). However, XP does not work properly as a client, and you may not get it running at all. I had no trouble with Win2K once I got SP4 and the final rollup installed. Without those, you can’t install the VMWare drivers to make Windows run right. With the drivers installed, it’s fully integrated with the host system desktop and allows me to run a lot of software that WINE cannot handle. For security reasons, I don’t allow the VM to connect to the Internet, but it’s easy to share folders between the host and VM once you set it up. Now, under Windows 7, VMWare took quite a bit of power and was pretty slow. Under SL6, it takes some power to load, but then runs about as quietly as if I were running Win2K itself. I haven’t tried the built-in KVM because kernel level stuff is simply not necessary for this and way too complicated. The other desktop VMs seem more difficult in the descriptions so I went with what I knew.
Capitalism is bad. It’s a cruel and heartless economic system. Socialism and Communism are also very bad, and Fascism is worst of all. All of them are very bad because all of them are inherently materialistic. Each of them treats material goods and creature comfort as god. Humans become no more than a resource, rather than the whole point of things. God said we are designed to live under a tribal government with a family economic system. The modern secular state is one of Satan’s major accomplishments on earth.
In this real world, the American political system and culture are so horrifically evil from the very start, no economic system will work. Places like Europe are socially more boring, but the politics avoid the extremes of what people can tolerate, for the most part. Their governments and economic policies have a human face, where ours is all fangs and hatred. But socialism works out tolerably well there, compared to the idiocy of our welfare-warfare state system. Honestly, if I had the means, I’d rather live in Europe somewhere, but not the UK. I’m sure that leaks out in my writings.
My current fiction series will end with chapter 11. I already have a part 2 ready and I’m working on part 3. Same characters, similar geography, etc., but the core mission becomes steadily more obvious. I’ll keep posting it here, so if this fiction bores you, you’ll probably lose interest in this blog. Right now, this is something really important to me.

Posted in personal | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bits and Pieces 11