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The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
![[Image: rheinlandcopiezp1.png]](http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/8756/rheinlandcopiezp1.png)
Illustration by Xing
From left to right; BDM Vizeregie Moleman, Kirche die Grunnen Alders Dunkengrunalder Schumacher, Albert Brock, Vizebundesministerium fur Gesundheit Kohler and General Baden.
Within the confines of a bright, virtual boardroom, numerous figures sat in well carved chairs, witness to a near infinite cityscape. From around this conflux of characters, one could observe many high ranking officials, including BDM Vizeregie Moleman, Kirche die Grunnen Alders Dunkelgrunalder Schumacher, renowned public television personality Albert Brock, Bundesministerium f?r Gesundheit Kohler and General Baden. Within the confines of this government owned and operated computer shell, these men began to talk, separated by billions of kilometres. However, the 1st to talk actually began to speak in text, due to his rather unusual manner of speech;
“So, Agent Alan managed to imprison the Corsair. Good. Our fraudulent doctor has been imprisoned. Good. We’ve managed to cover the details of both subjects involvement with our mysterious, criminal enemy and avoided a national panic that could have resulted in enough heresy to put you, Mr Schumacher, into a coma. Good. Mr Brock has failed to cover up our department’s involvement in this matter. Not good. Not good at all. I demand an explanation for this now, or there will be more discord in your house, Mr Brock, than there is in the homes of 1000 Discordian heretics.”
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
Albert Brock nervously spoke, straightening his virtual tie;
Sir, all this has done is generate good publicity for your department. You can use this info to dispel the propaganda of many of your opponents and show the Bureaus service to the people, and at the very least, no information was leaked about the internal affairs investigation into the activities of Agent Alan in relation to our enemy..
Good publicity? Mr Brock, bringing our activities into the limelight in this time and age is tantamount to sending the LSF directors a box of chocolates entitled Hello, may I please investigate your activities in great detail and possibly cripple a war effort, costing millions of civilian lives and billions of dollars?. You knew this was important, I had sent you the briefing a mere week ago. Why did you not see that this breaking bulleting, which your immediate underling reviews, had contained information on our workings, and why are you dodging the justice of the Chancellor in favour of saving your own skin?
The senior Church official spoke up, Moleman listening reverentially to his words;
My son, I feel that Mr Brock has merely committed the sin of ignorance, which is in a lesser class of the sin of lack of vigilance. I do not think he was indeed slothful at the time of this bulleting review, merely that he neglected to check a single paper among the many urgent papers which now flow in a time of near-war. This single mention, which may have seemed innocuous to the untrained eye, may have slipped past him while he was working on more urgent matters. I implore you to forgive him.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
This does not bode well. If your men are being watched by those LSF vermin, we couldnt move a single troopship into Bering without their President blaspheming against the Chancellor.
As much as I would dearly love to order the assassination of Codename Sniper just to teach that harpy a lesson, I have been given a direct order not to by Grosseadmiral Krieg. He says its about honour, but why should one cast pearls amongst swine?
Kohler spoke;
Gentlemen, Your Holiness, much as I love to learn of the elaborate trade of espionage, I feel the Chancellor would want us to discuss more pressing priorities. I have had my men look into the morgue records and it seems that one particular body went missing in the back room, where they keep criminals and vagrants. The cameras didnt show anything, so whoever our enemy is, he must be either a good hacker, or using technology so advanced it could completely baffle one of our most advanced camera systems. In this business, Im guessing the latter.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
And our analysis vindicates a civilians analysis. The 9 Hells have frozen. Now, to close this meeting, heres what I would advise you people to do. General sir, I advise you to move your troops to Bering as planned, but our agents will instead be conducting operations in Bretonia, as our newly promoted Agent Alan was seen yesterday sending out a hard mail to a courier in a Whale. Unfortunately, we couldnt track him due to a provision in the Boorman Treaty, forbidding the deliberate tracking of foreign civilians without indisputable evidence that said civilians are a threat to House security. For all we know, this guy could be an innocent courier, and we could be looking at an earful from the civil liberties lobby in Bretonia. If Bretonia goes to war with us, Liberty will also follow, and we do not yet have the resources to wage such a war until we eliminate the Wild forces in New Berlin and the Hessian presence in the Omegas. Minister, I implore you to run a through search of that morgue for any traces of biological warfare on its staff or any further evidence of van Schmidts corruption. Your Holiness, my prayers are with you, and I must humbly beg that you unite our citizens in opposition of Libertys government, so that we may more peacefully bring them to the heel of the Chancellors will. Mr Brock, have Wagner taken in and run a story on him being a traitor to our nation and a Hessian insurgent. That is all.
The boardroom darkened, and the avatars turned to mere coding, then all the screens of the men controlling them went out in white flashes, leaving nought but the black face of a monitor.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
Arthur Whymper; Respected executive manager at Sunderland Research Station and owner of the Cambridge legal firm Whymper Legal Consultancy and Representation. 3 time winner of Most Reliable Lawyer of the Year, Sector 14, Cambridge award and a Templeton Award For Ethical Practice, 2nd Class. Respected amongst the scientific community for his sound and efficient advice and among Bretonia s government for his patriotism and secrecy.
Arthur Whymper lay back in the comfortable confines of his Cambridge penthouse, the classical tunes of the Palmerton St theme playing across the room like paint across a wall. It had been the end of a long day of litigation, red tape and diplomatic entanglements. He truly felt he had earned the rest at the end of this day. Unfortunately, rest was not to come.
Barely after the bony face of actor Ron Barkley had played across the screen, Mr Whymper heard a loud ringing from his kitchen telephone. He quickly paused the screen, waddling over and checking the caller ID. The phone was scrambled, so he reset it. The call came again, the phone scrambling.
Oh boy, must be one of these MI6 chaps down at Downing Complex. Well, better answer it, old boy. Dont want to tee off the codgers.
He picked up the phone, a voice emanating out of it almost immediately;
Hello, Arthur. This is a future friend. Check your mail tomorrow.
What?
The mysterious caller hung up. Mr Whymper attempted to trace the call and considered contacting M16, but reconsidered, thinking he should probably wait to see if the caller will contact with more details before he contacted M16. He paced back slowly to his viewing, unpausing and trying to relax about this strange encounter with the thought he was protected by the Bretonian government and the calming pallor of a well choreographed bar scene.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
The next day, a doorbell rang unusually early in Mr Whymper's penthouse. He could see from his security viewer that a mail droid was waiting outside, with no weapons or gaseous components. He walked up from enjoying a DVD of The Trafalgar Plot: Part II and a glass of raided Kusari sake and released the thick door, grabbing the package and just as rapidly slamming the bulkhead in the face of the machine.
He gently layed it upon a coffee table patterned by neatly organized binders. He then pressed a release button at its brim, the roof of the container swinging open to reveal a strange black device, which seemed to be almost spherical and pulsed with several orange, gelatine buttons. Along its packaging lay a tiny note, which Mr Whymper was rapidly able to decipher with a magnifying glass he often used to aid his wearing eyes. The note read, in nondescript handwriting;
You have undoubtedly held back on your notions of proceeding to your intelligence authorities due to wishing to draw me out into the open. However, I have access to significant records already and I would most certainly know if you had proceeded to the M16 building, password XR141516151e3qr12414325t61352416515215252y23trqeteswtretrgwerertwergty24trq31q34141515135135456451559914912415001551535151223545trtg545tty55t5y56yttrhytr.
If you do such a thing, then you shall both find yourself stuck in this pathetic position of labour and amnesiac of our current engagement. However, if you take this chance, and simply slot the largest button on this sphere to a connector node in the building, I promise great rewards for you. The 1st can be viewed in your bank account
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
Mr Whymper glanced briefly at his wrist mounted neural net monitor, checking his bank account. What he found nearly caused the old man to have a heart attack. He now had over 10 million credits in his 1st account alone. Still thinking this might be a case of stolen or inappropriately transferred funds,
Mr Whymper attempted to run a transaction trace. The trace seemed to have come from the spherical device itself. He attempted to open it, but all that he found inside was a melted, plastic like substance, similar to the melting plastic used by packaging companies.
It could also be a tool in a cover up, so Mr Whymper wandered over to the phone. He rang the emergency line, but merely found the same mysterious voice speaking again, as though it had hijacked the line.
I see you have attempted to contact the authorities, Arthur. Not very grateful for a man who just got handed a nice retirement. And this coincides quite nicely with that private online Curacao casino tour you were planning, too.
Ah well, I can always find another man. Even so, be aware that what I was planning was perfectly innocent. I simply wanted you to transfer some seized criminal smuggling funds to a despondent people. Nothing illegal about that, in fact, its standard government procedure in these cases. But it appears charity is not a virtue among your profession. To each his own, I suppose.
The voice seemed to actually be on the verge of hanging up, but Arthur spoke;
I see. Well, we have tried to extend an olive branch many times to you Nayehiya, but it keeps..
I believe you are putting words into my mouth, my friend. I never said anything about the Nayehiya. I speak of a suffering group, yes, but not the Nayehiya.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
Who do you wish to help?
I speak of a despondent people who are dying every day, being murdered ruthlessly by greedy businessmen and vile criminals, and Im sure a man of your intelligence can figure that out.
Arthur Whymper thought to his times on Leeds.. the talk of workers revolts, of justice for the poor, of equality for all under a new order, of..
You are a clever man, sir. But I am a patriotic man, and I will not stand by while you scallywags twist and corrupt our culture!
Your culture has already been twisted and corrupted from what it was. Honour, respect, loyalty, courage, these are all mocked and spat upon by the bloated bourgeuiouse of your society. They are the traitors, not you. I offer you a chance to take a stand for what is right, and to not sit idly by and let, in the words of an ancient philosopher, evil triumph while good men do nothing. This is but a small step towards compassion, peace and order.
You sound like a Molly of some kind. My brother nearly got offed by you chaps, so take your 2 bit rambling and drive it up the back lane. Im not betraying my country for anything!
I shall call you tomorrow, and you shall see.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
The line then went dead. Over the rest of the day, Arthur Whymper made several attempts to acquire assistance from the police, but a lack of evidence prevented them from acting on the matter. Late in the evening, 2 intelligence agents visited Mr Whymper to protect him and planted a bug on his phone for monitoring the strange caller.
The strange caller did not call for nearly a week, until Mr Whymper was in a 3 minute intermediate period between a meeting with a MI6 representative and a Bretonian venture capitalist. Having waited to confirm the capitalist had been granted security clearance, Mr Whymper blindly picked up the phone. The same voice rang out, even as he switched off his mobile neural net phone.
Thank you for referring to the authorities via that phone. Not only did you give me access to the police database, but even speeded up the process decrypting part of your so called intelligence network by a direct visitation by Her Majestys Secret Service. You did well, Arthur, and did as expected. I never intended you to slot that silly device into the door, oh no no.. it was an unarmed spike, with no possibility of as much hacking a museum computer.
The Man With No Name; Chapter 1 - Praetyre - 06-16-2008
"I must apologize for the previous deception, but it was necessary in order to demonstrate to you the nature and veracity of my work and to test you. Had you previously slotted such a device into the area, I would have rapidly advised you to leave and later informed you of your decoyship, as I am sure a man like you employs. For only the true Arthur Whymper, the true patriot would refuse to betray his country to the words of a malicious, mendacious, methodical, marked mechanical murderous Molly!
Arthur Whymper collapsed in a slump, feeling like a pawn on a chessboard, a key on a piano, blind to its master and confused to its tune.
Be aware that I have access to your security network. If you try to alert the authorities, I will know. If you try to run away, I will know. If you move a muscle out of line, thanks to the thermal imagery camera, I will know. And what I do know now from the database records is that the man whom you just met is currently filling out a form in Room A3 with one Dr Jane Dean known as a 4124 form, registered as code 1241251545AEZETRTY in the New London Legal Database. Im sure you are aware what this means.