Chapter 285: The Department of Horribly Suspicious People Strikes Again

Sunday, January 1 to Monday, January 23, 2006

OSU had been shut down for a month over Christmas, and when it restarted on January 9, I was ready to take the exams for another dozen courses. After completing one of those exams, I turned my phone back on and received a message to call Prof immediately. He told me, "The Department of Homeland Security asked for your transcript at the office this morning. Come to my office and we'll talk about it."

In his office, Prof told me that the secretary that took their request passed it on to Maureen, who called Prof to ask what to do. OSU policy is that transcripts aren't given out willy-nilly, so their request had been refused (in my opinion you couldn't get much more willy, let alone nilly, than the DHS). There was certainly no good reason for Prof to cooperate with them, not after the last fiasco. Prof called the Physics and Business offices to warn them. Physics had already been approached and had refused; Business soon called back to say they'd just been asked and had refused.

Prof had also called the school, to find out if anyone had been asking about me, Julia or Carol there, but no one had. Mom, Dad and Vanessa hadn't had anything happen either; the DHS hadn't crossed their minds for weeks.

Prof and I spent some time trying to work out what was going on, and what to do about it. It wasn't as if we intended for my transcript to be secret, as copies of it would be sent to every university that I might want to go to after graduation. But it was worrying that the DHS was still sniffing around, and that they might be sniffing after me only, although there might be other 'sniffing' going on that we knew nothing about. The one new incident wasn't enough to extrapolate from. We couldn't think of anything significant to do, just a bunch of small ideas:

• "Be careful, Mark," instructed Prof. So if an ideal opportunity finally appeared to show my girls that they could fly, I'd let it go past. Watching what we said would be a good idea too.

• Prof made sure I had his lawyer's phone number in my phone and memorized.

• I'd start keeping my wallet well stocked with cash, "Just in case." I'd take a couple of thousand out of what I had in the safe.

I had another exam to get to, and we couldn't think of any reason why not, so that's what I did, looking over my shoulder the whole way. I didn't see anything worrying.

We discussed it over dinner at home. Nothing else had happened, and no one had anything more useful than "Let's all be careful." Prof had already called his lawyer and asked him if he could find out anything. He said he'd get people onto it. He was a local Corvallis lawyer, so personally useless against the DHS, but he had lawyer contacts that had dealt with the DHS before. They'd almost certainly fail, but at least their asking around might put the DHS on notice not to do anything stupid - we weren't exactly filled with confidence about that possibility.

^

Nothing happened for a week, then on Thursday January 19, the DHS swooped. They arrived at each of the three departmental offices armed with search warrants, and commenced extracting my transcripts and everything else each department had on me, which was a substantial amount, as there'd been a great deal of internal emailing about me.

I was on the phone discussing this with Prof when we all got a text message informing us that our home was being broken into (we'd set up our very expensive security system to notify our phones). Prof suggested I find somewhere to lose myself for an hour or so, while he checked out what was happening.

I found out later that he called the cops to report his house was being broken into. The security company should've sent someone to investigate too. He had quick calls with Vanessa and Mom (Dad being hard to reach on the factory floor), and they agreed that Prof and one of The Boys should go home to check out what was happening. Andrew was available, so he and Prof headed off to check.

I'd had the idea of driving to about a mile from home then using a sight blob sent up to three hundred feet or so to check what could be seen of the activity at home. Unfortunately it was raining, so that idea was useless. I wasn't sure whether I should go to my car, which was very distinctive so easy to spot, or stay away from it, in which case how would I move quickly if I needed to. I also didn't want to turn my cellphone off to avoid being triangulated, because I wanted to be able to receive calls. Hiding among a large crowd was probably best, so I went to a building in OSU which had several exits, put myself in a central location, pretended to have my head down in a book while I used a sight blob to check out the entrances for any potential trouble coming my way.

On the way home, Prof got a call from our security company to inform him that our home was being searched by a large group of DHS agents exercising a warrant. Prof called his lawyer, who said he'd come to our home.

Prof and Andrew arrived home shortly after that, and got imperiously ordered to stay out of the way.

The lawyer arrived and inspected the warrant. It was to search and seize anything that might be used in, or contain evidence of, terrorism or terrorism financing related activities. There were no arrest warrants. The DHS was just still fishing for information.

The search took a fair while, during which our panic calmed down but our anger rose:

• Early on we got a call from school saying they'd been visited too, for all their records on me, Julia, Carol and Donna. It was good to know that the DHS was serious about the threat to national security that 13- and 14-year old girls represented.

• They took every computer system out of our home. Not just the computers, but the entire SYSTEMS! All of my 30" screens went (I'd upgraded to the VERY first 30" screens that were available. They were only a few days old). They took everyone else's screens (my hand-me-down 24s), all our printers, Vanessa's scanner, the keyboards, mice, the internet box-things and even the mousepads! Why the fuck take the screens, except to be deliberate assholes?

• They found my safe and demanded the combination. The lawyer said we had to provide it, so Prof called me for it. Goodbye to eight grand for God knows how long. It also contained Ava's nude photos and her letter (they took those too, because they were so obviously subversive). There was nothing else in the safe.

• They easily found Prof's safe (he had one bolted to the floor in his bedroom closet, same as he'd had at his previous home). It contained his gun (legal), and my fake ID (not so legal). Prof looked very guilty when he confessed that to us later, but our lawyer downplayed it to a surprising degree, saying, "Unless a false ID is used in the commission of a crime, fraud for example, then it's usually not prosecuted. It's in his real name, just with his birthdate changed, so it's even less serious."

• They trashed the place: drawers emptied, beds stripped, book cases pulled from the walls, etc. It wasn't expensive damage; 'only' about a thousand dollars worth, but they'd made a god-awful mess. They'd taken Vanessa's digital camera, but The Boys went home to get theirs to document the damage before we started tidying up.

Tidying up took a LONG time.

There was nothing else we could do. Vanessa tried to find out when we'd get our computers back, or just the screens, but the few people she managed to get connected to refused to say anything about anything. Apparently they didn't care that we had to make a decision whether to spend something like $40,000 to replace everything. Our lawyer said, "If you don't get it back within a couple of weeks, then it'll probably take several months or years. We could petition the court, but that would take months and cost as much as the items, which would probably be destructively searched before being returned." So we decided to wait for a couple of weeks to see what happened.

When he heard about it, the Dean was great. He was appalled that our openly sending our own money to Europe and my having a diving vacation in a Thai resort had resulted in so much abuse. He replaced Prof's, Vanessa's and my home computer systems. We downgraded my setup considerably, not telling him about my confiscated laptop or that my desktop computer had had eight 30" screens. My new system was a single computer running two 24" screens. That slowed my studying down dramatically, but I wasn't doing ANYTHING impressive until this crap was over with.

The Dean also tried to use his political connections to find out what was happening. He was a very big wig in Corvallis (OSU is hugely important to the town), but he was a very small wig when compared to the DHS, and he got nowhere.

We were hugely inconvenienced and annoyed, but not really worried. Sooner or later the Department of Half-witted Simpletons would decide we had absolutely no connection to terrorism. None of us could possibly be linked to that. The only subverting of the American way of life I'd done was in importing a large number of Australian bikinis, which didn't exactly put me in the same camp as the Muslim fundamentalists. I've never understood why those fundamentalists insist their nation's females wear chador instead of Australian bikinis. Religious people are crazy. When I'm Emperor of the World, the wearing of Australian bikinis - in any one of the seven real colors - will be strongly encouraged (for suitably shaped girls, obviously).

The only real questions were how long it'd take the Half-wits to give up, and what sort of trouble the fake ID would cause us. Our lawyer's opinion of the latter was, "Not much."

We talked and behaved as if every room in our home was bugged, which it easily could've been. So I forgot I had NP and blobs; Carol slept in "Carol's Bedroom", often with Julia or Ava to keep her company; I ordered my body to sleep for six hours per night then woke to walk to my study to do normal studying (OSU wouldn't notice my dramatic slowdown for a week or two but then I'd have to tell them). There were no more games with Diana and Claire Norris, or fun of almost every other kind. It was a huge pain in the ass.

^

On the following Monday, January 23, I parked in the OSU parking lot I use, got out, and had only walked a few step when I was suddenly surrounded by DHS agents. After identifying themselves, they told me they wanted to ask me some questions, handcuffed me, put me into an SUV that drove up, and off we went.

I had a goon on either side of me, and I was handcuffed, but that was the extent of their security. They hadn't removed my cellphone from my belt, so I used NP to speed-dial Prof's number - he'd seemed to be the best choice as he was the closest thing we had to a leader with this DHS mess. I used a forearm to cover my phone so no one could see that it was making a call, bowing my head and closing my eyes to allow me to create a sight blob to watch my phone's screen so I'd know when Prof answered. When that happened, I looked up and asked out loud, "Where is the DHS taking me now?" I didn't get an answer, so I added, "Rather than handcuffing me every few weeks, why doesn't the DHS ask questions civilly? We've got nothing to hide."

I was thinking about what to say next, when all the agents gave a little twitch. One of the guys next to me reached down, pulled my arms away, grabbed my phone off my belt, and disconnected the call. He gave me a dirty look, then passed my phone to the front passenger.

#6: <They must've been told over their earphones?>

#2: <Yeah. That didn't take them long. They were monitoring our phone in real-time, the bastards. Or maybe Prof's phone, but more likely ours because Prof answered his.>

#3: <If it WAS Prof who answered. We can't be sure of that. They grabbed everyone last time. And more likely they were monitoring everyone's phones.>

#2: <Good points.>

#8: <We just turned the wrong way to be going to the police station for the interrogation.>

#6: <Uh oh. I'd much prefer to be surrounded by law-abiding policemen, especially because they'd recognize us when we arrived. I wonder where we're going.>

#3: <We could try asking nicely.>

#6: <Yeah, right!>

#2: <What a colossal bunch of asshats the DHS is. The first round of interviews were MAYBE justified, but there's ZERO evidence of any of us being involved in terrorism.>

#3: <Yeah. Knowing these morons, I'm guessing we're going to spend the next twelve hours answering the same questions we answered last time.>

#7: <That'd certainly confirm my opinion of them. I wonder how many times they can pull crap like this before a lawyer could get them to stop harassing us?>

#6: <I wouldn't hold your breath on that. The tone of the stories we've heard is that they don't have any real limits on them.>

#2: <There's certainly no limit to their stupidity or willingness to piss off innocent people.>

We moaned to ourselves until, #2: <Uh oh. We just turned to go north out of town. Where the hell are we going?>

#3: <No reason why not to ask.>

"Where are we going?"

"Sit still and shut up."

#3: <Do we want to get into an argument about it? Establish our not being a pussy, or something?>

#2: <Forget it. We're not going to get an answer. They like being assholes too much for that. And it's not like these guys are going to be impressed by our making an issue out of it.>

Several times during the trip north I sent a sight blob to check all the cars around us, to see if anyone else in my families was being similarly asked to help the DHS with their inquiries, but I never saw anyone I knew.

I was surprised we didn't stop in Salem, that being the state capital. We drove all the way north to Portland.

#6: <I bet when these fuckwits let us go, they won't provide transport back home again. They'll just open the door and tell us to go.>

#7: <No bet. That's EXACTLY what they're going to do, and they'll enjoy it too.> [#7 should've taken the bet as #6's description was very wrong, although I did have to provide my own transportation home: a sled.]

We drove into a built up commercial area of Portland, then turned into an underground garage for a high-rise building that had no signs on it that I could see. They had to pause at the garage's entrance to swipe a card to be let in, so I did a very quick sight blob check of all four sides of the building, seeing no signs. I saw the main pedestrian entrance, so I sent the sight blob into it, where I spotted a sign above a security desk saying "Department of Homeland Security." I knew that was a lie, because this was the Department of Harebrained Screwups.

I was taken into an elevator and up to an interview room on the fifth floor, patted down, had my pockets emptied, watch taken, and was parked on a chair still with my handcuffs on, watched over by a silent goon - he looked like a goon, walked like a goon, talked like a goon (i.e., didn't), so "Goon" he was. That suited me. I bowed my head, shut my eyes, and used a sight blob to check out the area. It was about 10am, and the place looked just like an ordinary business office; not that I've been in many, but I've seen them on TV. There were several other spartan interview rooms in the center of the floor, all of which were empty. Otherwise there was an open-plan area where people worked in cubicles, and a series of offices around the outside of the floor. I quickly checked on all the floors above and below mine that I could reach, sight blobs losing range quickly when going through thick concrete floors/ceilings [[I assumed]], seeing very much the same layouts, although only some of the floors had interview rooms. I didn't see anyone else from my families.

I returned the sight blob to my level and started snooping, reading people's computer screens and whatever papers they had open, trying to find anything about what was happening to me. Unsuccessfully, but I did get dozens of snapshots of the sorts of things that DHS office workers work on. It was scarily impressive, until I wondered what crap my file contained, probably 'impressive' stuff like, "Suspected of terrorist training for underwater demolitions attacks."

I was still snooping when I heard my room's door open, so I canceled the blob and looked up to see a new guy walking in. He wasn't wearing a cheap jacket or a shoulder holster, just a shirt and tie, so he was presumably a boss type. Hopefully he had brain cells in the plural. Another interrogation began.

It was quickly apparent that whoever the boss was, he had considerably more than two brain cells. The last time I'd been interrogated, the interrogator had treated it as dull routine. He'd even given the impression of not really listening to my answers. But this guy was alert and thinking. Ordinary that would've pleased me, because it should've meant he'd be smart enough to realize how stupid the "Mark Anderson is a Terrorist" theory was. Unfortunately that's not how this interrogation unfolded. Boss (for the lack of a better name; "Asshole" being insufficiently distinctive) was VERY interested in me. The last interrogation had been about what I'd done, but this was about me. For example, he spent fifteen minutes asking me why I was studying Physics. "Because I like it" was apparently an inadequate answer.

"Who asked you to take it?" [The previous interview had asked this question dozens of times. This time there were a couple of repetitions early on and then it was never asked again.]

"No one. I chose it because I like it."

"Why do you like it?"

"I don't know; I just do. Why does anyone like anything?"

"What aspects of it appeal to you?"

That sort of question isn't easy to answer. Even if Prof had asked me, I would've had to stop to think before speaking. Add a layer of justified paranoia on top of that, and it definitely required thought. Part of the true answer was that I thought it might help me use my abilities better, but obviously that couldn't be said.

"That's hard to put into words. I guess I like understanding how the Universe works, its natural laws, and things like that. Probably what drives anyone who likes science, I guess."

"So you disagree with the religious approach?"

"Approach to what?"

"Understanding the Universe."

"I've not noticed that religious people pursue understanding of the universe. They're interested in people, rather than external science."

"There are religious scientists."

"I'm sure there are. Just as there are non-religious scientists."

"Physicists and Christians have different explanations for the formation of the Earth."

#4: <He knows the word "physicist". I'd bet he's the first DHS person we've met who does. This guy's debating with us; the last time the guy was almost reading from a list of prepared questions. Hopefully this guy's got a mind capable of grasping the concept that we're just an innocent 16-year old boy.>

"Yes they do."

"Which explanation do you think is correct?"

"The scientific explanation seems more logical to me."

"Someone as smart as you must think Christians are stupid for believing the biblical explanation."

"Why must I?"

"Don't you?"

"I don't think it's as simple as that. I wasn't around to observe the formation of the Earth, so I have to take the scientific explanation on faith. Christians take their explanation on faith too. They seem happy with their choice; I'm happy with my choice."

"What if your choices came into conflict, as happens with the Intelligent Design debate?"

"Then I'd probably react the same way I do about the Intelligent Design debate, and largely ignore it."

"Why do you ignore it?"

"Because it's unimportant to me. I'm only a 16-year old kid; I don't care whether kids are taught Intelligent Design alongside Evolution or not."

"You don't care that Christians are trying to gain control of the school curriculum?"

"I'm not aware that they're trying to control the entire curriculum; merely one small aspect of it in one subject."

"But if they're wrong, they shouldn't be allowed to control any of the curriculum."

"That's not for me to decide, which is why I ignore the issue."

"Wouldn't you get angry if 25% of everything you had to study was religious theory?"

"Personally, I'd probably choose to study something else if that was the case."

"You'd let hundreds of thousands of kids waste their time studying religious trash. You come across as a very selfish boy."

"If hundreds of thousands of kids were wasting their time studying religious trash - or any scientific trash, or literary trash, or any other trash - I wouldn't be in a position to change that. I thought selfishness was when someone takes more than their fair share. I cannot see that in the situation you presented, that I'm taking anything, let alone more than my fair share."

"Would you describe yourself as tolerant of religious viewpoints?"

"That would depend on what you're viewing. Things don't become automatically exempt from disagreement just because they're religious."

"Such as?"

"As I understand it, the Aztecs used to raid their neighbors, take prisoners, and then cut their hearts out of their living bodies during religious ceremonies. I'm not tolerant to the religious belief that human sacrifice is acceptable. But I am tolerant of the religious belief that people shouldn't steal. Like I said, it all depends on what you're viewing."

That's probably enough quoting to give you the flavor of the interrogation/debate. It took us fifteen more minutes of circling before he moved off the issue of why I was studying Physics.

Then he started on what I hoped to learn from Physics (what use it was, what I wanted to use it for, what effect it'd have on my life, etc.)

Then he asked why I was studying Business, a topic we spent another half an hour on.

Then he asked me why I was studying Math, fortunately only spending fifteen minutes in total on that.

Then I had to explain why I was doing Physics, Math and Business, rather than some other combination of subjects.

By the time we'd finished why I'd chosen the degrees I had, it was well-established that this was going to be a VERY slow interrogation, and one which seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with my presumably suspected links to terrorists. The first interrogation had repeatedly asked me who my controller was, contact was, and other obvious paranoid fantasies, but this guy seemed to be shaping up to be the most thorough Careers Guidance Counselor I'd ever heard of.

I guess that if I kept studying Physics and Math, and specialized in the right directions over the next twenty years, then I might gain some knowledge about how to build an atomic bomb, so there was some faint terrorism threat to my educational choices. But I was surprised by the degree of disconnection from terrorism of his next line of questioning: "How many girlfriends do you have?"

"WHAT! How on Earth does securing our homeland depend in any way on how many girlfriends I've got?"

"Answer the question."

"It's absurd and nothing to do with your business."

"My business is whatever I want my business to be. You're in my custody, and you'll stay in it until you've answered all my questions. How many girlfriends do you have?"

#4: <There's no harm in admitting Julia is our girlfriend. Plus they've got Ava's photos and letter asking to be my girlfriend, so that makes two. We're obviously not going to count Carol, and we can easily say that we don't have any other girlfriends. If he pushes we can admit to having some lovers, but we're not going to raise it.>

#6: <Why don't we just say "One MAIN girlfriend", and see if we get pushed into admitting Ava. I'd like to do what we can to avoid her getting swept into this crap.>

"I thought your job is uncovering terrorists and keeping America safe, but if it helps, I've got one main girlfriend."

"Who?"

"Julia Williams."

"What about Ava West?"

"What about her?"

"Don't get smart. You know what I mean."

"My previous answer stands."

"What previous answer?"

"I've got one main girlfriend, which is Julia Williams."

"What about Ava West?"

"She's not really a girlfriend, which I thought my saying I had one main girlfriend implied pretty obviously."

"Do you have sex with her?"

"Keeping America safe from terrorists depends on whether I have sex with Ava?"

"Your EVER getting out of here depends on your answering my questions. Do you have sex with Ava West?"

"This is ABSURD! It's lunchtime, I'm hungry, and I'm sick of your stupidly invasive questions. I'm a 16-year old kid for Christ's sake. I've got NOTHING to do with terrorists or terrorism, and I'm not meant to have sex for another two years."

Boss stood up, and while walking toward the door, said to Goon, "Put him in a cell until tomorrow. Wait until I send help."

#1: <I REALLY don't want to wait until tomorrow. Half the kids at school know we have sex with Ava, so let's tell the prick.>

#All: <Agreed.>

I called after him, "Okay. If it's so important to you, yes, Ava and I sometimes have sex."

Boss kept walking.

"Wait! I answered your question already." By which time he was out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

A few seconds later, two more of the guys who'd fetched me from OSU entered the room. Two of them took my arms, and they escorted me into an elevator. We went down.

We exited into an elevator lobby with two doors off it: straight ahead and on the left wall. We turned left. Because one of the goons had been leading me and had obscured my view, I didn't realize that the door had a security keypad until it was being used. Next time I'll have a sight blob ready to watch what the access code is. I did see the last two digits and that the goon using it had swiped his badge through it.

Through that door took us into a corridor that only went about ten feet before another strong door blocked the way. One of the agents pressed a button beside the door then looked up at the camera above the door. A buzzer sounded and we pushed through the door into the next room.

There was a guy sitting at a desk on the right side of an otherwise empty, small room. There were three solid metal doors close together off the left wall, and three more off the wall straight ahead of us, the right wall being blank, and the wall we'd entered from only having the door we'd just used.

"Number one," the guard said.

I was marched to the first door on the left, one of my escorts putting his hand on the handle. There was an audible <thunk> from the door. I looked around quickly to see the prison guard withdrawing his finger from a row of five buttons mounted on his desk. Why five wasn't obvious to me, as there appeared to be six cells, plus the seventh door we'd come in.

The cell door was opened, my handcuffs were removed and I was pushed in, the door closing behind me with a loud click.

The 'room' was barely that. The most bizarre feature was its height: the same as the top of the door. I walk though doorways never worrying about hitting my head, but being in a room that height made me want to shrink down to avoid hitting my head. The room was about eight feet deep by five feet wide and empty except for a bedpan on the floor at the far end, a roll of toilet paper beside it, and a wooden bed on the floor. Literally a "wooden bed on the floor"; it looked like a wooden door lying on the floor. No mattress, sheets or blanket. The ONLY things in the room were the bedpan, toilet paper, the wooden plank, and me.

There was a lightbulb recessed into the ceiling behind a thick sheet of unbreakable looking glass. The door had a peephole at eye level and a slot at ankle level, presumably to deliver food. I hope I'd made it in time for lunchtime, because I was hungry.

I took stock. I had all my clothes on. It being winter that meant quite a lot of clothing, so I was comfortable temperature-wise. I was wearing the comfortable boots I'd gotten from Lily so no laces, but I still had my belt. (Movies of guys in jail always seem to make a big deal about laces and belts, so they were almost the first thing I thought of). My pockets were empty.

A sight blob saw that all the other cells were identical and empty, except the last cell going clockwise, which wasn't a cell at all. It had the same type of door, but inside was a toilet, sink and very small kitchen. Hardly sanitary to have a toilet in the same small room as a kitchen, but there it was. Clearly the Department of Half-baked Shitheads saved money by making low rooms, putting toilets with kitchens, and employing assholes. Given that these guys all had their heads up their asses, it didn't really matter that their toilet was in the kitchen, except that my food would probably come from there. Soon would be good.