Chapter 298: The New Me Rejoins Society

Saturday, April 1 to Tuesday, April 25, 2006

I was now a white-faced version of Ronald Fisher, also known as "Bomber" to those friends he/I had left, because he'd thought it made him sound macho and cool. I was nineteen years old - one of my important criteria was for him to be old enough to legally ignore his parents - and a high-school graduate. The latter had surprised me, but he'd insisted that his parents had the paper to prove it. Judging by the widespread ignorance the gang members had demonstrated in their many conversations with me, their schools hadn't so much educated as baby-sat their students.

As soon as I was black enough, I needed to get a couple of tattoos. Nothing major, just around my upper-arms. I'd wear long-sleeved shirts until the tattoos had aged enough to look correct. I don't like tats, and my family doesn't either, but they seemed to be obligatory for LA thugs. Fortunately there had been a huge number of small gangs for me to pick from, so I'd selected a group of guys that weren't as covered in tats as many of them were.

Once I'd picked a group, the choice had been a lot more limited. Ronald Fisher didn't have anything about him that made him particularly useful for me, other than his being a legal adult, short, ten-fingered, Black guy. He'd just been the least bad choice. As I had thought likely, the police had his fingerprints on file, so I'd had to use the ink pad I'd bought to take his fingerprints and mine, compare them side by side, then try to get mine to change to match his. They had changed - which was very helpful of my body - and to my eyes they now looked the same as Ron's, but I much preferred not to put them to the test with a computerized matching system. I couldn't do anything about our DNA's being different. I knew the Fort Dodge scientists had taken my DNA profile, so I couldn't allow the CIA, or probably any authorities, to test my new body's DNA. That worried me quite a lot, because in addition to the risk of the authorities testing everyone associated with my families in their hunt for the missing Mark Anderson, it wasn't hard to imagine that in the future DNA testing might be very common; perhaps even required as part of getting a job for its medical insurance. I'd have to avoid crossing that bridge whenever I got near it, probably by all of us emigrating to a different country.

Ron had some minor convictions, but the police didn't want him now and weren't likely to want him in the future for anything they knew about. He worked as a mechanic at a mostly legit place, a job I was largely ignorant of so I'd have to do some cramming on the subject. A pity his job wasn't something I knew a little about, such as landscaping, but I guess there's not much call for that in ghettos.

He didn't play sports, being too small. He didn't do much of anything except hang out with his loser friends, which just ensured that his life drifted downward. He had a girlfriend, who would have had another boyfriend within a week or two of his disappearance. She wasn't particularly good looking; she just wasn't particular.

He had two parents living at home, which was statistically unlikely according to the sample I had taken. Also at his home were a younger sister and an even younger brother, and that's about all the biography that matters because he (i.e., me) was leaving it behind.

^

I spent the next couple of weeks living rough around northern California and the very southern part of Oregon, living in the cheap sleeping bag I'd bought on my resupply run to a town but have never taken out of is packaging to avoid getting anyone else's DNA on it. The receipt for which was in my wallet so I could prove where and when I'd bought it.

When my face was black enough to pass for Ron Fisher, I showed it in some small towns, picking up a little casual work for a few dollars or a meal, always talking enough and mentioning my name so some of the people would remember me. I was similarly chatty when I hitchhiked from small town to small town. I was establishing my presence in the area while my body finished making its changes - especially losing height - as well as taking the time to practice "being myself". I wanted to have that down cold before I returned to LA.

Mid-April was six weeks after the snatch. I'd lost three inches to 5' 8", leaving just two more inches to go (to wherever it is they go). Ron had been overweight, but I was only slightly so now, "'Cause of da rough livin'," I'd say if asked. I didn't want to be fat, and not being so would help excuse any difference in the way I walked. It was time for the next stage.

I phoned the criminal lawyer I'd selected back when I was scouting LA, making an appointment for the afternoon in a couple of days' time. I hitched to LA, arriving in the right morning and heading to his office. I told his secretary I was four hours early because hitching is unpredictable. Talking like Ronald Fisher used to, I asked whether her boss could see me early. He couldn't, so I had to kill some time.

No problem. I found an internet café and started reading newspaper issues going back in time over the last couple of months. I didn't notice any headlines about Top Secret CIA Biochem Weapon Labs burning (farther) down, but the Portland paper mentioned the tragic burglary-gone-wrong of a respected, senior DHS agent. Amazingly, he had the same name as that asshole Robert Moran. I had killed Moran and Wright in an attempt to cut the connection between me specifically and the "Mark Anderson" the CIA knew about - perhaps without knowing where I'd come from after I'd destroyed so much of their data - as there must be tens of thousands of "Mark Andersons" in America. Unfortunately the article about Moran's death included: "Moran was possibly implicated in the unexplained disappearance of Mark Anderson, 16, of Corvallis. An extremely gifted student who according to the Dean of the Oregon State University, 'Is the greatest genius our country has ever produced, and his disappearance is a national tragedy'..." Clearly Moran's role in my disappearance had already been reported on. Perhaps I should have checked the newspaper stories before killing Wright and Moran. Nonetheless, I didn't regret killing them. They had sent me to my death, and perhaps many other innocent people before me too.

I located several other related stories, and read about my family's public battle to get me back. The battle had been HUGE; far bigger than I'd imagined. They'd got senators and high-powered lawyers involved, there'd been public demonstrations and the media had made a VERY big deal out of it: there were big, well-placed, strong-languaged stories in the country's major newspapers.

One comment I quite liked was my parents quoted as saying, "A year ago Mark and Professor Williams were kidnapped by three thugs who held them chained up in a basement to force them to hand over their $11 million roulette win. Two of the three thugs we killed and the third escaped, leaving Mark and Prof to almost die. In the year since then, instead of finding the Third Man, the authorities have been wasting their time concocting a ridiculous theory that Mark is a terrorist and kidnapping him themselves." There was more ridicule directed at the authorities, but what amused me about the quote was that unbeknown to them, the authorities had indeed captured the mystery "Third Man".

It was fascinating to read but the desperate quotes from my family made me very uncomfortable and sorry for them. I had to skip over some of the quotes as they were too emotional for me. They REALLY made me want to contact my loved ones to assure them that I was alive, but I knew I couldn't risk that. I was in a major life-or-death struggle with a very expensively hurt CIA, and if they had even an inkling that I was still alive, they'd do ANYTHING to get me back. My loved ones would have to keep on suffering until it was safe for me to contact them in my new persona.

While reading, I'd had the thought that maybe I could've been freed just by waiting for the pressure to mount high enough, but I'd quickly dismissed the idea. It looked like the DHS might have been forced to release me had I still been in their control, but they'd passed me on to the CIA too quickly for that. The DHS were sticking to their story that they'd let me go, even though there was widespread disbelief of it. There was no mention of the CIA in any of articles, so there'd been no pressure on that organization to release me. It was impossible to imagine that they would have ever let me go; not after what they'd done to me, where I'd been, the faces I'd seen, and the journalistic investigation that would follow my shouting out my story. If the pressure on the Government itself had got so high that something had to be done to ease it, I could only imagine that my dead body would be found somewhere in circumstances that put the blame on me, such as in an Afghani terrorist training camp.

My ego was very gratified by the magnitude of the noise being created about me. It was truly very impressive, but it was ultimately useless. My family's efforts made lots of noise but achieved nothing. (I've written "my family's efforts" as if it was just my parents who were campaigning for my return. I knew it would have been "my families' efforts" as the Williamses would have been heavily involved, but that wasn't apparent from the press articles since my parents were fronting all of those. There was one amusing exception to that: Julia had arranged a very photogenic protest by a bevy of very attractively dressed high-school beauties protesting outside the Portland DHS. I admired the tactic and how successful it'd obviously been at getting the media's attention, because it got some BIG articles with plenty of pictures, even one of me. Unfortunately, by then I'd already been transferred to DC [My parents had been slow to start their campaign because they'd assumed the DHS would release me, as they had the previous time. My parents had also initially been reluctant to cause suspicion by reacting too strongly to my disappearance, or to reveal that they knew the DHS had taken me to Portland and then DC since that information had come from my publicly inexplicable text messages].

I will mention a few facts about their search, the first being that the DHS is a bunch of ass-covering assholes. Nearly all of their statements were either empty - they'd initially been: "We don't comment about ongoing investigations" - or when they were later forced to say something, they outright lied about releasing me.

My parents had eventually been forced to go public with the contents of my first text message - not the source, just the information, attributing it to an anonymous "concerned citizen". Whereupon the DHS added mud slinging to their list of responses, by releasing personal details about me that were carefully chosen to paint me in a bad light in order to convince the public not to support my parents' campaign. The first definitive statement from the DHS had been Moran's statement that he'd released me in Portland, and that he personally thought that I'd gone underground with the aid of the terrorist network I'd contacted in Thailand. He'd asked the public to call the DHS if I was spotted, because "We'd like to ask him some questions about his 'possible'," said with a sneer, "terrorist connections."

My family had ended up having to release the contents of my text message that provided details of my transfer to the S&T office, again giving the explanation that they'd received it anonymously. The media had confirmed that the captain and copilot I'd named existed, as did the plane with the registration number I'd given, and it had flown from DC to Portland and back on the given date. For quite a while no one was available for comment, the DHS at both ends of the country having gone into full-on, stone-walling, "We Don't Even Know How To Spell Mark"-mode. When the senatorial-led pressure had gotten great enough, the DHS had finally admitted that I'd been transferred to the S&T building and that they'd had me in custody for a week, but had then released me. That hadn't been believed as it was the same line that Moran had used in Portland, and that was now known to be a lie.

It was only a couple of days later that I'd killed Wright and Moran, and after their deaths the DHS had started using them as the scapegoats, saying that Wright's personal records revealed that I been collected on February 4, but that his papers did not say by whom.It was a truly absurd situation, but the DHS's line was simply, "There is no paperwork about Mark Anderson's release. We know someone came to get him, and that he left our office in good health, but we don't know who took him or where he is now. Our responsibility for him ended when he left our premises on February 4."

My killing Wright made it easy for the DHS to pass the buck, without even saying whom they'd passed it to. That didn't make me regret killing Wright or Moran. I had already escaped (of course, or I couldn't have killed them), so whether or not they were alive to answer questions made no difference to my whereabouts or ability to live my life. Even if Wright had pointed the finger directly at the CIA at Fort Dodge, I couldn't turn up and say, "Yoo hoo, here I am. I'm alive now." The CIA would be all over my ass wanting VERY much to know how I'd gotten out when everyone else had been killed. I did NOT want to be asked that question!

There was some stuff about why the S&T office had held me: "Because of Mark Anderson's genius, Moran had sent him to Wright for more appropriate testing, which had involved IQ and similar types of tests." They were just spouting inoffensive, bland crap. In none of the articles was there any mention of my being suspected of having mind control powers. The senior DHS bosses would know about that, but they weren't saying. No doubt because they could imagine the public ridicule the DHS would receive, and then the shit they'd be in. Their only comment was a consistent, "Wright's failure to properly document the release of Mr. Anderson means we do not know what happened to Mr. Anderson after he left our premises. If we could help, we would, but we've had no involvement since February 4."

The investigation had hit a brick wall. No one was able to prove that the S&T office knew where I'd gone or who had me, especially because Wright had deliberately kept that very close to his chest, knowing my likely final fate and that my parents were already making trouble for the Portland office. The DHS bosses were officially "very sorry", and they knew their agency would be sued for their illegal actions, but they simply said that all of their staff had followed the orders of Moran or Wright, both of whom were dead now, otherwise they would've been facing severe internal reviews and criminal prosecutions for their misconducts.

[[It was true that Moran and Wright had got the DHS into this mess by acting both illegally and against agency policy and practice, thus the DHS itself could have been more forthcoming because it wasn't really their collective fault. But as is usual with such government agencies, totally denying responsibility automatically took precedence over being forthcoming. To do otherwise would have been in direct contravention to agency policy and practice.]]

Reading the articles had made me imagine how much frustration my parents must be feeling. I'd thought about sending my family's lawyer a text message again, equivalent to those I'd sent previously, and saying that it was the CIA who had picked me up from the DHS, and they'd transferred me to their secret biochem weapons facility in Fort Dodge, Iowa. That would enable my parents to start making some progress again, but I quickly realized that it was a stupid idea, as it wasn't going to get me back into my parents' arms any sooner. It was also far too risky as, at the times each of the text messages had been sent, I was probably the only person who knew I'd been in those four locations (counting the Portland-to-DC plane as a "location"). If the CIA learned that of the text message I'd just contemplated sending to our lawyer, then they'd suspect that I was still alive, which would be VERY bad.

One of the reasons I'd destroyed all the computer records at Fort Dodge was the hope that the CIA might not know who I was anymore. There'd be surviving off-shift staff who knew about "Mark Anderson", but it's a very common name so maybe they wouldn't know which "Mark Anderson". I now knew that I'd been stupidly naïve. Between the many press stories about my genius and the timings of my disappearance, the CIA scientists had probably eaten their morning cereal while reading about my parents' search for me, fully aware that I was the same boy they were experimenting on. Hopefully the CIA would conclude that I'd died in the disaster, although the limited oxygen supply inside the place might've put the fire out before many bodies were totally destroyed. Hopefully the ones I'd thrown down the shafts would have been, so my missing body would be just one of more than two dozen.

#14: <Uh oh! I just realized that if the CIA ever suspect that we're alive, then Wright's and Moran's deaths would be a flashing neon sign saying "Mark Anderson Destroyed the Fort Dodge Lab!">

#4: <FUCK!>

#All: <Agreed.>

#15: <We should go back to Fort Dodge to see how badly damaged the lab is, to get an idea of the chance they've identified all the corpses. And we need to be SUPER careful that our real identity NEVER gets out.>

I arrived at the lawyer's office on time, and started telling him my cover story. He quickly interrupted me because he preferred to discuss money, so I gave him $200 to start with.

My cover story was that the group of guys I hung with had gone crazy one evening six weeks ago, attacking each other with knives. I'd run for my life. I told him that I'd been getting more and more pissed off with the drugs and violence of my life for the last year or more, and that the knife fight pushed me to get out of the city to take some time to think. I'd always liked watching nature programs on TV, so I went north and lived in the woods and around small towns while I thought about things. I'd decided that it was possible to live more comfortably in the wilderness than in LA, and there was nothing holding me at home, so I was leaving it forever. I'd come back to tidy things up. I wanted him to help me deal with the police because I didn't want them hounding me wherever I went. I also didn't want to deal with my family because they'd let their kids down by not moving somewhere decent years ago. I wanted the lawyer to let them know I was alive, and to deal with any crap they caused.

In truth, I did want the lawyer to do exactly what I'd described, plus I figured he was also a good test for how believable my cover story was. If I couldn't convince someone that I was paying to work for me, then my cover story was in trouble. There was nothing fantastic about my story - I hadn't, for example, claimed I'd spent the last six weeks as Jessica Alba's love-slave - but it was still very unusual. Young ghetto Blacks don't go roughing it in the woods. He was prepared to proceed with my story though, especially after I gave him another $200.

I gave him more details, especially insisting how eager I was to avoid being arrested for anything. I was worried about my fingerprints not matching, even though they looked like they'd pass. Once he understood what I wanted, my lawyer contacted the cops.

They were VERY interested in knowing what had happened in the alley. They had four dead bodies and seven missing ones. The corpses were closed cases as forensics proved that they'd killed each other, but the seven missing person's cases were a mystery the cops wanted to clean up.

My lawyer told the cop that his client (me), had run out of the alley as soon as the fighting had started and hadn't looked back, but they were welcome to make an appointment to come to his office to interview me as a witness for the short part of the fight that I'd seen, if they wished. They did wish, so we arranged a meeting the next morning.

I bought some decent clothes after leaving his office. Nothing flashy; just nice, casual Kmart clothes. Something to give them the impression that I wasn't a typical street thug anymore, especially as I wasn't wearing any ostentatious bling. I had a WONDERFUL shower and shave, then under the cover of darkness, hid almost all of my money in a remote spot an hour's flight north, because I didn't want to have nearly $10,000 cash on me if the cops arrested me during the interview. I also flew to above the Fisher residence and had a very thorough snoop through it.

The next day, the two cops were as distrustful as cops always are. They even had a copy of my mug shots with them, which they eyeballed to make sure I was me. They asked to see my ID too. My lawyer's explanation yesterday must've made them suspicious that I was a ringer.

I had a very simple story: "We were hangin' when dey all ran for da alley. I followed and dey was havin' a knife fight. I was sick of all da crap already, so I split. I don' know nottin' else."

There was the usual cop bullshit, but my lawyer knew how that game was played and stopped them being excessive.

"What about the white guy?" one of the cops asked.

"What white guy?"

"The one in the alley."

"I didn't see no whitey. I left when I saw da fightin'."

"Why did you leave?" (Cops have VERY short memories.)

We played the usual game of ask and ask-again for ten minutes, then I said, "I don' have 'nuf money to pay fer my lawya to listen to yous asking da same stuff. I kin write down da names I 'member for who I hitched wit' or casual worked fer. If'n yous REALLY want, I kin show you places where I camped, but I saw nuttin' in da alley; just da knife fight fer a second or two."

Cops have very short memories (I'm repeating that in case you're a cop), so my warning about not being able to afford them repeating themselves didn't hold them for long; they REALLY wanted to know where the six missing guys were.

"I don' know, an' I don' care. I'm leavin' and never comin' back. If'n yous find 'em, don' bother telling me."

"Don't you care that your friends could be in trouble?"

"Friens dat knife each other ain't friens. Yous say four dead? If da rest ain't dead already, den dey will be in a few years, probly after dey knock some bitches up. Makes no diff'rnce to me. I ain't NEVER comin' back to dis shit hole."

We went around several more times.

When it got too tedious, I added another comment, "I'm gonna go north, find a nice town, and stay der. If'n yous give me ya card, when I find a town I'll go see da cops and tell em to call ya to say where I'm at. You kin send me any questions ya want, but I don' know nuttin, exceptin' I want outta all dis crap. Der's good people and better life up north, so dat's where I's goin'. I wanna get a good job, learn to speak proper, meet a nice girl, and stay away from drugs, guns and hos."

Eventually even my lawyer lost patience - and he was being paid by the hour! - "Are you charging my client, or is he free to go?"

They didn't want to stop, but they didn't actually have anything to charge me with. The murders had been open-and-shut cases. Charging me with six missing persons cases was difficult without any proof that something illegal had happened and that I'd been involved in it. I can't have made all six of them disappear from an alley all by myself and there was no circumstantial evidence that I had, so to arrest me for that would have been silly. So they just asked me some more of the same questions, got me to write down some names so they could check I'd been drifting around, made some final threats, including threatening me with dire consequences if I didn't report in to the police as I'd OFFERED to do, then they left.

Which just left Ronald Fisher's family to take care of. I couldn't talk with them because there was too much chance they'd see through my act, plus I was still two inches too tall. I'd told my lawyer that my family were assholes that I didn't want to have anything to do with. I gave him another $100 to deal with them:

• To send my keys back to them (I didn't want to write the address on an envelope because my handwriting would be different. I'd practiced his signature and writing style, but it was only his signature that I had any faith in my ability to reproduce fairly well).

• To tell them officially that all my stuff at home was theirs now. According to the original Ron Fisher, there'd been very little money in his account. I wasn't going to touch it in case doing so could be used against me if this deception ever came to light (without the body what could they charge me with? Theft was probably the most serious, so I wouldn't touch his money). I could've given it to the Fisher family, but that required going to the bank and signing forms, which I didn't want to do either. I didn't mention it. No doubt the lawyer assumed I'd use my own money.

• I told him I'd let him know where I was settled, but not to pass that information on to my family. All I wanted from them was my birth certificate so I could apply for a passport, to be sent to me via him. He could answer my family's questions until the $100 ran out, and after that any time he spent dealing with them was on his dime.

In case you're wondering, there was no point trying to hide from the authorities where I'd be. I needed to get a job, pay tax, etc., so they'd know my location. If the Fisher family hired a PI to find me, he'd easily succeed. If I saw them, I'd turn my back and walk away. By then I'd be the right height, and if they'd heard me speaking differently, it would have the excuse that I was deliberately speaking better, as I'd made sure to mention in front of the cops and lawyer.

My lawyer wished me "Good luck" as I left his office.

I replied, "I'd need luck if'n I stayed here, not to leave."

He nodded understandingly.

^

I hitchhiked north. By the time I got a ride, it was about three hours away from getting dark, so I told the driver I was heading for a place about three hours' drive away. That worked for him.

So three hours later I'd reached a point about one-third of the way to where I'd dropped my money off after only an hour's flight last night. Flying is definitely the way to go, especially considering the itinerary I had planned for this evening: north for about 200 miles to pick up my money, a little north of east for 1,700 miles to check out Fort Dodge, west 1,800 miles to check home, then south 800 miles to where I'd just got out of the truck. Total distance: 4,500 miles. I could save some time by not picking up my money until the final leg, but I had almost nothing in my wallet now and I don't like being cashless. It was only a total of nine or ten hours of flying, so I had plenty of time.

After my ride ended, I didn't take off until I'd had a VERY careful look around the area. I didn't expect the LA cops to have tailed me, but I was feeling very paranoid, especially about what could be happening if the CIA was hunting me. I was so worried I didn't even feel like doing a Superman takeoff; I just stepped onto the nearly vertical Flying Sled and took off.

I picked up my money, then headed to Fort Dodge. I was less fearful of clouds and rain, but I still went over the top of them if that was less than 10,000 feet, or around them otherwise. It lengthened the trip, but that was okay.

It was the night of April 19 that I arrived back at Fort Dodge, exactly two months since I'd escaped. I'd spent two weeks scouting LA, one month camping with my prisoners, and two more weeks working on the physical transformations.

I didn't want to fly over the lab in case they had God knows what sort of defenses set up now, so about ten miles away from the lab's location I used a max-sized sight blob to very carefully scout the ground below me. It appeared safe to land, so I did so. I carefully scouted the next dash (ground level only, either flying a few inches above the ground if I was in a valley or hidden by trees, or running if I crossed a skyline or was in the open). I made a dash, scouted, made another dash, scouted, etc. Eventually I peeked over the top of a small hillock to see the walls that surrounded the lab's above-ground building.

I sent a sight blob up for a higher inspection, which showed me that there was NO above-ground building anymore! My first fear was the fire I'd set had spread up the two final shafts to ignite the top building, and perhaps to kill thousands of townsfolk with nasty biochem weapons, but I quickly saw that wasn't the case. There was no sign of fire damage and the building had been neatly removed. They'd done it deliberately.

There was a lot of activity inside the walls. The whole area was lit up and there were heaps of people doing things, some in hazmat suits. I was too far away to see well enough, so I got back to my scout-dash-scout process.

I was eventually close enough to see that they had the two top level elevators working, with airlocks and decontamination rooms on the top of each. A lot of the returning workers were moving slowly and carefully, so this was obviously a scary place. I wasn't interested in what they were doing though, I wanted to see what the place looked like inside, to get an idea of the chance of the CIA knowing that my body was absent rather than one of many which was unaccounted for.