Canada takes swift procurement action; still just as dumb

By 2030 Canada was going to decide what would replace the CP-140 long range Anti-Submarine Warfare [ASW] aircraft. The DND  planned a competition to "assess needs and products", but because America has been complaining to the PM about Canada being shit at natsec, the logical move was to buy some American shit to hopefully shut them up. In an almost singularly odd move, the baksheesh to America was to buy Boeing P-8s, the 737 based ASW aircraft.

This move was objected to by everybody

Like the premiers of the two biggest provinces asked for a competition, the standing committee on defense unanimously asked for a competition, the Canadian arms industry has been apoplectic to be cut out of not only a major purchase, but a major purchase where Canada is in fact quite technologically capable at, ASW warfare.

Which, naturally, the P-8 doesn't use

There's also the CP-140 Aurora (Canuk Orion), which is just finishing up a $400 million dollar upgrade. This was to keep the fleet viable...well they say 2040, I think "into the 2030s" a bit more likely

The current defense minister was warned not to mention to Boeing that mostly Canadian technology upgraded the CP-140, and that the CP-140 recently won a ASW completion, beating out several other nations flying ... P-8s.

So this is another shit procurement, one that is twice as baffling as Boeing was declared Persona non grata in Canada after the whole "teaming up with a piece of malignant candy corn to try and stop a competitor aircraft to its clapped-out 737 from appearing". This totally failed though Bombardier earned literally no money from the several billion dollar development process due to unrelated incompetence, despite having the Fed fully having planned out its parry for the acts of evil candy corn

(Sidebar to those that know: I know Bombardier is kinda like Arrow Air in the 1980s or the R101, such a mess you can just pick a cause as to why a disaster happened, but if somebody could explain to me how you successfully develop an modern airliner and then earn no money from that, please tell me)

Speaking of Bombardier

They made a lot of noise that they could have entered the competition as originally scheduled with a new ASW aircraft [said aircraft is a repurposed bizjet]

Which I'm kinda skeptical of, simply because 1) it's not developed yet, and 2) it's a repurposed biz jet, and maybe this is wrong of me, but I think the size of the CP-140 / P-8 speak to a greater capability simply because you can have more dudes working and longer flight times.

Here's a picture, though:



So couple notes: one ignore the livery, Canada will never fly these. Second, Canada announced a few days ago it was totally gonna help sell the thing to other nations. Which 1) when do you not try and help sell Bombardier projects, and 2) you know what would really help here? THE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN USING THE THINGS

The Fed did claim this was gonna totes make money for Canadian industry at the press announcement (not anybody in Defense Industries and ASW warfare obviously) and they were pressed on that point, and they said literally nothing in the way of details. Because it was a lie.

So:

1. The person who said "let's get the Americans to shut up by buying some of their shit" really didn't know shit about fuck;

2. Once this unforced error was made, the fed tried to get Bombardier to shut up with a hand-waving promise about "help later;"

3. When basically all the people who did know about airplanes, ASW warfare, Canada's relative strength to same, the result was to object and say holy shit no, let's think about this, the response was to sign shit as fast as possible, because obviously the problem here is that these people won't shut up;

4. all of this was pointless.

Number 4 follows because the original impulse was to get America to shut up about Canadian incompetence at NatSec, which is in fact true (in part because of major procurement decisions happening on a whim then continuing because somebody can't admit to making a mistake ever) so really this purchase CONFIRMS American complains, not ameliorate them.

PS> Cameron Ortis guilty on all counts, turns out his story of "I was engaging in a SECRET intel operation by selling Canada's secrets to criminals" was not a good story

Sober second thought (12-22-23)

In retrospect, this might be an example of Canada making the right choice for a dumb reason. 

While The CP-140 was still working, it was going to need to be replaced by 2030. While a competition would have been better (and given us a chance to buy Kawasaki P-1s) the Boeing P-8 is a good choice that is, after all, used by many nations. The airframes are common as hell, and thus easy to service. With all the onboard equipment shared with the US, NATO and SEATO, it is the Boeing 737 of onboard military sensors and equipment. 

I have approximately zero faith in the ability of the modern Boeing to do anything new with competence, as the 737 Max scandal, not to mention the complete hollowing out of their manufacturing and engineering base for short term profits, has wrecked a once great company. Fun fact, since 2014 Boeing has payed $20 billion to the US government in contract penalties because of their sheer inability to do what they said they were going to do. So while it's weird that Canada would rush to do business with them, the P-8 is at least a known property, and the whole "skipping Canada's procurement processes" has been about the only way Canada can do these things successfully. 

The American political angle I now get. It's an election year; contract orders for the US arms industry is good economic news. If America wants to help Canada stop being so terrible at National Security, it is important the American government remain free of administrations that don't know the meaning of the term. 

In short, even a blind beaver find an acorn now and then.

Why a Military

I'm not quite sure when I realised this, but it has dawned on me that a lot of people do not understand why militaries exist. Perhaps this is part of what happens when you stop teaching civics in school, or the increasing alienation of the post-industrial world from the military sphere. In Canada, at least, I feel part of the story is being in America's cultural shadow. American culture, I think, sees the military as an essential part of its self-identity. While any debate might circle around its use and its size, the existence of a military is taken as granted. This uncritical acceptance means that most Canadians don't really have a jumping off point for discussing why Canada – or any nation – needs a military. So, I thought I'd write a basic explainer as to 'why a military.' While as a Canadian I'm going to be often using Canada as an example, I think the basic framework I'm going to lay out here will work for any nation, since the basic rationales for a military are founded on what a nation is.

The first reason sovereign nations have militaries is right there in the name: they are sovereign. In modern international law, the concept simply means that the nation in question is the uncontested authority over its territory, and is independent, IE, not subordinate to another government. Having a military is both a demonstration of sovereignty and a mechanism to remain sovereign. While non-sovereign military and paramilitary forces exist, a sovereign military force is a bit different, in that it is part of the state itself, and acts as the state’s military in the international arena as a force to act coercively, and more importantly, a force to resist the coercion of others. The military, thus, is used to resist the violence of others, be they external to the nation or internal to it, and also as a mechanism of last resort for when other structures of society (such as social or legal structures) break down. Thus the military acts as a fail-safe to other forms of government power, and the state itself. This makes the military 1) a sign of a sovereign nation, and 2) an indemnification against risks not focused on by other parts of government or society.

Speaking of indemnification, the military as insurance is a useful metaphor. Insurance is something that you get hoping it is not needed – the fact you never needed to contact your insurance provider about your last car is no argument that buying insurance was a waste of money. Insurance also recognizes that the world is an uncertain place, where outcomes cannot be foreseen with certainty. This of course is trivial when talking about insurance, but it is surprising just how many critics of the military fail to grasp this. (We will return to this anon.)

A third reason nations have a military is simply that hard power (the power to influence via coercion) has value. Hard power by diplomacy's definition is the use of force; things like diplomacy, trade relations, and the exchange of ideas are 'soft' power, IE the use of coercion rather than force. This can mean the ability to attack others, but also to defend against the hard power of other nations. A simple example here is the Ukrainian war; with a military already there to resist Russia's invasion, Ukraine would have been conquered by Russia's first assaults. Hard power is also at root to the whole concept of deterrence, where aggression is checked before it starts by the power of the opponent to return harm on the aggressor. Hard power also underlies why defensive pacts exist – nations band together to resist the hard power of larger aggressors.

If the third reason starts simply but then gets complected, the fourth reason starts complicated and gets more complicated. Nations have militaries to pursue foreign policy goals. While historically this has often boiled down to “the ability to attack that guy” or “the ability to defend against that guy”, this is not always true. Canada has foreign policy goals that involve military power: for example, continuing to assert control over its staked claim to its part of the Arctic. The Arctic has the potential with climate change to be a new, changing frontier, one that has attracted a fair bit of notice from other nations, such as Russia, China, the USA, as well as several European nations, plus Japan. There's also the small matter that when Canada was created, the legal documents doing so only describe Canada to its Arctic Ocean shoreline; the islands beyond were not specified, which creates the awful fear (to Canada) that somebody else could lay claim to them. The military, along with broader National Security initiatives such as SAR services and policing are arguments that the islands (and the economic zones surrounding them) are in fact Canada's. Canada recently filed claims of an expanded exclusive economic zone (EEZ) stretching to the geographic north pole, meaning things like fish, oil, and mineral rights in these waters are exclusively Canada's, and part of what defines an EEZ is the ability to monitor and police that space.

There's also something that is on the border between hard and soft power as far as the military is concerned: the capabilities of the military can be sometimes used in soft power ways. For example, Amphibious warfare ships are often ideal for disaster relief, being designed as staging areas for the movement of vehicles, logistics, and medical support. It is for this reason that both Spain and Italy’s navy have amphibious warfare ships; they seek to have influence on the Mediterranean, and such ships are very versatile. Similarly, heavy lift air transport (IE large transport aircraft such as the An-124, Il-76, C-130, and C-17) can have a wide variety of potential uses in an emergency. Less capital intensive examples of the squishy hard/soft border include the ability to participate in peacekeeping operations, and the simple ability to give military equipment to those that need it.

It is these four basic reasons that militaries among nations are universal.

Now some would object at this point. Rather than respond to all critics (which would likely be impossible and without a doubt tedious) let me keep in the style I set out in and keep the objections limited and general. Many people who I'm going to describe as “military dislikers” have some political ideology or another that I'm just going to describe as Utopian, IE a group of people who believe the real world can in the future become a perfect society of some description. With them, I disagree, but it goes considerably beyond “militaries are in fact necessary and good.” Anybody with a Utopian worldview, IE one who believes in a perfect form of society, is going to be endlessly baffled by the existence of something that is kept around in case something breaks or fails. In contrast (as anybody who deals with people or things on a more hands-on level could tell the Utopian) machines and systems that work in the real world are never built to be perfect; they are built to fail safely. In other words, things are done in reality by building with what you have, rather than what you would like, and the results inevitably will have flaws. It's only by accepting this can something durable be created.¹

The second group of military dislikers I'd characterise as people who, when it comes to the military, anyway, believe that because the old car didn't ever use its insurance, it was a waste of money to get the insurance. To rephrase, they conclude that because CF-18s never once had to scramble to intercept Backfire bombers attacking Edmonton, therefore Canada does not need fighter jets. The whole insurance metaphor I think says most of what is needed, though I will point out that many people who object to big capital purchases by the Canadian military (and are strangely silent on the Canadian Military paying poverty wages among other issues) display a certainty as to what the future will bring that is not confidence inspiring in the current age. The idea that Finland and Sweden would join NATO would have been seen by me in 2020 as incredibly unlikely, just like Russia declaring war on Ukraine and attempting to annex it with force – and yet, here we are.¹

The military disliker looking for concrete examples might cite Iceland and Costa Rica not having militaries as at least examples of its possibility, if not some implicit or explicit reason why Canada shouldn't have one, either. And fair enough; it is true both nations don't have militaries. It's only when you start looking at the details of both nations that it becomes less convincing.

Iceland became a sovereign nation independent of Denmark only after the latter was occupied by Nazi Germany. It was then, shall we say, friendly invaded by Britain, and then later occupied by the United States during World War 2 to prevent a less-than-friendly invasion by the Nazis. Today, it is true, Iceland lacks a formal military, but does have a coast guard that enforces Icelandic sovereignty in its territorial waters, one that is notable in that it won several battles with the British Navy during the Cold War.¹ What’s more, Iceland is a member of NATO, and thus if attacked will be defended by the entire NATO alliance. So Iceland has on-call quite significant military forces, if it was needed. One more fact that is relevant: the nation of Iceland has about the same population as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

This is the fine print not known to the typical Iceland citer: that every sovereign state not possessing a military has an agreement with somebody who does, who will show up if invited. Costa Rica is similarly disappointing to those inclined to do a little digging. It possesses no formal armed forces, it is true, stemming from the military having a long history of being a destabilizing, tyrannical element in Costa Rican history. But, in its national police force, it possesses elements that can be described as paramilitary; serving the function if not officially military.

So we're getting somewhere, now. With these four basic reasons we understand why militaries exist, and can understand why they are subdivided into army, navy, and air force, as land, sea, and air are the domains that nations seek to assert sovereignty over. The question of ‘why a military’ has been answered; the question then you have to ask is "how much military is needed to accomplish our four goals?”

    This question has no definitive answer. First because the answer is contextual; not only about the nations involved, but also the resources of the nations, the various goals and challenges it faces, what resources its possible enemies possess, what a nation’s foreign policy goals are, etc. You also have to factor in that ultimately people are behind these decisions, and their decisions affect other nations. Kaiser Wilhelm’s decision to enter into a naval arms race with the UK was done for our four reasons, but was undoubtedly a disaster for Germany. Putin who after firing a reform-minded defence minister became about maximal defence to preserve Russia against its ‘enemies’, but this too was a disaster, and one ironically that did a lot to undermine Russia’s military. In the Cold War, the UK was determined to develop all its own warplanes at a time when it was cash strapped, and this decision was mostly a feckless waste of resources, especially when the Second World War had demonstrated the UK lacked the resources to develop effective aircraft for every last warplane niche it possessed, at a time when aircraft development was quicker and cheaper. Speaking of, the Maginot line of fortifications that France constructed pre Second World War failed, not because they were poorly made, but because they did not cover the entirety of France’s eastern border, among other reasons. This is a field where failures abound, and sometimes are enormously significant.

    In order to navigate this uncertainty, we return to our insurance analogy, and militaries hedge their bets. In addition to this, it’s worth mentioning nations are restricted by finite resources. Even the US Military, gigantic as it is, must choose how to invest smartly, and for the rest of the world, the aircraft of one Nimitz class supercarrier would be an entire air force.

With this real world restriction, all militaries focus on core competencies in their respective fields, occasionally branching out into specialisations when circumstances dictate. This is by the principle of insurance (since the precise nature and timing of future conflicts is unknown). This also gives you a base of personnel and expertise to build off of when something unforeseen happens. The personnel of your military are your most valuable asset, as without them, the big capital purchases are so much scale modelling fodder. Military Personal also act as a cadre; IE a group of people who can serve as the nucleus of a much larger force, should major war threaten. Using the standing armed forces as a cadre is standard in modern industrialised nations. This means that the Army, Navy, and Air Force must train in modern methods of warfare (such as anti-submarine warfare, air defence, armoured brigades etc) both to limit the risk of the unknown future, and to function as effective cadres in an emergency.

While we're on an economic vibe, under-spending on the military has negative effects. Canada is a excellent example here: if you under-spend on defence, it means you will be likely frustrated in meeting some or all of your foreign policy goals, your defensive alliance partners will be cross with you and may consider dropping you from the alliance, and other nations will start damaging your sovereignty for their own benefit. It is also bad in that competence (in military and national security matters) requires a lot of effort to get and to maintain, and under-spending likely means you are losing at least some of it. While big capital items, like tanks, helicopters, and submarines attract most of the attention in the modern media, in truth this spending is, to repeat myself, secondary to the people who make up the military.

Despite the problems of underspending, I judge overspending on the military as the worse mistake, if only because the underspending nation (presumably) has money saved that can be used to change direction; for a nation that has over-spent, it is not that easy. Unnecessary infrastructure is a waste twice: first in the construction of it, and second in the cost of its maintenance. What's more, aside from not spending money in more fruitful areas, an overspent military may find their diplomacy distorted as other nations view them with increased suspicion. More armament does not always translate into an advantage.

Beyond that, overspending can damage the economy, and the military, in other ways. The USSR was previously a gold standard for what happens when you spend too much on defence, but Russia has become its worthy successor. While navigating the rust out, brain drain, and a step down in military size is anything but easy, Russia (in its navy, for example) attempted to hang onto so many now irreplaceable Soviet vessels that in the end it got the worst of both worlds; they are considerably behind in replacement construction, and most of the Soviet era ships are of dubious value. The Destroyers that can accompany capital ships long distances are all 35-40 years old, with 1980s era Soviet equipment. And that's assuming the destroyers are fully functional. The Slava-class cruiser Moskva was sunk in May 2022 in the Black Sea, and after it was revealed that the ship had only half her complement, and the Harpoon missiles launched by Ukraine were not intercepted by any of the ship's defences, because none of these defences were working. Navy ships that are the boat equivalent of Potemkin's villages are what you get when you try to have a military capacity beyond your ability to support. This pattern is all over the Russian military, even setting aside corruption: the attempt to hang onto existing assets poisoned attempts at rationalization and the development of new equipment, to the point that rust out and corruption have erased whole industries.

So there you have it: the underpinning of militaries with modern nations. If a nation values itself, it will care about these issues. Most do; I don't know why Canada and Germany are such outliers, but I hope this essay helps a bit.

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1 Not only military dislikers are Utopians. Both Robert S. MacNamera and Donald Rumsfeld as Defence Secretaries for the United States saw war itself as something that could be rationalised and perfected using period MBA style management. MacNamera as SecDef attempted to run the Vietnam War via these methods, and the result was a disaster. MacNamera viewed war as akin to a manufacturing process rather than as insurance, one that would 'produce victory' as a product once the 'correct' amount of efficient force was used.. Donald Rumsfeld was an Utopian as well. He sought to use the magic of an unregulated free market to write a new chapter in war. Using 'just in time' inventory methods, Rumsfeld sought to both make war radically cheaper to pave the way for 21st century American imperialism, and to use the free market instead of policy and resources to reform nations into what America saw as ideal: neoliberal democracy friendly to the US. The result of the experiment was a trillion-dollar war in Iraq that did nothing to strengthen America, and who's abject failure discredited the whole neoconservative intellectual movement. In both cases, Utopian vision leads to disaster. ^↩

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1 The Ukraine war is a sterling example of the unpredictability of future events, since those that follow foreign policy often assume rational actors seeking rational outcomes, and open war and annexation was judged to be the least rational thing Russia could want in the given scenario. ^↩

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1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars^↩

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 14 - 16

Chapter Fourteen

Jason is back in LA, in what seems to be early morning. The Las Vegas pols hand Jason and Ruth over to the LA pols and scram. As they are taken inside, Jason is trying to think about what he can say to the police general that does not sound like a lie or insanity.

Jason and Felix meet. Felix is a well dressed, nice as in friendly looking dude in his mid 50s with grey hair and expensive looking glasses. Felix puts Ruth aside for now and lets Jason into his office suite, which surprises Jason in its luxury. Felix says that it doesn't show up in photos, but guesses Jason is a Six. This is pretty thunderous to Jason, who asks if Felix is also a Six; Felix grinning holds up seven fingers.

Chapter Fifteen

We swap perspectives to Felix, who is feeling pretty smug. When surprised to be dealing with a Six, the lie that Felix is a Seven somehow always works. In the relation of power, this is necessary, as anybody not a Six's equal is an inferior, an "ordinary." But for some reason, the lie that Felix is a step *above* a six somehow works. He briefly remembers a conversation he and Alys had about this. I think there's also a reference to Kathy's kind of thinking, as Alys dismisses the whole thing - and somehow, this dislike causes the whole idea to stop existing as far as Alys is concerned.

Back in the General's plush office, he sells the lie a bit. Then Felix asks for breakfast to be brought in, then asks the question: how the hell did Jason wipe out all of his records?

(Note: I'm not skipping details any more than I usually do; the chapters have just gotten really short.) 

 Chapter 16

Jason been asked The Question by General Felix. He's fallen for the 7 thing, so his first impulse is to just tell the whole insane story...

But surprisingly, Jason suddenly feels angry. He doesn't want to tell Felix anything.

Given silence, Felix starts to speculate about a conspiracy of sixes, which gets Jason to volunteer that the only Six he knows is Heather Hart - and she thinks he's a twerp fan.

Felix is pleased; he had no idea Hart, famous singer and media personality, was a six. He suggests bringing Hart in to "consult" with the police on this - to which Jason responds, "sure, whatev, throw her in a labor camp." This is amusing to Felix. OK, so apparently all this genetic augmentation stuff was genetic engineers being funded by....the aristocrats. Y'see, the aristocrats apparently thought they were aristocrats by virtue of actually being better people, better breeding, etc. When they began to lose power, they started funding genetic engineering to "enhance" this superiority. So, despite being wrong about themselves, they ended up creating what they thought they were: genetically enhanced people. The scheme didn't work at all, because all these genetically enhanced people couldn't stand each other, and would flip on each other in a heartbeat in the type of situation Jason is in.

(New Deus Ex: here's your plot)

General Felix gets some swank cigars, and offers Jason one. Jason actually responds like a human, saying "I've never smoked a quality cigar, and if I got out of that..." Felix wants to know if he means got out of jail. Whatever rapport the two men were on the verge of is killed. Despite being a six, Jason is on the edge of exploding at Felix. Once again the General asks if Jason is well known to the literally underground intellectuals, and asks about musical strata. Jason says "not any more." Felix asks "have you ever made a record?" and Jason responds through clenched teeth "not here." He just doesn't answer when Felix asks "then where?"

Sensing he's getting nowhere, Felix presses his intercom and asks for Kathy to be brought in. Felix gets Jason to admit most of the info he had Kathy forge was real. Suddenly, somehow, Felix intuits that Jason didn't wipe out his data; he didn't have any to start with. Jason tells Felix that he doesn't exist, and doesn't really know how any of this is possible.

General Felix asks Jason to join him for breakfast ("c'mon, you got the munchies anyway."). A Grey uniform pol women brings in breakfast: eggs, pancakes and breakfast meat. Somehow the topic gets around to kids, and the General shows Jason a 3d of his son (a boy of about six, trying to get a kite off the ground.) Unfortunately, the boy's in Florida, and so he never did. The General and his wife live in LA. And because it is Jason's fate, the general gets around to the love of children. His wife says you can forget anything, except your love for a child. Also if something goes badly wrong, a death, a divorce, it sticks with you forever. For the second time in 24 hours, Jason concludes love just isn't worth it then. This actually gets the General a bit angry, Jason's lack of understanding. Felix blames it on Jason being a Six. But soon he settles, and says that the food in the Cafeteria at the police HQ is frequently poisoned; "I guess lots of the cafeteria staff have family in internment camps" Felix says, laughing. (And Felix directs the breakfast order from a "new" place; holy shit, he's exactly like trump, he's convinced without anonymity people will try to poison him "and that's why he always gets his McDonald's through the drive through")

The general informs Jason he's free to go. Being a police general, he cancels any crimes Jason might have committed. Like Kathy and the psychic hotel clerk, General Felix is satisfied Jason is actually telling the truth, as nonsensical as that is. He does say that now Jason is permanently under surveillance, and "if someday Jason finds out WTF, so will the police at the same time."

Jason thanks the General for the meal. He's composing himself again, now that terrible unknown consequences are not offering him cigars. Absolved of his sins, Jason is staying the night (OK, maybe its midnight or 2 AM? I thought it was almost dawn in Las Vegas) because it is police procedure not to let people go at night, but come the morning, Jason is walking out the front door of the HQ a free man.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 14-15

 Chapter Fourteen

Jason is back in LA, in what seems to be early morning. The Las Vegas pols hand Jason and Ruth over to the LA pols and scram. As they are taken inside, Jason is trying to think about what he can say to the police general that does not sound like a lie or insanity.

Jason and Felix meet. Felix is a well dressed, nice as in friendly looking dude in his mid 50s with grey hair and expensive looking glasses. Felix puts Ruth aside for now and lets Jason into his office suite, which surprises Jason in its luxury. Felix says that it doesn't show up in photos, but guesses Jason is a Six. This is pretty thunderous to Jason, who asks if Felix is also a Six; Felix grinning holds up seven fingers.

Chapter Fifteen

We swap perspectives to Felix, who is feeling pretty smug. When surprised to be dealing with a Six, the lie that Felix is a Seven somehow always works. In the relation of power, this is necessary, as anybody not a Six's equal is an inferior, an "ordinary." But for some reason, the lie that Felix is a step *above* a six somehow works. He briefly remembers a conversation he and Alys had about this. I think there's also a reference to Kathy's kind of thinking, as Alys dismisses the whole thing - and somehow, this dislike causes the whole idea to stop existing as far as Alys is concerned.

Back in the General's plush office, he sells the lie a bit. Then Felix asks for breakfast to be brought in, then asks the question: how the hell did Jason wipe out all of his records?

(Note: I'm not skipping details any more than I usually do; the chapters have just gotten really short.)

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 12-13

 Chapter 12

We're with whatever police unit has been methodically searching the entire apartment complex in Las Vegas. Despite apparently being able to detect a male fitting Jason's profile, either this is another vague sensor or the boots on the ground never got that info. They've searched every apartment except two by now. One is owned by a Ruth Gomen, and the other by an Allen Mufi. Naturally they pick Mufi's.

And ha, this group of police was ringing the bell to get people to let them in. If you were assuming they were once again, a bunch of combine soldiers doing breech-bang-clear thirty or so times, I don't blame you. This does explain how the police were so quiet as to not be heard by Jason, I suppose. This time, the police corporal in front tries Mufi's door before ringing, and finds it unlocked. The police sneak in with flashlights, and find everything dark and quiet, with the debris of a party lying around.

quote:

[The police corporal] trod across wall to wall carpet, which depicted in gold Richard M. Nixon's final ascent into heaven, amid joyous singing above and wails of misery below. At the far door he trod on God, who was smiling a lot as He received his second only begotten son back into his bosom, and pushed open the bedroom door.

Mr. Mufi is asleep as a bunch of pols enter his bedroom. Mufi then wakes up, bolts to a drawer naked, and grabs some scissors, threatening to kill himself with them. To the pols this seems a bit of an overreaction, and they haul the blanket off of Mufi's bed, noticing someone else there. It is a naked thirteen year old boy.

This is naturally horrifying to the pols, but it gets worse because the nameless pol we're with asked if the boy can prove he is thirteen, the age of consent. So funny thing: as long as the boy is thirteen and voluntarily there, this is no longer a crime. The other pols are disgusted by this, but the corporal informs them that "victimless crimes" are being removed from the books, and this is one of them. Mufi is a legal sex predator, colloquially known as a 'scan. Bear in mind, this is still abhorred, and the corporal threatens to reveal Mufi's secret at work (he's a used Quibble dealer.) This doesn't make much impact with Mufi, where he moves from terror to excuse making to smugness when he realizes the cops are just gonna leave, so the Corporal spits in his face and departs.

The pols are completely disgusted, not to mention horrified that they had to see that and were unable to do anything. They take formation in front of Ruth's door, hoping this apartment is better.

Chapter 13

Jason is still in the apartment, and is literally just theorizing on how he has 24 hour minimum, up to 48 before the cops come calling. He then notices that it is quiet, too quiet. Jason suddenly realizes he's about to get got.

The doorbell rings. Jason opens the door. The cops place Taverner into protective custidy, along with Ruth. She asks if she can get a jacket, and one of the pols grabs her and hauls her out of the apartment. Ruth is sniveling that she's going to a gulag, and Jason says "nah, they'll probably just kill you", which gets a "well you're a nice guy" from one of the arresting pols.

Jason and Ruth are taken to the police van/quibble and searched, then put aboard. Both are being taken back to LA, to the police HQ. Ruth is somewhat understandably freaking out, and the pols are actually trying to console her, saying she's just being taken back to Los Angeles, chill. Ruth says she hates LA. The pol riding in the back with them says "so do I - but we must learn to live with it; it's there."

As Ruth continies to have a little breakdown, thinking of the pols ransacking her apartment (Jason responds to this with "Yup.") Jason asks the pol with them who they are being taken to, McNulty? The pol responds with Psalm 69 (lol) and says, no, it sounds like General Felix Buckman himself wants to talk to you. The pol then quotes another verse, Isaiah 65:13, 17. Then kinda on a roll:

quote:

"All flesh is like grass," the jesus freak Pol intoned. "Like low-grade roachweed, most likely. Onto us a child is born, onto us a hit is given. The crooked shall be made straight and the straight loaded."

"Do you have a joint?" Jason asked him.

"No, I've run out." The Jesus freak pol rapped on the forward metal wall. "Hey, Ralf, can you lay a joint on this brother?"

"Here." A crushed pack of Goldies appeared by way of a grey-sleeved hand and arm.

"Thanks" said Jason as he lit up. "You want one?" he asked Ruth Rae.

"I want Bob" she whimpered. "I want my husband."

Silently, Jason sat hunched over, smoking and meditating.

"Don't give up," the Jesus-freak pol said beside him, in the darkness.

"Why not?" Jason said.

"The forced labor camps are not that bad. In basic orientation they took us through one; there's showers, and beds with mattresses, and recreation such as vollyball, and arts and hobbies; you know ----- crafts, like making candles. By hand. And your family can send you packages, and once a month they or your friends can visit you." He added "and you get to worship at the church of your choice."

Jason said sardonically, "The church of my choice is the free and open world."

After that there was silence, except for the noisy clatter of the quibble's engine, and Ruth Rae's whimpering.

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; Chapter 11

Jason finds Ruth smoking a cigarette in the living room, lit only by the lights of urban night outside. (Oh, apparently cigarettes are *rationed*, not illegal (because they give you cancer) and so of course the black market provides extra cigs, and Ruth in fact has a lung-shaped ashtray. She asks Jason if she loved Monica Buff.

Jason says yes, qualifying it by saying there are many kinds of love. Ruth tells a story of a bunny rabbit a childhood friend once owned. Raised with cats, it always wanted to bring the cats back to a little nest the rabbit made out of cat fur. Cats being cats did not do this. Then one day it decided to play tag (which it always played with the childhood friend and the cats) with a German Shepard that was with another friend. The dog not knowing the rules (or who this strange rabbit was) bit and held the rabbit by its hindquarters, until people got him off. After that, the rabbit was terrified of dogs, but still kept trying to be a cat, because it wasn't very smart. This is why Ruth divested herself of animals entirely: their lives are short and then they die, and that hurts.

Jason asks what the point of love is, then. From his experience people will just leave as they got a better offer on the love market, leaving you holding the bag of emotions. Ruth has a fairly long monolog on what love is, saying it's completely irrational and against most human instincts, which is survival. But survival always fails, in the end. No instinct can defeat death. So love is the thing that goes on; not with you, but with others, and that's why it alone gives the true peace and contentment.

Jason's repost is that since love inevitably is irrational and leads to badness, you could cut it out of your life entirely. Ruth responds that saying that grief - this is really what is being talked about - is the thing that allows love its special value, as love with grief would be under or unappreciated. Ruth shares a ghost experience she had with the family dog. Grief as experiencing death for a time, then gradually you return to life.

Jason plans to stay till morning at Ruth's apartment. He thinks it unlikely that the Police would turn on him that quickly. He ends on the disquieting thought that in this situation, he is the rabbit; something that doesn't understand the rules of the people around him.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 10

We're back with General Felix, and it's difficult to tell what time it is. Either this is a continuation of the phone call we left off on, or this is the second call Felix has made to McNulty. McNulty has just told the General that Jason has just destroyed his last tracker dot. Felix is convinced now that Jason is someone deeply sinister who must be apprehended. His evidence is the total lack of police records on Jason. McNulty thinks Jason split Los Vegas the instant he found the tracker dot; General Felix says no; he's betting Jason is still there. He also orders McNulty who is most def home, high, and ready for bed to take a pill and return to HQ. As McNulty hangs up, Felix is irritated by McNulty's drug use. (Once again, quite likely perfectly legal.)

Alys (who is reading McNulty's police file) says Felix should consider that maybe Jason is broadly who he says he is. She points out skill-and-appearance wise at least, his story fits what Kathy has told police. This is also irritating to Felix who tells Alys to GTFO. She unperturbed, speculates he might be the singer who sang the latest pornochord hit----

Felix cuts her off with a bribe. If she just GTFO at this juncture, she can have a perfectly centered one-dollar black U.S. Trans-Mississippi stamp. For stamp collectors, it is a holy grail. Alys, who like her brother is super into stamps, is kind of blown away by this and agrees, and leaves for the roof. Felix got it in a trade with a somebody heading to a forced labor camp; a stamp for freedom. By himself, Felix gets introspective about why he finds Alys so disturbing. Even as the Police General in a dystopian police state plays by the rules, he thinks. Hypothetically, no police general would have somebody killed if they did the state a favor first. But Alys: she doesn't play by the rules. If you try to force her, she just becomes more chaotic and even less rule bound. Felix is terrified of this. He half expects to get home and find Alys burned the stamp, just to demonstrate her chaos-ness.

He also puts on some classical music and muses about poetry, thinking at last that the reason he is right about Jason sticking in Las Vegas, is because he can think like the enemy, not like a cop (viz. McNulty, who assumes that Jason is always acting rationally.) Jason might be huge, but he was revealed apparently through a fuckup of some sort. If you assume he's this important sinister dude, how did he end up in a fleabag hotel with no papers, and then get papers through the desperate stratagem of bribing the guy at the desk? Put on the one hand what it takes to vanish entirely from the databanks, and this amateur hour stuff on the other, 10 to 1 this was some sort of blunder. I mean: why not just stay in the hotel? What was so important that he had to wander around the edge of Watts with a PI?

Herb (General Felix's Lt.) points out it is only by mistakes that they have any chance of catching the really sophisticated people - otherwise they would be an unknowable metaphysical entity. But now the General has noticed him, dum dum dum dum

General Felix checks in with Las Vegas. He ordered Las Vegas to conduct a sweep of the upscale apartment complex Jason signal was last detected at. (Somewhat hilariously compared to today's tech, the dot only returns a signal accurately enough to say Jason is in this building.) So of the 36 or so units, 30 have been searched. No Taverner, though. Feeling vaguely disappointed, Felix rings off, telling the uniform to call him direct when they bag him. Waiting for McNulty to get to his desk and for the police squad to find Jason, he worries about the idiots doing the sweep and their noisy goddamn ways. (If you're picturing a bunch of Half-Life overwatch soldiers or a SWAT team, that actually seems a bit off. Written in 1972, SWAT was brand new, and these appear to be just a mob of uniform police.) Herb tries to make a bet with the General: five gold Kriegerands that they bag Taverener but this yields nothing. Intrigued, the general bets $1000 dollars that this opens a whole new vista of sinister....bad....guys for the police. Herb is nonplussed by this, because he frankly doesn't have that kind of money.

New call for Felix, the police captain in Vegas reports radar/thermal imaging has detected a male about Taverner's reported size in one of the un-searched apartments. Felix orders the surrounding apartments be quietly cleared out, then move in to capture.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 9

So Jason and Ruth were fucking, and Jason is amazed by how big her apartment is, the dog breeder man she married must have (or had) serious cash. Ruth smokes cigarettes, which is very very expensive, and also the only vice that is explicitly described as illegal. Jason is actually censoring his own thoughts as to how old Ruth looks, changing "prune face" to "weathered". I dunno, I think as far as showbiz goes, Dick knows of what he writes here. Hollywood wrote off Natalie Wood past 35 FFS

Ahem. Anyway, Jason asks if Ruth remembers Monica Buff. Ruth does, as she was her sister-in-law for six years. She sounds like a catch: mentally ill with what sounds like schizophrenia, rarely washes, can go for days at a time saying literally nothing, would steal from anybody (like Ruth) if the opportunity arose. Naturally Jason had a "brief but intense affair with her" She was 19, he was 37. She spent all her days shoplifting so she could feed students (IE the bad literally underground rebels.) Despite being an unmedicated schizophrenic, she beat the police system entirely. Any time her paranoia said "pols gonna run a spot check" she would call the police about a man beating on her door, and then she'd maneuver whatever refugee she was keeping out of the house, and then lock the door on them. The police would show up and find a student beating on her door. No more police problems! She also wandered off and vanished, and is probably dead now.

While Ruth is trying to understand what Jason saw in a mentally ill teenager who stank, Jason remembers "hey, didn't McNulty ask about who planted the tracking dot?" Jason then spends an intense half hour in the bathroom, looking for the translucent purple dot and eventually finding it. Not only has this whole fucking ruse been for nothing, now Ruth's life might be in danger too.

Bummer. Jason asks for coffee, which Ruth gets out of her automat/replicator thing, in a big mug that says "keep on Truckin'" on it. After wolfing it down, tooth pain be damned, He then explains he has to leave, he doesn't know if the pigs are on his tail, but getting an innocent person police hassle is a sin he doesn't want, and besides, you're too old

Ruth looks like "a warped, stomped doll", then runs to the kitchen and runs back with a stoneware platter with souvenir of knotts berry farm written on it. She at a run tries to cave Jason's head in with the platter, and Jason only just manages to intercept with his elbow. The platter shatters into three pieces, one slashing a deep gouge in Jason's arm.

There's a pause.

Ruth says she's sorry. Jason says he's sorry, too. Ruth asks why Jason said that to her, Jason says "because of my own fears of age. Because they are wearing me down, what's left of me." Jason does some first aid and wonders where Ruth has gotten to. If it's to get the police, after what I said, Jason thinks, he couldn't blame her.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter Eight

Jason is deciding what his next move should be.

He really wants to hedge against further police activity, and is considering hiding in the jungle or remote South Pacific islands. He then tallies his resources: some money, is handsome, has Charisma, and 42 years as a six. He also has his collected experiences. He decides an apartment would be nice for now; but he can't put his own name on anything, as landlords are required to update the police on residences. So, somebody else that has an apartment, like a woman he seduces. After rolling it through his head a bit, he gets a quibble (apparently these are software piloted, so like a johnny cab) and directs it to fly to reno, to a specific hi-tone club he knows. He calls it up, and charms the matre'd by remembering the man's name. It all goes wrong, though, as he gives his name and the Matre'd says "try booking us in two weeks."

Once again, denied, he grinds his teeth and sends "sheets of pain" through his mouth with his now destroyed filling now almost off entirely.

Course correction for the Quibble: make it Las Vegas.

Jason enters another hi-tone club, but no so hi-tone a nobody like him can't get in. He knew "classy chicks" hung out here, and gets lucky: he sees a woman he once had an affair with when Heather Hart was out of town for a few months. Her name is Ruth Rae. She's thirty-eight, still not bad looking, so Jason decides to go for it (after a lot of deets flash through his head as to how old she is - she wears bifocals at home!!!!!) Using the fact that Rae is unaware of their pre-existing relationship, Jason seduces a woman that as far as she's concerned is wearing a "seduce me" sign. The band that night is Freddy Hydrocephalic. Oh, and I guess the Saint's Row universe is nearby, as Rae thinks she recognizes Jason from the Phantom Baller Show.

Oh, and Ruth thinks the ones that really protect you are strangers, as she destroyed a cash deposit last year of four $50 bills, and was nearly sent to the Gulag in Georgia (it was an entrapment sting) and her boss somehow made it go away. Anyway, so she says she considers Jason a friend, so he is in like Flynn.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 7

A man in a luxurious quibble sits in the parking lot atop the police HQ. He reads the above-fold headlines, then carefully places the newspaper on the back seat. He's General Felix Buckman. He's a police general. The novel sketches the command structure (above Felix are Grand Marshall, and above that a mysterious Director) but the impression the book gives is that Buckman is the head of all natpol in at least Los Angeles if not California. He's coming in to start his day when the day shift is just ending. He's mid fifties, known by all, concerned for his subordinates well-being. He walks through the office of now empty and clear desks for agents, and notices one desk still messy: this is McNulty's desk. To Buckman, McNulty is an enthusiastic dummy; a necessary kind that must be tolerated. Buckman starts reading what he's working on; apparently there is a Jason Taverner, and he doesn't exist.

His assistant, Herb Maime, meets his boss as he reads McNulty's notes. The notes are weird and interesting enough that Buckman gets Maime to call McNulty at home. Buckman quickly interrogates McNulty about what he's found so far. Jason Taverener, handsome dude, apparently wealthy, got Kathy the forger to make *unusually good* forgeries, good enough to pass a pol checkpoint. Then, briefly, what happened last chapter. Taverner still had a tracker dot on him, and a good thing too: trying to find out more from the world data banks has shown that he's missing from all of them. What was a low level thing with ident cards is now maybe national security - the ability to remove oneself entirely from *all* databases is extraordinary. Where does Taverner get his money? Who does he work for?

Well, now he has the eye of the General of Police.

In his office, Felix finds his sister, Alys, asleep on his couch. This is intensely irritating to him. She's mid thirties, and dressed no-shit like a punk. Skin-tight black pants, a man's leather shirt, hoop earrings, with a metal studded belt with a wrought-iron buckle. I guess this is also fetish gear, (which Alys is totally into) but if Felix is the model of law and order, Alys is rebellion and personal power personified. She also *may* be his fraternal twin, but honestly it's difficult to tell if that's just drug talk later on Alys's part or Dick just forgetting he wrote both characters with a 20 year age gap.

Anyway, she's stoned, and so *of course* she uses Felix's shit to break into the police HQ to pass out in his office. Naturally Felix gets into a puritanical snit about it. One thing here is that it's really difficult to tell if anything Alys does is actually illegal - her position as family of a police general would likely make her immune to consequence, but as the two discuss it the issue is that it bothers the shit out of felix to have a sister who's basically a chaos imp implacably opposed to everything good, IE The Law. Alys brings up her being a political weakness to her bro, which he dismisses, as she's already "well known" to the six marshals and the one director above him. The argument continues through Buckman's suite of offices, with even Buckman threatening to shoot her not phasing Alys. Just while he's working himself into a good puritan fury about what a degenerate pleasure seeker she is, McNutly calls. His thesis is confirmed: his staff compared all of Taverner's bioinformatic data, and none of it exists anywhere on earth. Jason Taverner is not only an alias, he's someone with no paper trail at all. He doesn't exist.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 6

The guy immediately ahead of Jason evidently went to a shit forger, as he's immediately grabbed and thrown into a police quibble. But, Kathy does good work, as they pass inspection. The men attempt to give him grief about his tracker dot on his natpol card being scraped off, but he just says "I don't know what an electric dot is" and they let him pass.

Kathy was lurking in the darkness. She pops out to say "see, I did good work". Jason realizes she's done it again; by proving the cards are good, Jason now owes her one, and has lost his status as Kathy's victim. Trapped again, Jason and Kathy head back to Kathy's shit apartment, while she tells him about her pet turtle (kept at the good apartment.)

But somebody's waiting back at Kathy's: Mr. McNulty, her handler. He gets off Kathy's shitty couch and extends a hand to Jason; he reaches to shake it and McNulty corrects him: no, I'm not offering to shake your hand, I want to see your IDs. Jason gives McNulty his wallet. McNulty is late middle age, modestly dressed but impeccably groomed, smelling of onions and hot sauce. He's eyeballing Jason with interest. His real leather shoes, his lack of fear. He also notes that Kathy's forgeries are much better than he thought she could do. He asks who planted the tracker dot on Jason's person, and she confirms it was Ed, the hotel clerk. Kathy confesses she told Jason "some things", and McNulty asks about Jack being part of those things. McNulty then informs Jason that Jack is dead: killed three years ago in a traffic accident, and Kathy's belief about the camp in Alaska is a psychotic delusion. (Side note - that means Kathy is working for the police because McNulty is holding a delusion over her.) Kathy naturally denies this, that Jack is alive, and starts to silently weep large tears. McNulty is taking Jason in, naturally, but finishes up his business with Kathy, making sure they were square for the week. "After Jack gets out you won't be able to count on me at all" Kathy says; McNulty cheerfully rejoins that for Kathy, that day will never come, while cheerfully winking at Jason.

Jason thinks "we live in a state of betrayal."

Jason isn't being arrested, he's just being taken along to the station for some biometric ID recordings. Jason almost objects until Kathy shoots him a warning look.

Processing at the station must be a bit different from today, as Jason is put in a vast waiting room filled with people waiting to be summoned. Some gizmo McNulty pinned on Jason's lapel gets him moved out of that room and processed - fill out a form, footprint, voiceprint, EKG scan. McNulty and the officer identify him as - Jason Taverener, age 39, Diesel Engine Mechanic from Wyoming. This is wrong, obviously, but the record is clean and no other records come up in the database, so bingo, that is who Jason is. He's free to go.

Then they pull a classic Columbo; at the police station entrance, a loud page calls him back to processing. They have a 15 year old photo of "Jason", and he is ugly and doesn't look anything like Jason aside from being white and male. McNulty says "you've had plastic surgery" and Jason runs with this, saying "yeah, I mean look at the old me." He explains where the evidently large sums of money came from by improvising a story from scattered details he's glanced at from "Jason's" form. This satisfies McNulty, and Jason is free to go. Then McNulty Columbos Jason *again* - he takes his old IDs and gives him a police temp pass instead. The temp pass is real, and universal, but only lasts a week, the idea being he'll have real IDs reissued by then. For the third time, Jason is free to go.

Jason thinks he's traded up: a totally genuine and real pass for Kathy's forgeries. And the process getting genuine, abet mistaken IDs has started. So no worries about forced labor camps! Unless of course, they decide to arrest him for the counterfeit passes.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman said; Chapter 5

Kathy and Jason are holding hands as they walk down the street. Kathy is talking about love and auras; Jason is numb to the world. She eventually tunes in to his non-replies being non replies, but Jason is at a distance now, constructing his own psychological models. He's concluded that Kathy is a solipsistic narcissist who's chief skill is manipulation, and any attempts at communication will just prompt a deflection or some other defense reaction. Her sheer hostility to any logic was the castle moat.

She asks if he feels like catching a captian kirk. He's like sure, whatev. She asks if he wants to return to her place and screw like minks. This pegs his desire to get the fuck away from Kathy, consequences be dammed. A conversation about honestly quickly leads to Jason saying he thinks Kathy should be in a mental hospital and he wants nothing more than to get away from her. And so he walks away, into the crowd.

Wondering if he's just doomed himself, Jason finds a phone booth and using the gold Kriegerands payphones apparently take, calls Heather on her mega-ultra-secret line. Heather, naturally, has no idea who he is and instantly classifies him as a stalker, no matter how much weird personal info Jason can give about Heather. Several calls happen, where Jason basically bombards Heather with her secrets, and Heather is enormously freaked out because...who the fuck is this guy? Things end only when Jason runs out of Kriegerands. Jason is behind himself with frustration and has damaged one of his silver fillings through grindings.

Having tried that and failed, Jason can only fantasize about what a TV show his predicament would made. He gets lost in this reverie, and walks into a police checkpoint.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 4

Kathy and Jason are in Kathy's small single room apartment. Jason dislikes the small space and Kathy's screwdrivers made from orange juice and cheap gin and soon enough, absurdly, picks up that Kathy has two apartments and this one is the shit one, and resents that as well. To complete the bad tinder date feel Jason notices a copy of Remembrances of Things Past by Proust on Kathy's nightstand, and yes, I only know that book as a Monty Python reference. She's not read it very far, and Jason admits he only knows it as his show did a dramatic recreation of a scene one time. Jason then notices Kathy has a Cheerful Charlie, which is some kind of talking robot doll. He starts talking to it and just when he's about to turn it off it says "hey, I know how you can get your name, game, and fame back! Go talk to your girlfriend." When Jason asks who that is, the Charlie says "Heather Hart." (Oh, no wonder I was thinking of Mary Hart earlier; Jason's showbiz girlfriend has the same last name.) Jason weirdly takes this in stride, and starts to ask about Kathy, but Kathy immediately hauls away the Cheerful Charlie, as she doesn't want it snitching on her. This is literally her given reason, and I'm glad we've come to a place where real life and Phillip K. Dick novels coincide, as Cheerful Charlie is clearly an Amazon Echo except with a better interface. This leads to Jason quoting a line from Finnegan's Wake (which Kathy has not read but seen the film four times) and when Jason, who's met the director of said film on his show offers to tell what the man is really like, Kathy stridently refuses. She wants to believe what she wants to believe, much in the same way she's more or less respecting that Jason is who he believes he is.

Jason then lets slip that he is a six. Kathy has only a vague idea of what that means, but remembers that Jason said that, cranking Jason's paranoia up another notch. Increasingly, Jason is trying to manage Kathy like he managed Heather and Marilyn: in this case, trying to keep his date smooth sailing with a police informant. She removes the purple tracker dots from his documents. Talking about Kathy's cat leads immediately back to sharp reefs as Kathy manages to move from her cat to Mr. McNulty, her handler. Jason manages to squeeze out of Kathy that most of her money goes into Other Apartment, where she has some sort of weekly time-share arrangement with one or two other girls. Possibly not liking admitting things, Kathy confesses that her husband is alive, and in a gulag in Alaska. She's working with the police to keep him alive and safe, as well as for the money. So she's sending other people up the river to save one, and estimates she's sent about "150" up shit creek.

Jason says that this is evil, which naturally pisses off Kathy. She says she gets letter from her husband, Jack, "all the time", which Jason points out are likely fakes and Jack is already dead. Kathy weeps with almost shocking intensity at this, so Jason lies and rationalizes "well it's probably cheaper to keep Jack alive and have him write letters than fake it", which gets Kathy to calm down. Man, lots of Tinder date memories for me here!

Jason realizes Kathy is in an impossible situation from which she can't get out, but tries to get Kathy to give up this little life. She ignores him of course, but says Jason is a good person for trying. Speaking of good person, apparently Jack gave full permission for Kathy to have sidepiece action. And besides, Kathy hadn't met Jason before, and Kathy was in a psychiatric hospital for eight weeks one time, and she met two people who were totally convinced they were celebrates, too. Huh. Maybe she's moved back to her delusional stage again...anyway, that's why it was alright for her to fuck a guy who thought he was Mickey Quinn named David, because it was Destiny, and she'd still pick Jack anyway because she cares for Jack more than the rest of humanity, and no Jason, I'm not going to turn you in after we fuck, I love you.

Jason objects, saying they've known each other only a few hours, but Kathy is very earnest and serious on the love issue.

They decamp to an "Italian-type" restaurant where Kathy seems to know the staff, and both sit down to what Kathy describes as "really authentic" and Jason describes as "fucking awful" Italian food. Jason now senses some crisis building in Kathy, and asks her what a fit from her would look like. She responds "toddler style tantrum with truckstomp profanity directed at anyone impinging on my freedom." And yes, she does feel like that's coming on, which makes sense, she hasn't been taking her medication. Kathy doesn't take her daily psych meds because it fucks with her mind. Kathy sees that Jason doesn't want to be involved with Kathy's incipient psychological episode, and invites him to leave. Jason refuses, both out of concern for her and convinced she'll rat out Jason instantly if he does. Kathy says that the people around her will take care of her, like that degenerate drunk at the bar, or that cook back there in the tiny kitchen who lacks A/C. Jason challenges her to take some fuckin' responsibility for her actions, and Kathy points out Jason can go fuck himself, Kathy has not hurt Jason. Jason gives up, realizing he's totally in the thrall of this mentally ill police informant and they both know it.

Kathy tries some sexy talk about how her love is a growing vine reaching for Jason, and Jason flags down a waiter and discovers they don't serve hard liquor here. Any sort of managing of Kathy now gone, Jason is honest with Kathy and said "this place sucks, let's bail." This provokes the psychological attack in Kathy. She begins screaming, throwing herself on the floor while swearing like she's channeling the collective unconscious profanity of the world's longshoreman. The manager and the waiter of the shitty Italian place, after assessment, pick up Kathy and dump her out on the street, and then extract a bribe of $300 from Jason to keep the cops out of it.

Under the neon sign of Senor Luigi's or whatever, Kathy recovers. Jason realizes she called his bluff and won. She may not know much, but her manipulation skills are first rate.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 3

Jason and the hotel clerk (pencil mustache, slightly effeminate, telepathic) are in the clerk's quibble, driving to Watts. [Note: I'm not sure of a quibble is distinct from a skyfly, as right now the clerk is driving but quibbles also might be able to fly. I'm picturing an old Checker Marathon.) Because of the clerk's telepathy, he functionally has access to Jason's thoughts just like we do and comments on them. An elderly black man is crossing the street, and the clerk comments nowadays black people are like whooping cranes, rare and protected by extensive laws. So, fun story: apparently the civil rights struggle ended with African-Americans getting what they wanted: equal protection under the law, etc. The price they paid for this was genocide, with a forced sterilization program and the right to only have one child per couple. With the later police state, this has resulted in all [surviving] black people actually *retaining* all their old fashioned legal rights while everybody else lost theirs. The sight of the black man causes the clerk to say "I don't like your racist views, even if you are paying me $500". Jason responds "there's enough blacks alive to suit me." Watts is not only run down but abandoned.

They reach their destination, a abandoned restaurant. The clerk and Jason go inside, where a wall opens to reveal a small but well organized and equipped workshop. Kathy is the forger - Jason thinks she's 15 or 16, [not much in tits, but with nice legs, he thinks] though for reasons that will soon become clear I sorta doubt this and think she must be in her mid 20s. Maybe she's like Sissy Spacek in Badlands(1973) in that was in her mid 20s in that role but really does look 16? Not sure.

Anyway, Kathy charges Jason $2000 of his $5K wad o' cash for comprehensive documents, but appears to really know her fake document shit. At the same time, she's clearly a little lonely and intrigued by this well dressed non-student who suddenly needs all the docs. She hasn't heard of Jason, but like the clerk, quickly buys that for some reason Jason is a man who believes he was a big celebrity until yesterday. We learn her husband is dead, killed in national service. She then makes Jason guess her age (he guesses 16, she say it is 20) and then guesses his age to be "about 50" which enrages Jason, who tells between clenched teeth he's 43. Kathy is sorry for the accidental offense and turns to sorting Jason's shit out. But the troublesome conversation continues. She asks about Jason's career, and all the people he'd fucked over to get to the top. Jason (who in Chapter one briefly thought about exactly this) denies fucking people over is a thing, saying it's a business so talent and rationality - he doesn't use the term meritocracy, but Dick would definitely find it amusing to use a term created specifically to mock the whole idea used with a straight face.

As she's counter-fitting, Kathy confesses she thinks Jason is insane, which on the basis of his story and beliefs only makes sense. Eddie (the hotel clerk) is lurking in the background, smoking a big cigar. Kathy then gets into a booth with Jason on some counterfeit pretext [] and confesses both Eddie and herself are police informants. She shows him the subtle purple dots on his cards that act as tracking beacons and as microphones. She tells him this because she wants to help Jason escape. Her deal: get rid of all the tracking stuff on his cards and docs, slip Eddie an extra $500 to keep quiet, and spend the night with Kathy. Jason is angry because he has no choice but to agree. Or does he? He attempts to say "fuck it then' and strides out of the little shop. Kathy stops him, first saying he's already got a tracker on him, and, in an eerie replay of Mason trying to put a lid on Jason says "cmon, one night, and you get everything. That's all I'm asking." So Jason, completely outplayed, agrees. Now operating under Phillip K. Dick levels of paranoia, he realizes this could all be a grift to squeeze a little extra money out of Jason before the big net descends.

So once again, Jason is attached to a female who he has to make happy, or else.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 2

 Jason wakes up. He is not in the hospital.

He's in a fleabag hotel. The marks of the jellyfish are gone. Hanging in the closet is his silk suit, which improbably has that gigantic wad of cash he was flashing earlier. Understandably confused and on the brink of panic, Jason dresses and unsteadily shuffels to the lobby and its phone, as hotels as nasty as this don't have phones in their rooms. Using the payphone he calls his agent and his attorney, but neither have heard of Jason Taverner and blow him off as a crank. Jason checks a discarded LA Times, and the date printed is literally the next day - according to the date, the events of chapter one happened the night before. Jason's agent made a brief appearance in it. Looking through the paper, he can't find any of the ads or notices featuring him, his regular appearance at a fancy club, or a mention of his TV show. Now on the verge of freaking out, only Jason's Six status keeps him working. He decides to call someone else, goes to his wallet to get the number, and discovers all his IDs are gone.

This is worse than you'd think.

Y'see, fun story, America in 1988 is a totalitarian police state. Flow My Tears was published in 1974, and Dick has the campus protest movement become permanent - revolutionary structures have taken over the universities. The Government meanwhile, has formed siege lines around the universities, and most of the activity has moved literally underground, where students and professors do...something. Anybody caught without any ID is presumed to be an agent or an escapee from the radical underground, and thus someone who's going to spend the rest of their lives in a forced labor camp.

So Jason has not only been reduced to nothing, he's a substantial negative person; an untermenchen as the Nazis used to say. Jason calls the Birth Registration control center in Iowa, and, nope, no record of his birth. Because of the terrifying possibilities of forgetting your IDs, everyone has an ID tattoo on their forearm, plus some stuff we'd call RFID chips today...but Jason is so paranoid now he doesn't trust that it will do anything. Six to the fore: first job is to get fake IDs. Jason doesn't want to end up with a pickaxe on the moon.

The Hotel clerk is reading Box magazine. Jason takes a $500 bill and plops it on the hotel desk. Saying his cards have been stolen and he needs replacements ASAP, the clerk agrees to help. Oh and the clerk is telepathic and can read Jason's mind.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 1

Jason Taverner is at the top of his game. He's a famous singer with his own, mega-succsessful TV show. That's because he's a Six. It's not explained at this juncture, but he and his girlfriend/special guest that night Heather Locklear are both people who got themselves genetically modified - Stage six modification? They just finished Dick's TV show, and now have to run a gauntlet with police to get to Dick's Rolls-Royce skyflyer.

Things are maybe not the best between Heather and Jason. They are a celebrity couple professionally but also a couple outside of that, and Heather is sounding burnt out. She hates People, especially her fans, and wants to give up being a celebrity, marry Jason, have Jason's kids, etc. Though this could just be burnout; she also thinks flying to the secluded house they have in Zurich is stupid. This surprises Dick, as the house was chosen especially so they could get away from People. (She does not look like Heather Locklear, being described as having a roman nose, red hair, and violet eyes, but the showbiz/30 million viewers immediately put me in mind of Locklear and Mary Hart, this kind of inhumanly perfect beauty, a flawless diamond, never scratched even as they bore through concrete at the end of a pneumatic drill.)

Dick takes all this, and much else, in. Evidently being a six gives you one king-hell-ass brain, as he's managing his GF on the brink of a psychological crisis, flying his Rolls, feeling smug at how awesome he is, thinking about some of Heather's secrets, flashing a big wad of cash, promising to use said wad of cash to buy Heather something nice, then dreaming of using said wad of cash to hit up a Vegas casino to play blackjack (Sixes win all the time, even beating the dealers) even as Heather rolls her eyes and calls him a selfish asshole.

Dick then gets a call. It's from Marylin Mason, who is some starlet Dick got an audition for. She's also having a nervous breakdown and threatening to kill herself, which Dick thinks is a sign she's pregnant. (Of course he's fucking her on the side.) And after he got her *two* auditions, the first one for the president of Columbia records! Typical "ordinares"! She blew both auditions and can't process it, blaming Taverner instead. Dick's tired and already managing crazy, but MM is super insistent he stop by briefly. He lands on the field in her building complex. Heather waits in the skyflyer.

There's something strange with Marylin Mason - spooky. Dick doesn't let it show , but Mason's mood is something hidden and dangerous. Before he can even begin trying to calibrate what's going on, Mason takes a plastic bag, and hucks an alien jellyfish at Dick. It attaches to his chest and begins boring through his suit with its 50 tentacles. As a Six, instead of screaming, Dick instantly grabs a nearby whiskey bottle, unscrews it, and empties it on the jellyfish. This kills the jellyfish in a few seconds, but now the tubes are inside him and can apparently survive jellyfish death, and continue to tunnel into his torso. Dick and Mason have a moment of "well, wasn't expecting that", and then Dick passes out.

Dick comes to as he's racing through a hospital on a gurney. Heather is there. Apparently Dick was seconds from death at Mason's, and is being rushed to emergency surgery. Holding Heather's hand, Dick passes out again. 

 Addition, chapter one: Jason momentarily wonders if he's given himself brain damage using the "phone-grid transex network", but dismisses the through with a junkie's excuses: he didn't do it much, and there had been no premature aging or brain damage. (Point of fact Heather had noticed Jason needs to dye his hair, which apparently is unusual for a Six, so one of those signs is definitely a question mark.)