Things are Getting Insane So I'm finally getting some sleep. At 6am my cell phone starts ringing and buzzing. I roll over and ignore it. It rings a second and third time, playing some awful chimey sound. Finally Ellie kicks me. "Turn that fucking thing off," she whimpers. "It's fucking 6 in the morning." I throw on some sweatpants and grab the phone. The cabin is cold in the morning, and I get goosebumps as I move around the room. "What," I spit into the phone as I walk into the hall, closing the door gently behind me. "Hi, it's me, Carrie Park, from work. I'm on my way over there. We've got to meet." I'm silent for a moment. "What? Huh? Do you know what time it is?" Her tinny voice is even more crackled over the cell connection. "We don't have much time. I've been working on that list all night. I haven't been able to crack the security to get to the original file. Do you have your laptop with you? If I'm right, we've got to move. Another hit is going down today, any minute even. And it's someone I know." I stumble down the stairs to the kitchen where I left my laptop. I find my bluetooth headset so I can talk to Carrie and work the computer at the same time. Rough sounds murmur through the phone, so I figure she's driving. "Where are you? I'm almost connected." "I'm on 50, just past Placerville. Probably less than an hour away. You need to look at the hit list. I've got to show you something." My still-sleeping brain processes the information slowly. "Are you nuts? You're coming here?" I log in thru the VPN system. I'm not sure if I'm thankful or if I regret installing a high-speed internet connection at the cabin. Ellie insisted so she could have fast access to whatever it is she does online. In moments I find the list and scroll to the end. "Listen Alex, if I'm right about this, we have a change to stop this attack. Look at the next name on the list. Professor Charles Benson. He's a faculty member at Stanford, and he was one of my thesis mentors. He also has a cabin out near Tahoe, and he's supposed to be having a student retreat out there today. It's a perfect opportunity." "Um, what's he done? I don't get all of this. A professor?" "Here's the thing. Apparently Benson has been working on some top-secret research project. Maybe you can access those files. My guess is that he's gotten in too deep and that's made whoever's behind this really nervous. They want him out of the picture before he can blow the whistle." "None of this makes any sense," I start whining. "The company is doing great. People love our product. Heck, my girlfriend Ellie is hooked on our social apps. We preach goodness and fairness." I search through the secret docs but I can't find anything that mentions Prof. Benson. "It's a cover," she says. "We're just the shell of something bigger. Do you ever wonder why you never go to Building Four? There's never any meetings in it, and you can't even look at the floor plan. I never see anyone entering or leaving, at least not from the street." "I thought that building was all servers and only a small staff worked there." "Well, I found out that dozens of people eat, sleep, and work there, never leaving. Something is going on in there. Listen, where can we meet?" I look at my watch. 6:20. "Crap. I'm supposed to going hiking with Ellie this morning." "Damn it Alex, this man could die, and we're the only ones who can stop it. He might hold the key to what's been happening. We've got to warn him. His web site lists his cabin's address for his students." "Why do you need me? Can't you just call him?" Carrie sighed over the phone. "You brought this to me, Alex. You have the access. We need to show him what you found and try to get an explanation. If we have to we'll threaten to expose him if he doesn't help us." I heave a big sigh and give her my address. I don't want Ellie to be stranded so I figure the best plan is to have Carrie drive. As I hang up, the nerves start frying again. I just gave her my address, I realize. If she's not on the level, we're in trouble. Just in case, I find and load my dad's old shotgun, and place it where I can get it easily if the need arises. I take a quick shower and pack a few things in my hiking backpack. I write out a note for Ellie, apologizing for missing our planned hike. I hear the crunchy sound of a car climbing the gravel road to our cabin. I grab the shotgun and peer out the window. I see a rusty old Corolla winding up the the path. It's not the kind of car I'd expect from a top-paid developer, but I finally make out her figure in the dim pre-dawn light. I throw on my backpack and quietly leave the cabin. When I open the door, Carrie is hastily cleaning out all the junk strewn around the car. Trash, papers, wrappers, empty water and soda containers, just about everything. "Sorry," she said. "I usually don't have passengers. Are you doing ok?" She peers at me through those thick glasses of hers. I throw my stuff over a pile of junk in the back and we pull away from the cabin. "Yeah. I'm supposed to be getting ready for a hike with my girlfriend." "Is she a big outdoors person?" I smile and shake my head. "Let's just say when I say 'hike' what I really mean is getting out into nature...and doing what comes naturally. It's more of an picnic than a hike." I'm not sure why I said that. "Ah," she replies. "Nothing like nature. So she doesn't like doing anything strenuous." I laugh at that one. "You don't know Ellie. One time we went hiking for real. She has a friend who lent her all this high-tech climbing gear. When we got to the hard parts, she attacked them like she was insane. She was yelling at me to keep up, and it ended in a big weird fight. You don't understand her. She's really intense sometimes, and other times she's a complete veg. Like her aerobics class she teaches. It's not one of those step or dance class. It's what they call 'bootcamp.' I mean she does the whole thing including the yelling and insulting. She talked me into the class once. About 15 minutes in I couldn't take it anymore and I bolted." "Wow, did she bust you up for that?" "Nah, she was actually cool about it. She said, 'it's not for everyone' but not in an insulting way. The rest of the people in that class looked like soldiers trying to keep in shape between tours. Some of them drive over an hour just for the class." "That must be intimidating." I'm silent for a moment. "You know, there's these two sides to her. The spitfire aerobics instructor is one I almost never see. It's the side I hope I never see. Usually she's all over me and wants to spend time with me. I don't think we've spend a night apart since we met." "Sounds exhausting. This girlfriend of yours, Ellie? Is this something serious?" I shrug. "I don't know. We spend a lot of time together, but sometimes we just don't connect. It's like we've been together for a while now and I barely know her sometimes. She's really reserved and hates talking about herself. Although she talks all the time, it's always about some gossip she's heard. She won't talk much about her past. I think some bad stuff has happened. Someday I hope she'll be comfortable enough to talk to me." "Jeez, that sounds complicated. How long have you been together?" "We met about eight months ago, right when the startup I was at went under. She was sorta there for me during that rough patch. In fact, she was the one who got me the interview here through a friend of hers. We just kinda moved in together after a few weeks. So what about you? Any men in your life? Any complicated relationships?" Carrie snorts. "Right. I spend all my time at the office or on the road. And besides, I'm not exactly topping the 'hot or not' charts. I don't get guys banging down my doors." I take a sideways glance at her. In this light she doesn't look half bad. A couple day ago at Halloween I remember that she actually dressed up as some kind of Pokemon character or something and she looked cute. "Come on Carrie. Don't sell yourself short." "Kinda hard when you're only five-foot-one." I could see her smiling. "You just need to get out there. Don't work so much. Be willing to meet people and smile once in a while." "I don't have time for any of that. Relationships are complicated and messy. I mean, don't you find all your free time dealing with your relationship issues?" I thought about that for a moment. "I guess. But I like being with her most of the time." "What do you guys do? Do you go to art shows or the theater?" "She mostly likes to go dancing. She likes being out there on the floor where she gets a lot of attention. Heck half the time she's just dancing out there with strangers." "Doesn't that bother you? Do you trust her?" "Hey, I always get to go home with her. She just likes to do some harmless flirting I guess. We're strictly monogamous, so it's not that kind of thing. We also go to Giants and Niners games. She doesn't understand a thing about them and talks on her phone the whole time, but I appreciate the effort to support my interests. So how far are we from the professor?" Carrie reaches down and throws me a stack of paper. "It's in there somewhere. It's not far." I look at the papers, one with gum sticking to it. "For someone who's supposed to be super brilliant, you're super disorganized." Carrie shoots me a look as the sun begins to peek around the mountains. "I focus on what's important. Spending a lot of time organizing stuff is distracting. Every once in a while I just gather up stuff and toss it out en masse whether I need it or not." "Ellie's the most organized person I know. I think she plans her wardrobe a week in advance." Carrie chuckles. "Half the time I don't know which pile of clothes is clean and which is dirty." I start feeling relaxed as the car putters through the winding hills. My first few meetings with Carrie had been awkward and intimidating. But now she seemed to be revealing another side of her. I finally find our location on the map, and we're actually minutes away. "Stop the car here," I tell Carrie. "We should approach on foot so we can scout out bad guys. Carrie agrees and pulls the the car off the road. I hoist my backpack on my shoulder. We walk in comparative silence, just looking like some day hikers or hitchers. Finally we spot the professor's house. "I only see one car," says Carrie. "Maybe his students don't arrive 'til later." The cabin is perched on a slope above the main street. A long sinuous driveways leads up to the garage. We look around. I hear a snapping sound then a shot. "Shit, someone shot at us!" The snap was a bullet whizzing by our heads. I grab Carrie by the sleeve and pull her behind a nearby rock. "Stop shooting!" I scream. "You're not taking me without a fight," answers the shooter from somewhere up near or in the cabin. I try to look around the rock but the sniper fires again. "Hold on! We're not here to hurt you!" Carrie tugs my sleeve. "Tell him I'm here. I used to be a student of his." "I have Carrie Park with me! Professor! We're just here to talk!" "Let me see her. No quick moves and hands where I can see them." I look at Carrie who is pressed up against the rock. Her breath is coming fast and hard, and she looks like she's about to puke. I nod at her and motion for her to go. She slides across the rock and waves her hands. No shots come. "Professor! It's me, Carrie! I'm here with a friend." "Hold it right there," he replies. "I know you work for Infinitae. You're one of them!" "No I'm not," she cries back. "I just found out about this yesterday. Please, let us come and talk to you. It might not be safe out here." The professor is silent for a moment, and then waves to us. "OK, just hurry up." We run up the steps leading to his house while he trains his gun on us. When we get inside, he makes me take off my pack and then pats us both down. He hugs Carrie once he feels safe. "God, god, what has the world come to," he says as he sits down heavily on a wooden chair, and we sit on a couch. Rustic framing and furniture decorates his cabin, providing it with an Old West feel, even though it seems only a few years old. The professor is a tall, willowy man, wearing a sweater and slacks. "Carrie, it's so good to see you again. You just breezed through your dissertation and right into the industry. We had hoped you would be around for a few years." "Yeah," she says. "Infinitae really pressed hard on me. I've got a staff, I have equipment, I can really accomplish things in a fraction of the time. Don't worry though, I'm working on throwing some stuff your way, stuff that only requires brainpower, not money." "If I can live that long. You're here right now so you must know something." "We only have a list," she replies, pulling the paper from her back pocket. "And you're next." I notice that she has marked up the list extensively, drawing lines and circles and copious notes. The professor studies it for a minute. "Yes. Loose ends, security risks, and some just competitors. How much do you know about Project Envelope?" We look at each other. "Never heard of it." "I had been asked to come in because some of the work I've done on signal analysis. They wanted to talk to me about building a new kind of search instrument. Something about a flexible index that could be updated millions of times a second for the most accurate results." "That doesn't sound very novel," I comment. "You don't understand," he replies, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "It's not the technology. It's the application. Project Envelope is about computer warfare. The index is for espionage. Infinitae is just a front for a huge military experiment. The biggest problem they have is that due to their ridiculous and unexpected success in other areas, their low profile has been smashed. Bits and parts of Project Envelope have filtered down into the main development team. Half the projects you work on either directly or indirectly contribute to Envelope. The people on this list have either found out or figured out what is going on. My guess is that Infinitae has intercepted some data indicating that they suspected. Also some of the deaths can be attributed to people who refused to sell their company to Infinitae. With their CEO's or main talent dead, those companies then have no choice but to deal." "I don't get it," I say. "Infinitae is a successful company, why would we even need the government?" Professor Benson smirks at us. "So, you truly believe that your main applications really rake in that much money? Or could it really be a series of government servers artificially inflating traffic? Maybe it's some advertisers who 'provide' a lot of the income, even though in reality they get very little traffic if any? Everything can be cooked. You're just not as popular as people think. At least half your income comes from the government. We're talking billions of dollars of funding." Carrie rubs her face in her hands. "But why? Can't the NSA or whoever just get this information on their own? And why the killings? Surely it will eventually get back to them." "I don't know. My gut feeling is that this is a rogue operation that the main government doesn't even know about. Someone is trying to prove something." I look at Carrie and the Professor. "I witnessed the last hit. These guys are for real. We've got to be able to do something. We need to keep you alive so you can tell your story." "If you found me here, then they won't be far behind," he says, rising from his chair. "You two are in a perfect position, inside the company. You need to find a way to get deeper inside. We need to know who's pulling the strings. Right now they have complete deniability. We need some solid proof. You might be the only hope--" The professor stops as I hear some tinkling of glass. For a long moment he just stands there, looking blank. A line of blood seeps out his nose. He then collapses, blood flowing out of the back of his head. Carrie screams. I then see the small hole in the window. "Sniper!" I cry out as we duck down on the ground. I hear the gunning of an engine as a car peels away. I grab the professor's rifle but the car has already disappeared down the road. Carrie shakes the professor, but we both know he is dead. "What the fuck are we going to do," I cry out. I feel like shitting and puking at the same time. I run my hands through my head. The blood from his headwound is pooling under his body. "First, calm down," says Carrie. "We need to get out of here. We've got to clean this place up and leave no traces. We can't be associated with this. Infinitae would like nothing better than to point the finger at us. Remember, you were at the last hit too. Probably got on a camera." "Shit, shit, shit. What the fuck? All the previous hits had looked like accidents." "This one will too. We're far enough out that they could blame a stray shot from a deer hunter. If you look at the trajectory, you'll see that it's possible. Whoever made this shot is an expert marksmen. But it won't look like an accident if we leave traces." I can't think so I just nod at her. She seems so calm. Ellie probably would have fainted at the sight of the blood. She gets hysterical when she breaks a nail. Actually I take that back. I've seen her get scraped and cut, like the time she fell mountain biking. She just shrugged it off and it turned out she needed eight stitches. Maybe I'm the one about to faint. Shit, I really need help. We clean the gun and all the surfaces we've touched. "What about the body," I ask Carrie. "Just leave it. Someone will eventually notice, probably on Monday when classes are back." I nod. We run back to the car and I whip out my laptop. "What are you doing," asked Carrie. "I'm getting this all down. I've been posting everything that's happened on this blog I stole." "What?? Are you nuts??" Carrie seems to be about to have a fit. "There needs to be a record," I explain. "If anything happens to us, someone will know the truth. I'm using this guys blog from Seattle. It gets no traffic at all, so I think we're safe." I've typed all this on the drive back. As we pull up to our cabin, I see Ellie over there fingering the shotgun, and my brother Brad is there too. --- OK now it's almost 10pm. The rest of today has been hellish, but I think I'll throw this up and fill you all in tomorrow about how shitty the rest of my day has been. I'm just too mentally exhausted to type any more. See you all tomorrow...I hope.

Ellie is Driving Me Nuts Thank God we're finally here. I don't even know how I have the energy to type this. I haven't slept in two days and I'm exhausted. I've heard a saying that "when it goes wrong, it all goes wrong." Today I believe that. I spent the rest of the afternoon pretending to work. I couldn't focus on any of my tasks. I don't know if I ever posted what I do for Infinitae. I'm just your average software developer. Earlier this year I had been working at a startup that went belly-up when our lead investor embezzled our funds. The FBI is looking for him in the Bahamas or something. After interviewing at a bunch of places I chose Infinitae because they seemed to have the best handle on social networking software and had some super benefits. They also were the fastest growing company in the Bay Area and were looking to explode, unlike the startup that had imploded. At one point my manager called me into his office and asked me to close the door. I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst, figuring I had been discovered. I spotted a security guard down the hall. My boss only wanted to talk to me about a candidate I had interviewed a couple of days ago. After giving him my assessment, he asked if I felt ok. "You look like shit," he said. "Why don't you take off early. I know you've been working a lot of extra hours." I nodded absently. "Yeah, ok." Needless to say I high-tailed it out of there. Ellie had left a rambling message on my cell phone at some point, saying she didn't feel great and to hurry home. When I get home, nothing is packed. It's true that she was still sleeping it off when I left this morning. In fact I found her still in bed. "C'mon, Ellie, we gotta get out of here." She looked at me with blurry eyes. Had she been drinking again? "Hey babe, come here," she beckoned. I noticed that she hadn't even showered or gotten dressed, and it was four in the afternoon. I strode over to her and sat on the edge of the bed next to her. She didn't smell so good, I hate to say. No alcohol though. "Hey Ellie, we've got to get packed. Don't you remember? We're spending the weekend at the Tahoe cabin with my family." She whacked the bed with her fist. "Shit!" She rolled over. "What? I thought you liked it out there." "Yeah, until you told me 'She' would be there." Ah. My brother's wife Marcia. They didn't get along very well. They had some kind of weird competitive vibe between them. I think it has something to do with each needing to be the center of attention. "I don't have a damn thing to wear, I ran out of mascara and my hair needs a treatment." "Honey," I tell her, "we're going hiking and out on Dad's boat. How good do you need to look?" "Better than her. Did you see how much work she's had done? She's like Ms Plastic Princess." These are the kinds of things that drive me to distraction. Sometimes I don't get her. "Come on, honey. She's like eight years older than you. Her butt sags. She's got the beginnings of crow's feet." "Do you think I'm prettier than her?" "Of course. How can you ask that? Now could you get dressed already? Do you have anything packed?" She slid her feet off the bed. "Hey, Alex. You look like crap. Did I keep you up last night?" I let out an exasperated sigh. "No honey. I saw a woman get run over last night. Remember? Or were you too busy puking?" "Oh fuck you." She shoved me away. "You never came home last night. You were supposed to take me to that new Asian place, remember? You never called or anything." Damn it. I didn't remember that. In fact I don't remember any plans for last night at all. I just didn't have the energy to argue right then. "Sorry," I mumbled. "Something came up at work. You know." "I'm hitting the shower," she announced. I watched her back as she walked away from me. For a second I considered joining her there, caressing her neck, rubbing my hands along her smooth wet body-- I broke out of my fantasy and set to packing. Well we finally made it out the door. She had cleaned up really nice and looked smoking hot. We stopped at a drug store so she could restock her cosmetics and other things. The trip out here was uneventful. I kept wanting to talk to her about work, but she kept fiddling with her MP3 player, filling the car with her top-40 girl music and trying to sing along wildly off-key. She wouldn't let me sing, even to the ones I could tolerate. A couple of times I began nodding off. Ellie didn't even notice, as she seemed focussed on her music or texting people with the IPhone I just bought her for her birthday. She's probably one of Infinitae's heaviest users. I think her friend list is somewhere in our top 100. She probably doesn't personally know a dozen of them. We arrived safe and sound a little while ago. Ellie is working on getting our stuff unpacked and put away neatly. She likes everything in order. She's probably also re-washing everything in the kitchen because "who knows who's been using this stuff." I figured I would just throw something up to let people know I'm still alive and we made it. So about Ellie. I need to do some serious thinking. Lately I keep thinking and rethinking about why and how we moved in together. Everything happened so fast. We had been dating for less than two months. I was out of work after the layoff, so we spent almost all our time together. After the first couple weeks Ellie practically lived here, only going home when she needed some clothes. The only difference from before an after was that there was a weekend where we moved all her crap over here. There wasn't more of her, just more of her junk. I don't even know what she does half the time. She has plenty of money, although she gets me to pay for a lot of stuff including most of the rent and utilities. She just works part time as an aerobics instructor and sometimes behind a makeup counter. I think most of her money comes from some kind of inheritance or trust fund. I've really got to get some sleep. Ellie sounds like she's heading back up here. It's time for us to play nice-nice, and then I can finally get some sleep. See you all tomorrow. I hope.

Help Me... I'm taking a little break for lunch, so let me get you up to date. Everything has been getting to me. The cameras on the ceilings, the guards patrolling the campus, and every email and IM is causing me to break out in a cold sweat. I've looked at the death list a hundred times already. Someone has already updated it to indicate that Aileen McGovern is dead. I was walking down the hall when I ran across Carrie Park. I originally met her at orientation. She's younger than I am, maybe 24 or so, but already she has a PhD. She's whispered to be some kind of phenom. She gets to go to all the fancy conferences and has her fingers in a lot of top-priority projects. She's not much to look at. She's small and a little scrawny, with limp and stringy hair and thick rectangular glasses. Her face is angular and a little haughty in my opinion. Every time I deal with her I feel intimidated, because she speaks her mind and always seems to set everyone in their place like she's Queen or something. I did a design review with her once, and she proceeded to rip into my plans like I was an incompetent imbecile. However, a few weeks ago I was here working late, really stuck on a problem. I went to get a drink of water and I noticed Carrie in her office as usual. I don't think she ever leaves, except for her frequent conferences and offsite meetings. She's usually there when I get in, and she's still there when I leave. I hesitated, then knocked on her door. "Yeah," she said, barely moving her eyes from the monitor. "Hey, Carrie, remember me? I'm really stuck on something. Remember the review you did? I just can't figure it out. Do you have a second?" For a long moment she sat staring at her screen, typing away at the keyboard. Then she slowly raised her eyes to mine, glaring. "Ok, fine. I only have a minute." She grudgingly trudged to my office and we sat down together. "What the hell is this crap," she breathed, peering at my laughable code. "We just need to start over." For the next four hours, until the wee hours of the morning, we sat there working on the problem. I found that we actually had a rapport, bouncing ideas off one another. Still, I found myself amazed, and perhaps even a little jealous of her insight and creativity in solving the problem. At one point I nearly feel asleep until she cruelly knocked me upside the head. "Pay attention, this is important," she said. That late night session really left an impression on me. It's true, she barely acknowledges me when I pass her in the hall, and I've never seen her at any social activity, even lunch. Anyways, she walks by me with barely a nod, and then I turned around and say, "Carrie!" She stops like she's been shot and turns to me with a disappointed face. "I'm really late for a meeting, Alex." She starts walking. "Carrie, please. I just need a minute. It's important. It can't wait." She turns back again, and looks at her watch. I think when she sees the desperation on my face, she relents. "OK. I can maybe be a couple minutes late." "Let's find a conference room." I lead her down the hall. The first room is empty, but contains a video conference system. I think for a moment. How do I know that thing is really off? "Not this room," I tell her. She slaps her thigh in frustration. Down the hall I find another room with no VC system. I disconnect the phone just to be safe. "What is going on, Alex? You're acting very strange." We sit down on opposite sides of the table. I get back up and close the shades. Carrie is looking at me like I'm crazy. Well, maybe I am right now. "Carrie," I start. "You know that our company motto is 'Be Infinitely Good' right? Well, I might have found something about us that's...infinitely bad." "Okay," said Carrie slowly and deliberately. "I think we hire hitmen," I just blurt out. She stares at me blankly. Her chest shudders as she stifles laughter. She gathers her laptop and makes like she's about to leave. "I'm serious," I say, "what do you know about any deals we have going with Alliance Tech?" She stops cold. "That deal went into the toilet. I get it. The accident with McGovern last night--" "I was there," I breath, "I saw the whole thing. It was no accident." Carrie looks at the door for a long moment and checks her watch again. She looks at me through those thick glasses. "Why were you there?" I pull out the printout I made of the death list and hand it to her. At first she grins and shakes her head, like this is all an elaborate joke. Then as she reads the names, her smile turns to a frown. I see her gripping the paper tighter. "These are all failed deals and each person listed is the dealbreaker. I've heard some rumors about an unusual level of accidents in this industry. Where did you get this?" I explain how I somehow got privileged access. She turns on her laptop, but the secret script I used had disappeared. "I've got to run," she finally tells me. "Listen Alex, do not tell anyone about this." "Are you fucking kidding me? I almost barely told you. You're the smartest person I know, and I didn't know who else to turn to." "Can I keep this," she says, waving the printout. "Sure, but don't let anyone else see it. Keep it on you." "Do you think I'm an idiot?" she snaps, then recants. "Sorry. Let's just keep quiet. We've got to talk again but my schedule's booked. Do you have any time this weekend?" I shake my head. "We're spending the weekend in my folks' cabin in Tahoe. I don't want to IM or email about this. We're leaving right after work." "Ok, let's meet Monday at 7" "In the morning??" She glares at me. "OK, fine, 7am." I hope I can get up that early. As we part she gives me a strange look, concern mixed with regret of some kind. I get a feeling that some of this might have been known to her already. Why the hell did I tell her my weekend plans? God I need some sleep.

Bad Night I didn't sleep a wink :( The images keep popping into my head. I watched a lot of the TV reports but everyone kept saying it was a horrible accident. The car apparently had been stolen and just abandoned. To make matters worse, Ellie got sick in the middle of the night. Something's up with her. She wouldn't talk to me and explain what happened. I don't know if I'm more worried or annoyed. The last thing I need right now is to deal with her crap. I've got to head to work now, and pretend everything's OK. I can't let on that I know anything. But I've got to find someone who I can talk to, someone I can trust. I just don't know what to do.

Now I'm Beyond Freaked Out This has got to be the worst day of my life. Seriously. I just got back from the SFMUC and I think I'm about to lose it. I have no one to talk to again. My stupid girlfriend is passed out on the damn couch. There's a bottle of JD near her, completely empty. What the fuck? Did she drink the whole thing? Was someone over? This is totally bullshit. I'm about to go mental over what happened and she's lying on the couch in her frickin underwear. I swear I'm a little bit relieved she's asleep. I have to talk to someone about this, so I guess I'll just post this here. OK. I go to the meeting. Mac Users. Woo Hoo. They're all going nuts over the Leopard release. I don't see the big deal. I guess I'm more of a Vista guy. Anyways, I'm looking around, thinking that something bad's going to happen to her. She actually was a fairly young and good looking lady, mid-30's I guess. Just Google her and you'll see her bio. I don't see how she gets to run a whole company, but I guess she's a pretty shrewd business woman. Somewhere in the middle of the meeting she gives a presentation of her software. I'm scanning the room, looking for badguys, but I think she's saying something about video tags. Like you can create short video messages to tag things with. There was a funny demo where you could mouse over things and a little video would pop up saying things like "this sucks" or "awesome". This is the kind of shit Infinitae could really use. A bunch of people go up to talk, and then later there's a social hour where you can mingle with the guests. I don't know if I'm stupid or something, but of course I've got to meet her. Up close, she really has a nice smile but a firm handshake. I ask her some dumb questions about how they get the popups to play so seamlessly but she just directs me to their jobs page. Whatever. By now I'm feeling like an ass. I got all excited about some stupid list, wasted a whole evening tracking nothing. She's a nice person, she doesn't seem like she'd be involved in any weird schemes or secret games. I still kinda hang out. I notice her grabbing her coat. I sneak behind her and pass out the door after her. This is where things go to hell. She walks over to the cab stand. I mean, I'm watching all this like you watch television. There's a cab down the street but he doesn't notice her yet. Up the hill, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. It's a car backing up. I almost didn't give it a second glance. But something tickles my mind and I realize...there's no driver. Before I can shout anything the car rolls down the hill and runs right into Aileen. I mean, there's no warning because the engine isn't running. She goes under the car and it drags her down the hill a hundred feet or so. Are you still with me here? Someone rolled a car into her. On purpose. I just stand there gawking, while people all around me are screaming and running after her. The poor woman never had a chance. In about five minutes the place is crawling with police cars and helicopters are buzzing all around. If you're reading this tonight, I'm sure it will be all over the news. For like ten minutes I'm just standing there, holding a lamppost for support. My mind isn't even functioning. I'm saying something like "wha wha wha" over and over again. Then a thought strikes me: What if they're here? What if one of them is somewhere nearby? What if they spot me? Sure I could explain that I was at the SFMUC...but if they checked up on me they would know! I get the fuck out of there as fast as I can. Crap, I think Ellie is waking up. When she gets drunk she gets horny. She thinks she's sexy when she's drunk but it's more embarrassing than sexy. It's fine when she's just a little buzzed, but I can tell by the way she's stumbling to the bathroom that this isn't that time. Cool, she went straight to bed. I don't think I'll be able to sleep a wink. I'm going to get a drink and try to relax. I'll see you guys tomorrow. If I don't post anything tomorrow send help. Seriously. Just find my USB key. That will explain everything.

I'm Almost Calm But not really. It was a nice day out today, with the sun shining over the bay, birds flying around and children playing in the park. I decided to take a walk outside to try to get some perspective. I felt the walls closing in around me so I had to get out. My office complex is in downtown SF near the Pacific Coast. They had cleared out a few blocks of tenements to put in these 10-story shiny behemoths. Each of the four buildings had been designed to precise specifications. As I looked up at them on my walk, they seemed hulking and foreboding. During my walk I decided to call up my girlfriend Ellie. She sort of came along about the same time as my new job, and somehow she convince me to let her move in. Well I tried to talk to her about what was going, but she didn't seem responsive: "Hey Ellie, listen to me," I said, looking over my shoulder for eavesdroppers. "I've really hit on something big. You're not going to believe this. This company is not as good as they say they are." "Really? C'mon, A, that's hard to believe. I'm sure that you're just misunderstanding it." "Seriously," I replied, frustrated by her apparent lack of concern. "Something bad is going on here. People could get hurt." The filtered sound of a soap opera on the other end of the phone didn't calm me much. I don't really know how we got together. She's not my usual type. I met Ellie at a bar and she just was all over me. I've really never been with anyone like her. She's beautiful, with flowing dark hair, dark eyes and luscious lips. And her body...I think she spends 2 hours a day just exercising her butt. It's incredible. I never thought someone like me could be with someone like that. I mean I work out, do some running or biking on the weekends, but I'd expect someone like her to be with some steroid-pumped muscle machine. "Are you going to pick up my dry cleaning," she asked, interrupting my reverie. "I gotta call you back," I said, disconnecting it without getting her response. I let out a big sigh. Sometimes she seemed so self-absorbed that I just want to throttle her. If it wasn't for the great sex and her obsessive cleaning habits, I don't know what I would do. When we're together she just blabs and blabs about everything and nothing and then I find myself looking for something else to do. Well enough about Ellie. She's the least of my problems right now. I've got to figure something out. This is just killing me. This is like finding out your wife is pregnant and it's not yours. At first of course you're angry, furious at the betrayal. Then you want to know. You want to know who's behind it, who the father is. Who was the mastermind of this evil purpose? I guess in a way I started getting curious. I found myself back at my workstation. I turned the monitor sideways so it faced the wall and no one could look over my shoulder. My heart began pounding as I looked at the display filled with project listings. I still had access to the secret files. One by one I clicked on them and then saved the screen shots to my hard drive. I dared not save the text, because I knew all the machines were indexed, and a simple search could find the document on my machine. I downloaded all the shots to my USB key and then deleted the images files. Hopefully they would stay deleted. Now I needed to figure out what to do with the images. Well, that's the problem. If I turn these things in, my company goes down the toilet, and I'd probably be laid off eventually. Even if they never connect me with the leak, which I'm sure they would, my job wouldn't be safe. I thought about one of the images I copied. Project XEOIC. Exterminate Enemies of Infinitae.com. A list of names, along with the description of how they died, and how much they paid the killer. I began laughing. A light dawned on me. These were just the documents for some secret role-playing game! God, I feel so stupid! None of this is real, it's all just some sick game they've come up with. I looked at one of the names on the list, "Herbert Jefferson." CEO of Imagine Products Inc. A likely takeover candidate. He probably was in the game. I went over to trusty Google, fearing to use our own search engine. I typed in his name, and waited for the results. Herbert Jefferson, b. Dec 14, 1948, d. August 19, 2007 CEO of Imagine Products Inc. I fucking jumped out of my chair. This has got to be a coincidence. Someone's just playing a cruel joke. I found a news story on his death, and the description matched. I checked a few more names. All dead. Then at the bottom of the list I found a few names not dead. Aileen McGovern, President of Alliance Tech. Scheduled to speak tonight at the SFMUC. Shit! Okay I got that all typed in, so you're up to date. I gotta go! I can still make it in time. I'll let you know what happens!

I am Really Freaked Out! OK. I am really having a problem right now. I'm literally shaking. I'm sweating like a pig and freezing at the same time. I feel like puking but nothing's coming up. I stumbled across something at work today that I really don't think I should have seen. Something really bad. I mean Evil with a capital 'E'. I don't know what to do. I don't know if there's anyone I can talk to about this. The only reason I'm blogging about it is that I've got to get this off my chest. Here's what happened. I just joined this new team, and part of what I've need to work on this past week is to gain access to various secure sites on the intranet and get permissions to do certain things. So I'm filling out the forms, and everything is going well, but at the final step I keep getting an error. I searched through the online docs but I can't seem to find a way around the error. I finally find a little shell script posted on someone's internal blog and run it. When I return back to the main project page, suddenly I can see tons of projects that I couldn't before. At the top left corner of the page I see my login name followed by ":Admin". I didn't think much of it at the time. What caught my attention was a few projects with strange labels like "GMCEX" and "CSTOAX" whereas all the rest seems harmless like "User Settings" and "Email Client". So of course like an idiot I checked them out... I know that all access to restricted documents is monitored. They know that I've been in there. If what I've read is true...I could be in deep shit. I just went to the bathroom and along the way I noticed all the cameras installed in the ceiling. I've worked here six months and never noticed them before. Are they new? Why are they there? Jesus Christ, what the fuck have I gotten myself into? I gotta go. I'm just going to post this real quick and try to calm down. What the hell am I supposed to do? My company knows everything about everyone! I am so screwed!!