Simon S

Simon Cylima

The Americans think they have things bad. They have no idea.

Your name is Simon Cylima. You were born in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, twenty-eight years ago.

Even at that time, the situation in your homeland was far from good. The political aftermath of the genocides had never quite settled down, and the specter of the Franco-Rwandan War of 2018 still loomed large in the public imagination.

Yes, times were tense, even then. But at least at that time, it was still possible for a boy to attend school. You showed a natural aptitude for technology and mathematics, and did well in your classes. You weren't well-liked, but you had the respect of your teachers, which mattered far more to you.

That all came to a screeching halt in your fifth year, when outright war broke out between the Sudanese-Egyptian Republic and the remaining ten African Union states, which included your country. At ten years old, you were drafted.

Because of your skill set, you were recruited to the AAF - the African Air Force - to operate the on-board computers on AU aircraft. There, you became good friends with your pilot, Myo Kwizera, a Burundian three years your senior. Together, you trained, learned everything there is to know about aircraft, and eventually started flying missions.

The machinery of war fascinated you. It may seem strange, but there was - and still is - a fascination for you in the sheer adrenaline rush of locking onto a target, firing, pitching up until you nearly stalled out, and pumping the throttle out to full blast. The smell of fusion grenades, the jet fuel, the grinding of engines... ah, but you digress.

Being the foolish young boys you were, it seemed to you and Myo that the world could be your oyster. You dreamed of a new, better life in China, the world's capital for both technology and war. You got your chance one day when you were assigned a long-range stealth reconnaissance mission to Cairo. You were to fly a new model of spyplane overhead to collect intelligence on possible civilian military targets.

The plan was simple: you wouldn't be going to Cairo. Instead, you would steal the experimental spyplane and head east. You figured your travel time to Beijing as three hours, tops. You knew that because of the nature of your aircraft, you wouldn't be detected.

Or at least, that's what you thought. You made it out of Africa easily, and flew right over India undetected. Your plan was working flawlessly up until you neared the Chinese coast. What you didn't realize about your craft, you see, is that it was a stolen Chinese design - and the Chinese knew all too well how to detect it and shoot it down. You went down off the coast of Hong Kong.

You never saw Myo, or your plane, again. You assume that the Chinese left you for dead. But by some miracle, you managed to float to safety and washed up in port. You were saved!

Unfortunately, your savior was a container ship crewman with ties to the mob. No sooner were you resuscitated than you found yourself being threatened and beaten by three large men. They didn't believe you at first when you told them, in broken Chinese, who you were and where you'd come from. Fortunately, cooler heads - in the form of their boss, Lu Jian-Guo - soon arrived.

Jon - as Mr. Lu liked to be called - recognized that you were no threat, and that your skills might be of some use. The two of you worked out an agreement: you would stay and work for his organization. As soon as your usefulness came to an end, you would be given a fake passport and a one-way ticket to wherever, provided you never spoke of the mob again. You had little choice.

Mr. Lu's main business was in electronic larceny. It was a simple, but effective business. Along with Lu's other ten hackers, you would work day and night on finding and exploiting new security holes in bank central computers. You barely went outside. Usually, the banks didn't know you'd even been there until it was far too late to stop you - and they never found a trace.

Never, that is, until the third month of your eighth year in the employ of Lu Jian-Guo.

It was your fault, you have to admit. You were desperate - hadn't gotten a single score in over a month. Your cash was starting to run low. And you should have known better - but you walked right into an HSBC honeypot.

Needless to say, that was it for you. You shipped out for Los Angeles that very day.

Before you met Lu Jian-Guo, you had never heard of the PROTECT Act of 2017. After you began working for him, you thought about it nearly every day. The PROTECT Act (or, in full, the "Protecting our Rights and Opportunities against Terrorism through Enhanced Computer Technology Act"), effectively outsourced America's homeland security databases to a Chinese data farm. This was an absolute godsend for Lu Jian-Guo, who had an in with the company that owned some of the replica servers. It made it incredibly easy to fake American identities. Without the PROTECT Act, Jon would probably have been out of business.

All this is by way of saying that Jon didn't give you a fake American passport. Jon gave you a real American passport, and a real American identity in the real American databases.

Of course, an American passport doesn't get you money, a credit history, a job, or a place to live. For a few years you were forced to live in a homeless shelter while working freelance coding jobs using the computers at public libraries. It wasn't much, and you didn't have a steady income stream, but you got by.

Eventually you caught a break: a real, full-time job working as a software engineer at the Bank of America. The irony isn't lost on you, but then again, what could be better preparation for this than your years with the mob? With the money the job brought in, you were able to move into an apartment and have enough money left over to save a bit too. Of course, knowing what you know, you would never give it to a bank. You keep your money in a safe.

Your colleagues at work soon got you into hunting. It didn't take much, of course - you'd loved guns since you first came into contact with them - but now rarely a day goes by when you don't hit the shooting range after work with some buddies, and you make a point of going on hunting trips whenever you can.

In no small part due to those trips, you've also become interested in American politics. Not so much in the petty bickering of the various political candidates - who are mostly identical to each other anyway - but in the larger issues of the future of your adopted country. You believe things have seriously gone awry in the past 50 years or so. Between the environmental disasters, the loss of economic ground to China, India, and Mexico, the failure to engage the rest of the world diplomatically, and - most troublingly - the loss of several major coastal cities to global warming, you are seriously concerned.

Most Americans seem fairly content to go on with their lives ignorant of the extent of the problems. Your hunting buddies in LA, much as you liked them, were no exception. In fact, you didn't find anyone who shared your positions until you met Jude.

Jude is an ex-cop from Chicago. You met through your mutual friend Ray, on a hunting trip. Jude not only agreed with your political views wholeheartedly, he told you about a whole group of like-minded people. The organization was still somewhat informal, but it was starting to gain some notoriety. Led by a woman named Chris, this small, ragtag group of individuals was beginning to put some real political pressure for change on some of the higher-ups in Washington.

You couldn't wait to meet these people. There was only one problem: you would have to move all the way across the country to do it.

Your employer stalled for quite some time on the issue of transferring you. During this time, you talked to Jude nearly every night, on the phone and on the Internet. The two of you became fast friends - indeed, you'd never been this close to someone since Myo. Jude gave your life a real direction, and convinced you that you really could make a difference in this world.

Finally, after over a year, Bank of America approved your transfer. You live simply and without many possessions, so moving was not too difficult. Jude met you at the airport, along with John, a good friend of his from the group. Chris, the leader, was there too, and so was her boyfriend Barry. The four of them met you with open arms - literally - and brought you to Chris's house.

Over dinner, Chris told you about the MAGE Institute, the organization she had created. MAGE, which stands for "Movement Against Global Exploitation," is a policy think tank and political advocacy group. Unlike other think tanks, MAGE sees the future ahead with clear eyes: unless drastic action is taken, the entire planet is in serious peril.

The core of the MAGE Institute consists of a close-knit group of advisers who debate policy and organize actions of the Institute. When, towards the end of the evening, after a lively and enlightening conversation, Chris asked if you would like to join this group, you agreed without hesitation.

Before the first MAGE meeting you attended, Jude pulled you aside and introduced you to James Papadopolous, another MAGE member and a construction worker who used to be a U.S. Marine. After talking for a little while, it became immediately apparent why he had done so. Even within an organization like MAGE, where most people agree that disaster looms unless something is done quickly, most members are too weak-willed to truly see what is obviously necessary. Not James. Here was a man who, like you, had tasted real combat. Here was a man with the skills to really get things done.

You, Jude, and James quickly banded together to form what might accurately be called the "extremist" wing of MAGE. Unlike the other members, you three believe that political action is not sufficient to surmount the problems the world is currently facing. Only a weakling would shy away from facing these issues head on. Direct action is both proper and necessary.

Over the past year, the three of you have quietly and successfully conducted three major missions. No one else in the MAGE Institute has knowledge of these major missions. Most inner-circle members know that you, James and Jude are more willing to use force, and that you've assisted with minor industrial sabotage from time to time. It is simpler to just keep the doubters and weak-willed unaware of the full details and continue to do what needs doing.

The first mission involved bombing the construction site of a new regional headquarters for ExxonMobil in New Jersey. You set back the construction by at least six months and cost ExxonMobil a few million dollars. No one was killed, though two executives visiting the site and a dozen construction workers were injured.

The second major mission was your most ambitious yet, involving the bombing of General Electric headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. Your computer skills got Jude and James into the place, despite heavy security. The two shot three security personnel getting in and out of the place. The explosives went off as planned less than a half hour after their exit. The news reports stated that two more security personnel were killed in the explosion and that the bombing had caused as much as $40 million of damage.

The third major mission was a more personal one. Peter Skala, an industrial mole for the MAGE Institute in the Three Diamonds Foods Corporation, was starting to get pressure. Jude decided to give Three Diamonds something else to worry about and remove a few of the upper-ups in the corporation. Using information previously garnered from Peter plus some you gathered by your own "investigation" skills, the three of you were able to plan and carry out the bombing of an upper-level management meeting of Three Diamonds two weeks ago. Six people were killed and the remaining four seriously wounded.

At present, you, Jude and James are planning an attack on a heavily polluting coal power plant in Kentucky. The thing is a relic, but political connections have kept the thing running and well subsidized for more than four decades. Removing this plant will be a significant blow against a major source of pollution in the state.

In addition to these missions you have been helping to fund MAGE. With the information supplied by Eve, and some of your own work, it has been simple to funnel money from Chevron and certain other polluting companies into MAGE's coffers. Chris and Judy don't know exactly where the money comes from, but they have the sense not to look too closely.

All of this is not to say that you don't respect the views of others in MAGE. Most of the Institute members are quite sensible, intelligent people who happen to disagree with the three of you on this one, albeit important, point. However, there is a faction at the other extreme of MAGE who refuses to even consider reason: those who others call the "peaceniks," consisting of Barry, John, Andrea, and Tamasa.

Andrea, you can forgive for her soft-hearted views. Being an academic, she has limited real-world experience. John, likewise, is probably just rebelling against his brother James (your compatriot). However, Tamasa absolutely should know better: since she grew up in India, she has actually seen the world outside this country and this should have given her some perspective - but she remains a starry-eyed fool. And Barry may be the worst of the bunch: goading them to their stupid positions, he remains ever the manipulator.

All this brings you to tonight: the "passover Seder." You know little of Chris's strange religion, Judaism, which some others in the group also share. However, you are always eager to experience new cultures and traditions, and tonight should be a rich experience of that sort. And you could not imagine a better group of people to share it with.

Enjoy.

Who You Know

• Chris Carpenter - A woman of true faith and vision, Chris is the born leader of the MAGE Institute.
• Barry Magdalene - You don't understand what Chris sees in this weasel of a man, but whatever makes her happy.
• Peter Skala - The older, wiser Skala sister. Peter works for a fishing corporation.
• Andrea Skala - A biologist of some sort, Andrea has been seduced by the honeyed voices of those who believe that words can solve real problems. Ha.
• James Papadopoulos - A true brother in arms, James has been doing good work in direct actions for the MAGE cause. The others do not appreciate his contributions, but you and Jude are grateful for James's efforts.
• John Papadopoulos - You once had an annoying little brother like John. You left him in Rwanda and never looked back.
• Phillip Harrison - Phillip reminds you of the evangelical missionaries you met as a child. He seems a good, if naive, man.
• Frank Bartholomew - You knew many men like Frank in the AAF: broken, because they could not handle the strains of war.
• Tamasa Valappil - As you said, Tamasa should know better than to join up with Barry's band of idealists.
• Jamie Schreiber - Jamie is less a person and more an extension of Chris, like a hand or an elbow.
• Eve Matthews - Although Eve is wheelchair-bound, she is a fighter nonetheless and a woman of great intelligence.
• Judy Isaacson - The money woman. More than once, she has turned down Jude's eminiently reasonable requests for funding.
• Jude Fairchild - You are very grateful to your friend Jude for introducing you into the MAGE Institute. He is one of the few truly strong-hearted people you have met in this country.