All posts by Machine Trooper

To Retort, Or Not To Retort

…That is the question I’ve been pondering for a while with regards to dishonest, drive-by, one-star reviews at Amazon and Goodreads.

Conventional wisdom is for authors to avoid responding to negative reviews, lest you look defensive, yada yada yada. I’ve done that up until now.

But I’ve been mulling over something I read about Trump: He’s one of those successful guys who fires right back when criticised. First debate with Shrillery notwithstanding (because he did actually come off as defensive), this has worked pretty well for him.

I’ve received negative reviews on all my novels, and some of my shorter books as well. But one of them from about a year ago stands out as the wthoughtcoporst. It’s intentionally insulting, first of all–no doubt a ploy to get an emotional rise out of me (all the more reason for me to not take the bait, I suppose, but c’est le guerre). And it’s also intentionally misleading, by somebody who evidently didn’t read the book. It’s got all the fingerprints of an SJW troll attempting to protect unwashed brains around the world from a counter-narrative.

The point-and-shriek review, and my response are here.

Trump Drops the Ball in First Debate

It’s a cardinal sin in any sort of conflict to underestimate your opponent. That’s true in football, boxing, war…and in politics. No matter how weak your adversary is, or appears to be, it is foolish to count your chickens before they’re hatched. To paraphrase Bob Griese, overconfidence leads to arrogance, which leads to carelessness, which leads to defeat.

I’m not saying underestimation was the folly of Trump himself. I do consider him overconfident, but I honestly don’t know what goes through his mind most of the time.

But it definitely is the folly of Trump’s supporters. Loudmouths all over the “Alt Right” and, in fact, all over the neomasculine blogosphere have been talking smack about the debates for months, assuming a Trump victory with some rather outlandish predictions–like Hillary wouldn’t even show up; or that she would collapse on stage or go into a coughing fit.

This smack-talking is nothing new. I remember vividly from 2012, from memes and comment threads, how the cuck Paul Ryan was going to destroy the moron Joe Biden in their debate; and even how RINO Mitt Romney was going to win the election in a landslide.

The enemy is so weak, all we have to do is show up. Like Mike Tyson in Tokyo.

Evil is rarely incompetent. The people who installed Barack Hussein Obama, and who have sold Hillary to half of the electorate already, did not get to where they are by inept buffonery. It is idiotic to assume that Hillary’s handlers can’t prep her to look good for 90 minutes. They made Obama look good, for Kek’s sake.

But the debate wasn’t lost because Hillary looked good. It wasn’t even because the “mediator” is a shill for the Democrats. (Anybody with a functioning brain has come to expect that.)

Trump beat himself.

The man is just not a good speaker. He played defense, letting Hillary take, and maintain, the initiative. He missed opening after opening, wasted time with bumbling explanations that nearly always missed the key points, and often proved himself incapable of even completing a coherent sentence.

The swing voters are just as superficial as the “Alt Right” loudmouths who assume a Trumpslide because alpha male. (And because “master of rhetoric.”) This has been a fact since the very first televised presidential debate. They will choose a silver-tongued devil like Slick Willy or Hussein every time, even when they know they’re being lied to (or should know–this goes back to the whole functioning brain qualifier).  Trump didn’t look “presidential,” or even comfortable. I fully expect to read and hear descriptive words like “rude” and “bully” all day tomorrow. Maybe even “illiterate,” “dullard,” “unintelligent” or the like. That is the image he presented to the ovine masses.

I could never be a politician, for many reasons. One of them is that I am probably even worse than Trump at expressing my ideas orally.  I do not level these criticisms of him out of any notion that I could have performed better.

I’m merely observing that he needs a different game plan if he has any hope of articulating his own ideas or exposing Hillary’s glaring weaknesses in such a fashion that the lapdog media won’t be able to continue hiding them. I’m also observing that the smack-talkers on the Trump Train are not to be taken seriously, now or ever.

Learn from history, lest you repeat it.

…Again.

The Man in the High Castle

Alternate history is a genre full of potential. Unfortunately, the concepts are usually more interesting than their execution in film or fiction.

In a world…

…Where the Axis Powers won WWII, a resistance movement sparks to life in 1962.

Now that you’re hooked with that brilliant high-concept pitch, some expository details:

  • America lost the Second World War in 1952.
  • Nazi Germany got The Bomb first, evidently, and used it to force surrender.
  • Hitler is still in power, but his health is failing.
  • Goering and Goebels (maybe Himmler, too) are jockeying into position to succeed Adolf.
  • The Eastern US is a puppet German state; the western US is occupied by Imperial Japan.
  • In the middle is “neutral territory.”
  • The reason for that neutrality, how it is maintained, and what it means exactly, is not completely clear as of Episode 3.

I see no reason to continue watching after the third episode. In fact, I pretty much knew all I needed to know 15 minutes into Episode 1. Well, probably upon reading the Amazon Prime blurb. But I’m always hoping to be surprised (and am, once in a while), so I clicked on “play.” I kept it playing for three episodes because I had paperwork to do and couldn’t find much that looked better.

There’s really nothing new here. Every part of the story so far, subtly or not-so-subtly, faithfully follows the cultural Marxist playbook. Listing quibbles would be a tedious task. Let’s cut to the Groundbreaking Plot Device:

Wanna know what motivates the resistance movement against the JapaNazis? You might suppose it would have something to do with the twofold reign of terror and a yearning for the freedom that was lost.

You’d be wrong.

See, this “Man in the High Castle” is making propaganda films. (No narcissism in Hollywood. Nope, not one smidgeon of evidence of self-importance.) These films are smuggled through underground networks, and depict an “alternate” outcome of the war, where the Good Guys won. (You know, the one we in this reality believe in.)

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Without these films, Americans are unable to imagine a different course of history from the one they’ve traveled. But now, thanks to being spoon-fed what could have happened differently, it’s time to throw off the shackles of their Axis oppressors!

By watching movies.

Well, there is one act of defiance you might expect from a resistance movement…an extremely incompetent one doomed to fail, that is: an ambush of two quislings in a limousine. Despite complete surprise and a crossfire with automatic weapons (Thompsons, I think, though I wasn’t watching closely) one SS officer armed with a Luger emerges from the kill zone unscathed and takes out all 4-5 ambushers.

(Maybe the scene betrays the director’s closet belief in Aryan Supremacy?)

kinopoisk.ruIt’s a mystery how such silly storytelling can be delivered with a straight face. Perhaps the artistic geniuses behind this series assume an alternate history movie (again, not one iota of painfully obvious self-aggrandizement, here) is revolutionary because they don’t know what life is like outside their leftist echo chamber. In Hollywood (the capitol of Social Justice Propaganda) anyone who dares challenge The Narrative is apprehended by the Thought Police and summarily character assassinated…which means this plot is an example of one of the three Laws of the SJWs: they always project.

In fact, peel away some of the semantic/visual disguises, and this series paints a dystopian portrait of the fundamental transformation to be wrought on America within a few years (but already underway in the Obamanation).

You know–aside from the quibble that the USA they aspire to will not enjoy any prosperity similar to the actual America of 1962.

Amerigeddon–A Review

There’s a scene in the movie The Right Stuff which takes place during the first few months of “the Space Race” after Sputnik was launched. An American muses, “Why do our rockets always blow up on the launch pad?” or something to that effect. I would have had the same question, seeing as how America was still an industrial giant and the world leader in technology. How could Russian rocket scientists be enjoying more success than ours, especially in a country like the USSR where people capable of creative thinking are among those targeted and routinely murdered by the state?

I’ll bet I have the same kind of frustration those late ’50s rocket scientists had. How is it that smart, hardworking, independent thinkers are consistently outperformed at cinematic storytelling by the left-wing hive mind? Why do our movies always suffer poor story telling, cheesy dialog and generally inept suspension of disbelief?

The first couple minutes of Amerigeddon are promising. But then the primary villain was introduced and my cringing began. But I didn’t cringe because of how eeee-veel the bad guys are. The ensuing conversation is corny enough to embarrass a B-Movie Nazi, and it doesn’t get better from there.

Unfortunately, some of the characters are soldiers in the 101st Division. I say unfortunately because the film makers evidently did not bother to recruit a technical advisor with some basic military knowledge. I suppose they get things wrong no worse than most movies and TV shows with alleged military elements, but this is a big taboo for me. I wouldn’t try to shoot a film about doctors or stock brokers without consulting one or more. With all the veterans out here, there’s no excuse for getting the basics so utterly jacked-up.

The plot is fairly weak, though I have seen worse. The hero confronts a Congressional committee about our state of helplessness in the case of an ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP). One wonders what he hoped to accomplish, other than get himself placed on a Domestic Terrorist (“red”) List. The politicians ignore the warning and make veiled threats against the hero.

The EMP occurs once all the exposition is established. A few of the characters know it’s an EMP from the moment the lights go out. Meanwhile, the “soldier” character realizes that the US Army has been subsumed by the UN, and deserts. The rest of the movie depicts a small conglomeration of family and friends retreating to the safety of the rich prepper hero’s backwoods retreat; then fighting off an attack by UN troops in a slipshod, lackluster climactic sequence.

Filming the climactic scenes was probably more exciting than watching them is.

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Even though the producer is a millionaire, and millions probably went into making this film, it comes off as very low-budget. With the right choices, that wouldn’t have been as obvious. But no budget is big enough to compensate for what coulda’/shoulda’ been straightened out in the screenwriting stage.

I wanted this movie to be good. It is not.

The only people who will cut this movie some slack are those like me who appreciate what the film makers were trying to do. Watching it is not going to change anyone’s mind, or nudge fence-sitters into an epiphany…because the glaring problems result in a total package which doesn’t come off as believable.

The culture war is not a fair fight. The left has been sneaking their messages into entertainment for a long, long time. They could afford to be subtle because they had so much time to program the minds of the masses, and almost nobody called them out for it (before the Internet came along, anyway). Most people alive today have had The Narrative spoon-fed to them for all their lives. We can’t boil frogs the way they have, for a number of reasons.

And frankly, we are running out of time. We haven’t yet felt the bite of efforts like “Net Neutrality,” just as the “greatest generation” didn’t suffer the full consequences of the New Deal until it could be blamed on convenient scapegoats (like the free market itself), and like the Great Recession and “housing bubble” didn’t manifest until their architects were retired and could safely blame their successors. And like the catastrophic effects of Obamacare won’t be fully felt until Hussein is duly whitewashed, canonized, and (with the media’s willing assistance) can blame his political rivals. But even beyond “Net Neutrality,” Hillary has hinted at her intent to shut down the alternative media. A clear violation of the law she will swear to uphold and defend, but who is going to hold her accountable to her oath–the FBI?  The DOJ? The Supreme Court? Congress? You?

Yeah, just like Obama has been held accountable.

Ahem. So with time running out, we can’t plant little seeds like the left did over the course of generations. Besides, they were virtually unopposed while we have opposition everywhere. When it comes to the arts, the left has an overwhelming numerical advantage. When it comes to film, TV, video games and other expensive arts, they have every conceivable advantage (other than their Narrative itself, which is built with and on lies, and routinely contradicts itself).

So what can we do?

I’ve drifted too far off-topic already. This movie will not win hearts and minds.

Below is a link to some speculative SHTF tales that are much better (though the plausibility of the Red Dawn remake is questionable).

Chasing Tyson

Mike Tyson’s story is of a journey from the bottom to the top, and back to the bottom. If you saw one of his later fights–like against Lennox Lewis–you would assume him to be overrated, if not a joke. If you had seen him in action on his way to becoming the youngest heavyweight champion in history, you would realize how far he fell.

HolyfieldbeltsIn the days after Tyson’s one-round knockout of Carl “The Truth” Williams, many a casual sports consumer opined that nobody in the game could beat him. I pointed to a smart, skilled light-heavyweight named Evander Holyfield and told anybody who would listen, “If anybody could do it, he could.”

Unknown to most of us, or at least under-appreciated, Tyson’s personal life was a hot mess at the time and his self-destruction was already underway. In his first fight with Frank Bruno, careful observers noted the cracks appearing in his armor. He was no longer a well-oiled wrecking machine. More like a powerful-but-lazy brawler.

Tyson’s mentor/trainer/father figure, Cus D’Amato, had died. For a while his fighting discipline was maintained by trainer Kevin Rooney, but Tyson fired Rooney and replaced him with a posse of sycophants and Yes Men. His skills diminished and his motivation died. He was ripe for demolition when he arrived in Tokyo for his fateful match against a journeyman heavyweight motivated to give the performance of a lifetime.

It’s tragic that once all that talent was stripped off Tyson (by himself, mostly) there was just an ugly little person underneath. But honestly, that is the case with most celebrities. Our culture tends to worship people with Tier One talent, and/or beauty. But those things are gifts, not some outward manifestation of inner goodness.

Having followed Evander Holyfield from before he moved up to Heavyweight, I recognized him for an exceptional warrior. Even as a light-heavy, he never had the power to match Tyson (very few in history have ever had a punch like Iron Mike did), but he was smart, disciplined, had knockout power…plus miles and miles of heart.

The documentary portrays Holyfield as a disrespected hard luck fighter who struggled to emerge from under Tyson’s shadow. It’s an interesting perspective, new to me, because I recognized Evander’s potential from way back (serious fight fans had watched him since the Olympics).

SeolOlympicsBoxers

Holyfield chased a title match against Tyson from when Iron Mike truly was “the baddest man on the planet.” It’s like a tragicomedy how, every time he got close to his goal, fate stepped in to deny him, time and time again.

After a long, winding path to get there, Holyfield finally got his shot. The Tyson he fought was not the fearsome juggernaut of the past, but neither was he the one-diminsional target who faced Lewis and Douglas.

Evander beat him soundly.

Then, in the infamous rematch, Tyson manifested his inner turmoil for the world to see in all its vile ugliness. Instead of channeling his anger into his fists, as Cus D’Amato had taught him, he took the coward’s way out in an unprecedented foul that ended the fight (he tried to bite Holyfield’s ear off).

Because the film maker slanted the history into such a hard luck narrative, I Tysonwildroundhousedisagree with many assessments offered, and am disappointed that many facts are missing or touched on so briefly as to seem irrelevant.

To me, the tragic, hard luck aspect of the whole story is that, because of their performance during the downhill slides of their respective careers, history won’t remember what world-class fighters both of these men once were.

Random Musings on Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Entertainment

CATEGORIES

TEOTWAWKI or “The End Of The World As We Know It” is a brand which has been traditionally applied to post-apocalyptic movies, games, and books. In such narratives, the story begins AFTER some cataclysmic event has forever altered life on Earth.

SHTF or “Shit Hits The Fan” stories are about, or take place DURING the cataclysmic event. (Most “patriot fiction” fits inside this genre.)

It occurred to me we’ve been throwing everything under the TEOTWAWKI umbrella (including my own latest novel). Because I review so much work in the genre, I have now made a SHTF category and moved all (I hope) the relevant posts into it, for ease and accuracy of navigation.

UNFINISHED STORIES

I’ve been consuming a lot of SHTF and TEOTWAWKI entertainment lately. Recently I’ve tossed two books aside before finishing them. That has prompted me to create a new category called “Pet Peeves,” and this is my first post to be categorized that way.

There are a few different tropes that often annoy me enough to quit watching or reading whatever incorporates them. As regular readers of Virtual Pulp can probably guess, left-wing propaganda is one of them (explaining why I rarely go to movies anymore, and never watch TV). Another nauseating trope is the obligatory “strong female character,” which in action/adventure manifests as the obligatory Amazon Superninja.

Another deal-breaker for me is excessive stupidity, in whatever form. Going back to TEOTWAWKI, this is why I didn’t get very far watching the Jericho series on Netflix. It started out with a lot of promise, but smacked me out of my suspension of disbelief too many times to even be engaged by the point where we discover the EMP was caused by the Right Wing Boogeyman (egads! What a surprise!).

I recently picked up a handful of books on free promotion, for my Kindle. One of them featured a rare (for the SHTF genre) protagonist: an extremely naive civilian suburbanite victim of normalcy bias. I know too many people like this guy in real life (throw a rock in North America, and you’ll hit one), and find them a real challenge to engage with on any meaningful level. Yet, for me, it was a unique storytelling perspective (and perhaps overdue), and I guessed he would have to wise up in order to survive.

The character did show signs of maturing over the course of several chapters, and I gritted my teeth through his Pollyana attitude/reactions. I even held my peace, with an eye-roll or two, at how cash was still accepted after the economy, infrastructure, and even government itself were all rendered moot.

Then I came to a scene in which the protag and his companions are waylayed by literal highway robbers. Our hero is armed. The villains are not. He has some supplies he and his pals will require to survive along their journey. The bad guys want to take it.

So he lets them take it, in an alleged compromise (they won’t rape the girl traveling with him).

You have to wonder why some people even have guns, if they’re unwilling to use them even in matters of survival. The sad part is, this character is all too real, and the “compromise” is too perfect a metaphor for how we’ve allowed our freedoms, our government, and our country to be “compromised” away from us. Real life and its stupid people are more than enough, thank-you. This story and character is too much stupidity for something I read voluntarily and sacrifice time for.

OVERHAULING STRAIGHT AMERICA

The population has been so relentlessly conditioned that it’s hard to escape from the malignant sodomiphilic echo chamber even in indie fiction.

Another book in the genre was also from a suburbanite perspective. There were some trace amounts of the “all men are rapists” attitude in this one, but it wasn’t so “in your face” as to make it unreadable. I had finished reading about 90% of the book before the author sucker-punched me by revealing a character as homosexual.

The reaction to this by one of the main characters was how all reasonable, “open-minded” people are supposed to react: immediate support, equal or surpassing what a “straight” individual should get. Just in case there are still some dirty brains still out there, the efforts to wash them are ubiquitous and never-ending.

No thanks. Pass. I have no interest in reading the remaining 10%.

THE ROAD/JOURNEY PLOT

This really should have been pondered long ago, but only lately has it really become a point of fascination to me that 95-99% of post-apocalyptic tales depict a journey of the protagonist. Most often, the journey is taken in order to reunite with family.

On the one hand, this makes a lot of sense. When the SHTF a lot of people will be separated from loved ones by varying distances. They’ll be away on a business trip, or at the office, grocery store, etc., when disaster strikes. So it’s a valid plot.

It’s also a grossly overused plot. So overused that I’m now rethinking a few sequels to False Flag, and a zombie parody I had in mind.

That’s all for now. Happy weekend.

My All-American

I’ve been at this point before–where I’m convinced the entertainment industry is incapable of producing any movie other than formulaic pap, recycled vehicles from decades past, chick-flicks (overt or disguised) or “social justice” agitprop. Then I stumble across something like My All-American, and am amazed that something worth watching can still slip through the cracks.

There are only so many plot variations to be utilized in a jock story, so, granted: one can argue that this film should be included in the “formulaic pap” comment I made above. In fact, you might note many similarities between this movie and Rudy and The Express (or, going back farther, to Brian’s Song, or, changing sports, The Natural). Nevertheless, this biopic should be celebrated by red pill masculists everywhere–especially those raising a son, yearning for something worth watching together.

My All-American tells the story of Freddy Steinmark, who was born to play football. Gifted with natural athletic ability, his fatMyAllAmerican1her, while working two jobs to support the family, pushed Freddy to relentlessly expand on his talent with rigorous conditioning. His mother (a stay-at-home mom, it seems) was on-board with her son’s disciplined upbringing, complimenting her husband’s stern agenda with loving encouragement.

That family dynamic may not have been so unusual in the stories of yesteryear, but it is downright alien in the reality of America today.

Not only is the home life of Steinmark idiosyncratic in our present cultural context, but Freddy himself was exceptional, in any time and place. He is the model of what a young man should be–and what most parents would once have aspired to raise. To list his positive qualities would make this post too long, but I’ll list three that would seem to be diametrically opposed in any other film coming out of Homowood, Commiefornia. He is:

  • Forthright
  • Humble
  • Thoroughly masculine

Ah, crap, I have to list a couple more. The Freddy Steinmark of this film shows the guts, determination and toughness that once exemplified the average American male. Considered too small for most college football programs to take him seriously, there is no “quit” in him, and he fights an uphill battle toward a full-ride scholarship with the Texas Longhorns. I should mention here that other players on the team, and the coach, are developed just enough to make me want to read the book for more details. Despite Steinmark being a terror at defensive back, the team was a team, not a one-man-show. I’m thankful for the authenticy of the film’s depiction of how a football team works (or can work, anyway) from the inside.MyAllAmerican

One very interesting subplot depicts the starting quarterback–a phenomenal player with a cannon arm–losing his position to a fourth-stringer with better instincts for reading opposing defenses, and who more readily adapts to the coach’s new “triple option” offensive scheme.

Though he is a devout Catholic, Steinmark’s portrayal (by Finn Wittrock) is a case study in Christian integrity–not the wussified churchianity so en vogue on both sides of the pulpit in pretty much every denomination today. Even the leading lady’s (Sarah Bolger) portrayal is a departure from the obligatory grrrrl power! cliche`s rammed down our collective throats everywhere else. The only time she gets “assertive” with boyfriend Freddy, it is due to genuine concern over his well-being. (Director Angelo Pizzo, however, does overdo it trying to milk our emotions in a few smarmy scenes no doubt included to appeal to the females in the audience.)

MyAllAmerican2

I’m not sure how faithful the movie is to the true story of Freddy Steinmark, though it does ring true. In any case, you won’t find many movies made since the early 1960s or so which present unabashed manhood in such a positive light.

Negotiating With Her For Marriage

Jennifer Scarred Wolf was an early riser. Joshua Rennenkampf was not.

By the time Josh got up and dressed, her bed was made and she was nowhere to be found in the house. Josh peeked out the window and saw her Jeep was still there, so he figured she was out taking a walk or picking flowers or some of that other girly stuff she liked to do. It was one of the things he loved about her, come to think of it: she was so easy to please, even just nature made her happy.

Another thing he loved about her was that she didn’t watch much TV. When she did, it was usually the Weather Channel. She’d sit and watch it like it was a fascinating interview or something.

Josh booted up his work station in the living room. He still had work to do on a couple of his contracts, but decided to get started on Tommy’s request instead. This was the weekend, after all.

He had lost track of time when Jennifer came inside, shedding her jacket.

“Good morning,” she greeted, cheerily. “Brrr. It’s nippy up here in the mornings.”

“Morning,” he replied, taking a sip of coffee.

She pressed her small, cold hands against the back of his neck and he jumped at the icy sensation.

“Told you it was nippy,” she said, laughing.

“You’re such a brat in the mornings,” he said, finding her cheer contagious despite himself. “Jeez, it’s not that cold outside, but your hands are like icicles.”

“Cold hands, warm heart,” she sing-songed, sweetly.

“Where were you?”

“Oh, I played with the dogs a little,” she said. “Brushed Indy down. I had to do something while you were sleeping your life away. I’ll go make breakfast in a minute.”

“Sounds good,” he said, rubbing her hands in between his to warm them.

She sat in his lap and glanced at the monitor. “What’s ‘MK Ultra’?”

“Just one of the rabbit trails I followed, checking into something for your uncle.”

Her expression turned thoughtful as she skimmed over some of the text on screen. “Monarch… Montauk… What is all this?”

Josh alt-tabbed to another window. “Oh, just some conspiracy stuff you probably don’t want to hear about.”

“Ah,” she said, poking him in a ticklish spot. “Trying to find out whether I’m real or a lizard-person?”

“Oh, I know you’re reptillian,” he deadpanned. “Your hands just gave it away, you two-legged iguana.”

She frowned, started to speak a couple times, then hesitantly said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Josh sobered in an instant. He dreaded “the Talk,” but knew, sooner or later, they were going to have it. Was now the time? They’d already had a couple Big Talks recently—surely he had earned a postponement?

They had the Religion Talk, wherein he had assured her he had no problem with her faith. He believed in God; just didn’t know much about Him and never made an effort to know. He’d never read the Bible before meeting her, and still wasn’t very keen on it, or going to church. But he suspected there was something to Christianity, or the pinkos wouldn’t be so rabid in their efforts to smear it.

They had the Political Talk, wherein she acknowledged the Hegelian patterns he pointed out in economic and foreign policy over the last century; conceding it might be plausible that people in authority could conspire to frame their enemies and kill innocents just to accumulate more power for themselves and push an agenda that couldn’t achieve popular support otherwise. She just didn’t like to dwell on it, and he could certainly understand that.

The Talk that was still forthcoming was about their future together–if there was to be one.

“I’ve been thinking about how my dad and Uncle Tommy were framed for that murder in Indonesia,” Jennifer said.

Relief flooded through Josh’s brain, despite the sobering subject of her murdered father. “Yeah?”

“Uncle Tommy thought it must be because of what they were investigating before they left. He couldn’t think of anything else it could be.”

(from Chapter 25)

The dogs began barking outside, then he heard a droning noise—an engine straining to pull a vehicle uphill on his private drive from the highway below. He changed seats and cued up his security camera feed. He toggled between the cameras and saw a subcompact creeping up his drive. There appeared to be only one person inside but he couldn’t tell who it was.

He strapped on the shoulder rig for his sidearm, pulled his jacket over it, and yanked his Mini-14 off the rack before heading outside. He drifted into the woods to the back of his parking area, and took position at a hide which gave him a good view of the drive and parking area, while concealing him fairly well.

When the subcompact pulled up and stopped, he recognized Paul Tareen’s daughter, Terry. She remained inside her car, though, staring warily at the two large pit bulls standing stiff-legged on either side of the car, watching her.

Josh broke from cover and strode toward the car, telling the dogs to stand down. Ragnarok and Valkyrie ran back to join him, then matched his pace, one on each flank. He had really hit the jackpot with these dogs. They responded to command very well with minimal training.

Seeing Josh, Terry got out of the car with a dimpled smile and a casserole pot. “Howdy, neighbor!” she called.

Josh slung the rifle around his back and said, “Hey, Terry. Never seen anyone in your family drive a car before. Thought you did everything on horseback.”

She laughed and lifted up the ceramic casserole pot. “I couldn’t figure out how to carry this on a horse.”

When he reached her, he extended his hand to shake. She hugged him instead. It was a brief contact, but the message was received: she was interested in being more than a handshake kind of neighbor.

“What’s that?” he asked, gesturing toward the dish.

“I made apple cobbler,” she said, cheerily. “We couldn’t finish all of it, so I thought you might like to, before it goes bad.”

“Well thanks,” he said. “That’s real nice of you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, beaming. He felt guilty that this young, possibly innocent girl was so sprung for him.

“Well, come on inside,” he said, waving toward his house. “Might as well visit a spell, since you took the trouble to drive over.”

He led her inside. She asked polite questions and made polite comments about his dome home while looking around like a bumpkin in New York City.

Josh retrieved bowls and spoons from the kitchen. “Why don’t you have some with me?”

“I guess I’ll have a little bit,” Terry said, grinning again.

She was a pretty girl, with a natural willowy figure, and more feminine than most of her generation. Her rustic upbringing by a gruff father and no-nonsense mother had gifted her with manners and a degree of humility despite her youthful confidence.

Maybe marriage could live up to the hype with a woman like this. He hoped she would find a man who appreciated what she brought to the table, and not some abusive jerk, alcoholic, or deadbeat.

They chatted as they ate the cobbler at his small table, and he again felt a pang of guilt about her attraction to him.

“Just out of curiosity,” he asked, “does your family know you came over here?”

She nodded. “Yeah, why?”

“And they’re okay with it?”

She laughed. “They’re pretty sure you’re not a serial killer, or we wouldn’t have had you over for Independence Day.”

“How do I know you’re not a serial killer?” he asked.

She laughed some more. “Don’t ever make me mad, or you might find out.”

After a couple glances into his eyes, she said “Y’know, it’s going to be dark soon. Do you think you can show me how to navigate by the stars?”

By country girl standards, Terry was coming at him with all guns blazing.

He had given her family a copy of the Ranger’s Handbook, from which they could learn as much about using the stars as he could teach her. On the 4th of July at their house he had shown her family the basics of land navigation with a compass. He also answered a lot of questions about communications and military tactics, and discussed with Paul teaching them some more skills in the future. They ate a big meal cooked by Terry and her mother, and watched American Sniper on the flat screen, too.

“There’s not all that much to it,” he said, “but that’s fine.”

What cobbler they didn’t finish went into a plastic container, which he stored in the fridge. Terry asked if she could wash the casserole pot and lid in his sink, and volunteered to wash the other dishes, too. He gladly consented, and they continued to chat as she did.

She slyly worked in a few probing questions about Jennifer. Josh answered honestly that he wasn’t sure whether they would stay together, or even if they were still officially together right then. He wasn’t seeing anyone else, and didn’t think Jennifer was, but who could tell, regarding such things?

By the time Terry finished the dishes it was getting dark. They went outside and played with the dogs until it was dark enough to see the constellations clearly. He pointed out what she should be able to see on any clear night in the northern hemisphere, and how to judge direction by their position. The most important object to find was Polaris, the North Star, which was easily done after locating the Big Dipper.

As he pointed things out, she closed the distance until she was backed up against him. Her body language suggested that he should wrap her in his own body heat to fend off the cool evening air. Josh hadn’t always been a hermit, so he knew what was going on. And the pleasance of her proximity was overcoming the guilt he’d felt earlier. She was only a few years younger than Jennifer, after all…

Their age difference didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. It was only thoughts of Jennifer that allowed him to keep his hands off Terry.

He said he had work to do, and sent her home. She bid goodbye with a smile that promised she would test his resolve again soon.

Despite himself, it was hard to concentrate on work that night. He went to bed with the idea that it really sucked being alone sometimes, and only then realized that Terry had been the victor in their friendly hormonal struggle.

The next night Josh finished the cobbler, and Jennifer called as he did. When she asked what he was doing he naively answered honestly, and the conversation quickly became an interrogation. Before it was finished, Jennifer found out where the cobbler came from, who delivered it, what happened afterwards and how long Terry visited that night. Having shown what he thought was respectable restraint, Josh answered her questions honestly, but was on the verge of telling her to mind her own business more than once.

Instead, he went the playful route and took every opportunity to crack jokes and poke fun.

He was tired of being in sexual limbo. He had been content with going Galt before meeting Jennifer, including the whole celibacy aspect. But she had awakened hungers in him which went unresolved for an extended period, and it was kind of satisfying making her squirm for a change.

Instead of getting pissy and hanging up in a huff, though, Jennifer said, “I’d like to come visit again this weekend.”

Jennifer drove up Friday. She had an interview at a law office in town before coming to his house. He avoided obvious questions like, “Why do you want a job here when you live in Oklahoma?”

He suspected any such question would trigger an ambush she had planned, to instigate the Talk.

But he knew the Talk was inevitable, and probably this weekend, so he instigated it himself when they put Denver and Indy back in the stables after a ride.

It was time to let the other shoe drop. Maybe she would take the deal he was willing to offer. If so, great. More likely, she wouldn’t. She could get on with her life and find the perfect supplicating church boy to marry, if that’s what she wanted. Josh could go back to being a hermit, or have some fun with Terry once he got over Jennifer…or whatever. He just wanted to know, and cut his losses if it wasn’t going to work out.

The Talk took them through the evening chores, back into the house, and finished on the couch.

“You’ve got expectations, right?” he asked, after they’d gone over the love motive extensively. She’d been claiming to be in love with him ever since Indonesia.

“Expectations?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”

He sighed, uncomfortable with these touchy-feely conversations about relationships and other daytime TV fodder. “I mean you want to get married. You’ve made that pretty obvious. So you must have certain expectations about how it’s going to be. What do you expect a husband to bring to the table?”

“You make me sound so demanding,” she said.

I’ve got expectations,” he said, shrugging.

“Like what?”

“Fine, Jennifer: I’ll go first: Outside of war, nuclear attack, or natural disaster, I’m not moving anywhere.”

She almost smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to leave this place.”

Jennifer didn’t like the cold, but she loved snow. When she visited he would often wake up to find her drinking a cup of coffee just staring out the window at the scenery, bundled up in blankets like an Eskimo even though it was warm in his house.

“Okay, good,” he said. “But I’m the king of this castle. I have the last say and the bottom line on decisions, and I expect you to back me up, even if you disagree with me.”

She flinched. “You expect me to just keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told?”

“I said king; not tyrant,” he replied. “We can talk about stuff. You can tell me what you think. If I see you’re right about something, then fine—we’ll go with that. But if I listen to all your reasons and still decide on something else, you need to let it drop and not pitch a fit.”

“That’s not really fair,” she said. “You could refuse to admit I’m right, and stick with your decision just to be stubborn.”

He shrugged again. “If you can’t trust me, then you got no business marrying me.”

She mulled this over for a while. “I guess I’m not really against you being king of the castle. But I would expect to be queen.”

“I have no problem with that,” he said. “Just don’t start thinking we’re on a chess board.”

“What else?” she asked, warily.

He hadn’t expected to get past that one. He had been sure she would storm out calling him a sexist pig and plenty other names. Still, she hadn’t explicitly agreed to the term, either. He decided not to press her on it right now, because he had plenty more he was sure would bring her claws out.

“I’m not gonna tolerate disrespect from you,” he said. “I don’t care how mad at me you are, or if you’ve had a bad day, or if I’ve done something really stupid. If you’re my wife, then you give me respect, period. You can disagree with me or whatever without disrespecting me.”

She nodded. Well, that was easier than expected, too.

“You have to put up with my lunacy, ” he said. “Because I’ll probably never change. My worldview isn’t going to change; I’m not giving up my guns; I’m not going to get a national I.D. if it becomes mandatory; I’m not getting kitchen appliances with microchips for the smart grid; I’m not going to register or get permits for anything I already have a right to.”

“I’ve never called you a lunatic, Joshua. I just get scared sometimes because you dwell on gloom and doom stuff so much. I think I ought to get a gun of my own. Something like what Uncle Tommy has, but maybe doesn’t kick as hard.”

At that point Josh’s goal began to transform from scaring Jennifer away as fast and decisively as possible, to seeing if there was actually a glimmer of hope they could be together long-term.

“My rule about cellphones stands,” he added. “And anything else that can be used to spy on me. That’s a deal-breaker.”

This was it. No woman on Earth, once aware of cellular technology and social networks, would ever give them up. They would die first.

She sighed. “I know. What else?”

His jaw dropped. “Do you mean you agree?”

She nodded, frowning. “I’ll go along with that. But there’s got to be some kind of compromise we can both live with. For now: okay. Anything else?”

“W-well,” he stammered, still off balance, “you’re not allowed to kick me when I’m down.”

“Okay.”

He scratched his head. This had gone completely different than he had imagined. Normally he would suspect she was lying just to trap him, but she had proven honest to a fault so far. “I want sex,” he said.

“That’s part of marriage,” she said, with a reserved laugh.

“Well,” he licked dry lips, feeling awkward about all this, “I want it often, and I want…you know, passion. You can’t just lay there like you’re bored or being traumatized.”

“I don’t think I would be like that,” she said.

“You can’t be claiming headaches all the time, or you don’t ‘feel sexy,’ or other excuses.”

“What if I’m sick?” she asked, with an indignant sharpening of tone. “I’m still expected to…?”

“No, no,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Legitimate reasons are one thing. But you can’t use sex as a weapon. It’s not a training tool for you to withhold as punishment or give as a reward. It’s just something we do. And if you’re not gonna enjoy it…if you’re not gonna give it a good ol’ college try, then I really don’t want to go through the trouble. What’s the point of us sharing a bed?”

Jennifer chewed on her lip for a moment, then said, “I’ve got some expectations, if you’re done.”

“I think those are the big ones,” he said, feeling dazed. “If we can agree on those, we can work out the rest.”

“Okay,” she said. “If I’m going to be your wife, then we have to find a good church somewhere around here, and I expect you to go with me.”

This was no surprise. “I can do that. Sundays and Wednesdays?”

“Probably,” she said. “We can take a day off now and then. But we might get invited to extra things I want to go to.”

“I’d be willing to do that,” he said.

She looked relieved. “Also, I’d like you to keep an open mind about it.”

“About Christianity?” he asked.

She nodded. “Just give it the benefit of honest consideration, the way you’ve done with other things you believe.”

He shrugged. It seemed like a fair compromise.

“And I would raise our kids to believe in God,” she added quickly. “To read the Bible, and believe what’s in it.”

“You can’t force people to believe something, Jennifer. I’m living proof of that.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said, putting her hand on his. “I’m saying I’m going to teach my kids the truth as I see it. When they get old enough, they’ll make up their own minds just like we do. But they’ll at least have the benefit of the option.”

“I’ll go along with that,” he said.

“You won’t try to contradict what I teach them?”

“No, but while we’re on the subject of kids…”

“Hold that thought, please,” she said, pointing an index finger in the air. “We’ll get to that in a minute.”

“Okay,” he said. “Go for it.”

“I won’t tolerate abuse,” she said. “That’s a deal breaker for me.”

“That’s no prob…wait a minute. Define ‘abuse.’ Does it include when you don’t get your way, or you don’t like something I say?”

“You can’t hit me,” she clarified. “Ever. Or choke me or…manhandle me…”

He waved his hands and shook his head. “Physical rough stuff. I wouldn’t ever do that to you.”

“But just like you don’t want to be disrespected,” she added, “you can’t be verbally abusive, either.”

“What’s verbal abuse? Define that.”

“I’m not talking about arguments…”

“You mean sarcasm?” he asked. “Because I use sarcasm all the time, even when I’m not upset.”

“Sometimes,” she said, twisting her lips as if searching for the right words. “Any kind of character assassination directed at me. Anything meant to demean or defame or belittle me.”

“Okay.”

“I expect faithfulness,” she said. “If you’re my husband, there can’t be any other woman.”

“Give me sex on a regular basis and I won’t want any other women,” he said, a bit defensive.

“Joshua, I’m serious. I can’t tell you how serious I am about this.”

He squeezed her hand. “Same thing on the flip side, though. You have to be faithful, too. No exceptions, no excuses.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “Believe me: I’ve had opportunities.”

“I’m on board. But it’s a two-way street.”

“And just for the record,” she said. “Once I’m married, I plan to give my husband all the sex he can handle.”

Josh said nothing, but his mind sure was noisy right then.

“I’d like to have three children,” she continued. “Maybe more.”

“Hmm. Who decides if more and how many more?” Josh asked.

“Something we’d have to agree on. Would you give me at least three?”

Josh thought about it. “Yeah. But what if I decided no more, and you still wanted more?”

She took a deep breath. “If I couldn’t convince you, then I guess I’d have to respect your wishes.”

He couldn’t believe how this was going.

“But we can’t argue in front of the kids,” she said. “We have to work out disagreements in private, and present a united front to the family.”

“Fair enough,” Josh said. “And you can teach them Bible stuff, but I’m gonna teach them to shoot, hunt, trap and prep.”

She seemed to look a little less worried the further along the conversation went.

“I know you love your privacy,” she said, “but I want to be able to have family over.”

“Tommy and Linda are welcome here any time,” Josh said, with a magnanimous gesture. “Same with Gunther and Carl. And Uncle Jay for that matter. I’m just not so sure about Takoda, though.”

“Me neither, right now,” Jennifer said. “But what about my mother?”

“If she minds her manners, we can do that.”

And we should go there to visit them sometimes, too,” Jennifer said. “And you’ll have to be sociable.”

“Life of the party—that’s me.”

“And I’ll work as a legal assistant; or at whatever job I can find, if you want me to,” she continued. “But when we have our first baby, I’m done. I stay home and raise our children after that.”

“You mean you don’t want to build a career first, and wait until your 30s to start popping them out?”

She shook her head.

He was stunned. He knew Jennifer marched to a different drum, but had no idea she was this divergent from the feminist norm. “Well…how soon do you want to start popping them out?”

“We can spend a year or two just enjoying each other,” she said. “But I don’t want to wait any longer than that.”

“Done. And you don’t have to get a job at all if you don’t want, baby or not. I make enough consulting to keep the bills paid here.”

She cracked a smile. “Done? Does that mean my terms sound acceptable?”

They did. In fact, he was getting excited. Truth be told, she had him at “all the sex you can handle.”

With the big concerns dealt with, they moved on to smaller stuff. He felt even better about the whole thing when he found out she didn’t want some huge dog-and-pony show of a ceremony. It seemed she understood that the marriage would be more important than the wedding.

As the exchange of terms lightened up and wound down, she snickered a little and said, “You know, I guess you could say what we’re both insisting on is an old pre-war, maybe even Puritan, marriage.”

“Welcome to the new frontier,” he quipped, kissing her hand. “The new counter-culture.”

“Well, except for your doomsday prepping, anyway,” she said.

Josh snapped his fingers. “Hey, wait right there. I got something for you.”

He left her on the couch, went back into his workshop, found what he wanted on the bench next to the soldering iron, and returned to the living room with the customized phone.

“I was saving this for your birthday, but it’s ready now.” He handed it to her and she stared curiously at it. “I modified it. It’s safe to use here at the house or wherever. And you don’t need a warranty plan from the carrier. If it breaks, I’ll fix it.”

She turned it on, eyes lighting up before the screen did. “Does it have Internet?”

“Of course,” he said, laughing. “It’s rooted. You get not only wi-fi but 4G, free. Texting. A few aps. But you can’t trust all the aps out there, so you have to check with me before you download anything.”

She threw her arms around him and squeezed with surprising strength for her size.

He slapped her on the thigh and stood. “Go get dressed up.”

“What?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from the phone to look at him. “Why?”

“I’m taking you to a restaurant in town,” he replied. “There’s a question I want to ask you there.”

(from Chapter 30 of False Flag)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

On Saturday July 30 2016 all the novels from the Retreads Series are on sale at Amazon for 99 cents.