Day 75 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 24 (2221 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 24

The email had lead nowhere, it was a throwaway account made on a public service traced back to an IP address obviously masked more than once and a complete dead end. Jacob was expecting no less from someone who had already proven the ability he had to hide his identity and cover his tracks. Blake was still covering the media and all public facing tasks, Jacob was still happy not leaving his hotel room, not for the foreseeable future anyway.

Blake was pulling in a decent amount from his appearances, paid to appear and take the rough with the smooth from the various pundits, hosts, comedians and politicians working their media savvy angles and trying to appear relevant and meaningful when the only person taking any effective action is Darwin himself. He was completely capable of handling himself and the barbs of opponents with no personal attacks or ad hominem assaults of his business partner ever getting through the armour. He had barley been back longer than an hour at a time to check in on the site, the staff of his partner before running off again to the next engagement. The exposure was great for them, not only were they being seen and delivering the message of what Facts Alone was all about, they were driving people to come and see the site, sign up and increase the advertising and sponsorship money that was pouring into the coffers. More often than not Blake Hilliard would be talking about the media role in the Darwin affair, not the hidden meaning or guesswork into the motivations and intent of what they were seeing. It often came full circle back to the very reason for the Facts Alone's creation in the first instance, there was so little known so all the 'extra' information was opinion and blind guessing dressed up as 'expert' derived news. It always lead to the lively debates about the role of guests on the shows, the necessity of the shows and of course the nature of truth and the motivations of everyone there.

Blake was always very clear about his motivation, to expand the reach of his product and to make money, which is why he nearly always said yes and nearly always took the paid gigs. Never kowtowing to the hosts agenda or taking the bait laid by conservative or liberal guests, but playing the same message over and over again. The facts are the facts, everything else is on us, not on what you see. These kind of appearances only added to the conspiracy theories about the involvement with the Darwin identity, despite having been cleared, accused, cleared and re-accused many times over in the media, never by the authorities.

He was sick of being asked the meaning of everything. One of Darwin's more enigmatic and therefore irritating qualities was to provide little or no added commentary to the episodes as they came in. There was no judgement and no statement of justice or right to any of the deaths, they were just there and happening. You could not hear what the players were saying to each other and the camera angles were not always the best for the experienced lip readers who were hired to find more, dig further and fill in some of the gaps as everyone races to find the meaning in whatever this thing is. Everyone thinks they know, that their own interpretation is the one that is right, but nothing is confirmed just because it is popular.

Man is a being in search of meaning, so Plato once said and while most people were looking for that meaning in this most meaningless of entertainments, Jacob was now looking for the facts behind it all. Blake had given him the Plato quote weeks ago, when he had first used it on some news segment or talk show and it had settled on Jacob and stayed for days in the back of his mind. They knew, like with all the other problems they saw in the media, the problems that started them down the road to the service they provided, that it was human nature that drove the biggest issues they had. Desire for explanation, desire for being told the quick way what to think or feel, desire for more, for change and for less and for the same. These fought with each other in everyone, and while it seemed that it was counter-intuitive to the idea of news to actually provide the opposite, there it was anyway. People drove the news by the capitalist ideal, they watched the shows that gave them what they came back for, opinion and the easy road, the agreement and the argument. They cried for truth and fairness but settled instantly on the ones that were exactly what they wanted or the ones that challenged their views. Virtually no one was in it for the Facts Alone, but there were still people asking for it and they made a decent hough living on that principle. They had no narrative in their stories, but they had a narrative about themselves in their own story. On the face of it, whatever was featured on Facts Alone had no narrative, but if you knew who they were, why the Facts Alone service was there and what it did, then the narrative was pre-packaged around whatever it was you were consuming. This was unavoidable, the medium was the message as predicted.

Jacob was looking for the facts, the things that were outside of all the noise that was permeating the popular media and commentary out in the world. If man were truly a being looking for meaning, then Darwin was capitalising on that with his complete refusal to provide any whatsoever. He had stopped and given one message so far and that message was to him, personally. Whatever he intended, he had not intended that Jacob react the way he had perhaps? Certainly something had happened that made him reach out with the barest of messages. Why would he do that unless Jacob and Blake were part of the plan in some way? There was no need for them anymore, it was not like they were any more integral to getting the episodes seen or beyond the police's reach than anyone else with an internet connection now that the game was world wide and famous.

Darwin had stepped out of character to make a statement directly to me, thought Jacob before re-evaluating and then correcting his own assumption. Darwin had stepped into character to make that statement as he had none prior to that. So there was some thought and some ethics or morals behind the programme then, or that could be safely assumed. Only the truly guilty were in the game as players, there were no collateral damaged people that they were aware of. So there was a person or persons there with a semblance of reason and intent, no message perhaps like the business that he was party to, they did not want to just kill, they did not intend to simply carry out painful and public endorsed executions, which some people were calling it (approvingly).

There was no message, the message was in the delivery. Murderers and violent repeat offenders put into situations, the situation rotates when someone dies. The people involved were all taken, over a period of time and held together or separately and then brought together. Different states, different situations, some were known and some were unknown locations. He had to have access to government records as well as private ones, and would have to had money or influence at high levels. Though it was also conceivable that he had nothing but access at low levels, the levels where things get done and people are more likely to keep secrets.

The screen wall was playing the episodes, five of them dedicated to the originals as they had arrived and then 4 more kept an eye on the news, so that if anything broke it would come up there first. Jacob knew that the FBI and the police, the NSA the CIA and anyone with even the remotest chance of discovering the evidence buried in the shows would have been over them already, and they would have followed every lead they could. As far as anyone knew no one had zeroed in on the Darwin location or identity. They would have been looking at the details, the visual clues the props and the clothes, the lighting and anything that made any traceable sense. These were not things that Jacob was any better or any more ready to follow up on, he did not have the access, the information, the warrants or any of the tools that they had.

What he had was new eyes, he had a personal connection even though he knew nothing whatsoever about what it might be, buy he had a personal connection with Darwin. They had been chosen, they had been singled out for the first one and then had been included well beyond the point when they were unnecessary to the Game's continuance. They, he really, had been kidnapped and made a point of to send a message to the FBI. Then he had been given a new message, “The message was not for you”. That original message, the one everyone thinks was a middle finger to the FBI to show them they were not it charge, that was the message that they all assumed was not for Jacob and Blake. Yet they were caught up in the kidnapping, and made part of that message.

Unless that was not the message he meant, not the message that he was referring to. Maybe it was that another message was not for him, but this one certainly was. The message about the message was for Jacob, it was delivered right here to this screen array and no where else. This message was for him, the previous was not.

What did that mean for Jacob, Blake and the Facts Alone crew who were living in a hotel, hiding from a threat they could not really stop? He had accepted the tenuous nature of personal security some time ago, discussing the future with his partner and friend. Blake would remain out front while Jacob would Howard Hughes himself into this hotel, change the perception of who he was, change his appearance and free himself as much as he could from the machine built around him. Two weeks in the hotel and he had a beard and a dishevelled chic going on and was wearing it into who he was. He could focus here, he could step away from who Jacob Edgerton was, who he had been and he could leave that behind and deal in the facts alone. The irony of it all was beyond interesting but thoughts for another day, another life. He could come back to how the nature of their involvement started to rewrite the way people looked at the story when he had time, but right now he just needed to lock it down and focus.

Blake had become the personable and accessible face of the company, despite being the acerbic and impatient, condescending prick that he could be a lot of the time, and the nicer one the one that everyone else in the company relied on, he became the unapproachable and difficult one that wanted to hold everyone away, be alone and crazy.

It was a good cover story, it was a good chance for the two men to change the way they looked at things because people had changed the way they looked at them. Now he was looking again at Darwin, in a new light and in a new way with that personal message in mind.

The Message Was Not Meant For You.

If it was not the message that everyone thought it was, then what message was it? There could be another message, hidden in plain sight and among the video episodes for sure. There was no guarantee that Darwin could have been referring to the one that was obvious to all, the message to the FBI, but that seemed too trite and too blunt. Darwin had been silent through threats, name calling, challenges, insults and taunts all the same way. Calls to come forward, name calling about his competency and cowardice and some direct threats to his abilities to control and defend himself or his position. Not a single reaction, not a single piece of evidence came forward to prove or disprove any of the reactions from the media, the government or the public at large.

So why make a point to the FBI? Unless that was not the point he was making, maybe the message that he was talking about, the kidnapping was meant for Jacob, but it only made sense now with the message that there may be something else.

Jacob was thinking himself in circles, he recognised the madness that it might have been and that he hoped it was not. That was a possibility, that he was reading too much into all of this and that there was no message, and nothing but what was actually seen. He went back to the screens and blew up episode one and watched it again.