Power is realized and sustained by sufficient numbers of Adoptables benefitting from active and willing participation in the vision and purpose of The Infinite Game, such they stand and deny, through conflict and violence, if forced to by those seeking its end.
The Eternal War | Doctrine | Religion | Responsibles’ Principle
Those things which shape a man, more often than not, happen when he’s very young, still but a mere child. Long before the fullness of those things can be recognized and understood. One of the most impactful events in his life, one which would shape him fundamentally for the remainder of his life. Happened when Early was still very young, six or seven years old. He can never remember exactly how old he was on that day. So much of those early years – the years of pain – little more than major memory gap filled blurs of lessons, hunger, cold, pain and abuse.
It was a day in which his mother had one of her hippy gatherings at the commune she’d founded in the high mountains of Washington, only a walking distance number of miles from Canada. A ride on horseback into British Columbia he’d made many times. High up in the Cascades, where the rugged peaks are covered in snow for six months of the year. Up where the tree line ends and bare rock and only sparse shrubs, plants and mountain flowers survive and bloom. Up in the territory of grizzlies, mountain lions and the impossible acrobatic feats of mountain goats. The land of thirty below zero weeks in winter.
His birth mother, with whom he lived until age fourteen, Aftyn Anne du Waleis, was an unusually tall and imposing person, pale of skin and dark of hair, with a strong Scottish face punctuated by a rather demonstrable nose, he'd inherited, set below a disquieting pair of deep-set grey-green eyes. Eyes which always seemed to harbor, to barely contain, the very dark fires of Hades within.
“Can we not just get on with it, get this bloody final day behind us.” His mother, in one of her moods. The sort meant you listened, while remaining as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. The final day of an event, the kind drew the most extraordinary people from around the world. These events on the commune were becoming less frequent, though. Wealthy, fascinating and famous people showing less and less. For reasons his very young self would only come to understand in the lean years to follow.
When the Yom Kippur war had broken out a year prior, preventing a future on a Kibbutz for her and her two young sons. Aftyn had instead, moved them all high up in the mountains to land she’d purchased to establish a commune. Before the one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old farmhouse went up in flames in the dead of winter, before the hippies, mostly upper middle and upper-class sons and daughters, and the parasites who live on them, dealers, gurus, spiritualists, et al, stopped coming. There were several of these events a year in the first years. Now only a couple. All of them were events she hated, despising her own class as she did. Despite this, she seemed incapable of not putting such together and hosting them.
“Early, what must you do?” A question often asked in different ways and around different subjects by Aftyn, of her despised and hated elder son. The answer to which he had better be prepared to give. Answer denoting his having paid attention, close attention. Having not only listened but having thought. She may have hated the fact she’d become pregnant in what was meant to be a seduction to humiliate her mother in her mother’s own social circles. She may have despised the product of that pregnancy and how the birth of this illegitimate son had fundamentally changed the course of her life. But he was none-the-less one of us. Even if he was then, a bastard.
“See the grift.”
“Is there always a grift?” Looking glancingly at Early with those eyes borrowed from Hades himself. Her mind working on all the last-minute items needed to be addressed as the guests arrive, shed their travel clothes, greet one another and otherwise prepare to gather in the main room, around the large stone fireplace set back into the wall, and the comfortable and intimate seating area wrapped around its open face. This the third and final day of the event.
“Yes.” While she may not seem to be, she’s paying close attention to his responses. “They must trick us out of what they can’t take.” She only nods and motions him to continue. He’d gotten the answers right. If not, she would’ve smacked the living daylight out of him. Right there and then.
“What’s most essential for a grift?”
“Someone conditioned to believe the improbable.” There’s the briefest of a grimace crosses her face. He could not then, and wouldn’t for many years, understand the threat plagued her from within their very own family. Even though their lives were about to change dramatically, and all the signs were already there. On this day, he was yet unaware of the ruthless and brutal all-out war she was losing with her own family. Straight up cruelty, fraud, theft and corruption, not dependent on a grift. Power being exercised. Ancient power. The power of an angry woman and a weak man, of female verssu female competition, of true ruthlessness.
Before turning her back on her own, coming to the Americas. Seeking the spiritual path. She’d been educated at all the right schools on the continent, followed by Berkeley pre-med and Columbia Med School. She’d never practice medicine however, and never would. Result of a drug arrest shortly after graduating med-school making such difficult, but not impossible. An ever-increasing touch of madness and an inability to understand the very concept of work. And an utter inability to not be a member of the class she was born, raised and educated in, by far the greater impediment. These events of elites, petty elites, and hangers on she could do quite well however, at least in those years. Before full on brilliant madness settled in to stay. That is, put together a diverse group of rather interesting people, soe world famous, and get them to talk openly, freely.
“Conditioned how?”
“Education and spirituality.” Even at his young age he knows she’s taught him these things out of her own direct experience. The price for which he’d watched in her rapid aging, even though she was then still quite young and rather strikingly, if coldly, beautiful.
“Why these?”
“Education conditions people to believe they’re smarter than they are. Mistaking linguistic capacity for intelligence. Spiritual pursuit conditions people to be emotionally and psychologically open to deceit and manipulation, to believe in the unprovable.” There was more to this dance, this conversation she’d had with her sons since their earliest memories. More she’d learned as first-hand lessons. At great personal cost.
Her turning to go into the main room to greet her guests, tells Early he’d held his own this time. More would be expected of him today, in there, in the gathering place. It was in there, around the great fireplace, where some of the most formative conversations and experiences occurred, formative on Early’s development and also that of his younger brother Brin. Sadly, where Early would be painfully yet powerfully and positively shaped by all of it. Brin would not come out so well; a drug addict, violent criminal and murdered, all prior to the age of twenty-one. A weight Early would carry his entire life.
“There’s something else going on here.” Aftyn says to Richard, the only guest remaining after the three days, late on this final day. “There’s someone or something with an agenda behind this move.”
“Yes, but which faction.” Richard replies. He’d seen a lot as a Green Beret during back-to-back tours in and around Vietnam. Even more since he’d left the Army and become one of Sonny’s trusted guys. “There’ve been increasing efforts by more than one intel agency to gain access to more than just the Oakland chapter.”
“I’m not surprised. Something’s being built out.” Aftyn responds to this revelation. “Related to law enforcement. Or are these separate efforts?”
“These are in addition and are distinctly separate from all the usual law enforcement efforts.”
“A long game is being played. Whatever’s being built out won’t be fully in place for decades.” Aftyn ponders this. It fits the conversation she had with others in this very room, and before even moving into the high country. While still in San Francisco.
“Has the earmarks of intelligence operations. Preparing the battlespace. The exact same techniques and tactics we used in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and you Brits used before us all around the empire.” Richard speaks from direct, hands-on experience.
“Before Mary funds these efforts, we must draw out who’s behind it all.” Mary, whose father co-founded one of the most powerful technology companies in the world, one which helped launch Silicon Valley. Her family yet another newly wealthy family seeking to do good with its money. Naïve to the ways in which the world really works, all the threats and efforts to get at their wealth, connections and capacities through outright theft, subversion of effort or through unlawful use of power.
“Let’s just say we’ve influence with the building owner and local sheriff.” Richard, all six foot six and three hundred pounds plus of him, smiles ruefully.
“Mary is Mary. She’s going to fund this.” Aftyn grimaces. “It touches all of her virtue buttons. We must know which faction is involved, before she does.”
“Sonny knows the law firms and banks involved. I’m sure some procedure can be found to delay everything.” Richard downs the last of the Irish whiskey he’d been nursing for the past hour. Reaches for the bottle to pour another. “We’ve a little time. It’s getting close to the end of summer.” Pausing as he pulls a finger from his glass. “These stuffed shirts do like to go on that last vacation before summer’s end.” Richard says, smiling ruefully again.
“Have to draw out the handler or lawyer coordinating these efforts. Whomever is ultimately responsible and the point of contact for this effort. This will show us which faction.” Aftyn continues.
“Depending on the faction, given Mary’s family and the power of those who want access and control over that fortune, this could be quite dangerous. Getting ourselves involved, even only in collecting intelligence, will leave a signature.” Richard responds. “This could be mortally dangerous.”
“Your type gets right to the point of it.” Aftyn smiles knowingly at Richard. A look exchanges between them Early has seen before. Richard would be staying the night again. There were more than one former Green Beret and SOG who’d become a biker, during and after the war. Having had the illusion of theirs as an honorable country ripped from them. Many of them riding their Harleys through the high country of Washington and Idaho. Many of them stopping through the club’s property just to the east of Aftyn’s one hundred acres.
It had taken almost a year to do so, but the handler, an attorney with one of the old Scandinavian firms in New York, was drawn out. His mother, Aftyn, discussed the findings of the conversation, as she’d been told, with young Early. The content of a conversation between the handler and Sonny’s, the club’s, attorney and the representative. In which, a rather long-term, stringent and lucrative contract was hashed out. Lucrative for the club. Extremely expensive for the faction the representative represented.
“How do we know the faction?” Aftyn asks of the son she hates but must prepare for the life ahead.
“Each faction has its own preferred grift.”
“What are the grifts and which faction are they most associated with?”
“Social justice, advanced technology, and secret knowledge.” Early recites. “Social justice is preferred by Marxists. Advanced technology is preferred by Fascists. And secret knowledge is preferred by seekers.”
“Who’s susceptible to each grift?” Aftyn, stern and intense as ever.
“The well-educated, entertainers and new money, the resentful, fall for the social justice grift. Bureaucrats, older and more traditional wealth, the self-help community, also resentful, fall for the advanced technology grift.” Pausing as his young mind tries to remember the third. “Very old money, very big new money, recreational drug users and the masses, Adoptables, fall for the secret knowledge.”
“Are these hard distinctions?”
“No. But the general patterns hold across time.” Early recognized the truth in it even then. He could see it in those who came through their place in San Francisco before and the commune here. Though it would be several decades before he would really understand the old deep institutional knowledge of his millennia old family that his mother was sharing and impressing upon him.
“How do you know which grift is being employed, which faction you are confronted with?”
“Each grift has its own syntax, its own infrastructure and follows its own pattern.”
“Is it always the same?”
“Yes. Though minor details may change.”
“Very good. Many of these grifts go back centuries, if not millennia. They are passed down from generation to generation. Continuity through time. Baked into human existence from the inception of the first human civilization, if not before.” She’ll never show it, nor express it, but she’s proud of Early.
“Now which is the most prevalent and which the most dangerous?” Aftyn continues the lesson. The test.
“The most prevalent is secret knowledge. The most dangerous in different periods of human history is the advanced technology grift. But most dangerous at all times is the social justice grift.”
“Why is social justice the most dangerous?”
“It’s based on resentment, hatred and domination of language.”
“Go on.”
“Fairness is hard wired in the human mind. This is easily hijacked using words. Most humans are resentful of something. Words can fuel this resentment, making the person believe things are unfair even when they are not.”
“Those who convince others through words that something is unfair, have the control and power.”
“And those who have this control and power always use it to steal everything they can before fostering or committing genocide.” Even now, decades and vast oceans of experience later on. He can still remember this very conversation. The feel of truth to it. Even then, as a kid, he could see adults and other kids, even his brother, seeking to do all of this. To play all of this out on one another all the time.
“Never forget, Early. There is no valence to the grift. It’s simply a part of the human experience. A necessary one. It’s when the grifter gains too much power and wealth, when one or more of the grifts come to outstrip the Infinite Game. This is where and when the danger to civilization arises.”
“Why is the grift important?” Aftyn asks further.
“It’s a teacher.”
“What is the lesson of the grift?”
“That humans want to believe.”
“And?”
“Humans are too easily deceived.”
“Yes. Seeking out the grift teaches us how to see even the most sophisticated deception.” In the end it was not a grift but an interrelated medical and legal war, fostered within her own family, which finally broke Aftyn. Forever changing the course of Early’s life.
“Which faction and grift is this?” Aftyn grilling her son, having given him just enough of the necessary details of the meeting and conversation between Sonny’s attorney and the handler. Just enough for her son to work the rest out himself. To make a first order approximation. An approximation he’d better answer properly. Or pay the consequences in pain. Scottish mothers paying forward through their own children all the pain and trauma they and all the women before them have known back for millennia.
“I think it looks like the Marxists and social justice.”
“Looks like?” Aftyn pushes her son to continue. That tone ringing in her tamboured voice.
“This is about changing the way laws are used here?” Early looking to his mother carefully, so as to not draw her ire but to ensure he’s on the right path. “Dependency infrastructure is being built out to support undesirables for later destruction. Following the pattern of Nazis using communists in nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties Germany.”
“Everything the Nazis did was legal according to German law.” Aftyn smiles briefly. It’s not an approving maternal smile. She would never prove capable of that with him, unlike his younger brother. It’s more the smile of a teacher for their star pupil. A pupil recognized for being precosious at a very early age.
“Nazis always project their intentions on their enemies, the communists, and the people. They hide their real purpose by funding communists and Marxist groups and organizations. To foster chaos in every community. To justify later adoption and acceptance of fascism and the new ultimate solution.” This had been one of her earliest lessons. A lesson earlier learned, drawing upon her own experiences away at school in the fifties and sixties in Switzerland and Austria.
“The Nazis will bring about their Fourth Reich and will have their revenge.” This too was a lesson she had taught him early in life.
It would be several decades further on from this day that he’d learn of the path his mother had been forced to walk in life. Product of heritage, class and her particular family. By her father’s choices. By the early suspicious death of her father. A path which had driven her to leave Europe, to ensure her son was raised away from her family and class. Raised in tight isolation, so as to not be like them. As she would often say.
“I don’t know how to ensure this approximation is correct?” Early still but a child, not knowing if or how she wanted him to continue.
“There will be a banking trail for the large deposit and multiple accounts established to hide the sources of the funding. The banks and cutouts used will tell you which faction.” It’s astounding what a young child’s mind is capable of, when not raised from day one to be a child. Aftyn had never allowed and never would allow her son to be a child. There was no time for such useless expenditure of capacities, such frivolousness. She may hate her son, hate her family, class and heritage. She may have isolated the three of them here in the mountains of northern Washington. And yet, she’d raised him exactly as she’d been raised, to be an asset to family, heritage and class. Seems no matter how far one runs away, no matter where one ends up. There one is. Some things simply can’t be escaped. They go far too deep.
He’d tried to get away from Aftyn more than once. Even if only for part of a day. To get away from the constant badgering, the constant pressure and vitriol heaped upon him, the endless lessons and lectures. The only ways in which she seemed capable of interacting with this elder son so despised.
He’d take his horse and ride up even higher into the mountains, the dogs in tow. Find an open area and let the horse graze as he laid in the sun, trying to allow his young mind to somehow make sense of it all. If only he could please her. If only he could figure out what it was, she really wanted. He’d never find that answer and by the age of fourteen the state would take him away from Aftyn for good. At her request. She’d taught him all she could by that point. And he’d reached six foot tall and for the first time in his entire life had told her no. Looking here straight in the eyes. No, you will not strike me unconscious in your baseless rage against me.
Much later, decades later, upon induction into The Order. Early would learn of his mother’s past, of all she’d experienced during her years away at all those uber elite boarding schools on the Continent. Schools she’d attended with the children of literal Nazis and the many families of Europe, and the world, which had supported them, even if only in secret. Her father having been staunchly set against, having openly fought against the Nazis in the court of law, in banking and business and ultimately actual fighting behind enemy lines for much of the war. This despite her mother and older brother had been in accord with the ideals and principles of the Nazis.
She’d learned of Operations Odessa, Paperclip and Sunrise early in her life. How the stolen wealth and assets of the Nazis had been laundered, so as to fund the next phase in the bringing about of the Fourth Reich. A global Reich through what would later be known as globalization. Of how highly capable and knowledgeable Nazis had been spared life and fortune, brought directly into the corporations, newly minted intelligence agencies, into academia and science and centers of research and learning of the West. Not least of all into the emergent superpower that is the United States. The Nazis had never been defeated. They metastasized around the world to all the many places where their knowledge and stolen wealth were welcomed. They having mastered bureaucracy unlike any bureaucratic feudalists before.
The longer this assignment went on, as mentor and security for this mentee. The more these memories were coming back to Early. Memories of these early lessons and the discoveries made after having joined The Order. These were particularly strong in him as he meets with Bronson, two floors up in the apartment also owned by The Order in the building at the peak of Russian Hill. This time of day the famous San Francisco fog rolling in, blotting out all but the very tops of the red steel suspension towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog not yet having reached Alcatraz nor the East Bay. Warm sun still shining through the windows that line the East side of the building.
“You were chosen for this task as you are a strong aristocratic figure. Something lacking in most nobility today.” The sun was to Bronson’s back, forcing Early, where he’s seated, to squint his eyes if he’s to look at the older man directly. An effect intentionally obtained by Bronson. A bloody provocation! “She’ll defer and look up to you naturally.”
“There’s no way in which we are going to weaken her. Least of all by having her defer to anyone.” Is Early’s emotionless response.
“We all know of your exemplary service to The Order. Even those who don’t, defer and look up to you. Someone of her age and background will not be able to resist.”
There can be no doubt of any of it. All of this had been in the planning and pursuit for quite some time. Long before even he and the young lady with all the royal blood in her veins, two floors down, were even born. Matrilineal plans, within plans, within plans. With oh so many redundancies. Oh so many course corrections as events in the broader world prevented particular plans and efforts mid attempt. All to make possible just such an eventuality. Should such be necessary.
“If she’s to be the future wife and peer of a royal and future king and emperor. If such is her fate. Then she must be able to stand on her own. Subservient to no one.” It’s the only response comes to the Earl’s mind.
Bronson takes a moment to try and look through the Earl. “She is to know nothing of her true heritage nor what she’s being prepared for. Nothing! We’ll give you the details she needs to know as the program progresses. If it progresses.” The threat is obvious.
This strikes a chord within Early, a father, senior commander and Nobleman's protectiveness all stacking together to something powerful. “Commander, perhaps it has slipped your mind and memory. But I am well aware of the fullness of the conflict, of the threats represented by the masters and agents of the great change.”
“Yes, I am aware of your post-doctoral work. And the unconventional warfare and 5th generation warfare efforts you’re engaged in on our behalf.” Bronson begrudgingly replies. “Though I doubt even you know the full mosaic of the program and its threats.”
His mother had hated managers, bureaucrats of any type. From his earliest days she'd taught him how to read through their double speak, their loose usage of words, the disinterested or mock offended facial expressions and body posture. There can be no doubting it, Bronson does not agree with the program. Nor does he care much for Peers. He cannot however deny the fact that Early, the Earl, and Peer of the Realm, is the Lord Commander’s man. Which only further exacerbates Commander Bronson’s anger.
“This damn program may very well be the end of The Order! We cannot take a position, cannot take a side. Neutrality is everything!” That’s real emotion from Bronson. Almost bordering on rage.
There can be no doubting it. Bronson poses a very real threat. She’s in your care! The Lord Commander’s words take on new meaning with this revelation.
Early will have to speak with Carl soonest. Now! A pre-modeled threshold has been crossed; a trigger accomplished. Now it’s necessary to go up a level in security posture, activate assets, close in security.
Trust absolutely no one, not even your own. Not everyone can be turned. Many will die first. But far too many can be fooled, even if only in part and only for the briefest of moments. That’s all it takes to kill someone, even those secured by the very best, the slightest of mistakes that lasts for only an instant.
“Commander, the Princess is my ward.” Calm. Quiet. Rather simple and mellow statement. And yet the promise of death resides within and is transmitted by this statement. There’s no need for bluster, no need for anger or threats. It’s all a statement of unmitigated fact. Let the Commander and his faction calculate their next moves knowing Lord Raedbora and his people have the Princess under their protection. Knowing that His Lordship recognizes and is fully prepared for the threat from within.
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