The Eventual Pulitzer (Patreon)

So I don't like to write overly political stories. It's to some degree unavoidable given how political questions about homosexuality, sex, and free will are, and in particular in combination. But I try to stay out of party politics, known political organization, and real people overall to be honest. But I had this idea very, very loosely based on a tumblr story that I couldn't shake, so let's stick it in here where no one will ever see it.

Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks with him in the dark. He couldn't see the sky from where they sat, but maybe some clouds had cleared up and letting the moonlight illuminate the forest ahead. Or maybe the truck was returning to them. If it was, parked as they were on this forest road, they wouldn't see them until it was almost upon them. They had kept the lights off in the semi, no electronics or phones or anything on for at least the past hour, so the light-sensitive fluid or whatever it was that builds up in the eyes over time would be at its maximum sensitivity by now.

No, there was definitely some vehicle approaching. It must be them returning, because who else would be out driving in the forest at three in the morning, or whatever the time was now. Finally he would be able to see what it was they did. It had started out innocently enough, researching campaign donations from rich mega-donors. Most of them looked pretty normal. Donate to the party, donate to candidates, donate to super PACs, donate to NGOs, donate to thinktanks. Some of them however stood out. It was a pattern his team had begun to recognize from donors like the Mercer family. They tended to start unprofitable companies that worked in a niche sector within polling or advertising or news to tilt the scale towards their political leanings.

Mr. and Mrs. Spearhart followed that pattern, although on the democratic side. They funded a lot of politicians and explicitly political organizations as well as some more one-issue organizations. The BLMs and Lincoln Projects. But then there was a gaping hole of complex finance to funnel massive amounts of money to... something. As he tried to untangle it he ran into weird shell companies or outright distractions to keep him off his scent. Beauty salons, biotech companies, a chain of gyms, a publishing company. Some individual parts perhaps profitable, but the sum had churned through billions in losses. It was out of character for the Spearharts who had made their fortune through well-researched investments in growth companies.

Apparently he had gotten close, because he got a phone call well into the project after months of digging around. The call was quite vague. They wanted to set up something, though it wasn't clear what. The conditions were that he got to attend something he couldn't write about for an unspecified amount of time. He would be notified once a year if the embargo were to be extended for another year or not, at the most 10 years. It was preposterous. Publishing journalistic work 10 years later was unheard of. He said yes.

A few days later a stack of contracts arrived at his home. His editor's first reaction was outrage. Why had he said yes to this without checking first? He responded that nothing had been given yet, nothing promised, and they had the contracts to do what they wanted with. The mere fact that they went to this level of effort to protect whatever they were spending money on was reason enough to not agree to anything. Dig deeper and expose whatever was there to expose. The response to that was that months of work had yielded nothing. There was something big they protected, and they would be the ones to tell the story, even if it wasn't this year. Besides, what did they have to show after all that work. Not much, except for the stack of contracts in front of them. It still took them a week to finally decide to go through with it, and another month for legal to approve it. He signed it, sent it in, and didn't hear anything back. Not for weeks.

Then suddenly another phone call. He had been given a time and place, 9 pm at a trucker stop in Kentucky a few days later. He had flown to Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, picked up a rental, and driven to the stop outside of Winchester. There was a big gas station, diner, and plenty of place for semis to park overnight. It wasn't deserted, but not too bad of a place for a kidnapping he thought. Right on time a large semi with a rigid trailer pulled up at the parking. His phone got a call from an unknown number. Burner phone no doubt, but he would still check the number later when he got back to write it all up. "Are you the guy?" someone asked him. "I guess I am" was all he could think of. "Ok, just get in."

He'd entered the semi on the passenger side, the first time he'd ever been in one. It was roomy, everything was large, and the driver was quiet. He tried to ask some questions, but the driver either said he didn't know or wasn't allowed to say for most of it. It took about an hour before he realized that they were trailed by a station wagon. It became obvious once they started to drive down the more rural roads. Finally they ended up on forest roads where eventually both vehicles came to a stop. The driver announced that they would stay there for a while, which turned out to be many hours. At 1 am the station wagon left them and the driver flicked a switch. "Warming up until they get back," he said as if it was obvious what he meant.

He was too blinded by the car to make out much of anything as it returned from its mission, whatever it had been. The car passed them by one the narrow road and stopped just behind them, back to back. "Bring your camera," the driver said and exited. Still blinded, he grabbed into his bag in the dark and pulled out his Casio. We great care and inexperience he opened the door and climbed down onto the dirt road. Bright cold white LEDs behind the trailer cast shadows deep into the woods around them, making the scenery eerie. It was cold and dead silent except for the men chatting behind the vehicle.

The back of the station wagon was open and in the back was a stretcher and on the stretcher was a body. The straight position made him think corpse until he saw the chest moving slowly, like he was in deep sleep. The man was perhaps in his thirties, in excellent condition from the looks of it, and had a large tribal tattoo sleeve arching down over his left pec. He recognized the Punisher skull logo in the middle of the man boob. A common symbol to show sympathy with the police and with forceful policing. Weird how that happened when the comic book character happily kills cops. Weirder still that Disney hasn't sued all the unofficial merchandise using the logo.

"This is Nash," the driver said and handed me an iPad with the guy's picture on the screen. He looked pretty much the same, but with a camo cap, camo pants, watch, wristband, and a rifle. Two other men wearing coveralls and facemasks carried the stretcher with Nash out of the station wagon and up into the back of the trailer, which was now open. "Don't forget to do your part," the driver continued and motioned towards the camera. He handed the tablet back while his mind was racing about what was worth documenting and what would look good on the magazine cover. He took a few quick shots into the forest, at the open station wagon, while the other three jumped into the trailer. He hadn't even looked into the trailer, he realized.

Wide strips of white plastic hung down the back, blocking visibility. Not as nimble as the others, he climbed in and through the plastic. Inside was a tiny chamber with an interior wall with a door in it. The others had already carried the stretcher with Nash through the door opening into the inner room of the trailer. He followed and his jaw almost dropped, while he was shooting photo after photo. The internals of the trailer looked like a spaceship. High tech controls, tubes, machinery, and in the center was Nash still on the same stretcher, but on top of a mount that made it look like an operating table. Alien machinery came down from the ceiling like arms, waiting to be set in motion. "Close the door please and we will begin," the driver said. Still in shock he did as he was told.

The men begun what looked like a well rehearsed operation turning on the machinery. The arms came to life and did a series of motions that looked like a systems check to see everything could move properly, followed by zeroing where they carefully touched the sides of the stretcher. He could feel the air rushing around them, like some HVAC came to life. He had to remind himself again to document this, and took a few more photos.

"I'm ready and committed," said the driver, doing something on his table. "I'm ready and committed," answered one of the other guys. "I'm ready and committed," echoed the last one. The driver nodded and the room came to action.

The different arms started to move all over the body on the stretcher, but without touching Nash. To his amazement the tattoos were quickly fading from the body where one of the arms moved. It ended with something that looked similar to a shaver at the end. Then he saw that another arm with a similar but different attachment left a trail of tattoos. Different and more haphazard looking. Next the skin of Nash started to change, though he couldn't really correlate it to any of the arms' movmenets. It was like the entire body just slowly changed color from tanned white to reddened hispanic. It was subtle, but important. Then the color of the lights shining down on Nash changed and the body suddenly and aggressively sprouted hair. A thick, black beard formed in less than 30 seconds. At the same time a less thick but still substantial fur shoot out of his chest and abs, and later his arms and shoulders.

The arms retracted up into their ceiling position and a whirring sound started. He could see the muscles on the body slowly but clearly inflating. He had to force himself to look through the camera because he didn't want to miss anything just looking at Nash's transformation. All of this was unreal. He almost did miss Nash shrinking a few inches. The muscles kept increasing in size. His head was now flanked by two mounds of trap muscles, his tight pecs and lithe arms were now more like a body builder's, and his legs had gone from a runner's legs to a lifter's. But the body kept growing. The pecs turned flabby, the arms started to look more like a Walmart shopper's, and the abs completely disappeared behind an ever-expanding gut. Even the face was rounder and the nose wider. There was still semblance to the Nash who entered the trailer, but you would have to know him pretty well to see it.

The sound was dying down as the machinery had completed its task and was making sure to hibernate properly. "Let's give them a bit of space. It's heavier on the way out," the driver said and motioned me to open the door again.

As we stood outside in the brisk air, watching two anonymous men carry a muscled yet overweight Hispanic man into a waiting station wagon I ask the obvious question. "Why are you doing whatever it was I just saw?" He smiles a crooked smile and looks into the eerily lit forest. "It's the next step against domestic terrorism. The organization identifies linchpin agitators, not the leaders but the ones asserting informal influence in a community. Then we come in and alters them a bit. Some places need racial diversity, some places need a flamboyant gay twink. Whatever the data model predicts is going to send the local white power structures into chaos. You have all the photos you need?"

He was in shock. This went so far beyond what was acceptable. As much as he hated gerrymandering, voter suppression, social media manipulation, and the entire right-wing media system, this wasn't ok. "You are all going to jail, you know that right?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But that isn't your concern. You just need to write a good article about this and sit on the story until we are done. Or.." he motioned towards what had been Nash.