An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Five
by Leon Manna
The following story is a work of fiction.
Por eso soy andariego
Pa' olvidarme de pesares
Soy barco de cualquier puerto
No me le arrodillo a nadie
Me juego en cualquier gallera
Aquì o en otros lugares
- El Charrito Negro
[That's why I'm walking
To forget about regrets
I am a port of any port
I don't kneel anyone
I play in any cookie
Here or elsewhere
- The black charrito]
I'm a coward and a fool! It seemed so simple in the moment, like such a sincere thought. Inner doubt, self loathing. It'll be my turn soon, here or in other places! God! We swam back to shore and started heading towards my apartment. Lenny coughed up seawater and looked at me. "Let me get a ride," he said.
"So you're living here now?"
He nodded. "Yeah dude. I got shot with a .22 like, four times in Miami. Four separate times! Can you believe that? Besides, you pay me to be your lawyer. You're the only person within a hundred mile radius who I can somewhat tolerate, and even then... You piss me off." He seemed to be in a good mood, I guess, despite the backhanded compliment.
"Just take my moped." He hopped on it and rode off. I watched him crank the brakes too hard and crash onto the sand. Then he got up like nothing happened, turned around, gave me the stink-eye, and rode off. About 15 feet later he did that whole thing again, and then disappeared on a bend in the road.
Lenny Cruz (right) and Leon (left)
I heard the dial tone. Then Ary picked up.
"What do you want?"
"Uhh... Your stuff isn't at the apartment. I haven't seen you in a couple days. Are you okay?"
"No, I'm not okay. My ex-boyfriend is a sociopath and I followed him across the country for no reason. I'm going home. I already bought a ticket."
"Wait, wait, wait I -"
"I don't want to hear it. I hate you."
I couldn't even say anything. Can I even be mad? No. Then she hung up, and that's where the Ary plotline ended, as well as any future I had with her. Once again, I felt guilty. It's my fault.
Across the U.S., a federal agent named Segev Bezalel, who we will refer to as Moe, gets a call about a strange guy. A strange guy who smokes crack in Best Buy. The strange guy has been doing unspeakable, despicable acts of cybercrime. Thousands upon thousands of dollars, missing, totally gone with no idea where it went. It's me. I'm the strange guy.
So the detective thinks to himself, "Piece of cake."
But the detective gets frustrated quickly because Leon Manna, who lived in Arizona, died pretty recently. What confuses him is that there's another Leon Manna in Utah. When he checks on that, it shows that he also died, but in 2013. Then he checks again, and sees a Leon Manna in California. And then he sees one in Nevada, and South Carolina, and then New York, until he's filled in all but 15 of the states in the U.S. Some are dead, some are alive. Each one has a vaguely similar description. I am everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I am more powerful than God.
This boggles his mind. How did he impersonate someone who's been dead since the last decade? How could it have happened? Moe has no clue what to do. He calls his boss, but it's three in the morning, so he doesn't pick up. He calls about ten other buffoons, none of which pick up either. He finally reaches his boss's boss, who "has no clue who the f*ck he is and why the hell would he f*cking call me at 3 am, I mean who has the nerve. Your boss will be hearing about this."
But something didn't sit right with him. He listens to the tone on his phone while he waits for Leon to pick up. He's about to terminate the call when he hears a voice on the other end.
"Hello?"
Moe paused. "Is this Leon Manna?"
There was silence. Then, "Long time, no see. I miss you Moe."
"Segev, dumbass. Let's talk, please. You don't need to run."
"No, Moe. I do need to run."
"You don't. We gathered everything, Leon. I even see an armed robbery here. We're going to catch you eventually."
"No the f*ck you will not. Also, that robbery wasn't me. It was a man named Nash Nashville. You'll find him in Memphis. I wouldn't bother looking in Nashville, though. If he's not there, I'd check your mother's house."
"Well, that's just disrespectful." But the call was terminated and there was nobody listening to hear him say that. When he called back, the number was disconnected. In the morning, he calls his boss. His boss decides to send him on a maniacal wild goose chase, investigating every single Leon Manna in the U.S.
So what now? Well, I have 15 states that need Leon Manna in them. A federal semi-turncoat is always won over with blackmail. They do nasty stuff, they really do, you just have to catch them. This is how we operated for a while. And then, we met this guy somewhere in a stack of papers. We knew he was from New Mexico, but we didn't know his name. I'll let you fill the rest in.
Moe sees this. Just like my shapeshifter act at Sawtooth, this actually did the opposite of what I thought it would. I was just trying to cause as much confusion and chaos as possible, there was basically no strategy past that. Moe isn't an idiot, and he realizes very quickly that I'm making all these fake identities in different states to confuse him. Why? Because if he would do it, I would. That's sorta how he caught us. They assigned my case to him after they did a profile on me. There was a reason it was him, but I simply can't tell you why just yet. There's more to say before. He calls his boss and after like, seven layers of bureaucracy or something, someone finally orders the Social Security Administration to check in on all of these Leon Manna clones. The SSA says they can't do that within the timeframe they needed because there were multiple real Leon Manna identities in some of those states. So after swearing profusely at the person from the SSA, the moron demands that they investigate every case of Leon Manna in any state ever, regardless of how long it takes. This was a huge waste of time because they can't seem to figure out which ones were real and which weren't. They couldn't go and check every single Leon in real life, they simply didn't have the resources, and I wasn't important enough for that.
So the Federal Pig calls the SSA back and says that they need to check to see which Leon Manna identities match up with each other in other states, for unknown reasons. I'm not sure what their tactic was there. But every single picture was a different person. I'm really good at Photoshop.
...
What to do, what to do... I didn't know yet. I was thinking about it, waiting for 1.5 grams of phenibut hydrochloride to kick in when I heard a knock on my door. Déjà vu.
Again, Lenny, except normal this time. "I'm going to Cuba. We both have warrants."
"I know," I said. "I called the county office claiming to be an employer looking to hire us. I said I just needed to know if there was anything that should disqualify us. The list was pretty long, this isn't good."
"Well, let's go then."
I thought about it for a second. "What about a contingency plan?"
And so here's what happened: I sat back and did nothing. But one night, at 3 am again, there was nobody in the office except for the security guard. The first thing that happened was somebody made it into the server that stored digital evidence of people Moe was investigating via the ETERNALBLUE exploit. The intruder dropped a small executable file into a temporary folder, executed it, and then disconnected. This executable, which had been encrypted and then packed into another executable, remained unflagged by anti-virus and looped through the entire filesystem until it had collected the paths of every SQL database file on the system. Then, the executable proceeded to overwrite that database with null bytes. Then it did that to the entire HDD. Then it destroyed the backups. Then wiped the MBR of the server.
The Master Boot Record (MBR) is the first 512 bytes in the first sector of your HDD that tells the computer where the OS is and then how to load it. If you overwrite the MBR with null bytes, the computer will not boot. If you overwrite it with your own code, the computer will run whatever you placed every single time it starts.
Long story short, the server says "f*ck you" on boot, every single time. So did every computer in his office. Then, somehow, the intruder got control of the thermostat in the evidence room and then turned it up to a dangerously high temperature, making most or all of the physical evidence useless. At least the shit they had on me. Eventually the evidence room caught on fire due to the amount of paper documents inside. Needless to say, panic ensued.
But this wasn't me. The IP address they associated with the intrusion originated overseas. The executable had basically nothing in it of value, even though they spent a lot of time reverse engineering it. The IP they had came from a country where they had no jurisdiction, far far away. Somewhere in Europe I think... But I wouldn't know, I just sat on my couch and watched a movie.
What evidence? What are you talking about?
Oh God when will it stop on: An Atavistic Freakout?