The next Monday, to my surprise, I got an appointment with the Army psychiatrist I met in December. I had been told he was deployed because of Covid, which I suspected was a lie to make me feel important. I had heard of deployments being stopped because of Covid, but never the opposite. I showed the psychiatrist the mental health evaluation that basically said I was insane, and he assured me it was just someone's opinion at the time and had no legal or medical significance. I felt better after the appointment, so at least there was that.
A few days later, I came through the gate, and instead of the guard saying, 'Welcome to Fort Gordon' she asked 'what do you know about building computers?' I was perplexed because I had been through that gate hundreds of times and never been asked a question like that. Again, if this had happened in isolation, I would accept a more pedestrian explanation for it. Around the same time, I decided that if NSA was spying on my screen I might as well give them a taste of their own medicine, so I Rick Rolled them.
YouTube nearly locked up mysteriously when I was about to hit play, so I suspect they tried to jam it. They retaliated in kind in various ways over the year. Also, my brother got a very strange glitch. He was trying to print some Army form and out of the printer came a page that said, 'you are not allowed to print this form'. A freak event? Maybe. I suspect it was an NSA prank.
About the same time, since I figured that somehow, my screen was being recorded, I opened up Notepad on one half of my screen and a video on the other half of my screen which showed an artificial intelligence program learning how to play the video game Snake. Again, I was typing in Notepad, so unless there was spyware on my laptop, the only person who should have been able to see it was me. As I now strongly suspected my screen was being watched, I wrote in Notepad that the AI program's style of play is easy for a bot, but very hard for a human. I also noted that my best friend from work said I don't think like a machine, but I understand how machines think. It's similar to the way Temple Grandin's understanding of the way animals think allowed her to design more efficient and humane slaughterhouses.
A few days after that, I watched a video of an extremely violent documentary called Africa: Blood and Guts. It's about the upheaval in post-colonial Africa in the 1960s. As I watched, I typed some things in Swahili it Notepad, so if anyone was watching, they would think I was having flashbacks caused by PTSD. The next day, two middle-aged technicians came to my room and explained that they were upgrading my internet just for me. The device they put on my ceiling appeared to be a wireless modem and the model name written on it was RUCKUS. When I tried to get online later, none of my browsers would open.
Not long after, a close friend gave me a book called Achilles in Vietnam. It compares the suffering described by the warriors in the Iliad to PTSD as described by Vietnam veterans. The main point is that PTSD tends to happen when soldiers lose faith in their leaders first and that eventually turns into a distrust of almost everyone even after the war is over.
I went on leave for the month of April decided to go camping on base to get away from electronics for a while. When I arrived at the campsite, one of the technicians I saw earlier was already there. I found it odd he would be camping by himself on a weekday in the same spot as me after he had just 'upgraded' my internet. When I got there, he assured me I was in a quiet, safe place, which also seemed like an odd thing to say.
My second night of camping, I decided to take a lat night walk around upper Leitner Lake. There is a sign at the trail entrance that says 'warning: alligators', but since the gate was open and I was not going anywhere near the shore, I figured I was safe. It turns out alligators are most active at night and there were a lot of them in that lake. I heard their various calls and grunts and sometimes they'd splash the water with their tails. About a mile away from my tent, I heard a loud splash and saw a dark shape in front of me scurry into the woods. It was hard to tell exactly how big it was in the dark.
It was at this time that I decided it was best to return to my tent. I heard a very loud splash and decided an intimidating shout would frighten the gator away. It worked. The next day, I was texting a friend about the incident and before I had even sent it, the park ranger came by and asked to see my camping permit. I suspected that now my phone was being monitored and I began speaking directly to whoever was watching. As I texted, a trailer door opened and I saw a middle-aged man in a military uniform without the coat, so I couldn't see his name or rank. It was very odd that a middle-aged man driving a sports car would go camping by himself on a weekday while wearing a military uniform. I suspected he had some kind of compact monitoring device in the camper. Such devices exist; I learned about them in training. And again, I know it sounds far-fetched and if it happened in isolation, I would not suspect anything strange about it.
On day two or three of my camping trip, I sent some text messages asking a friend to interview her about the importance of women in unconventional warfare. Before I even sent the message, a woman came driving in a truck on the path where I was walking. She stopped and asked for directions to the campground. As we spoke, I was able to correctly guess that she was Korean from her last name. She was the wife of a soldier she met while he was stationed in Korea. She seemed curious to know more but had no further questions when I asked if she had any. I later saw her picking flowers by the lake near the campground, but she never actually camped there. Another one of those strange events that kept happening.
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