In September of 2021, I went to a bar on a Saturday afternoon. I saw a young woman reading at the bar with an empty seat next to her, so I decided to go for it and sat there. I've spent a lot of time in bars, and I had never seen a young woman reading a book alone. It turned out she was an Army officer enrolled in some cyber course at Fort Gordon and the book she was reading (Ghost Fleet) was about a hypothetical cyberwar between the US and China. Perhaps I should have offered her my contact info or asked for hers. It seemed too early to do given we had just met. I went back a week later about the same time hoping to see her again but no luck.
Around this time, I got stung by fire ants at the metal shop. My best friend from NSA gave me her feminine itch cream as it was the only thing she had at the moment. It worked as the active ingredient is the same, although I was left with a strange urge to eat ice cream and watch 'Titanic'.
In mid-October, a very strange series of events happened one Sunday. Around 5 AM, I was lying in bed when I suddenly heard a distant rumbling sound that lasted for a few seconds. At the same time, it seemed like my head was vibrating. When it stopped, I had a headache which lasted for the rest of the day. I know what acoustic weapons are and my symptoms are consistent with being struck by one. Interestingly enough, one of the more popular models is made by Bose, which is more famous for making stereo speakers. A few hours later when I tried to call my parents about it, I got the 'we're sorry, the number you have dialed cannot be reached' recording. That's the only time I've ever gotten that recording when calling my parents. Later, while watching YouTube, I got several ads for a drink called a Sonic Blast from the Sonic fast-food chain. It was hard to see that as mere coincidence. It was first time I had ever seen those ads.
Around 8 PM, I was eating at Chipotle when heard the melody of the country song Jolene on the sound system. The weird part was, the words were in some strange language and after listening carefully, I recognized it was Klingon, the fictional language from Star Trek. That seemed like a very weird thing to be playing in Chipotle. I never even heard a normal country song in all the times I've eaten there. When I got home, I got on YouTube again and the first two ads I saw seemed to be telling me something. The first was an ad for Chipotle, where had just been, and the second was an ad for flights from Augusta to Washington DC. I ran outside and saw that my car was missing. I thought it was some weird practical joke and I was supposed to go to Chipotle where I'd meet the soldier who came with me to the gun club and with whom I had fallen in love with. Then we'd both go to Fort Meade together where I'd be an NSA code breaker.
When I texted her that my car had be stolen, she texted me back for the first time in six months. She said she had been drinking and couldn't drive. When I texted my closest friend, she said the exact same thing. Now I was getting really suspicious. When I texted my closest friend that I got shot with a sonic cannon that morning, she replied that her dog must have farted at me. I was angry, but she convinced me to return home instead walk to Chipotle and file a stolen vehicle report. The next day, when the cop came to investigate, he said some sort of hacker must have stolen my car since it has electronic locks.
My closest friend gave me a ride to the phone store that day after I said I was ready to buy a smartphone. On the drive back, she talked about how when driving, you need to conform and go with the flow. The timing of those comments was odd to me. It seemed like a cryptic reference to me needing to buy a smartphone to fit in. At the smartphone store, when I went to pay, the card reader displayed that the phone cost $14,000 and not the $140 it was marked with. I distinctly remember seeing on the display one, four, comma, three zeroes, decimal point, and then two more zeroes. Fortunately, my credit card was not charged that amount.
I found my car that evening in the convenience store parking lot. It was undamaged and none of my welding gear had been stolen from it. It seemed very unlikely that someone would steal a car only to abandon it less than a mile away without stealing any of the valuable things inside or causing any damage as they broke in. Whoever stole my car was familiar with my habits and wanted me to get it back, because I had been going to that convenience store daily for months.
My car recovered, I returned to my apartment and went to YouTube. For the past few months, I had done little on YouTube except search for songs and listen to music, and it was usually the same songs over and over. This time, the top clip suggestion was a cartoon. As I typed in my mental sandbox while refreshing YouTube, it seemed to cartoon clips being suggested were responses to what I was typing. For example, when I wrote that I felt like I was in an interrogation and needed a break, the next clip suggestion was a cartoon of a guy breaking glass with a hammer.
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