I was up all night 'talking' with whoever was on the other side, and the conversation meandered among many topics. Whoever was on the other side did a good job of convincing me she was the soldier I had fallen in love with and had texted the night my car was stolen. After being up all night, I became angry that instead of an explanation or a job offer, I was still not getting any straight answers. I quit my welding job that morning and returned harness and vest I had been issued. Then I went on base and threw the smartphone I had bought the day before through the turnstile of the NSA building I used to work in. No one was present at the time, but the security cameras saw it. I did it as an act of protest. From my perspective, the NSA had been monitoring me since at least March, and even after I caught them red-handed, I was forced to keep up the charade for months. I sent a few more angry texts to the soldier I had fallen in love with before leaving. There were no threats in them.
When I got home, I got a very strange voicemail from INSCOM, which is the Army organization in charge of military intelligence soldiers. The message instructed me to call a number, then an extension, then enter a very long numerical code. It was the strangest voicemail I've ever gotten. I did not call the number or enter the code. Around the same time, while out driving, a white van was stopped in front of me at a red light. The driver got out and opened the van's rear doors, as if to show me it was empty and not a surveillance van.
A few days later, I got a text from the Fort Gordon police to come on base and retrieve the phone I threw. When I arrived, I was handcuffed and taken to the police station. They told me I was not under arrest and that I would be free to go if I answered their questions. So I answered some questions from the police before being led to another room. It was an interrogation room with a one-way mirror and my questioners were NSA special agents. They asked why I through the phone and I explained briefly that it was because I was upset with that female soldier. Before being released, I was informed that I was banned from Fort Gordon and would be arrested if I returned.
About a week after that, I was served a restraining order with a court date by the female soldier I sent angry texts too. The first statement she made in her petition was provably false and she knew it when she wrote it. She said I had been dishonorably discharged and I was able to prove her wrong in court with the statement from my company commander. Not sure why people lie when they don't have to. I guess she just wanted to twist the knife. I apologized to her in court and the judge ended up giving us a mutual restraining order for a year.
Toward the end of October, I was at a bar downtown when a young woman came up to me with tears in her eyes. She said she had an abusive ex-husband who had sole custody of her daughter. This by itself was extremely strange. I've spent a lot of time in bars and nothing like that has ever happened to me before. I suggested we go out for a walk and a talk. During that walk, we had a few chats with homeless people, some of whom seemed to have stories similar to mine; that is, guys who got discharged from the military for minor to moderate infractions. As we were about to return to the bar, she told me that sometimes she would hear secret messages from things like TVs and computers. It was at this I suspected she was some kind of plant sent to spy on me, but I did my best to be polite with her. When we passed the Confederate monument in downtown Augusta, she said how awful it was and ought to be removed. I replied that I thought there were many other worse problems at the moment, and it was not worth the cost of removal. She gave me her number but never responded to the one text I sent her.
In early November, my phone kept making the text message notification chime, but there were no new text messages. I heard that chime at least 30 times in less than an hour. I suspect my monitors were nervous about something I wrote the night before and wanted to get my attention to make sure I was OK. It's touching that a dreaded spy agency would go to such lengths to ensure the well-being of a former employee. About this time, in my mental sandbox, I wrote 'our marriage will be long and happy' as I suspected the person on the other end was the female soldier I fell in love with. Either that or it was someone in cahoots with her. Anyway, after I typed those words, the browser tabs I had open mysteriously switched to a 'page not found' error message even though my internet connection was fine. The tabs magically came back after I typed a few paragraphs explaining my previous statement.
The last major set of events of interest in my recent life took place after Veterans' Day in 2021. I had ordered a computer kit and wanted to prove the concept that computers cooled with mineral oil can be safely overclocked far more than had been done by other methods. All computers have something called a system clock which can only be set so fast without causing a computer cooled by air to overheat and shut down. However, if a computer is immersed in mineral oil, its system clock can be set to a far higher value. It effectively makes the computer faster without changing the hardware and a minimal change to the software. I was inspired to build it after contemplating the time the gate guard asked me what I knew about building computers.
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