0's and 1's: Bk2- Web of Conceit - 3. Chapter 2

0’s and 1’s Book 2

Web of Conceit

Chapter 2

(Hunter Douglas)

 

I make no pretenses about my view in religion or the concept of a divine all powerful being, I don’t believe in either. There are rules and algorithms in nature, odd repeating sequences like Fibonacci sequence, and potential quantum enigmas that look like intelligence, but it’s mostly observer bias. Kevin’s tale of meeting the “writer” can be explained away with psychological and chemical responses to traumatic injury, along with a coincidental visit from the Catholic priest as his brain began to regain cognitive function. At least, that’s what I tell myself, because the other explanation is as tragic as an episode of Black Mirror. The concept of an all-powerful “writer” dictating human actions like characters for the pleasure of an audience, it’s very morbid. I never tossed the priest’s business card just on the off chance there’s more to existence than logic and coincidence.

Kevin is recovering pretty well, he’s going through physical therapy to get his normal range of motion back. I’ve seen him on and off, bringing him books, laptop, or a heavy handed tutor. Oddly enough, he actually rebounded and finished the material for his junior year of high school courses in less time than it would have taken in school. He jokes that it proves the validity of homeschool curriculum being superior to normal public school education. In reality, I know he has been reading and doing tons of work throughout his time in the hospital, my mom says Kevin usually sleeps about 5 hours a day. His near-death experience is pushing him to work harder, but I haven’t approached him with anything from our “investigative” work or the status of our relationship. He doesn’t need that stress added on top of what he’s working through.

In terms of investigations, I have run into a roadblock with Mason Cameron. Benji and I are able to link the guns to Mason’s father, who lived out in rural Iowa. However, those guns were just under his name and were not purchased by him. Mason got the money from a P2P lender, peer to peer lending is a rather new kind of commercial lending online, where individuals or businesses can request loans through a 3^rd party application. The actual lender maybe made up of 1 other individual matched to the seeker or it could several hundred pooled lenders to reduce the risk of lending. If that’s not complicated enough, when you go deeper into the transactional history of the lenders in Mason’s account, you hit the Cryptocurrency wall, since the lender used Bitcoin to supply the loan. Basically, the origins of the money are untraceable.

Benji and I have tried conspiracy theorizing on this with his new group of Valkyeries, based on a group of aspiring young female LGBTQ journalists. C.I.S.S and other far-right Christian organizations in the US were ruled out, because another attack so soon after the mail bombings would not serve their goals. A lone wolf scenario is also off the table due to the complexities of how Mason received his financing. That leaves international players like spy agencies, corporations, and terrorist organizations. Benji thought the reason the shooting occurred was to impede C.I.S.S actions domestically, so we should work on the assumption whoever this group is, they are no friends of the network that attacked us earlier.

However, due to the lack of scruples over targeting gay teens physically with overt violence, they’re also not likely allies of our cause either. For them to put so much effort in, Benji and his Valkyeries assume there is something more going on with C.I.S.S than merely the age old repression of homosexuals. One thing I’ve learned about Benji after all this time, he’s actually a really good analyst, splitting out all the actions and actors into different components. Yet, even with Benji’s unexpected skills, we’re no closer to knowing the answers to the most important questions.

What kind of shadow war are we fighting? Who are the bad guys? How did Mason Cameron’s brutal attack play into the big events? What can we do next, when we have opponents willing to kill openly with extreme force?

Restless at home, I went downstairs to grab a cup of tea to calm my nerves. My mother was there reading patient status reports with her warm loving eyes. Pediatric oncology seems like such a depressing topic; I don’t understand why she chose that field of medicine. These kids usually will never live normally and a good proportion of them will die horribly. I’ve read the novel and seen the movie adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars, which my mom suggested. If even 1% of that is true, I can’t imagine dedicating my life to such a hopeless cause.

 

As I heated the kettle for my jasmine green tea, my mom noticed me.

“Hunter, is something wrong?”

 

I just shrugged my shoulder like any other teenage boy, but my mom probably sensed my anxiety.

 

“You’ve been looking into Mason Cameron.”

 

I froze for a moment and stared at my mother.

“How?”

 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing, or what you had done before for Ryan and Jeremy. Your father isn’t around much due to his job travelling, and I have my rounds at the hospital, but we’re not idiots. We’re also not going to stop you despite knowing how dangerous this stuff is, because you’re our son and this is your life.”

 

My jaw dropped.

“Seriously? Why? I could die, Kevin could have died, and other people are already dead, because I went looking for the truth. I mean I found the perpetrators of Ryan’s suicide and Jeremy’s exposure, but it just led to more questions. Maybe, if I stop now, it could end up well for everyone.”

 

“Nothing would make me happier than to see you safe, but it’s not my happiness that matters.”

 

Confused with what she said, I wanted to understand.

“Why is my happiness so important? Why must everyone help me find the truth? Help me find Justice for what happened?”

 

“Hunter, you don’t get it. it stopped being about you when Ryan died. Judge Thatcher and I talked after the funeral, he wanted to do something since he could not help his son. The others involved with this wanted to help, because no one deserves to be tortured to death. All the losses and tragedies you guys faced recently has just made it more important to see it through. It’s not you that’s driving this quest.”

 

Maybe she’s right, but she doesn’t realize one thing.

“Kevin is doing this for me like he always has.”

 

She nodded without any surprise.

“I was wondering when you would figure that out. He’s been by your side for a long time. You were so focused on Ryan, but Kevin never stopped caring and I think on some level you never let Kevin go either,” my mom paused, collecting her thoughts. “So, I assume your self-doubt is coming from the fact he almost died for you.”

 

I nodded without replying

 

“Love is complicated. I can’t offer you any answers on this; only the people in love can answer with their own feelings. Do you love him?”

 

I nodded without replying again

 

“Then, the question you are facing is, are you betraying Ryan by loving Kevin?”

 

“I don’t know and that scares me. Finding solutions to programming or hardware issues is simple compared to this.”

 

“Well how would you solve those issues?”

 

“Look for the root cause by analyzing the issues.”

 

“What if an issue disappears, but the effect is still there?”

 

“I don’t know; there’s no way to track the issue backward anymore.”

 

My mom smiled at me.

“Hunter, being a doctor in my specialty, I sometimes will wipe out a large section of cancer cells only to find there’s a new colony in another area of the body. I look at these reports and realize some other doctors might have already done the same things I did before, so there’s no way of treating what caused the original cancer.”

 

“Isn’t it frustrating though? I mean your job is to treat kids with cancer. Some of them will die from it, no matter how many times you wipe out the cancer. You don’t know why they keep coming back and can only give those kids a little extra time.”

 

“Hunter, I love my job, despite all the tragedies I see and all the sad partings of kids. I am giving them a chance to live a little longer, experience things they wouldn’t have, and letting their longer lives touch other people. That’s what being a doctor is about, while everyone will eventually die, we give people a chance to be connected with the rest of humanity. We fix what we can and leave the rest to them.”

 

The kettle started whistling and my brain was burning at the insight.

“I should look at the effect rather than the reason, because what I am trying to do is fix the issue.”

 

My mom didn’t know that she solved something more than my romantic issues with Kevin. Mason Cameron was obvious, but not as a pawn for bigger forces from an analytical standpoint. I never spent any time trying to know who he was as a person, or what drove him to hate gays so much. My focus in all these investigations so far has been based on deductive reasoning, starting with ideas and linking them to the ultimate truth. Benji has helped me by offering his talents with inductive reasoning, you are looking at the evidence provided to come to likely truths about any subject. These 2 forms of logical arguments are used commonly in computer science and theoretical mathematics, but what most people don’t realize is there are actually 3 forms of logical arguments. Abductive reasoning is observing the effects to arrive at the “most likely” or plausible explanation. I use it in my intuitive AI (Artificial Intelligence) programming in order to diagnose errors based on effects. Most computer programs can be given instructions and reply with answers based on deductive reasoning, but when you need to adapt answers, you need intuitive error checking.

With that realization, I thanked my mom and headed back to my room. It didn’t take me long to find Mason’s house. It was easy to find and relatively safe to visit; Mason had died in his rampage and his single mother was no threat. Cassandra Cameron was a local realtor, her sales pitches consisted of homemade cookies and zero money down. The Uber ride there was short, I never realized how close he actually lived near me. He wasn’t a jock, I would be considered a jock with my size, height, and playing soccer despite my young age. Nor was he creative or outgoing, like Ryan or Kevin with their interest in drama. Being part of our magnet school, he would have had to pass exams and was capable of these things. Yet, he never displayed his intelligence or showed interests in any activities. It’s more than being a wallflower in a high school of overachievers; Mason never even tried.

As I left the Uber, I saw a front porch in disrepair. There was pink spray paint, broken glass from windows, and pieces of fencing littered the ground. I had not considered the possibility that some people might have taken it upon themselves to vent their anger against Mason’s mother. Being a victim, I didn’t consider the effects from the other side.

I navigated the broken wooden stairs and hit the doorbell.

 

A frightened voice from inside shouted.

“Go away, I’ve called the cops.”

 

I tried to sound as gentle as I could.

“Ms. Cameron, I am Douglas Hunter and I just want to talk.”

 

A slender weary woman appeared.

“I know your name and what Mason did to you. I don’t have anything to tell you about that stuff. He never shared that with me.”

 

“I want to know who he was.”

 

“Why now? He’s dead and all your troubles are gone.” Tears were streaming down her face.

 

I wish I could feel sympathy for her, but I couldn’t.

“I need to know…”

 

She cracked her screen door open and without saying a word I was about to enter, then realized I should have asked before entering.

“Would you like to call the police and say this was a false alarm?”

 

“They stopped checking up after the 1^st time. When they knew I was Mason’s mother and that he’d killed one of their own, I think I got blacklisted by the dispatcher.” her sad hoarse voice somberly replied.

 

I didn’t believe the police would be so callous.

“The police can’t do that! They’re supposed to serve everyone without bias.”

 

“That’s what I thought, but no matter how many times I called or even going down to a police headquarters to file reports, there was no one. The spray painters came last night.”

 

I felt sympathy for her.

“I’ll call some friends and you should be okay.”

 

She didn’t reply and I just wandered the two-story house. Mason’s portrait was inside a glass cabinet alongside several dusty old fishing poles and lures. There were other objects in there as well, a swiss army knife, a lantern, and a pair of binoculars with equal dust coverage. Fishing and camping have never been interests of mine, too slow and too arbitrary for my tastes. I am an urban intellectual with absolutely no interest in nature or outdoors activities like fishing, hiking, or camping. I’ll play sports and go jogging with friends, though. Mason might have loved doing this, but it would have been before he moved to our city. My lack of wilderness interest doesn’t mean my city doesn’t have Boy Scouts or camping enthusiast groups. Angel, one of the boys Mason killed, was a member of 4-H along with the scouts and he was a good friend of mine. His group’s adage of “learn by doing” may be hokey, but experiential learning is just as valid as anything else.

Seeing all of the camping gear with dust, I could gather Mason’s outlook toward this potential interest had disappeared for some reason.

 

“Mason loved camping and fishing. He wished he could live like that all the time. His father had taught him how to fish and hunt, by the time Mason was six years old.”

 

“Why didn’t he continue with it when you moved here? We have a bunch of nature groups in the city.”

 

She opened the glass cabinet and gingerly removed the dusty fishing rod.

“He stopped, because of me. He stopped when he learned why his father wasn’t around.”

 

All my research came up empty when trying to learn more about Mason’s father. All I got was simple pictures and a background: Kyle Joseph Cameron, 48 years of age, Caucasian, native of Iowa, small scale farmer and part time salesman as occupation, and lastly separated without divorce. It’s odd his father would be separated from them, but he didn’t take the next step of divorce. Benji had come up with scenarios from the mundane extra-marital affair, to the perverse that Mason was abused by his biological father, which would explain some of the anti-social behaviour. It’s a horrible truth that in modern society, we jump to these kinds of conclusions, but more often than not, the darkest fictions of our imagination pale to the cold void of reality.

 

I knew I was prying into something personal, but I was already this far.

“Why did he leave you both?”

 

“He couldn’t accept what he wasn’t anymore.”

 

I was confused by her answer for a moment, then it dawned on me.

“Was your husband gay?”

 

Her expression was indeterminate, between remorse and guilt.

“He could never be gay, just as he could never truly be happy with me, either. I didn’t know about his past, when I met him. He was such a charming man, constantly trying to please me. I was not the prettiest girl out there and he was a gorgeous young man. When he asked me to marry him, I thought my life was complete. Then, the 1^st night came and the 2^nd night without any action. It drove me crazy to see him so close to me, but yet so far and reserved. He always had an excuse from our wedding night to our 3^rd anniversary, but I couldn’t complain as he was so kind to me, and there was no sign of infidelity.”

 

I was even more puzzled with her answer.

“I don’t understand. Why was he like that?”

 

She kept going without answering.

“I knew a friend, who was a nurse. She gave me a few pills that would reduce his inhibitions. I mixed a good helping of it into his food and drink, then I had him for one moment as my husband and Mason was conceived. That was the worst mistake I ever made. When Kyle woke up and realized what I done and saw my smiling face, he started crying uncontrollably. Through his tears, Kyle told me the truth. When he was a teenager he loved another boy dearly. His family found out and sent him to undergo treatments. The treatments of electro-shock and chemical regiments, were designed to make him be normal, but they robbed him of any joy he could ever truly have. After he told me his story, he asked me to leave him alone forever. He is a good man and took care of Mason, despite what I did. Mason would look forward to being with his father every summer for their camping trips along with a few friends he made, until 3 years ago. Mason came home angry one day and asked me about his father. I don’t know how he found out, but he knew everything. After that, Mason never went to see his father, or took another camping trip.”

 

I had a range of emotions going through me: empathy for Kyle’s plight, spite and sorrow for this woman who raped him, and an odd emotion for Mason. I could not imagine how that revelation could have been easy to handle. Ms. Cameron was wrong for what she did, but in her defense, she was trying to love a man, who could never love her back. Spousal rape is a recent concept, but I could imagine the tragedies from such events between heterosexuals and their homosexual spouses. I don’t know if I could ever feel sympathy for her actions, but I can understand why she did it.

Kyle Cameron is a tragedy of ignorance. Even today, teenagers with homosexual expressions are sent for “treatment” to eliminate a perceived vice. There are still many, including powerful politicians and religious authorities, who champion conversion therapy. If they could just step back and look at the world around them, they could see the examples of happy relationships from homosexuals, bisexuals, and queer folks of all shapes and sizes. We’re not a disease that needs a cure, we’re just people trying to find joy in what we have with one another. If Mason and those like him were not led down a path of ignorance, maybe we could all live in peace. I might not enjoy the same things as Mason, but he would have added new shades to the rainbow. If only there were do-overs in life.

 

There was not much more for me here except one thing.

“Can I see his room?”

 

The room was bare; probably canvased by law enforcement several times over. There were a few books on the small stack, Mason had a full collection of Gary Paulson’s nature young adult fiction books, The Hatchet, The River, and Brian’s Winter, one of which I knew due to it being required reading. He also had a copy of Fight Club, which I have never read, but saw the movie. Based on the indentations on the pages and sweat stains, he was reading this book very often. Flipping through the pages, I noticed a particular passage with fading ink:

“Unless we get God's attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.

Which is worse, hell or nothing?

Only if we're caught and punished can we be saved.” (Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk)

 

After learning all I came to learn and observe of Mason Cameron’s former life, I left for home. Instead of another Uber, I walked to collect my thoughts on everything I had learned.

All of this information adds one more clue to the tapestry. Mason was in play long before he even knew I existed. His father’s treatments were not something I could easily find even with my advanced skills and resources. Someone told him for a purpose. There was nothing personal about what he did. Heck, he might also have been a victim of something bigger than himself. Mason was forced into confronting something he couldn’t handle, turning to destruction for solace. He became a living weapon for multiple sides of a conflict, where human life does not matter as much as the result of human actions.

As the shadows of dusk fall upon the earth, the specters of casualties yet to come consume my mind with questions of ability and purpose. What should I do now with what I know? I can’t compete against a person or a group like this, who are making chess moves years before the game is set. I have resources at my disposal, but I know I have already lost. I need more than what I have in intelligence, I need something that can reset the board and counter moves before they happen. There is one possibility, but I can’t ask so much of something so small, can I? Ryan would never have wanted this; I really just want to close my eyes and move on with my life, maybe even one day buying a private island with Kevin at my side and let the world burn. Mankind isn’t worth it.

I am that selfish and I am that conceited, but Kevin isn’t. He spent years hoping, and if Ryan had never died, probably a lifetime longing. Even when there’s no chance of success, Kevin will still keep trying. I guess that is what faith truly is, the belief in something better despite all odds. Even if I do what I am planning, it’s a longshot and there’s always the possibility of it backfiring. Mankind isn’t ready for what I had built with Ryan; I am not sure if I am ready for the responsibility, either.

Yet, my mind is made up. I am not going to save mankind out of altruism. I am going to believe that maybe by giving one more moment for hope, things can get better.