This is not speculation, it is not presumption, it is a story. The beginning or one side to a story and it just jumped at me. I cannot use it in any of the other stories, as such I put it here. Enjoy and feel free to use this.
It was early morning. The man was walking on the street. He was merely walking and enjoying the sounds of the city. Yet behind the facade that we all see there was something more, but unless you have been part of it, you will not pick up on it. He was looking to the stores in a mall and he was considering issues that were left open to him. He stopped, he smelled something and it was overwhelming him. On his left was an Italian shop making fresh wood fired oven baked flat bread. The sense of oregano was almost making him faint. He was suddenly so hungry. He saw the small breads, there was a version with Sopressa and parmesan. It was a special 2 for $5 and he bought two. He asked where he could get some coffee so he could sit down and eat them. The cook pointed at an empty table. He nodded and asked for a macchiato. He started to slowly eat the first loaf. A loaf was an exaggeration as the break was hardly more than a mini baguette but the smell and the taste were amazing. Before he had munched down on his first bread the macchiato was delivered.
He starting to consider how greed has left tradecraft at a massive disadvantage all over the world, especially in London, most metropolitan American cities and Sydney. These franchise settings, setting an unrealistic stage of zero hours and non-manageable forced choices had opened up these places to tradecraft. Places like the IRGC were sending people to acquire these franchises, set 2-4 people as staff, letting them get trained in local customs and solidifying their new identities. And for years each place would gain 100-350 identities and credit card information. A trickle down solution that was not fast, but it was certain. Every shop would gain personal details from whomever paid with a credit card and it was fuelling the data coffers of UANI. And every day that no action was taken more details would flow to Tehran. The setting was almost unmanageable. It was even worse that the holders of these franchise solutions were holding onto their shops with an iron fist and their legal teams were shielding their revenue streams and not shielding the locations where the were.
He considered that as far as he could tell already 28 shops were in play, three in Sydney, eight in London and the other 18 were set over San Francisco, New York and Chicago. And every 6 months these places would upgrade 36-72 agents to a new level finding new jobs with their old ‘employer’ vouching for it all and no one could tell how long it had been going on for. He was aware of at least 2 years of issues, as such Iran had close to 150 agents all over the globe and the options for chaos were enormous. So how to deal with them?
Detection was the largest problem. Several of them would enter some international student program and could fall under the net swim ming freely in an academic pond of knowledge and that was beside all the local knowledge they were acquiring by merely being silent and misinforming on their enemies through third party sources whenever possible.
The options for some slaughterfest were also not possible. Before there were enough solutions, the media jumps in label it racism and they would make matters worse. Moreover these players had made connections with local organised crime overpaying for services and these people would be keeping an eye out whilst selling every now and then something with a huge margin, these people were not stupid, they were driven and the people who needed to be aware were not, or they just didn’t care.
Whatever this was it was a mere story. Will it grace your writings? Good luck with it and whilst I am looking at the additional settings for Residuam Vitam and Engonos I see more options for both, the question becomes how can I smooth things over? You see adding cogs tend to create levels of chaos and at some point I need to revisit the entire story and see if the story is smooth enough. Fr what it is worth, I see no point adding levels of tradecraft to either story. Well, Residuam Vitam has some tradecraft, but it was for different reasons and with a different mindset in play. The distinction makes sense when that story is complete and the additional parts are about to evolve, but that is on me and that is my challenge.
We all evolve and every storyteller knows that if he or she does not evolve. Whatever comes after is merely repetitive and a simple twist on the originalist of the first story. A setting I will desperately avoid, but that is me.
Enjoy the day.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 