Bottom line... 
(begun Saturday 9th November at 4.55am..)


The early years?  Watching the GateKeeper over at St. Theresa's as he stumbled about the property bearing his porta-light, and me not having a clue apart from recognizing some sort of bizarre Hardyboys signalling game?
With Mr. Dawood's Roseanne cc's three monstrosities now towering on the horizon just beyond the gumtrees, I figure I'll have a grandstand view of the latest signalling enterprises.  They'd had someone around the top floor of the middle block rig up a light the night before last to test the waters, although I'd not noticed it last night..
I can step out onto the verandah after dark and if I hang around long enough, chances are I'll see a spotlight sweep across the gumtrees, as the Laser Program Users this side of the valley line up the route/path planned for the evening...

When you compare this rather obvious and clumsy method of communicating to the astonishingly sophisticated options the Spies are afforded in the privacy of your home, it seems sort of old-fashioned somehow..
Sort of on a par with the two cans and piece of string that we used to pretend were telephones when we were laaities?
Some egghead will no doubt design a more efficient and less noticable means of establishing the desired routes soon enough, but in the meantime, if you do ever glance out of your window to see a light cutting across the nearby trees, it will probably be your local Smart City Data Collectors setting up the path for their evening's monitoring...  No worries, as it could be that pleasant 20-something youngster who lives 2 doors down from you, and who appears to work from home... Does he or his fellow recruits have your home marked on his Visiting list on any given day/night?
Lost any of your appliances over the last couple of years?  Any major spikes or surges when the power's been cut?  Your lights dip quite alarmingly on occasion, for no apparent reason?  Then you have yet to be officially invited on board the Project, and you'd best keep your fingers tightly crossed that you're not being deliberately overlooked...

My Good Neighbour is proving to be a godsend as Balliram cranks up his terror tactics to instill fear in all the charges under his jurisdiction, and he's everywhere at once, as he assists the latest recruits up at No. 33, and then Freddie the Accountant at No. 12, with his new razor wire HERE...
I wouldn't be lying if I were to say that all the security precautions in the world won't save you, were your Area Controller to pick you to provide the latest example of a patsy...
Once you've fully grasped that he/she can remotely corrupt your battery-operated devices, and that disabling the power supply to your house alarm briefly, is an absolute piece of cake, you'll see the futility of putting in a state of the art security system...
Do I advocate that you simply don't bother?  By no means...

You do the best you can to protect your family and your assets, including sacrificing yourselves or your IT friendly kids to the Smart City Project (although as Agent Balliram has demonstrated so enthusiastically, this past week) this last will not necessarily save you from being targeted...
A final point being driven home to my ex-Treasurer, to ensure she doesn't entertain second thoughts regarding their participation in this scurrilously inhumane and divisive Project?  Did I say divisive?
When the blurb you're fed insists you will ultimately be one powerful force of Rainbow Warriors, united against evil and corruption?
You'll buy that crap because you have no choice.  Bottom line.

In the midst of all this engineered mayhem, you've been tossed what looks like a life-line, and by golly, you're going to have to sit on that little warning voice hard, before you sign on the dotted line.. And sign you will, or you'll suffer the consequences... Your fellow recruits will trot out endless exhortations that you are to have faith, and that Good will ultimately triumph over evil, as long as you hold your tongue and do as you're told...
I guess you'll understand why I see a very different picture to the one that you've been persuaded to accept..
After nine long years of being the pinata for the Troop's amusement and entertainment, and no end in sight, I'm inclined to view the recruits as sheep, being artfully divided up into pens to be herded about at their Owner's pleasure...

Does Jannie van Zyl's First Lieutenant Bevonk remain as devout as ever he was, and is his faith all that keeps him going, despite that he sees the writing on the wall, and he grows more cynical by the day?  I can still rise each day and tell myself that something truly miraculous could occur, be it the sight of a pair of purple-crested loeries sharing the birdbath, or a UAV? suddenly soaring hundreds of feet into the air before my bulging eyes.. He'd said that if that orange light I'd seen hovering over the valley recently had indeed been a drone, I would've heard it buzzing like a horde of angry wasps...
He's a clever lad is our Aviator, but he has yet to be introduced to many of the remarkable advances made to the surveillance technology, and I'd lay odds that a near-silent drone is one of them...

The demonstration the chap had laid on, was some sort of test, although I hadn't felt the desire to ask the reason for it, and I'd been happy just for the privilege of witnessing such a magical thing.. Enough said for the moment at least...
How's the Bundu.net Yank doing up there in the Midlands with his recruitment numbers?  Does he liaise with the designated Mischief-Making team as I suspect, and is the engineered crime wave due to increase in that little backwater, in order to up the sign-up to this fantastical quantum laser Neighbourhood Watch?
It's the only way?  Seriously, Mistuh Spence?  As your average honest rate-paying citizen has their immune system battered relentlessly by the 'perfectly safe' unregulated amounts of wireless that saturate their suburb, prior to the laser paths being set up?
Routes that will eventually have the damaged or departed flora and fauna picking up again, to fool Joe Public into believing that all is well?

LATER at 8am

It's still raining out there, and hopefully the biotechnology practitioner has decided he'll come and work in our garden next Saturday, when the weather may or may not have improved...
Hmm.. I've just taken a wrong-number call on the landline, and for some reason the word Hundai popped into my head as I automatically pulled the lead from the back of the set before re-connecting it...
I can feel their hot breath on my neck as I stumble about on Facebook... I'm watched so closely that our PC has taken to hanging every few minutes as a result, although of course our regular anti-virus updates and scans have been 'trained' to report no untoward mischief found, as has yours.. *winks..

The GameWrecker has just staggered out of bed, and I'm rewarded immediately by the usual knives to my cancer, as the Eavesdroppers race to capture his muttered 'good-morning' for posterity...
Was it yesterday or the day before that I'd acknowledged a new Friend request?  I went over and checked out his wall before ticking the box, and found that he's from Buffalo City.. Someone perhaps linked to the mybroadband.co.za forums?  Someone who's almost certainly a recruit to the growing army of quantum laser program users down in East London?  His wall hadn't offended me, as several have managed to do, and as far as I'm concerned, as long as he sits quietly and keeps his derision to himself, he's welcome..

It was I on the other hand, who'd sent a Friend request to the young man in Capetown in an attempt to renew our brief communications from a few years back... A silly idea on my part, as I'd discovered almost immediately, when his air of unease was almost palpable.. Would he prefer if I were to Unfriend him?
Like I said, I'm new to the whole Facebook thing, and the protocols that one should follow, but if Jared would like to do the deed his end, I certainly wouldn't be offended...
If he's allowed himself to buy into the school of thought that has me deserving of all this unpleasant attention, then best he delete me to concentrate on his falsely rosy little bubble of hope, and to becoming proficient in the use of the laser program...

Right. I've since established that the rain isn't about to stop, and that young Vincent is content to try again next Saturday, if it's fine... Happiness all round...
So tellus, what do you think?  You've only just met me on Facebook and find me to be a generally sane-sounding, if opinionated old fart who appears to have a bee in her bonnet over Sutcliffe's Smart City Project?
That's it?  You've not bothered to go look through my photo albums to see the clouds of spheres created by Roux's wireless bearing, ultra-short laser showers?
You've not checked out the spheres sitting on the walls inside our home?  Visible evidence of the Peeping Toms that use the privacy of our home as a Learning Centre with which to train up new recruits, causing the levels of EMR to fluctuate wildly on their arrival and departure?

Keep up folks... For if you're as yet unaware of the near-alien properties of this astonishing technology, this is probably one of the only places you'll find the real truth of this Grand Scheme..
Will today be the day?
Will godschild approach me to speak openly of the Project, and tell me that he and my Excellent Neighbour are doing their darndest to end the mischief caused in ours by Agent Balliram?
I'd been curled up in front of the TV at about 8.20pm last night, when I suddenly felt someone cautiously prodding away at my cancer with their lasers...
A moment later and I'd felt the blood soaking into my top... If my picking and scratching leads to a gusher I'm the first to say so, but whoever was on Shift duty in ours at that time can award themselves some brownie points, as I'd quite forgotten how easy it is for them to cause our Millie the Gross to haemmorrage... A visitor you wanted to impress, perhaps, with the sight of all that rich scarlet?
Peace..

---oOo---

Saturday 9th November 2013 at 10.48am.