Snakeback in Angora

Somewhere in the vast and unspoiled natural beauty that is New Jersey, right around the corner from K-Mart, lived a man named Stellan Andrews. He lived with his wife, his enormous children, and a host of psychotic delusions.

Stellan had always known that he was special. From a very early age, it was clear to him that he was superior to the other children, and as he aged, he discovered that he could employ his above-average intellect and cunning to manipulate social systems to his advantage. By the time he was 18, he thought himself invincible.

His ambitious and power-hungry nature was tempered by a fair amount of social ineptitude and an utter lack of empathy for anyone who was not similarly power-hungry and evil as he. This led to a perception of him as bright and eccentric at best, or more frequently as one of them there smartypants weirdos who thought that he was too good for his neighbors in the mobile home park. His friends were few and tended to be outcasts with sociopathic tendencies. These friendships were intense and codependent until abrupt ends; one person would demand too much, the other would demur, the first would stand firm and uncompromising as this would now become a significant issue about loyalty and value and importance, and after a short-lived blowup, they would never speak again. Throughout, extreme amounts of jealousy would rage in both directions, and so Stellan never had more than one friend at a time.

In between friendships, though also during them, Stellan spent much of his time tinkering with technology. He dissected and rebuilt radios, televisions, computers, and anything else he could get his hands on. He played with model rockets and explosives of many types, though without fail it was his friends who were more interested in these types of activities. With them, he also played with guns, but he never had any interest in doing so on his own.

After high school, Stellan enlisted in the Army, despite a fundamental distrust of government and a lack of passion for most of the various relevant interests of his now-forgotten friends: guns, history, tanks, U.S. Cavalry catalogs, and dolls that were called “action figures”. However, he did enjoy strategy- and war-games, which never had any relevance to his military career. The only aspect which appealed to him was the power hierarchy, and this seemed more natural to him than any other social structure he had experienced.

He was stationed in Laos for a time, and that is where he met his wife. She was a Chinese rabbi, and since she spoke no English, they hit it off smashingly. With not much to go on about her personality, he romanticized her into his perfect woman, and by the time his delusions were shattered, they were raising children in New Jersey. Neither was particularly happy. She sublimated nearly all of herself into her work at the local pan-Asian synagogue, and he, now more social than he had ever been in his life, entered into a sinister and twisted game.

It was called Perfidy, and there were a couple hundred participants across the entire country. These players had a few things in common: they were moderately sociopathic; they harbored great contempt and resentment for the average citizen, whom they characterized as a stupid sheep or cow; and they believed that they, as superior creatures, were entitled to control the proletariat for entertainment purposes.

The game, to boil it down to some sort of boiled-down nutshell, was the structured use of random and unwitting people as pawns in a giant and complex strategy game. The players who excelled were accomplished manipulators and liars, or, as they preferred to call themselves, social engineers. They were also cold and dispassionate.

Stellan lost his head. He had just been outmanœuvred by Jack Breig from Delaware, and he was livid. As the bile rushed into his mouth, he lost his firm grasp on strategery, and succumbed to vengeful instincts. Within days, he and Jack were getting far too personal. His rage abided when he succeeded in triggering Jack's divorce. In response, Jack proved once again that he was Stellan's better. The next day, Stellan was arrested for a crime that he did not commit. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. His family was not pleased.

He returned home a felon. No longer able to get credit or a job, he reacted in the most natural way possible: he joined the local Plan 9 Users' Group.

[To be continued...]