Won't Get Fooled Again

We return to Mountain Maryland on the eve of destruction. A town on a knife-edge. As the fate of what is known as Garrett Prime decides everything. The fate of a multiverse of both fact and fiction. Possible and improbable. We must believe that one man can make a difference. That ordinary people can be the heroes of myth and legend. Soon one of the FBI's longest-running case files would be closed. An investigation spanning two decades with thousands of man-hours put into it. The investigation into the strange occurrences around The DART facility known simply as *The Loop* in Garrett Maryland. The mass amnesia affected almost all the adult residents of this seemingly quiet little town, making this case near impossible.

At least two battalions worth of heavily armed FBI agents and Special Forces Soldiers gathered in a repurposed hangar at Garrett County Airport. On the very edge of the mind control affected area. The hangar was surrounded by advanced military vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Tanks armoured personnel carriers. Some green and others black bearing FBI livery. The people ins inside the large hanger huddled together for warmth around various heaters, in the bitter cold of the Maryland winter. Assembled are a ragtag bunch of people. From straight-laced army officers to nonchalant FBI agents. A board along the side of the hanger that once held maintenance clipboards now boar file photos or E-fit style renderings of familiar faces, once seen on almost every Milk carton in the USA. *Potential Friendlies* were written above them. Another *Hostiles Shoot on Sight* With a picture of a Younger Holter Arkaville and an e- fit drawing of an aged up Casey "Mitch" Mitchell. They were at the head of images of robots that looked like the fantasy of the designers at the *Hasbro* toy company.

*Hold on I’m Coming by Sam and Dave* was audible over the hubbub of the assembled personnel being played on a car radio.

An Imposing blond woman of easily six feet in height, with broad shoulders, held up her hand, her gloves had metal armour on the fingers and knuckles. The chatter in the hanger immediately ceased. As silence fell. If this imposing figure of a woman resembled any actress it would be a wild-haired Rebecca Romijn. A shorter man with greying hair and a high hairline wearing a worn brown leather trench coat and a large 1970s scarf removed his hat and stood in front of the Map of Garrett County on the far wall of the hanger.

“In case we haven’t met, my name is Director Gene Tyler. I'm with the FBI Behavioural Science Unit. My Agents were the first to notice the lights and this MK Ultra style brainwashing that the town of Garrett is under. So this is my Dog and Pony show."

Director Tyler bears an uncanny resemblance to British Actor John Simm. He speaks loudly enough to be heard, yet he does not yell.

Tyler flicked open a manilla folder on the folding table in front of him, without taking off his brown leather driving gloves. Drawing a finger under the briefing notes. Despite them all being put to memory. Gene didn’t think he’d be back formulating a battle plan of how to take a town over twenty years after he’d left army intelligence. Yet here he was. Nor did he ever think in his wildest dream that it would be a town in Maryland a few hours from his own home.

“Given that Captain Sean Locke and Sergeant Herbert Saville are presumed to still be within the city limits of Garrett. Being held prisoner. The DOD has sent us *Special Counter-Terrorist Unit Delta*, to assist with their retrieval."

Tyler continued It was odd that after chasing a man calling himself Flagg since the 60’s that now his ally was Brigadier General Lawrence J Flagg. He was a clean-shaven muscular man in combat fatigues of around Gene’s age. A look of recollection crossed The Brigadiers’ face when those names were mentioned and he nodded humbly when his unit was mentioned.

"We mean to repatriate our people, and take back the town Director"

The square-jawed Flagg added.

“The situation on the ground is getting worse. We have aerial photos courtesy of the Air Force, and they’re *Top Secret* spy planes. They are unaffected by the lights in the city. As we discovered when a commercial flight bound for Cleveland went over Garrett airspace before we could warn the CAA.”

Gene looked to the Brigadier who continued.

“We have at least six confirmed what you at the FBI have quite aptly named *Decepticons,* taking the form of construction equipment, they are currently engaged with fighting various other fictional creatures for control of DownTown Garette. There is also a robotic cat beast. We’re going in there to paint as many targets as we can, and our air support will cripple them, with overwhelming firepower, with minimal property damage and zero civilian casualties. Our man in the air Captain Armbruster and his squadron will be running a harassment mission against the entity named *Starscream* in order to nullify their air support.”

The Brigadier General tried to sound as professional and serious as he could when talking about children's toys and cartoon characters taking over a small Maryland town. He was glad he’d played Transformers vs Decepticons with his Grandson last weekend. The boy was still in short trousers but he'd already become a key military strategist. A real chip of the old block.

“We have SAM sites set up here, here and here.”

The general indicated on the map.

“Thank you, General. If our targeted airstrikes don't work we’ll be fighting with Tanks and APCs Street to Street and block by block. We have plenty of MK 153 Missile launchers and M203 Grenade launchers. Still pretty formidable mobile firepower.”

Tyler had to admit. There were probably more missiles and grenades here than he’d seen in all his time in Southeast Asia.

“My Combat engineers will mine every road if it gives us the advantage. We’d rather not we need to get those civilians out of there”

The General spoke gravely. He didn’t one any of the townsfolk used as humans shield or caught in the crossfire. This enemy had no mercy or human frailty.

“Agent Nolan is our technology except.”

Gene indicated a young woman who looked nothing like a soldier or any of the other FBI agents. Her makeup was applied heavily with batwing eyeliner that evoked Siouxie Sioux. Her clothing though warm and practical had a gothic flair to it. Her winter coat had a pointed Witch style pixie hood and was adorned with Spikes and Gothic crosses.

Nolan waved at the assembled soldiers. It was like a Matias Pérez’s convention up in here. Mati was her jarhead partner. He had been translating civilian speech into army speak for her this whole operation. Mati had been the guy that had gotten the assignment to babysit the department's geek in the field, some years ago. Sonia was a Quantico graduate just like everyone else and wasn’t going to stay back at the office. They’d been good friends ever since.

“With SSA Bozzio’s help”

Sonia Nolan credited her senior agent.

Mads as she was known to the unit, was sitting on the chrome bumper of a lifted matt black civilian truck parked next to the Old Man's Lincoln in the extremely full hanger. The truck was a rare 1950s GMC quad cab. The bed was full of electrical tools.

“We’ve managed to tap into the server for the Garrett power grid, from a substation beyond the exclusion zone. We can overload it and the whole town will be in a blackout. According to the local radio. The civilian population has been ordered to stay indoors. So they’ll believe it’s part of the power grid test.”

Ghost as Sonia had a well-deserved reputation as the best hacker anyone had ever seen. So good that she had to explain what she was doing as even the most ardent self processed technology experts couldn't spot her work. Her code was near indistinguishable from a program's usual source code. In fact, she’d written a lot of the code for serves when she’d been with IBM. Sonia's seemingly deathly appearance also helped the nickname had stuck.

“Nice work Ghost”

Gene’s serious stony face broke into a small smile.

“Boss, I’ve also left a few boobytraps in their system in case they do try to bring the grid back online. Or if they’re foolish enough to try and connect to it with the Loop mainframe. It’s not elegant and it’s very brute force”

Mads Bozzio smiled at *Brute Force;* it was the only way she knew how to hack computers back in her Phone Freaking days.

“If they network the mainframe to the power grid, my virus will force the Loop itself to do a fully automated safety shut down.”

Sonia explained. Using their own safety protocols against them, the same ones Eugene Butts had smuggled out, in a massive mainframe data dump, many years ago.

“You know how this guy who calls himself Luther thinks as well as I do. If we can continue the ruse that we're his intellectual inferiors, he'll make a mistake, overstretch his limited forces, and then the dominos will topple.”

Knowing your enemy was the whole reason Tyler had been with Intelligence and the CIA. It was the entire rationale of having the Behavioural Sciences Unit. To profile and contain dangerous minds. This thing, this man that used to be local kid Casey Mitchell was perhaps the most dangerous person any of them had ever faced. Yet the BSU ordinarily hunted serial killers on a daily basis.

Another woman appeared at Tyler’s side. Also wrapped up against the cold wearing a red leather trenchcoat over a designer three prince suit. She was Asian and maybe ten years younger than the Director himself. She bore a striking resemblance to Lucy Liu. This was Dr Rose Tyler, The Director's wife, a consultant psychologist with the FBI. credited as being the Mother of Modern Criminal profiling, and co-founder of the behavioural sciences unit.

“Several of the enemies we’ve identified, enjoy playing complex mind games. Many of you have been selected for this mission because you’ve never been to this state before, so you are unknown to the enemy.”

Rose placed a box on the table. There were small crystals carefully individually wrapped in black tissue paper within the box. Each crystal was mounted into a holder and rubber silencer that could be slipped onto dog tags. There was a *Paperback Exchange* sticker on the side of the box.

“In the unlikely case, they can power any of the lights locally these offer protection from the hypnotic mind-altering effects.”

The soldiers eyed their newly acquired crystals curiously as the box was handed around.

“The Crystal refract the lights, and disrupts the mind control device being used.”

Rose assured the sceptical soldiers. Who strung the crystals on their dog tags under the watchful gaze of their commanding officer.

“We move out after Sunset at 18:30 hours. The entire town power grid will be fried by then.”

Director Tyler explained. Ghost nodded, confident in her own abilities.

“You all know what you have to do.”

He finished his briefing gravely.

Twilight begins to fall over Mountain Maryland for the very last time, in the greatest decade. The decade of the 1980s. *Won’t Get Fooled Again* by *The Who* begins to play as an SR-17 Blackbird shoots high above the Garrett Skyline, doing last-minute vital resonance for the forces of justice. While a prototype aircraft designated YF-22 circled the Garret city limits slow and low, its motions seemed somehow threatening, its movement more rapid than any pilot could manage. A squadron of strangely shaped jets appeared high above the mountain's F-117 Nighthawk Stealth fighters, the pride of the United States Air Force. On an intercept course with *Starscream*.

Soon the final battle of Garrett Prime would commence. The fate of the future would be decided on the Main Street of Nowheres Ville USA.