-
Day 5 Assignments
Please post your Day 5 assignments here!
-
16 Replies
-
Kim J’s SOTL Stacking Suspense ASSIGNMENT 4, PART 2:
I learned that MIS must be present in every scene, or the scene doesn’t belong in the movie. I also learned the few times when I couldn’t find the “intrigue,” per se, in a scene, I could still find character motivation.
1: Crawford warns Clarice from the outset not to let Lecter “get inside your head.” This theme drives much of the plot throughout the movie, right up to the final scene when Lecter calls Clarice at her FBI graduation celebration.
2: Establish your protagonist’s flaw through your antagonist’s actions. Use your protagonist’s responses to your antagonist’s actions to establish their strengths. Lecter uses one key piece of information (Clarice’s West Virginia accent) to make a series of assumptions about people with Appalachian accents. He uses this stereotype to dig deeper into her psyche to mine it for insecurities and shame about feeling like “poor white trash.” Clarice eventually pushes back and employs manipulative tactics to trick Lecter. He admires her cleverness.
3: Have your protagonist and antagonist share skill sets. An emerging FBI profiler, Clarice is pretty good herself at identifying and exploiting weaknesses — knowing when to be truthful to Lecter, when to withhold, and when to use Lecter’s tactics on him. She makes a daring play when she offers him a transfer to a different facility in a ruse to gain his cooperation. This is a fundamental, recurring theme throughout the film until the very last scene: Cat and mouse, quid pro quo.
4: Give the protagonist a special skill (novitiate FBI psychological profiler), but build and amplify the need to hone that skill throughout as the antagonist puts more obstacles in the protagonist’s way. The closer Clarice gets, the more roadblocks Lecter’s cryptic word games create. This forms an undercurrent of psychological pressure for Clarice.
5: Skip the red herring if you can find a more creative approach. In this movie, there are two villains– Jaime Gumb, killer and target of the investigation, and Hannibal Lecter, Clarice’s antagonist and mentor. Crawford is her mentor initially, but Lecter assumes that role as the story progresses. We don’t need a red-herring.
6: The Four C’s: Creepy, Cunning, Complicated, and Cryptic. Lecter’s role is complex in the story. Make the villain/antagonist deep.
7: Give the villain or antagonist humanity. Despite his flaws, Lecter is courteous, sophisticated, and craving human contact of an intellectually stimulating nature. The only person he’s really dealt with for the past eight years is the obnoxious Dr. Chilton, whom he despises and will eventually kill and eat. Clarice finds Lecter compelling, too, even though she knows it puts her at risk of psychological victimization.
Jaime Gumb doesn’t reveal much humanity. We know how much he loves Precious and that the world mistreated him, but otherwise, his character a bit flat and one-dimensional. I would have liked to see a snippet of a relationship with a family member or something that shows Jaime can move about in the world outside his basement or dressing room. What happens when this guy goes to the grocery store? Perhaps it would help to know a bit more about his psychological trauma contributing to his psychopathy to add depth to his character.
8: Make the antagonist (or villain) unique to his peers. Lecter stands in stark contrast to other characters on the cell block, which makes him stand out. The other criminally insane inmates are flat stereotypes. Lecter has great posture, is tidily groomed, well-spoken, and has art on his walls drawn from memories of a “bon vivant” lifestyle. He is a cut above the rest of them. He’s intriguing and compelling– the kind of guest you would like at a dinner party if you weren’t the main course.
9: Mirror something in the protagonist and antagonist/villain’s characters. Jaime Gumb’s obsessive metamorphosis fantasies mirror Clarice’s own metamorphosis fantasies of shedding her “poor white trash” upbringing to become an ace FBI profiler. Clarice sublimates while Jaime acts out.
10: Use a ticking clock. Jaime Gumb holds his victims for three days before killing them. It raises the stakes when we see time running out for victim Catherine Martin. Have a good reason for using it in the plot.
11: Have the supporting characters fulfill a critical role in the protagonist’s quest. Jack Crawford tests Clarice’s mettle and presents her inciting incident. The obnoxious Dr. Chilton creates a problem Clarice solves tactfully, revealing skill. Senator Martin agrees to the transfer ruse Clarice created involving her unwittingly because it will buy Lecter’s cooperation. The gaggle of troopers milling about the mortuary allows Clarice to show off her skills of using her roots – her accent and vernacular – to gain their cooperation. Fellow trainee Ardelia Mapp helps Clarice work out Lecter’s cryptic clues. Victim Frederica’s best friend puts the final piece of the puzzle in place for Clarice. If a supporting or seemingly minor character doesn’t fulfill a service to the protagonist, cut them.
-
This reply was modified 4 years ago by Kim Jaspers.
-
Thanks Kim! This is a terrific analysis. You really helped me!
-
This reply was modified 4 years ago by
-
I didn’t see the Day 4 assignment, so I’m posting the Stacking Suspense Assignment, Part 1 here. Will post Part 2 in a day or two, provided it is still here.
Diana’s BI Stacking Suspense
What I learned: I got more clarity on the distinctions between Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense, and am
starting to see how they play off each other and how a lot of the scenes leave
you hanging, like the mystery is the tapestry of the movie and the suspense and
intrigue play off that and are woven into the tapestry in the right places. I
think this will help me especially when we work with each of them separately,
so I can get an even deeper understanding of these elements. I also liked how
the characters also have MIS built into them. And how important it is to build
stakes into the scenes to create a more thrilling story. Ex: Is someone going
to be killed? Is someone risking their life? Is someone in danger and not
knowing it? Etc. I also noticed that not every scene in the movie had every
element of MIS, but most did and the ones that didn’t were heavy on the other
two. -
ASSIGNMENT DAY 5 – THE VILLAIN’S PLAN
I learned from this assignment: 1) Reverse engineering is critical to writing a good thriller. 2) Make the villain’s sequence as nefarious and hard on the protagonist as possible.
Villain Sven plans to replace all living souls with the dead to eliminate free will and achieve world dominance. Hero Sage has depicted a battle in her graphic novel, which ensures Sven’s plan will fail, so he must force her to change the outcome of the battle. Sven is the mastermind, and false mentor/antagonist Lindsey is his foot soldier proxy who carries out most of Sven’s orders under the pretext of trying to help her. Sven and Lindsey’s mission: get Sage and bring her to Los Angeles headquarters to force the change in the novel.
Intercept Sage from a boardwalk ride.
Transport her from 2020 to 1995, one year before the critical battle depicted in her novel.
Befriend Sage to gain her trust.
Convince Sage, her mother (with whom Sage lives), is dead, leaving Sage with nowhere to go but with Lindsey to Los Angeles.
Withhold Sage’s psychotropic medication and exacerbate her stress, driving her further into a state of paranoid delusion.
Lock her up so she can’t escape.
Intercept Sage’s publisher and editor to “help” her with the rewrite.
Torture and brainwash Sage to gain compliance.
Pretend to elevate Sage’s status within the organization while diminishing Lindsey’s status.
Kill one of Sage’s allies to prevent them from helping her escape.
Kill Lindsey to prevent her from telling Sage the truth about his ruse.
-
Just realized this should go in the previous day’s lesson.
I’ll post Day 5 in a sec.
Diana’s SOTL Stacking Suspense
What I learned: It was really interesting to see the interconnectedness of each of the elements of suspense as well as the inner elements within and between the characters. This movie was a masterpiece in suspense. Almost every scene was jam-packed with mystery, intrigue and suspense. There was brilliant subtext, which added to the intrigue. And the suspense kept building until the protagonist was in the worst possible situation she could be in: face to face with the serial killer she had been hunting down. I know this wasn’t part of the assignment, but I also appreciated the gradient of change with Clarice. She was a well-rounded character and her transformation was credible, and the butterfly metaphor was not lost on me. Loved how the writer layered so many elements to work in tandem, both on and beneath the surface. A true cinematic masterpiece. Gets better every time I watch it.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 12 months ago by Diana Ceres.
-
This reply was modified 3 years, 12 months ago by
-
Diana’s Villain Has a Great Plan!
What I learned: I loved looking at the movie this way. It really helped me see the structure and gain better clarity on how things would play out.
End goal: Obtain the mind-control chip so he can [do something nefarious with it].
How can he accomplish this in a devious way? Kill Sarah’s husband who created the chip and stole the chip when he realized what was going to be done with it. Destroy Sarah’s life/manipulate her into letting him know where the chip is, since it wasn’t on her husband when he was killed.
How can he cover it up? Tamper with the crime scene. Make it look like someone else did it.
Sequence to make it as intriguing as possible: Act 1: Console Sarah when her husband is murdered. Scare Sarah by sending someone to ransack her home by looking for the chip. Act 2: Assign her a “patient” that is actually a plant to throw her off his trail. Scare Sarah again by having someone run her off the road. Issue death threats on the phone, etc. Midpoint: Use his friendship/trust to gaslight Sarah and cause her to break with her ethics by hypnotizing a patient to gain valuable information to help her find her husband’s killer. Act 3: Continue to manipulate
Sarah, confusing her, causing her to spiral out of control and use the
mind-control chip to program the plant to track down and kill the man who
murdered her husband. Act 4: Attempt to steal chip from Sarah now that he has
confirmation she has the chip and kill her in the process. -
Ron Johnson: The villain has a great plan!
What I learned: The hero’s actions are a response to the villain’s desire/plan.
We’ve been told a thousand times by so many writing gurus that the Hero must act out of their own will and desire or the plot will feel contrived. However, the KEY is to understand the Hero does so as a response to the villain’s plan. If no villain’s action, the Hero doesn’t act, because they are by nature good (or at least not evil) and go about their life. It is the Villain’s malfeasance that awakens the Hero’s desire by their plight. They are inexorably connected. Therefore, the villain’s goal is the engine that drives the story.
No villain’s goal, no hero’s action, no story.
The most helpful part of the course for me is where we are asked to answer questions about specific elements in our story. The question “how does the Villain accomplish their goal in a devious way” and “how do they cover it up?” gets you to focus on specific details that may otherwise take weeks, or months to discover through trial and error, as they flesh out those elements that create conflict in a natural way.
My story:
1 – Hightower’s End Goal: To restore the Khmer Empire, become a god-king and take over Asia.
2 – He accomplishes this by kidnapping leading archeologists in order to find the ancient stone Lingam and performing the ritual by a Hindu Priest, while building a small army and converting top level officials to his cause that will take over the nation of Cambodia.
3 – He covers it up by using poachers to steal artifacts all over Cambodia and hides his army in a mining operation in the jungle.
Secretly recruits ex-Khmer Rouge lieutenants and generals.
Gains allies and installs puppet leaders in government by paying them off.
Kills any defectors who may expose his plan.
4 – Sequence:
Hightower kidnaps leading archeologists on Jayavarman II.
Tries to kidnap Glory’s mom (the top researcher) but fails and so raids Glory’s home looking for her mom’s archeological reports.
Failing at both, he goes after Glory.
He pays off political and military officials in Cambodia’s government to stifle moves that would stop him.
Takes out anyone who might expose his plan, puts a bounty on Quinn who used to work for him but defected.
Assigns a special unit to go after Glory and Quinn, recruits spies and local bounty hunters to report their whereabouts or bring them in.
He pays off archeologists in the field to not report his raiding temples in search of the stone.
Trains soldiers under the command of ex-Khmer Rouge lieutenants and generals. Acquires tanks and army vehicles, planes and drones.
Finds the Lingam stone and performs the ritual to become a god-king.
Stages a coop within the Cambodian government.
Takes over the Cambodian government.
-
I just wanted to comment that posting what we’ve learned is helpful because we can see how others have interpreted the material and get another P.O.V. I especially enjoyed – and want to thank – Kim J’s post that were very insightful regarding SOTL, which can be applied to any thriller. Great job!
-
Very kind of you Ron. Thank you 🙂 I really disliked this movie when it came out, but in the context of this course, it’s now epic.
-
-
KANNAN MENON LOGA (the Villain has a great plan)
What I learned from this lesson is that you need to trust the process of fleshing out the outline to help create the narrative details.
What is the Villain’s end goal?
Loga (the Villain) want to launder a huge portion of the proceeds of the US$12 Billion Malaysian swindle through the US financial system by engaging in massive investment in US properties including financing films, purchasing entertainment centers like high-end discos, night clubs, and real estate properties (all lightly regulated and not subject to rigorous anti-money laundering regulations.
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
Over several years, LOGA (the Villain) has used David (ASHA, the heroine’s American husband) as his US financial advisor, gradually entrusting greater amounts of assets of six or seven years. After LOGA helps mastermind a US $12Billion dollar swindle in Malaysia, there is an exponential increase in the amount of funds entrusted to David.
But at the same time, exposure of the financial swindle has caused the Malaysian government to fall, and attention by regulatory authorities, to it is critical to for LOGA to carefully supervise the money-laundering process esp. in the U.S. To his horror he discovers that DAVID has been misappropriating the misappropriated funds! On discovering this he kills DAVID. But he discovers that ASHA has been named executor of all of DAVID’s accounts.
Now LOGA needs to recruit ASHA (his former lover, now a US citizen) as his agent as she controls the funds of offshore company used to funnel the foreign funds into the US,
3. How does LOGA recruit Asha after her husband is murdered?
Possibilities include:
1. Seduction: Loga senses she is unhappy in her marriage and seduces her; once their physical relationship is resumed, she is vulnerable to suggestion and becomes enmeshed in his plan.
2. Makes her a financial offer as she’s desperate for money
How can LOGA help cover up the source of the funds?
LOGA arranges each investment flow so that it originates from a different bank/company/jurisdiction so they funds are not connected to each other.
Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.
(a) While at lunch with her Malaysian girlfriend LOGA “accidentally” sees her and comes up to her, thus rekindling their old relationship to some degree at least / OR another similar accidental meeting in public, so LOGA can pretend that whatever he does to involve her was not planned and merely fortuitous.
Once ASHA is involved
(however it happened) she has to discover certain things that undermines her
trust that her arrangement with LOGA is above board AND that DAVIDs murder is
related to the investment accounts. -
DAY 5 – ASSIGNMENT
Subject Line: Alan’s Villain Has a Great Plan!
What I learned from this assignment? I learned that I actually had a lot more intrigue in my script than I previously thought. Although, I still need to add more. I’d like to add in a double-cross or at least a couple blindsides.
To create your Villain’s plan, answer these four questions:
What is the end goal?
To abduct and auction women on the dark web for huge $$$. This story mainly focuses on three females, Holly Sampson, Erin Raynor and Madison Hansen.
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
At a restaurant bar, he offers to share the world’s best weed with Holly, drugs her and abducts her.
In a tavern, he tries to abduct Erin with a date rape drug, but fails.
Offers Erin a fake modeling job but instead, abducts her.
They are nice to 13 year-old runaway Madison at the bus station, buy her lunch, then offer her a place to stay overnight.
How can they cover it up?
After luring girls and young women into their web with lies, they smuggle them off to the rich individual buyers or brothels.
Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.
· Traffickers lure Holly Sampson by offering to smoke the ‘world’s best weed’ with her, then roofie her, and abduct her.
· At a bar, they roofie Erin Raynor, but Jay prevents her abduction. The traffickers threaten to kill Jay.
· Traffickers stake out the Denver bus stop hunting for runaways. They find 13 year old Madison Hansen there all alone and offer to buy her lunch. After a nice lunch, they offer her a place to stay. She accepts. They abduct her and sell her to a semi trailer brothel in Iowa.
· Traffickers offer Erin Raynor a modeling job, which she accepts. They pick her up with a limo at the L.A. airport. But there is no modeling job. Instead Erin is locked in the back of the limo, which is totally insulated to prevent her from calling for help or being tracked. They smuggle her to a boat bound for China.
· Holly and Erin are auctioned on the dark web to a Beijing brothel.
-
Kim J. same for me. I only marginally liked SOTL because it seemed a little over the top in showcasing serial killers. I thought B Bill was a little too stereotypical and underwritten as a character. Therefore I missed a lot of nuance. But now I appreciate how the writer built-in a great underdog protagonist pit against a ruthless, brilliant villain in a story that keeps you guessing from scene to scene, under suspense, upping the stakes, or in Hannibal’s case “steaks.” LOL. Again, you did a great job dissecting it and I learned something from your post. 🙂
-
David Polcyn – Villain’s great plan
What I learned is….
Reverse engineering the plan really let the villain be the puppet master, pulling the strings and the hero must rise to the challenge. Makes it much easier to build the script from this prospective.
What is the end goal? To cover up a billon dollar money laundering/ sex trafficking ring targeting celebrities and politicians by killing the rockstar who is going public with the details.
How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way? Make the whole thing looks like a simple Murder suicide by a jealous ex-boyfriend, in other words pin it on Joe.
How can they cover it up?
1. Go on TV to build rep as Celebrity lawyer – news consultant for celebrity scandals.
2. Befriend tabloid hack, pretend like he is trying to help Joe while twisting the screws to make his life more difficult, setting him up and undermining him behind the scenes.
3. Convince two bit tabloid hack (Joe) he will make a lot of money with compromising photos by letting him broker a deal with celebrities rather than tabloids.
4. Covertly tip off said tabloid about Rockstar’s infidelity and make sure Tabloid hack (Joe) get’s the job to get the photo.
5. Set up Rockstar infidelity with a trafficked teenager to be photographed by said hack.
6. Dispose of Teenager to keep her quiet.
7. Report teenager missing to ensure Rockstar will pay to keep it hidden.
8. Get a sample of Joe’s handwriting so he can forge a blackmail & suicide note.
9. Set up “blackmail” deal with Joe which results in former KGB assassins murdering Rockstar at Joe’s office, setting it up to look like a murder suicide. But Joe escapes.
10. Manipulate police/ shape narrative with media. Destroy Joe’s credibility – Having Ella implicate him as the jealous ex and Joe was blackmailing her husband/rockstar.
11. Kill anyone who get’s in the way by framing Joe or making it look like suicide.
12. Back up plan is to set up a meeting with Joe and Ella. Murder them both and make it look like a murder suicide of a jealous ex.
-
Mike’s villain has a great plan
Learned: having a strong villain’s plan will make outlining so much easier.
1. End goal of the Villain – to take over the country via a coup.
2. Accomplish/devious – he has teamed up with the mafia to coerce silence/cooperation and fund bribes, and uses the mafia as a scapegoat for killings
3. Cover up – bribing, discrediting or killing anyone that stands in the way
4. Sequence –
a. Kill the Secretary of State [brother of the President] who discovered the plot
b. Use loyal subordinate/Red Herring to control the investigation
c. Bribe Hero to ignore the mafia in the investigation and try to kill him if he doesn’t comply
d. Fabricate evidence to implicate mafia in Sec State’s death
e. Kill IM official who offered bribe to Sec State
f. Attempt to kill Mafia Boss
g. Co-opt Finance Minister – fabricate evidence of financial crimes against President and PM
h. Co-opt Defense Minister – control military for coup
i. Trigger coup
-
Jon’s Villain Has a Great Plan!
1)What is the end goal?
To collect DNA from Eve
2)How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
They request an interview to get her aboard the ship but they don’t have an opportunity.
3)How can they cover it up?
Eventually, aliens kidnap her to collect her DNA. The coverup is that they use technology so there are no signs of abduction.
4)Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.
Request Eve.
Refuse her replacement.
Try to convince her to try technology during the interview
Kidnap her Grandmother in an attempt to lure her in
Kidnap her.
She grabs their DNA instead and technology
Foils the DNA extraction (they must return)
they admit to being half-human from the future and she agrees to help.
-
Karen Grube’s Villain Has a Great Plan!
What I learned from this assignment is that the Villain can have an overt goal and plan and a hidden goal even more sinister.
1. What is the end goal?
Phoenix’s goal is to destroy the entire world’s economic structure to plunge us into a global depression deeper than any the world has ever seen. This is economic warfare and will result in food riots, violence, countries taking military action against other countries, putting us on the brink of World War III.
2. How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way?
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is the world’s most secret and secretive financial institution. They influence global economic policy by guiding the rules and regulations used by over 60 of the world’s largest Central Banks. Phoenix’s plan is to steal the digital keys the BIS is planning on sending out to eight of the banks who offered to be part of their test of a single global digital currency that they believe will make international financial transactions between central banks more efficient and secure. He’s going to use the test to infiltrate the real computer systems of the central banks, completely shutting them down so they can’t conduct business – EVER AGAIN! One of these banks is the U.S. Federal Reserve. Imagine the FED being hijacked, not for ransom, but to destroy all their electronic records . . . permanently.
If his plan doesn’t work, he has a backup plan; to blow up the BIS’s Computer Operations building and all of its data and servers. This would leave little if any oversight into worldwide central bank operations.
3. How can he cover it up?
Phoenix appears only on the dark web as an avatar to remain anonymous.
Phoenix has infiltrated the BIS staff with a few strategically placed moles in building security and high level cybersecurity positions within the BIS who will follow his instructions in return for huge cybercurrency payouts. They don’t know his end game. He’s told them he intends to ransom the computer systems for hundreds of billions in cryptocurrency.
Phoenix set up a “rehearsal” by taking over a single large international bank based in the U.S.. He never asking for ransom to see how long it would take them to recover. It took 21 days and the bank nearly collapsed as it was unable to conduct business. Some businesses were forced to close with no access to funds. Several investors and individuals lost millions.
Phoenix watches as David Hamilton “Ham,” from the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), leads the raid on the home where the men who committed his “rehearsal” are preparing for their next cyberattack. They have no clue who Phoenix is.
Phoenix targets Ham’s wife and daughter to see to it that he is put on leave while the BIS test is being conducted.
Phoenix learns that there’s one man who can stop his plan, Paul Rittenauer, a cybersecurity expert overseeing the Canadian BIS test site. Paul discovered the flaw in the test’s network communications protocols that Phoenix is planning on using to capture the test encryption keys. Paul can fix the flaw but thinks someone is trying to stop him. He is also Ham’s best friend.
Paul meets with Ham, tells him about what he suspects, and asks for his help since there’s no one else he can trust.
Phoenix has Paul kidnapped to prevent him from fixing the flaw and to lure Ham into trying to search for Paul rather than investigating the situation that Paul told him about.
Phoenix lures Ham to Switzerland where he threatens both him and Paul, and Ham’s sister and her son if they don’t undo what they did to stop his plan.
Phoenix lives in a secure bunker within a huge estate in Canada with armed guards and military-level security from which he directs his assassins and moles within the BIS.
Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible.
Phoenix has two hired cyberpunks infiltrate a large international bank and shut down its computer systems in a ransomware attack, only they never ask for ransom. He just wants to know the effect on the bank and its customers, and how long it will take for them to recover.
Phoenix watches on hidden camera as Ham and his men raid the house where the cyberpunks are planning their next attack. The two men escape through an underground tunnel, but Ham and his team catch and arrest them. They don’t know who hired them and the video connection has been cut so it can’t be traced. In the laptop one of the men escaped with is a tracking device letting Phoenix know where the laptop is.
Phoenix watches as the two men leave the courthouse after being indicted for computer crimes. They get into a van waiting at the curb. A reflection of Phoenix is seen in the van’s window.
Phoenix suspects Paul Rittenauer, who works for the BIS, knows about the flaw in the communications protocols for the test. He also knows that Paul is Ham’s best friend and has asked him for help. He kidnaps Paul before he can remedy the flaw, at least he thinks so.
Ham seeks the help of a cybersecurity team in Kentucky run by his and Paul’s former Marine CO. They set a trap for Phoenix on the dark web, but Phoenix uses it to lure Ham into trying to rescue Paul. Ham and Paul convince Phoenix that he needs them both for his plan to succeed.
Phoenix sends both Paul and Ham to the offices of the BIS in Basel, Switzerland to make sure his plan can’t be stopped. He shows them a streaming video of Ham’s sister and her son being held by two of his thugs.
Phoenix thinks he has the upper hand. He doesn’t know he left a clue behind at the BIS – a print hanging on the wall of what was his office of the January 1984 edition of The Economist featuring a phoenix rising out of the flames of different burning currencies with the title “Get ready for a world currency.” The office was HIS office. Phoenix works for the BIS and was just transferred to the Canada office where Paul was working. Ham coerces one of Phoenix’s phony security guards into confirming the identification and Phoenix’s location.
Ham’s former CO calls his boss at FinCEN letting him know that Ham’s in danger but that he can’t reach out to anyone else for help.
Ham arrives back in the U.S. and goes to his boss with Phoenix’s real name and location, which is further confirmed by the men they arrested when they rescued Ham’s sister and nephew. Ham’s boss tells him that his wife and daughter were relocated to a safe house after recovering from the accident and thanks Ham for going along with the pretense they had died.
Ham and the cybersecurity team from Kentucky develop a plan to make Phoenix think his attack is succeeding. They set up fake video feeds from each of the eight central banks. Phoenix watches the panic as they discover their computer systems are disappearing, only it isn’t real. The test is actually being conducted as planned.
Ham’s cybersecurity team begins feeding Phoenix the phony feed from the eight central banks. Phoenix watches the stream inside his security bunker beneath his estate. Ham and a handful of armed agents take out the estate’s guards, go inside the home, and with the biometric scan of one the guards, enter Phoenix’s secure safe room. But he’s not there.
Phoenix has escaped through a hidden door to an underground tunnel that leads to another safe room keyed only to Phoenix’s biometrics.
Ham’s CO spotted a sea plan anchored on a nearby lake using a drone he sent over the landscape earlier. The drone is also equipped with Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and a second fly-over revealed the tunnel and an underground river with a Waverunner PWC stashed on one bank, and a metal door at the other end.
Phoenix sits in his second safe room watching what he thinks is the continuing drama at the eight central banks. He’s riveted to the screens. “You’re too late,” he says as Ham and three armed agents walk in from the tunnel. Ham signals the cybersecurity team outside to switch off the fake feed. Phoenix smiles as he watches those managing the test at each central bank congratulating themselves on their success. “You’re still too late,” Phoenix switches his feed to the BIS IT Building where those who set up the test are watching the central bank live streams on their monitors as the digital transactions move between the banks display on their screens in real time.
“It’s already started. The entire BIS computer system will be destroyed within minutes. Our world isn’t ready for the end times. I’ve stopped them from creating the one-world currency that signals the beginning the Apocalypse. People won’t need the mark of the beast to live. We’ll be free.”
“So that’s what this was all about? It was never a heist. You thought you could stop what the Bible predicts? What makes you think you can stop God’s plans or His timing? To hell with you Phoenix, or should I call you “Gerhard Hoffman?”
“The BIS systems are now totally wiped out. They’ll never be able to control the world’s economy again.”
“Look at your screen Gerhard. Do they look as though they’re having a problem accessing their data? When Oscar figured out you weren’t going to pay him any more, he gave us the code for the virus you uploaded. Actually, the key was in the files we grabbed from your darknet site. You were smart, but you forgot the first rule of cyberwarfare. You should have hacked yourself. You didn’t see the 15% cyber-tip we had Oscar send back to you after you paid him the last time.”
“They’ll never let this go to trial. I know too much about the BIS and how they influence the world’s financial institutions to control the economic and social development of nearly every country. The world needed to see this kind of – what does the BIS call a global financial disaster – a Black Swan Event? – to be awakened to the danger. They’ll never let that get out.”
“You’re right. You won’t be tried for cyber terrorism here in the U.S. There’s is a cell waiting for you at Gitmo. You’re never getting out unless it’s in a box. I have a few buddies there who’ll see to it. God’s plans for you don’t your include interfering with His timetable.”
Log in to reply.