3 / 4 Giving Grace

Yup. Today is day 4 but only my 3rd post. So what happened? I planned on writing later in the day after work, but then life happened and I didn't. Am I going to beat myself up about it? Nope.

This is a project that I am doing for fun - and I'm not turning it into a source of stress. Hence the raw, unedited posting.

So, that being said, let's get with today's writing.

***

Reviewing the footage, the extrapolations and every outcome possible it was confirmed. She was the key.

Who was she? Not a politician. Not a billionaire. Not someone famous for being famous, nor being notorious. In fact, most had never heard of her - and why would they? She was unremarkable. She was on the outer edges of normal, but still within the bulk of the bell curve.

If you asked her, she would say that she's a nobody. A socially anxious, outgoing intorvert with AuADHD and little to no filter mitigating her thoughts from spewing out.

And yet, she was the one.

Every possible simulation they ran, every factor they tried - her life was the indicator. If she met certain milestones, achieved certain goals, then it worked out. If she didn't, it didnt matter what else they tried - she failed, so did they.

And failure was not an option.

Here's the rub - they had gone as far as they could working behind the scenes to influence situations and outcomes to ensure her success. To go any farther, they would need to talk to her.

Let's not get into the stack of rules and regulations this would break - to list them would take this story and turn it into an encyclopedia sized text.

But the simulations and the data didn't lie - this was the only way, and, like Thanos, it was inevitable. She had already clued in to the manipulation of her social media feeds - noticing when content was shown that the algorithm had no reason to bring up for her. Noticing trends in content, connections to what was going on in life.

The connections weren't the same as when you read a horoscope and look for ways to have it apply, they were specific, timely, and too numerous to be accidental. She knew that something was up, and was starting to read the signs.

One might think 'great, she's getting it on her own, let's just let her keep going - that way we dont have to actually connect with her and we'll still get it done.' Alas, if only it were that easy.

You see, even with noticing the signs and knowing what she does - sometimes that isn't enough.

Let's go through an example.

At work, along with every other employee, she had gone through cyber security training - everything from identifying scams and phishing to safe social posting. Most of it she hardly paid attention to because she already knew all this. Hell, the only reason she paid as much attention as she did was because the quiz that you had to pass for each module used specific language and her mind didn't always come up with the same terms. The keener, people-pleasing over-achiever in her did not tolerate failing, but she was also lazy, so she did the minimum to get by.

And she knew all this stuff. In her daily review of news emails covering everything from business, marketing, retail, tech, american and Canadian news from multiple sources - the stories of people falling prey were as common as American mass shootings.

And yet.

Despite the red flags that went up and the alarm bells that went off, knowing that what she was being asked to do didn't make any sense (he needed physical gift cards, but wanted a picture of the card with the code revealed - for employee gifts - and wouldnt do digital ones?) she went ahead and spent money she didn't have on these gift cards, and sent the pictures, just like she had been asked to do.

Her rationale? She had been asked to buy gift cards by some of the other partners before, so this wasn't an unusual request, and she was actively emailing with the requesting partner. It didn't make sense, but she doesn't always have all the information up front and it's not uncommon for things not to make sense until after the fact.

Plus, she was rushed, and distracted, more focused on getting done what needed to be done so she could clock out early and head out of town for the weekend.

Starting to make sense? Even with all the red flags, she still did something that was very obviously a scam. So as much as she has started to connect the dots with the signs and the social media manipulation it wasn't enough. They were going to have to get explicit to get the job done. Failure was not an option.

So why her? Of all the answers they could find, that one alluded them time and time again.

What they did know is that they had made it this far, passed every checkpoint.

When Tom Brady tossed the Superbowl Trophy from one yacht to another - it had to be caught of they would fail. She saw the catch replayed as a gif in one of her news emails and was in such disbelief that she went and watched the full clip. Yup. That actually happened. Can you imagine what would have happened if the pass was incomplete?

NOPE. Hard pass on that.

It's not that she had anything to do with the pass being caught - but they were never successful in scenarios where it wasn't. After a time, monitoring all the branches became unsustainable so they had managed to get all of the key events, all of the checkpoints and indicator events to happen or appear in her life.

This simple manipulation provided the resources to manage and monitor this woman, and was part of what clued her in that something was different. Not sure how different, but still different. These events, seemingly minor stood out to her, as something that she had to recognize and acknowledge as being significant regardless of how disconnected or obscure each was from her life.