And now the conclusion to "The Page"
"The Page" ©
by John S. LES
All out Bustanian civil war that lasted about six weeks. A total of about 200,000 Simba and 370,000 Tumbili soldiers were killed. Even though the Simba lost fewer soldiers, they had the smaller tribal population and had to call a truce or they would face possible ethnic extinction or absorption. Most of the world had literally turned their backs on the conflict. The one positive was that women and children had been spared. Only the men were left to fight it out in the cities.
I had already returned back to school for fall semester of my senior year. I had received a lot of kudos from my boss, Congressman Hollingsworth, and other members of Congress, for the help I provided with a simple cell phone application that allowed Jamila to contact me when her and her father's diplomatic delegation had been detained in Bustani shortly before the civil war started.
The 2011/2012 school year, was also a Presidential election year, and I was being quietly courted by both sides of the political isle to become their Page next summer.. They all wanted to be use me as a symbol for American high school technological ingenuity. Then my SAT scores came back, and they were near perfect scores. Suddenly colleges I never even applied to were calling me and offering me scholarships. Just about every Ivy League school called me, and even the West Coast "Ivies" like Stanford, USC and UCLA. These were all the Alma maters of the various Congressmen and Senators. This was now well beyond my simple dream of me and Jamila both going to Georgetown University and earning our college degrees together.
To relieve myself of some of the pressure, I started this blog. I wanted to connect with other teenagers who were having difficulty deciding on where to go to college and how that decision might affect them for the rest of their lives. The blog became a hit with other teenagers. Partly because of my name being in the media from press coverage of the UN delegate recovery in Bustani and part because I had struck a cord with young people around the country. Critics of my blog felt that I started a trend and brought sex appeal to guys out there who were computer geeks. I guess that what happens when you're a good looking teenager who also happens to be tall and athletic, yet prefers computers over basketball, football or baseball.
Around the world, there were sporadic protests at the United Nations and at embassies of the Super Powers around the world for not coming sooner to the the aid of African nations such as Bustani. Even I joined in some of the protests held in front of the United Nations, much to my father's dislike. I also joined a relief program that created food and clothes drives for survivors of the Bustani civil war. Jamila and I discussed the possibility of going back to Bustani as Red Cross volunteers next summer to help work with the children of Bustani who were now made fatherless from the war.
Some pressure within the world media forced the United Nations, more specifically the United States and Russia to openly talk about providing more political and military intervention with countries like Bustani teetering on the brink of civil war, in order to prevent bloodshed and loss of valuable human life. They were dramatic, attention getting words for Masamba to the world media, but even I knew he didn't mean that. Even though he was thousands of miles away, Masamba was building his case that the start of peace throughout Africa, would begin with the world formally recognizing Bustani and him as the starting point of such peace. He announced dates for starting a world tour for peace throughout Africa. What no one knew at the time was that he was planning the exact opposite. He wanted to destabilize the Super Powers so that the nations in Africa could see him as a world leader out of the chaos.
As the Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Years holidays passed, my own family and Jamilia's managed to get together. It was a happy holidays for all of us. We were all happy as Jamila had received college acceptance letters from Georgetown, Harvard and Yale and I had received acceptance letters from Georgetown, Harvard and MIT. Our families wanted us to preferred us to attend Georgetown to stay close by. We began to consider attending Harvard together to be able to be away from our families.
The November elections in the US brought new political sparring in Washington, DC. While the politicians arm wrestled in Washington, it was during this moment of political turnover that Masamba was able to sneak in a second layer of sleeper assassins who would compliment the first set of sleeper assassins he had slipped into Super Power countries around the world nearly a two years earlier. But just like he did within his own country, he began to quietly eliminate those in America he considered his enemies.
First on his list was my boss, Congressman Hollingsworth, who had been mysteriously poisoned just three months after we got back to the US. Hollingsworth became so sick that he nearly died in the hospital and had to be induced into a coma in order to be saved by his doctors. When the November elections came around, he had to surrender his seat. His full convalescence from some slight physical and neurological damage would require a year long rehabilitation. Next came Jamila's father and uncle in late January. While driving his brother in Arlington, to complete paperwork for for political asylum, Jamila's father's car was struck in an intersection by a stolen cab. The driver of the other car escaped, but Jamila's uncle was killed and her father suffered back injuries. Then came my father. One Sunday while going for his morning jog to get the newspaper he was ambushed by a knife wielding African man. Although badly cut on his arm and leg both he and an an alert police officer managed to gun down the assailant. All the immigration paperwork on the dead assailant stated that he was a Nigerian born immigrant. Months later that paperwork proved to be a forgery.
Homeland Security dragged its feet on the circumstances on the attempts of the lives of my father, and Jamila's father and uncle, as well as Congressman Hollingsworth. The CIA could not officially touch the investigation and the FBI was embroiled in Congressional hearings for the appointment of a new Director. No one could or would connect these incidents to Masamba. No one except me and my computer science club crew.
In mid February, myself, Zach, Will and Tanya had a virtual conference from our homes. My father was still recovering from his wounds and Jamila's father was turning the corner on walking again. We ran traces back to Jamila's laptop which had been taken from her by Masamba's soldiers last summer. Will and Zach had hacked it a year ago when she and I were having our problems. We wanted to see who was using it and for what. We had tried the same traces months earlier, but the computer was never turned on. Now it was being used and from what we gathered, it was being used by Masamba himself.
In the first few days we could not understand the codes he was using. But was was clear to us was that he was using no less than 50 different identities on the laptop to communicate to his assassins around the world. We couldn't understand what was being communicated at first. But what we did notice was a particular word "kulipua" being repeated at key times. We knew the Swahili translation for kulipua meant "to blow up". We did not know when, how or what reference this phrase was being attached to, but it had become clear to us that the dots were connecting.
When I approached Jamila to describe what she knew about the art of Mwili Mipuko - body explosion that - she told me that it was mythical talk and that no one in her immediate family had ever witnessed it. Moreover, such ancient practices of fighting had never been discussed or used outside the confines of Bustani. It would be a forbidden against all religious traditions of the Simba or Tumbili tribes to do so. She then refused to talk to me for a while after learning that Will and Zach had even hacked her computer on my behalf. I expected that reaction. Our plans for picking a college together was then officially over. But I had to press on.
When I tried to reach out to the Congressman who took my former bosses seat in Congress, a political opposite, he wanted nothing to do with me. With the FBI, Homeland Security and Congress turning their backs to me and dismissing my theory about some sort of international assassination plot being carried out by Masamba was largely ignored and dismissed. I was only left with one more move. I had to reach out to that CIA analyst. I remembered on the plane ride in to Kenya whose code name on the plane was Debra. So...I began to use my blog to reach out to the Company and Debra in my blog. Mixed in with my messages to teens to be vigilant of recent immigrants from Bustani were my own coded messages that I knew the computer algorithms at the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI would pick up and start to follow.
Within three days me, Zach, Will and Tanya were dragged into an FBI office location that I will keep anonymous. From there we were interviewed by investigators from the FBI, Homeland Security and eventually "Debra" from the CIA. The first two sets of investigators hardly believed a word we said. We were threatened with being arrested for treason, computer hacking and possible espionage. It wasn't until "Debra" finally did speak to me that things began moving in a favorable direction. She had been promoted and moved to a different responsibility for her role in Bustani. But she had the clearest insight to the traditional and nontraditional warfare that Bustanians had been using for years. She was also impressed with all prior knowledge she had of me and my friends. She basically pulled us out of arrest and fast tracked us down to another location in the Washington, DC area.
The computer tech's at the CIA room took Will's laptop and were able to tap into Jamila's laptop. They then enhanced everything on screen and poured over the notes that we had and the locations that Masamba's messages were going out to. There was at least 60 assassins who were given the order to "explode" but no one knew when, where or how they could sneak explosives into the country or past security check points. In all of her research Debra could not find a single note that would or could explain the Simba custom of human combustion or explosion. Just as her superiors were ready to push me out of the way again for being in over my head on national security issues, I reminded Debra that the Senegalese commander from the UN force in Bustani, Captain Amari Kanyomozi must have known something about the art, because he used the same principle to get the release of the first delegation prior to our arrival in Bustani last summer.
Within about 6 hours, and after numerous high level contacts were patched through, Captain Kanyomozi sent a video obtained by one of his slain troops via his cell phone shortly before that trooper was killed via collateral damage later that summer. The video showed the two person "human bomb" that the suicide Simba's controlled by Masamba were using to kill their own and now others. With the help of some top scientists from around the world, it was then theorized that due to the special nature of the Simba's body chemistry, through hundreds of years of natural, but powerful steroid absorption, they were able to use static electricity to ignite their bodies. To enhance this explosive effect, they had to bath their skin cells in special toxic liniments as well as ingest additional materials which accelerated the explosion process.
Once the video made its way through every Super Power national security department as well as other member nations of the UN. Almost within a blink of an eye, Masamba had become Public Enemy to the entire World. Me and my friends were released after two days of debriefing. It would take the next seven weeks before security forces around the world including the US, Russia, and China were able to round up the human bomb assassins using the locations of their email receptions. Masamba himself would die of some mysterious illness that befell him. I guess that's what happens when you try to assassinate the leaders of the world. Miraculously a new leader for Bustani was established. He was Bustani born, but London, England educated and served as a diplomat for Bustani relations in Russia.
I eventually chose to attend Harvard, since Jamila still expressed feelings of betrayal and mistrust. I figured that it was probably wiser that I not be so close to her home turf in Georgetown. Much to my surprise, she did chose Harvard as well and we reconciled our differences. So I end this story by first thanking all of my readers out there for helping to choose peace over murder. But, I'm also reminding you that mankind must remain vigilant to stay on guard against those who constantly try to turn our world into chaos - making us turn away from each other, rather than turn toward each other.
