February 22, 2014
Phony Calls

Phone Transcript #A0032-2376
Hi.

Hello. Did you know that the Minnesota Bank Association has earned you 5% extra on all of your banking?

I'm so sorry about your mother.

*Ahem* The Association can earn you an additional 3% with only one small change.

Your mother, Anne Regina Morrissey…

What about my mother?

There's been a terrible accident… a fire. It was… the water heater. The… new installation. Something went wrong with it. ...Gas leak.

What are you talking about?

Oh my God! I am so sorry! I thought you knew. Didn't they tell you yet? It was after the last time you talked to her… on Monday.

That was one of several calls brought to my attention in the last two weeks. They all involve telemarketers and one male individual pegged at somewhere between sixteen and eighteen years old. The mother was unharmed, but did just get a new gas water heater installed. (I used her name since it's all over the news anyway.) The other calls involved similar information that the young man could not have known since none of the telemarketers could identify him, and no connection was made between them--two were in India, even.

I never had the nerve, or arrogance perhaps, to make a prank call as a teen. These were all about someone close to the telemarketer having died or been attacked. They also seemed to tap into some fear the telemarketer had about that person. By now you're probably wondering what I did about it--given what I revealed about how the Protectorate deals with unrepentant gifted.

I have no idea how many prank calls are made in the U.S. every day. Or how many are nasty. I don't know if anyone takes any, except the worst ones, seriously. The O.S.I.R. though, does take these seriously. That means I have to as well.

It didn't take the O.S.I.R. long to track the kid down despite covering his tracks with some phone tricks using Lookered. It didn't take Melvin long either. While the O.S.I.R. was getting their verification, Sarah, Susan D'Amico, and I met with the prankster in a nearby mall. Sarah and I needed a quick way in with the kid, and Susan was glad to help when we asked her to use her old Socialmabob page to set up a date with him. We didn't need her to go, but she insisted.

We got there early. In fact Susan came after we did. The meeting place was the busy food court at lunchtime. Susan sat a couple tables away toward the garbage bins. He came on time and spotted her from her pictures. We got up from our table and headed to the garbage with our trays before he reached the table. We didn't want to give him a chance to bolt. I forced his mouth shut without touching him. Sarah pulled a chair out for him and then sat down. I stood behind him with a hand gently on his shoulder, but pushing him into the seat. Susan did all of the talking.

She told him we knew about the calls, and that his life was in danger. He stopped struggling and I let go of him. I told him we knew he could tell we were telling the truth. There are a lot of cues for a telepath to pick up on. We couldn't know if he would believe it was true or just that we thought it was. Big difference sometimes. There was also the matter of would he actually care.

He didn't. He asked Susan if she knew how many people I'd killed. She paused only for a moment before telling the kid that it was a tiny number compared to the men, women, kids, and punks like him, that her uncle was responsible for. She also told him we could just as easily leave him to die. The men after him wouldn't hesitate.

Then he asked the question I didn't have an answer for. What about his mother? It would kill her if he just disappeared. He asked us to take her wherever he was going. There were just two problems. Melvin was on the mall security system and spotted agents heading toward the food court. He also had eyes on some more watching the mother's house. We got out of there. The kid is safe. Agents are still watching his mother and monitoring everything she does. Melvin arranged for him to call her in a safe manner. It's a bad situation. We plan to extract his mother this Wednesday and get them both somewhere safe. It's just too bad the kid has ruined both of their lives.

Tags: abduction, cell phone, Lookered, Melvin Klein, O.S.I.R., pranks, Sarah Jayne, Socialmabob, Susan D'Amico, telemarketers, telepathy, truth.