Hacks

Only a minute had passed since Angela de la Paz had temporarily tossed the cursed Rolex onto the roof of the Reiki Triplets' house during last week's kerfuffle, but by the time she had attempted to retrieve it, it was missing and her psychic powers could not tell her where it was.  The catbird had spotted the shiny Rolex gleaming on that roof immediately, retrieved it to decorate her late-season nest, then received a message from Ardua of the Potomac to deliver it to somebody else.

And so it was that psychiatrist Ermann Esse had found the Rolex pushed through his mail slot.  It was a little dirty and sticky, but after carefully cleaning the watch, Dr. Esse was thoroughly convinced it was authentic.  He had spotted two sets of initials engraved on it, but could not quite match them to any of his patients.  Still, like any logical man would do, he had concluded that a grateful patient must have decided to leave it for him anonymously.  Usually August was slow, and Dr. Esse had planned to leave Washington this week to go hiking for ten days in Japan, but the psychotropic rush produced by the Rolex had made him too spastic to get on an airplane.  Then the Ashley Madison cheaters' website had been hacked, and his office had been inundated by hysterical sessions with wronged spouses.

Dr. Esse had long specialized in old-school psychiatry--with long conversations, occasional hypnosis, and therapeutic recommendations.  Many high-ranking federal workers who had to pass frequent drug tests for their security clearances went to Dr. Esse for therapy because he would not prescribe drugs.  But after days of listening to whining, unhappy people, coinciding with days of wearing the cursed Rolex, something in him snapped, and he simply did not want to be around miserable people anymore.

So today he was prepared.  He nodded sympathetically for a few minutes as a White House staffer began bemoaning the sense of betrayal and abandonment she felt after discovering her husband trolling for lovers on Ashley Madison, then he suggested they try hypnosis.

"I just told you I have lost all sense of trust, and you want me to surrender to hypnosis?!" she cried in bewilderment at the shrink.

But the psychiatrist was adamant.  A few minutes later, she was in la la land, and he told her to pay no attention to the syringe of drugs he was injecting into her thigh.  Then he told her that every time she saw her husband's face, she should hit it until she stopped seeing it.  Then he had a sudden urge to have sex with her while she was hypnotized, but he decided to wait to see if somebody more attractive might be coming in later this afternoon.  Then he woke her out of the trance.

"Wow!" she told Dr. Esse.  "I feel great!"

"I'll see you in one week, unless you need to come in sooner."

She left his room happily after only a quarter hour, and Dr. Esse realized he had some free time.  "Maybe I'll try online porn?" he thought.  "I should get better educated, for certainly my next wave of patients will be the dumped spouses who become addicted to Internet porn."

Meanwhile, the Holier Than Thou Caucus was having an emergency meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss how to deal with the Ashley Madison scandal.

"What if we bring back tar and feathering?"

"It's carcinogenic--you can't put that on people's skin."

"Well, people using federal email accounts to access a cheaters' website need to be fired!  Why are we spending tax money on enabling that?"

"There are Representatives who have been busted, too.  If we make the bureaucrats lose their jobs, we need to make the Representatives, too."

"We can't!  But we could read their names on the House floor during the next filibuster."

"That could be weeks or even months off!  We need to file ethics charges against them."

"What if they were just browsing, but never actually had an affair?"

"That's what they'll all say!"

"Excuse me," said Congressman Herrmark.  "It seems to me those people are probably going to have to go through excruciatingly embarrassing divorces, probably with great financial losses, and their kids will hate them, so do we really need to pile on, too?  And is shame even an effective tool in our society anymore?  Planned Parenthood got exposed as cannibals that hack up babies, and they still have no shame at all."

The others stared at him blankly, since the entire Holier Than Thou Caucus was premised on lording it over sinners, rather than stopping evil.

Over at the Federal Reserve Board, the Camelot Society was also having an emergency meeting--but their topic was the recent Wall Street panic.

"They used to say if the United States sneezed, the whole world got a cold.  Now it's China."

"And if Greece sneezes, people just vomit, ha ha ha!"

"China's not the problem!  The problem is there's never enough liquidity!"

"You've really become a broken record on that subject!"

"I agree:  the problem is growing income inequality.  If people had decent wages--"

"We can't do anything about wages!  We need to return to quantitative easing!"

Obi-Wan Woman jumped up on the Round Table.  (She was still wearing her tunic, leggings, and tall boots despite the summer weather.)  "No, no, no!" she exclaimed.  "We cannot make these mistakes again!"

"She's right!" exclaimed Luciano Talaverdi Yellen (not really related to Janet Yellen).  He had not slept with Obi-Wan Woman in a long time, and was actually a happily married man, but he just could not resist her charisma.

"Right about what?  She didn't even say anything!"

"Because it's the End of Hyperbole!" exclaimed Luciano, jumping on his chair.  "Death before dishonor!  China cannot break us!"

Security dog Princess Buttercup stopped by with her handler to see what all the shouting was about, saw that Luciano had not brought Petro Pig (her love interest), sniffed in disappointment, and turned to leave the library.

Back on Capitol Hill, the Speaker of the House was so happy about the Ashley Madison hack that he was almost willing to ratify the Iran nuclear deal--almost.

"This is much worse than the stuff I was being blackmailed for!" Congressman John Boehner crowed to his bodyguard, Solomon Kane.  "I'm a free man again!"

"Sir, I'm not sure it's that simple.  For one thing, Ashley Madison got hit by the same hacker you did."  (By that, he meant the Tarantula.)

"What?!  Are you sure?!"  (Kane nodded.)  "That guy hired by the guy you won't tell me about, with the psychic bodyguard?"  (Kane nodded.)  "Damn it!  When are you going to put an end to that guy?!"

"Look," said Kane, "we have to wait and see how this plays out.  He exposed all those people publicly, so he can't exactly blackmail them.  However, he might blackmail people who have additional secrets.  If he gets busy with them, he might give you fewer demands about how you vote.  It's just a big wild card right now."

"I'm tired of wild cards!" exclaimed Boehner.  "Why can't I control anything?  I'm two heartbeats away from the Presidency!  I want you to kill Donald Trump!  Can you at least do that for me?!  Or are you going to pretend Trump also has a psychic bodyguard?"

"Now, come on, sir!" said Kane, walking behind the Speaker of the House to start rubbing his shoulders.  "It's not that bad!  You control all sorts of things!  You're a very powerful man!  And you don't even need to run for reelection this year!  Life is good!"  Boehner sighed and surrendered to his man crush.

Out in the river, Ardua of the Potomac looked up with interest as Charles Wu passed over the bridge, on his way to the airport to take his little girl on vacation to England.  Wu looked down in amazement, still overwhelmed from learning that a large underwater demon was responsible for the suicide of his first nanny ... and Angela had not told him.

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COMING UP:  Bo-Oz Consulting pitches their new refugee plan.