The Maltese Manuscript (LSD, #6)

3. Hey Joe

Hey Joe

Another day is another chance.

My first attention after getting up goes to my spiPhone. The poor thing still fails to connect to the satellite. I turn it off, take the chip card out, and replace it with the card of a disposable mobile phone from my arsenal. It works. I can connect to the Internet, I have access to my secret secure backup space in the cloud, and I can talk and text again. Solving my old problems caused new problems because now, I have a new number. Every message and phone call for my #5 spiPhone will hang out in the cloud until I install a replacement for the old chip card.

I'm not looking forward to reading all those messages and receiving all those phone calls. Tolerance and understanding aren't in the job description of #1, The Boss. He was clear with his orders. I disobeyed them. He'll be furious and order #4, The Agent, to go after me and Malik.

I assume he'll also contact his compies [=competitive colleagues, doing the same work, but for their own account]. From now on, the local chapters of the CIA and the KGB will search for me, but also the MSN, the Malta Security Network, consisting of three agents with code names Mercí, Suavez and Neighman. All those organizations have the technology to find any activated chip card in even the biggest haystack. And, of course, there's Khalid El Bullít, who obviously has access to the encrypted network of the LSD and is even capable of toasting chips from a distance. No. It's better to use the spare chip and ignore all the traffic to and from the LSD for a while.

The entire world is against me, but I'm not afraid.

Mark Twain said: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.", and he said: "Do the thing you fear most, and the death of fear is certain.", and also; "Basically, adverbs certainly and undoubtedly indicate quite possibly overwriting. Actually, my editor, actively and successfully, liberates my work, almost fully, very completely, often totally, from really unnecessary adverbs.", although I'm not sure if that last one survived the pre-print-process.

Yesterday, I was confused by all the events that so quickly followed each other, unsure about the best tactics to follow, but now, after a few hours of sleep, I'm determined. Fighting back is a much better option than running away, adapting to the situation, or ignoring the problems. «When you're in a desperate situation, you fight, without fear.», Sun Tzu advised in his book «The Art of War», already 2.500 years ago. In a fight, fear is a useless emotion. When your opponents know you're afraid, you'll never be safe again. They'll hunt you down, they make you obey, and they keep dictating new rules, tasks, and punishments because your fear is their strongest weapon to make you do what they want.

If anyone doubts that statement, watch TV: governments feed our fear with frequent crises, to convince voters they can't survive without their governments, and commercial companies feed our fear with advertisements, to convince consumers they can't survive with wrinkles and invisible stains in their underwear. When fear stops us from thinking and acting, Sun Tzu predicted we'll lose everything: taxes will climb, freedom will fall, and the abyss between rich winners and poor losers will grow wider.

The philosophy is clear: if you want to survive, you'll have to be good at what you do. If you want to be good at what you do, you'll have to be open to criticism, be willing to learn, and do everything you can to get better. It doesn't matter if you're a spy who's fighting for his life, a writer who wants to write the best-written story he's capable of, a mother who raises her children, or a salesperson who has to do her job in a world of competition: it's attitude. Hard work pays off in feeling good, about yourself and about what you've achieved. Fear is no option. Fear doesn't help you with anything. On the contrary. It paralyses you and leads you away from your goals. Fear is a useless emotion. The good thing about fear is: you can turn it off.