Oplan Taglagas: Testimonies About a Stalker

Chapter 1: The Apprehension

August 22, 2014. It was a typical day for an unemployed, 22 year-old manchild named Aloysius U. Cardenas. A Batch 2013 Information Technology graduate of Merveilles University, he lives with his family in a suburban community in the Rizal province. However, his past life contained a lot of unrepented and unadmitted blunders, really major ones to the point that he still has restrictions in his daily life and his parents never smiled at him anymore.

At around 8:00 AM, after he had finished his usual morning ritual, he sought out the quickest route to WorldSpec (carrying his complete credentials in an envelope), a television station located in Quezon City, to find work there as a website developer. WorldSpec, short for World Spectacle Television, was established in 2008 to provide avant-garde entertainment to viewers in the Greater Manila region. Situated on channel 16 with the callsign DZWS, WorldSpec features Japanese animated shows, European and American live-action television dramas, especially cult classics from the latter half of the 20th century, local lifestyle shows starring prominent personalities from Manila's high society, and every 9:00 PM, is a movie night that spans two hours at maximum, with Tuesday allotted to vintage movies (mostly ranging from 1940-1970). Every Sunday at 2:00 PM (since the seventeenth of the month), a celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass is aired live from a nearby parish.

About 35 minutes later, including an LRT-2 train ride from Anonas to Boston Street, Aloy had reached his destination, the WorldSpec office that is housed in a five-storey building within the New Manila district. As he reached the room of the Human Resources department on the fourth floor, he approached a middle-aged man and said: "Good morning, sir. I will apply as a web developer at WorldSpec." This man was Orlando Tenorio, the Human Resources manager who is nicknamed Orly, seated behind his desk with a laptop computer deployed on top. He told the applicant, "Let me check your credentials."

Aloy quickly complied, giving the envelope to the manager. If WorldSpec was his first job, Orly would have told him to use the fire exit anytime the stalker gets in and out of the office to prevent himself from meeting celebrities, given his seedy reputation at Merviu and on the Internet. As Orly inspects the applicant's employment history, he asked the young man: "You were employed at Yantok for one year. Why did you leave the company nearly two months ago?"

"Maybe I wasn't man enough for the job," Aloy replied, with a look of nervousness on his face.

"Don't hide everything from me, young man," Orly confirmed from the stalker's previous employer that the latter was indeed fired from his position as a software programmer about two months ago for being a prick to his co-workers within his department and supervisors, not being efficient enough with his projects, installing pirated software in his assigned computer just because he isn't willing to find any open-source alternatives, and trying to flirt with the ladies from the sales department. "Are those something a website developer should be proud of?"

"N-no?" Aloy quickly answered him back, still nervous. But just then, he didn't expect his would-be superior to snarl.

"You should be ashamed of yourself! I do not care about your excuses, and I will never accept a renegade like you in my company! Now, begone!"

As he took the elevator back to the ground floor, he is suddenly cornered by four men unknown to him: plainclothes operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Unified Greater Manila Police Department. One of them announced, "Aloysius Cardenas. We're placing you under arrest."

"What for?" Aloy didn't know that he was caught in his own trap, having escaped from taking responsibility for his numerous transgressions. Had he truly repented for those misdeeds and did a complete 180° on his life, he wouldn't have to deal with formal accusations coming from the people whose lives were ruined because of his unwarranted involvement in their personal affairs.

Aloy did have a Facebook account like his peers, and started opening it in 2009 when he knew that his high school classmates had their own ones. The last time he checked his account before his arrest was yesterday. He found out that many of his friends, including those from high school and college and also those who he never actually met in person (let alone adding them to "protect" himself from so-called trolls), have disappeared from his radar. In fact, they had blocked him to the point that his friend count gradually goes down to only a scant few composed of only abandoned and rarely-used accounts. (Aloy did search for the names of those who blocked him on another browser—he was able to see their profiles in public view.) If his mom had an account there and was informed about his arrest, she'd never hesitate to block him. One more infraction on the site and his account goes kaput.

As Aloy is escorted to the nearest police station, his greatest troubles were just beginning.