You have accidentally been provided access to some of SelectaCorp’s most sensitive files and is unexpectedly offered a choice: resist or join. The inducement is a powerful one– a colleague and rising corporate player and a woman he has unrequited feelings for: Kimberly. Boy-Girl office romance. Well sort off. Boy worship Girl who spurns his slightly clumsy advances and plots to steal his promotion. Then Selectorcorp operative steps and teaches boy the basics of how to handle and manage a female. You will take her in hand – show her who is in charge. She will be demoted, abused, lose her home, outsourced, exhaust her savings and finally forced to make a living as a webcam girl. Not to mention losing her family and friends. In the end you will have a decision to make. Do you still have a conscience?

So I’ve dusted off this early Arcana, worked with Esclavage to tighten it up and now it is ready for a 2020 reboot.

Below is the original introduction

Day 1 – An elaborate hoax, courtesy of the deep web?

An old friend had sent me an email and I couldn’t find it. My current email address hadn’t caught anything from them, but this was an old friend and so I had to remind myself– what email address had I been using in those days? I dutifully tracked back and thought it might have been an email addy I had used over a decade ago– as I said, this was an old friend.

After twenty minutes of digging around for my old email addy login details, I found it. I logged in and found it stuffed with thousands of orphaned spam but there it was– my friend’s catch-up email.

And something else.

Addressed to an almost me… a flipped spelling of my name which had reached me nevertheless. This happens– my name is common enough and people routinely transpose a couple of the letters (‘i’ for ‘e’). It is all it takes– a random tap and your email is sent flying off to the great data Nothing. There it was… an email to my internet doppleganger. An email labelled as spam from something called SelectaCorp.
“Subject: Prospectus (for final approval)”

I almost didn’t open it. A Nigerian mining ‘opportunity’ no doubt. But the ‘for final approval’ triggered the click urge. I could say I merely wanted to re-direct the message to the correct recipient, but that wasn’t it. I’m a voyeur– I admit it. I wanted to see what needed ‘approval.’

Now of course I wish I hadn’t. Some things can’t be unseen.

It was the onion domain in the link to the file that should have been my first tip off that this wasn’t some scammer. If you’re looking for gullible investors, you don’t exactly go promoting in the Deep Web and that’s what the onion link pointed to.

But big companies also use the Deep Web for cloud storage. Big companies also interested in keeping off the radar screen. Their mission critical stuff like confidential financial data. And so after re-checking my anti-virus apps and launching my Tor browser, I took the plunge.

I clicked on the link.

Weirdly, after re-routing through proxies, it directed me back to the clearnet. An anonymous file storage site– the page displayed a tree in a rainforest. So open it was secret.

This was a prank– some grad school kids with a twisted sense of humor.

A web hoax in bad taste. I remember thinking that. There are so many of them out there, aren’t they? And we’ve become so damned desensitized to just about anything these days. Maybe the accidental discovery wasn’t so accidental after all. But searches didn’t turn up anything. There are a lot of SelectaCorps out there, according to Google.

Whatever– after a few days, it slipped my mind. We are so easily distracted these days, aren’t we?

Day 7- They say there is an app for everything

The economy’s in pieces; the world is on fire. The internet is an escape hatch I suspect we all increasingly use to put distance between ourselves and Out There. It is a destination that multiplies the weirdness and wonder of the ‘real world’ by magnitudes.

And, anyway, I was bored. And even though it had been months, I circled back to my defunct email service to see if… maybe… those entrepreneurial pranksters had ever followed up with the unknown “i not e’. Had they managed to get some seed money for their satirical venture?

I dove straight into the spam folder folder of my Xnet freemail account, not expecting much. But there it was… another message for ‘i not e’.

So I had been right– it was obviously a prank. An app for purchasing, well, women. Was it a feminist progressive take down? A parody of hyper capitalism? There was a pomo whiff coming off of the whole thing now– but at least they were doing it cleverly.

Day 13 – Not cool guys

Brilliant pranks are the ones that walk the line but never cross over into bad taste. I wondered what “i not e” thought about the latest from the SelectaCorp kids. I was checking my freemail now on a regular basis and the emails for ‘i not e’ from SelectaCorp were growing in frequency.

The latest ‘channel report’ read like the kind of briefing document a startup would supply a vc investor– data on the pipeline, inventory, etc.– all very positive by the way.

Cute. Except now it was getting offensive. Really offensive. This wasn’t some militant feminist. And as far as I knew, if it was a joke, it was nowhere near a punchline.

Day 21 – Blinding me with science

For the first time, I considered contacting someone.

Who? No idea. But it– SelectaCorp– was no longer funny enough to share, even if I had wanted to. Now I was just embarrassed by even having been in receipt of their corporate ‘materials’.

I was only somewhat relieved by considering the obvious– it was part of some role playing game for frustrated geeks. ‘i not e’ was one of the players and I was getting his email by accident.

I didn’t like the thought of the kind of players who enjoyed this subject though. Not at all. Even less when I accessed the link for what they called the Science & Technology Directorate Report

Some of this ‘science’ was real… the geeks had done their homework and it was, to their credit, obscenely realistic.

Day 28 – Exec2sec acquisition Guide

This isn’t happening…because it can’t be happening. The latest from SelectaCorp for their mate ‘i not e’ isn’t disquieting because it is so ridiculous. It is because it is so possible.

What would motivate any group of gamers to produce something as vile and misogynistic as this?

Could this possibly be going on in the corporate world– in this era of progressive policy and politics? This is not a game. Iwas wrong about that. There’s too much going on here. know things are getting pretty bleak but what Selecta is suggesting— no, ADVISING, their clients to do with this material… it is beyond the imagination of some role playing geeks.

After looking at the latest for I-not-E, I knew I should delete the material I had AND the damned email address. I didn’t want to see any more of their ‘work’. It was insane– a feminist nightmare. had to take a shower after reviewing it. It took several attempts. I’d like to think that few– if ANY– corporate types would implement this utterly sociopathic battle plan against an unknowing professional career woman. But I know the corporate world far too well to consider that to be a realistic hope. I feared what women in the hands of maniacs like this would have to face on a daily basis.

Day 32 – Naive

I was. I guess I still am.

I can’t fathom how any decent human being can earn a living…
…start a business…
…make a fortune…
…selling other human beings?

What kind of world are we living in?

Can money fucking well buy EVERYTHING?

Doesn’t that just make us commodities????

No– I won’t believe that.

There is no ‘i not e’– how could there be? No one could sanction this– let alone INVEST and MAKE MONEY from it!

If this IS real– am I in danger?
If I continue to access ‘i not e’’s email, I will need to scrub my digital tracks more thoroughly than I have been.

Could this be real? Is SelectaCorp actually supplying live ‘product’ on the world market?

I think Arcana is code word for the client/s. I doubt any of the names used are real– even if these truly are authentic files.

I’ve tried to search but haven’t found any missing persons notices regarding the Fox family… but that doesn’t give me much peace.

One wasn’t enough– he had to have them all.

Reflection
if, by stupid blind fate, I’ve stumbled into something that’s so transparently wrong then I have to hope that:
1.) it is restricted to a truly demented and tiny group of people OR
2.) I’m wholly in error and this is a fiction
I dearly hope it is the later because if not this ‘service’ may prosper in an era of decadence and servility.

Exponentially.

This time it was someone I actually recognized. Barely– but she was too high profile not to be searchable. She would have cost a fortune…
…which makes me think this is real.

Because after the 5th luxury yacht, after the sixth home, after the next bought election, after the next billion–
what else is there?

what must their appetites be like?

I have to scrub, scrub, scrub… ‘i not e’ can’t learn I’m privy to their secrets.

Or it may be me suffering at the psychotic hands of a SelectaCorp client.

How sad for her.

How sad for them both… if he ever finds out.

Which they won’t ever, ever let happen.

To have a life that seems untouchable… but none of us are untouchable is what I’m learning.

Day 36 – The Future Comes in 1 Flavor

I never knew that. I thought it was a consequence of millions of random events and decisions. But, luckily for us drones, it as all been organized. Sorted. So we don’t have to worry. Not a single random element can be permitted to disrupt the decisions our social betters have already made. I watched the news and realized it was a sitcom instead…

They took a whole country and made it go away

I didn’t think you could do that. Congratulations SelectaCorp.

We’re all just playing pieces in their games. They move us around the board until they get what they want.

We’re all quite expendable.

Don’t feel guilty– SelectaCorp made it fashionable, don’t you know?

Trust no one

It is my great big paranoid take-away, considering how deep Selecta’s reach (and grip) appears to be. LEOs– at least attractive female ones– can apparently be abducted– for a price– and reduced to whoredom.

If they can do that to a law enforcement officer– an AMERICAN LEO– than what aren’t they willing to do? And if they were to do such a thing… they have a network to facilitate. Which indicates inside assistance.

Which means that if you’re one of the elites– criminal or not– you can buy what you like. In this case, an American conscientious, committed and pretty female law enforcement office

hope– for her sake– he gets bored with her and kills her soon. No one should endure what she’s been made to.

If they were willing to destroy a socity for fun and profit they wouldn’t hesitate to snuff me like a bug. That’s all I was to beings like this anyway. I had thought their internal comms were fake but now I could only imagine they did have as many officials in their pockets as they claimed. And it seemed that it was more than a bent cop or judge– powerful people were aware of what SelectaCorp had on offer and were quite happy to do business with them.

Respectable types. Role-models. And lots of ‘civilized’ types who applied ethics and morality– but only to their own class.

As I was to discover in my next agonized visit to the dreaded freemail account……

Day 41 – ARCANA 15: The Splatter Saga

Mineral rights are small change. SelectaCorp was about to make a real score manipulating the hottest IPO of the century…

As I reviewed the meticulous, detailed, files on them, I began to feel as if I knew these women. They were completely normal. They weren’t even knock-out beauties– just average, middle class women trying to make their way in the world. Each just trying to scratch out some measure of happiness, love and comfort in a cold, cruel world.

And they would have made out ok– if they hadn’t been selected as prizes to be handed out in the never ending corporate casino game…

I could have warned them but, really, what was the point? I couldn’t have changed their fate any more than I could change the weather.

I watched them helplessly– even while ‘i not e’ probably read with satisfaction– submit to new lives of submission.

Got to hand it to thouse selectacorp propeller heads. Their tech works. They were objectified and their personalities purposely warped to meet the requirements of each of their new masters. You could tell they were still there– underneath all the fake smiles– but they instinctively knew resistance wasn’t an option.

I often wonder if they knew just what kind of trap they were in would have helped them cope better. I even felt sorry for the HR woman– the one who was helping ‘manage’ the women’s transition into corporate slaves.

Meanwhile the IPO made many, many billionaires… it was a Wall St. darling in the eyes of investors– and the insiders who were in early… like SelectaCorp.

The Selectacorp analyst seemed as fascinated by the …depravity of the new media executives as I was. I wondered if ‘i not e’ ever responded to the reports and what he or she had to say about them. Any of the men seemed pleasant enough on the surface– but once they had been given unimaginable wealth– and their new toys– they seemed to respond with increasing degrees of sadism.

Over the course of the transition, they seemed to treat the women less as human beings deserving of respect– and more like things that could be stress-tested for laughs and giggles
With all their wealth, they could have found plenty of women willing to do whatever they wanted them to do– perform whatever act they insisted on.

But that’s not the point of having power… having power means being able to make others do things– with hope or reward or not– depending on the status of the underling.

SelectaCorp had grasped this market and run with it– and it was now turning over tens and soon hundreds of millions… they had developed a suite of technology designed to deliver any sadist’s fondest daydream…

Submission is never enough– these racist bastards have to grind them into utter debasement and humiliation.

Someone needs to give them a taste of what that’s like.

Day 51 – I have been lurking now for months paralyzed and unsure what to do.

The last report was the last. I can’t just sit here while these women are humiliated by billionaires for kicks. I don’t see any edge to SelectaCorp– any horizon they won’t cross in order to make a buck. They combine 21st century technology and business & accounting practices and tie them to the darkest impulses in the human psyche.

Even a pawn gets to make a move.

After downloading the last file, I made a back-up copy and stuck it on one of those anonymous cloud storage services. I’ve also scheduled a release of all those SelectaCorp related materials to every political party, media outlet and government office I could find an email address for. If I don’t cancel the post, it will dump automatically.

The next (and maybe the last) move

Subject:

Dear Doppleganger,

When you receive this, you’ll realize what’s happened– and been happening– with your email, so there’s no point in discussing it. I’d only say that it landed with me as a complete accident– I in no way was trying to learn anything about what you and your organization are up to. I really wish I had NEVER seen the things you’ve done. Because what you and SelectaCorp represent is simply evil.

Our names are similar– it was a simple transposition that dumped your most privileged plans in my digital lap. But our morality is also transposed– if I could, I’d destroy you.

But I can’t. And it won’t take you long to find me and kill me. Don’t. If you do, at some future trigger date, ALL details regarding your activities will be made public. Without me to suspend the publication, it will all automatically go live. Your very sensitive clientele wouldn’t like that at all– would they?

I knew eventually you’d find me– thus this offer. Leave me alone and I’ll reciprocate. Mutually assured destruction works when both the mouse and the elephant have nukes.

I look forward to your response to this very reasonable proposition.

Regards….

+++++

So now I wait… and wait……

Day 56 – Hobsons Choice

And now he’s forcing me into his world… offering my a choice I can’t possibly make. Interfering in my life like I’m one of his test subjects…