Hall after hall, booth after booth, auditorium after auditorium, the place is packed. Monster crowd, broad assortment. Industry reps, industry pioneers (in person!) industry wannabes, customers, the odd reporter, brats playing Witchfinder, and significant and insignificant others. Crowd’s in a good mood. Happy babble echoes off the walls. They’re all laughing, joking, swiping coin for t-shirts, hats, hoodies, mugs, cozies, and other swag. You’d think Steve Jobs just came back from the dead. Or Brad Ragnarok was still alive.
Brad is the star attraction today. You want to talk industry pioneers? Start with Brad. He pretty much invented the whole damn industry, right after the Second Great Awakening.
Today, some of you chumps might get to meet him.
A kid in VR specs crashes into Brad like a bull. Right in the gut. Brad doesn’t flinch, what with his amazing abs and all.
Brad smiles. Kid takes off his blindman specs.
“Sorry,” kid says. “Oh, I’m real sorry.”
“No worries, kid. What’s your name?”
“Tommy,” says the kid.
“Tommy What?”
“Tommy Smith.”
Brad takes the specs, looks through them.
“Well, Tommy Smith. Fun’s fun, but you’d best play safe. Dial back the filter, huh? Don’t want to keep running into folks, huh?”
“No, sir.”
Hands specs back. Tommy does a frantic voice command; the specs shade back to a reasonable tint. Kid returns specs to Brad for his approval. Brad looks through, nods, hands them back.
“Well, that’s a whole lot better. You play safe, Tommy Smith.”
“I will, sir. Thanks.”
Tommy runs off. Crowd’s looking at him in awe. Got their iPhones out, so it's lights, vid, action. They even start applauding. Brad waves off the fanboy idolatry.
“Kid’s got to learn sometime.”
They nod like the chumps they are.
“Gotta run, folks. It’s showtime!”
They applaud again. Chumps.
Brad smiles, turns his back, walks off. Whispers, “Tommy Smith. Search and cross reference family attendance WitchCon.”
Little bastard has to be a witch. But that can wait.
Brad goes through the front doors of the auditorium, does his prizefighter run up the center aisle, bounds up on stage, takes the lectern.
“How you doing, folks?”
Big applause.
“That’s what I thought. You’re all witch-hunters, and I’m the man who started the hunt. You all know that. And you’re all doing OK. But you know you could do better, and that's why you're here. I’m about to tell you how. Now here’s another question.”
Pause for dramatic effect.
“What does a witch look like?”
An image pops up on the massive high-def screen behind the stage.
A color photo of Margaret Hamilton, in full costume and green-skin makeup as The Wicked Witch of the West.
This gets a big laugh.
“Yeah, this one's easy to spot. But that’s only in the movies. It’s not that easy in real life. The truth is, a witch looks like you. Or me. Or him. Or her. Or me.”
They gasp with shock. Then sigh. Oh, that’s what he meant.
“I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Witches hid out for centuries. They hid out during the old time witch hunts. They kept it up for a century or two when the witch hunts went away. America nearly went to hell as a result! The great scientific minds of the Godless Age figured the climate was going to hell because of carbon in the atmosphere! They assumed abortion was a woman’s right to choose, not a human sacrifice. Wells were poisoned, crops failed, wombs became barren. Why, there had to be a scientific explanation, huh? Well there was! What was it?”
“Witchcraft!” they all shouted.
“You’re damn right. By the time our leaders figured it out, most of the real science had been lost! And then they came to me. You all know the story.”
Yeah. Brad’s big success story. Security Solutions Inc. (aka SS) was his baby. It specialized in private prisons and detention centers. Big data nearly put him out of business. Quantum computing and all that shit. It was predictive, if not prophetic. Why lock people up when you know the crime before the time? Why detain illegals, when they can’t get in anymore?
The answer is, you don’t. You find another business model. Damned if Brad knew what it was. Had two lean years.
Then a wave of religious fervor swept America and saved his ass. The new holy roller President and his cronies came to Brad. Supplicants, on their knees practically. They were convinced all our nation's problems boiled down to witchcraft. They had no idea how to find the bastards. Could he help?
Sure. Brad was happy to help. His competitors refused. These American ayatollahs were convinced the country was rotten with witchcraft. Wouldn't big data work on that? Brad's competitors said, well, gee, what with black magic and all they can fool the computers. Utter bullshit, of course. The truth was they just couldn't stomach it. But Brad could. And he got the job.
And Brad said the job was good.
Once upon a time, the United States government paid Brad to lock people up. Now, they paid him to find witches. Sweet deal. Something like quadruple billing with no oversight. Flat monthly charge. Per diem. Then fee for service plus expenses, and SS gets to seize the assets of the witches once apprehended. Paid a whole lot better than throwing teenage punks in a cinderblock hellhole.
Sweet deal, man. Sweet, sweet deal. Now, just between us chickens, Brad no more believed in witches (then or now) than he believed in the man in the moon or a flying purple people eater hiding under the bed. Come on! But, hell, if you pay Brad to find the witches and sons of witches, he's sure as hell going to find them. And Brad did.
Now, Brad doesn't say any of this in public. The official history of Brad's new business model is bullshit. PR, hype, a cover story, dig? The truth is ugly, so Brad let the chumps believe the happy lie.
He'd sold today's show as a tips and tricks kinda deal. As per usual, Brad plans to say exactly nothing. You think Brad's giving away trade secrets? You got another think coming, pal. This is a commercial in disguise, folks. But Brad's good at this shit.
Time to give 'em what they want.
Flashes the crowd a big smile.
"So, how do you find a witch who doesn't aim to be found? A cunning witch who's got the Devil and black magic on their side? Who's got a network of other witches backing 'em up?"
Brad smiled wider. Knowingly.
"Start with the network. Witches thought it was their strength! Turns out it was their weak point ... and their downfall. Find one witch, make 'em name all the other witches in their branch of the coven. Then work your way up. Get the names of the whole coven. Then the coven above that. And then the next one. And ... you just keep going. One name after another."
Names bubble into Brad's head. One after another. Sean McCormick. Goth-type artist, little shithead. Lasted for hours. Bastard had balls, Brad had to give him that. At least at first. Then he spilled. Name, after name. Jeff Harkness, Alissa Thompson, Joe Whatsisname. His mother was a suspect, too, but she'd vanished into thin air.
"Of course, you've still got your lone wolves. This righteous nation blocked the digital evil of the world system outside the USA, and destroyed all the magic-related paraphernalia in the bonfires of 2023. But countless bad apples squirreled stuff away. Ain't in no coven, doing their witchcraft in secret. Practiced spells and so forth when nobody was looking. So how do you see what they're doing in the dark? By bringing everything to light. As you know, we relied on spirit-filled men of God to reveal the iniquity among us. The suspects always deny the accusation. God sees all—but God's ministers sometimes err. Yes, mistakes can be made. How can you be sure?"
He smiled. They knew that one.
"Fire and water, of course. We set up state-of-the-art hydraulic containment units to drown suspected witches until they confessed. If some poor innocent says nothing and drowns, their soul's with God."
Brad's dear departed wife, for example. Teresa, bless her heart, kept her mouth shut. Glaring at him through the glass the whole time, even after the water covered her mouth until she couldn't help but open it, gasping for breath, getting water instead. Hate in her eyes, until her eyes went dead. Sorry, honey. But it sure beats a messy divorce.
"As to fire, well, why reinvent the wheel? Or in this case, the stake."
Teresa's feminazi support group explored that option. Quite a spectacle. Sparks flying up like a campfire in the night. Brad stood there, smiling. While Brad was dealing with Teresa, those whores just screamed and screamed at him. (All that 20th century jive about civil rights and freedom and shit.) Now they just screamed. Bye ladies. See you in hell.
Brad keeps it up.
Colorful anecdotes that say exactly nothing. Now Brad's reached his favorite point in the talk. The pitch. Sign these chumps up for seminars, intensive sessions and all that horseshit.
But one lady in the audience is breaking his flow. She's waving her hand in the air.
"Sorry, ma'am. No questions in the presentation," says Brad. "We've got a FAQ on our site ... Do I know you?"
"I don't think so. Can I come up?
The obvious answer is no. Brad avoids audience participation like the plague it is. But today, hell. She's pretty. Got something about her. Why not?"
He waved her up. She ran up the aisle, just like Brad did at the start of the show. Zips up the stairs, then walks up to him at the lectern.
Good looking woman. Red hair, green eyes. 35 or so. Something about her. Something stirring in Brad's pants.
"Well, hello little lady. What's your name?'
"Alice McCormick."
McCormick?
"OK, Alice. What's your question?"
"It's not exactly a question."
She laughs.
"I just think it's kind of funny ..."
"What's so funny?"
"All this. This witch-hunting thing you all got going for yourself. Sweet deal you've got."
Sweet deal. Exact same words running through Brad's head a few minutes ago. Shout for security? Nah. She's harmless.
The lady giggles again.
"So what's so funny, ma'am?"
"Well ... you." Laughs. "All of you! All you high-tech witch-hunters, chasing after witches. I think you're hilarious, I really do. Like dogs chasing after cars. Did it ever occur to you ... Did you ever even ask yourselves ..."
Talking with her hands, giggling. A ball of St. Elmo's fire slowly grows in her hands. Crackling energy. Reflected in her eyes. No. Inside her eyes.
She laughs uncontrollably. The fireball grows.
"What the fuck did you plan to do if you ever caught one?"
She laughs insanely, then opens her hands. The sizzling energy leaps out and fries Brad like a mosquito in a bug zapper. The crowd screams and tries to run.
It gets bad after that.
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