Machiavelli’s Revenge
For nearly a year, Special Agent Pierre Ducksalot had been busy tracking down the source of the greaser mice. During this time, a puzzle or two came to the fore. DNA testing had revealed that there were two distinct species of Mouseans. One group produced dark grey Diesel grease and the other a light more delicate and refined grey grease. ——- He also stumbled on a bizarre pair of words, “Machiavelli’s Revenge”. Duck ruminated – “Is there a connection? Or — what the heck?!”
Per his nature, Duck invariably and singularly focused on inconsistencies in data. Like another of his mentors, Sherlock Holmes, he looked for odd patterns to explain the apparently unexplainable. Did “Machiavelli’s Revenge” fit with Mousean species distinctions? Once again, he went to Director Flynchem. The conversation was short, not so sweet and —– well here it is verbatim:
Duck: Sir, I have discovered some strange anomalies and odd communications. Can you help?
Flynch: Explain. (A person of quite few words. Most intriguing)
Duck: There are two Mousean species and something called “Machiavelli’s Revenge”.
Flynch: (Long and uncomfortable grunt followed by —) “Way above your pay grade. Stick to clearing the FBI headquarters of greaser mice.”
This brief conversation with the Director left Duck with a set of gnawing uncertainties in his gut – and his gut was seldom wrong about anything other than Shori Banazai’s sushi pizza. Obviously, the inconsistencies were connected and meaningful beyond just clearing the FBI headquarters of the Mouseans.
Duck used the ”borrowed” Chinese super computer to do a deep query of “Machiavelli’s Revenge” and greased mice variants. (Not surprisingly, the artificial intelligence search capability of the Chinese device was impressive, expansive, troubling and quite precise. Ding unxi Dong must be proud.) The search results were sensational and unprecedented. Duck then used the phraseological analysis techniques applied in the Ted Kaczynski case. It revealed with certainty that Bamdi Jingoo was involved in some way – but as it turned out later, not necessarily as a villain or dupe – but possibly a quite strange and elusive hero.
Without a doubt Machiavelli’s Revenge was a man and mice task force. The men were FBI although what kind of FBI was not clear. Were they actual agents, pay for play mercenaries, foreign nationals, professors of criminal justice, or completely off- the-books homeless day hires? And, low and behold, whoever they were, they were working with Diesel Mouseans. Remarkably, somebody had been teaching the men how to communicate with the mice – or was it the mice with the men? “You know who teaches them, but what you don’t know is how and when, Duck old boy.”
To put it simply, the FBI leadership had created the Machiavelli’s Revenge task force to harass the opposition to their favored “centralized and socialized government” political party. “You now know who at the highest levels of the Bureau has weaponized the FBI, Duck, — so much for Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity.”
The way Machiavelli’s Revenge worked was that the task force would show up at any place of political opposition and at any inopportune time. The manpower would overwhelm, scare, confuse, threaten, and incarcerate the opposition while the mice searched for any and all computers and written or printed material. (Notably, computer keyboard letters had a particular odor and printer ink was like a Roquefort cheese aphrodisiac to the Mouseans. No harassed opponent was able to escape with his or her computers, cell phones, tablets and paperwork intact. All such items were confiscated and simply disappeared.)
For his effort in exposing Machiavelli’s Revenge, Special Agent Pierre Ducksalot was demoted. (The maxim that “no good deed goes unpunished” applied.) Of course, within the FBI itself, heads rolled, and the organization was completely deconfigured, decentralized, decontaminated and de(ar)ranged. (In an amazing twist of fate, Duck, who had been banished to the furthest regions of Maine, eventually became the Senator from that great State of the Union. Irony followed when he was appointed Chair of the Subcommittee for Investigative and Intelligence resources.
For his work in countering species genocide and supporting small sentient life development, recently knighted Sir Bamdi Jingoo was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. However, the honor was considerably devalued because key Nobel prize committee members had been in cahoots with the FBI and their favored political party. He was subsequently chosen to be the first Director of the Mousean (mFBI) Research facility in Addis Ababa.
Fundamentally, all variants of the Mousean species were now a force to be considered politically, culturally, economically, militarily and linguistically. The resultant political infighting became ferocious.
Postscript: The incident that blew the cover off the Machiavelli’s Revenge task force involved the arrest of a 96 year old Jewish holocaust survivor who had stumbled into a Christian sing along near the National Archives.