You weren’t paranoid if people were really out to get you, but she couldn’t be sure. If the wrong people were reading her posts, they might – might – care. And if they did care, they might – might – want to stop her.
If they thought she was a threat.
A big if. Who frequented these Web sites besides weirdos and nutcases? But the weirdos and nutcases were onto something. They were ninety percent right about everything except who and why. They were pointing fingers in the wrong directions.
Everything was either political or religious or cultural to them. They couldn’t see that the real reasons were much darker, more sinister, and more dangerous and threatening than their wildest nightmare scenarios.
Only one man was listening – or at least not dismissing her as a kook as were most of the others.
When the kooks think you’re a kook, maybe it’s time to reassess your position.
No. Not when you’re sure you’re right.
And she was sure. Well, pretty sure. As sure as you could be about these things when–
There. He’d looked at her again. Her gut tingled with alarm. No question: He was watching her.
The latest novel (and the first I’ve read) in F. Paul Wilson’s popular Repairman Jack series, Ground Zero
Rating: 3/5 stars
Set in an alternative present, Ground Zero asks the reader to suspend her disbelief regarding an ancient book from the “First Age”, the text of which “changes into the reader’s native language”, a lady (“The Lady”) and her dog, not human and canine but “embodiments” of the noosphere, and a Zoroastrian-flavored “cosmic shadow war waged out of sight and influencing everything”. Done, done, and done. But the reader is also asked to swallow the following conspiracy narrative: that “Al Qaeda” operatives (sans CIA, ISI, or other intelligence agency/government involvement, but funded and manipulated instead by a secret society called the Septimus Order, evidently a big player in the Repairman Jack mythos) flew planes into the Twin Towers, which were then brought down by conventional controlled demolition (the book opens with a shadowy figure [one of the villains from the Order] pressing a black button to detonate the South Tower and musing how, “No one, absolutely no one, would guess – or be allowed to guess – the truth behind the who and the why of this day.”) Our hero’s childhood pal Weezy hazards some guesses, and lil’ puzzle pieces like insider trading, Raytheon and “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” are briefly discussed, along with the notion (though Wilson doesn’t come right out and say it) that the event functioned, at least in part, as mass ritual sacrifice, with higher-ups of the Order “soaking up the pain, panic, terror, fear, grief, anguish, and dismay, feasting on it.” For me, having spent some time in the labyrinth of competing and complementary conspiratorial/occult interpretations of 9-11, the Septimus Order’s scheme (of opening a gateway to Lovecraftian weirdness that will transform the world in a really unpleasant way [props to Wilson for linking 9-11 to pillars and portals and all, but he keeps it literal, not symbolic; in other words, he's no Jake Kotze]) seemed superfluous, more amusing than (presumably Wilson’s intention) terrifying. While I’m equally suspicious of the official CT narrative, those emanating from the capital-T “9/11 Truth” camp, and those from researchers rather farther afield, I’m convinced that “the truth behind the who and the why of this day”, whatever it may be, is for shizzle stranger, and more interesting, than this particular piece of fiction, in which the most banal of 9-11 CT is trotted out, superficially presented, and ultimately used as a lead-in to the “real” conspiracy of the Septimus Order. Still, it’s competently written, and not having read any of the other Repairman Jack books, I was able to follow along just fine. Ground Zero doesn’t quite stand on its own as a satisfying thriller, but as a late entry in a long series it isn’t meant to, and Wilson is up front about that. If you’re into the series, then, go for it; if you’re into researching 9-11 anomalies, your time will be better spent doing just that, and doing it well, rather than reading Ground Zero.
Sorry.
Happy reading and cuídate.
Tags: 9-11, 9-11 research, 9-11 Truth, book reviews, conspiracy, F. Paul Wilson, Ground Zero, insider trading, Jake Kotze, Raytheon, Rebuilding America's Defenses, Repairman Jack, Septimus Order, SF, Weezy