This is version 2 of this first behind the Scenes of the What to do about Katrina serialisation. The first version kind of ran away with me and I couldn’t help myself slipping into one of my not infrequent diatribes. Some might call them rants, perhaps. Also, I ended up similarly diving brimful into some hard biochemical science. And that latter kind of thing shouldn’t really belong here. Ironically, given my intended purpose for this post, it would put people off. Instead, I hope, I’ll try and do a separate article about that for anyone who is interested.
That’s a William Blake, in case you hadn’t guessed. Death on a Pale Horse (1800)
Firstly, however, I should say that as you may know I intended for these Behind the Scenes to be nice bonus material for my paid subscribers. At the moment, however, I don’t have any paid subscribers. One can live in hope, though. But aside from that, I decided that I wanted to make this first one available to all my subscribers, firstly as a kind of enticement, if you see what I mean, so people can get an idea of what to expect from the Behind the Scenes series, but secondly, and more importantly, I wanted to offer this one by way of a much-needed clarification or explanation regarding the impression that some readers might understandably, but mistakenly, have taken on about the story. So I wanted to kind of correct that.
Specifically, it would be understandable if readers assumed, from the first few instalments, that this story is just going to be some excuse for spewing out so-called conspiracy theories, in particular at this stage of the narrative about the Covid Pandemic, and that kind of thing is a turn-off for a lot of people. The first thing I would iterate right now is that this is not the case. It may seem that way, but it isn’t. So I can assure you in that regard. Indeed, although there’s a fair amount of that in the first few instalments, hopefully you’ll notice that from the third instalment onwards it’s not really the case.
So I was mindful of not wanting you to be put off by that impression. It is ironic, in fact, that the Covid Pandemic does not actually feature as much as you might have thought it would from the opening, even in this initial Episode I or even Act I. It may only seem like it does because in order to establish an element of realism, that’s to say to indicate that the setting is, indeed, this real world (as opposed to a fictional world or a parallel world) it was important to make it clear that Katrina has arrived, in November 2021, into the midst of a pandemic (as far as her observations tell her, at least). At the same time, this observation provides her with a means to present herself at the Embassy and hopefully avoid any severe interrogation and suspicion on the part of the inevitable intelligence officers nesting furtively in that Embassy. She would hope that by presenting herself as a kind of mad conspiracy theorist she would simply be handed over to the psychiatrists, which she can easily handle. Naturally, stuff never works out so easily for the protagonist. In her defence, though, the trouble she’s about to experience is entirely due to stuff of which she is, at our present juncture, somewhat not-so-blissfully unaware.
But it does warrant an explanation in that regard. Without, I hope, being too spoilery about it.
My first point here is to reiterate something I said in both my intro, and in the intro to the original version of Episode I, the standalone novella D-Zero Meson Oscillation, namely the point about realism. A significant, if not the most significant, aspect, or theme, running through the story is the classic ‘stranger in a strange land’, or ‘outsider arrives and cannot help but be iconoclastic’. Given that Katrina is, or says/believes she is, from a parallel world, this theme is somewhat obvious. And in terms of narrative theory and psychology, the reader will use their empathy simply to view everything through the eyes of the main character. In this way, if the main character is an outsider constantly making observations and judgements on the world in which she finds herself, then this enables the reader to do the same, even if, and especially if, this world in which she finds herself happens to be the reader’s own world. It is, after all, often difficult for a person who is so habituated to their own world to take a step back from it, observe it with a clear head, and suddenly understand it all.
I personally have never had that problem because I’ve always been an outsider. I wouldn’t necessarily say everything I write is written from that perspective but certainly the significant portion of it is. Katrina, in that sense, is in a very true way simply an extension of me. Idealised, sure, but she’s still me. Since she popped into my head – fully formed, I should add – I have understood her as ‘the life I should have led’. Had I been born under different circumstances, like her, with different parents, different extended family and friends, different education, and, yes, her physical characteristics, then I would’ve ended up being and doing something virtually identical to her.
But I mustn’t digress too much. I did that in the first version and it got messy and took me far too long to get to the point.
Anyway – realism. Right. The first version, DZMO, as I say, is not realistic. It was never intended to be. It’s an obvious postmodern fantasy. By realistic, I am largely talking about psychology here. You don’t, after all, just waltz into a British Embassy in Paris regurgitating classified information and expect to avoid disquieting entanglements with the intelligence services. Every embassy, I’m sure you know, is a nest of intelligent officers, after all. There are various types or roles of them, of course, but essentially you can expect certain types to be present. The two roles you’ve been introduced to so far are somewhat standard – that’s to say the junior MI5 liaison officer (Tom), and the senior SIS officer (Peter), also known as the ‘chief resident’. Whilst my Peter might not appear realistic at the moment, given his attitude towards the Katrina situation, you will find out soon enough why that might be. In his case, given his personality, it’s entirely realistic. Tom likewise.
But here is what would most likely happen if someone like Katrina just showed up at the Embassy and started saying the things she did in DZMO. First, they would obviously think she was mad, claiming to be from the parallel world. However, they would be remiss if they didn’t at least check the veracity or otherwise of the information she provided. If it turns out to be rubbish, then they’d simply hand her over to a psychologist and wash their hands of her. If, however, it turns out to be true, then they immediately get suspicious. They would of course refuse to believe the parallel world thing, instead, in the manner of what SIS officers have become these days, they would stick her in a safehouse and conduct a combination of psychological assessment interviews and interrogations. Should those interrogations not yield anything regarding their most important concern ‘where did you get this information’, then they would most likely transfer her to a far more secure location and start going all enhanced interrogation techniques on her (this Wikipedia entry on the subject is surprisingly frank, actually, aside from the fact that the first sentence places these techniques in the past, although you can bet they still do it – of course they do!).
Yes, that is naturally the beginnings of a seriously good spy thriller, so long as the main character in particular is drawn correctly, but it wasn’t where I wanted to go with this final version. At least not yet, anyway…
And that, ironically enough, is indeed precisely because of Katrina’s character. She is perfectly aware that this course of events described above is what would happen if she says anything in her interviews and psych assessments that arouses even the slightest suspicion. What you need to bear in mind here is the real character of modern SIS officers. These people are really much nastier than you would probably like to think. They would think nothing of subjecting a girl like Katrina to enhanced interrogation techniques. They are somewhat permanently not just ‘suspicious’ (like Peter), but even paranoid and on edge. Oftentimes they are merely looking for an excuse to morph into Jack Bauer mode. By the time she reaches the Embassy, Katrina will be acutely aware of this, and would’ve carefully contrived a strategy for what to do about MI6.
There is – again without getting too spoilery – a far deeper explanation for that, however, which you will absolutely not find out in this Act I of Episode I (aside perhaps from a few suggestive elements). Hopefully that might be an enticement to upgrade to paid, even though I am aware most probably can’t afford it. But by the end of Act I, as the pace picks up, you may well find it difficult to say no.
The second aspect of realism, then, which I wanted to make the predominant topic of this initial Behind the Scenes, is the glaring omission in DZMO of the Covid Pandemic. Given that, as I say, this story is largely a device for iconoclastic observations on this world, that would simply never work unless the world in question really is this world. Not a fictional version of this world, let alone a parallel version, but demonstrably and believably this world. At least, as it was in November 2021 when the narrative begins (naturally, Katrina’s presence in this world will end up changing the timeline – which is equally part of the point of the narrative – you are already witnessing some of this if you’re keeping up with the Journal). November 2021, of course, although at the tail-end of the Pandemic, is still well within the height of lockdowns, mask-wearing, people queuing up for injections, death rate numbers constantly and perhaps subliminally rolling across the bottom of TV screens, and all the rest of it.
And so, if this is not represented in the story then you, the reader, will instantly think of it as a completely different world, nothing to do with this one, and the central theme of the story is lost. No observations made by Katrina or any other character will have any impact whatsoever. Thus, I simply can’t avoid stating in the narrative that there is a Pandemic going on, and describing the main character’s reaction and attitude towards that.
And here’s where people would get to thinking that the whole thing is an excuse for conspiracy theory ranting. Because Katrina’s initial reaction comes across as that of a conspiracy theorist. Or at least the picture of a conspiracy theorist which the general public have been given during that Pandemic period (and which has continued since, intriguingly enough).
And this is what merits my clarification and explanation. For this, you need to know a few things about Katrina, or at least about her own world, and perhaps a few inconvenient facts about the Pandemic in this world and the general reaction to it taken by governments in particular. In the latter case, however, try not to worry as I will restrain myself, unlike version one.
So, then, the observant reader will have noticed in the most recent instalment that Katrina utters the line ‘it wasn’t the same IFR in my world’. Tom of course doesn’t register this. Partly because he’s hungover, partly because he has a lot of issues going on in his life, and partly because of that he has no time for what he perceives as conspiracy theories originating from an obviously mad girl who believes she’s from a parallel world (either that or she’s a well-rehearsed spy, in which case the entire scenario is totally out of his league and well beyond his low-level pay grade). Junior MI5 liaison officers, you should know, may well act like this, as it happens (and, indeed, have many of the same issues in their lives as Tom does – as you’ll soon discover), and would certainly be acutely aware of all the conspiracy theories flying around. In particular, such types of officers are equally acutely aware that their organisation, MI5 that is, is very often the subject of conspiracy theories itself, and you can imagine how irritating that would become, to put it mildly. Junior liaison officers, you should also know, are not necessarily typical of MI5 officers in general. That’s to say they are not really specialists (yet), they don’t have that much in the way of security clearance levels, and they certainly have nothing to do with any nasty or devious operations carried out by their more unwholesome colleagues.
On that note, I’ll give you one biographical aspect of Tom which kind of explains this aspect of him. Namely the fact that he’s not this more modern, nasty and conspiratorial type of intelligence officer who has no problem whatsoever with concepts like ‘collateral damage’. Tom is really only in the intelligence services because of his father, who works for MI6. Without that familial connection, Tom would never have ended up on a recruitment shortlist at Oxford (or even a longlist, for that matter). Thus, what do you do with a ‘good guy’ who gets into an otherwise nasty intelligence service? Well, you ‘park’ them somewhere where they can’t get in the way of your nefarious schemes. Somewhere out of the way where their conscience won’t be a problem for you. Hence, in Tom’s case, liaison officer in Paris. And if you want to know what one of Tom’s issues in his life is, then it’s simply that he himself is aware of that. Had it not been for the perception of paternal expectations, he probably would’ve chosen a somewhat different career. Add the eternally machinating Peter into the mix and you can kind of understand where he’s coming from. For him, then, the arrival of Katrina is something of a catalyst to all these personal issues.
‘It wasn’t the same in our world’ then is a key indicator here for Katrina’s attitude. She will be talking in more depth about her parallel world version of the Pandemic later in Episode I (especially when she starts having talks with Malcolm, the psychologist), but to put it briefly here without being too spoilery, in her world the IFR (infection fatality rate – sorry, I should’ve stated that earlier in case you didn’t know) was, let’s just say, a lot higher. In this world, certainly by November 2021 at least, and as stated at the time in the Wikipedia entry, it had become understood that for anyone who was basically healthy, did not have any serious comorbidities, was not elderly and vulnerable, and did not have a compromised immune system, Covid was absolutely not any danger whatsoever. When these ‘conspiracy theorists’ talk of it being no more dangerous than the seasonal flu, they are, ironically, telling the truth. But only with regards to ‘normal healthy people’.
Part of the problem with the Pandemic was the ‘nocebo’ effect. For those unaware of that, think of the nocebo effect as the opposite of the placebo. So just as placebo could be called positive mental attitude, nocebo is negative mental attitude – thinking the worst makes things worse, in other words. In the case of Sars-Cov2, people were told it was deadly. They were shown scary images on the television. Fear was talked up all the time. Combine this with all the pollutants and unhealthy stuff associated with, well, let’s just call it neoliberalism shall we, and you have a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. What would otherwise be a virtually unnoticed new coronavirus suddenly becomes more serious. People who would’ve brushed it off without even knowing they had it instead develop mild colds. A mild cold instead becomes a hefty dose of the flu-type illness which lays you low for a week, and what would’ve have been that moderate illness turns into something very serious requiring hospitalisation. And serious becomes potentially fatal (especially when combined with bad treatment choices, like ventilators).
And this also becomes true for any other infection people might pick up during this time. If in doubt, call it Covid.
In other words, this was a Pandemic that never needed to happen. Aside from the obvious measure, when faced with an allegedly deadly plague on the way, of simply shutting down the bloody borders (as New Zealand initially did, and as Katrina quite sensibly explains to Tom over lunch), there were a wide range of other measures that could and should have been taken. Handing out vitamin D to everyone alone would’ve made a difference. Shielding the vulnerable likewise. I think that suggestion was known as the Great Barrington Declaration or something.
Anyway, the IFR.
I should probably tell you what she read, actually. It might help.
Age 0-34, .004%
35-44, .068%
45-54, .23%
55-64, .75%
65-74, 2.5%
75-84, 8.5%
85+, 28.3%
I should also make a few observations on this, because on the one paw it makes little sense in terms of a ‘deadly pandemic’ – as evidenced by the IFR for younger people, and on the other paw it takes no account of co-morbidities. 85+, for example, is beyond normal life expectancy, at which point everyone has co-morbidities and the older you are the more you get to the ‘next infection will kill you’ stage. It’s usually ‘pneumonia’ written on the death certificate. Just that during the Pandemic, instead of pneumonia, they’d write ‘Covid’. In which case, we are actually talking about any infection. In other words if you were to add up the IFRs for all the various respiratory infections circulating you may well find they come very close to those above-cited IFRs.
Similarly, in America, for example, according to this official reference the percentage of people aged 55+ with at least 1 co-morbidity is 0.6, 2 co-morbidities 0.7, and 3+ 0.5. Compare this to the IFRs for those age groups. What you’re really seeing here is a complete misrepresentation of the ‘pure’ Covid IFR. Also notice how low it is for those under 45, and even those 45-54.
And Americans, in particular, are not exactly the most healthy people on the planet, are they?
So the obvious conclusion an outsider would take here is that there is no deadly plague going around. These mortality rates from Covid aren’t much different to regular mortality rates. You can view some annual death rates by age at this reference.
So what confuses Katrina to begin with, why she thinks it doesn’t make much sense, is not just the cognitive dissonance between the public and governmental reaction, which is a kind of reaction you would see to a deadly plague, and the very low IFR, but also the fact that the reaction itself is not only of no beneficial effect whatsoever, but could indeed make it worse if there was a deadly plague going around.
But this also, worryingly for her, applies to normal people, not just the heartless governments. Why was none of this obvious to normal people, she would ask? Why do they just do what they are told, walking around with flimsy masks on, whilst also believing what they are told about a deadly virus doing the rounds?
Cognitive dissonance, see.
One way to think about this, amusingly enough, is to imagine if it was rage zombies. If it was rage zombies, then you would think that lockdown would mean lockdown, wouldn’t it? And you’d have the military all over the place probably taking great delight in getting to slaughter human-looking people without twinging their conscience. Or, if you don’t want to think about rage zombies, how about Ebola, which apparently has an infection fatality rate of around 50%? Or bubonic plague. Back in the Middle Ages, lockdown and quarantine really did mean lockdown and quarantine. The idea of allowing people to travel around all over the place infecting everyone would’ve been absurd.
And yet this is precisely what all these governments did. First, they allow this ‘plague’ into the country in the first place, and then they enact ‘partial’ restrictions. By that I mean they continue allowing ‘key workers’ to roam about the place. This defies let’s call it epidemiology. Are they saying that non-key workers are more contagious? If you think about the network of social connections people have, or call it the six degrees of separation, then statistically speaking every key worker is directly or indirectly connected with every other person in the country. So, in other words, ‘partial’ lockdown is no better than ‘no lockdown whatsoever’. Same applies for periodic release of lockdowns.
If I start talking about the demonstrable ineffectiveness of masks, of course, and all the other ‘personal’ measures they coercively controlled people into taking, then many of you will indeed start calling me a conspiracy theorist, so I’ll leave that one for now. But the point remains, I hope, about the dissonance between the idea of a serious contagion and the response that everyone took, whether that be in government or in the general public. You wouldn’t have seen people in the Middle Ages plague times casually strolling around with masks on, then ‘eating out to help out’, would you?
The Plague in Cambridge… Mark Gridley
But in order to illustrate and reinforce our point let’s mention the overall IFR and examine what that actually says about the government. In our case, by the way, I’ll talk about the British government (because I’m British – although I do live in France; France was hardly any different, by the way, perhaps a little more bureaucratic, though). The initial IFR cited in the media scare stories at the beginning of the outbreak, when governments in Europe were still doing nothing whatsoever about it, was reckoned at 3-4%. If we take a population of the British mainland of around 65 million people, then 3-4% is between 1.95 – 2.7 million people. In other words, the British government at the time (not in the slightest opposed by the ‘opposition’, I should add), headed by Boris Johnson, were, according to the official opinion about this contagious disease outbreak, prepared to murder between 1.95 and 2.7 million of their own people.
Later, the overall IFR (for the general population as a whole, regardless of age group), was revised down to around 0.25%. But how many people is that? Out of 65 million, that’s 162,500 human beings.
With regards to older people, however, according to the IFR which Katrina has found, it’s much higher. So, again, the British government seem perfectly willing to allow at a minimum 1 in 10 old people to just die. Probably more, actually – 2.5% of people aged 65-74, 8.5% of those 75-84, and 28.3% of those aged 85 and over. I don’t even need to waste my time working out exactly how many innocent British citizens that is, I hope? Indeed, at one point someone in the Tory party really was somewhat gleefully boasting about having saved some 600 million on the State pensions bill (that’s just for 2020/21 – for 21/22 add another 900 million).
Anyway, my point in all this with regards to the story’s narrative, is that this is Katrina’s obvious, common-sense observation and conclusion. And my own point is that it shouldn’t take an outsider from a parallel world to see it either. So when Katrina calls this world a dystopia, she has every good reason for doing so.
This, then, is the ‘big picture’, which Katrina cannot avoid noticing, because to her it’s blindingly obvious. And she is likewise somewhat flabbergasted that the people of this world can’t really see it for themselves. That’s a kind of cognitive dissonance, and a mark of coercive control. Similarly, all these conspiracy theories, especially the more ridiculous ones which have been highlighted to the general public, seem only to serve as a distraction and misdirection away from this very simple big picture, namely that the governments of the world, those in power, money and influence, genuinely are a bunch of genocidal monsters.
And this is the case even if, as some conspiracy theorists attest, there never was a ‘Sars-Cov2’ virus in the first place. They still acted as if there was one and subjected the entire population to unnecessary cruelty and abuse. Which means we still have the same big picture. And as I say, this would be obvious to Katrina. The simplest definition of a dystopia, remember, is evil people being in charge. A utopia then, is simply when (morally) good people are in charge. And as for all these conspiracy theories, ranging from the ‘Sars-Cov2 never existed’ (leading to ‘viruses themselves don’t exist’), to ‘it’s an engineered bioweapon’ and ‘the vaccines are bioweapons’ up to the outright wacky ‘Bill Gates is nanochipping everyone and using 5G to control people’ (the one that was primarily presented, or misrepresented to the public in order to turn them off asking any questions whatsoever), they only serve to misdirect and distract from the most important simple point of all, which is this big picture. Which is, in a nutshell, this world is governed by evil. If the world as one woke up and realised that, then given that evil is in a very small minority indeed, the ensuing revolution, everyone acting out of simple self-defence, would indeed be both final and absolute.
So in view of this, perhaps, you can understand why certain branches of this evil cabal take great pains to concoct misdirecting conspiracy theories to distract people, including ‘conspiracy theorists’ themselves, from this simple big picture – and thus preventing people from acting on it. This is known in the trade as ‘cognitive infiltration’, by the way, for those unaware of such things. This kind of subversive activity, as it happens, will be one of the main foci of much of the other stuff I intended to write about here in the Classified-K section.
So on the one paw, they act like there is a deadly plague going around, but on the other paw, they do not take any of the common sense measures you would expect to be taken if there was a plague going around. So if there was a plague, either it was not dangerous (at least for healthy people), or it was dangerous but the cabal had already given themselves an antidote.
So this is where we get to Katrina’s parallel world pandemic. Spoiler alert, in other words. It won’t be too much of a spoiler, though, because I won’t give you any details – you would have to keep reading to find them out. But essentially, in her world it really was a conspiracy and it really was a deadly virus with an IFR ranging between 10-30% depending on the underlying health status of the individual. Furthermore, in her world the vaccine – or antidote – was indeed safe and effective, as a proper vaccine should be.
So this is one of the main things you have to bear in mind when forming an opinion of Katrina’s attitude towards the Covid Pandemic. At the beginning of the narrative, also remember, she doesn’t know any of the details which everybody else does, so it’s natural that she would assume that it’s a serious disease. When she finds out it’s a coronavirus, however (from the paper she picks up and reads in the park on the way to the Embassy), she realises that this is her ticket inside and method of avoiding any misfortunate imperial intelligence service entanglements. She, after all, has received the vaccine in her world, and thus has a comprehensive immunity to any coronavirus on this particular planet, whether naturally evolved or genetically engineered as a bioweapon. Likewise, it would be understandable if she genuinely believed they would welcome her antibodies.
On the other paw, you also need to bear in mind Katrina’s very first impression of this world when she wakes up at the Gare de l’Est. She can tell it’s a parallel world, for starters, because as she says there’s no Maglev terminal and the air is dirty and polluted. So she can understand why people are wearing masks (as for example a lot of people do in places like Beijing), but at the same time she wonders why they continue to tolerate such pollution, rather than, say, voting for politicians who would genuinely take common sense measures to eliminate that pollution (i.e. morally good people), as was the case with the Liberal Socialists in her world. But then she sees that most of the people are wearing surgeon’s masks, which are entirely ineffective against pollution – they were, after all, intended for surgeons to wear when performing, well, surgery. I should point out, to be honest, that they are also ineffective against airborne respiratory viruses. Surgical theatres have clear protocols involving stuff like masks – namely hand washing, disposal of masks, and all the rest of it. Likewise surgeons also wear gloves (likewise disposed after use). These kinds of masks are in no way intended for protection against everyday viruses. That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s just a medical fact. Unless, possibly, you wanted to also wear surgical gloves, be accompanied by a nurse taking off your gloves, giving you and her hands a wash after every time you fiddle with your mask, putting an entirely new one on, and so on and so forth. Do you know anyone who did that? Or would do it, even? Because that’s like, beyond anal.
But with regards to the narrative, hopefully you can understand the massive level of cognitive dissonance Katrina is faced with on arrival. Of course her first thought would be that it’s a weird anxiety dream possibly involving her sudden and unexpected and unrehearsed part in Monty Python’s Surgeons’ Convention sketch, but the pinch test would soon put her right on that score (if you’re not sure if you’re lucid dreaming or awake then pinch yourself – if it feels like a real pinch, you’re not dreaming).
All this, then, creates in Katrina a distinct impression of the utter absurdity of this world she finds herself in. And it is an example of the absurd (when in Paris, after all). For an outsider, or for someone like myself who does have the capacity to step outside and look at the world, instead of from the world, this absurdity really is obvious. It is a cognitive dissonance that can only be logically resolved by concluding that it is a dystopia, in which the vast majority of the population have been psychologically subjugated. Yes, that is indeed a ‘conspiracy theory’, because that kind of thing simply doesn’t happen naturally, and requires ‘agency’, and there are a number of such psychological explanations for it, but it’s not something which I shall delve into here, you’ll doubtless be pleased to know.
But if you’re wondering how such a bioweapon conspiracy could ever happen in a utopia like the one Katrina insists she comes from, well, that’s yet another intriguing reason to keep reading, reader dear, isn’t it, eh?
Anyhow, I reckon that’s more than enough for now. Again, I didn’t intend for it to end up this lengthy (around 4,500 words – correction, 5,500 in the final count – sorry!) but at least, I am happy to say, I did not launch into any ill-advised diatribes. Instead, I hope I did a good job of clarifying the story so far in terms of not putting people off with the impression that this is all going to devolve into some conspiracy theory story. It isn’t. There will, inevitably, be ‘conspiracies’, but that’s in the nature of a narrative which is, in large part, something of a spy thriller. Spies conspire all the time, after all. Katrina knows this all too well, as you’ll doubtless discover, and she had resolved to want no part in such things ever again. Inevitably, however (and as you may have already been guessing if you’ve been keeping up with her Journal), that wish of hers will of course not be granted.
She would call it a penance. Why does she need to do penance? Well, that’s another reason to keep on reading.
I also hope that this first Behind the Scenes has been insightful and enjoyable to read, and that it adds something to the enjoyment of the story. That’s partly the point of this Behind the Scenes series, after all.
I’m not entirely sure just yet what the next instalment will be, but I’m sure I’ll think of something worthwhile.
Until then, dearest readers, I hope you have a very lovely day.
Ciao.