Set in the Rocky Mountains in the not too distant future, ‘Ghost Snatchers’ is a novel by James LaFond about an army of SJWs and their legions of color descending upon the last remaining redoubt of heritage Americans using Afghanistan War tactics. Originally scheduled to talk about his book, James joins us this evening just as the formula of lockdowns and riots perfected in 2020 is set to reignite as the nation braces for the outcome of the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd, and yet another apparent excessive use of force was on display in Minneapolis with the shooting of Daunte Wright. As an “adviser to the persecuted and hated minority that is the pale face man”, our most consistently popular guest offers his take on the new vaϲϲine passports and the Baltimore-ification of the American city going forward.

Unfortunately Ghost Snatcher is still not in print. However, it will soon be available behind our paywall at Substack—coming soon, a place where I can hopefully express my self with as much latitude as the crew of Justice Server 42.

The first ten pages of the short novel are reproduced below.

Ghost Snatcher

In the Company of Heroes in the Shadow of America

A Crackpot Book

Editor-publisher: Lynn Lockhart

Proofed by

Dust Cover

A novel of 2048

Principal Warrant Officer Bersten Dessalines has graduated top of his class from the Portland Social Justice Academy just in time for the final act in the War against Privilege. He has been assigned as crew for Justice Server #42 four of the most decorated Social Justice Servants for the drive against The Last Redoubt of hateful fanaticism in the Uinta Mountains of Utah. As a Civil Server, however, Dessalines is disturbed, for his crew flagrantly demonstrates uncompassioned behavior, have renamed their vehicle “Ghost Snatcher” and, most disturbing of all, stridently insist that they are that which is fundamentally incompatible with both Social Justice and Civil Service: heroes.

Contents

Author’s Notes 4

Remote Debriefing Notes 9

In the Company of Heroes 11

Oldschool Johnson 14

Crankshaft Witherspoon 17

Acetylene Jackson 22

Mainline Watson 26

The Red Rock Warrant 30

Our Story—Fuck You! 41

The Baltimore Warrant 46

The Jersey Warrant 51

The Chicago Warrant 56

The Pittsburg Warrant 61

The Portland Warrant 66

Estes Park R & R 72

The Last Redoubt 78

Parley’s Summit 82

Peoa 88

Bloody Kamas 92

The Upper Setting 96

The Soap Stone Shit Show 100

Mushroom Meadow 109

On Top of the World 117

Remote Debriefing Notes

The transcribed audio record of Principle Warrant Officer Bersten Dessalines was acquired remotely, rather than via a drone upload, as operational elevation at the extreme reach of Operation Redoubt, as well as out-of-control, man-made, global cooling, was rendered impractical by the convergence of these extremes.

For the printed transcript, made possible by Polycorp Solutions, Dessalines’ operational monologue, recorded into his sympathetic implant—necessarily aloud, as internal monologue reception remains in Clinical Trial Tier 2—in Nephilinde, for preservation of operational security, is rendered in italic.

Visual impressions drawn from the onboard video array, routed through Principle Warrant Officer Dessalines’ navigational implant, utilizing Polycorp 360 Command-and-Control Navigational Geotechnology have been transcribed in bold in order to draw more in-depth operational conclusions. For maximum insight, be sure and subscribe to Wrap Around Sound with your PC-360 representation center today!

-Justice and Security for All

Courtesy of Polycorp Solutions

Making the World a Fairer Place

In the Company of Heroes

Onboard Array

The rush-bounded lake to the east contrasts lushly with the snow-crowned face of the Rocky Mountains to the west, as the Justice Server, one ten-wheeled vehicle built for maximum ruggedness and accordion-hitched in the middle into two distinct sections to facilitate squad maneuver, rumbled quietly along the fallow pavement. Where detours off the fallow pavement are required due to rutting or pitting, the Polycorp Green Friendly tire treading insuring minimum damage to grass and other plant life impacted during transit. Minimal-ecological impact transportation navigation takes the Justice Server #42 north from Community Denver through Node Loveland…

We were told in the Social Justice Academy that no person is a hero, that no person rises above lest he be pushed up from the ranks by those whose shoulders he stands upon. Well, as a graduate at the top of my class I now find myself among a collection of throwbacks to a more primitive age, men who have been insistent since my introduction as their new commanding officer, that they are in fact heroes. These men refuse to take commands according to their Community Identification, their Service Designation or their Operational Rank.

According to Systemic Oppression Recognition Protocol Beta, I am therefore consenting to their demands for heroic status.

Additionally, according to Systemic Oppression Recognition Protocol Alpha, I am, in the interests of minimizing internal operational friction, consenting to induction into their own naming and ranking tradition, myself, a process which does not recognize one’s Social Justice Rating or Thought Purity Index, but rather seems to have some deep-seated, anthropological origin which was not covered in my graduate coursework.

Justice Server #42 has been unfortunately spray-painted black, and, with white spray-paint—totally compromising any possibility of functional camouflage—has been named Ghost Snatcher. These men refuse to identify the remnants of Ancestral Privilege according to their traditional designation, and name them “ghosts” which I find quite disturbing. However, noting that I have been given the most experienced crew in the Justice Service, I feel compassion-bound to abide by the barbaric traditions which these long-toiling veterans of the JS insist comprise the key to their storied success.

Oldschool Johnson

Awards: The Distinguished Service Star, Privilege Redaction Commendation—First Class, Gender Projection Service Medal—Provisional, with Butterfly Wing Cluster, Purple Heart [six awards]

Outstanding Community Service Debt: 1,626.72 hours

Oldschool Johnson, an NFL linebacker before The Crash, who lost his legs battling reactionary White Nationalists in New Jersey in 2036, mans the turret above me in the main hull, over the central axil. His weapon array is a dual Fifty Cal and grenade launcher, with 5,000 rounds of Fifty Cal and 500 grenades. We’re loaded for “Polar Bear,” as he says having taken care to chase the Latino loaders away at the Union Station Depot, with court martial-worthy verbal offenses that I will no doubt be called upon to testify for as a witness after the Op.

Oldschool is armed against regulations with two .44 magnum revolvers, which he claims are “battle prizes,” and a sawed-off, double-barrel ten gauge shotgun, which he insists is a family heirloom—oh yes, and he keeps a straight razor in his afro. The other men will call him “Crispy” in reference both to his dark skin and burn marks, when exercising what passes for levity among them.

Oldschool Johnson has a voice like baritone gravel, insists on bringing a 10 gallon can of rum for emergency fuel and medicinal use and has, as senior crew member, been called upon to assign me my call signal.

They call me Sunshine, “Captain Sunshine,” despite the fact that the Justice Service retired that designation as too sexist for tolerable compassioned operation before I entered the academy.

Not to cast judgment on my compassioned mentors, but a heads up would have been nice.

Just sayin’.

Onboard Array

Oldschool Johnson is seen emerging from his turret with a sawed-off shotgun and blasting at a flock of geese, two of which fall. The vehicle then suffers an override, ploughs over a field of gloriously purple orchids, painstakingly transplanted from a Japanese nursery. The onboard violation counter begins ticking with a fine designated at 240 hours of community service for Oldschool and 24 hours of community service for Crankshaft Witherspoon, who overrode the Ecofriendly Navigation Program to facilitate retrieval of the two downed geese as Oldschool thundered, “Dat’s ma bird-dog—fuck dis Vegan-Ready-to-Eat bullshit.”

Ten hours of community service were added to Justice Server Johnson’s sentence for insensitivity to avian victims of dietary oppression.

And the Ghost Catcher rumbled on, through fields of crushed dreams…

Crankshaft Witherspoon

Awards: Auto-Engineering Service Star, Martin Luther King Justice Award, No Borders Resettlement Award with Gull Wing Cloudburst, Purple Heart [2 awards]

Conviction Reassignment Awards: Armed Robbery, Murder 2, Manslaughter, Menacing—six counts, all overturned and reassigned at Demographic Service Awards after the Whitefish, Montana Riots

Outstanding Community Service Debt: 162.5 hours

Onboard Array

A bald, crag-faced, muscle-bound man with tattoos and a potbelly betrayed by his sleeveless t-shirt two sizes too small, a Hitlerian mustache painted on a face but one shade lighter, a pink notch, cleaved from his nose by some unknown mishap, leaps back into the driving port, with two ruined Canada geese held by the neck in one left hand, the back of which is branded with the words, “Don’t Wait,” come into the line of sight of the infraction camera, which then focuses on the right hand which goes to the wheel of the override-manual controls and is branded with the word, “HATE!”

Crankshaft Witherspoon is the most racist—that is if the appellation of racist could be legally assigned to a Person of Color—that it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. Before converting to the Justice Service he was an assassin for the Afrikan Nazi Army in America, whose members believed—and I am afraid, still do—that Hitler was actually a black Jamaican who used advanced cosmetic surgery techniques to hide his identity while seeking the Final Solution.

Crankshaft only speaks with Oldschool and Acetylene, regarding myself and Mainline as “no account bitches,” liberally employs such illegal hate speech terms as “soy boy,” “faggot,” “cat lady,” and the aforementioned “bitch,” and heartily believes that the “goboment,” is still run by “the self-serving so-called Whiteman.”

As the override driver and mechanic, Crankshaft is only supposed to be armed with a Glock 36 and the H&K Suppressor Sweeper. Unfortunately, these remain locked in the hold. Crankshaft arms himself with an 1898 Mauser 8 millimeter bolt action rifle, for which he laboriously and lovingly handloads the ammunition, which he names Von Moltke, an antique CSA saber he calls Ole Nate, a Bowie knife he refers to as Jimmy Jam, and a 9 millimeter Luger pistol he lovingly whispers to, unwilling to let any of the other crew members hear the sacred name of his totemic sleeping companion. Most disturbing is Crankshaft’s complete disregard for the suffused rainbow camo pattern approved for the Justice Service and his adoption of Anglo-Western attire, such as a duster when dismounted and a Stetson along with jackboots and the authentic WWII Luger holster for his handgun.

The subject is currently glaring up at me from the override port instead of watching the road so I will desist from further commentary.

“Nice driving, Crankshaft.”

“Fuck you, Sunshine. Ay don’ need no frizzy face faggit jus’ outa akad-ami blowin’ smoke up my black ass. Stay in yo lane soy boy en jus’ ged me dem co-ordinates fo da Red Rock Warrant. Dis brutha ain’ all about trussin’ dat electronic banka in da sky. Dig into doze Nat Geo Principal Warrant Officer Grease Spot left in the view port en ged me a tri-ang-u-ation—ged to it, nijar!”

I must respectfully request reassignment to a less hostile service environment upon the successful completion of our mission—Good Earth, they didn’t even remove the charred boot or bloodstains of my predecessor...

Video Array

Principal Warrant Officer Dessilanes is shown taking off his universal blue helmet and retching into it within the confines of his C&C turret, as Oldschool in the gun turret roars in laughter and Crankshaft in the override port below drives with his right hand and pounds on the housing of the C&C turret with the other and cackles like a fiend from Bosch’s vision of Hell…

Acetylene Jackson

Awards: Distinguished Service Star, Social Media Medal for Mandated Race-Reassignment [having performed the involuntary operation on a white CEO on a live-stream audio-video], Martin Luther King Justice Award—with Afrikan Torch Device, Purple Heart [3 awards]

Acetylene Jackson is, by far, the most frightening member of the crew. He began his Privilege Reassignment career as a fixer for the Black Guerilla Family in Baltimore, Maryland, purportedly did work as a jackal for the CIA, was the personal bodyguard of the Mayor of Baltimore during the corporate transition, and, most famously performed involuntary gender reassignment surgery with a welding torch on social media livestream, which elevated him in the public consciousness of the Justice Service, but has vexed the Judicial Board of the Service with questions of propriety every since.

Acetylene Jackson remains a gangster through and through, insults the entire crew constantly, except for me, who he refuses to address directly, which could cause problems in that he is the operator of the four-wheeler and has great potential latitude. He has, however, shown one saving grace. His friendship with Mainline Watson, who, due to his ultra-high regard outside the Justice Service and his dualistic gender identity, is constantly derided by Oldschool and Crankshaft.

Acetylene has assigned himself to be Mainline’s “personal man-the-fuck-up trainer,” which may seem distasteful from the vantage of Service Delegation Priorities. It is this officer’s personal contention that Acetylene’s crude, sexist and brutally gendered encouragement of our star crew member will help the operation gel in a way that my attempts at compassioned mediation have yet failed to achieve.

Acetylene, like every crew member save Mainline Watson, has discarded the blue helmet and suffused rainbow camouflage attire for a raspberry beret decorated with 16 gull feathers, one for each “ghosting” he has committed, a leather vest under a short-sleeved chainmail shirt and black jeans under black leather chaps. He prefers to wear black kung fu slippers, is armed with a pair of razor sharp butterfly knives, a collection of hooked, curved and straight razors, knives and daggers strapped in every conceivable location, an Acetylene torch, and an aluminum baseball bat. He has also stowed onboard a handmade bow and arrow, I suppose for the illegal harvesting of innocent game. The men have discarded the vegan meals ready to eat to make way for Oldschool’s rum…

As the four-wheel driver, he is charged with positioning less-than-lethal ordinance operated by Mainline Watson and also retrieving disabled, netted, stunned and audio-shocked targets of privilege reassignment. In my opinion, he is too eager by half to declare disabled targets to be resisting arrest. That said, the man moves like a great hunting cat and is indispensable in urban and suburban ruins and in the bush as well.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Acetylene!”

“Oh, my Earth!”

“No! Desist!! Hold your fire!!!”

Video Array

Acetylene Jackson, resplendent in his raspberry gull-feather beret, rises from his driving port, knocks an arrow to a wood and horn bow, draws the shaft to his ear, and draws a bead on a pod of pink-attired Earth Cyclists and looses a quivering black shaft of whipping fiberglass, which takes out the front tire of one of the mountain bikes, pitching the rider forward, over Her handlebars. As the Ghost Snatcher speeds by the head of the leader can be seen to be wracked with deep-felt sobs of pain and disapproved invalidation…

The voice of Oldschool Johnson grinds out, “Fucks yeah, son—dunk dat clit in da dirt o’ hurt!”

Mainline Watson

Awards: Distinguished Service Star [3 awards, Detroit, Chicago and Flint], Civic Engineering Star from FEMA for the Siege of Staten Island, Manhattan Service Star for Economic Justice, Gender Reassignment of Repressed Persons Award for Negotiating the Conversion of Mass Christian Denominations [3 “Rock Star” awards], Purple Heart [8 awards for 4 injuries, which wounded each gender quality separately and uniquely]

Mainline Watson is the one Person on this crew who truly deserves the moniker hero, in my humble opinion, for bloodlessly negotiating racial justice, gender reassignment, sexual orientation and reparation demographics at many of the Homeland’s white hotspots. It is my pleasure to be assigned to serve with a Person who is a legend in Its own time, being the highest-ranking instructor in sub-lethal munitions and also the most highly decorated voluntary hermaphrodite to serve in combat.

I must, however, respectfully submit, that some of Mainline’s double-gender psychic injuries have seemingly prepared him to fall prey to the negative influence of the other crew members, who have successfully baited him over his sub-lethal weaponry and negotiating roles that he has taken to carrying a machete and a Colt 1911 .45 APC handgun and chanting songs with Oldschool and Acetylene about “squashing cockroaches [Mexicans],” “baking bread pudding [Asians, northeastern I think],” and the unsavory ambition to “spike a k—" well, I cannot with a clear conscience repeat the slur about our most victimized race. Before I submit my operational prologue for debriefing at the end of Op—

“Oh, My Earth! No! Desist, desist—they are not cockroaches, they are economic refugees! Mainline, Mainline—remember the Million Person March, how we hugged and—no!”

Video Array

Acetylene Jackson is seen piloting the detached four-wheeler towards a group of Mexican women and children as Mainline Watson, once the peace-making face of post political, Corporate America, brings his sublethal bean bag ammunition to bear on the posteriors of the running Latinas…

In the sympathetic recorder of Principle [1] Warrant Officer Bersten Dessilanes, is preserved for Just Posterity, the cackling baritone voice of Oldschool Johnson, “Now dat shit is justice! When de done ate anotha crate a tortillas dey all gonna look like beanbags anyhow! Shoot em up Short Dick—show us you more man den bitch!”

A reassignment officer in pink falls in agony shielding a young Nun from fire, the scattering figures of the refugees lost in a squall of dust as Acetylenes Jackson, raising his illegal Indian bow high in his left hand drives in a semi-circle around the stampeding humans as mainline Watson, helmeted in blue within his polychrome bubble traverses the turret of his beanbag cannon to fire into a gaggle of scrambling children…

Ahead the array shows the open road past Loveland Node, on the way to Red Rock Canyon, the Ghost Snatcher rumbling onward to long awaited Justice and storied infamy.

...

Note

-1. Dessalines is not the Principal but the Principle Warrant Officer, as the Justice Service is a minimally hierarchical organization focused on Principle.