“What’s that smell?”

“It’s Earth. Olfactory dislocative disorder. It wears off in a few hours.”

“Can’t we move the ingress egress locus? I mean really...a storm drain in a convenience store parking lot?”

“Negative. It’s an anchored foxhole. Your people found it.”

“Ellen found it. I had nothing to do with Dark Cherry. Sir.”

“We know that. Here is your identity portfolio, and, this is a mission statement; oh, here...a Maryland driver’s license.”

“My name is Joann?”

“Sorry. We didn’t have time for a lot of choices. We thought since you’re Elorine...you know, your hero and all.”

“Thanks.”

“Here, I got you a coffee. Can you read while I drive? I want to be in Ocean City by three o’clock.”

“Sure...OH MY GODDESS! What is this?”

“Its coffee; Outworld coffee and nobody over here says, oh my goddess. It’s oh my god.”

“I know, and women can’t overhead press a standard ton. So, this is a full team replacement? What went wrong?”

“Batman. Fight scenes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We didn’t invent psych war...Joann...humans did. The enemy doesn’t have techmagi, they don’t know how to encrypt subliminal devices in words, but, they’ve been doing it with images in films for decades. The first team took it upon themselves to start going to the movies.”

“You mean...?”

“The techmagi have analyzed a copy of the Outworld film The Dark Knight. Every frame of the fight scenes is encrypted with subliminal cutters. I’m talking about over a million splicers per frame.”

“Wait a minute; what about their own people?”

“They don’t care; they call it, collateral damage. We have recorded a spike in violent crime, full psychotic breaks, some guy paints his face like the Joker and tries to steal a movie poster, somebody walks into a church with a shotgun; the Prince Georges County police raid the Mayor of Berwyn Heights’ house, kill his dogs, tie up his family, then, make no arrests and walk away like they don’t know why they did it except they were looking for a “person of interest.””

“Oh my godde...god!”

“None of that matters to us. Members of our team got cut by the splicers. Within a week they had violated the rules of engagement: no direct communication with any human via electronic means. After that, each member began to exhibit clear symptoms of a full blown psychosis. Psi-cutters are nasty. The psychic membrane between the middle and lower is shredded. Psychosis results from total collapse of the personality containment field. All done through the eyes. Their CIA has been doing it in films for a long time. The good news is that the techmagi have developed a way to encrypt our weapon directly into the body of a message like this one. Target doesn’t notice a thing and all the damage is at a very deep level. They’re also working on a shield against the visual splicers. Until they do...”

“Sir?”

“Stay out of movie theaters...Joann.”

“Yes, sir.”