I found my mother’s binoculars and chanced a look at a boarding house across the way. There was a small red light I could see in that window, and at a closer look, I discovered it was a video camera pointed my way. I quickly dropped the binoculars and closed the curtains, completely baffled by this. Over time I learned this was some military spook with alleged connections to the RCMP. These shenanigans carried on the entire time I was stuck in NS. Every job I applied for got sabotaged by this git telling them whatever nonsense about me most likely to put them off.
The bastard even followed me to British Columbia when my father dragged me there for four months. Fortunately, I spend most of my time in the wilds of the Soowali reserve with native friends. I also got to know the chief narcotics agent of the region (working undercover), who assured me I wasn’t a person of interest, but he did warn me there were other elements on my case, though he wasn’t sure what. Either way, it wasn’t about drugs, which puzzled me even more. Unfortunately, my stalker must have got wind of this and told the local junkies at the lake park that I was in cahoots with this undercover guy. I had nothing to do with these cretins, but they were always around making threats when I was passing through on my way to Vedder Crossing. I told my father what was happening, and that I needed to get out of there pronto. I managed to get as far as Winnipeg until my flight got bumped by a bunch of politicians. That’s when I encountered a man who would later prove to be my next stalker. While I was bunkered down there, my baggage was definitely searched.
When I finally returned to NS, the creep was back with a vengeance. We wound up on the base quarters while the creep lodged his trailer in the neighbouring park, instigating the children there to taunt me and my brother wherever they could. When I attended free school on the Dalhousie campus, several friends got encroached to no avail and they informed me. At the time some weirdo from Brunswick Towers in Halifax got involved with close friends also living there. This guy was some ex-hell’s angels type rehabilitated from prison time for armed robbery. He had some secret plan to make off with a bunch of gold coins, him and his cohorts had fished out some cove. It didn’t take long before I started having the most lucid premonitions about the whole affair, and withdrew all contact for fear he would realize how much I could see. He knew about my abilities, unfortunately everyone knew, even my school teachers, because of so many incidents where I unwittingly let the cat out of the bag, answering questions before they were asked, or asking about things before they even happened. I felt so time warped, it was all like some recurring nightmare, and I just wanted to get as far away from it all as possible...but no, this weirdo just wouldn’t back off. He hitched up with my friend Anne, taking up some courses in Dalhousie. Whenever I stopped for a coffee and a sandwich, there they were trying to embroil me in their plans. I knew well not to accept that invite to his boat. Nor was I convinced of it being lost at sea, despite Anne’s insistence that all those visions were just wishful thinking. Needless to say, he pitched up at a party some six months later looking for me, but I knew better than be there. At the same time I knew a guy from Halifax Transit, also on my case about some alleged meeting with aliens in the remote outback of New Brunswick. Yeah right.
I swear this guy was under some kind of hypnotic suggestion. When he spoke, it was like something else was speaking behind that cold blank stare. There wasn’t even an eye twitch when I waved my hand before his face. I knew in an instant it wasn’t aliens just itching to get their hands on me.
I talked to my father again, summing up the odds of shit happening if I don’t leave the country soonest. We had already my mother and brother over in Germany, so I pulled my bank account, quit my job and high-tailed it across the Atlantic.
This time peace prevailed about a year and a half until the next vision came. It was the man in Winnipeg, he was coming to Germany to take over where the last creep left off. When I was called in to renew my visa, they told me I was entitled to German citizenship due to my mother’s refugee status but because of my father’s NATO status it would be postponed until his service expired. Well, in 1977 my father insisted I take up a job on base. That lasted until a captain at the AMU referred me to a graphic job in HQ. I applied and got it, although the contentions from all sides were pretty heavy. Still. I thought what the hell, I’m just doing time until I finally see the end of this cold war and all that my family lost through it before assuming my German citizenship in a free Europe.
It certainly proved to be an uphill battle, and god only knows why these spooks were still on my case. I was heading back from lunch when I saw that creep one last time, driving past in that ugly yellow Pontiac. Then as I sat back in my office, I remember the cold chill that came over me as I looked to that window of the next building and saw his replacement watching over me, very much intent.
It was 1980 when all hell escalated. So many pitfalls at work trying to put me in a compromising situation, like I was some kind of threat to who knows what. My circle of private friends was very small, and they were encroached in much the same manner as before, even run off the road at night. Interestingly it only happened on the civilian side, never whenever I had to attend military functions. The daily harassment on the job came from all sides, often trying to interfere with priority jobs from the senior staff and beyond. By April I was on the verge of a collapse. My brain just shut down so I went on a month’s medical leave. I don’t know what the doctor found in the blood tests, but he tried to raise a stink with some undisclosed military authority. I can only guess what that was about but he was silenced with threats to have his GP’s license revoked. I was finally able to work through May and then in July, then the help of a colleague in admin enabled me to take a few weeks Sabbatical in Iceland. Of course a number of people in HQ got all hyped about that. “Why Iceland, why not Tenerifa or the Riviera?”. Sorry, but I never was North American enough to be inspired by such tourist traps. “You’re talking to somebody who was in Czechoslovakia at 14, just months before Prague Spring invasion and traveled much of Europe alone at the age of 16.” No, they never understood that. They never understood that my grandfather spent 5 years in the dreaded political labour camp outside Hameln for shaking his fist and shouting “Hitler verrecke” at the Gestapo. False senses of nationalism were never our venue.
Well, the strangest thing happened in Keflavik when I passed through customs. The customs officer came over and told me he had received a phone call from certain authorities asking about me. He said don’t worry it’s none of their business anyway, so enjoy your time in Iceland. I just smiled and thanked him kindly, knowing I would somehow find out who it was when I got back. Indeed the vacation was enjoyable and quite the learned experience I had hoped it would be. No surprise though that I spotted my new stalker passing by in a car as I was on my way back to the guesthouse. Of course they encroached the one friend that I made, trying to lure me back to Canada with immigration promises to him, but I was not bent on marrying. In fact, whatever their profile on me, they clearly had it all wrong.
When I got back, a friend from the AMU dropped by. I asked her if anything strange happened while I was away. She said yeah, the Base Commander was all up in arms about someone and wanted booking info on commercial flights from Frankfurt to London. Someone by the name of Kate May...I laughed. That’s my legal name, I told her. The name Giesela was adopted in school by my parents screwing up the records. “Oh shit, but why? “ “Your guess is as good as mine”, I replied and told her to forget it. Aside from frequent visits from the major of AMU, things finally died down and I carried on as usual. Then the stalker started getting ever more reproachful with his weird requests, eventually pushing some young corporal at me that was a real head case. To make matters worse, she became romantically involved with my brother, trying to embroil me with other cretins that were less than savoury while the stalker kept lurking around our house in his car.
When my brother married her, she of course got transferred to the base orderly room. When it came time for her posting to Maritime Command, somebody tried to delete me and my brothers’s records from the computer. That set off an alert in Heidelberg, and all hell broke loose when that part of the network shut down on the ruse of flood damage. You don’t try to mess with anyone’s files in Wiesbaden, especially if they have a high clearance. It was yet another case of WTF were you thinking. Fortunately I was in Iceland again at the time, and when I got back, the culprit got himself fired. Still, I had a bitch of a time getting my brother on that flight when the time came, even though the legalities of the marriage were international. With the help of the command social worker, we finally got my brother through the ordeal. In Halifax, however, he wound up in the hospital with some mystery disease that had him in isolation for near a month. She finally got discharged from the military on a medical release and they wound up on her father’s farm in Hamstead, NB. Meanwhile on the home front, shit had escalated to the point of break with the stalker’s new cohort that took Ruth’s place in the base orderly room. I actually foresaw that arrangement in a series of waking visions, even the blighter in NDHQ he was answering to. Needless to say, he freaked out when I passed that on to the rumour gallery. This sent him on drunken driving binges around my house until he crashed into that street sign at the end of the village.
There was other weird shit also going on, like regular visits from an SIU plonker giving courses in “telepathic hypnosis”. After his friends failed to lure me into seeking employment in Ottawa, he returned to Edmonton where he continued to give courses to the RCMP. What a load of spook and humbug. One look into my eyes and he ran off scared shitless. The lassitude of those who should have been protecting me from such obvious coercion, instead acted in contempt of whatever my failure to reciprocate their social expectations, or simply denied it all as some allegedly paranoid delusion. Naturally, it became clear to me just how much the system had become subverted by this curse out of shear blatant ignorance. No doubt it would have been easier for them to throw us expendable civilians to the wolves than rock the boat at the risk of falling down the ranks. To this day it annoys me to no end just what a sham it was all turning into.
That’s when I decided to discuss the matter with friends in the liaison office of the local German territorial command. We were not only being spied upon, but psychogens et al were involved, very much in violation of the Geneva Convention. Unlike my Canadian colleagues, they did not try to pass this off as some paranoid figment, but forthwith contacted the Militärische Aussendienst to investigate. In the weeks that followed, I watched as the white mercedes with government plates closed in on these blighters. Foolishly enough, my stalker and his cohort paid an unsolicited visit while I was asleep, just to interrogate me as to what was going on. Whatever that drug was, they got nothing but a bunch of drivel that would have paled the likes of Stephen King. I told them I represented some secret organization of psychics scattered across the planet to keep an eye on things. “They know all about you. Hear that car driving past? Well they’re onto you, so you better run.” (sardonic laugh), That’s when the two freaked and left in quite a frenzy. Indeed that Mercedes was driving down that farm road next to the house and must have caught them in the act of leaving. I could have thought I was dreaming if it wasn’t for that itching needle mark on my arm, but then my unconscious mind is so hard wired, I’ve even been able to wake myself out of a synthetic coma. I guess all that LSD conditioning finally paid off.
Suddenly, about 50 people got a 48 hour posting notice to leave the country, no questions asked. I was assured by a couple of intelligence guys, that it was over, and if anything like this should happen again, to contact them. Of course they couldn’t tell me what any of that shite was really about. Like I'm really supposed to trust that. It was 1984, which is a tad ironic. Trudeau was finally done as Prime Minister, and it was as if a great weight was lifted. In the years that followed, some degree of normality seemed to prevail despite all power struggles in the Ottawa political scene.
That all ended when defense decided to buy the F-18 instead of the more reliable modified F-15. The technology was much too advanced for the usual standards of fighter training. After 5 of them crashed due to pilot error, the national budget went out the window. I knew it would be downhill from there. Finally the wall came down, and what does some jerk from intelligence tell me; "Oh they'll disband NATO and the Russians will take over, and blah and blah and blah". In all these years I worked with these blighters, I don't think any of them ever had a clue how allegiances work in the real world...but it didn't matter. As far as I was concerned, my job was done. Germany became one again and family reunited. At the time too many people I dreaded, had found their way into higher command and certainly as a German, I would never hear the end of it. Relatives in Canada had already branded me a traitor for leaving their beloved country, as clueless as they were to the privy council and the 21 families that ran the whole show. I don't know what it is about North Americans in general, but they never could identify with anything beyond that white picket fence mentality.
When they started closing this place down, I made that decision I had promised myself long ago, and pulled the pin. I surely didn’t want to find myself in Ottawa or Geilenkirchen and for what? My father remained embroiled in that dilemma until he finally died in 2008. After my mother died in 2013, I was finally able to leave all traces of that past behind me and lead a relatively normal life. Still, sometimes I wonder, but then my so-called sixth sense tells me the answer is so stupid, it’s just as well I burned those bridges behind me. After all, I’m out of the gray zone, with all due democratic rights a citizen of Europe and treated with respect as such. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
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