Conductor: A Myth of Mind Control

PROLOGUE

October 1975

A Sense Mapping

A lone, tall, and imposing young man stood on the forest edge and had a private conversation with his Conductor. The Conductor, a thought voice inside of his head, said forcefully:

THERE,

SEE THE BOY

BY THE JUNGLE

GYM?

The

little

red-headed

boy?

SEE

HIS RIGHT

HAND MOVING

COUNTER-CLOCKWISE?

Detector-in-training Agent Ackroyd adjusted his goggles and zoomed-in.

Yes?

PULL BACK

AND OBSERVE

THE PLAYGROUND

ACTIVITY.

Yes?

THE BOY

IN THE GREEN JACKET

CHASING THE THREE GIRLS?

THE KID PUSHING THE DIZZY

WHEEL? THE DIRECTION

OF MOTION?

The girl

cart-wheeling?

I get it. You’re saying

the red-head is

influencing?

SUBTLE,

ISN’T HE?

Agent Ackroyd hesitated.

No,

not really. If

he’s influencing, why

does he need the hand

movement?

GOOD!

He’s

not the

influencer.

CORRECT.

Agent Ackroyd goggled the corner classroom windows and said:

There’s

a blonde,

button-nosed

girl blazing her sixth

chakra against the

window.

MEET

TEN YEAR OLD

MONICA

GIFFORD.

Jeez

she’s strong!

She’s conscious

of the ability!

She must be

a conduit.

The Conductor thought to himself:

I show Ackroyd grade school playgrounds across America, fertile and accessible plains of energetic observation, and yet he still takes these rare finds for granted as if every schoolyard harbors a conduit class.

YES,

AGENT,

SHE HAS

PLACID-SET

PARENTS AND

PUPPET-SET PEERS,

AND I DISCOVERED THAT SHE

HAS CORNERED THE LOCAL BRAT-CARE BUSINESS BY SUB-CONDUCTING THREE OF HER DEAREST FRIENDS INTO PAYING HER A FINDER’S FEE FOR EVERY BABYSITTING JOB THEY PERFORM! MONICA KNOWS EVERY FAMILY THAT NEEDS A BABYSITTER

WITHIN TEN MILES

OF HER HOME.

Which

means?

SHE

KNOWS AT

LEAST EVERY FAMILY

IN THE LOCAL

DISTRICT.

I’m

here to

detect if she goes

conduit?

YES!

I HAVE HER AT

REGIONAL

PLUS.

She’s

more than a

regional?

MAYNARD,

WHAT DOES YOUR

ENERGY BODY

CONVEY?

I

feel

a strong

transient

awareness.

SHE’S

AMAZING.

She knows I’m here, thought Maynard, involuntarily circling his left hand counter clockwise.

A rare generational find, locating Monica Gifford at such an early age, when she could be molded and trained coherently, is the reason she endured her eventual imprisonment. For thousands of years, governments, secret societies, religions, and power brokers, have kept mind control a secret in order to consolidate power to a limited few. There are forces that employ fear, corruption, propaganda, media control and distraction, and a top-down power structure to keep all of humankind in check; guidance usually confused as being a God’s omnipotent voice and invisible presence.

The mind control hierarchy is a undisclosed physics-based range of mental power; only a few individuals can attain upward mental mobility and knowledge within the control consciousness, and only if they are allowed to do so. The higher one goes, the more attention is paid to your advancement by those above, and the less that your freewill is actually yours, until, by a rare generational occurrence, you’re able to topple the Master Conductor at the peak of the pyramid.

PART ONE - Man in the Half Moon Dome

Speed & force = power / control.

June 2015

1. Canon City

Maynard Ackroyd positioned his massive body and resolutely cold conduit mind between the isolation cell door and the steady arrogant glare of Guard Bubba Tibbons. From within the cell, Monica Gifford screamed at Maynard to piss-off, for the world to piss-off, and for all gods and goddesses to piss-off. Monica’s skills and unorthodox Gurument training and unfortunate fate had led her to a private Colorado Maximum-Security Prison.

I owe Monica everything. Maynard glared back at Bubba Tibbons and his tin foil block hat. Through clenching teeth Bubba said, Monica’s all yours, sir, after this here taser makes her shut the hell-up. Puhleeeeze move aside.

No, said Maynard.

No? exclaimed Bubba, No? See how Monica’s downed everyone in the cellblock? This interview is over!

Maynard said calmly, She hasn’t downed you, Mr. Tibbons. Monica is a kind of ethical channel.

Bubba relaxed and managed a smile and patted his block hat built-in camera, And I’m wearing Channel Number Five! I know she’s heavily medicated, and I know you’re a fed, sir, but I have to protect us from this lunatic. Now back away!

Maynard wouldn’t budge from blocking the cell door, so Bubba decisively tasered Maynard’s right kneecap. As Maynard yelled and crumpled over in agony, Bubba recharged the taser. The tension of Maynard’s so-called follow-up interview with Monica evaporated as Bubba gloated and hovered over the fetal Mr. Ackroyd and listened to his pitchy moans. There would be no interview of Monica today and I’ll leave Ackroyd in her cell if I have to.

Then Bubba opened the cell door, shooting the taser to the chest of Monica, who proudly welcomed it with arms held high. She didn’t collapse or give ground. The cellblock lights went dark, and the emergency battery lights kicked-on. Abruptly enraptured by the rippling air distortion behind Monica, Bubba felt a diverse energy intrude, like a hot desert wind invading a cool mountain shadow. Bubba froze in awe of the soothing waves of energy. Through the ripples, an intrusion of blackness, sparkles, plasma-like energy, and superimposition. A colorful and bizarre four legged sheep clown formed right next to Monica.

It then galloped around the stunned Bubba, encircling him in misty color, and bold threatening movements, splattering Bubba with multi-colored paint drops; a mind-stretching cornucopia, woolen white sheep and circus clown images warped the air; the Clownsheep went through the cell door avoiding the rubber bullets fired by Bubba. A continuous stream of thought forms emanated out from the entire cellblock, and expanded outward from the whole prison to merge with the high prairie late spring azure sky.

Monica used a judo move and took down Bubba Tibbons, and then stared at the open cell door and Maynard’s moaning form on the walkway; then she thought about her father. Her mom had been killed in a solo car accident when Monica was six years old. Her Dad, Glenn, raised her in rural Mendocino County until she was fifteen. He was a freelance bookkeeper for several legit businesses and had a underground client who grew thousands of pot plants. Glenn taught Monica everything he knew about bookkeeping and finance. One day, the underground client accused Glenn of skimming cash and framed him as the caretaker of a remote pot farm on state forest land. Glenn was murdered in the Soledad Prison exercise yard by an associate of his shady client, in front of a very passive prison guard, which now colored Monica’s opinion of all prison guard’s ethical range of behavior.

Never again will I be jailed by low-con losers!

Monica stomped on Bubba’s ribcage until it cracked, and he screamed at her in pain, then whimpered and mewed, and faded into a state of shock. She stepped over Bubba and looked down at the prone Maynard; joyful feelings of loyalty and bitter revenge intermingled as she suppressed her guilt. She sense-mapped the prison wing, and discovered that many of her cellmates were awake and mentally prompting her to trigger a mass escape. Discerning all of the prison grounds and guards, and support staff, she planned her escape in the clarified moment, looking at the first guard station, and headed for the Outer Sanctum.

2. The Bypass Café @ Half Moon Bay

Weber Grambling had one eye on Clutch Antoine and one eye on Clutch’s daily tormentor, Toad Belfour. Weber didn’t need gaydar to detect the flamboyant Toad Belfour. Nobody in California needed gaydar anymore.

Toad knew how to rile Clutch. It was pretty easy… everyone riled Clutch. Toad was middle-aged, slow and deliberative, a fat happy slob, and a trust fund hippy. He squeaked along in tattered and faded denim shorts, wearing a loose fitting red and gold Hawaiian shirt, his eyes holding sparks of menacing wit.

Toad gripped a platter loaded with diggings from the round-tabled buffet menagerie named Donut Mountain, featuring the maple glazed South Peak, two French Cruller ridges, and the bubbling Hot Chocolate Fondue Fiord with floating and dissolving customer-abandoned whip cream test shots.

Executing the risky balancing act, Toad stopped at Clutch and Weber’s table. Body cologne and body odor arrived with him. Toad faced upward cringing, barely suppressing a sneeze and let go a big blaster. A plain cake donut landed on Clutch's Dutch Toast, splattering droplets of syrupy melted butter on the table.

Blurting caustic giggles, Toad said, Bless me! I do feel snotty today. Then a squeaky ambivalent shuffle to his table, sniveling and swiveling and laughing weakly he said, Keep the donut. Clutch started to get up, but Weber motioned him down. Clutch slouched and sighed, and fell backward, slap-whooshing the mock leather cushion.

Clutch…pummeling Toad won't stop the flirting.

Squinting and ignoring Weber, tacitly claiming territorial breakfast plate rights, Clutch picked up a knife and began to fork, slice, and lift a section of Toad’s plain cake donut. He dipped it in the hot buttered syrup boat and ate it.

His anger melted away. Nasal whistles accompanied suctioned air through his broad nose as he chewed and swallowed carbo load ala Toad.

Weber darted his eyes at a passing waitress, and smiled cautiously and remembered why he possessed a pen in hand. It was for the unsigned insurance license form under Clutch's water glass, the one splattered with buttered syrup droplets. Despite Clutch's distrust of those California State sub-conduits who cajole and covet taxpayers, and then tax away the taxpayer’s chance at saving money for some dental work in the near future, the newly stained form had to be signed.

It was a simple formality of the California Private Eye Credentialism Board.

Weber acted as a buffer, as usual. After a few mental prods, Clutch signed and dated the splattered liability form. Now they could practice private detective work for another year in all California counties. Fortunately, Weber mailed the renewal form before they actually began to incur work-related damage later in the afternoon.

Clutch and Weber left the Bypass Café in their motor home named Karmavore, and clunked over Hwy 92 to south freeway 280, while the news radio hyped the Clownsheep story like an instant suburban myth that’ll fade out by the next news cycle. Clutch’s toothache got worse.

Accompanied by co-anchor chuckles and insightful outbursts from an effected off-studio audio engineer, the aged anchorman reported that an elusive pack of wild dogs in Colorado had attacked house pets including Yollar, the champion Malamute show dog.

Fast and furious the strange Clownsheep mob had struck. Clutch turned the radio down and grabbed his tablet. Weber drove and watched CNN on the dashboard flat screen. Karmavore is a 500 horsepower twenty seven foot Recreational Vehicle equipped with a CB radio, MP3 system, a small commercial satellite dish, a Gurument issued off-the-public-bandwidth classified Wi-Fi satellite dish system, a cell phone booster unit, a solar and gas generator, and an isolation chamber that blocks electromagnetic waves. The aluminum siding distorts non-electromagnetic energy wave spin and had been replaced with expensive carbon nylon composite armor panels. For Clutch, listening and responding to world news is an exercise in worldliness. The Clownsheep story was certainly sensational weirdness.

In short, a deliberate, bizarre, mind control swath effect had issued forth from Colorado with the power to erase the imagination in those that were within range. This is not to say creativity ended. Crap still issued forth within the influence of the effect. Those who continued to produce only copied what had come before.

Authorities today in California are baffled over a rash of petnappings and killings and gross felony mayhem in and around Yosemite National Park. The effect has migrated into California from Colorado.

Wackos runamuckas, ranted Clutch.

It seems our greatest creative artists are under attack by an insidious malady as yet to be identified...perhaps a microorganism? How could this happen to so many at the same time? Surely this is not a coincidence. What's next Sean?

My show of course, hey folks...if the effect hits the rest of California, there will be no new quality commercials or visual arts, dances, books, fashions, and architecture! Music and makeup! Tattoos! What the hell is going on here? That's it. What a day, folks, what a day! Lines are open in five minutes. The ten oh eight guest is the chef from Maya Magoos...barring a stroke that is.

And thanks to the lucid Sean, and from Jimbo and Ed, thanks for tuning in to the morning news. We hope the effect has disaffected our devoted listeners. Thank goodness Sean is still unaffected.

The Clownsheep mob was now in Yosemite! The swath of mind control hadn’t reached the Bay Area yet. Weber Grambling steered Karmavore to north 680, then east on 580 toward the Sierra Nevada’s, proactively anticipating that the Gurument would soon ask for his help to manage the transdimensional breach.

3. Foray

Someone from the Gurument had shut off the prison electric grid from the main feed outside the prison walls, and someone on the inside had shut-off the back-up generator. Monica Gifford, having finally overcome the drugs the warden put in her food, stepped over Maynard Ackroyd and sauntered toward the terrified prison guard manning the secure watch post, whose squinting, slack-jawed, and woozy white trash attitude pressed the plate glass to see Monica’s shadowy form approaching him with malice of forethought. She siphoned the guard’s attention energy and redirected it to the manual override lock lever which the guard pulled on involuntarily to open the vestibule door.

Monica moved quickly through the doorway, her eyes penetrating to the next watch post. She skirted the cameras and knocked out most everyone within a mile radius of the prison and kept the other watch post guards alert and siphoned. She needed the guard assist through the control pass-points until she could finally exit the mind-numbing prison. A rubber bullet whizzed by her left shoulder, and from behind her the Gurument Agent Ackroyd said, Lay down with your hands behind your back! Then there came a Gurument Conduit operative, Maynard’s inside man, who had shut down the prison power generator, and wore a fazed block hat and pointed a bean bag gun at her face...

Monica did not lie down for the Gurument. Mixed feelings for Maynard would not get in the way this time. She squeezed back and Maynard and the other man crumpled in pain. She headed for the next pass-point and made the female guard open the door and pass out. Monica remembered the guard as being the meanest crony bitch of them all. She palm punched the guard’s false teeth out and threw them behind an artificial plant. The battery powered alarm system faded in intensity. Monica made it to the visitor’s lobby where a third Gurument Agent waited, wearing his own block hat designed to block conduit level telepathic intrusions. Monica acted rashly. The helmeted Gurument Agent took his own life by firing a point blank rubber bullet into his own temple. When this was discovered by Maynard, he confirmed to himself that Monica Gifford was no longer a strong Regional Conduit and probably had never been a Regional. Very few people alive can stop her now.

Monica leapt over the dead Gurument Agent and entered the administrative wing and met no resistance as she approached the visitor lobby and final control point. A veteran male guard, compliantly opened the door, and she let him down gently with a forehead kiss. Outside the air was crisp and breezy and open. Monica engaged hungrily for new minds to read, and all the teaming minds for miles around were available to her, unimpeded by the self knowledge of Monica’s capability. And so she sent the actionable people and authorities out of harms way.

The Clownsheep thingy was many miles west; its colorful thought forms struck at her mind and left control hooks in her energy body like those of a mature Beta Conductor, draining creativity from all of the other creative people in the path of it’s transdimensional terror.

She thought: I wonder which one of us the Gurument fears the most?

4. Common Ground

The day before, the powerful thought wave form had overtaken Canon City, Colorado, the Capital of American Prisons, a sprawl of public and private prisons where thousands of boundary breaking criminals live symbiotically side by side with boundary enforcing guards, sharing incarceration psychosis, the hyper-vigilant duty to control a prisoner coupled to the hyper-vigilant urge for the prisoner to escape.

The unfathomable Clownsheep Edgar, juiced-up by the hyper-vigilant effect, clobbered Central Colorado consciousness and creativity with a continuously spawning fear-based fever wave of dark thought forms, radiating outward to the ego controlled world. His sphere of influence was fifty miles in diameter. At first the thought form effect was tangible only to the artistic themselves. Abstract landscapists and beloved poets suffered mild strokes, while others clawed at creative blocks; many continued their uninspired craft, a nullification of their previous artistic status.

Inside the epicenter, mild brain strokes increased. The effect gently accelerated senility in the imaginative elderly and tweaked everyone’s touch tablets and smart phones with apps that opened indecipherable symbols that enhanced the distraction. The forces of government erupted into action. The evidence left by Edgar was made chaotically, scattered here and there in a flurry. Hoof prints in the mud and sandbars. Greasepaint colors rubbed onto aspen bark. Dog and catnappings’, a swath of bloody fur-kid corpses from Canon City to Montrose littered the countryside.

Heckling the bird life and scattering the deer, this rippling movement of light and color, at first thought to be a gang of cruel performance artists or a sadistic flash mob, combined dancing with pet stalking, targeting campsites and remote cabins. Side glancing witnesses saw chaotically comical wild dogs. High-con and perceptive witnesses perceived sheepnish at the edge of their vision.

Edgar moved so fast as to appear to be multiple Clownsheep. Elegantly shaped, a blur of a pantomime, witnesses claimed Edgar was the name he kept naming himself, the only word he ever said he said repeatedly, pointing at his chest: Edgar, Edgar, Edgar! He also spoke his name inside peoples’ heads.

His hairdo was a frightful mimicry of a spongy red harlequin foolscap minus the tinkling bells. A white face pocked by caked-on boils gushing primary green, orange, red, yellow, and blue greasepaint; the witnesses felt sharp energetic eruptions of pleasure malice, leading their attention to unprecedented dark thought form fulfillment, to the untapped subversive nature of the ignored and collective unconsciousness.

Edgar spied on cabin homes in Pagosa Springs, prancing back and forth in the shadows of pine trees, he twirled and spun-off red and pink paint drops. He surveyed a shady lawn with his paint smeared hardbound travelogue in hand, always waving the book at the witnesses, and he moved swiftly towards a fetching celebrity dog.

Across the road, the reddish tan English bulldog, Chutzpah, careened and twisted inside his pen, springing from tense haunches, pawing at the latched gate, his tongue pressing the galvanized wire. Slobber elongated as Chutzpah’s master, Ernie Arneson, lifted the latch.

Chuzzie good boy. No leash for now!

The gate swung violently as Chutzpah heaved against it. He ran in circles, half growling, half submissive. Arnie crouched and teased him by dangling a leash. Chutzpah came forward sniffing cautiously, and then resumed his hang tongue expression.

After affectionate pats, Arnie hooked the leash to Chutzpah, then they went down the primrose path, past the choir of nine stoic garden gnomes, to the gravel driveway circle joining the paved roadt as a postal jeep pulled up with the thrice week delivery. The ponytailed mailman said, Hey Arnie, you got another plate.

Yeah, looks like it, replied Arnie as he accepted the envelopes and a slim cardboard package, It's my second Stooges plate. Suppose to be as stunning as the second Bev Hillbillies.

The Postman nodded and half-smiled. Then abruptly, Chutzpah ripped free of the leash. Arnie and the Postman watched Chutzpah run away towards the Nicholson's driveway entrance across the road. Arnie yelled, Chuzzie! Here boy! Don't go up there! The postman drove on.

As Arnie reached the base of Nicholson’s driveway, a dog doomed yelp echoed around the neighborhood followed by a terrified woman’s scream. Arnie froze. Then a tail-tucking Chutzpah came running down the driveway tearing agitated circles around Arnie, who dropped the mail, moaning when the Three Stooges plate cracked with a ceramic death ping. Arnie grabbed Chutzpah by the collar. Fresh blood soaked Chutzpah’s chin and breast. Chutzpah licked Arnie. Orange and white greasepaint streaked Chutzpah’s back and smeared Arnie’s hands.

Arnie took hold of the leash and tied the looped end to Nicholson's yellow reflective address post. Chutzpah whined and clawed the pavement, bending the plastic post slightly. Arnie began a slow climb towards the sound of a woman wailing. Dread tainted nausea welled inside him as thoughts formed recognition.

God, don't let it be the almighty prizewinning show dog Yollar.

Arnie stared at Nicholson’s side lawn, which lacked any obvious scream source.

What was all that commotion in the woods?

He knew the sobbing woman by the edge of the lawn. She pointed at the woods.

What was her name? Oh yeah, She’s Nicholson's cabin sitter, Rachael.

She wasn't too hysterical; in fact, she added relief to Arnie's situation by confirming that it wasn’t Arnie’s Chutzpah that had dragged Yollar into the shadowy woods.

Something else had done the killing.

Rachael shakily pointed at the brushy forest undergrowth; it had to be a bear, or whatever. Arnie was naked without a shotgun...

He could see a pack of fast and wild animals across the far side of the back lawn, in the trees, dancing and pirouetting off their hind legs. Then came an agonized groan from Rachael as she grabbed her temples and crumpled to the ground. Arnie bent over, sick to his stomach, his head throbbed with every Chutzpah bark. In a peak frenzy of confusion, Arnie threw up and jogged back down the driveway with Chutzpah to call the sheriff and to find something to dissolve the paint on Chutzpah’s reddish tan coat.

Hours later, the authorities said the Edgar Clownsheep creature had surprised and menaced Yollar on the back lawn as Yollar played towel n tug with Rachael. Edgar had dragged Yollar aside and disemboweled her in the woods between scraggly juniper bushes. On top of bloody pine needles, seven colored rhinestones glistened off Yollar's torn collar. When her mausoleum was built her followers added revenge to the sublime tenets of dog idolatry.

5. Groveland Cleave

High horsepower Karmavore rumbled across the farm plain of California’s San Joaquin Valley to the golden foothills west of Yosemite National Park. Weber took Highway 120 up the Old Priest Grade short cut in order to pass the slower RV’s, and to diabolically hold back the faster passenger cars. At the top of the grade there was a turnout and intersection to rejoin 120 proper. Clutch took over the driver’s seat while Weber used his IPOD to video cars passing by with their angry occupants displaying middle fingers.

Bored teenagers, said Weber.

What’s that? replied Clutch.

Punk kids pretending to be sicko’s.

What? The cars behind us?

No. I don't buy the wild animal theory.

Clutch shrugged, Oh? Where do we start?

I don't know. Keep your eye open.

They slowed to 25 mph at the Groveland town limit sign and entered a charming gold mining village adorned with cops and buzzing bystanders. Tired and confused townspeople and doctors from Veterinarians for Peace conferred by a Red Cross tent housing catatonic victims of the effect. They parked a block away and Weber got it all on his IPOD. They were at the front lines...

Patrolman Matthew Jeffers approached and had Clutch and Weber's ear right away: They been through here early this morning. They left prints and paint droplets. If yah ask me, they aren’t wild dogs...maybe wolves. You guys from the county? Can I see Eye Dee’s?

Weber whipped out his wallet and Clutch got his out real slow like.

Weber asked, Which way did the wild dogs go?

Jeffer’s beady-eyes perused their ID’s and said, From San Mateo County? Eh…okay, okay...uh…we surveyed west of here...no reports of attacks there. I think we got our hands full with this bunch of retired hippy artists up here. Their pets are left unattended. You know the rest.

No I don't, replied Weber, I believe you can tell me some more if I buy you breakfast at Ansel's.

Weber pointed across the street.

Jeffers face lit up. Ansel's? They got them foo foo garlic hash browns…sure I'll take yah up on it. Not often I get to talk with prying eyes from San Francisco.

Half Moon Bay, corrected Clutch.

Well, here's your ID's. Yah won't believe what we found up near Buck Meadows.

They ate a fine country-sized meal and listened to Jeffers describe the stroke victims and horrible pet attacks outside the mainstream of the usual deviant rural crimes. These unknown culprits were some kind of city-bred imports practicing ritual sacrifice, taking a dare, or being just plain head sick. Jeffers thought the mind effect hysteria was a symptom of the boomers city to country migration. Then Jeffers asked, Ready to see the evidence?

Weber replied, If it's close. Otherwise we'll go up to Buck Meadows.

Out back close enough?

In the back was a slashed and mutilated body of a mature German Shepherd named Garvey, who had belonged to Ansel's night cook. Wearing a headset camcorder, Clutch filmed the perimeter, seeing paint droplets smeared on low branch oak leaves, zoomed in on the stylized graffiti lines tagging a piece of plywood leaning against an antique shed. He took blue, red, and yellow paint drop samples that stunk like petroleum jelly.

Jeffers showed Weber the footprints. Weber quickly observed the cloven hoof indents, not wolf, dog, horse, or cougar.

More likely a goat or a sheep!

Unusual violence, signs of agility, very active hoofs. Many were obliterated by vigorous contact, as if the perps had been leaping around and enjoying themselves, and there was as many as twenty attackers or as few as one. Too messy to tell.

Weber got the chills. In the corner of his left eye he thought he saw something. He looked left. There was nothing. It may have been the tail of a squirrel, or the spark of reflected sunlight, or a low flying bird.

Weber studied the recently watered backyard, which had been torn up, where clumps of mud and grass mixed with hoof gouges. Weber carefully observed a detail that was so obvious he had to restrain himself from laughing out loud. He concluded, although they were subhuman in nature, it was people who had left handprints as they cart wheeled into the bushes.

Weber was often self-conscious about his hasty analyzing; someone wore hoof shoes and knew gymnastics and carried paint tubes and had an extreme need to kill pets. The wild dog theory was a wild fiction.

Say Clutch.

Clutch was on his knees, filming a headless squirrel on the ground.

Yeah?

Maybe the Canon City effect caused some artists to go over the deep end.

Clutch chuckled, Art students? How can you tell?

Weber said with a sly grin, It smells like they make their own paint. He leaned in toward the plywood paint spots, grimaced and rubbed his nose, and entered the edge of the woods to continue his survey.

At this point, after observing the professionalism of private eyes