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and selling to those who had an appreciation for “the lowest of the low arts”—as Moroni mused.
    My job as a reporter or recorder: to pen exposés chronicling the goings-on of our group, and record virtually everything Moroni had said.
    And write stories.
    I sold one fictional story (Fillono and I co-wrote) to an underground literary magazine. We both worked on the screenplay; he turned the screenplay into a film and I into a short story.
    The gist of the yarn: The Telepathic Ventriloquist sits up on the stage with his dummy and stares at the audience in stark silence.
    Neither he nor the dummy ever move their mouths: through telepathy he prompts his audience into laughter.
    The ventriloquist’s act gains more and more notoriety.
    In the end, however, the ventriloquist learns he is but a stooge for a company testing out its new mind-control device. The device had been planted within the dummy, which needs a human conduit to allow it to work.
    The ventriloquist becomes aware he himself is the conduit through which his audience becomes brainwashed into purchasing a new brand of mouthwash.
    The climax of the film occurs when he performs “his” now popular act, and during the performance he breaks character and directly notifies the audience of what is going on. The crowd believes his speech to be a new part of his show, and laughs more so. Finally, aware of his predicament, he smashes the dummy into pieces. The audience boos him and collectively leaves.
    The final shot of Fillono’s film is, in my opinion far more expressive than the end of my story. He leaves us with a slow zoom-out of the ventriloquist, sitting under a lone spotlight, into a wide-shot of him gazing into the vast empty venue in desolate silence.
    The film was projected in a dozen or so art house theaters and garnered critical acclaim.
    My short story netted me $250 from the underground publication Buck Naked Truth .

    The last piece I had been working on during my time with Moroni—to the best of my recollection—was called “Undercover Repart: General of Inane to Make Bold Move.” I remember that, because I knew I needed to fix the spelling of “Report,” but I hadn’t been able to get around to it for reasons which will be mentioned later. It was to be Moroni’s tell-all speech in which he was going to give us the unadulterated, unabridged and mind-blowing account of his real identity and the actuality of his intentions.
    “Everything is in place … for a declaration of war on them by us—the human race … SCREW YOU ALL!” That is how the repart—I mean report—ends.

I WAS in my stand-up tent, flipping through my report. I didn’t like how the piece ended. As a matter of fact, the work on the whole sucked. I felt as though nothing had really been accomplished, and the entire year had been blown accomplishing that nothingness.
    Was I akin to Fillono’s Telepathic Ventriloquist? A mere “yes-man” acting as a bestooged conduit for use by manipulative higher forces?
    Probably.
    A mind-storm erupted on the scale of a psychic el niño. A diligent revision of my work-in-progress was in order. With this revision I took my own liberties and added my very own thoughts to the piece.
    For one, I made the fact quite lucid that Moroni was an insane man. I implemented myself into the piece as a spy, in the guise of a writer who works for some unknown (or undisclosed) agency, sent to investigate and report on the activities of the man known as Moroni.
    Secondly, I made myself out to be the hero, saving the planet from Moroni’s underhanded madness.
    And lastly, a love interest was introduced. I was, after all, beg-inning to feel lonesome and in need of female contact.
    “Ah, Mr. Bikaver … I see and I lurk, you are going about your work.” Moroni staggered into my tent with a bottle of wine in one hand and an attaché in the other. He pushed the bottle into my chest and sat down in a fold-out camping chair across from me. “May I check upon