Mr. Rabbit Visits Barcelona
- Günberk Braun brings this problem to his friend (and a very powerful spy in India's External Intelligence Agency), Alfred Vaz; and Vaz sets up a meeting in Barcelona with—you guessed it—Mr. Rabbit.
- And also some very important spies from around the world: Günberk Braun, Keiko Mitsuri, and Alfred Vaz.
- And we should add that the meeting is virtual: Rabbit is basically a hologram and Keiko is calling in from Japan. (We said it before: if you're at all into technology, this book will have you drooling and wondering why we don't have that now.)
- All the spies keep sending each other "silent messages," which are basically text messages you send with your wearable computers with tiny movements. (In other words, it basically looks like you're talking to people using telepathy.)
- The spies want to hire Rabbit to take over an entire lab. Like, say, the lab at the University of California at San Diego.
- Of course, they can't just come out and say, "we are spies who want you to do this." So Vaz's team, while pretending to hide their tracks, lets a few clues slip that indicate they are ex-drug kingpins of South America.
- But then again, these super-spies don't really know who Rabbit is. He might be the American government for all they know (although their analysts say he isn't).
- After Rabbit goes off to survey the lab and figure out how to break in, the super spies sit around drinking sangria. Actually, they sit around worrying about their plan. (And actually, only Vaz is physically in Barcelona and drinking.)
- What they worry about is: who is creating this mind control device, this YGBM (You-Gotta-Believe-Me)?
- Is it a great power, like the EU, China, the US, etc.? Or is this another terrorist group/cult?
- Then, after Keiko and Günberk Braun end their virtual visit, Vaz tours around Barcelona (in a self-driving car!) and thinks about how easy it would be to destroy everything.
- That is, Vaz thinks about how, thanks to technology (doh!), lots of terror groups or individual people can do huge damage—which is why Vaz is creating the YGBM technology. If he can just control people's minds (just a little), he can prevent them from using weapons of mass destruction.
- Yes, the mind control scheme—that's all Vaz. So while he pretends to help Günberk Braun and Keiko Mitsuri catch the culprits, he's actually trying to get them off his back.