On the subject of The Shaggy Man

The Union has been alerted by dozens of repo men that, in runner code (01=A, etc.), conspiracy member Ophelia Mitchell’s case file data spells “FIND THE SHAGGY MAN.” This concerns us greatly.

As you know, Groundswell is addicted to a childish and unwieldy series of nicknames based on the classic Oz book series, apparently because the characters in those books need hearts, brains, and other property that the Union is in the honest business of selling. Runners Thornton, Akeju, Gamble, and LaFerriere have been identified as “Dorothy,” “Scarecrow,” “Lion,” and “Woodman,” respectively. We have also been made aware of “Wizard” and “TikTok,” but have not been able to identify them as yet.

But we sure know who the Shaggy Man is. We’ve been looking for him for years.

Several years ago, a naive man named Mitchell founded a collective called Groundswell. This Mitchell person believed that people with artificial organs—our artificial organs—deserved to live healthy and debt-free, so he created Groundswell to assist runners in running free. It didn’t work. Groundswell’s charges had such a high casualty rate (good job, repo men!) that Mitchell invented a jamming device which masked the artiforg’s signal, with the intent to give them to runners for free.

But Mitchell’s collaborators in the newly incorporated Groundswell, Inc. had other ideas. They realized this was an opportunity to bind runners to their will. In a surprisingly admirable stroke of marketing genius, Groundswell added a “recharge” feature that required runners to do tasks each day or the jamming would cease. In essence, the runners gained a new kind of debt, one much more insidious than our logical payment plans. This was too much for a pie-eyed liberal like Mitchell, and he abandoned his corrupt organization. Word leaked that he was in hiding with his niece Ophelia, a young ice dancer whom he codenamed “Ozma.”

For years, our sources say he has been working on the “O-Magnet,” a new device that could wipe an artiforg from our systems forever. We would certainly like to find out if that’s true. Now, as far as we know, Mitchell has not revealed the location of this device, and we don’t want to spook him. So if any repo man finds the Shaggy Man, do not arrest him. What we want to do is simply find out where his O-Magnet is, and eradicate it from the earth.

So if you meet the Shaggy Man, pretend you are a runner. Convince him of your inherent goodness, and perhaps he will tell us what we need to know, or perhaps give us something we need. Whatever happens, do not alert him that we are on to him. That can come another day.

In lighter news, we at the Union hope certain of our speedy repo men are enjoying their complimentary screenings of our training film, which opens nationwide on Friday. We have not heard of any Groundswell clues found at those thus far, so attention shifts to the five that remain, in Hartford, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, and Orange County. These are showing on Thursday, so we hope to hear from our repo men that something was discovered in one of those places. Good luck, repos!

Lexi Raiman
Union Security

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