Exonerated!

It is with great pleasure that we announce that over the weekend Daniel and his task force successfully located and took into custody (former) Count Quisling! Perhaps even more exciting is that we have cleared up the mysteries surrounding his apparent betrayal and the apparent lack of thoroughness in our background checks, and that the GNU Public Dictatorship is off the hook.

It was with great sadness that Daniel announced that Quisling had apparently betrayed us in late July. We weren't sure it was the right thing to do, but we figured that with our supporters on the lookout we would find Quisling much faster than we would otherwise. Unfortunately, as often happens with complex situations, we did not correctly anticipate the magnitude of every effect of this announcement. It seems that the Parent Corporation was able to leverage many more news outlets than we previously thought possible, and the backlash against the GNU Public Dictatorship was harsh. We provided more information in order to silence the fears being voiced by "supporters" of the GPD, but still our search proved fruitless.

That is, until one of our supporters noticed a ride that had been in the GNU Public Area at the GNU Public Theme Park in Corpus Christi, Texas. At the Theme Park it had been called TORSO (Terrence's Open Reality Simulation Orchestrator) and it served to provide a realistic version of day-to-day life. When our supporter (who we shall call "Bert" to protect his identity) found the ride he thought it looked familiar, but it was labeled EORSO (Edgar's Open Reality Simulation Orchestrator). We were very disappointed that "Edgar" was willing to steal an open-source ride and pretend it was his own (which is, in itself, a grave violation of copyright law), so we investigated. Inside we found a relaxed Count Quisling, apparently going about his daily routine. When he saw Daniel he asked why we had softened our position on brads, and Daniel, confused, explained that we had not. The conversation continued, confusing all participants, until someone guessed what had happened.

Quisling had been somehow tricked into entering the simulator. Thanks to the open nature of the ride we were able to tell that the simulator had been programmed to simulate Quisling's daily routine and provide an ever-softening stance on brads and hole punches, purportedly from the Board of Dictators, to wear down his resistance to them. We were pleased when we realized that Quisling had not betrayed us, but we still had a great deal of investigation to do before we found out what had happened.

Apparently back in June Quisling was approached by what he considered a suspicious character. Quisling tailed him back to an apartment, where he apparently lost him. Quisling returned, apparently to work, and had been going about his duties faithfully regardless of what he thought he read on our blog. He called us several times, but was directed to an answering machine. He left several messages asking us whether we had some game plan that he should be aware of. When Daniel arrived Quisling still had no idea he had been missing for several months.

So, you ask, if Quisling was in EORSO at the time, who was the man Daniel saw fleeing from Quisling's office? The answer, as we discovered recently, was that Quisling had an identical twin who happens to be "Edgar" (the one who makes the decisions, not the figurehead) of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch. Given the information we now have we know that "Edgar" himself took Count Quisling's place and tried his best to bring down the GPD from inside. Why would the leader of the UBHP take such a risk? The answer could only be that our efforts are scaring them more than they would like to let on, and that they decided to take this risk in order to discredit us.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not relieved that we didn't hire our nemesis and that the man we hired didn't betray us, and we're nothing if not pleased that the UBHP considers us a great enough threat to send their reclusive leader undercover into our midst in the hopes of discrediting us. We are also nothing if not pleased that their evil plan did not succeed, and we hope that the evidence from Quisling's office can be reexamined given this new information and yield some clues about the workings of the UBHP's leadership.