Nicholas – Austin Bunton Designs

Summary/Moral: when humans choose fear over trust and love, ignoring or losing their senses

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From across the chilly and iceberg-laden northern Atlantic ocean, my first good friend from England came. His family had migrated to the U.S. at some point in, perhaps, the early ’90s. It was there that we were destined to meet… and part.

Nicholas met me in a junior-high class, and we soon thereafter started becoming friends due to our shared interest in news, higher education, and the Special Operations community (sometimes also known as SpecWar, for Special Warfare). We’d keep track of current events via numerous news programs and papers, make our way through Honors and Advanced Placement (college-level) classes, and read his books about the British Special Air Service (S.A.S.) during our after-school hangouts at his family’s place across town. It seemed like we were captivated and capable enough to become military officers in elite programs, ourselves, one day.

JROTC didn’t suit him much, and for various and understandable reasons; it was geared more toward losers than cadet- and officer-candidates, its teachers were often subpar, and there was no way a better-formed and more-groomed member of international society was ever going to enjoy something like that. It is said that JROTC also stands for Junior/Just Rejects On The Campus, and there is some truth to that, as many are. Nick was a cut above, so his time sampling our school’s JROTC program was brief.

We ended up doing more studying and training on our own; outside that classroom and program, we found ways to practice making some of the things we’d learned about from a few acquired books frowned-upon by the mindless establishment. We also made our way into the local creeks, seldom traversed by all the rich elites populating our community, and this led us to find and explore some of the big drainage tunnels linked in a network beneath their neighborhoods of mansions. Strange, I now think, how he at some times stood with that establishment, having once worked with me to buck and bypass it in so many ways, but not so strange… how Inisfree now has an even-better tunnels-based network beneath its surface-terrain, inspired in part, if only subconsciously or in faded memories, of our time spent out there in the shadowy concrete walk-in pipes occasionally spilling out into the side-creeks.

The hand-&-arm signals developed for Elite Team started here. Nick was a founding member of that team, too. We made plans to do martial arts, camouflage hide-and-seek, and even practice ‘stalking’ (which is what snipers call sneaking up on people to observe them at medium- and close-range without being seen). All of this would later lead into The Wolves –which I wrote a series of episodes or short-stories about, one of the main characters being based on and named after Nick, and another inspired by the SAS commandos in the book and film he introduced me to.

I remember fondly the nights we raced around town in my black four-door sedan, one time nearly ruining my brakes after I accelerated to high speeds and then tried to slow down just as quickly, motivated by the Top Gun soundtrack’s “Highway to the Danger Zone” playing loud from a CD, and another time when we turned left before realizing there was a concrete median preventing us from crossing into the correct lanes of traffic, resulting in three of us, all wearing black ski-masks, facing a wall of incoming vehicles spanning all three lanes on the wrong side of the street, their headlights lighting up the entire interior of that black car of mine, all of us clearly in view of them, all of the people in those approaching cars probably wondering why they were looking at a car full of masked men driving the wrong way. Such were our adventures, sometimes taking unexpected and thrilling turns, all of us narrowly escaping harm and incarceration. It was a fun time to be alive.

Nick and his siblings had complained about how poor our school was compared to the ones they’d grown up with back in England. The more I learned about the differences in those educational systems, the more I had to agree. I think he was doing his best to manage, though they all still worried about how much dumber and less marketable they were turning out to be, having had to acquiesce to the American standards. Designing innovative weapon systems in some of our classes, and going on these after-school adventures, not to mention starting a training system and team of our own, were ways to take the edge off –which I could tell he found entertaining and worthy enough.

One evening while I was at his family’s place, his sister walked by in a tight blue swimsuit, and that was that; she and I started dating a few days later, we fell in love, and that was when I sketched out my first dream-house design (which was the one that, many years later, got expanded and upgraded into the Governor’s Mansion and the whole of Inisfree). I couldn’t believe how intelligent and compatible she was –as much so as she was beautiful. We swam, danced, joked, saw movies together, played Chess, listened to music whenever we could, and were getting along perfectly –as well as very maturely/honorably, having decided to wait until after we graduated before getting engaged and married. She even got dressed up to watch me sing at the Meyerson Symphony Center one night, and had me spellbound and starstruck yet again.

All that got sabotaged, though, when corrupt authorities terrorized the whole family, terrorizing me, too. Everything we had built was torn apart in the most vicious and unprovoked of ways. I only saw Nick once after that traumatizing hell we all went through, having been threatened by goons who were violating the law and ignoring our Constitutional rights in how they were pre-judging and treating us. In another year, his whole family and I, though almost all of us had become best friends (and like family), would never see or hear from each other again, all of us having been brought to the shocking reality that it wasn’t just the U.S.’s educational system that was severely flawed, but its justice system and the nation in general, too.

He was the mature of the two brothers in his family, and even shook my hand a year later –the one time I was able to show back up after I’d become a Marine. There was just something off about how he and the others were thinking, though, and I became very much aware of such subtleties and vibes since then, learning to avoid relatives of anyone I felt a connection with, and even to avoid giving my real name; humans, even more-intelligent ones like Nick, just weren’t logical or ‘awake’ enough yet to get the whole equation right, and there was nothing else I could do to help but steer clear of them until/if that day comes. It took me a long while to make sense of all this, but eventually I came to understand that most encounters are not meant to last more than in-passing, a few months at most, and when the vibe clearly indicates all is over, it is time to move on, lest one or both sides try to hold on, resulting in a similar amount of damage to those who try to rebuild and hold onto land in the path of annual tornadoes and hurricanes.

What happened ultimately boils down to this: all the people who inserted themselves into the friendship and relationship I had back in this time… were doing so not based on trust or love or logic, but fear and other mindless negativity, ignoring all facts and evidence, ignoring all context, and ignoring the needs of the heart. No matter how great a person is in all other areas, if they degrade and shame themselves in such a way (choosing fear and negative-herds over everything else), they can no longer be trusted or even useful. I’ll always be grateful for the good times Nick and I were able to experience as friends, but I can’t forget how I was the only one to remain standing against the waves of tyranny piled upon us when the jealous and brainwashed stepped in, refusing to leave any of us alone; I can never again be with people lacking heart, bravery, and the balance that completes (well-rounds) a person/spirit/soul.

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Quick Bio:

So much in the Bible was left to our imagination. What were the ancient characters really like? This section of each of our Biblor’an pages helps us more accurately picture our own.

Given Name: Nicholas Halliday
Birthplace/Hometown: ?, U.K.
DOB: ~1983
Hair/Eyes: brown / brown
Height/Weight: >6′ / ~200 lbs.
Race/Nationality: Caucasian / British
Distinguishing Features: elven; tall, fit, bilateral
Common Attire: normal school clothes
Voice/Personality: tenor, British accent / studious, focused, refined
Education/Career: great during childhood in the U.K., and above the norm once in the U.S. / ?
Diet/Health: ?
Preferences/Mannerisms: higher education, living in line with the establishment
Relatives/Descendants: numerous British family members / ?

Nick came from England, where he’d been in great schools and learning to fly. It was difficult for him, socially and educationally, transitioning to the far less sophisticated United States; the U.S. left a lot to be desired for anyone coming from a part of the world where learning institutions actually knew how to teach and groom young members of society for greater roles. We became fast friends due to our many similar views about that and much more, and because of our shared interest in elite military units, weapons R+D, edgy humor, and so on; we were the kind of boys with nobility in our blood, and the feeling that we were always meant for something greater, both of us feeling cheated by our chapter of life –and many of the lesser lot around us. Both of us would endure extreme pressures, shitty jobs, and mind-numbing years spent stuck in America. I still remember how he conducted himself in spite of those pressures, how he shook my hand like a man that one day I’d managed to return to catch up on old times, and how I couldn’t help but miss such an exemplary first English friend. I hope he’s doing well.

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Jokes:

“Fucking Indian drivers! …No offense, Vijay.”

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Quotes:

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Terms Coined:

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Major Influence on Inisfree:

much of how the NWO military training area conducts its daily exercises/evolutions (such as for search-&-rescue), all thanks to the S.A.S. methods Nick here introduced me to via stories and documentaries such as Bravo Two Zero

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